How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S11, Ep2 How to Fail: Jessica Ennis-Hill

Episode Date: June 2, 2021

Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill is an Olympic heptathlon gold medallist and a three-time world champion. This is a woman who knows what it takes to succeed at the very highest levels, and who has learned to process failure when she doesn't win. I learned so much from her insight. And she's still only 35!We had a truly fascinating conversation about the psychology of competitiveness, the importance of loyalty and roots, how injury taught her the value of rest and how losing the 2011 World Championship to a woman who later turned out to be a drugs cheat fuelled Ennis-Hill's desire to do better.We also talk about the specific challenges facing female athletes - from dealing with heavy periods to suppressing menstrual cycles altogether in order to compete - and how the fact that these issues weren't really talked about has now motivated Ennis-Hill to make fitness more accessible to women. Plus she talks about making the difficult decision to return to athletics after the birth of her first child, and why she wishes she'd trusted her own instincts.Oh, and obviously I ask her about the London 2012 Olympics. Enjoy!*Ennis-Hill's fitness app for women, Jennis, is available here.*My new novel, Magpie, is out on 2nd September. I'd love it if you felt like pre-ordering as it really helps authors. You can do that here.*How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted by Elizabeth Day, produced by Naomi Mantin and Chris Sharp. We love hearing from you! To contact us, email [e-mail]*Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayHow To Fail @howtofailpod Jessica Ennis-Hill @jessicaennishill   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. This episode of How to Fail is sponsored by Misoma, my go-to jewelry brand. Now, I was introduced to Misoma by a very, very close friend of mine, and I have barely gone a day without wearing a piece of their jewelry since. They really are amazing. And Miss Soma know that every piece of jewellery a woman wears tells a part of her story, her successes, her celebrations, and of course, her failures. The earrings she bought with her first paycheck, the surprise pick-me-up present from her best friend after that rubbish

breakup, the matching bracelets they got on that wild holiday, refusing to take them off for months. As we grow, so too does our armour. From past loves to career milestones, morning to night, we wear our treasured moments, knowing they have shaped the person we have become. Misoma are on a mission to build a more confident, creative, and collaborative world, starting a chain reaction, one link at a time. I'm thrilled to share to all listeners of How to Fail a very exclusive 15% off now when you use ElizabethDay15 on Misoma.com. Thank you very much to Miss Soma. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, the podcast that celebrates the things that haven't gone right.

This is a podcast about learning from our mistakes and understanding that why we fail ultimately makes us stronger. Because learning how to fail in life actually means learning how to succeed better. I'm your host, author and journalist Elizabeth Day, and every week I'll be asking a new interviewee what they've learned from failure. Jessica Ennis-Hill is one of the most respected British track and field athletes of all time. She is an Olympic heptathlon gold medalist and a three-time world champion. The image of her winning gold during London's so-called Super Saturday in 2012 will stay seared in the minds of anyone who was there or who watched it on TV. It certainly does mine. Her achievements are extraordinary. Just 15 months

after giving birth to her first child, Reggie, she won the 2015 Heptathlon World Championship in Beijing. Shortly after her 2016 retirement, she was given a damehood, and shortly after that, she had her second child, a daughter, Olivia. Ennis Hill grew up in Sheffield, the daughter of Vinnie, a painter-decorator, and Alison, a social worker. She found sport young when her parents took her to a summer holiday athletics camp at the age of 10. Here, she won her first prize, a pair of trainers. the age of 10. Here she won her first prize, a pair of trainers. As well as pursuing athletics, Ennis Hill also gained a psychology degree from the University of Sheffield and found the time to marry her teenage sweetheart, Andy Hill. After retiring from athletics, Ennis Hill was surprised by the lack of relatable advice on training and health for women, particularly those embarking on motherhood

or wanting to get back into fitness after giving birth. So she launched the Genis Fitness app to pull together all her experience, including cycle mapping, which offers users the right fitness sessions for the four phases of their menstrual cycle. It's a brilliant idea that shouldn't be revolutionary, but is. As for what athletics might have taught her about success and failure, she says, you have those moments when you feel totally broken because of disappointments and setbacks. You just have to refocus yourself, put things into perspective and keep going. Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill, welcome to How to Fail. Oh, thank you so much for having me. It is an absolute delight. I wonder, have you always

had that ability, that sense of discipline? Do you think you're born with it or do you think that you learnt it? It's something that I think about quite often and I do get asked quite a lot. I think it's a combination of both. I think that from a very young age my parents say that I was very very driven and very focused from the age of nine or ten. You know I knew what I wanted to do and I just went at it a hundred percent but I do think that you need to have that environment, you need to have the right people around you and to be stimulated in the right way to bring out that side of you, that drive and that focus. And I definitely found that as soon as I stepped into the world of sport. Is it true that you wrote your university dissertation on self-regulation?

