Couple Things with Shawn and Andrew - Olympic Couples Talk Love, Marriage & Competition | Chock & Bates

Episode Date: August 13, 2026

We sat down with Olympic ice dancers Madison Chock and Evan Bates to talk about what it takes to compete at the highest level alongside the person you love. From becoming partners on the ice to falling in love, getting married, and continuing to chase huge goals together, Madison and Evan share what their journey has really looked like behind the scenes. We talk Olympic pressure, marriage, trust, competing as a couple, and what keeps them coming back after all these years. As athletes ourselves, we loved getting to compare experiences and hear what it’s like when your teammate also happens to be your spouse. This was such a fun one. Enjoy! (00:00) we have a couple crush (01:30) what’s your dynamic as a couple? (03:20) navigating the rough times & going home (05:30) life post-olympics (07:06) the community around chock & bates (09:00) who is more likely to be…? (18:45) confidence on the ice (21:00) feelings are moldable (23:44) the subjectivity of our sports (27:40) the mixed zone & kiss and cry cameras (32:15) quantitative vs. qualitative “success data” (34:27) the journaling process (39:35) the art of designing costumes (43:15) our shared love of sports & vacations (45:13) the post-olympics blues (47:18) what’s next for chock & bates? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up, everybody? Welcome back to a couple things, interviews. With Sean and Andrew. This interview has been a long time coming. Long time coming. We have been working on this for months. No longer than that, because we were working on this before the Olympics. That's right.

We have another, let's just say we have a crush on another couple. Okay. We're obsessed. We're fans. We're fan-girling today. And we finally got the interview. It was with Madison Shaw and Evan Bates. This was a really good conversation.

They've been skating together for 15 years and now they're married. And to hear how they navigate their relationship dynamics was really interesting. Sean and I can't really even work out together. And they compete together, which is pretty impressive. But I love their approach to life. They're very playful. And if you didn't see, Sean and I tried to recreate their ice dancing. Olympic iconic routine.

And if you didn't see, Sean and I tried to recreate their ice dancing Olympic routine in our kitchen. and we'd a blast doing it. Hey, they thought we did a pretty good job. They also want to get us on the ice and try to teach us, which would be terrifying. I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that. But this is an iconic couple. If you did not see them at the Olympics, you need to go back and watch.

They, I think it was like my favorite moment of the Olympics watching. It was really fun. Anyways, it was a wonderful conversation. It was a pleasure and a privilege to talk to them without further ado. Madison Chalk and Evan Bates. You guys, we are your biggest favorite. I feel like when we were watching the Winter Olympics, you guys are the only people, I mean, there was a lot that we were supporting.

And there's a lot of people we love. But I was obsessed with you guys in your story. There are so many questions I have. Let's just start with my husband and I can't even work out together. You guys are training and competing at the Olympics together. Just start with, I'm sure you get this question a million times, but what is the dynamic with training and being in such an intense atmosphere and your training partner is your spouse?

That is a question we actually eat a lot. They're like, how do you guys spend so much time together? Luckily, we like each other, so that helps. Oh, what's that like? Yeah. But I feel like you guys work out together all the time. Like, I see you guys doing challenges and things like that.

So it's similar. Like, we try to keep a light and have fun. Light is. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, you're training for the Olympics. Like, we get in the gym and we're just very supportive, but we're like super focused and just like zeroed in on the task at hand. And I'll hear Evan, I'll be going for like a last rep and a set. And I just hear him clapping, really.

I'd like, just clapping. No, but I mean, we, we skated together for 15 years. And the first five years, we were just friends and then started dating. And I feel like the progression of becoming husband and wife was a long process. and learning how to navigate that as a couple into training and get the most out of training without compromising our relationship. There was a learning curve there. And I feel like we did learn me, especially a lot about communication and taking responsibility

for yourself before you ask something of the other person. And in the end, I think skating was just the greatest lesson and it strengthened our relationship so much. And we're so grateful for that experience. I feel like training at an elite level, there's so many sacrifices that need to be made as far as your time and your obsession to your sport and to your craft. And just remembering back in the day, you can have some really bad practices and some really rough times. But you navigate those together. Do those rough times ever come out towards each other in practice? And if they do,

how do you then go home and go back to being husband and wife and not training partners? Yes, absolutely. When you do it as long as we have and you're a couple, so you're balancing this fine line of working relationship and romantic relationship. It's a really fine line and it's super easy to take things personally. And that's we have to dissociate a little bit and just hold more space for each other and the relationship. That's the number one thing we learned was putting a relationship first because we did have a lot of hard training days. And most of our arguments centered around skating. Only only skating. Like literally only skating. So I think now that we're not skating. There's not much to argue about. But it was just because we wanted the same

things and we just had different ways of kind of going about them and achieving them on the ice and practice every day. So it was just learning to work together and communicate things before they become something bigger and you silently just are mad at the other person, but you're not going to say why, I'm not going to bring it up. You just have to let it out and clear it as soon as possible. You skated together for how long? 15 years. And is that chapter closed? No, we're definitely still skating. We're actually going to get back on the ice tomorrow. We've taken a little hiatus, which has been really nice and needed.

