Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Driven By Inspiration, Not Desperation | World Champion Wrestler, Adeline Gray

Episode Date: July 7, 2021

This week’s conversation is with Adeline Gray, one of the top professional freestyle wrestlers in the world, male or female. She is a 2016 Olympian, five-time World Champion (2012, 2014, 2015, 2018, 2019), seven-time World Championship medalist and went undefeated in international competition from 2014-2016. Adeline’s 2019 World title and fifth World Championship win gave her the title of the most decorated female American wrestler in history. I wanted to speak with Adeline to understand how she became a trailblazer for her sport - how did she stay the course when there wasn’t one, when there were few role models to look up to?Adeline’s story isn’t all roses - after going undefeated from 2014-2016 in international competition, she wasn’t able to get it done at the 2016 Rio Olympics, finishing in 7th place.We discuss what went wrong at those Games and how’s she’s adjusted her mindset heading into the Tokyo Olympics.I think this is a perfect conversation with the Games only a few weeks out... _________________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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What I do is very difficult and I don't know if it would be worth it if it was just for me. So I really hope there's some little girls and some young women out there who realize that it's not too late. Okay, welcome back. Or if you're new, welcome to the Finding Mastery Podcast. I'm Michael Gervais, and by trade and training, I'm a sport and performance psychologist. And I'm fortunate enough to work with some of the top performers across the planet. And the idea behind these conversations is to learn from people just like them. Those extraordinary people who have organized their inner life to commit themselves towards mastery. And there's two parts of mastery,

mastery of self and mastery of craft. And these conversations are really primarily interested in the intertwining of those two, how it takes place. And so our minds are our greatest asset. And if you want to learn more about how you can train your mind, this is just a quick little reminder here to check out the online psychological training course that I created with the head coach of the Seattle Seahawks, Pete Carroll. And you can find all of that at findingmastery.net forward slash course. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions. In any high-performing environment that I've been part of, from elite teams to executive boardrooms, one thing holds true.

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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 davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. Now this week's conversation is with Adeline Gray, one of the top professional freestyle wrestlers in the world. She's a 2016 Olympian, a five-time world champion. That's 2012, 2014, 2015, and 18 and 19. And she's a seven-time world championship medalist. And she went undefeated in the international competition from the time of 2014 to 2016.

How about that? How about understanding the language of world-class, world-leading? She has it. She understands the full alphabet, the way the inflections work together, the whole thing. And I'm incredibly excited to introduce her to you if you're not familiar with her work. So Adeline's 2019 world title and her fifth world championship win gave her the title of the most decorated female American wrestler in history. Now that's really important in the context of what we talk about in this conversation. And the reason I wanted to speak with her is to understand how she became a trailblazer

in her sport. More specifically, how did she stay the course when there wasn't one clearly carved? And also what was it like for her to be able to develop this path, her pursuit when there were no role models or very few role models for her to look up to. So Adeline's story isn't all peaches and roses. Like there's just like any path towards mastery, there are hard times and challenges. And after going undefeated from 2014 and 2016 in international competition, I would say that she wasn't able to perform to her potential at the 2016 Rio Olympics. And so we get into what that was like for her to have that experience. And we discuss the circumstances around the games, both from an internal and external framework,

and how she's adjusted her mindset heading into the Tokyo games. This is a really well-timed conversation with the Olympic games only a few weeks out. And I'm incredibly honored to be part of one of the teams, USA Surfing, representing the United States of America. And when I get back, I'm going to have lots of download for us because these games will be like no other games we've ever seen in our lifetime. And so there's going to be unique consequences, unique complications. There's going to be incredible upsides for some athletes. So I'm going to bring some of those gems home for us to be able to pay attention to and learn from. And with that, let's jump right into this week's conversation with Adeline Gray. Adeline, how are you? I'm doing great. How are you?

I'm so stoked to sit with you. This feels like a real treat because I've been fascinated for a long time with folks that have been disruptive, that have carved their own path and, and blazed the trail where others have gone. And so I'm incredibly excited to speak with you. So, you know, just for context, where are you right now on the planet? I'm in Colorado Springs, Colorado. And is this your full-time residency while you're training for the Olympic team? Yes. So I actually am born and raised in Denver. So this is actually home, home for me.

And then my husband has a house in Colorado Springs. He's stationed here with the U.S. Army. But my sister and I live at the Olympic and Paralympic Training Center. That's just east of downtown Colorado Springs. And I lived here for almost 10 years. And then I moved out when my husband moved to Georgia and lived with him for a little bit. And then he got restationed here in Colorado Springs and have kind of been in and out of living here at the training center for pretty much my whole adulthood, which is kind of a weird sentence. Okay. So you are one of the best in the world at your craft and there's lots to learn from your experiences and your insights and your practices. And I also want to learn more about your upbringing because you've changed barriers and stereotypes that you had to face down. You

had to square them up and deal with them. And I'm, I don't know if you like met them accurately, meaning that you, you knew that you had to square some stereotypes up early on, or you, you didn't know how to face them down. So you kind of gave to the stereotype a little bit. So I want to learn how you, how you worked with stereotypes, because that's a big deal right now. Like nobody wants to be stereotyped. Nobody wants to be marginalized. And I think you've got an incredible history to point to it, especially because if I have it right in your sport, you were in high school, you're primarily competing in a male dominant sport. And. And so you didn't have a whole lot of heroes, quote unquote, that looked like you, that moved like you even. And so can

we start with what it was like growing up, just for some context, and then lead us right into how you were able to deal with some of those barriers that uniquely you had to manage? No, stereotypes are a huge deal in wrestling. And especially it just talking about women's wrestling, you really have an image that comes in your head of this like whole good type woman who's supposed to be massive and towering over everyone. And I think the best way I can put it is my mom's friends all watch me on TV and watch me wrestle and see pictures of me.

And I look big and strong and powerful and mean on the wrestling mat. And then I will meet my mom's friends later. And they will always ask me like, you're the wrestler. They're like, but you look like a woman. And I'm like, I am a woman. And they're like, but you look so nice. And that's not what you look like. And it's always kind of an interesting exchange because I'm kind of sitting there looking at them like, what did you expect? Because when, what my image and stereotyping of a female wrestler is I'm actually the larger person on my wrestling team. My weight class is the, is the heavyweight division. And so all of the

other women are smaller than me, my whole team, every 10 pounds, we essentially go down until we have 105 pound weight class. And so I am the bigger, stronger woman. So when people expect me to be bigger and stronger than I am, it's kind of an interesting kind of pull and dynamic for me to look at them and like, it doesn't get bigger than me. And I'm a pretty average person. I'm five, eight in our society. That's, you know, kind of tall for a woman, but not really. And I weigh 165 pounds and I'm mostly lean muscle. So I don't have a lot of body fat on me. No one ever comes up to me and is like, dang, you're big, but it's an interesting dynamic to kind of challenge people's idea of what a female wrestler does look like. And I consider myself to be pretty stereotypical on the athletic side of pretty, and it's nice to fit into that into our world. It just also is a little bit hard when people come up to you expecting you to be something

different than you are. And I guess when I was a kid, I started wrestling, I was six years old. My dad was the youngest of seven boys and my mom, her family loved wrestling. So she's the youngest of seven kids as well. And all of her brothers and her dad wrestled. And when my parents had my sisters and I, there's now four girls in my family. I think they didn't really know what to do with us. I think they were always saw themselves as like T-ball coaches and baseball coaches. And all of a sudden these little girls came into the mix and they didn't know what sport to put us in first. And so, um, you could start wrestling a little bit early at six years old is about when they start do kids wrestling. And my cousins were

wrestling, which is my mom's brother's kids. And she was like, okay, how about you go try wrestling? And so my dad took me to wrestling practice and he wrestled when he was in high school. And so he was my coach and it was something at the beginning was just kind of fun. And we went in there and played games. Like the first few years of wrestling is super just learning your body, learning how to have fun in a team, learning how to play games and doing a little bit of hard work in the middle of practice and then getting to mess around and have your parents just show you some different drills. And I just remember really being a bonding experience between me and my father. How old were you at that time? I was six.

