Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Bob Bowman, ASU Men's and Women's Swimming Head Coach

Episode Date: February 28, 2018

This week’s conversation is with Hall of Fame swimming coach Bob Bowman, the maestro behind the illustrious career of Michael Phelps.He’s now the Head Coach for the Men’s and Women’s programs at Arizona State University.He is a four-time member of the U.S. Olympic Team staff, including Head Coach of the Men’s team at Rio 2016.He has guided swimmers to 38 Olympic medals, including 21 individual medals and 19 individual gold medals, and 43 World Records over the course of his illustrious career.Bob comes from a family of teachers and that’s how he views himself: a teacher.He has experienced an incredible amount of success, but it is all about the process for him.When it comes to the process, Bob has four phases to his model: discovery, imagination, challenge, and high performance.This conversation has it all.We cover the common traits of high performers, how he gets the most out of his swimmers, and Bob shares some fantastic stories about his experiences coaching Olympians Michael Phelps, Allison Schmitt, and others.Bob has been by the side of the greatest swimmer to ever do it for 20 years. I can’t wait for you to learn from him in this conversation._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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favorite flavor right now is the chocolate chip cookie dough. And a few of our teammates here at Finding Mastery have been loving the fudge brownie and peanut butter. I know, Stuart, you're still listening here. So getting enough protein matters. And that can't be understated, not just for strength, but for energy and focus, recovery, for longevity. And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. Now, this week's conversation is with Hall of Fame swimming coach Bob Bowman. And most of you

know his name. He's literally the maestro behind the flat out best ever career of Michael Phelps. And he's the head coach for the men's and women's programs at Arizona State University. Coach Bowman is a four-time member of the U.S. Olympic team staff, including head coach of the men's team at Rio in 2016. And listen to this. He's guided swimmers to 38 Olympic medals. Yes, Michael Phelps is included in that, but including 21 individual medals and 19 individual gold medals. Yes, Michael Phelps is included in that, but including 21 individual medals and 19 individual gold medals, 43 world records over the course of his incredible career. He understands it. Either that or he's ridiculous at picking people that are naturally going to win. And there's always an argument for any of us in the field of performance psychology,

for performance development, like did you get lucky with somebody or, you know, do you really understand something? The truth is there's probably some, something in the middle, but to be able to do the length of his career at the quality of his career is notable. It's important. And I'm excited to be able to share this conversation with you. He's incredible at his understanding and his clarity, and he's also had incredible success likely because of that. And for him, it's all about the process. That's it. It's about the process. When it comes to the process, he's got four phases, a discovery phase, an imagination phase, a challenge phase, and a high performance phase. It's really clean. In this conversation, it has it all. We go

deep. We stay right in the meat of how he's cultivated environments and strategies for people to become their very best. Now we cover the common traits of high performers. That's all cool, but we dive deep into the process of what he does. And he shares flat out great stories about his experiences coaching Olympians like Phelps and Alison Schmidt and others. And he shares flat out great stories about his experiences coaching Olympians like Phelps and Alison Schmidt and others. And it's just great. So I want to thank Bob again for the time we spent. And he's been at the side of some of the greatest swimmers, you know, in some of the most incredible competitions for the last 20 years. And I can't wait for you to learn from him, from this conversation. And with that, let's

jump right into this conversation with coach Bob Bowman. Bob, how are you? I'm great, Mike. Yeah. Okay. Here we are. So great breakfast. That was a really fun conversation. That's going to help sharpen this conversation as well. Sure. Okay. Where'd you grow up? Grew up in Columbia, South Carolina. What was it like growing up? It was great. I feel like I had a, you know, wonderful middle-class upbringing, you know, I had great parents, a sister, went to good schools, had a lot of good experiences educationally, had a very strong extended family to support us. I thought it was great. What does dad represent for you? I think my dad represents discipline.

He had pretty high standards for us, how we were expected to behave and do in school and just the way we went about doing everything. I just felt like we had a, there were expectations of what we should be and how we should be. And then mom? Kind of the same, you know, but I think my mom had much more. She probably pushed us harder in school. She recognized the value of doing a lot of different activities. I studied music extensively, but in a lot of different activities at school, and I think

she supported all of that. So it was great having parents who really felt like a well-rounded education was important and not necessarily just academically. When you said they have high standards, did that, that, that does two things for me. It's like, okay, so parents were involved. And the other thing it does for me at just listening, like, okay, there was some tension in the house for execution at a high level. Absolutely. Did I get, I got that right. Yeah. Okay. So how did you deal with that? And how did your parents, how did your parents deliver that message? But I want to know both of those. I don't think it was delivered in like a militant way, but you know, if I came home

with a 90 on a test, my mom would say, well, what could you have done to get a hundred instead of, oh, can I give you five bucks? Cause you got an A on a test or, you know, so I feel like that there was a, we were supposed to do well in school. That was the, you know, or whatever we were doing, we were expected to give our best effort. And then once we were doing that, if there are ways that we could improve, I think they wanted us to find those. Did they match up their life in that same way that they had high standards for themselves? Oh yeah. Okay. Did they achieve the way and the things that they wanted

to achieve in their life? I'm pretty sure they did. My mother was a teacher, a high school teacher, and I think an excellent one. You know, she was always there early, stayed late, put in the time, I think had a good rapport with her students. You know, she's still today is in contact with so many of her students over 40 years, 50 years. My dad worked in the state government, worked his way up to being a commissioner of a state agency. So, you know, was in charge of a lot of people doing a lot of good things. At the time, it was a state department of disabilities and special needs. So it took care of a lot of people that really needed that. But, you know, he was, I would say pretty demanding in terms of

how he took care of those people and how he ran things and the expectations that he would have. So I would say they were both successful. Yes. Okay. Sister, my sister is a teacher now, middle school teachers, five years younger than me. Yeah. Okay. So you come from a teaching family. Definitely. You're a teacher as well. Yeah. Yeah. Do you consider like the word coach is, I mean, a really important word in our life, you know, right. And I want to talk to you about this, the other term life coach. And I know life coaches are listening. I apologize for this, but I get concerned. I get concerned about the level of training required to be able to really influence other people's thoughts.

Okay. So nonwithstanding that for just a moment, you're a teacher. You teach people how to become really proficient in the thing that they do, but you've also got a way about helping others understand how to live more so than just do. And so I'd like to think so. Yeah, I definitely think of myself as a teacher. Yeah, you do. Okay. All right. So let's do something fun. Age 11. Yeah. What was it like for you at age 11? Age 11. I was at, I was just starting to swim because we had moved to a new neighborhood that

had a neighborhood pool. And in the summer, I just basically spent most of the days hanging out at the pool. And when I was there one day, somebody said, yeah, we have a swim team here. It might be fun if you tried it. Okay. And I did. So that was kind of the beginning of the swimming journey. Okay. So age 11 is an important age for you.

Yeah. Because it's also when you met somebody who was extraordinary. It ended up being world's best for a long time. Okay. Let's put a pin in that for a minute. Okay. So if you could do the chapters of your life and I don't know how many chapters you've had, you're obviously in your thirties.

Thank you. Plus 20, but there you go. Okay. So, um, so you could do five chapters like each decade or you could break it up however you want it. Like how would you do the chapters of your life? That's interesting. I, well, you know, the first 10 years were just like, I just felt like I had a normal childhood. I played with kids, went to school, had family activities, started taking piano lessons, the usual things. The second

10 years, I became more interested in certain things. I actually got very involved in music and still am to this. I studied music in college, composition, but I had some very strong teachers in music in high school who really, I think, shaped me even today. And we can probably talk about that a little bit later. So I'd say that 10 years was very formative for me because I had a great appreciation for what it was like to be immersed in something. And I was actually doing it on two tracks. I was doing it in swimming and I was doing it in music and I was going to school. So for that period of time, I think it was very formative for me. Okay. Wait, real quick. Did you, so how would you label the first, the first chapter? I was going to school. So for that period of time, I think it was very formative for me.

Okay. Wait, real quick. Did you, so how would you label the first, the first chapter? First chapter is discovery. And the second chapter is imagination. I know where you're going. Yeah. Okay. Good. That's so good that you're fitting it into your model, but it's right. It is. It is. Yeah. I love your model by the way well thank you i appreciate that yeah and so let's let's uh interrupt right now and say say your model you've got like three phases well yeah you know there's uh discovery there's imagination i call it the challenge phase and then that leads to high performance so they're really four i guess yeah okay are there four yeah i would say there are four. I think that the way,

I think that it's not necessarily linear and I want to get into the weeds with you because every one of those phases that you just talked about, it's like, they're always part of the play. Oh yeah. Like discovery in the early years, of course, imagination got to, and we also need both of those as we get really proficient as well. So it's not like once you go through discovering imagination, it's over, it's over. Yeah. So do you talk about that as well? Oh, I talk about it all the time. It's an inner, like it's an iterative model. Exactly. Yeah. It's, it's a cycle really. Yeah. Okay. The process, the process is about, yeah, it's funny because it sounds so soft when people say it's all about the process. Yeah. It's funny because it sounds so soft when people say it's all about the process.

Yeah, it is because, and let's talk about you, but you got to get the outcomes to keep going. Sure. And it, the softness drives me nuts. It is. I don't know how I want to be quiet. When you talk about the process, what comes up for you? Well, it's pretty much everything I do on a daily basis. It's the decisions we make about how we're going to spend our time, what standards we have for ourselves when we're spending that time, the type of things we're going to choose to do, how we approach competition, all of those things. And really the process is all of the things that we control. Yes. The outcomes are largely not in our control except for by way of the process by having prepared well. When you do goal setting, and I know you enjoy goal setting. Sure. Do you focus on both outcome and process? And I'm guessing that you use, but please, of course,

correct me. I'm guessing you use outcome, but then triple down on process. Exactly. One goal or maybe two on outcome. Well, I think everybody has, there are two major kinds of goals, right? There's like your long-term sort of, we call it the dream goal, you know, and that is a goal. It's out there in the future that drives you. It's actually not particularly, it doesn't have to be particularly specific, but it's exciting. And it's sort of, I could call it like an emotional catalyst, right? So for every swimmer, it's, well, not every swimmer, but I want to swim in the Olympics. So that's out there, right? At least in the programs I run, it's out there. Every day, the kids come in and there are pictures of Olympians on the wall that were on their team.

And every eight-year-old thinks they're going to be one. So that's a great thing. Now, working back from that, we kind of use more kind of short-term goals. And I would say a year is about as far as you could specifically plan for most of the athletes that I'm working with. I mean, I have a four-year plan, but as you get into year three and four, it's very general and broad. And we have some targets that we know we're going to have to be good at, but the main targets are within this season or training year. And then we would work back from those to the most important goals you have, which I call immediate goals, which are, what are you going to do today? And, and if you ever looked at like, say Michael Phelps, I should have brought a picture of it, but I have a sheet of paper from when he was, I think, 12 years old.