So we haven't skated in six weeks, which for us is like an eternity. Other than COVID, I think it's the most time we've been off the ice. But we are getting back on tomorrow. We're like a little apprehensive about how that's going to go and how it's going to feel. But we're excited. Skating is like we share this creative outlet and this passion together. And ice dance is so inherently romantic in a way. it's our job to look like we're in love on the ice.

But luckily for us, we are actually in love. So we're excited to get back out there. And we're getting ready for some shows. We're going to Japan at the end of the month. And we always love going to Japan. So we're really excited. What has life look like the last six weeks without having skating? You know what?

It has been so busy. We've just been saying yes to everything that comes our way, which we normally wouldn't because we're like, no, we've got to get back to training. And right now we're like, we're going to take a nice big break and just say yes to everything. So we've been traveling a lot, bouncing around from L.A., Palm Springs, New York, Las Vegas. And then we took a little bit of a hiatus.

We took a family vacation with Evans family, his brother, sisters, and parents, and their families up to the UP in Mackinnell Island, which was amazing. Wow. I feel like y'all earned that. So I'm glad you took advantage of that. Was a relationship dynamic different at all? Was that the largest window of time you had gone without skating? Yeah. Yeah.

It has. I mean. And the first time we've done a family vacation in New York. Yeah. I just, I feel like the kind of post-Olympic unwind is so needed and necessary. And our relationship has honestly just been like, it's felt it's always good. But like lately it just feels like we don't have that stress hanging over our heads anymore, that kind of like thing you have in the back of your mind that you always need to get back to this pursuit. And you're always in like constant competition with yourself and with your competitors for reminding ourselves.

Because we're not going to compete this upcoming season. And the reminder of like we don't need to have that constant ball of stress is so comforting. And it's so nice. And it's new for us. It's the first time we felt that ever. We're getting coming to terms with that. When it comes to your strategy of training and planning and going to your next season and even looking ahead to different Olympics, paint the picture for us and what your team looks like.

Is it you two who are sitting down and saying, I want to do this season, I don't want to do this season? Do you have a coach? Do you have mentors that are painting this picture for you? Because I feel like with that marriage dynamic, inherently, someone might be more competitive, might want more of a break. How are you painting that picture and protecting your marriage while strategically putting in a training plan that one might agree with and one might not? We knew we had this total vision for the Olympics. And in the last four years, we have really been in the driver's seat of our plan with what we want to do and how we want to do it. And that was huge for us, just taking ownership of every facet of our training, every facet of the creative process.

And since we moved to Montreal, we have been surrounded by the best team of coaches and mentors possible. And they've really been guiding us and giving us the tools and the space to create this freedom for ourselves and create our own structure and what works for us. So instead of when you're a kid and you have a coach and they tell you everything and line up your plan and tell you what to do, when we moved to Montreal, it was a shift because we were older, we weren't young kids. We started our relationship with our coaches when we were adults. So it became more of a working partnership than the typical, like, student coach dynamic. Of course, we were learning from them and trying to absorb everything as much as possible, but they really left the bulk of it in our hands to feel like how much we learn, how we absorb it. Like it was on us and our responsibility to journal, to take notes, to be in charge of our scheduling and just really have all the ownership over our process. Wow, that's great. It feels like a good setup. Who would you say between you two is more competitive?

I think Maddie is more outwardly competitive and I'm like competitive too, but too polite to show it. It's the Midwestern in me is just like. after you. That's okay. That's okay. No, but we're both super competitive, but I think when-

It comes out on the ice. Maddie is very competitive. Who's more of a- What about between you two? And you guys go on reality shows and compete against each other all the time. Sean, taking the-

Yeah, I'm really competitive, but I don't really take it personally. Yeah. And that's why, to your point, Sean and I spend all day together, but we do not work out. Take the hour and a half is pretty much the only part of the day

we're not together. It's because Sean just dialed in and I don't have that same approach as she does. And so it's like, it caused attention where I'm like, hey, I'm just. Was there a workout that kind of tip the scales until we can't do this anymore? I think it's just the dynamic of sports. You guys are in the same sport. And with gymnastics, it was very military style.

There's no talking. There's no playing around. Football and football locker room and weight room was very different. There's such a heartedness sometimes. And so I would go to workout and I feel like, what are you? doing? Why are you jumping around, bouncing around? Let's get this done. And it's just, it was very different. So I was like, no, we're going to do opposite thing. Who between you two is more of a perfectionist? I don't know. I think we're both. That's a mindset we've worked a lot on because in

skating, it's like you really have the, you're like, everything needs to look perfect and be perfect. A toe, not a rhinestone, not a place. Because it's a judge sport and you're so, so, I don't know, just like intimately critiqued on everything, your appearance, what you do, how you do it. So I think that's something that we've worked on is moving away from the perfectionist mindset and going towards an excellence mindset and the pursuit of excellence and doing everything every day just to get one percent better and just be excellent at what we're doing in the moment at that task. But I do think that you're better at walking away from something or leaving something. And I'm like learning to not always say what's,

on my mind because it's not always need necessary. It's like, what is the quote? Is it kind? Is it necessary? What was the other one? Oh, man, we need to have a refresh with stuff because. Is it helpful? Like when we were on the ice and when we want to say something, it's okay.