Okay. So at six was your first exposure to wrestling? Yes. Mostly boys at that point. So there were, um, I was related to all the girls on the team at the time. So it was just my cousin. Yeah. Okay. So it was, it was my cousin, me and my sister. And then there were a few girls who floated in and out, but this is a room of about 40 kids. So 40 boys. And then you have my cousin who I really felt like set a foundation. And my head coach was my uncle. And so he, you know, laid down the hammer. He was like, these women are allowed to be in this room. They will be treated as equals. He always really spoke to us as if it was the same as race. He's like, I don't care if you're black or white or purple, if you are a male or a female, he's like, if you have an ability or able-bodied person or a disabled person, we're going to find a place for you in this wrestling room. And you're going to earn your right to be here. And you're going to do that

through hard work and paying attention and having this structure essentially of enjoying this art of wrestling. And it was a, it was a very interesting thing to kind of come into a room and, and know that you have that. And then I was able to find kind of my little niches, you know, I had a cousin who was a boy on the team and I would wrestle him and then he would go wrestle somebody. And then they, and then we would switch partners and he kind of like grease the wheels a little bit of introducing a girl to wrestle a boy. And I know in other clubs, some kids are like, well, I've never seen a boy and girl wrestle before. And I'm like, well, weird. Can I wrestle you? And it really made it. So we just didn't even think about the fact that it was something different because at the time, I mean, even now in a lot of wrestling rooms, boys wrestle boys and girls wrestle girls. And it's interesting because it's the only way I could have gotten better was by wrestling boys.

My sister was 40 pounds less than me. And my cousin was 40 pounds more than me and my cousin was 40 pounds more than me and they're very challenging to wrestle people who aren't close to your weight class and close to your age and so the only chance I had was to train with the boys and I did that between six years old all the way through high school and so uh it wasn't without some challenges I definitely like within my wrestling room I felt very accepted and cared for. And like, I was part of that team and I had training partners. I had people who would really wrestle me. They wouldn't go out there and just try to lose or try to hurt me. Like I thought they were competitors and made me better. And they treated me like an athlete. And that was

always kind of the respect that I asked from people was to treat me as an athlete. And then when we went into other people's clubs where we'd had tournaments, there were a few people who didn't really understand and wanted the purity of the sport and had these ideas that boys and girls shouldn't wrestle. And I didn't really understand it. I was young. And so I unfortunately don't know if I can answer some of these questions because my support system allowed me to focus on wrestling. And with the kind of I'm going to come off as a little bit of a jock, but I kind of stayed away from some of the drama and let my parents deal with it and let my support system deal with it and let the environment of women's equality fight for me and allowed people to step in when things weren't right. And I just stood there saying like, but I want to wrestle. And they allowed me to do that. And I really felt that my upbringing was without some of the challenges that I hear from a lot of the women that are even on my team, or even some young girls now about boys forfeiting to them. And my parents from a young age, I, I probably had

five boys forfeit against me out of about 30 matches. Um, and my parents just always told me it was a buy. And so if anyone who's ever seen a bracket, the buy in the bracket, that person loses all the time. And so it was make that joke that the buy just keeps showing up and you get to advance onto the next round. And so my parents, parents, I don't even know if they told me sometimes that the boy didn't want to wrestle me. They just told me I had a buy. And then I went on to the next round. What was the reason that they wouldn't want to wrestle you? Was that like a, I don't know. I mean, maybe there's a religious reason. I don't know. So it varies. I, and that's kind of the hardship. You can't really peg it as like these people are bad because they wouldn't wrestle a girl and give me the opportunity to

get better at my sport. I've had some very respectful young men who said, I want to wrestle you, but my grandparents are here and they're very upset and they don't want me to wrestle you. And I don't think my relationship with my grandparents is worth straining to go out to this match. And they came up to me and apologized. And they said, I wish you the best good luck in the tournament. And that situation is very different than I had a young man in high school, which, uh, when I got to high school, I'd been wrestling for 10 years. I'd been training at some elite clubs that had private coaching. I was a good athlete. I was on varsity as a freshman. I had some, some art behind me, some years of experience in wrestling. Like I had more to offer than some of the boys who

stepped on the mat who started their freshman year. And so this young man had only been wrestling a few years. He, uh, came up to me in a tournament and was like, nope, not going to wrestle a girl, not going to wrestle a girl, like, and forfeited the match against me. And I was like, okay, that happens. Keep on, move on with my life. But then later that year, he wrestled a first year girl wrestler in a tournament and beat her like eight to one. And that situation really frustrates me because that shows me he just didn't want to lose to a girl. And he didn't have the courage or the coaching staff to tell him that he needed to have enough guts to go out there and compete against somebody that was better than

him. I would have beat this kid on paper and for him to disrespect women and to disrespect our sport like that is really terrible um but a lot of the coaches and the young men that i see uh now who have the choice a lot of times um i don't think it should be up to the kid because i saw a lot of coaches who said hey i'm gonna leave it up to you. If you want to wrestle a girl, you can. Where that would never happen with race. You know, if you had a kid who was like, you're going to wrestle this black kid, I'm going to give you the choice on if you're going to wrestle this kid, whether, you know, or not.

Like that would be, first of all, an uproar on race. But for some reason, when it comes to gender, we allow this difference to happen. And we allow these, really a cop out for the parents to make a decision and to have a girl and lose to her to lose to a better athlete at that moment. And first of all, this is sport it's wrestling. It's supposed to be a fun game and people put so much energy and passion into it that sometimes it gets blown out of proportion. But I really think you see how people feel about the opposite gender. Like, do you actually believe in women's equality? Do you actually believe women should be paid more? And this is just a little microcosm of seeing how we feel about the dynamics of men and women in our world. And it's very interesting to me that we have

parents who still ask their kid, like, if you want to wrestle a girl, you can. And we have just language that kind of degrades women in sports. So often you throw like a girl, you can. And we have just language that kind of degrades women in sports. So often you throw like a girl, you know, just some little things that constantly kind of kick women down is still second class when it comes to athletics and even in education in some realms. And it's a, it's a hardship that I think needs to be changing. And I believe that with the growth of women's wrestling and so many people getting on board with women's wrestling, it is moving in the correct direction.

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You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code FindingMastery20 at FelixGray.com for 20% off. So if I play back some of the themes here, I'm imagining that money was not an issue in your family. You didn't talk about it that way, but I'm imagining it wasn't one of the main things. Like resources were intact for you. Is that a fair assumption? Yes. My father was a Denver police officer and we were a single income home and there were six people in our family, but my

parents lived within their means and made it possible. There were choices that were made in our household. We didn't go on vacations unless they were sport related. We, I definitely never went without food. I definitely never went without my basic necessities. My parents were very middle class, but we also didn't have nice cars. I didn't find an airplane until I joined traveling with the Olympic Committee. My sisters all got passports for the first time when I went on a trip and got them a passport. I grew up middle class and my mother was a stay-at-home mom and really cared for her kids and was a great mother. And so I feel very lucky that I was in a position to be able to pursue sports at a young age and have that shape my whole life and now into my adulthood. Okay. You also came from a really big family, which sounds incredibly supportive, but I know better.

I was pretty supportive. Yeah, I I know better. Okay. Meaning that there's, there's, um, relationships are complicated. Like there was certainly challenges inside of the family dynamic. Were you aware of them? Um, I don't think so. No, I, so my uncle was the head coach of the wrestling program and his kids wrestled and my aunts and uncles were always really excited when we would come. We, we had a big family that they all live within about an hour of our battle, Colorado. And so we used to go to my grandparents' house once a month on my mom's side and meet up. And there were like 50 people there and we would have five or six for each month. So it was really, really fun for me.