I did. Yeah, gosh, it seems such a long time ago. But yes, I did. I love psychology at school. And it was the subject that I really found great interest in and was really fascinated by. And I was going down this sports route from a young age. And I didn't want to then go into the physical education side too much within my academic world. I wanted to have something that was quite separate, but would also, you know, help me in the long term. So I loved psychology and I went on to study at the University of Sheffield. And yes, it was on self-regulation. I can't remember half of it, to be honest. I remember just having such a great time at university and really enjoying that subject.

What is self-regulation? It was related to sports. So we did our dissertation with two other girls who really kind of honed in and focused on whether the brain is stimulated in the same way that a muscle is. So can we train ourselves to think in a certain way and to act in a certain way? So we did many, many research projects on it. And I have to dig it out. I really, you know, that's the first time I've spoken about my dissertation for such a long time. That's the first time I've spoken about my dissertation for such a long time. So, yeah, it was a really interesting topic.

And it was something that definitely stuck with me, the psychology side of it, for a very long time. And obviously going into sport and then seeing psychology from a sports perspective was really, really interesting. Well, that is fascinating, given the quote that I read out, that idea that you can put things into perspective and keep going because athletics when you're doing it at your elite level must be quite helpful then for believing that you can train your brain because I'm not a professional athlete might surprise you to hear but from what I understand you treat defeat as data acquisition is that right is that how you take the sting out of defeat? Yeah definitely I think that you know the huge part of why you are able to be so successful as a sportsman or sportswoman is down to the psychology behind it you have these key moments within your career whether it's an Olympics or a major championships where you have to be absolutely ready and at your best physical peak but mentally you have to be absolutely ready and at your best physical peak

but mentally you have to be 100% in the moment and prepared and I think very much early on in my career it was focused on the physical side and being as strong as I could and prepared from that perspective and as I kind of developed through my career the understanding of how psychology plays a massive part in how you train yourself to be prepared for different situations that you might face in competition, how you communicate amongst your team within that pressured and, you know, very intense environment, and how you train your brain to a certain extent to be able to go through those situations and those experiences, recall previous experiences to help you in the moment that you might find yourself in, and be able to learn and be able to adapt from what you

learn in those situations and not get so defeated and downtrodden by disappointment and finding that way to find justification in performances or setbacks so that you can see the positive in that failure in a sense. It sounds a bit like you are trained not to take things personally so obviously you have to take things personally to an extent like you'll need to get fitter if you're not fit enough to want to race but you don't think well I'm a terrible person now. No, and that's exactly it. You have to find those external points around you to justify and help you reason with why you weren't able to be your best at that time or why something didn't happen the way you'd planned it to happen. You can't go internally and say, gosh, this was all my fault and it's me and what can I do to change it? You have to find those external points that can help you reason

with why that performance wasn't where it needed to be so that you can actively do something to change the next time that happens and use that experience to move forwards. Does that help in the rest of your life? So does that help when your child refuses to go to bed at night and you feel like, what am I doing wrong?

I do. I think that it definitely helps. And I do take so much of what I learn in the world of sport to my everyday life and definitely being a mother as well. I think it was very hard at the beginning becoming a mum for the first time. becoming a mum for the first time, I kind of had this logical approach thinking, my son will go to bed when I tell him to go to bed, and he'll sleep and have a nap at 12 o'clock for two hours, and it'll all pan out nicely. And actually, children are not predictable creatures, and they have their own schedule. And that was a learning curve in itself. But I definitely drew on those moments of just being able to, yeah, a trial and error process of understanding when things don't quite work and how I need to adapt and how I need to adapt the environment around us