And I took the group through a goal setting process. And I said, OK, at the top, write your dream goal. And Michael wrote, my goal is to swim in the Olympics. OK. And it said, what is your main goal for this season? It says, my goal is to make junior nationals. Well, what does that mean? It means I need to swim a certain time in this event. So we pick three events because they swim a lot of events. And then I said for each

event, write down three things that if you do them in practice, you will be guaranteed to reach this goal. And that's where the rubber meets the road, right? That's the best part because that's where we spend all of our time are on those objectives that are going to help guarantee that you reach the goal if you do it in training. So I'd say that's where we spend most of our time is on the process. And do you track those with them every day, every week? We're usually in touch with them almost on a daily basis. Do you do one to 10, one to seven, one to five checklist? Yes. No, no. It's more, I know exactly what their goal times are. And when we're doing a certain set in practice, I will be kind of checking on them to make sure they're swimming at the correct speed

at the correct stroke count at the tempo, whatever we've decided the parameters are, and then helping them kind of stay on track. I see my role, you know, all of this goal setting stuff is like, it's kind of like a roadmap. And I'm the real GPS. I'm the voice saying, you know, turn right, turn right while they're going the other way. Sometimes recalibrating, I help recalibrating. Okay. Let's get back on, on track. So I feel like the coach's role is to know their goals and to remind them of them on a daily basis and to also kind of help them tweak them if they need to be. Gotcha. Okay.

All right. And then you recalibrate on a regular basis. Sure. But you're setting four-year goals with a one-year focus. Yeah, exactly. And then the dream goals, but you're setting four year goals with the one year focus. Yeah, exactly. And then the, the dream goals, as you put it, we use the word vision. Yeah. Yeah.

Of course. Just creating like a vision of what you would like your future to look and feel like. Yeah. And it sounds like it's probably the same thing. Exactly. You know, nobody gets out of bed in the morning to finish their 200 freestyle in 53 seconds. I mean, that's a great thing to do. And if you do that, you will likely swim on an Olympic team, but you know, to be the best ever. That was my goals. It evolved to that. Yeah. So that was

the dream goal, the dream goal after, you know, what, first it was to swim in the Olympics. And once you've done that a few times, it kind of gets old. You got to come up with something. Yeah. But it was like, and this is a little bit interesting because it touches on something we discussed at breakfast. We were going into the Beijing Olympic Games. I think this was a year before. And we had called the main parts of our team together, which were at the time, Michael, myself, his mother, and our agent, Peter Carlisle. And actually, I think our publicist, Drew Johnson, was there too, had come to Ann Arbor where we were training. I was coaching at University of Michigan. And the purpose of this meeting was to kind of just figure out what the

story was going to be going into Beijing. Because there were a lot of external expectations about what Michael could or could not do. And we had our idea of what may or may not happen. And so what we wanted to talk to Michael about was how did he want the expectations to be managed? Because we could put it out there, you know, eight gold medals, or we could just continue to say the thing that we did the last Olympics. I just want to win one gold medal and just do my best and those kinds of things. And if, you know, if you do number the first thing and kind of lay it out there, then you're laying it out there. And Michael sat in that room and we had all talked about it a little bit and it kind of got quiet.

And I just remember so clearly him saying it. I never believed anything more than I believed it when he said, I want to be the best ever. And that became his vision. And that's what happened. There it was. Yeah. When you think about that type of goal, best ever, do you over-index on better than others or my best self? His best self.

Yeah. It's all based for us. It was based on times. So if he could crack whatever level, then it just so happens that nobody else was doing that. Well, right. And if he got beat, he got beat. That's it. There have been many swims where Michael was one of his best swims ever.

He was third in the 2004 Olympic Games in the 200 free. But that was just a super high-quality swim for where he was at that time, well above what he had done before that might've been his best swim in the whole Olympic games. You know, we'd never really defined success relative to other people. It's really relative to what our expectations for ourselves are. I'm nodding my head because yes, it's really hard. It's super hard. It's really hard to have that discipline. I know the science. I know how important what you're saying is. It's right on track, right on money and right on the money. And when you see other people doing better or worse or whatever, it's easy to go. If they're doing worse, like, okay, good. I'm on the right path. You might

not be right. Cause they might catch up later or whatever. They might be in a funky phase. Okay. But it's really requires a deep discipline to be able to focus on your standards. Sure. How did you create that environment? Well, I think we created that environment because largely the whole team is based on that North Baltimore aquatic club, where we spend most of our time. Um, even from a young age, we were teaching young swimmers to, well, number one, they had to know their own times. They had to keep track of their goals. They had to basically own the process of what they were doing, right? Because they're the ones at the end of the day who are going to get up on the block. I'm not going to be up there. It's like they have to learn us. They have to own it.

So to do that, you have to focus on what you're doing, how you're better today than you were yesterday. What are your goals that are coming up? Are we on track to reach them? If you reach them, what is next? If you don't reach them, how do we go back and kind of retool things so that you can reach them? And I thought that, well, all of our Olympic swimmers, Allison Schmidt, Michael, all of them were sort of raised in this model of, you know, it's against you against the clock. And even though competing is great and we love to race and that's a fun thing, at the end of the day, the quality is going to be, you know, what was your effort and how did that relate to what you were capable of doing? Yeah. I add something. And so effort and capability, I love those two. And then I had one more element, which was at what level of command did you have? And so like I add that layer and at first I have to explain what that is to people, which is like, did you have yeah and so like that i add that layer and at first i have to explain what

that is to people which is like did you have command of your mind sure did you have access to your craft and if the effort was high and you had high command and you of your mind and access to your craft that's like for me it's like okay that is those are the two parts that determine i guess or influence potential. For sure. There's all obviously genetics and all these other things, right? Okay. You know, like as if genetics aren't important, but like, but the two things that we can control.

Exactly. So I want to get into the command piece with you. Yeah. Like how did you help your athletes have greater command of their, their inner experience so that they could access their craft. Well, I don't know. Do you want to go there now? Yeah, let me go there now.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. This is going to be part of my definition of mastery later, but that's okay. We can definitely talk about it because it's a big part of it. I think we create an environment in training and on a daily basis where they're asked to sort of test their command. We put them in situations where they have to be comfortable being uncomfortable, where they're at the edge of their capabilities,

and where they are really a lot of times struggling to maintain that. I think that's where they learn the most about what they can do and what they can't. And that's my job as a coach to, to sort of set up these practices so that they get that simulation of the race sort of stresses, because ultimately that's the most important thing at the high level meets really at any meet. How frequently do you create those scenarios? Not every day or they can't take it. I would say probably in different ways, two or three times a week.

But a couple of times where they are really going to be up against it and they are going to have to perform. Do you use physical exhaustion to get them there? Or do you use some sort of other environmental, mental, creative, I don't want to use the word manipulation, but in the purest sense, manipulating the environment to be as close as you possibly, you're laughing. Like, like, so what ways do you create that physical instability? Well, the physical instability would be, that's easy. I can just make the rest interval short. You know, you can do a lot of different things to stress them what i think is key is you know even if they're doing sometimes on the days where the the work might not be maximal from a you know blood coming out your ears effort level i might raise the bar

on uh technique every you cannot go over 10 strokes a lap or we're starting over some stuff like that built in there are definitely well or just you know not penalties i don't think i but just standards right standards so um you know that's but if they don't execute it at some level do it again right which is like in behavioral terms of punishment exactly yeah yeah yeah sure yeah okay and uh i think another thing we might do is, let's say, Mike, you're in practice, and I said, okay, we're doing 10 100s, one every four minutes, maximal effort,

and I want you to be under one minute is your time, okay? And we're going to go until you get 10 under a minute. So you can choose the first 10 or you can just keep going all day. I have all day. You're not leaving here until you go 10 under a minute. And when they get out of the, when somebody gets out of the pool on the fourth one and says, forget it. How do you manage? Oh, they don't do that because they know they can't come back. They want to be part of the program. They're part of the program. But you know, what happens is I actually, this is a real life story on that same set. I had a young lady, Sierra Runge. I'll mention her name because she's an Olympic gold medalist in Rio. But in the, when she first came to me, we were doing this very

practice on a Saturday morning. And I said, you're going to have to break a minute. And in her case, it was break a minute on one of them. You have to break a minute before we're done with this set. She was going one-on-one. Okay. So she does, everyone does 10, everyone else is done. She keeps going and she's, we do 10 more, gets to 20. This is maximal efforts, right? She's kind of crying, but she's still going. And I'm not really, I'm just trying to keep it pretty matter of fact. Nope. That was one minute 0.4, not 59. One was a minute 0.0. I didn't count it right. I was being a real bastard, but anyway, I was just wanting to see how far I could push her on number 24. She goes to 58. So was that a physical problem? Was she less tired

on number 24 than she was on number two? No, it was a concentration and a stroke issue she had to work out. So by putting her in a situation where she had to figure it out, that's mimicking what happens in the big races. That's the level of stress where you're going to have to solve a problem under kind of dire conditions for yourself. And that's what she did. So that's my job to create those circumstances. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentous. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team,

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and use the code FINDINGMASTERY20 at FelixGray.com for 20% off. It's rare that we get the experience in modern times where we are left with just our hands and our feet and our head to figure something out. Exactly. And for me, those are really special moments where it is, maybe it sounds crazy. I don't know i don't talk about this a lot but those opportunities where it's my head my hands and my feet and sometimes what feels like a very barbaric isolated experience like the most ancient test to man and woman is do you have what it takes yeah to figure it out and the only way to get to those places to really know is to go through some gauntlets.

Exactly. To go through some really tough times to know that I can sort it out. What have you done to create multiple championships? What, what do you, what is it for you? I really think it's just the, I think this sounds corny, but it's just like how we do it. It's our way of, it's our culture, I guess, if you want to use the buzzword, but that's what it is. And people know that when they come into our group, that's what the expectation is. That's what we are here to do.

It's our mission. And everything that we do is geared towards that. And I don't do it the way some other coaches do it. And there are some swimmers, quite frankly, who are super talented that don't click with my methods. And that's perfectly fine. We help them find a place where they can be happy or do well. But there are some that just click immediately with mine. And those are the ones that tend to gravitate to my program. They know that there are going to be expectations. They know that the intensity level, I said that really Southern intensity level. I sometimes go back to South Carolina on a daily basis. The intensity level is going to be high in some

regard. That doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be swimming at top speed every day doing something, but it means that there are going to be some demands on them and parts of what we're doing that are going to be higher than the average, probably all the time. Did you create that because you knew that that was important or did your early athletes shape that with you? I think that's, it's two things. Number one, I was very fortunate to work with three different mentor coaches. Was this music or swimming? This is swimming. The music, gosh, the music people were way more ruthless than the swimming people. I mean, that's one of the reasons I got, I focused on swimming was the, I really liked the people in the environment and swimming better than music. It was cutthroat out there, but I worked with an Olympic coach. His name was Paul Bergen and he was considered an incredibly demanding coach, but incredibly successful. world record holders and, you know, over numerous distances and events and, and a great thinker

about the sport. And every minute I was his assistant coach, he was pushing me in some way. And that every athlete on that deck, every minute of every practice, I actually think to the point that it was unhealthy at times. So I've kind of used that and tempered by, I do it, but I do it selectively. Uh, I later worked for David Marsh. who's still a famous coach here in Southern California now. And he is much more in tuned, I think, to the mental side of things. So he could motivate people to do anything. Certainly worked hard, but just in a different way. But his approach was much more mental.

And then I worked for another Olympic coach, Murray Stevens in Baltimore, where I kind of cut my teeth there. He was much more of a technician, but again, with these ridiculously high standards. And I think ultimately I've toned down off of his, because with Murray, every day you were expected to do something near your best race effort every day. And a lot of people just kind of fell apart doing that. So I've, I use that and took the best of all three of those and sort of put that into

my thing. Okay. So technical intensity and mindset. Yeah. Are those the three? Yeah, sure. Those three mentors represented.