And we would play sports and we would demonstrate, like I remember sitting in the living room and like clearing the stuff out of the middle of the living room and like showing my new move that we were learning at wrestling practice, or you'd wrestle your cousin in the backyard. Like there was a, I think very supportive. My aunts and uncles were always very excited whenever I talked about wrestling or, you know, my cousin would win an event. I feel like they supported him and what him, him being able to wrestle. And my cousin and

I went back and forth, uh, competing against each other for quite a few years. And so they were always a little bit invested about like who had won the last rubber match. And so I, I, I always felt very supported and cared for by my family. My dad's side, we're not as close with it, but my Nana doesn't like to watch wrestling. She never even watched my dad. She's always scared that someone's going to get hurt. And so she, she now just started watching me wrestle and just in the last couple of years, but she doesn't watch until after she knows that everything's okay. So I don't know if I was as like supported in words of affirmation from my dad's family,

but they were always pretty excited. Like my dad's cousins and brothers were always like, wow, it's cool that you're such a stud. I feel pretty protected and loved by the family and the, you know, also the recognition that sports were part of it. Do you have a story about your parents, about how they helped you become the woman that you are? So my, this actually just happened. So my family was up at a cabin and my best friend, her husband came and my best friend's husband's family definitely does. It was not like mine. His parents got divorced and I don't know if he felt overly supported in his athletic career ever. game and my best friend's husband's family definitely does it was not like mine his parents

got divorced and I don't know if he felt overly supported in his athletic career ever and he was my mom's partner while we were playing this very intense card game and my mom kept telling him she was coaching him the whole time she was like focus keep your eyes here hold the cards differently it was just like nitpicking every little thing that he did. And he, after a few games was like sweating, we're all sweating. So it's not a, it's not a very big thing, but just to point out that he was very into this game. And he looks at my mom and he's like, I can see how you raise champions. He's like, I've never felt more focused in my life. And my mother for a second was like, did I do something wrong? And she's like, no, it's incredible. He's like,

I feel like you care. I feel like you're teaching me to be competitive. He's like, this is a stupid card game. He's like, how he's like, you did this to your kids every single day. And I think it really paints a good picture that I was bred and my parents did a very good job of making sports a huge part of our lives. And I have a sister who is a pilot in the Air Force. I am an Olympian. My other sister is a wrestling coach. All four of us have graduated college. I just think my parents did such a wonderful job of raising their kids in this competitive environment and made us competitive and made us realize that we could thrive in our worlds that we're in. And so I just think with what we were talking about with my parents kind of attributes and putting

into the influence that they had on my life, like they kept me sheltered when I feel like I maybe could have been overwhelmed with some of the situations, but they also helped me, inspire me and taught me to be a very competitive, passionate person. And I think that shows in my wrestling. Okay. So the, the family's really supported. They're very well connected and competition is part of the DNA. They've set up that meritocracy is it leads. It's not gender or ethnicity. It's like, if you've got ability,

whether it's disabled or able-bodied, as you put it, that meritocracy, if you have merit and you can do something, like you earn yourself a position on the map. And so was there ever a time that all of that came into question? If that was just BS to prop you up, if it was your parents were just kind of well-intended, but they didn't understand the ways of the real world. Did you ever have a moment where you're like, this isn't, it's not like that in other places. I mean, I don't think it's anything to shy away from. Like it's a harder life that people question and judge. And, you know, they didn't understand why I was doing weight management plans when I was in high school. My friends weren't working as hard as I was.

So it was weird that I had abs. I mean, there were like some weird things that come along with hard work I was. So it was weird that I had abs. I mean, there were like some weird things that come along with hard work and wrestling. Like I have broader shoulders and a bigger upper body than some of my, my female friends that just run cross country do. Uh, so there, there definitely some of those stereotypes that you try to fit into, especially as like a 16 year old girl, who's very concerned about her looks and how she fits into the world, wrestling provided some challenges. And so my mom, I think saw some of those challenges come up. And I remember after, I don't quite remember if it was like, it was probably like four or five

years after I was wrestling. So I was getting to maybe like beginning prepubescent puberty age. And my mom was a basketball coach. And my sister who's two years younger than me was very short. And so my mom, I came to me and was like, you're my tallest daughter. Let's go play basketball. She's like, it'll be fun. I'll coach you. She's like, this wrestling thing looks hard. And I think it's going to provide more hardships as you get older and some controversies about you having to fight to be on a boys team. And I had a situation in middle school where my middle school told me that I couldn't join the boys wrestling team because it's the boys wrestling team. They don't have a girls wrestling team. And

luckily with the legislation of title nine, I had that. It was like hours that I wasn't allowed to be on the boys team. And then by the time it got, you know, word that I needed to be able to be allowed to be on the team, I got a personal invitation being like, we would love for you to join. Um, and so I, I found my space of being able to be within wrestling. And then my mother kind of stepped in and challenged me on it. And it was an important place because every year she's like, do you want to play basketball? I can still make you a great basketball player. And I remember you, typically I came to her like crying, like practice is hard. The boys are smelly. Like something happened where you're just going through being a kid and learning about yourself. And my mom always

kind of gave me that out that you don't have to do this next year if you don't want to. And I was, you know, sucked it up and was like, no, I wrestle. I want to keep wrestling and kind of was a good gut check for me is how I was. I always saw it. And I, my mom, I don't like making it sound like she wasn't supportive because my mother always had my wrestling stuff ready for me to walk out the door. She always came to every single wrestling match and she loves wrestling. Like my parents to this day come to wrestling competitions. And like I was supposed to wrestle at a U.S. Nationals a few years ago and I got hurt and my parents still win. My dad is my fan. He loves me and my wrestling. He did not want to go to the wrestling tournament. So he stayed at

the pool and would hang out in Vegas and just enjoyed himself. My mom sat in a stinky wrestling gym for 10 hours and watched my teammates wrestle because she loves wrestling. And I'm not saying she doesn't love my wrestling. My wrestling is exciting for her and she gets to be in a unique, you know, perspective and spot with it. But she also was that person in my life who said, you don't have to do this. You can do another path. And through, through middle school, she was like, I can make you a great basketball player. And in high school, she was like, we can play D one. And then a little later in high school, she's like, we can play D two. She's junior year. She's like, we could maybe make D three. She's like, at this point,

we're getting a little late in the years. And my junior year is right when my wrestling kind of took off. I was on, I was the team captain of my boys team in Littleton, Colorado. And I didn't make it to state. I had a 500 season that year, had a lot of pins, had a great year. And then I ended up going on to try out for the junior world team, uh, with the team USA development program. And in 2008, I won the junior world championships, um, with only like very little freestyle experience. So I compete in Olympic style wrestling right now, which is freestyle, which means total body. It's very similar to what we wrestle in the NCAAs or in kids, youth, high school wrestling. But it does have some differences. They're both like all both periods are on our feet.

There's only two periods instead of three. The basic I describe it similar to like swimming. It's the same body movements. There's just a little bit different rules. It'd be like if someone swam backstroke instead of freestyle, same differences there. You just are using the same body parts. You're still in a pool. You still have the same idea of winning. You're trying to score more points or get a pin. Uh, but overall it is a different sport, but you have to learn the strategy of it. And so I won the junior world championships without knowing all the rules yet and realized that I had put in enough effort training against young men and boys that I could jump into the international stage and do very well. And that was kind of the beginning of this path that led me down to now being on national

team for over 10 years. I now have five world titles. I just qualified for my second Olympics. And, uh, it's been pretty crazy just to know that I'm 30 years old and I am a professional athlete. And I didn't really know that women could do that. I, you know, I knew of Serena Williams, but I also didn't know that you could be a professional for your whole, all the way through your 20s. And so it has been transformative to kind of understand and grow into this person that didn't really have as many role models as I would have liked to growing up. I want to understand how you think about competing. And I'd like to know where you first formed it

and has it changed over time? Because you're an elite competitor and most people learn about it at a young age, like how they define competition. They learned it from their parents and you had a really unique experience where I'm sure you had unenlightened moms and dads whispering into their son's ear saying, do not lose to a girl.