to help whether it might be bedtime routines or whatever it might be with the children oh you're so sorted it is so refreshing and calming to listen to you I wish I was I mean there's areas that aren't sorted as well. Well, I wonder like what it's like, do you ever just lose it in an argument with your husband? Or I imagine you're the kind of person that it's impossible to win an argument with. I mean, me and my husband, it's our wedding anniversary next week and we've been married for eight years, but we've been together for, I 16 years so we've had a an amazing relationship where we've been together through all these major major experiences and moments through our individual careers and also having

children and yeah without a doubt we have those moments where you know everything becomes too much and you have to let everything come out and just explode in a way but I think for me and my husband we have that real understanding for perspective and how our lives have changed and that real understanding of how we're experiencing these different situations and he was such a massive massive support through the whole of my career and through enabling me to be able to move from disappointing times where I'd had injuries or setbacks and just really helping me gain really great perspective and bring in that kind of normality and that almost grounding calm around me there's highs and lows but yeah I think we work together very well through them

that's one of the things that really struck me about you when I was researching for this interview is how much you have kept the people closest to you the same and how you have never strayed far from your roots so as well as Andy who you met as a teenager you still live in Sheffield I think and your coach throughout your career was the coach that you met at that summer camp I mentioned Tony Minichiello yeah how important is that to keep that team around you it's one of the most important things for me and it's one of the the main things that I would attribute to my success as an athlete and as a person really you know just being able to have that consistent level of security around you having those great people and and having that support network for me has been one of the biggest things

my life changed so much through the various different stages of winning medals and going into a home olympics and having all these pressures and expectations thrown at me from different angles by me being able to keep my family and my support team and my team around me really consistent has allowed me to just kind of feel really secured and grounded in who I am and not feel the pressure to change too much and change who I am as an individual and it's been a massive part of why I was so successful and yeah I think I owe so much to those people around me. who I am as an individual and it's been a massive part of why I was so successful and yeah I think I owe so much to those people around me. Now I am going to get onto your failures but I do want to ask you about cycle mapping because I think it's such a genius idea and like all the best ideas I don't know why it hasn't existed before now which is this idea that women, when they're in their cycle, can do certain exercises

better or certain exercises are better for whatever time in the cycle that you find yourself in. And I wonder what it was like for you as a top level athlete, how aware were you of your own cycles when you were competing? Yeah, I mean, it's so bizarre, because as an athlete, at the stage that I was towards the end of my career, you know, really in the thick of it, winning medals and everything was so detailed and so finely tuned. And the margin for error was so small, and every element was focused on so specifically. But the understanding and the time that was spent around understanding my menstrual cycle and other athletes was just not there. There wasn't that time and those resources really to

really delve into that area and understand it in a more detailed level. And I think over the years, and particularly since I've retired, I know that's changed. And I know there's more emphasis on understanding elite athletes menstrual cycles so that they can fine tune their training and really maximize on those times of the month where you're at your strongest. But it's bizarre to think that even now, it's still a bit of a taboo topic. And it's a topic that's not spoken about enough. And I think for everyday women, it's something that can have such a massive impact on the way us as women move our bodies and you know really simple information just knowing a bit more

about your follicular stage and knowing how your muscles adapt better and recover better and that you can push yourself a bit harder in a strength session or try and run a pb that week and then knowing when to just rest and recover and be kind to yourself is so, so valuable, but it's something that we as women don't have access to. And I really wanted to try and change that. I mean, thank you, really, from a personal perspective, like thank you for the work that you're doing here

because I feel like many women, I've noticed at certain times in my cycle that I just feel completely exhausted and don't feel like doing cardio but I've never had like the information that would empower that decision so I'm really grateful for the work that you're doing and again I've never asked any female athlete that I've ever interviewed this and I think it taps into what you're saying about it still being a taboo subject but what if you get your period on the day of a major race or event I mean have you ever had that experience? So again it ties into that kind of real understanding about our menstrual cycle and I

think from a young age in particular as a young athlete the kind of advice and the understanding around it is you should probably go on the pill on some form of contraceptive to be able to control your periods and when they come and there's no real communication around how that will impact on your performance firstly how that will impact on the side effects and other areas of your life it's just this is going to be the best route for you and some athletes choose not to go on the contraceptive pill at that stage and have a regular cycle and it's just about managing it and dealing with it and it's often done behind closed doors really there's not that support and that help to really know how to tackle it in those