Exactly. And so you've, so part of your formula becoming a world-class coach is that you've been mentored, been around other people that are highly skilled. You distilled the thing that was their essence, if you will, and said, okay, well, I can't have all three of those 10 out of 10s. I'd kill people or blow them up in some way. So then you temper those down so that they fit. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Brilliant. So high standards for technique,

high standards for intensity and high standards for mindset. Yeah. Does that sound like your culture? Yes. Okay. So with those high standards, thank you, mom and dad. Yep. With those high standards, how do you help people manage the long game? Got it. Right. So every day, you know, day in and day out high output, how do you help them manage the long game? Well, I think I, number one, I'm a good enough observer of what's going on now that if they're struggling in a way that is dangerous, I deal with it. I don't just turn a blind eye and let them just die. You know, so I will be modulating things to adjust some of those things. Because the athletes, one of the things I'm most proud of is I have some athletes that have been with me for, well, Michael, 20 years, Allison Schmidt, 10 years,

C.R. Runge, eight years. I think eight, yeah. Maybe not, yeah. I know them so well that when they walk in the door for practice, I can look at their eyes and tell how practice is going to go before we even get in the water. So I'm already kind of preemptively thinking, Oh, maybe this isn't a good fit. Maybe I'll adjust this for some person, or maybe they're ready to go. Okay. Let's put their pedal down, you know? So I I'm probably prejudging and I'm also judging

how they, you know, what their demeanor's like before practice. I'm a big believer in that. I observe these athletes all the time, particularly just before practice, you know, when they're stretching or getting ready or how they talk to each other before. And you can tell if someone's struggling during that time, cause they won't be very talkative and they'll kind of be the walking dead. And, you know, if the whole group is like that, I will throw the practice out and do something else. They don't believe that, but I actually do do that. Um, sometimes, but there are times where you just push them, you know, but, um, I think in general, that's how you keep them going in the long game is that you're monitoring on a daily basis what they're doing and trying to keep them near the best level they can be given where you are in a particular year. And some people are very tough.

They can just go forever. Michael, at his best, would be on a scale of 1 to 10. He would be probably a 7 or an 8 every day. On output. On output, intensity. And then there would be one day every six weeks where he would be a two. And then I'd kind of finagle that for a day or two, and then he'd get back to and keep going. Whereas I have some other people that every week they're

going to kind of break down if I keep pushing them too hard. So maybe I build in a day in midweek where they're a little less intense or, you know, I do something to kind of get them through the week, you know, in whole not falling apart, I guess. So that's a, it's kind of an art. Would you consider you and Michael in some ways? So obviously coach athlete relationship. Yeah. In some ways in your culture, are you partners? For sure.

Yeah. So you, you set. And not just Michael, all of us, all the, all the athletes, by the time they've reached a certain level, we are in this, we're in a partnership. Okay. For culture or for output? Everything. Okay. Yeah. I mean, those are, and really for life as well. You know, that's people I've done a lot of work now with our national team and with Olympic teams and, you know, USOC and all these people. And at the end of the day, the thing that drives performance, well, at least in swimming, and I would say in every sport is a coach athlete partnership. It's not a system. It's not a supplement. It's not a weight training program. I mean, it is the coach and athlete partnership. And on a daily

basis, how that works. Yes. We know from science of psychology that therapeutic outcomes, like what happens after people leave their time together, that something, I think it was 87%, don't quote me on that right now, but some high number, let's say above 60% of outcomes are based on rapport, on the relationship, on the kind of inherent trust that people build. To help what?

To help explore because we have a high regard. There's your discovery piece. The high regard allows people to really discover, to use their imagination, to create possible versions, 4.0, 5.0 of themselves. Yeah. That's brilliant. Okay. So how, what do you do to enhance the quality of the relationship in this high standard, high output environment that you're creating? Number one thing I do is I am completely honest at all times. I don't ever bullshit anybody. That is hard to do sometimes. That's really hard to do. And people say, how have you and Michael stayed together so long? That is why the cards have been on the table every day, every minute, the whole time.

Okay. And I think that I'm genuine. I'm authentic. People see me sometimes. I think they think I come off as like maybe rude, but like certainly brusque. But I just tell it like it is. If you're not doing the job, I tell you you're not doing the job. I'll say, hey, you told me your goal is to go one 45 and a 200 free one 54.

Isn't going to cut it, you know? So either change your goals or change what you're doing. I mean, it's pretty simple. I love it. It is simple. So we get caught in relationships when we think we have to say something to help them as opposed to be a mirror and a reflection and in a tune, uh, like almost like a tuning fork. Exactly. Yeah. Does that seem fair to you? Like the tune for absolutely fair. Yeah. Okay. And do you, okay. If you're

going to hold up the mirror, there are times when people don't want to look in the mirror. I'll think of myself. I'll think of lots of people. Like I know what I'm doing is not what I said. I think I could do. So now I've got this dissonance. Yes. Either I listened to you or I was wrong about what I said. Right. If I said, I'm going to do a sub two or whatever it is. I didn't know if that, I don't know if that's really possible. I thought it could be, you thought it could be. Am I just a low, if I, am I kind of lazy and I'm not getting there? Am I afraid of success? Am I getting my recovery systems wrong? Like what's happening? So how do you, with all the variables that go into place, do you ever pull back the mirror or do you always hold the mirror up relentlessly so? I pretty much relentlessly hold it up.

But then I say, how are we going to fix this? How many hours of sleep a night are you getting? What's your nutrition like? Are you going through some kind of stress away from the pool because you don't seem like yourself? And maybe the goal is not right, but we're pretty good at setting these goals now. I mean, you know, we're kind of fairly reasonable and, you know, so, you know, I don't think that's normally it, but, you know, I can honestly say this now, as I've done this for several many years, some of the athletes that I am closest to now that this is over are the ones that I was just mercilessly hard on at the time.

I mean, there were some, for whatever reason, I was just determined to get them to do something. They were kind of hardheaded that they wanted to do something, but maybe their way. And, and, but at the end of the day, they knew I was looking out for their best interest, at least in retrospect, if not at the time. And I, so I feel like there's something powerful in that, that they, they always know when they come to me that they're going to get pretty much what I think the truth is that I'm not going to try to, I just don't believe in trying to help somebody by lying to them about their situation. I don't think that helps anybody.

Brilliant ethical code. Yeah. And performance code. Yeah. What are some of the hardest times that you've been through with Michael? And he might not, he, he might not even know them. I'm imagining your relationship is such where he would know them, but this is not about things he's done wrong or right this is like your challenges with the best in the world in his sport for how many years well four quads 20 years well he went to five olympics so it's 20 years i coached him from 11 to 31 i mean that's ridiculous real relationship but yeah it's a real. I think the hardest times were when I felt like he cut me off and we couldn't have the dialogue. there was a period of time between 2012 and 20, no 20, 2008 and 2012 where basically he'd just go AWOL.

And so you were left isolated from that experience. Exactly. Yeah. And then when we come back, it would be awkward. And I, of course I handled it exactly wrong for the first two years. You know, I would just, well, Michael would miss a practice and right. And you have to understand, I'm going to say from 1997 until 2008, Michael may have missed three practices in that entire period. Just three. And, but if I remember correctly, you would practice every day.

We'll be practicing every day. So there's a lot of days. Christmas. Except Christmas, New Year's, everything. So there were probably three practices where he just didn't come for some reason. So it would be, I mean, during that time, if Michael didn't come for practice, we would call the police or something. You know, it would be i mean during that time if michael didn't come for practice we would call the police or something you know it would be like call the national guard he always comes to practice so it would be something some super extenuating surface okay that sounds circumstance it sounds

rare yeah and it's very rare it was super rare so healthy or not healthy uh maybe not healthy in the long run for you too yeah for everybody for for everybody. For you too. Because it just – we just – I mean it clearly helped us get where we wanted to go. But what it did was after 2012 when he would miss a practice or two, he would come back in and I would give some really wonderful input like you're throwing your whole life away in your career. You feel good about that? How do you think that went over? Yeah. It just got terrible and where'd that come from for you that i so you got high standards yeah i got i said maybe a little bit for my parents like i was raised to do what you're supposed to do but this sounds crazy yeah no this is no this i think it sounds like you got caught in your world no i totally did i totally did you know because it was quite frankly by that point it was like michael was like, this is a terrible example, but I always think of it as like

Goldman Sachs, too big to fail. We're doing anything we can to keep this going because not only at that point, was it about the performance? It was about business. It was about his future, really his future. Cause this is when he's making his money, you know? I mean, he'll do well all along, but at that point it was kind of like, you know, we had overcome some problems after Beijing. He was sort of back on track, but not really. And this is just 2012 Olympics is going to be super important for him. So I think I just I just got out of everything, got out of perspective. And quite frankly, I think my feelings were hurt because he wasn't there. This is where the relationship was confusing to you. Exactly. To you, right? And he needed separation.

He needed separation. Okay. And I needed practices. Well, you know, that is not a very good combination. No, no, it's not. You know, it's funny because this shows up with parents as well, parents and kids. The closer the control and leash, if you will, like that sounds terrible. Yeah, yeah.

Okay. So the tighter the controls, the closer the leash, the further the kid has to break free. The more energy they have to do to break into freedom. So they have to snap the leash. This is exactly what happened. Yeah. So then what do you do? You go get piercings first, then maybe you bleach your hair or dye your hair, and then maybe you run with a rougher crowd. Then you take some other risks. Then you have tattoos.

Michael's pretty mild. He just went to Vegas. I don't know what happened there, but you know what I'm saying? But yeah, you're exactly right. Is this when he got into some of the public challenges? seriously after beijing i came home and just couldn't wait to get started again 2008 yeah but michael came home and it was well he did a lot of appearances and stuff and you know all of that was good but it was like from his standpoint he was too young to retire after beijing which would have been a perfect ending point right eight eight medals eight gold medals perfect but he was too young and quite frankly had the potential to do so well if he did another olympics it was just a given he

was going to go to 2012 by every every person i mean even if he cut his performance in half even if he cut it in half and he really, yeah, exactly. One gold medal is extraordinary. Yeah, but he did it. But the expectation from virtually everybody, and even from us a little bit, was like, you've got to win eight again. The standard is eight now. If we're doing this, we should do it to the best we can do. How do we do that again?

And he and I both just would be, I would sit at home and say, this is impossible. It's never going to happen again. It barely happened before. And only because a lot of things, the stars aligned, right? So number one, he was kind of trying to find himself. He was reiterating your four phase phase. He was in the discovery phase again. And I was trying to be in challenge phase. You know what I mean? So he was trying to figure out who he was as a person, where he was going to go. And I was just trying to keep my foot on the pedal to keep the performances going. And that dissonance was just terrible for everybody. Looking back, would you have, if this happened again,

and you had an extraordinary athlete that did extraordinary things, they didn't know how to tell you that they needed some time away to discover, to go back to the discovery phase. What would you set up differently to create that space? And would you try to pull them out of discovery or would you say, good for you? Stay in discovery because we're going to get better imagination here in, you know, nine months, whatever. I would definitely have done that. And I actually would have,

the only thing that I would have planned, right. I would have said, you know, the problem that I feel like Michael in particular has faced after every Olympics and not just 2008 is that, and, and all Olympic, actually, I could draw this all Olympic athletes. Here's how it goes. You're going to spend years and years preparing for this week, eight days, right? So you've spent eight years, maybe it's four years, maybe it's 12, whoever you are on your trajectory. Alison Schmidt is a perfect example. You go to the Olympics, you accomplish the mission. Everything is great. Okay. Meaning you're there. You've got the cap. You are there. You got the suit. No, I'm talking about you win the medals. Okay. So you've, you've there you're you've got the cap you are there you got

the no i'm talking about you win the medal okay so you've you've gone and you've executed all everything is okay executed here's how it ends for michael the second the last gold medal is won he is whisked away by mbc or somebody else and then he goes on and on and on and on. And for Beijing, it was six straight months. There was not one minute for us to sit down and say, wow, that was awesome. So proud of you. Let's take a week off. What I do and all the other coaches do, I'm on the first plane out of there the next day after swimming. I can't take anymore. We've just been to the camp. It's like I got to get out of here.