And so in some respects, let's say you don't know it, right? And you're just out there, you know, doe-eyed, like, let me go. I love doing this. I'm pretty damn good at it. And I can't wait to get out there. And then you're brought with this extra intensity from the boy who's got this, you know, uninformed whisper in his ear. So that would be like a form of competition that that boy is learning. You know, like, it's like, don't embarrass us. Don't

whatever, um, go crush the other person. And I'm just wondering, you've got a unique experience. How do you define it? What was, and has it changed over time? Without sounding cliche, it's a switch. It's really kind of interesting because you are wrestling and you're telling yourself what to do. And then all of a sudden you kind of have this like blackout moment that some stuff happens and then you come out on top and then you're like, oh, I won. Cool. Got it. And you kind of look over at your coach like, what did I do? And he did a single leg. I'm like, great. I'm good at that one. Awesome. And so there is this level of just intensity that flips on and off. And I think a great story that kind of illustrates this is we were practicing our warmup and, um, I kind of, I was telling my coach, I'm like, the warmup doesn't feel right to me yet. Like, I don't feel the same intensity that I do on competition day. And one of my teammates was like, I'm so sick of doing this warmup. The warmup feels fine. And she kind of got a little combative

towards me and the coach about like, why are we doing this warmup again? And I still was trying to find like that extra oomph. And afterwards, my coach came up to me and was like, you're never going to feel the same way you do on competition day because you have the switch. And I just, and like, that was all he needed to say. I was like, oh yeah, you have the preparation and the adrenaline, like all of these things that build up that I do so much to get to competition day and prepare myself mentally and physically to pop that day and to have that energy that it's very hard to replicate that. And I can go through the motions. I can really try to get my energy up at the level of adrenaline.

When you have fear of losing or fear of winning or fear of who you're about to wrestle next or worried that all your hard work and you're going to trip and fall on your face on TV, you know, like you have all of these things on competition day that are allows me to perform and to feel that extra explosiveness, to feel that power, to feel strong and dominant and fast and have your moves just hit a little bit harder, a little bit crisper on that competition day. And it showed me that there are differences in people who are gamers and who go out there and truly shine on, on those, uh, those big moments. 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. And Cozy Earth has become a new part of that. Their bedding, it's incredibly soft, like next level soft.

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mastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. Okay. So for competition for you, are you working to compete to be your best or to be the best, better than others? I don't know if I have a separation for that. I'm working to be the best or the best. Your best. Are you, your best, like, are you competing day in and day out so you can get like free yourself up. So you're not encumbered by all of the what ifs and the doubts and the, all the stuff that gets noisy.

I just think those thoughts come no matter what, you know, it's a, it's a nice fallacy that I think, especially in American sports that we have that we're going to be the hardest workers and that we're going to outwork everyone. And, you know, when you're not working out, someone else is getting their workout in. And I I really think in the wrestling culture, especially we love the people who overtrain and the toughest survive and the cream rises to the top and all these like statements of hardship. But I, I personally have found that I have enough talent that I can work a little smarter instead of harder. And I have had to cope with some of this understanding of like, why am I good? And that's kind of been something that I've had to, I don't want to say it sounds very arrogant, but I struggle

with the conversation of like, why am I better than a lot of my teammates? And why am I better than some of these women that by my eyes work harder than I do, and maybe are a little more technical and have these areas that they do, do really, really well. But when it comes to the day of, I'm walking away with something that's never been done. There's never been a five-time world champion in the history, men or women in my sport in the United States. And so how am I able to replicate that consistently? And I've found some things that haven't. For a while, I was like, just like, I don't know.

It was just, I was just almost frustrated with not understanding why I had this switch that happened. And then mentally, I've been able to realize it the most, like I've been working with a sports psychologist for a number of years now. And, uh, it's been very helpful for him to kind of point out, like, that's something that you do really well. And that's one of the reasons you win. And it's, uh, one of the things is creating kind of those, uh, that internal dialogue that you have worries about. Um, one of them, I think for most people is the fear of not being loved because you lose.

And so it sounds dumb when you say it out loud, like my mom's love for me is not related to whether or not I win or lose this match, but it's helpful because that is a fear and a thought in a lot of kids' minds. And so I got into a habit at a pretty young age to asking my mom, like, will you love me even if I lose? And she would tell me yes. And that is now something that I do with my husband. And at the beginning, he rolled his eyes. He was like, why is it even a question? Like, this sounds really silly for you to even ask this question I'm like will you just tell me you love me even if I lose and then of course he responds back he's like I'll love you even if you lose he's like but don't lose and it's like a it's it feels silly and routine but it also

allows me the freedom to know that when I step on the mat this is just about wrestling this isn't about the love between my husband and me this isn isn't about the love of a mother and daughter. This isn't going to encompass anything other than this wrestling match. And you can make the essence of the gold medal that we're trying to get to so big. It's a financial, it's the accolades, it's people adoring and loving you. There is love from certain areas that is greater when you win and the United States and the world loves a winner. So there is some of that attached to it. But the personal relationships that I have are not directly affected. And it's very freeing for me to have this talk with, you know, the people in my life who I care about, and know that they're still going to be there even if

I lose and I and I trust them to know that that actually is the answer. Okay. So if, if I translate that through like a, a universal filter, it's that you too wrestle with like, if I'm not good enough at the thing I do, will people still want to be around me? Am I worthy without this exceptional ability to win or dominate or be great at the thing I do. And I think what's exceptional is that you've put words to it and had the courage to ask the question. And you've chosen, at least with your husband, somebody who is safe, similar to your first family who demonstrated to you that you matter and it's safe to compete. It's safe to be a girl and be a badass. It's safe to, you know, wrestle in the backyard, in the living room. It's safe to choose your own path, even though mom maybe wanted you to try some other things. So you've got a foundation that's

well-grounded. It's built on, let's call this, it sounds like a cheesy phrase, but it's psychological safety that you can say the important things and not just keep it all bound up. And because of that, you know that even if the worst thing were to happen in a competitive environment, that you walk away with the most important things in your life, which is the relationships that you've invested in. Does that sound like a basic framework for you? It does. Yes. Yeah. And then, so from that place, I'm still not clear if you're trying to be Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, you know, like, are you trying to be your very best or is, cause I kind of heard something else sneak in there, which is like other people are training.