moments and of course if you come on on your period before a major championship it's going to have a big effect on your performance yes and also the clothes that you have to wear those like tiny lycra hot pants I mean what a nightmare. Yeah I mean the worst kit I've ever had to wear was I think it was the Commonwealth Games in 2006 in Melbourne I remember seeing the kit there and it was white running knickers and I was like gosh this is not good this is really not good so it's you know it's that whole understanding around so many different areas that still is not given that much thought to and it really really should yeah I've never thought of it I've never thought that a lot of female athletes will be on the contraceptive pill to regulate their periods it's just fascinating

so thank you for opening up the discussion let Let's get on to your failures. So your first failure is your failure to not fully respect your body and the importance of rest, which is such a fantastic one to choose. Tell us more about that. Yeah, so I mean, in the early stages of my career, I felt that I was just bouncing through athletics, enjoying it, not really aware of injuries and of any real major setbacks at that point. I pushed myself so much harder than I should have. And I completely didn't think about the importance of resting. For me, resting was wasted time. It felt like I wasn't gaining anything from it and that I should be training max out 100% every day and pushing myself to breaking point and actually that then resulted

in me picking up a horrible injury which was three stress fractures in my right foot and I flew to a competition in Austria and I got to the point where I couldn't even run my high jump runway I couldn't run my curve I couldn't take off I had to retire from that competition and a couple of days later I found out I had this injury and it was a really bad injury in my foot and I was going to miss the Olympic Games and it was just an absolutely devastating moment of my life that I really hadn't ever thought that I would be in that position in such an important part of the year and an important part of my career in a whole. What year was this?

So this was 2008. So I'd just finished my university degree and it was Olympic year and it was the Beijing Olympics. And I was preparing to be there for it to be my first Olympics. And then I, you know, suffered this injury and had three stress fractures in my right foot. And one of the stress fractures was in my navicular bone, which is a really bad bone to have an injury in because the blood supply is really poor and potentially it doesn't heal properly ever. I had this devastating moment of being told that that was my Olympics over and also I need to make sure I'm very careful with the way I come back and rehab this injury because it might be a career-threatening injury. It was just the most awful time of my career.

It must have been horrendous. How did you deal with the disappointment first of all? How did you deal with the disappointment, first of all? Initially, I was just really, really shocked. I think in my head, I'd thought, you know, I might miss two weeks of training and that will be devastating, but it's only two weeks. And then when I was actually told how bad it was, how serious it was and how long it would take me out of training and competing I just couldn't believe it I was just so shocked and just so devastated that potentially this could be the end of my career when I hadn't even started you know I haven't even got to anywhere near where I wanted to be. I think that's one thing that comes across so clearly when you're talking is how fragile an athletic career can be that you can put everything in place and you can be really gifted and an injury can come along and just stop it just like that yeah I mean that is

sport it's an awful awful world the highs are so high and you you know you can reach some really incredible high points within your career but like you say in an instant everything can change in an injury can come out of nowhere and that's the end of your career so it's incredibly fragile. I spoke to someone called Matthew Saeed on an earlier episode of this podcast who had been an Olympic table tennis competitor and he choked at the Sydney Olympics by his own admission. And he said that afterwards, the thought that got him through was no matter how bad things were, his parents would still love him. And I wonder if you had a thought like that, that got you through

a very dark time. I would say that was probably one of the darkest moments of my career. It was the people around me, it was having, you know, my then boyfriend, my mum, my dad, my team, my support team, who basically said to me, we are here to support you, to help you in every way we can, and to just help me just really gain perspective on that whole situation. And it allowed me to just stop, like I would never have stopped like I did at that stage, because I was forced whole situation. And it allowed me to just stop like I would never have stopped like I did at that stage, because I was forced to stop. And it made me think about firstly, what I'd achieved to that point. And then it allowed me to think about how I wanted to move forward and what I wanted to then go on to achieve and how much it really meant to me.

And without having those people around me to give you that unconditional love and that support that you just need in those moments, I think I probably would have gone into myself a little bit and just without having those people around me to give you that unconditional love and that support that you just need in those moments I think I probably would have gone into myself a little bit and just said I might as well not do this. And did you ever question that like what you would do if you weren't going to do athletics? I think in a fleeting moment that thought had crossed my mind but I think I was just so young and still so focused at that time that I couldn't allow it to even become a real true thought in my brain I had to just very quickly move it to one side you know I was not for one moment going to let this take over everything that I'd worked for until that point I had great people around me I had all the support that I

needed I had all the people saying the right things to me. And no one really allowed me to take myself to that dark, dark place where I thought that this was the end. Even if they perhaps thought that themselves, they were all so positive and so passionate and so upbeat about getting me right and getting me back to where I needed to be, that I almost wasn't allowed to go to that darkest point, which was a really, really great thing. And talk to me a bit about the importance of rest and why you phrased this failure in the particular way that you did about not fully respecting your body. Yeah, I think it was just the first time that I truly understood that rest is a part of training.