Knowledge is knowing what to say. Wisdom is knowing when to say. Yeah, that's it. Are you saying to each other? Yeah, to each other. When we're working with our coach and the dynamic, it's like the feedback is you can always get better. It's like in skating, and I'm sure in gymnastics needed in football, it's like the play or the routine is never the same twice. And so we're skating like four hours a day, filming every

rep, analyzing it, looking for everything. You can always find something. But at the end of the day, like for your mental well-being, even for your progression as an athlete, it's not conducive to success to always nitpick and always bring up negative things. You want to leave on a good rep. I want to walk away from the rink feeling good about what you did. Even if we like are looking to get, I want Evan to move out of my way in this one piece or let me pass through here. I want to feel this certain feeling and vice versa. It's like, how do we go about asking the other person for that without being like, you're in the wrong spot.

Can you move? Get out of my way. Get out of my way. Can you put me here? So it's, it's just like a dynamic that we have to work on, like, how to talk to each other, when to say it. And that's why is it necessary? Is it helpful?

Is it kind? Like, how are you going to say it? Yeah. Yeah. Sean, I would say stylistically, both in working out in marriage and in parenting, it's funny. She has more of a sense of urgency to address issues now, which is super helpful. I'm not like, that's needed. And I'm more of like, hey, it'll work out in time.

There's no rush. And like kind of what you were describing is like there's, yeah, we have stuff we can work on. We always will. Yeah. But that doesn't mean we can't enjoy the ride. So it's like very stylistically different. And it's both are helpful and needed. But isn't it nice to have good?

But I do have to say styles and different personalities. We feel like we always say all the time. We're so different. Like not only because we have a massive height difference, which I wanted to talk to you guys about like your, but also our approach to everything, our personalities, like they're so different. I feel like the same is true with you guys. Yeah.

Ours is pretty extreme. So he's six, two. I'm 4.11. Wow. And we've just embraced it, though. He did confess at one point. This was like recently, this is within the past couple of years, that he wondered early on in our relationship if I was too short to go the distance with.

It was such a tough decision because it's like, okay, obviously she's a great athlete, right? So our kids will be good in that sense. Are they going to be short great athletes? I don't know what to do. I will say he's always got neck pain and I always have neck pain. So it's just what we'll have for the rest of our lives. But you can. How does that work with dancing, though?

With all your lifts and everything, I feel like the, I just remember it from Dancing with the Stars where they had to try to find partners who are somewhat similar night. Yeah, I appreciate you guys did our lifts, literally. You're the only couple I've seen who can do some of those lifts that we do on the ice, which is really impressive. Kudos to you guys. Keyword Sum. I was yelling at him pretty good. I was like, I was freaking out with some of the attempts. Was that in the kitchen, you guys?

Where were you guys? Yeah. Yeah. I love it. That was great. Probably not the safest. choice of places to try that out. Oh, that's so funny.

Did you like practice? How did you select which moves you wanted to try? Pretty and not. It was whatever we could do. We tried. I just pulled up your Olympic routine and I was like, how about that one? And then we had tried and be like, nope, can't do that. That one.

Yeah. There was one where you're like wrapping your body around him. Crazy. I still can't wrap my mind around what you did. Oh, in your shoulders. We're about to rip out of your body. You guys do a lot of crazy. You do one where you like come around.

around him. It's so beautiful. I pull around his neck and then poke over his shoulder and, oh yeah, and you're like holding your little, oh, it's so crazy. Have you guys ever skated? We didn't get, yes. I bet you're, love to. Love to skate. Not good at it. Can you guys? We would love to go skating with you guys. That would be great. It wouldn't be fun for them. It's like an expert teaching a beginner where you're like, but you imagine you trying to lift me on the ice. We would, someone would be drastic more. Guys, you could. like balance being Olympic gold medalist NFL players. You act like you have no skill set. You guys will kill it. Skating does not translate. It is like a, it's a blank slate. I feel like it's reset.

Also, we're like hockey players on the ice. It's like this. There's no, there's nothing graceful. Not a lot of elegance or finesse. I am curious that when you guys are going into the whole planning phase of let's do a lift or are you first doing this on ice? No, not usual. Sometimes like towards when you know what you're doing.

and you have an idea of where you want to go and what you want to do. We can do some things on the ice, but then there are some moves that we practice on the floor first and work with specialists, like acrobatts, and we have someone spot us off the ice and on the ice, depending on the difficulty and how we feel about the move. But I think towards the end, like we were able to just try things on the ice because we had just such a broad range of knowledge about how to lift

and what we wanted to do, how we wanted it to feel. I would just pick her up and then we would talk through it and be like, give me your leg or come over here or something like it's fun that's just that working dynamic like when you work so intimately for so long it's like we could communicate without talking and know what the other person's thinking and like to your point earlier about like having tough training days like sometimes it would be a sigh like just a look like something that would just set it off that it's i feel like it's leverage when you work with your spouse it can either be exponentially better or if it goes poorly,

it can go exponentially worse. You have to learn to use that leverage to your advantage. That's really well said. I agree. It's like if you can make it work, it's magic. I love, I get to understand Sean and such a,

you're talking about creativity and being able to share that together. It's, oh my gosh, that brings so much color to my understanding of her and to see her fully engage and activated in what we're doing. You're like, oh,