It's three and a half weeks. We just leave. Yeah. And so they're left by themselves. Their support system is gone. And they have other people, their agents or whatever, but they don't get a time to debrief. And oftentimes these are 2 a.m. interviews.

Exactly. And they don't get a chance to figure out what's next. Allison Schmidtmidt who's now a well-spoken advocate for mental health and particularly in high high performance athletes you know what could be better she went to an olympics she won three goals two silvers and individual gold medal world record and something but um i think maybe in a relay but she goes back to athens georgia to school at university of georgia and she just wants to go back to her normal life but that doesn't exist anymore and and from my standpoint like hey what could be better and from her

standpoint what could be worse my whole life is gone you know what i mean it's very difficult for these guys okay so you tell two stories real quick, but you're sharpening up something about, for me, the importance of the second part of the dream, like to enhance that. I saw, I say vision, you say dream probably exactly the same. Sure. Okay. So I'm at, I want to be an Olympian, you know, but then what will that be like? Right. Like making sure that that's sharp. And I learned this from the Red Bull Stratus program is that Felix Baumgartner jumped from the edge of space, 128,000 feet.

First person to ever do it early in the process. We started to talk about what are you doing next? What, after this jump is successful, What's that going to be like? And that real looking back like, OK, yes, I've read that that's really important to do. And really great minds have said that. Make sure you do that. It was the first time I've seen it really play out in. And then it worked.

Yeah. It's so easy not to do this because there's a fear in some ways that if we take our eye off the ball, then, you know, are we starting a parallel track of getting better at that second thing? Well, what's the essence of preparation for one of these events? Focus on the here and now. Not tomorrow, not yesterday. What are you doing today? And so the entire focus all the way up to the event is only on right now. And then during the event, it's specifically

right now so that you get to the end of it. And like, you know, me as a coach, I kind of have a natural progression of what I'm going to do. I'm going to go back, start coaching some people, some new ones will come through, the old ones might come back, you know, so I kind of know what I'm going to do. But these guys who maybe they're finished with college and they spent four or five more years or 10 years doing this and they know they're not going to be coming back to the swimming or maybe they are, but it's very difficult to know what the next step is because we have drilled into them that the here and now is what matters. Then the here and now is uncertain after that because when they know they're going to the pool twice a day and lifting weights and doing this it's easy to kind of do that but afterwards if

they don't have some thought about what's next i think there's a problem so i love the fact that you did that and that's actually something i'm trying to work on now it's it's a it's a pervasive problem it couldn't be more obvious in the nfl NFL that the statistic is somewhere around 87% of people that leave the league are divorced or broke or both within two years? Wow. So if you decode, what did that 13% do that are successful in that transition? Yeah. Is that they took the, every Sunday, every year, there's a mission, a mini mission and a larger mission, right? So every Sunday.

Yeah. Okay. So then that works. That's working for them. Yeah. So we need when they're, when they transition out, they need a new mission. Exactly. So what is that dream, vision, whatever words we want to put together? What is it? And to be as, and to use those same patterns that you found for success with world-class athletes to you that we can all use. Sure. Right. So what is your mission in life? If your mission is really clear, then, or your dream or vision is very clear, then you will put in the hard work. If it gets, if the, if the thing gets your heart to thump a little bit. Exactly. So write it down is what do you, do you ask them to write it down? I do ask them to write it down, but I'm not, I mean, yeah,

I ask them to write it down because I actually like him to write it down, but I'm not, I mean, yeah, I ask him to write it down because I actually like them to put us somewhere where they just kind of run into it a lot. Yeah. They see it a lot. So, but it's not a time. That's more of a goal. It's being Olympian or what if you're not an athlete? What would you suggest as an example of a dream, a vision, a mission? I think everybody might have something like for you, it's to paddleboard to Catalina Island. That's not big enough. That's like a funny event that I'm doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I mean, you know, I'm trying to think like be. But it is part of it. It's part of it, no? Like it gets me up. It gets me in the morning. It gets you going. You're excited about it. It kind of leads to all kinds of good behaviors, right?

Probably to make this happen. Yeah. I just think that people have things. Everybody has something that means something to them. And that's what the key is to find that. Whether it's, you know, I don't know, learning how to play the piano or being the best teacher you can be or starting a business and seeing you succeed. I mean, all of those things. And then once you've kind of got your target in mind, your vision, your, you know, dream, whatever, then I think you need to work back and go through all

the four phases, right? Maybe the discovery is coming up with your vision and imagination. Maybe those are, you're kind of formulating those and then you kind of challenge yourself to put it on, put some legs under it. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down. And that's why I've built intentional routines into the way that I close my day.

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Yeah. And I'd like if you could either speak to parents and or business professionals. Sure. And maybe we split these up to be more concrete. If you knew what I knew, dot, dot, dot. Yeah. If you knew what I knew, no, if you knew what I knew, what I knew, if you knew what I knew, when? Like as a, as a, as a 50 some year old man who's been creating world-class cultures and supporting world-class athletes and challenging them.

If you knew what I knew mom or dad, let's go there first. You'd be very careful about what you say to your kids. Oh God, I love that. Okay. So they, they really do listen whether you think they are or not.

And they internalize it so greatly. Okay. Teach, teach, teach, like teach us how to, Because they really do listen whether you think they are or not. And they internalize it so greatly. Okay. Teach, teach, teach. Like teach us how to speak better. Yeah. Reward their effort. Don't tell them they're smart or they're not smart or they're talented or not talented.

Reward them for trying hard, for being interested in things. Encourage them to be curious. And don't squash that ever. Once the fire is lit, fuel it and give them teachers that do the same thing. Okay. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Everything. I've got a nine-year-old.

Okay. And I'm a new parent. Sure. Nine years into it. Yeah. I'm grateful. I've studied a lot about how people work. And there's still a part of me that looks out at other, like his peers. And I think the parents are crazy because they're like,

we have to win this game. It's like a basketball, like, what are we doing? All the science and research would say, stop, have fun to get great. You need to be able to play this game for a long time. So just figure out what you're going to really enjoy. And I see these other kids, the parents are like, win, win, win, win. What's the score, this, that, and the other, everything that's counter. And I start wondering to myself, I know that you and I have probably seen and felt very similar things in many environments that we're going to nod our head to what we just said. And there's good, like I said, good research, but have we drank some sort of Kool-Aid or are you certain that that is the absolute right way to raise young minds, explore effort, uh, uh, reward effort, um, and help them create something

that they can feel that they have some sort of volitional control. Yeah. I, I'm sure that, sorry, you know how pendulum swings. I'm sure that that's right. But I also think that there's an element of, I want to say discipline, right? But it's about self-discipline and it's not necessarily just, you know, how would I say this? I think that you need to teach kids that commitment is important, but commitment is relative. So when we have eight-year-olds that join our team and North Baltimore Aquatic Club,

which is considered the most high-powered age group swimming program, and everybody thinks that every kid will be on the Olympics, we ask the eight-year-olds to come for three times a week for one hour. We'd like for you to come three times a week for an hour. We don't want you to come 10 times a week. We don't want you to come three times for four hours. We'd like for you to come three times a week for an hour. We don't want you to come 10 times a week. We don't want you to come three times for four hours. We'd like for you to spend an hour, three times a week, maybe two sometimes. You're not kicked off the team if you miss one. It's not a big deal, but that's your commitment level. Now, by the time you are in the top level of high school swimming, we ask you to come 10 times a week for three hours or two hours. You know what I mean? It's big time. But you've gradually learned that making the commitment

is important and is part of this process. But I think you do it in a safe way. Like these little league kids, what's important to your kid? Go to practice. You have practice today. We're going to go. Why? Because you signed up for this. This is what we're going to do. They have two practices a week for 10 weeks. And this is where my parents would come in when we talk about their standards. I remember many times where when I was on his age group swimming team, when I first started, for whatever reason, I just wouldn't want to go to practice. And we always went to practice. If it was kicking and screaming, we went to practice because we had committed to do it. And they would say something like, well, at the end of the season, if you don't think you want to swim, then no problem. But now you've made this commitment to the team and this activity, and we're going to see that through. And I think that's a huge part of success. It doesn't have to be. And again, the commitment was that time was three days a week for an hour and a half or whatever it was. So I feel like that goes along with the discovery process, that there is some level of personal investment in it.

It can't just be going from one thing to the next and the next. And I don't really feel like it today, so I'm just not going to do it. I don't think you're raising people who are going to be high performers that way. Maybe they're going to find a way, another path to do creative and wonderful things. But I think I've noticed in sports and I feel like it's in music and I feel like it's in school, honestly, that, you know, if there's an appreciation for the self-discipline of the commitment, that's what's going to stay with them for the rest of their life. No matter what they're doing, it's just stay with them in their marriage. It's going to stay with them in their job. It's going to be part of who they are.

What are some definitions of a world-class coach? What are some characteristics or defining features? I think a world-class coach is a keen observer of human behavior. I spend a lot of my time just watching people, listening to what they say to me and each other, and trying to get a real feel for who they are and where they might be based on that. One of my observations, to use your your word is that you guys ask more questions than give statements. Do you, do you do the same? I'd say that's true. Yeah. And then the questions are not random. There's a purpose behind the questions and it's to help understand what this world-class talent is seeing and feeling and thinking. Exactly. Okay. And then, and then when you do make statements, you tend to be pretty accurate. Yeah. There's a precision to the

statement, whereas a recreational coach, they talk a lot more and the things that they say are not really precise and accurate. I completely agree with that. Okay. So the Delta between the two, it's questions and then precision of language. And then, um, there's also a level of insight. Like they, like world-class coaches really do understand their craft. Do you think that they understand the world better and humans better, or is it just humans that are dedicated or just their craft? I think it's all of that, but I, I think we definitely understand our i'm gonna say our world yeah you know within our you know yeah i think i know pretty much everything that happens within my little 50 meter pool you know and once people are in there and we spend a lot of time in there and

then we go to some other meets and spend a lot of time together. You, you just, you get to, you get a sense for it. You know, a lot of it's, you know, just experience, right? Mistakes. Who is the guy? Niels Bohr, you know, an expert is someone who's made every mistake possible in their field. I don't know if I've made everyone, but I'm narrowing in on it, right? I'm getting close. So, you know, I think that you're just, the more you do it and the more that you're doing it with these high performers, you just get a feel for what makes them tick. And it's not always the same, but they do have some similarities. I think. What makes you tick? What are you driven by? Me? I'm driven by achievement, but just seeing what's possible.

You know, I mean, when I think back on some kid with some swimming talent and this unknown coach in a nondescript pool inside the Baltimore Beltway where that took us, It's kind of incredible. And it was only because we just kept raising the bar and saying, well, maybe we could do this. What do you think? Think somebody could do this? Could anybody ever swim 151 and 200 fly when the world record was 155? We used to ask that question all the time. Well, how would you do it?