It's a part of what you do. I read a book the other week, it was a psychology book, and it was all talking about, you know, you being your greatest asset, and you have to look after yourself and sleep, it's nutrition, it's every element of you that is so, so important. And I think when you're a young athlete, and you're incredibly impatient athlete and you're incredibly impatient and you want everything yesterday you often forget how important it is to remember what your body's going through physically and mentally and allow it to grow and rest and recover and adapt from what you're doing and I just didn't have any real appreciation for that until that point where I was told to stop for weeks and weeks and weeks and I couldn't move forward and it really just allowed me to yeah just take that real appreciation for how amazing the body is and

what it had done to that point and just really respect that time to recover and allow my body to rest and get back as strong as it possibly could it was like your body was saying you're kind of trying to ignore me or take me for granted. So let me just flag this and give you some time to really meditate. Yeah, absolutely. And I don't think you ever really take that rest you need until you get to a point where it all becomes too much or physically, you know, you break down and you have to almost just keep checking in with yourself to know when to take that recovery and rest and it goes back to understand your hormones as well and knowing that you can't push hard every week and every day you have to have these times where you hold back and you rest and

you recover and the benefits are huge the benefits are just as big as pushing yourself as hard when you don't really need to so yeah it was massive, massive learning curve for me and probably one of my biggest learnings in life through that failure. I think that's really interesting. And a lot of people will need to hear that, that actually rest is part of your exercise, that you're going to get more from the exercise if you factor in rest. that you're going to get more from the exercise if you factor in rest. So for someone who is an average person who is working out and over lockdown, working out might have been a really important thing for their mental health, and maybe they are pushing themselves a bit too hard. What would you say on average, a good kind of exercise slash rest ratio would be? From my perspective, at the moment, moment I train I exercise three or four times a week I would never train every day and it still blows my mind coming out of the athletic

world and speaking to friends and other various people that I know and how they exercise and some people train every day and you need to allow your body to rest and adapt from what it's doing you don't want to hit your body with HIIT sessions every day. You don't want to be doing all the long runs constantly. It's creating balance and variety of the exercise that you do. And that's such a key part of where you keep your motivation, where you keep your enjoyment in exercise and how you get stronger. So for me, when I was an elite athlete, we'd always have a day or two rest in the week so we'd always have that time and in a six-week training block we'd perhaps take four or five days or potentially a week rest at the end of that training block just to allow your body to recover and adapt from what it's done so

far so for me at least a day or two days of rest a week is so important and imperative I think for everybody so good to hear and on those rest days you just like going eating McDonald's and a little cheese yeah I'd love to do that to be honest I don't have a strict diet and I do fully rest and for me a rest day is a rest day so it's not an active rest day it's just you know having time with the kids relaxing and just yeah looking after yourself and I think those days are so important. I love hearing that thank you that's just such relief to hear that we need our rest. People are so hard on themselves and I think in the world that we live in now we're bombarded with so much information and material and Instagram posts and everybody's

workouts and you know I think you can get lost in trying to fit into everyone's way of training and exercising and understanding yourself and your hormones on a deeper level and training for you as an individual is such a powerful thing and I think that's where we should put our focus. So going back to your injury how long did it take you to recover from that? So I was in a boot for I think about 10 or 12 weeks and then after that it was a very long process of starting to walk and put pressure through my foot lots of scans lots of physio and then I had to start building back into running, to sprinting, to being able to put that immense load through my foot that I need to take off in a high jump or take off in

the long jump. So it wasn't really until my injury happened in the May, June time of 2008. And it wasn't until January the following year that I was back to some kind of decent pace of training. It was a long, frustrating process for me, but ultimately it was the right way to do it. It was about taking time and making sure that I healed that bone properly and was able to come back to the World Championships that following year. And do you think you came back stronger? Yes, without a doubt. You know, I remember those days so clearly. And I remember thinking, gosh, I hope there's a reason for this. I hope this has happened for a reason and that I will take something really positive

from this experience. And it was very hard to see at the time. I couldn't see it. I couldn't see past that point. But actually, the following year and the year after, I wouldn't have changed that injury at all. I was able to win the world championships the following year. I grew as an athlete. I adapted the way I trained and I was more sensible in how I rested and recovered.