So if they're training, I need to train. But I also hear you saying, no, that that's just stupid. Like maybe that works for a little bit on some days, but that's just a really stupid model to try to figure out how to keep up rather than how to fine tune. What is driving you to work as hard as you're working? I'm good at what I do and good at winning, which always feels good. I mean, I think that gratification there is pretty great. And there's just a, there's a level of, like, I was going to retire in 2017. I had a shoulder injury. It was after the last Olympics and I was just kind of ready to do something different. Um, and my husband got deployed and I was like, yeah, I'll just go back to what I know for a little bit while his nine month

deployment kind of happens and decide if I'm going to wrestle. And I really didn't think after like a year of sitting out of the sport, I was gonna be able to come back and be on top. And I kind of had this like game plan in my head that I was going to lose a couple of matches and like gracefully like go off into the distance and, you know, be the wrestler who was good and now get into coaching or do something else. Um, and then at the end of 2017, I had a tough competition and I did really well at it. And so my coach kind of talked me into doing one more event and then I ended up winning a world championship. And I was like, Oh, well, if I could do that, I might as well try for another one, see how that goes. And I ended up

winning back to back world championships again, um, ranked number one, headed into this Olympics and kind of the same setup as when I was working so hard in that previous quad. And so to kind of get back to what you said, it's a, it's interesting because I think there's a difference. I'm an adult who has a lot of experience and education and real life practices that I've gone through. And I've learned what some base necessities are to be able to do what I need to do. There's mental toughness, there's pushing through pain, there's understanding when you're injured versus hurt. There's so much to athletics that you have to know about yourself. And I am very self-aware and I understand, and I have a good voice when it comes to when to stand

up for myself and when to kind of challenge the coach or when to listen to the coach. And I, and I have, I have a trust in myself with that. And my coach has a trust in me for that. And so when I say these next few sentences, I just want to caution that people aren't telling their kids, they don't need to work hard, but my philosophy is not always to work harder. Um, I pull back more than I push and in many rounds, and I do not consider myself the hardest worker on the team. I can't do the most pushups. I can't do the most takedowns. I can't really do the most of anything, but like any combat sport or MMA type idea, I am able to be pretty proficient at a lot of these different areas and put it together to create my

dominance on the mat. And, uh, I go out there and try to execute my pace and my energy in a way that allows me to end the match as soon as possible. And so I, I guess to force to answer your question, I'm trying to be the best version of myself. So the match is as short as possible. So I beat the other person faster. I love it because I was going, as you're explaining this part of your internal workings, there's so much here I want to pause on and pull apart, but it's very clear to me that you're working to be your best so that you can be the best potentially. Right. So it's in that order. It's not flipped on its head, which is, listen, whatever it takes to be the best.

I'll sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice. I'll cheat, I'll whatever. It's not in that order. You know, you really are committed to being your best. And part of that, my best is to have a broad range of skills to intelligently put them together and recover in an intelligent way. And so it sounds like you've got,

just like your psychology as a framework has a strong wide base, so too does it sound like your training program has a strong wide base. So you're probably really hard to beat for a couple of reasons, right? There's very little to lose and there for a couple of reasons, right? Um, there's very little to lose and there's a lot of strength to anchor to. So like, but let me,

let me pause on the mental toughness bit for just a bit. Hold on. First of all, does that sound right? There's a, you're really hard to beat because there's very little to lose? Yeah, I think so. My defense is very good. So not very often do I get blown out of matches. And if I do get some points scored on me, I feel like I'm able to score big points so I can get back into any match. So from that standpoint, I think that there's a good piece there.

And as far as you're talking about the, like not a lot to lose as in I'm not putting my whole weight of my life on this one match and you know having that idea it's it's interesting because uh in women's sports internationally there is there are those people I remember a Bulgarian wrestler who wrestled years after she probably should have because that was her only way she could do anything she didn't have education she didn't have you know like a place to go other than this wrestling and wrestling was so good to her because she was great and she was a multi-olympic medalist multi-world champion like don't get me wrong she was very great at what she did

but I really saw some of these women who had nothing else. And you have these coaches who put this pressure on these young women at a junior world championship. I saw there was a young woman who got like kicked on the stairs after she, after she lost her match. And I went to my coach and was like, I don't understand. And he kind of had to say this to me. He was like, you are an American who has a lot of options and opportunities that you go back and pursue your education. He said, you could go and get a full career. He's like, you could go and get married. He's like, you have so much in front of you. He's like, some of these women, this is our only shot to take care of their families and set

themselves up for a different life. And I, I've been able to embrace a different life through wrestling, but it never was from that pressure point of this is the only way I've been able to embrace a different life through wrestling, but it never was from that pressure point of this is the only way I'm ever going to make it like I would be okay without wrestling, where some of these women will never be afforded any opportunity other than the fact that they were saw to have something special about them in their sport. And it is a, it's a different motivation for sure. And Team USA, because we are so well taken care of in a lot of ways, it's challenging to find that passion, that drive of why you want to win. And I think it's a it's easier to kind of step away from step away from is not the right word I would use there. But there is more pressure externally on people's lives in a lot of other countries where the sport is their only option.

So this is why in combat sports, I did a bunch of work in combat sports myself, not as an athlete, but working with them. And the debate amongst coaches when we were in the selection phase was, it was always, do you want to choose somebody that, uh, that comes from desperation or inspiration because combat sports, they'll test you now. And so you, I feel like you're the rare one that you're really coming from a framework of inspiration that your foundation is, is on point. And it's hard to knock your base, uh, hard to knock you over because your base is so strong, probably physically too. And whereas let's call it the Bulgarian. I'm not sure who it is that you're referencing,

but out of desperation, people will do pretty desperate things sometimes. And they'll go those distances that most people won't. Unfortunately, people break too, when they operate from that model, physically, you know, emotionally. Exactly. Like it's almost like, how do you keep that up? So you, you are one of the rare ones that's truly coming from inspiration. That's why I think your motivation is pure, that it is internally driven and it's not for the external validation.

That being said, what are the fears you carry with you? Fears I carry, I think getting hurt is one of them, like having lasting injuries that will be part of my life for the rest of my life. I've had some significant injuries and the body's just never the same after you hurt it. And so there, uh, it's interesting because I, I've had so much knowledge brought to me through my injuries. And I've learned so much about myself that I know how to take care of my body and I know how to help some others take care of their body. I feel like my husband comes to me with some things and I'm like, you need to go see a doctor. Or sometimes there's times when I'm like, okay, I think this is something I've learned and can help you get better at. And I have incorporated so much of that knowledge into my current training that it allows me to stay strong

and not get hurt as often. So I definitely think injury is one of them. I think losing kind of that admiration, no matter we're in a world of social media, and I have 82,000 followers that like my photos and tell me that I look great that day, or in those words of affirmation are nice. And it's nice when you win something and people come up to you and say, congratulations. And I've been doing that since I was 15 years old, gotten this recognition from this one thing in my life. And you ride those highs pretty easily. And I think stepping away is kind of scary. If you think about that doesn't last forever. And you don't have that constant attention and people willing to adjust. Like my family does a lot to help kind of shelter me from some of the external things

leading up to competitions. And they're willing to adjust my dietary restrictions and make me the special one pretty often. And it's nice to be the special one. There's also pressure to it. I'm not going to say it's always great, but I feel very loved. And my family shows that love and care because they're willing to adjust to the things I need close to competition. Um, so I think that's one of the things is like, I want to make them proud because they did so much to help me. And so that's a piece of it is that if I lose, I'm going to disappoint them, that kind of piece. What other things do I carry? I think I carry the weight of like almost like women's equality, you know, like, is there more to women's wrestling than just somebody wants to go out there and wrestle. Is this talking about, should women be allowed to do any sport or any job in the world?

Should women be allowed to be paid and recognized in a strong combative way? Like breaking some of the molds about, should women be aggressive? Should women be taught to punch hard? Should women be taught to carry big things? Like, is that messed up the dynamic roles between me and my husband? You know, does that ability for me to be able to protect myself in certain situations make

me less like, does that somehow they create a vulnerability dynamic that is challenging? And so I think there is a little piece of that that I carry with me and kind of question and wonder about from time to time. Okay, let's do this. We're talking about fears. You faced and survived one of the greatest fears that people could ever imagine. Being the best in the world at what you do and then not being able to get it done on the world stage.

My plan was so good leading up 2020 was like, it was like, it was going to be a great year. I was so excited. Oh, I was going to, to the 20, uh, to Rio, best in the world going into the Olympic Games, and you couldn't, quote unquote, get it done. It's one of people's great fears is to publicly not live up to what the reputation might be. And then you're in a combative sport, so it's physical and mental and technical. So it's got all three woven in there. How did you manage, maybe if you could just tell the story about what happened. And I know that there was an injury involved, but could you just tell the story and then get to the point about like, how did you deal with that loss?