I get to know you so much more deeply. And I can't imagine that's going our own ways for eight hours. a day. But anyway, I know it does go poorly sometimes and I'm glad that's not been our experience. We even have rough days with podcasting where it's like if your marriage isn't, I don't want to say vibing, but if you're in an

argument or you're just, it doesn't work well and I can only imagine this and if we're like in an argument being like we got to go to practice together would be so bad. It would be so bad. I just have such respect and props for how you guys have navigated that. I think, I

understanding that you guys did skate together for so long and you almost mastered the training side of it and then had to bring in the marriage side yeah but we got a podcast for a minute there too and it's not easy and like you can't fake it like you can't sit down and just paint a smile on and then have a really great conversation when like you're actually not in a great mood and you're off so or you're exhausted not easy yeah like the last thing you want to do is talk more about training for a little rest yeah yeah we don't have three kids we don't have three kids we don't I don't have three kids and a family. Like, you guys are doing everything.

You guys are awesome. We're treading water. I don't know if we're like swimming, but we're treading water. I think this is somewhat related, but my favorite thing, I could still see the close-up now. Every time they showed you all on TV, the absolute, I have chills right now thinking about it. The absolute confidence that you both exuded. It was like, I have deep chills right now. It was crazy.

I just know as an athlete to however you guys were positioning or thinking about it. it or the absolute confidence is so hard to have as an athlete and you're at all the dynamics of this is the biggest moment you've been working for and I know there's you're just you have to be a steel trap of not letting the negative thoughts come in and I'd literally never seen someone so visually confident as I had both of you and I just I guess just thank you for showing me that it was like amazing to watch I don't know how you did it or if you have tips or tricks but thank you Thank you. It was a long time coming to get to that point. I think when you take the ice, it can be very daunting. You just see all the people. And if you really think about the moment,

how many people are watching through the cameras, even it can be a lot. And I remember being at previous Olympics and feeling that, I don't know, all the eyes. You could feel all the eyes in the moment. And I think when we set our sights on Milan, we knew, okay, we had enough experience. We knew how we wanted it to feel. We had those good performance. performances were like, wow, okay, that's the feeling we won't have. And so it was then knowing that feeling intimately and working backwards from it and be like, okay, how can we achieve this feeling, this sense of calm and presence and readiness when we get to the Olympics. And so it was all just in preparation to feel how we wanted to feel and to prime ourselves in a way that we could perform in a way that kept that feeling in ourselves. And I think that alone being able to step on the ice and feel a sense of calm and presence and ease that was the biggest win and that was by far the biggest accomplishment because that was our number one goal our number one focus was to be able to step on the ice feel how we wanted to

feel and deliver a performance that we were proud of well because this has carry over to I think like relationships as well are you saying that feelings are moldable in your perspective. You said something alluded to it as well, but you're like, you say, hey, this is how we want to feel and then you take actions to get there? Absolutely. Absolutely. Feelings are moldable. Feelings are, feelings can be created. It's a practice. Just like anything, it's a skill set that you learn to cultivate and home. And I think every time we stepped on the ice in practice, we're like, okay, how can we find this feeling of presence and calm and just have this awareness? Because just being presence allows you to really be in the moment you're not so focused on, oh, this has to feel a certain

way. It's moldable. It's fluid. And you can move through it knowing that the next step is going to be a little bit different or feel a little bit different and to just have the presence and the calmness to not react, but to just experience. What were some of the things, the actions you took to get you to that feeling when you stepped on the ice? I think failing was a big part of it. We had failed before, at the Olympics in 2018, we completely belly flopped in the middle, like right on the Olympic rings. We found ourselves face down. And I think going through that experience and then understanding that we can handle difficulty, we can handle failure, makes failure less scary. And as you prepare the next time around, and we're so fortunate that we got the opportunity to do four and five

Olympics, we knew that we wanted to step off the ice and just feel complete and feel good about while we did. I think in the judge sport, you eventually understand that you can't put stock into what other people feel. As much as we could, we tried to take our power back and just focus on what we could control, which was our skating. And skating is unique in that our other competitors aren't on the ice with us in that moment. So we have our four minutes on the ice. We know our routine. We know our music. We practiced it so intimately that we knew as soon as that first note of the music, it became like doing a meditation. And like Maddie said, it wasn't the same exact thing. And, every single time, but it was close enough that we always made it feel good.

And we kept saying this to each other. We want to go into the Olympics feeling like we left no stone unturned. And yeah, this is Henry, by the way. He woke up from his nap. But we wanted to leave no stone unturned and know that when we got there, we had done everything in our power to prepare and be the best version of ourselves that we could possibly be. that was sleeping well, eating well, journaling, meditating, making sure we would think of different scenarios and imagine, okay, what if this went wrong, what if this went wrong, what if this went wrong?

How would we handle those things? We're so prepared, as prepared as we could possibly be for all the things within our control. At this past Olympics, something that's interesting and I think a reason why I gravitate so much to watching your sport is the unfortunate side of both of our sports, which is the subjectivity.