And then we'd start, you know, so I feel like'm, what drives me is pushing the limits of what's possible. And so do you get to experience that on a daily basis or is that only on the rare occasion where there's a limit setting public or private? No, every day. Cause every kid I coach has those. Every, okay. And then where you said said look at where it's taken me. Where has it taken you? All over the world. I met the prime minister of Great Britain, the president of the United States. It goes on and on to just have experiences and to basically be part of something which in a visceral way has changed the world.

You know, Michael has a platform now to talk about mental health and water safety and infant drowning and all of these things where we could actually impact the greater good through our sport. When's the last time you had a sense of peace? Oh, recently. Sunday morning. Tell me about it. Yeah. I just, you know, I get up.

Usually I get up at the same time every day, which is 4.15. It's pretty early. And on the days when I don't have a practice like this Sunday, I normally will go on a very long walk, like five miles through old town Scottsdale. I have a beautiful place to walk on this canal early morning. That's when I'd listen to podcasts and they hear your voice quite a bit during that time, but, or sometimes it's music, just whatever I feel like. And at the end of that, I normally get up, have a cup of coffee. That's the first thing I do. And I just try to reflect on just where I am. How are things going? What would I like to accomplish

today? Maybe, or what does that mean? Or maybe even think back to yesterday or whatever, just, but just have some quiet time where I just kind of let my mind go you know i don't try to consciously think about anything then i do my walk and at the end of that i end up in my backyard which is a beautifully landscaped little desert landscape in scottsdale and i sit and watch the sun come up and have a second cup of coffee and i can honestly say i'm truly at peace when i do that beautiful i think, I think that has to do with the bigger picture of my life, but you know, that was the last, last time.

What are some of the hardest parts of your life? Because on paper it's like, wow. The hardest parts are, I have this inner need to just be hyper-focused on this one thing, which would be like the swimmers and the training. And I know that, quite frankly, the more time I put into that, the more it's going to help those kids. But because of my position now and the other things I'm doing, I'm pulled in a lot of different directions. So I have to make some choices about what gives and what doesn't. And I think that's the hardest

part. How do you take care of yourself? I try to exercise now a lot better. I'm trying to eat better every day. I have a little rule. You know, I try to listen to music every day. Good music. I try to read something every day that has nothing to do with swimming. Sometimes I read about swimming too. And I try to keep my mind open to a lot of different things. So while I spend a lot of my time being kind of hyper-focused in this one area, I give my brain breaks throughout the day to kind of go away and then come back to it. What do you read and what do you listen to?

Or what are you reading now? What am I reading now? Actually, I'm just reading this book. I just got a book called the Mindside Manifesto. Brett McCabe sent it to me. It's a sports psychology book. I tend to read nonfiction. That's what I read.

Yeah, me too. That's it. Is there a couple go-tos that you hand out to other people that you. I do. A lot of coaches ask me and you know, there's a great coaching book, Tudor Bamba theory of methodology training, you know, that that's my Bible. Is it? Yeah. Oh yeah. So that's, I actually have an original copy of it. Stop. Yeah. That's really cool. I know the two nerds now talking about life. You know, his performance profile methodology. I just loved it. Sure. Yeah. Okay. And I mean, you know, I always hand out mindset, Carol Dweck. Um, we, I had the team

read it last year. This time we did grit, Angela Duckworth, and I've been on here. Um, so I'm tending to try to read things where I learn about something and it's usually about psychology. Okay. How good are you at psychology? I'm pretty good at it. Yeah. Undergraduate degree in psychology. And then there's a difference between being like a psychologist and a highly skilled person that has a great relationship with others that knows how to amplify and celebrate their potential. I think that's kind of where I am.

That's where I'd rather be. I don't diagnose abnormalities and stuff, but I do think I'm pretty observant about tendencies and how people tend to react to certain situations. Like, and we were talking about it earlier, you know, I try to use the full toolbox and there are some people that are on my team who I would never ever raise my voice to or say a crossword to or, or push them in a direct way because I know that they will just shut down if I do that. There are some people who the only thing they will respond to in that environment is something a little bit more to get their attention.

And I will do that in a directed way, not like in a just like using a chainsaw way, but there is a chainsaw in your toolbox. Be careful how you use that. So, you know, I feel like I'm getting much better now in my advanced, more experienced age of knowing what each individual needs and how they respond. Or if I do one and it's the wrong thing, I know how to fix it. Yeah. You know, you know, cause you don't always guess right. You know, what, what mistakes are you afraid of making in the future? I'm afraid of making mistakes that really hurt a kid's, I hate this word, but I'm going to say self-esteem. You know what I mean? I just feel like it's so it's misused in a lot of ways,

but I don't want to do something that squelches their drive or their fire inside to do something. And I've probably done that in the past. I know I've done it. How do you make that mistake? Like, what do you do? Just say something really harsh or just like, just try to, you know, when they're at a down moment, pile on. Yeah, you know, and I've heard over and over again.

So I've been fortunate enough to be in this experience with Microsoft for, and I've spent time with, well, not I alone, but like thousands, tens of thousands of people over the course of two years. And I won't give you the exact number because it's a little bit of their recipe here. And I would often ask, what's the difference between a great coach and a not great coach? We try to understand this. And you know what they'd say about the not great coach? They were in it for themselves. They were in it for them, not me.

And that's when I know I make the mistake. When I'm like thinking about like, well, how is this going to affect you is very different than, oh my gosh, this isn't going to work out for us. And the us has ruined me. That's like the error in any relationship. I totally agree with that.

That's a good way to put it. Yeah, I love what you just said there. Okay, so can you finish that thought? If you knew what I knew, but now speak to business folks. Like business people? Yeah. You'd focus on the process and not the outcome. I need the outcome, though.

Well, you're going to get the outcome. If the process is successful and you are doing the right things, the outcome is going to be a natural byproduct of that. Okay. I've heard that before. Yeah. I heard that before. And yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But business is different. No, business is not different.

It's exactly the same. We don't have a championship. Yeah, you do. It's your end of the year P&L. Okay. Well, we don't't have a championship. Yeah, you do. It's your end of the year P&L. Okay. Well, we don't have practice. No. Yeah, you do.

Every day you go in there and you spend eight hours a day doing something. Well, I don't have a feedback loop. Yes, you do. If your boss has set it up properly or someone has thought to set it up properly. Yeah, right. Yeah. So that's what failing businesses are. They don't communicate.

They don't have a sense of purpose. They don't have a vision for what they're doing. Right. Yeah. And, and they're not enthusiastic about it. And the feedback loops are not accurate. You know, there may be quarterly for sure. And that, how are you going to get better if four times a year, you get told what's not working. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. Brilliant. This is so good. No, thanks. I'm enjoying it. It's great. I have to. Yeah am too. Yeah. Okay. I want to know about drive. I want to go back to that because you said achievement. Are you more externally driven or internally driven?

I'm more internally driven. Are you saying that because you're supposed to say that? No. No, I honestly believe I am. I have certain just – here's a great example. Well, I think it's an example. I after the 2012 Olympics, which I told you, you know, Michael, we had gotten through and actually had a pretty good result. But getting there was extremely difficult.

And as you know, I had spent the better part of, well, at that point, I don't know, my career, probably 20 years, 25 years, working at this nonstop. Very few days off, very few any vacations, like no happy hour, no nothing. And I had decided after London I was going to give myself a break, and I was in a position to. So I didn't coach at all from the London Olympics until May of the next year. So it's about nine months. I took completely off and had complete freedom with my schedule. I mean, I did some appearances and whatever, there are a few things, but I could basically decide every day what I wanted to do. I bought a place on the beach in Delaware, Rehoboth. I thought I'd go to, and I did love going down there, but I remember right after I went down to the beach place and

kind of got moved in and I was like, all right, tomorrow I'm going to go down to the beach. So I went down there at like, I don't know, I get up so early. So I went to like 10, I'd already been up for like, you know, six hours and I got my umbrella and my lots of sunscreen, as you can tell, I'm not a sun person. So, so I'm sitting there and I got my book and it's awesome. Like, this is the best, this is what I've needed so badly. And after an hour, I was like, okay, that was fun. But you know, I have a place at the beach and all this time, so I'm going to have to stay at least another hour. And after 30 minutes, I minutes i'm like i'm gonna make myself stay for two hours because i have to because now i'm having a good time so i may i cannot vacation is my point i have to be doing

something sounds really fun it is it was awesome i was like oh God. So I have to find, I'd love to like, I like to cook. I like to ride my bike. I like to do different things like that, but I really have to have something that's occupying my mind and that I feel like I'm learning and kind of growing from. And I think that's my motivation. How long will you coach? Probably until I die. Will you coach on the pool deck or will you? I'm going to go for a while on the pool deck because I really love it. I've spent a lot of time in my career trying to not love it. Trying to say, well, you could do something else. You should, I don't know. There ain't a number of things I can do.

At the end of the day, I love being on the deck and interacting with these kids on a daily basis. Where does pressure come from? It comes from outside. It comes from when you start to pay attention to external causes of things that happen. How do you help yourself and or Michael and Allison and other athletes be more connected to the internal signal? You've got to be quiet to hear it, right? You've got to put yourself in a frame of mind where you can do it. And I think I encourage them to do a lot of relaxation techniques.

And I think it's in those times where they get in touch with those things. What are those techniques that you use? Is it more breathing stuff? It's more breathing, progressive relaxation, tighten up your hands. It's very basic very basic very basic you know i taught michael uh i didn't teach him i actually had his mom do it before he went to bed at night when he's like 11 i had her start reading this progressive relaxation thing and after about three times before he did the first thing he'd be asleep he got so good so you know he's very good that. And it's a skill that he obviously still uses. I mean, he definitely can put him.

My favorite example is Michael had broke his hand. He had surgery on the hand. And I was there with him. And I went back in the recovery room. Everything was fine. How did he break it? Fell in the ice in Michigan. Oh, yeah.

Great. We don't have that in Phoenix. it? Fell in the ice in Michigan. Oh, yeah. Great. We don't have that in Phoenix. But we're in the recovery room, and he's all hooked up, and we're just looking at his heart. It was like 80 because it had just come out of surgery. And the doc came in and said, Well, when your heart rate's under 50, you can leave. Probably be another hour or so.

And Michael went, his heart rate went to like 45. He's like, can we go? Dog's like, yeah, you're out of here. That's awesome. He can totally do that. Yeah. So he's very skilled at it.

Very skilled at it. And his resting heart rate's 36 or something. Okay. So relaxation strategies. What else? Meditation. And I think those go hand in hand. And I try to, I personally work on some meditation, but I don't do it really formally.

And I don't have like a mantra. You know, I had someone described to me meditation of focusing on your breath and allowing thoughts to like come into your brain. But as they come in, you just let your breath kind of blow them out, you know, like that. Hello and goodbye. Exactly. And that really works for me. Yeah, that's great. It's a great strategy.

And, you know, the art part of mindfulness is starting over a thousand times. Exactly. You know, it's hello and goodbye and to a place where all of a sudden those clouds like if the thought is a cloud yeah they just start to get a little more still yeah yeah exactly okay so what is the signal for you like this the noise signal to noise ratio right the distractions from the pressure conversation we're having our external what is the signal that's a hard question that is a hard question yeah yeah thank you yeah yeah thanks for exploring i think the signal is your breath right it's it's the inner you go with within yourselves we i used to have this i don't even know where we got this but we used to have this t-shirt at our club and it said the solution lies within us and I think that's completely true that you have this

belief that you can kind of solve whatever problems out there but I think the signal and the way to tone out the noise is to just get back to your most basic your authentic self I've heard it express you know now your learned state you're in your your is it authentic state There's a learned state and there's another state. What are those called? What's the other one? That's the one you want to be in. You don't want to be in your learned state where you learn how to like react to all this. I like authentic self and I think that's what it is. Yeah. Okay. And imagery. I know you use a lot of imagery. I do use imagery. Um, before we go there, let's talk about pre-performance routines. Sure. Do you support them? Absolutely. Yeah. I don't, by the way. Okay. So I'd like to have this, I really want to have this conversation.