Um, so 2016, I had gone, um, I was the first American to do back-to-back world titles leading into the world or into the world championship. So that had never been done by a female athlete for Team USA for women's wrestling. And going into the Olympics, I had a lot of expectation to come back from the Olympic gold medal. And at the time we did not have Olympic gold medalists, which is kind of crazy. Women's wrestling only got put into the Olympics in 2004. So it's still relatively new in the grand scheme of things, but we have a lot of world champions, champions. We have 10 different world champions, a bunch of Olympic medals. Like team USA is a very dominant team when it comes to international women's wrestling. But we did not have an Olympic champion headed in 2016. And so I could be the first Olympic champion for Team USA. And I was excited about it. I was looking forward to being

the first and looking forward to having that title and really putting that satisfaction on my career. Because when I tell people I'm a world championship wrestler, they don putting that satisfaction on my career. Cause when I tell people I'm a world championship wrestler, they don't really know what that means. They, uh, they're like, Oh, like they even ask sometimes about if it's WWE or MMA, they, they don't even have like a concept of what world championships are. And just so everybody knows what world championships are, what we, um, the Olympic stage wrestle in the off years of the olympics and so any year that there's an olympics there's typically a world championship uh and so that's essentially and the olympics is a qualified tournament so you have to there's only

16 spots and so um top seven qualify at the world championship and then each continent essentially gets a few slots to fill but very few people or countries actually qualify to go to the olympics and wrestling where the world championship is an open division you still only send one per weight but it's every country so i've had my bracket be as big as 40 different countries 40 different women so world championships are typically a very like long grueling tournament that have the best of everyone and like I have a few top-ranked women who are not going to the Olympics um and so I don't have to worry about them leading up to this event which is great uh with that said with a smaller pool you end up with

a very do or die conversations and I uh unfortunately had a match um My first match I won, I got a pin. And then my second match I got beat by a point. And I had a situation where unfortunately I had a shoulder injury and in the match I tried something and my shoulder kind of slipped a little bit. And like, that's that moment that I usually scored. And it's frustrating to look back on that moment and be like, ah, why? And it was a, it was a strategy misstep. It was my first Olympics. I was doing a lot of media and a lot of different kind of like extracurricular things that, um, looking back, maybe could have been kind of tailored.

Uh, but at the same time, I thought it was very important. I was doing hundreds of interviews talking about women's wrestling and telling people that women's wrestling was a sport that their girls can wrestle, that individual sports are important for women and to encourage women to stay in sport. I really felt good about my messaging and about how many people I truly reached. And so it's a, it's a conflicting conversation in my heart because of course, I wanted to win that medal and there's a financial incentive. There's, you know, being the first Olympic champion for Team USA has a special ring to it. There was all those things I desperately

would have loved to be part of, but I also don't regret the effort that I put into on the media side to get people to be talking about women's wrestling. And I really do believe that there is ripples, effects, and impact that are affected to this day. And there's a huge growth in women's wrestling. And I believe I've played a part in that with my work in the media side leading up to 2016. But I lost in the second round of that thing. I can re talk about that. Cause it was kind of scattered.

Oh no. Yeah. Keep rolling. Keep rolling. So in 2016, I went, uh, I was undefeated for back-to-back world championships leading into the Olympic games in Rio. We had an Olympic test event at the beginning of that year. And, uh, it was supposed to be this like easy event where you just kind of go and they test out the facilities and we make sure that the competition venue is ready. And there weren't supposed to be very many tough countries there. So I entered the competition after a pretty hard training camp. So I wasn't very ready for the event and I ended up winning the event, but I was pretty tired.

It was a very hard event. And at the end of the day, you saw this podium of women on the podium. And I'm like, this could be who wins the Olympics in a couple of months. And I was on top, which was great. And the next person and I had had a couple of matches where I dominated some of my top competitors. And so there was a lot of buzz and a lot of media attention about like how I pretty much had already won the Olympic title and how this was my year and that no one was going to be able to beat me. And I got a little caught up in that and the conversation that I had already won something that I hadn't already won.

And then there was a lot of media attention and buzz. Um, some things mentally, I felt like I got overwhelmed and stressed out about, which this is the, one of the biggest events you'll ever do in your life is the Olympic games. You have the Olympic village opening ceremonies. You have media attention, not, I mean, I know this is going to be a shock to most people, but not a lot of people watch women's wrestling. So the fact that people were coming to our events and being excited and talking about wrestling was cool to us. And, and that happens on the Olympic year. A lot of Olympians live through that where people only care about us once every four years. And, uh, with Zika going on as a female in her baby bearing years, I was a hot

topic person who could formulate a sentence well enough to get some news plugs from me. And so it was a, uh, it was a lot leading up to the Olympics. I also had had a shoulder injury that, um, my medical staff and I decided not to explore, um, and to just kind of ignore until after the Olympics to, cause it really wasn't going to change. I didn't have time to have surgery. And so we just did the rehab that we could and did some pain management. And I was in a lot of pain every day leading up to the event.

And that pain wearing on you consistently, um, put me in a space where I started to think about the future. And I, I remember I took down one of my teammates and I was like, that could be the last takedown I do that. And you just felt the hardest I will ever hit anybody. This is the best shape of my life. And that, uh, looking back was a really dangerous statement. Like I was so implanted in the future about what was going to happen after the Olympics that I really wasn't ready for the actual Olympics and the actual event that was kind of at my feet. And I went to the Olympics on that day. I had a great warmup. I won my first match by pin. My second match was against somebody that I have beaten 20 times and I lost by one point.

I strategically went with a different strategy to try to win the match. I had my bad shoulder that had been hurt kind of slip in one of the key moments where I typically score. And then I didn't get another opportunity to score. And my coach and staff and I had always talked about how it didn't matter if people scored on us because I could always score. And so I wasn't really worried about her scoring points on me. And I was winning one, one. Um, and in wrestling at the time, the last point score wins and she scored a point with one second left. And then the time clock ran out. I looked at the clock and I was like, wait, I can score like, hold on, let me score. And I, I ran out the clock and with her score at the last moment,

and that was it. There was no other chance. And that was something mentally I hadn't really prepared for. I had prepared for someone taking me down and me coming back and rescoring those points or someone throwing me and putting me on my back and me fighting off my back and figuring out how to score five or six points. But I didn't plan for someone to score in the last second. And it was disappointing because out of 20 matches against this woman, this is the one match she's going to beat me in. And I lost, and then she lost the next round. And, uh, that put me out of the tournament. So I ended up with seventh place at, um, the Olympics, which I have, I don't know if I've ever had a tournament where I went one or only wrestled two matches.

And so to have that experience at the Olympics was disappointing, to say the least. I mean, I was supposed to win and I ended up with seventh place. As you replay the story, is it still in you you do you still have energy around that loss I definitely think there's still energy around it I still have uh you know she's she's a challenging wrestler to wrestle and I went back and in my mind I was like oh I've never lost to her it's never been close and then I went back and watched the matches and she actually does keep the match fairly close and then I usually find a moment where I score and then I score a bunch of points on her. And so that moment just never happened. And I really think I've like coped with the loss enough to

be able to say like, it's a loss. And I felt that way pretty much directly after, um, losses happen and it's part of it. What was the first thought you had? That it's a loss. That was the first thought. Losses are part of sport. And I mean, it's just a really, I really am a big believer of like timing in life more than anything else. The timing of it was very poor.

I was super disappointed that my one loss had to happen at that tournament. It couldn't have happened at the test event. I would have been fine at the Olympics if my loss would have happened at the test event. And so I just kind of have that timing that unfortunately the Olympics is all about that. It's every four years you get one shot at it. And it's a scary thing to put that. Did you lose focus?