And I think it has an evil presence on your mind as a perfectionist because just like you said, you were talking about taking your power back and kind of controlling what you can. Something very interesting about our sports combined is you can go out there and do the absolute most perfect routine you've ever done in your life. But there's still a margin where a judge can say,

you know what? I'm really not feeling it today. and it is a part of the sport that comes with such beauty because it truly is you're trying to create a magical impression on someone but at the end of the day at a place like the olympics that can hold the weight of a medal in your hands i'll say this very frankly but i remember watching you guys as did the whole world and it was like you captured the most perfect moment i think the world had ever seen and i'm curious how you guys measured and weighted pressure on yourselves and going into the with a subjective sport and you won the silver, though it should have been gold,

and then you won the gold in the team. Walking away from those Olympics, did you feel like you put everything you had out there? And how do you then remove yourself from the Olympics and process your outcomes and the subjectivity of your sport and move forward? Yeah, I mean, that's just something that we've dealt with our entire career. Sometimes you win some, sometimes you lose some, sometimes you win when you maybe didn't deserve to or lose when you didn't deserve to. And it's definitely a harder pill to swallow when you're at the Olympics. And that is the dream.

That is the end goal. But we had our own personal goal. And we had to redefine what winning meant to us multiple times. We've learned this lesson across our careers. And so the Olympics was no different. It just was on a larger scale. And the whole world witnessed it. And when we finished our program, we felt like we had won.

And we knew in our hearts that we had won because we skated our very best and delivered four of our best performances we've ever skated at the Olympics when it was the time to do those performances. And so that for us, that was the win. Like we know in our hearts that we won because of that feeling. Because that's how you define winning. Because that's how we define winning. Yeah.

And I think like there are more. moments where we felt really down about the outcome. And I think we're so lucky because we kind of had each other to remind each other of, we would say like, okay, well, if you could go back, like, what would you change? And we would say nothing. I wouldn't change anything about the preparation, the time in the Milan, even post-performance media. Like, you step off the ice and you have to do Mixone and there's interviews and we're like heartbroken. And I felt like, we walked away and we kept reminding ourselves like we wouldn't change anything about how we handled anything and so that is comfort and that is what we yeah just always come back to it's like we did everything

we take that feeling with us that's what we will bring forward like our metals will probably sit in storage or sit in a drawer or maybe they'll be on display somewhere but it's the feeling in the the knowledge knowing that we accomplished what we set out to accomplish we achieved all the goals we set out to achieve and like that that that that is huge and we did it together We put our heads together. We problem solved every day in training. When it wasn't easy, we showed up. And that is the win.

Like we came out with our relationship being stronger, learning more about each other, more intimately about ourselves. And that's the greatest lesson. I think sport is truly the greatest teacher. I think you say that absolutely perfectly, beautifully. I felt like I experienced the same exact thing. And I will never forget watching you guys

and feeling I was back there. the mix zone. They need to get rid of that right after because I remember wearing silver metal and the mix zone is asking you questions of like, what would you change? And what went wrong? And why, why this? And it's like, no, it was everything I could have given. And I remember watching that from you guys and your iconic performance that is embedded in everyone's minds is what will last forever. But that mix zone is brutal. People really don't spare feelings or emotions. And you're trying to process, everything that you just went through. I just recently heard you talk about even when you won gold and you stepped off, you know, Matt and they were like, are you going to compete in four

years? It's like the first step over what just happened and to then move the goalpost to the next goal. And it's like, we're going to stop and celebrate the wins. Even if it's a silver medal, our win was our performance, our preparation, how we handled diversity, all of it. So like, yeah, I think we should fix them. I like that. Hi, non-Olympian here. Oh, okay. No, no, what is a mix zone? I've never heard of this.

I've never heard that term. It's right after your game. But it's like you have to walk through. It's kind of like a gauntlet. But you don't get to shower or change. And it's like a maze. You just like walk. Walk.

And they're all the press on film. There are some for just journalism like print or online. And yeah, you just stop at each stall on your way in your skates and your costumes. It's sweaty. You still get your skates on? You just trudging along there with your skates? You can't go to the bathroom. You're barefoot out here.

You're literally like you go from the podium and you like walk off the podium off the ice. And before you even late like right there you go into your mix zone. And it's just like it's even before the podium. It's like right right after you skate right. Yeah. The first thing you do if you get out of the kissing cry is go straight to the mix zone. And it's all the press from the world. Well, because the other brutal thing about both of y'all.

sport too is like they show you sitting there waiting for the score and it's like golly this is such a vulnerable moment i don't want to watch i really don't want to watch like zoom in on your face like as close i know i was like get these out of here yeah what is that called what is that part called the kiss and cry kiss and cry the names yeah yeah you guys actually have like an area for it yes you guys just is brutal yeah yeah they just the cameras are actually on the gymnastics floor. So they just follow you around and you're just like, go. What's the etiquette for kiss and cry? Because I feel like some people have like a, like a, you know, a system to it. Did you guys premeditate that? No, I mean, you just like sit there away for your scores and they show your program in slow motion,

like the replay of it. So you're kind of watching and then you see yourself making weird faces. Yeah. Yeah. No, but we try to, I think, like, stay pretty like neutral when we get our scores. I think the, the goal to avoid becoming a meme because there have been, you know, when you like, you know, get a bad score and you make a face or something, the internet remembers. So I don't know. You also want to be like vulnerable and natural. And I think it's nice when people see like how you're actually feeling. But like for us, I mean, we've sat in so many kissing cries that it just becomes like, okay, like what's next? Okay. Those are the scores. All right. Let's go analyze them backstage and see the breakdown. You kind of know what your score to expect a little bit. Yeah, or like what you're