Well, I'm going to tell you part of this is just, it happened. Mm-hmm. If you watch what Michael does behind the blocks at a swim meet today, it's the same thing he did at the first meet I ever saw him do. He goes behind the blocks. He has his headphones on. He stretches his legs in a certain way. He goes through this other routine of kind of little just basic stretching movements. Then he gets up on the block and he flaps his arms like three times and then he swims. And what is he doing internally when those movements are taking place?

I think it's just, honestly, I think it just keeps him from being nervous, standing there awkwardly. It just gives him something to do in that space because it's an interminable amount of time from the time they walk out to the time they call everybody's name until they actually get on the block and swim. So I do think that's part of it. And he is absolutely putting himself into a state if he's not there already. And the way that I kind of know this is if you go back and watch the video of the really iconic race of 2008, the a hundred meter butterfly, where he won by a hundredth of a second, the competitor, Michael Cav, is in the next lane. And he had noticed that Michael was always standing on the side of the block with his leg up on the kind of step that they have beside the block

and looking sideways. So Michael Kavich positioned himself. So he was doing the same thing, looking right into Michael. So it's like they're staring at each other for the race. And I just kind of noticed. So the race goes off. They, you know, it happened. And after I'm talking to Michael and I was like, what did you think when Kavish was staring you down before the race like that?

And Michael, honest to God says, was he looking at me? So he was clearly in another, he didn't even see the guy eight feet away, right in his face. He was in another state. So I think that's what the routine does. I also take it further. And the thing that I, where I think it's important is in the hours leading up. So my athletes always do the same warmup. They do it at the same time before the event starts like if we did michael's classic warm-up we arrive at the venue two hours before he will do some kind of stretching and limbering up exercises for about 30 minutes at an hour and a half before the event he will do his primary warm-up which is the same thing every meet i mean since he was 12 he tweaks it a little bit, but it's the same thing.

He will get out, dry off after about 30 minutes. He will put his racing suit on. Then 30 minutes before the event, he gets back in the warmup pool and does maybe, I don't know, five or 10 minutes worth of a light stuff warming up. Then he puts his warmups on. Then he goes to the ready room. He does this every race. And what this does is it makes everything automated. They don't have to spend one ounce of energy on,

what am I going to do to warm up tonight? They know exactly. And because they do the same thing all the time, they have a good feel for, do I feel good? Do I feel bad? Should I maybe do a little something at the end where they have some leeway to get their heart rate up higher? Or maybe they just feel great and they call it?

So I think it's super important. And every one of my athletes has one of those. It's not exactly that way, but it's pretty much like that. Do you ask them to write it down or does it organically just happen? It kind of organically happens. And then I start asking them about it. What is your routine? Yeah.

What is your routine? You know, when are you getting in? And then after a while, it's just like, like, I know Alison Schmidt, she's going to do about the same thing, but she's going to get in an hour and 40 before, cause she needs 10 more minutes to put her suit on. You know, it's just like the women's. So, you know, it, it just, it's little tweaks on stuff like that. And it's largely about timing because what I want them to do is from the time they get to the venue in that lead up to the actual race, I want all that to be automated. I don't want them. I want them to be able to conserve emotional energy. That's the key element at these races, conserving emotional energy and conserving psychological energy.

I don't want to spend any time on distractions of any kind. And that way, if a distraction comes up, that's not part of this thing, they have a lot of resources to deal with it and they can kind of go back to their plan. You know, the bus came a little late. Okay. We'll just adjust this a little bit, but we know what we're going to be doing. So I feel like it just makes them really, really solid when they get up there, right? They, they just go move through it. You built a great case for it. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's why we do it. Yeah. Great case for it. And then what are the thoughts that accompany or proceed the ideal mindset for, I want to ask for, let's say Michael, since we're talking about him and then you as

well, but what are the types of thoughts that, that influence the mindset? And there's two parts to that. What is the mindset and what are the thoughts? The mindset is trying to achieve honestly a state of peace. It's, I try not to interject anything into that equation that's going to make him think about something. Okay. Is this, okay. So now we're talking about Michael first. Yeah, we're talking about Michael. So his ideal competitive mindset is a state of peace. Well, it's a, when I say peace, Michael will absolutely tell you he doesn't think about anything and he listens to music to try to clear his head of everything during this build up to the race and during the race.

So he's thinking about the music then, right? So if the music is saying you know like uh if there's some lyrics in the music is he listening he definitely listens to it yeah but i i don't know that he listens to it it's like being inspired it's just more like a vibe more right okay yeah yeah all right and then that's just feel for that period in his life yeah like you know wherever he is yeah because it changes you know yeah me too yeah sometimes it's kanye sometimes it's country you know i mean it just depends on where he kind of is okay so then what are the thoughts that lead to in it you said again it's peace yeah yeah i mean i'm it doesn't sound aggressive i don't i don't

want to i usually say relaxation but which but i'm talking about relaxation right before the biggest event of your life it's a different relaxation than when you're on the beach on vacation you know what i mean it's like it's a physiological yeah it's a state i'm trying to move them more towards the deactivated physiological state yeah versus the over activated i think that's what we're doing and you're probably intimately familiar with the Yerkes-Dodson inverted U 1 to 10 scale. And then so are you helping them fine tune a 5? Exactly. That's on scale 1 to 10.

Exactly. And I think it's going to be so easy to go over that I'm always trying to get them to come down. Yeah. I've only had a couple athletes I have to jack up on that scale. Me too. Yeah. And they're ready for retirement. Well, or they just like are so under.

One very Olympic gold medalist I coached was like that. And I would have to get him to do it. I'd have to start talking about the outcome. I'd be like, you know, this is your chance. This is the only chance you're going to get. It's a rare pattern. Yeah, and it's very rare. And I never even have that talk ever.

I would never talk to anybody else. But for him, I switch it totally to the outcome because that gets his, tries to get him a more activated. What's the most dangerous thought? The most dangerous thought is, uh, what's, what happens if I don't achieve my goal? What's the most productive, most productive thought is what am I going to do right now? Where is my, my focus is needs to be right on this stroke of this race right now. And then the interplay between task at hand and internal awareness. Okay. You have to have, have to is a big word.

You have to have some solid awareness of your inner state to maximize the, the expression of the task, the manipulation of the task. Okay. So whether it's hip rotation, um, reach, you know, shoulder reach or whatever, like there has to be some sort of output that you're working on. So what, but if you're too internally aware about your thoughts, about your breathing, about whatever, you never kind of get to that output phase. So how do you, do you talk about that interplay? Like you can get too caught in your own head. I do with some people, not, I noticed that the high performers are hyper aware. Like I'll give you a perfect example. And Michael's always the ridiculous example, but in our pool in Baltimore, we have a 50 meter pool and there's a thing called a bokeh, which is a false wall in the middle,

which divides it into two pools. Basically we're at the far end. Michael is swimming hard. I mean, really hard. At the 60 or 70 meters away, there's a glass wall which leads into the lobby. There's a front desk. There's a ton of people in there. Michael is swimming this ridiculously hard set. And after one of the repeats, when he has about five seconds to rest, he's like, did my mom just come in? The front door of the building all the way down there. I'm like, what the hell is the matter? Who does that, right? But he's acutely aware. So what I'm saying is I think if they're like that, then you don't have to worry about them being in touch with the task at hand or anything else. They're very aware, but they're relaxed. I think that's the key. You want them to be, because when they're racing, Michael's very aware of what people are doing. Like I, I remember distinctly this race in Canada

where Ryan Lochte and Michael both swam the 200 IM. And this was one of the first times that Ryan was really challenging Michael and it was dead. It was just super, super close. And they swam. And Michael ended up winning. He ended up breaking world record. But Ryan was right behind him. This was a super intense race. And they both got out.

And they're like walking back to the warm down pool. And I met them there. And they're just laughing. And Ryan's like, yeah, I knew when you looked over at me at the 150 wall, it was all over. You know, like they look at each other, they know what they're doing in the middle of what this incredible exertion. So they're very aware. And I don't know if that's their high performers because they are aware or they're aware because they're high performers. I don't know.

It is chicken and egg. Speaking of chicken and egg, I don't want to be rude when I say this to you, but I want to explore this with you because I think about this as well in my own career, in my own life. And so I've been fortunate enough to be included and part of some extraordinary projects with extraordinary performers. Yeah. And some that have changed the way we understand the world and some changed aerospace and some changed their industry and some have changed family legacies. And so, okay. And then they'll point and say, Mike, thank you so much publicly, privately, whatever, both. And then I start to wonder, was I just lucky? Yeah. Okay. I studied this stuff for 20 years. Like I've got some stuff. Okay. Was I, they would have gotten there without me. Yeah. Did I help? Did I not help? Okay. So you know where I'm going? Oh yeah, sure. Okay. So you, you, you connected to the best in the world for 20

some years. Sure. Amazing thought. Do you ever wonder if your, your stuff helped, didn't help? Does that ever get confusing? And you've got a great line that I've read or that you shared with me. So can you talk about that just a little bit? I can, you know, I think early on in my career when, uh, we were just sort of getting going, but Michael was starting to show his real ability. I used to read these message boards about swimming. And now I've since I'm an adult now, I don't read the message boards because they're usually about me and they're negative. But, you know, just I don't do that anymore. My life got a lot better when I stopped doing that.

But somebody says, you know, Bob Bowman can't coach. The janitor could coach Michael Phelps. And I thought to myself as I read that, yeah, but could the janitor coach his mother? I love this. Yeah. Because that was the hard part. Getting the team together and getting them all behind him and understanding what we were doing. And, you know, so there's so many parts of it, right. Not just putting them in a pool and saying swim. I mean, Michael probably would have been a good swimmer if we dropped him off at a lake somewhere and said, swim for two hours every day. But, you know,

I feel like the sustained success that he had and the, you know, Michael broke world records for over a decade every year. That's just never done in our sport. And I think that, and in many different events. So I feel like it certainly impacted that in some way. But yeah, I feel like your greatest strength is your greatest weakness sometimes. That's my philosophy.

So what's my greatest strength? Oh, you coach Michael Phelps to all these medals. What's your greatest weakness? Oh, you can only coach Michael Phelps to all these. Which really isn't true if you look at the record. Yeah. And you've had like incredible success. Some success with other people. And, and quite frankly, that's why I'm coaching at Arizona State University right now. I took a program which had been kind of floundering and no one could say I

took over a ready-made program and just kept it going. So whatever happens there will be what it is. So we'll find out if I can coach or not, I suppose. You love, you're lighting up. I love it. You like that challenge. I love that challenge. Okay. World-class performers.

Yes. You included. What is the common thread to drive people to work this hard? What, what is your, what are your insights there? That's a great question. Wow. It's a hard one. It's complicated, but I think the common, it's almost not fair. It's almost, yeah, it's almost like it might be different for different people, but let me say real quick. It's the question I've been asking myself for 20 years. Yeah, yeah. So I don't know.