Did you take your foot off of the gas towards the end of that round? Were you in protection mode as opposed to aggressor mode? Like what, or did it just happen? She, listen, she's really good. Obviously she's on the, at the Olympics. The match was a decision. I, it really was just a one point difference yes you could say I went with a strategy I don't usually use but I've used the strategy in the world championships and won those one-to-one matches and we got on to win world titles so I don't overthink that decision because my shoulder slipped when I was supposed to score those points earlier in the match.

And I made a decision that this was going to be a close match. And I stuck with that strategy. Is that how I win most of my matches? No. Could have I wrestled that match differently? Yes. But I've also had that same experience happen and I've come out on top. And so it's a it's a tough one to overthink because losses are part of sport and they're especially a part of wrestling and there's unknowns from that other person that they contribute to the wrestling match. And so if I could go back and wrestle it differently, I definitely would.

But in that moment, I don't think I made too many mistakes. I don't feel like I lost focus. I don't feel like, I feel like things could have been a little bit less overwhelming before. So I could have had a little bit more mental space to be better on that day. But I, I, uh, I don't really have a, a woe is me i i tripped and fell i just uh had some things happen in that match that didn't pan out the way i wanted them to and really we're talking about one point difference and so in one point in wrestling isn't a lot you know like that's no the margins are so by a point and they lose by 10 points so it's a it's a different world looking back would you you did a bunch of media going into the games you're a little cocky not in media but like okay

is it i mean appropriately so you just won world championships you know but you were a little ahead of yourself is in your words cockaki is not the right word. Just a little bit thinking ahead rather than locking in the way that you probably normally would because at the games, it is a media circus. So will you do the same type of media engagement at these games in Tokyo, or will you dial it back? So my plan before the COVID situation happened was to dial back and to have just kind of a more calculated plan. It was just something that had never really happened before,

as far as the exposure that happened with me leading up to the Olympics. And Helen Maroulis is one of my teammates and she won an Olympic championship in Rio and she is our first Olympic gold medalist. And I am so happy that Team USA has one now. And she did almost like zero media and she's usually one of the other media polls. And so I felt like some of that burden kind of got pushed on to me to do more media. And I think I was just going to stay in my lane of doing the media that I pick on my terms leading up to my event. With COVID and the protocol that's getting put into place, we're doing no opening ceremonies. There's no village. There's no, I mean, there's so many no's. This is going to be an Olympic Games, like nothing we've ever experienced.

It's still the Olympic games. There's still a gold medal on the line. There's still a life changing experience that's going to happen. And I believe it's pretty well set up for me to do fairly well. Cause I don't even have the option to have some of the teen USA house or have my family there or have, you know, friends who are asking about tickets or have, you know, friends who are asking about tickets. And like, there's, there's things that are outside that COVID put a stop to. So you're going to have a lot of athletes who are focused and don't have those distractions

and including media, you know, there's very few media who have been cleared to go. Yeah. Okay. So will you, when you go to the games, congratulations, by the way, two-time Olympian. You're not an Olympian, unfortunately, until you weigh in and wrestle on that day. So there's a win in that sense of like, once you weigh in and you wrestle that I officially can call myself a two-time Olympian. Um, and that was a lot of pressure leading up to the last Olympics, because I was trying to call myself an Olympian. And then there were people who were like, you're not one yet. I'm like, okay. So then all of a sudden you become an Olympian and you deal with some of those emotions that you now have this title you get to keep with you forever. And I've been trying to kind of coach some of my newest, you know, crowned Olympians,

my teammates, and encourage them to kind of not overthink that like I did on the day of and kind of deal with some of those emotions earlier. And then the next step is just to go out there and win matches. I think it's being focused and being dominant. I really think women's wrestling has a lot of exciting things to offer. And I can be very exciting to watch on the wrestling mat. And so I think if I can get some highlight reel type stuff would be so cool. I mean, to be able to hit, you know, your best moves on that elite stage and

with the world watching, um, and with how closed down everything currently is the world will be watching. And so I think it'll be really awesome to get that exposure for not just myself, but for women in general. I, I have a story about a woman in South or in the Middle East that saw me on TV and she was like, she's like, I don't even care that you lost. She's like, it was just so awesome to see you out there performing and doing great things. And it really showed me that there's some ripple effects within women's combat sports that we're still just scratching the surface of exposing ourselves and getting people excited about the fact that women can do powerful and dominant and strange wrestling moves out on the wrestling mat. And then ultimately an Olympic gold medal,

you know, like I came back so that I could financially and physically hold that gold medal in my hand and be able to call myself an Olympic champion. I am going to go down in the history books in wrestling. I'm the first five-time world champion. I have been on 10 national teams. I have multiple medals. I'm now a two-time Olympian. There's only, I think, three of us in the women's world that's done that so far.

But there is something missing, you know, like we're here striving every single day to win Olympic and world championship medals. And I've been so dominant at winning world medals that the timing just really hopefully pans out at the Olympics. And I would, I am good enough to be an Olympic champion. I just have to prove it on that day. God, I love listening to you. I mean, you've got like, I wonder where's, where's the little place in you that's like, ah, I struggle here. No, like I, I don't, I mean,

you don't need to say it out loud in any way, but I'm listening like internally, I'm going through almost like a grid. It's a map actually for me. And as we're traveling together, I'm like, oh, yeah, oh, touchstone there, touchstone there. And like some of those touchstones are like, you're really open to experiences. You're really conscientious. You're aware. You can formulate your ideas in ways that have clarity to them. You don't seem to be burdened by a neurotic anxiety, but you've got a little anxiousness in there. And that probably gets you going and gets you, you know, that little extra whatever. You've got a great command of your inner life. You got an incredible stability of how you understand yourself and the big picture of how events take place. Sounds like you've got a spiritual framework in place that allows you to think about like there's more after this physical engagement that we have together. And so confidence is high, ability to be calm is high competitive mindset is clear we didn't get into any like meditation or breathing or imagery or that kind of stuff but i'm assuming you've

you've got some sort of practices there as well i do yeah i actually do a lot of meditation right now my sister is so annoyed with it uh she my sister is my training partner and lives with me right now and so i'm always asking her like, hey, you want to meditate? And she's like, please leave me alone. She's like, I do not want to think about my thoughts. But with the pandemic, when it happened, I had actually cracked a couple ribs. And so I needed a little bit more time to heal. And I couldn't really do a lot of wrestling. And so I got into a pretty routine meditation practice.

Our sports psychologist set it up with a bunch of Team USA athletes. And so we had these group meditation practices and these individual meditation practices. And it became kind of my like main focus during the pandemic was me just developing this practice and figuring out how different techniques can fit into wrestling. And it's been very helpful, not just for sport, but for kind of like life in general. I am very thankful that I put in so much effort and energy into developing this practice and kind of excited for the future that it holds and the payoff. I hope it pays off, you know, because it's pretty much all I've been doing this last year. So if I win the Olympic goldlympical medal there's gonna be a big piece of it that just says meditation across the back of it because just visualization meditation not as not a lot you can do during covid when it comes to that's right

we're closed we got kicked out of olympic training center my sister and i tried what we could in the living room floor but it's just uh it's different the I think it really opened my eyes to how elite some of the equipment and the coaches and the programming that we have and how lucky I am to be able to have access to so many of those resources. Because when I was at home in my living room with my 10 pound dumbbells, I was like, I can't do what I need to do with these 10 pound dumbbells. And so I had to just kind of put that on pause and place my focus into somewhere where I really felt like I could make gains. And that game was in my meditation

practice. And I also finished up my master's and was able to kind of find ways to do that. So I, I luckily have been able to pursue my education and enjoy wrestling and the distraction of school. Not a lot of people understand when you say like, Oh, I'm so nervous for world championships. Like people can't relate to that. They they're like, yeah, that must be scary. But when I'm saying the anxiety, like, Oh no, I have finals next week. And no, everyone knows what that feels like. And so I always really enjoy kind of that, that other thing in my life. And luckily, we have an Olympic partnership with DeVry University and was able to get my undergrad and my master's.