hoping for, but you don't go in, like, we never go into the competition thinking, like, oh, we get this specific number for our score. Like, it never works like that. But at the end, you're kind of like, okay, I feel like we may be less level there or that felt really good. Hopefully we'll get all the points for that element. But then it's just like, at that point, it's out of your control. And you just like, hope the judges like to hope the tech panel saw what we felt. I think like what's sometimes not so great is like you get the score and then it changes how you feel about your performance. You're bowing and center ice and you feel great about what you did, but then your score is like a couple points lower. All of a sudden, you leave and you go through

the mix zone and you lose that feeling of accomplishment that you just nailed your program. What would have been better? What would I have changed? And then so that is the feeling that we learn to separate. We're like, okay, how do we feel about performance? Let's hold on to that feeling. What went well? What would we bring forward to the next performance and what but we do our own personal analysis. I do think it's important. Sean and are big on goals and we have like 150 things that we kind of track and have quantitative metrics for like,

hey, how many times are we hanging out with friends or working out a year, going on date nights or whatever. And it hit us that like, okay, the quantitative is kind of a helpful tangible endpoint or scoreboard to have, but there's a whole other scoreboard, which is a qualitative, which is equally as important, but harder to communicate or share or, you know, put on a leaderboard.

And it's like both are important and how you all are describing that's winning is super important. I think if you're able to kind of toggle back and forth between those two, it's more healthy than just saying, hey, our only rubric for success is what that number says at the end of it. I think something so beautiful and powerful is being able to harness that feeling. because I remember again at the Olympics with the gold moment where they said, are you going in 2012?

I remember, frankly, it was not my best performance. And having that feeling, and I remember it of like the silver medal feeling for me, it was the top of the world for me. And that is the greatest feeling in the world. And I think when you reach a level of awareness and reflectiveness of your own abilities to be able to say, this was my best performance I've ever given. and nothing can ever make that better or worse or take it away is such a place to be because you've mastered a craft and you know that like nothing gets better than that.

And the way you guys speak of that performance, then you can feel that. You can sense it. I mean, I like what you're talking about, how you kind of apply some of these skills that we develop as athletes to your relationship. But then as you weigh like qualitative versus quantitative, it's like we could have less quantity, but better quality, and we'll be super happy. We'll be very content with that. And I think that's kind of what we learned, especially as we got older. And we couldn't do, you know, a million hours on the ice and all these run-throughs of our program. It's like just

doing it well once was enough for us to feel really good about it. It's so good. You mentioned journaling. Do you guys have a method to journaling? Do you both do it? I knew a guy who used to journal and he would write down what happened and then he would write down how he felt about what happened and then he would write down how he felt about how he felt about what happened. That guy was a little too much. But I don't know.

I don't know if you all have like some system. He has to change his pants eight different times before he went out. But his notes are probably so meticulous. Yeah, they were. Yeah, we are not that in depth. I wish I was more in depth to analyze like the truth of the situation, how I feel about it, and then how I feel about how I feel about it, that's, like, really unlocking, like, layers of

yourself. But we will analyze, like, we'll just write down after training, like, what we liked, key takeaways, what we want to do better tomorrow, what went well, and, like, what we're grateful for at the bottom because just always having that, like, gratitude mindset, I think really just reinforces why you're doing it. What is the end goal? Like, what's really important in life? Like, at the end, it wouldn't, it didn't necessarily.

reflect skating. It would be like the five things I'm grateful for. And I'd be like, my dogs, my comfortable sofa that I'm completely sprawled out on right now, or this new book that I'm reading that I can't wait to read before bed or my family or my parents. And it just puts things into perspective. So even if you had a hard training day or things didn't go your worry, maybe training was great, but maybe the next day it's not going to be as great. It was kind of like a scale of, okay, yes, this is training. This is the flow that I go through. But this is what's really important to me. these are the things I hold dear and value and will continue to put value in the next day because I'm just grateful that they're in my life for with me right now.

So that would be like the end of my journal, but then in the middle it would just be like, no, it's on skating exercises I liked from stroking class or a key, I don't know, phrase or takeaway that our coach said or that Evan said. And it would just be, it wouldn't be just a mess of things really. What exercise do you like from what class? Oh, so at the beginning of the day, we would always have, or the beginning of a session. So our sessions are like an hour 30 or an hour 45, and then there's an ice cut. And so the first 15 minutes of every one of those training blocks, we have a stroking class with the whole school, whoever is on the ice, whatever teams are on the ice, get one stroking class for 15 minutes from one of the coaches.