And I just have that huge appreciation for every moment that I had great success to really cherish it because I knew how quickly it could end and it could be taken away. I learned so much from that year. And I still use those moments and those experiences from that time to take into life now and to who I am as a retired athlete and a mother. You say that you missed your first Olympic Games, the ones that you've been training so hard for, but did you watch them on television or was it too painful? Oh, it was so hard. I remember watching bits of it and, you know, you can't not watch the Olympics because it's just incredible. And I had so many friends that were out there competing. I wanted to see how they did. And I remember sitting at home, you know, with my boot on and I had like a

muscle stimulator machine on my leg to help stimulate the muscles so it didn't waste away to nothing. And I remember just sitting on the sofa thinking, gosh, I wish I was there. But yeah, it was very, very hard to watch. And also knowing that it was four more years, four more years to get to another Olympics. And I didn't know what was going to happen in those four years. I didn't know how I was going to come back. You know, so much happens in that amount of time. And I felt that that moment had been taken away from me. And some athletes can be the best athletes in the world. They can be strong physically and mentally and so skillful, but

they could be injured every four years and never make an Olympics, let alone win a medal. God, that really brings it home to you, doesn't it? And it really brings it home how crushing it must have been for all of those people wanting to compete in the Olympics that have had to be delayed because of the pandemic. But talking of the Olympics, before heading into the 2012 Olympics and doing all of the brilliant things that you did there, your second failure is about a failure that preceded that, which was your failure to win the world championships in 2011. Why did you choose that as one of your failures? It was, again, a really key moment for me and one that sticks out within my career. That was such a huge year for me. It was a huge year for every British athlete

and I think that winter going into 2011 I trained so hard I'd focused I'd recovered the way I needed to I just felt I was prepared to be the best I could be that year and give myself that confidence that boost and you know almost make a statement to say that you know I'm here and I've trained really hard and I'm not going to let this opportunity go and then heading into that world championships in Daegu I felt great I felt brilliant and I ended up coming away with a silver medal now there was lots of controversy surrounding that particular championships and actually the girl who won the world championships that year was later banned for testing positive for taking drugs but for me at

that point all I could see was I'd failed like I'd failed to be the best I could be when I'd trained so hard I just couldn't stop thinking I must have done something wrong where did I go wrong along this journey into 2011 and then into such a big big Olympic year. But are you now the gold medalist because the person who won gold was stripped of their medal? Yes I am now the gold medalist yes and I received that medal a few years ago yeah I mean it was all rectified eventually but for me at that time I'd failed because I hadn't scored the score that I wanted to I hadn't performed the way I wanted to and then ultimately I'd come away with a silver medal. Did you suspect that drugs were being used or was your focus very much like no I'm the one who hasn't been good enough? At that time, there was an element of, as an athlete,

you have to just focus on yourself. And there might be noise surrounding the other athletes. And there was definitely talk that something wasn't 100% right with my competitor. But you can't get caught up in that conversation, because you don't know if there's truth in it. And you don't know if it's going to be rectified, and if it will come out or if it will stay hidden forever. So in those moments, I just remember feeling that my performance hadn't been where it needed to be. And I felt that I prepared so hard, but I wasn't where I needed to be. And it wasn't obviously until, you know, years down the line that what I thought was a huge failure for me and I took learnings off that failure going into 2012 actually wasn't a failure in the end. That's so interesting isn't it how the world

turns out because maybe if you hadn't learned those lessons from that perceived failure you might not have done as brilliantly as you did in the 2012 Olympics. Absolutely that's what I learned from that I honestly felt that I had to have that experience. And so many people have said, Oh, are you not so frustrated that you didn't get to stand on the podium in 2011 and be crowned world champion. And of course, I would have loved that moment. I would have absolutely loved it. But actually, it taught me so much. And it just gave me that kind of wake up and that reality check of do you know what you're not invincible and things can go wrong you might think that you're prepared