Okay, good. It's not even fair, but I'd love to see where you go with that. I'd like to think about that. The common thread in high performers is that I kind of go back to my personal experience. And maybe I'm a high performer or maybe I'm not, but do you just say that to throw it away? Well, no, no, not at all. I just, I'm just saying like, you know, I'm a hyper, I work with high performers. I don't know. I, maybe I'm a high performing coach that helps them high perform, but it's like, but so that's what I was coming

from earlier. For me, it's about seeing what the actual possibilities are. How far can this thing go? And that's what the cool part of me, because every time I take a step beyond what I think I could do, that motivates me to work super hard for the next step. And that process or that inner just satisfaction is what drives me. And that the interesting or sort of different part about what my success is, is it's tied to other people, whether they do it or not, you know, or how, you know, with the college team, it's just the program can do it. But I think that has to be part of it, that everybody has this desire. Well, at least high performers have this desire

to see how far they can go how what is the limit do we even know do you think that there's dysfunction that underneath so i i think about this often that in a normal world having such structured routines before you do something is there's a disorder called OCD. Yeah. Okay. And the problem with OCD, the difference though, is OCD in the normal world gets in the way of the function, daily functioning OCD on the, the pool deck actually facilitates the thing that they're about to go do. It doesn't stop them. It facilitates it. Right. So, but is there, I don't know, there's some sort of craziness, I think, underneath the tip of the arrow performers in the world. There's definitely something because they're by definition different than the norm,

right? I mean, they, and that has to deal with their psychological makeup, their emotional makeup, certainly their physical makeup. We know that. So there have to be, and when I say abnormal, I don't mean this in a bad way, just not normal, just not average, non-average above. I don't know if they're above average or below average, but there are definitely some differences psychologically and emotionally in high performers. This is going to sound counterintuitive, but if there's a thread that there's some sort of dysfunctional split fracture, something in their earlier life. Now, normal psychology says, let's heal that. Yeah. Okay. And what I'm about to suggest is no, let's, let's get in touch with it.

Yeah. Okay. Let's get in touch with your crazy. I think that happens all the time. Like, but let's, let's know it. Yeah. So it doesn't burn you, but you can use it to burn brightly. Yeah. And what does that mean? It's like, well, where does pain come from for you? Right. And if we can not try to undo it from an outcome, that will never happen. The outcome will never undo the inner pain. Exactly.

You're nodding your head like, yes. I've been there. Yeah. What do you mean? Well, I mean, I've had numerous athletes who are dealing with issues, which I think are kind of driving them to perform. And there's and maybe even I'm sure in my life, I don't know if I can go that deep that I had this pain, but I was definitely helping them do this. You have this belief that if you accomplish this huge goal, that somehow your life is going to be different. And it's not.

It's the same. You have the same bills. Maybe you make a little more money. Maybe you have some more opportunities. But at the end of the day, you're you. You're still shaving in the mirror. Exactly. You're still doing what you do.

So I see that all the time. Yeah. So would you suggest people get in touch with their crazy? Or would you say, no, just bottle it away and work hard? Well, working hard is a good antidote for many things, but probably they should get in touch with it. I think at some point. Okay. What is, okay. Before we go on to the next, is that oftentimes I think the worst thing we can do as friends to each other is take a, try to take away the pain. It'll be okay. That's okay. It's okay. No, this is sounds awful. This looks like it feels awful to you. You know, wow. I agree with that. Yeah. And then just let them not let them encourage them to feel it and then say, well,

what do you want to, how do you want to do this differently? Yeah. I, I'll use an example and I'll use Alison because I know she wouldn't mind at all about this. And she made the 2008 Olympic team in high school and everything is great. And we're on top of the world and we're in the training camp at Stanford. And all of a sudden her roommate is knocking on my door one afternoon and she's like, you need to come talk to Alison right now. I was like, whoa. I've never even seen her not smile the entire time. So I go and she's crying. She's very upset. And I did the quintessential what every man does when the woman starts crying.

And that is, okay, just how do we make it stop? Let's say whatever it takes to make it stop. No, no, no. Well, you know what i mean yeah the the i should say the immature man or they haven't figured it out and then try to solve and then try to solve the problem so anyway i did actually solve that because her problem was she was homesick and she didn't feel like she belonged on the olympic team so i it was very easy i said well here's the list of the people are swimming in the olympics and you're ranked number three in the 200 free. So I think you belong here. And she's like,

oh, okay. So that's solved that. But my point is she came back four years later, we're getting ready for 2012. And she had another episode like that and training. And it was like, we were training hard and I was pushing her and we're in Colorado and altitude and all this stuff is going on. And in between, I had talked to Terry McKeever, my good friend who coaches Cal Berkeley. And, you know, she suggested a book called The Female Brain. And so I read it. Cool book. It's a cool book.

But, you know, what I kind of got from that and in dealing with Allison that time was she doesn't want me to stop her crying. She just wants me and she doesn't want me to stop her crying. She just wants me, and she doesn't even want me to say anything. She just wants me to be there. And once I started doing that, we connected on a totally different way. And she's like, oh, thanks for doing that. I'm like, I just stood here, but yeah, it's, you know, that's what she just needed the support. It wasn't about trying to work through all these issues at the time. It was just like, I need you to hear me out and just be there for me. And I think once I started learning that it made it a

lot better. So I think there, there are ways that you're going to deal with athletes. Certainly the men and women are very different in that regard. You'll never have that. I mean, I haven't had an episode with a man like that yet where they did that and we needed to do that, but they do it differently. Brilliant. Yeah. Okay. Is there a word or phrase that guides your life? This is really about a philosophy. Yeah. Process is more important than the outcome. For sure. Is that a philosophy? That is my philosophy. I hate to beat a dead horse, but it's really true. And it's how we run everything we do. So, okay.

It's so clear. And then it provides like, okay, how do you create a world-class process? And then, so that's your model. Yep. The four phases, discovery, imagination, challenge, and then high performance. And then you've got tactics inside of each one yeah and if somebody is not in a uber competitive world-class environment but they're working hard in their life what would you suggest that they do to make their life better they can use the same process they can absolutely use it and they can find some people to help them get some feedback. You know, it might be tougher in some situations than others,

but I honestly believe that process can work in anything. It works in music. It works in business. It works in sports. How important is it to have a mentor or someone that's thinking about your well-being? I think it's really critical. And I think the reason that I sought out those mentors in swimming was because I had been brought up in this musical background where it's very important, the teacher-student relationship. If you read the biographies of any great performer, they're going to say studied violin with Dorothy delay at the Juilliard school. You know, they're always going to list their teachers. So their kind of lineage is kind of traced back through their teachers. And for me, I wanted to do that. I wanted to, to really learn. And the reason that you do that is number one, you, you, you understand how they think about it.

And when I was with any of these teachers, I was never trying to like make my own brand or do my own thing. I only wanted to learn how to do it their way. Like I wasn't even thinking. I was like, when I'm with Paul Bergen, I want to learn how to do it Paul Bergen's way. And then when I'm David Marsh, I'll do it David Marsh's way, A hundred percent. I will completely invest in learning how he does it and how. And then along the way, you're, you're kind of filing the things that you thought were really effective and kind of getting rid of the things that you didn't. But I feel like that's a key part of mentorship.

And frankly, it just saves you time because all these mentors have been doing this and they have made mistakes and stuff, and you just don't have to make those same mistakes. You can make your own. There are plenty that you're going to make on your own, but it saves you a lot of time and effort knowing that, you know, I don't know. I try to think of a good example, but there are a million of them. But, you know, Paul Bergen would say, you know, we once went to a meet that was going to be in California and we were living in Cincinnati.

So I got the girls up at two in the morning so they could warm up at the same time it would be in California and we were living in Cincinnati. So I got the girls up at two in the morning so they could warm up at the same time it would be in, you know, or whatever. Don't ever do that. Get to sleeping. Exactly. You know, those kinds of things. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay. All right. Can you talk about, we've talked a lot about working hard. Can you spend a little bit of time on recovery? Sure. Just talk about the importance of recovery and what recovery means to you and how you help people recover. Well, recovery is so critical because it's 50% of the process. The training is when you're giving the stimulus, the added adaptation occurs during a recovery period.

So I always tell my athletes, you know, the, the benefit of this practice is not what you just did over the last two hours. It's what's going to happen over the next eight or 10 hours or more, 24, really 48. So recovery is critical. And the way that you go about different modalities, I think, is also important. Nutrition is number one for me. Hydration and nutrition. That's the first thing we would address. Trying to take in the most high

quality nutrition you can get at the proper time these days we're looking for organic or you know those kind of things so i think that's important and then there are other a ton of other things that we're using now cold tubs we use cupping krasten technique and on and on and on there are any number of things you can use but the way that you approach the periods between the training sessions is really going to determine the effectiveness of the training sessions. And then vegetable based protein based healthy fat based. Is that I, I, yes, exactly. We like to use, we, I definitely want protein included in it, but, um, we're trying to find ways that aren't maybe heavily milk-based and we have some products that we use i don't know if i want to talk about

it here but i mean you know we use the prior code the targo which is a great uh and a lot of olympic swimmers are using that but it's a it's a um plant-based but it has protein in it so it's a stimulates recovery faster there we go go. Okay. How important is sleep and critical? Absolutely critical. Uh, there's a direct correlation between number of hours of sleep and athlete gets in the quality of their performance guarantee you or anyone, not any person. That's great. Okay. Thank you for, I know we're going long on time. Okay. I got time. Yeah, this is, this is okay. How, how important is the mental aspect of the game from your lenses? So we've got physical, technical strategy and mental. Mental. No, it's critical. And more so as you get higher up, you know, I would say when you're an age group swimmer and I, and I'll just break it

into two parts, right. To make it simple. Like when you're first starting out and you're nine or 10 years old, 90% of it's physical. You're learning how to do the skills and 10% might be mental, how to have good manners and practice. And as you move up to scale, that ratio changes. So when you're at the Olympic games, I would say it's 90% mental and 10% physical. And if you were to suggest people go on the path of learning mental skills, where would you start them? And what would you hope, what other skills would you hope that they would build along the way? Well, I w I would start them first on learning how to do some sort of relaxation technique or visualization. I think that's really important. And maybe a progressive relaxation technique, or there are plenty

of other things that they can do. Meditation, those things I think are, I think that's really powerful. And I think you'll find that most successful people are spending time during their day working on that. I like, of course, some sort of goal setting technique. And I don't know that you have to make it super complicated. It can be very simple, but I think there has to be something there to give you a little bit more structure and more, quite frankly, feedback on what you're doing. Because if you don't have very specific goals, it's hard to know what you're accomplishing on a daily basis. So I'd say that would be the next thing. Okay. When you do it, when you teach imagery, is there a particular way that you teach it? I teach it very simply. I tell kids, it's like, well, you're watching a movie, right? But it needs to be very vivid. You need to be in it. You need to smell it,

taste it the more, because the brain can't tell the difference between something that's vividly imagined and something that's real, right? That's the whole purpose. I've learned several things through my career. And, you know, Michael, I think is the greatest visualizer of all time. And I had learned later after he had done the Beijing Olympics that he will visualize the race going exactly the way that he wants it to go. And he will do it as if he is actually in the water and also as if he's watching himself in the stance, you know, like from above or something. Two different perspectives. Two different perspectives. But he will also visualize scenarios where things go wrong in the race and how he will respond to it. So he has a whole database of these visualizations that he can

call upon, you know, at the critical moment, and it won't be conscious because he's rehearsed it time and time again. He's swum these races hundreds of times in his mind. So it'll just click when it matters. Do you have a sense of how much time he spent on a regular basis doing it? Was it a daily, twice a week? Well, it's definitely daily in the lead up to the event. I would say I could, he also uses his videos of his best races. He would always ask me for the videos of his best races about two months to six weeks out. And I know that started the process.