And that will rotate, depending on how our head coach patch does all the scheduling. It's like fundamental. It's just like fundamentals. It's like warm ups. And like we would do. Cross rules. We would do turns. We would do some partnering things. And it would vary throughout the day. So it was never exactly the same. But it was like we kind of felt like when we moved to Montreal and had this new coaching team, we started doing the stroking classes. It allowed us to like fall in love with skating again because it's like going back to the basics. Like relearning, you know, just the very most basic thing that we might all just skate over. you know, like just jump over and, you know, kind of fill in the holes in our knowledge of, like,

what we might have missed throughout development. Like, instead of just getting on the ice and focusing solely on our choreography or a certain piece of our program, we would warm up our basics and kind of, I don't know, sharpen our tools, if you will, of how to skate, how to control our rotation or edges, like the technical things of skating before we dive. We love that. And then we would journal about it and be like, oh, today I learned, you know, the most basic thing, but like it really sparked a new interests, you know, maybe think something.

and then you perform better when you go for your sections because you're like, oh, I should use this hip. Like, it was very technical and it enhanced like the feeling of what we wanted to feel on the ice. And then we could apply that to our programs when we started working on sections or run-throughs. You all journal together? We journal, like, at the same time, but not like, we don't like share our notes. Well, sometimes. We do a little bit.

Yeah. If it was like about the program, we'd be like, okay, this is like a key here. We need to, I don't know, go up more on the turn or. like technical things like that we would share notes on before we do our run through so we would be primed to remember all the things that we tweaked the day before yeah no we would get pretty into it i think people would ask us all the time like how do you separate skating from life at home and we the answer is like we wouldn't like especially in the prep for the Olympics you know we would be like you know in our apartment in montreal and it would be like 9 p.m and we'd be

sharing note to like walking through choreography or doing something crazy looking like idiots We have all the windows. There's windows everywhere. People can just see right in and we're just doing crazy stuff in our living room, walking through our programs and fixing arms and positions. We're like, gosh, what must our neighbors think of us? That was just our process. And we felt like so, you know, we felt so ready.

We felt so prepared. Honestly, I feel like I wish I was your neighbor. I feel like I would have been watching like a live documentary. The unfolding. Something's weird. Because Netflix was like in our home, in our apartment, set up with all the lights and the cameras, and we're just like, oh, man, like, what must our neighbors think of us?

They're like, who are these people? That's awesome. You guys have shared openly with the world, but also we were chatting about it, some of your hobbies that you've since redirected your passions into. And one of them is designing costumes. I remember actually, like, watching you guys at the Olympics and hearing the story and seeing that you had designed costumes for a lot of the other countries and competitors that you were up against.

And it was truly like art. Again, part of gymnastics world is always like leotards and design. So I was really geeking out over it. But you have truly unlocked a different level of like costumes that I have never seen in your sport before. And it was stunning. How did you get into it? And then how did it grow to where other countries started contacting you to do their stuff? Well, thank you.

That's really sweet of you. I have always loved costumes and fashion and costume design. It's just since I was a kid, I was always so involved in, like, even my very first costume, which I just saw my mom's house, like, this big. I love the colors. I love picking out the fabrics and stones. And so that just kind of evolved as I grew in the sport. And I just loved the process.

I wanted to be as intimately a part of that process as I was in our skating process. I just started designing our costumes and working with our team to, I get the maid. And then I think people just started liking my costumes or I don't know, maybe they always had. Then they were like, oh, can you maybe like help me with my costume or give me some advice? What do you think I should wear? Do you like this color or this fabric?

And so then it just kind of evolved from there. And it was like our training mates at the ring from Spain or from Georgia. And they would ask like, oh, hey, can you maybe like help me design our costumes this year? Like, what would you do? I'd like to get your take on it. And so then that's just how it started. Do you have plans or dreams to grow that into? Is this another one?

This is Stella. She has no teeth. Oh my gosh. Do you have plans or dreams to, like, grow that into a full, like, fashion line outside of the sport? I mean, I would love to work in the fashion world and maybe, like, collaborate with other designers that have that kind of couture fashion house, but don't necessarily have the athletic side of things to, like, collaborate with them because I love when costumes look couture on the ice but are still functional, which is, like, a very... find balance to have. It's either like super sporty or super couture. And I've kind of danced in that middle area where the costumes also need to be functional, but they need to look beautiful and help tell a story. So I think I live in that little swim lane in between the two. And yeah,

I mean, I would love to work in the fashion world and collaborate with other designers to see how we can bring more of that fashion and creativity to the ice to enhance skaters performances. And even other sports as well. I mean, like tennis, golf, like their outfits are super cool. Like Naomi Osaka is always in some like interesting dramatic gar before she dramatically reveals her her tennis outfit. And that's just really fun. It's like another fun way to engage a different side of the sport and how I've taken up golfing. So I'm like, okay, well, we need some some cuter outfits here. We can make some improvements for sure. Nerting out a little here. Did you design your S.

S.B.'s dress? No, I didn't. That was Christian. That was a all Christian Seriano. Oh, it was gorgeous. Yeah, he is incredible. He graciously dressed me for that event, and I went into his studio, his attelier, and they were just like, oh, like, pick out whatever you want to try on, like, anything? Yeah, anything in the whole studio.

So it was so much fun, an absolute field day in there trying all of his beautiful gowns and frocks. And I just, yeah, it was so fun. It was so fun. It was gorgeous. Do you guys watch a lot of sports? Are you guys like, you love the whole, like, yeah, okay. Love it.

What are your favorite? Golf is one? What other ones? I love all sports. He has sports. I played constantly. Yeah. I grew up playing all sports, following all sports.