And it's been wonderful to have been part of my Olympic journey. And just, yeah, there's another kind of thing there that you're sharing is that, again, your identity is not solely wrapped up in a dangerous way into what you do and the downstream outcome that you might find is that you've got an identity outside of sport. You've got a family unit, again, that we've talked about earlier, but you've also got a second parallel path that you're investing in your education. What are you studying? Project management right now. I have a project management right now, or I just, I have a project management degree. Yeah. And so that'll, that'll tee up something later, but nonetheless, it is a way to dilute the intensity that I only am an athlete. And it becomes a very dangerous proposition when people foreclose their identity. And so you haven't done that. And then, uh, so meditation and imagery are different, right? So on the imagery bit, are you, is it real time? Is it slow?

Are you watching it from inside from a fan's perspective? How do you answer some of those things? So, um, my, the, one of the women who just made the Olympic team with me before the Olympic trials, we have a wrestling room that has double doors and you sit in a shoot is what it's called. And then you walk out onto the mat. So I actually, um, I call them tech practices where we go out into the shoot and we have some like music playing and we go through the visualization of, uh, like what your,

um, introduction will be and the people before us. And so we, we wrestle and you kind of have your favorites is what I'll call them. So the people who you want to make the Olympic team and maybe the people who don't, you don't. And so I had her and I practice listening to some of the names of the people we wanted to make the team. And then some people who like, I'm not gonna say we didn't want to make the team, but that our friend that lost to our friends. And that meant our friends were on the team with us. And I just had us listen to that, those names and feel that emotion and that sadness of like, Oh, I really wanted her to be on the team with me. Or, Oh man, I don't know him that well. I wish that the other guy was on the team with us. Cause you travel as a team and

a unit to so many of these events. And so we went through that emotional piece of what happens before the match. And then you walk out, you do your pre-routine. Like for me, I, I pull my shorts down. I pull my singlet up. I pull my knee pads up. I take my, my mouth guard in my mouth. I put it out of my bra. I put it in my mouth. I take a half sip of water. I hand everything back to my coach. I fold everything. I put it in the basket. I walk out onto the mat. I take a sip of water to wet my mouth guard. I say a word to my coach. I walk out into the center of the mat. I slot my quads and my, and my shins. And then we shake hands and we wrestle. And then we go through and do, we just tech the person as fast as possible. And the first time, two times I did this drill, my sister was the one who was kind of watching

the drill. And she's like, this is like really intimidating. Like you're so focused and fired up for these moments. And just being able to walk through the steps of what that will feel like and practice winning. And then you practice raising your arms and shaking your hands and being like, I am an Olympian. And you get to actually feel that emotion. It feels good to replicate that. So you're using your mental imagery with movement, like you're going through the steps.

So you're not sitting in a chair, laying on your back, doing mental imagery. You're actually physically going through it with intention. So I do that. And then I have one where I'm on a bike and i set a timer for three minutes for which is how long the wrestling period is and i go through and visualize what a wrestling match would be um and then before competition the day before we have some like seated resting imagery where i'm just closing my eyes seeing the body parts still with a little motion, but not as much, you're not going to sweat. Um, and then, yeah, those are the three that I use the most often. That's awesome. And

then can you control it? Do you feel like, yeah, I can control my images. My mind's not running away from me and I can see it in color and I can feel it. And there's a, I feel like I definitely, uh, when I run practices, uh, it's something that, um, I have people that I'm training practice and my, cause it neck. I can feel where my forearms hitting on their chest or their collarbone. I can feel the pressure bounce back and me push my, my ab engagement. So I have my shoulder and everything connected. So I'm pushing back into them. And that body control and awareness, I think really helps visually be able to understand how that's going to feel when there is a pop in a, in a body actually pushing back into you. So I do feel like I have pretty good control. So your coach will call out a compromised position or a position, and then you'll feel that. Is that, did I get that right? In the warmup, when you're just around, they'll usually have you do like a stance in motion as what we call it. So the beginning,

just like changing elevations, taking a shot. So he taking a shot so he'll yell shot he'll yell collar tie he'll yell clear tie and i got it yep there's just different um things that can happen just you just before but you're so intense in that moment that it you can feel as if somebody were in front of you i can yes and i i really have to be that in tune with it like sitting here with you and me i can picture like what it would feel like to call or tie you if that intimidates you at all. Good. Yeah, it does. Okay. So let's wrap up here. And thank you for your time and just the ability you have to share your adventure here, you know, your journey.

And so what do you hope little girls would be able to learn from you in a sentence or two or word or two? I'd love if my career could kind of work as some inspiration for women to explore sports that haven't been readily available to them. I think often women get pushed into team sports because we're a community and we build these team friendships and we have these bonds that we create that is a little bit more similar to our gender. And you share pressure and all this stuff. But women are very strong. And I believe mentally and physically can figure out how to make those gains and embrace them with pure success. And we see these highlight women who are coming out and just dominating. You have Simone Biles, you have Serena Williams, you have Emmanuel.

There's just so many women who've really stepped up and been truly dominant in their fields. Clarissa Shields. I mean, a lot of women out there are embracing individual sports and being very, very good at them. And that would be something that I hope that me being a female wrestler can show young girls is that they're allowed to be strong and powerful and be in control of their own bodies to make decisions about how they want to be in this world. And I think that's the best thing I could do is just kind of have my hard work, not just be for me. And hopefully it's not just for me because it's really hard. What I do is very difficult and I don't know if it would be worth it if it was just for me. So I,

I really hope there's some little girls and some young women out there who realize that it's not too late. I had a roommate who made the Olympic team. She didn't start wrestling until she was 18 years old. So you don't have to be six to start wrestling. Wrestling is an art. And if you commit to it and learn these drills and relearn them, it develops into something truly beautiful and important that can craft you winning a wrestling match. And it's a neat experience that can teach you a lot about yourself and just how tough you truly can be. What do you hope men could learn from you? Oh, what do I hope men learn from me? I think just I would love if we could get to a point where men could see me as a role model the same way that I grew up seeing men as a role model. I think that's like another

level of equality that young boys can be inspired by my success and by my skill sets and by me lacking in some areas like strength or having a greater body fat than what my male counterpart does and seeing that not as anything other than what I have in my toolbox and making it work. And so I really think from an athlete standpoint, there's young men out there who can use my career as an inspiration the same way that young girls have looked up to men's sports for a long time. I also think from like a people perspective, just looking at adults, I think that they can look at my career and my life and see that women can wrestle and do strong and powerful and intense things and still be part of our society as adult women who are able to have full time careers through their lives and be professional athletes into their 30s and not have that be a dream that's unattainable for young women who want that. I love every part of this conversation. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much. And last quick hits, just to wrap it up

before we wrap up, how do you think about mastery? I think about mastery in a few different areas. Uh, I think it's a definitely consistency and figuring out what you want and how to attain it. Um, I've been able to reach that by understanding that everything I do isn't just for wrestling. When I stepped away from the sport, I realized that I make a very good base athlete. I enjoy working out. I enjoy eating healthy. I enjoy getting sleep. And I don't have a lot of vices when it comes to drugs or alcohol or things that would make me not eligible to compete in my sport. My weight stays pretty consistent. And then I was able to just kind of identify the few things that I needed to be great. And I was willing to sacrifice and do those hard

things to be able to replicate winning over and over again. And so mastery to me is that like being educated enough in what you're doing to know who you are and why that base person isn't eat, sleep, breathe wrestling, even though we love that idea. Thank you so much. This is awesome. Great. Thank you. 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,

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