And after that, he would be probably every day visualizing. He got so good at it, he had to do it in the middle of the day because at night he would get so jacked up he couldn't go to sleep after, you know, because it's pretty emotional too. Yeah, same thing. If you're doing it right, you're going to switch on. Yeah, you're getting switched on. Yeah, doing it in bed is not the time. No, no, you have to find a time during the day. And I would say other than that, he's probably doing it maybe once or twice a week.

And then do you have a sense of how much time he's allocated? I have no real idea. I'm going to say 30 minutes. I don't think it's a big – I think he might take one race a day, two or three times, and they're not that long. And you can segment it out. If you wanted to, you could just do walking on stage. Yeah, for sure. Oh, yeah.

You could do whatever. Oh, yeah. Like sometimes being on stage, giving your speech., you know, like you can say, okay. I will say about visualization. One of the things that we try to do is tie that into the training because at certain aspects of the practice, when we get like, say they're doing this very long set and there's one repeat left at the end which is like say it's i don't know 100 meters and we want them to try to replicate the time they're going to swim in the race in 100 meters i would say something like all right play the movie

now your last 100 to 400 i am you know and try to visualize why you're actually physically doing this and whether the time adds up or not. If it does, that's fine. But if not, you're at least getting your brain to carry that into what's physically happening. Very cool. Okay. Here's a big question. Yeah.

It all comes down to the process. You make it very simple, don't you? I try to. Yeah. Which is the process is really about now. Yeah. How well are you doing now? So, like if we, if I ask this question about now, how are you doing now? Oh, I'm doing great.

I could do this all day. You mean specifically now? Yeah. These are the most important questions about my life's work, so I love it. What question have I not asked that's really been in the front and the back of your mind for a long time? That's a great question. We've covered a lot. It's a question about a question.

I'd like to... Man, we've covered a lot of ground. i got one for you yeah what are you most hungry for what are you aching for like what is your heart searching for my heart is searching and this is the honest to god truth to does that mean almost everything else is a lie? No, no. But I'm just like some people, I, I tend to be like, I feel like people perceive me as being like almost machine, like, like Michael, right? Like we moved from one thing in the process and do your goal. And I want the athletes who come through my program to leave it with a skill set that they take beyond swimming.

And that's the absolute truth. And it's really why I'm teaching now at ASU. And while I'm continuing to coach, cause I really don't have to, I can do any number of different things. What are you doing in ASU? Like what's that program look like? We're rebuilding a swimming program and I'm absolutely loving it because I'm getting to really teach again. I'm getting to bring in some talented athletes and kind of start over my career. I have some that you're going to know about in the Olympics that I'm coaching right now, but it's just been a real nice reset for me in a collegiate environment, which I love it because I feel really stimulated by it.

I'm involved in other aspects of campus other than just the swimming pool. And it's been really great. But imagine the people that go there are going to get an extraordinary program based on your body of work, your insight. Like imagine that that's going to be a great place to learn. Well, that's the idea. Do you have a favorite story that comes to mind about you and Michael? Oh, so many. I'm trying to think. Oh, he'll kill me for telling this one, but this is my favorite Michael because it just, when he first started to improve, right. get good and we were starting to think about this is you know he's going to be really special but he was maybe 14 so I was trying to just keep

everything really calm and just kind of keep everything you know we were at a meet in Orlando this junior nationals and Michael had gone over and he had swum the 1500 meters. It was a very hard race. I mean, it's the longest race I was making him swim it. Cause he had to toughen up and all this, you know, whatever. And he swam like a man's time. And at the time I think Michael was wearing like a size 22 swimsuit, which is like a postage stamp, right? He probably weighed 120 pounds. He's just a skinny little nothing. And I remember he finished the race and we walked literally across the parking lot to where our hotel was. It was just right next to the pool. And, um, he was wearing tennis shoes,

this tiny little brief suit and nothing else, his hat. I think he had a Michigan baseball hat on. And he had just done this whole big program. And the meet was like, he had just really done well. And it was one of the first meets that we had actually traveled together. I mean, cause we'd done a lot of local things when he was younger. And I remember I went to my room, but he was going to go down. He had to go down the hallway for something to get something. And he couldn't tell, but I just saw him skip down the hallway. He was like the happiest little kid in the world. And I thought this guy loves to swim. And that's what he ended his career with that kind of joy and kind of lost that in the process of all this other stuff. So I always think back to that. And I was like, I'm so glad he got back to that and i was like i'm so glad he got back to that because at the end in rio he was really

like that kid what a really cool story what a really cool story that you got to see both skips exactly yeah that's a privilege privilege position to be in someone's life oh for sure absolutely okay success is position to be in someone's life. Oh, for sure. Absolutely. Okay. Success is success is getting close to your potential. I don't know if we ever all reach it. You know, it's a, it's a really hard thing to think about. I mean, I think it's getting to some percentage of that, whatever that is. Like, how do you do that for yourself? Like what is your potential? I don't know. I honestly think that my main, you know, I used to live a life of like checking off these boxes, right? Have someone win the nationals, the junior nationals, this, the Olympic medal, gold medal, da-da-da-da-da-da.

And you checked off all these boxes. And now I feel like I, I, I want to lead a life more of influence, right? I'm at a point now where that's my greatest strength. So the more people I can positively influence, the closer I am to my potential or I'm, I'm, you know, giving my biggest gift or whatever it is using my talents. Oh, geez. Okay. Um, how do you finish this? I am a coach, a teacher. I would say a teacher. I'm a teacher. It's like a, that's a, a John Wooden thought too. Like you're a teacher. I definitely think of myself more of a teacher. What are you teaching?

How to live, basically. Hopefully how to live successfully. I'm teaching people that their life can be more than just what the average bear does. Which is focus on the outcome. Exactly, which is focus on the outcome. Exactly. Which is focus on the outcome. Exactly. This was just, I don't know. I won't say when this is.

This is recently. Yeah. This is a Seattle Seahawks Coach Carroll story. And we come in from a game where we won, but it was shabby. It was not clean. Nothing crisp about it. Yeah. But it was a win.

Yeah. And the next day, Coach Carroll is in front of the room and he says, he goes, you know, we won. We'll take it. Cause it's hard to get a win in the NFL. It's, you know, it's like a gold medal. It's very hard. Yeah.

They're all hard. I'm not talking about a win in the NFL. It's not a gold medal, but you know, it's like, they're all hard, you know? And so he says, um, if we focus on the outcome, we'll be average. We'll be like everybody else. So let's not be distracted by this win. Exactly. Let's never be distracted by a win or a loss. Let's double down.

Let's be really clear about how we're going to get better. Sure. And I bet you're like, you're nodding your head. I love it. Right. Isn't that great? Oh yeah. Nice, clear insight. Exactly. Yeah. I love it. Process, process, process. So, but it's not, I don't hear you ever use the word perfection. No. Yeah. You're, you're, you're really about improvement. I'm about improvement. Yeah. I'm about be better tomorrow today than you were yesterday. Yeah. Be better tomorrow than you were today. If you had a chance to ask somebody who's a master of their craft, one question, what would that be? How do you spend most of your time?

Yeah. Okay. Back at you. How do you spend most of of your time this is like a total cheat by me but how do you spend you know what i'm in this thing i'm actually in the 80 20 right i'm trying to spend 80 of my time on the things that are going to give us the big results instead of spending 80 of my time and stuff that's getting us 20% of the result. You know what I mean? It's like I want to spend my time on things which affect my athletes, the staff, everything I'm doing in a meaningful way instead of just, you know, going to meetings or trying to get a paycheck or all of those things. So it kind of goes back to my influence, right? I'm very conscious now of how I spend my time during the day, and am I spending it on something that really matters to what we're doing? Now, there are some things that really matter,

like writing the training program for that date. That really matters to me. That's the first thing I do. When I get there, I shut the door, turn off the phone and I spent an hour doing that. And that's probably the best hour of my day. Cause I just absolutely love doing that. But after that, I am really conscious now about not taking meetings and are going to go anywhere, not wasting time on things that my assistants can do and do well.

And really trying to make sure that my impact is on the student athletes most directly. So this is what I'm doing. Brilliant. What are the keys to mastery? How do you define or think about this concept of mastery? Well, I actually have thought about this. Coincidentally, I honestly see mastery in like Maslowian terms, right? It's self-actualization. You not only, well, over time, you've developed this physical skill set in our world, but not only do you have the physical skill set, but you have the emotional maturity and experience and you have the psychological experience and capacity to use

all of everything at an optimized state. So I think it's being self-actualized in your activity. Brilliant. Bob, thank you. I've said it a few times. This has been really fun. So thank you for the time and the insight and the wisdoms that you shared. And where can people connect with you? I am on Instagram and Twitter at coach underscore Bowman. B-O-W. B-O-W-M-A-N. And okay. So that's Instagram and Twitter. Your book, title of your book? The Golden Rules. Makes sense for you. There you go. Yeah. How did you come up with the title? Honestly, I didn't. The publishers did, but it made sense. How did you come up with the title? Honestly, I didn't. But it made sense. They helped me come up with it. It just, I think it, once we looked at what the content of the book was, it made perfect sense. That's great. Okay. And then Amazon,

where do you find it? Yeah. Barnes and Noble. Okay. On your website as well? On my, you can look on my Twitter handle. It gives you a link to it. Okay. And then what um, what's next? I'm building this program at Arizona state. We're also kind of now getting back into preparing for the 2020 Olympic game. So we have a group of athletes that are going to start doing that. So back to the real grind. I love it. Last little segment here, questions. What are, what is your crown jewel? thing that is this is like a brag question for a moment but what is the the thing that you're exceptional at or really

understand or like like what is your crown jewel i don't know another way of saying it i am undeterred by setbacks. I just keep going. Awesome. Yeah. I mean, really cool. How about, um, Alison, what is her crown jewel? Would you imagine her crown jewel is that she cares about other people so much. She is a truly empathetic person. Michael's crown jewel. Michael's crown jewel is his ability to imagine things that were never done and just kill himself to get there.

Wow. Okay. I wish you the best success at ASU. Um, I don't know if we're going to see each other at another Olympics. Yeah. Okay. And congratulations on your body of work and how you've impacted other people and the time that we've spent together, how it's impacted me. I want just been awesome. Thanks. Cool. Okay. So folks that are listening, you can punch over to finding mastery.net to have similar conversations as this. And you can find me at Michael Gervais on Twitter and on Instagram is at finding mastery. And if you haven't spent time yet, head over to finding mastery.net forward slash community. And we've got a whole tribe of people that are supporting and challenging each other on the path of mastery. You can also hit us up with minutes on mastery. So there'll be clips of two minutes or three minutes or less from world-class thinkers and doers. And Bob,

you're going to have a lot of them on there. So thank you. And I just want to appreciate everyone for spending time to invest in themselves. And it truly is a rising tide that floats all boats. So, you know, continue to contribute to ourselves and in return others as well. Awesome. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no-cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback. If you're looking for even more insights, we have a newsletter

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we can continue to show up for you. Lastly, as a quick reminder, information in this podcast and from any material on the Finding Mastery website and social channels is for information purposes only if you're looking for meaningful support which we all need one of the best things you can do is to talk to a licensed professional so seek assistance from your health care providers again a sincere thank you for listening until next episode be well think well keep exploring