I mean, we were watching the World Cup last night. We were flying home from Vegas, had the World Cup final on, which was fascinating, riveting. You were flying on Delta so they do the live TV, like, so you can just watch. Yeah. As soon as we sat down on the plane, we found the World Cup on TV and put it on both of our screens. Then, yeah, Maddie started playing golf. I grew up playing golf.

mom's actually a golf coach, so I played a lot of golf as a kid. So we've been playing a couple rounds together this summer, which has been really fun. And then, I mean, everything, football, basketball, baseball, we like all of it. Yeah, all of it. We love sports. Okay, so you just took your first family vacation and how many years? It was about four years, I think. Yeah. Wow. Didn't feel like a family vacation, but everything was gathered. When you were there, did you have a longing for the ice? you miss it or were you like, oh, no, this is nice. And we could do more of this.

No, we, honestly, the last four years, we just put everything in all of our energy, all of our time. And so when the Olympics finished, we're like, okay, we deserve a break. We need a break. We need a mental reset, a physical reset. And so that's what we're taking. And it's been feeling so good. It's been so nice to just do things that we didn't have the time to do before, or didn't have the capacity for mentally to just enjoy our lives in a different way and slow down

and just feel like the grind every day of having to get back to training or train for the next competition. And it's honestly, it's been so freeing and so nice to just enjoy this quality time with family and just our dogs and, yeah, each other in a different way. Would you three say it's fair to say that there's like a grieving process no matter the result after you hit that moment that you've been working towards? Like, is there some type of grief? What adjective would you use to describe the post-Olympic period? They call it the post-Olympic blues, which I think is valid. I think more than anything, too, like when you know your career is coming to an end, it can be very

scary and very daunting. I think a lot of athletes don't have that next avenue to go down. You know, many become coaches, which is a great job and very, you know, useful. But I think for us, it's like detaching our purpose from our competitive life and realizing that we're much more than just competitive athletes. Competition shaped us like we talked about. We learned so much from those experiences. But now we have to just be human beings for the next hopefully 50, 60 years and use everything that we learn to become good parents and good brother and good son. There's so much that we want to explore and do. But I think understanding that like we're not just figure skaters or Olympians or whatever the title is, it's like,

that is just a title that we won or earned, and there's so much depth and there's so much more to us. And exploring that is important, but I think people get lost in that, and they lose that sense of identity once their sport ends. Don't get me wrong, though. Like, even though we didn't really miss being on the ice when we took our time off,

like I am excited to get back on ice, and I do love skating and training and the feeling of it. I think it's very important to have some balance in with how we worked for the last four years and just like put our heads down and just it did it like it's it's nice to come up for air and be like oh there's so much more to life and so much so many fun experiences yeah life goes on yeah are kids in the picture for y'all hopefully hopefully yeah i think not at the moment just yeah not at the moment just our four-legged but we would like to yeah i think if we would be so blessed lucky we would like to have kids

it's a good adventure and you said you're going back on the ice tomorrow tomorrow yes tomorrow wow Okay, so as you step back on the ice, what are your intentions? How are you approaching it? And what are you hoping for? I'm just not to end myself within the first 30 minutes. I think also like falling back into the perfectionist trap and getting frustrated easily or like just meeting ourselves where we are, understanding that like we're not in peak, you know, it's not February.

We're not in Milan and we can't skate exactly maybe how we did a couple months ago. but it's still inside of us somewhere. We just need to excavate. We need to find those athletes in there and it'll come out. Like it might take a lap around the rink and my legs might be already trembly and I might be out of breath, but it'll be okay. I will try not to judge myself too harshly. And it's about enjoyment, but ultimately, like we love skating and that's why we did

it for so long. The fact that we got to do it together, we'd love it so much. And so I think just enjoying it would be the biggest goal. It is really, really beautiful and such an honor to hear your guys's perspective. on everything. I think a lot of athletes could really learn a lot from listening to you all and how you're approaching it with your identity and your purpose and the passion and the joy and truly everything. I applaud you guys for how you have navigated it and are navigating the future of it, which is really, really special. I don't think it was possible, but I'm more of a fan. I'm more of a fan.

I'm more of a man. Thank you so much. We're like creepy fans now that are just going to like watch you and cheer from you from the side. I feel like, We're like kindred couple spirits. I feel like we're friends. Until you see us on the eyes, you're like, I don't know. We're not going to hang with them. Our agent was like sending us stuff that you guys were posting during the Olympics. Honestly, we were so flattered that it meant so much to us.

I remember watching you in Beijing. I remember watching you on Dancing with the Stars, big fans, and we're super honored and I'm glad we could connect in your podcast. Thank you so much for that. It's truly a pleasure. If you're ever in Nashville, let us know. We need to go skating. I'm serious.

Yeah, that would be a blast. That would be so scary. I'd be paid for embarrassing. I'm going to try the Spider-Bent Challenge, but my hands- I would love to see the Spider-Man challenge. Actually, I want to, if you could teach me how to do a handstand, that would be like my greatest accomplishment. Oh, I could do that.

I don't think you can. I could easily do that. I don't know. I was teaching my daughter yesterday. That would be a blast. Yeah, we'd have fun. Well, thank you all. Thank you all for the time.

And it was an honor to meet you. And hopefully this isn't the last time we get a talk. Definitely. Thank you guys. Thank you. Bye.