and you're in the best shape that you possibly can be but things can still go wrong and to be honest I have a picture from that world championships and it was me crossing the line and the athlete behind me who ultimately won Tatiana Chinova she was celebrating with her big arms in the air and I kind of looked really defeated and that was the image that I used to fuel my training to make me just really kind of train hard and work towards that following year in that olympic so yeah I kind of used that moment so so productively did you actually have a physical image like did you print it out and stick it on your fridge or something or was it just in your head I had a physical image at home I didn't stick

it on the fridge I thought that would be too much at home my husband probably would have torn it down but um no I I had it imprinted in my brain. And I had a picture of it in my training diary as well. So I was just never going to let that feeling happen again. And it definitely fueled me. Oh, I love it. Everything can be used as fuel. Yes, it can. It can. Given that you did think that you were so prepared heading into 2011. How did you prepare differently for 2012? What changes did you then make? So after every championships, whether I've been successful or it's not quite gone the way we want to,

me and my coach, my team would always sit down and we'd analyse every event, every technique within each event, how I prepared, how I fuelled in events and in those two days of competition and we just had a really detailed rounded look at how we prepared and my performances so we did that after 2011 and we looked into areas where you know I felt that I could have been better because although I was obviously cheated out of a gold medal, there were still areas where I felt that I could improve and make changes. And that's what we did. We went away and we worked on those small changes. But ultimately, there wasn't anything major to change. It was just really small, small margins and tiny little bits to just polish up. And then the biggest thing was just staying injury free, just being sensible in our approach to training and having good physio and soft tissue therapy and just following that process that we've done so many times before and trusting in it more than anything.

So I hope you'll forgive me, but I would love to ask you some questions about the 2012 Olympics, because it feels like such a seminal moment for us as a country, apart from anything else. such a seminal moment for us as a country apart from anything else I just remember that feeling of optimism that our athletes could do anything and achieve anything and it was just this amazing wave of positive energy but I imagine the pressure for you because you had been chosen as the kind of face of everything so that when people landed in Heathrow, they saw like Jessica Enners Hill everywhere on all the billboards. For you, the pressure must have been deeply intense. And I wonder how you handled that. I mean, yeah, it was so, so intense. And I look back now and I think, gosh, how did I actually cope? How did I not crumble and just cry every day with the amount of pressure that was on me? But I think when I was in that moment, and that particular year, I was just so driven, so focused, and just so on following a process, I was so focused on training and making sure

training was right, and recovery was right, and making sure every single event was right. I had seven events to do. So even when there was four events going really well, there was always one event or two events that weren't quite where I needed them to be. So I was so caught up in that world of making sure that they were all right. And then I suppose the noise around me, I had all those amazing people around me to cancel that out. So I had my fiance at the time, just reassuring me and helping me gain perspective like he always does. I had my coach and my physio team and everyone just keeping everything normal and consistent for me. I'd drive to training and I'd see a big billboard with my like sweaty abs doing crunches or something it might be.

I just kind of had to take the humor in it and laugh it off. I just kind of had to take the humor in it and laugh it off. And I think, yeah, just having those people and that security in them, like I said before, really just helped keep everything consistent. My coach would always say to me, you have done a million heptathlons before. You know the events. You've competed against the same girls.

You know what you're doing. You've trained so hard. And all you need to do is just go out there and just enjoy it and perform like you always do it is an olympics but it's just a heptathlon and you've done them so often and so well and those words of reassurance really really helped and then what is it like winning an olympic gold medal when you were standing on that podium? Did it feel how you thought it was going to? Oh, my gosh, it felt incredible. And even eight years down the line now, which is so bizarre to say, I still like I'm beaming now. I have that kind of really excited, giddy feeling because I can remember every moment of standing there and seeing my mum, my dad, my

sister, my fiance, all my friends and family in the crowd and just hearing your national anthem and knowing what it's taken to get to that point and how hard you've worked and just that realisation that it's actually come together and it's actually happened was just incredible. It absolutely lived up to how I would imagine it to have been. And I didn't allow myself to think too much about standing on the podium until it actually happened. And when it did, it was just, yeah, the most amazing experience. What did your parents say to you?

Oh, they were just so, so proud. I went to a training camp in Portugal before the Olympics for a few weeks. I tried to kind of keep myself in this bubble of switching off from social media and not speaking to friends and family too much. seen my mum and dad for a good few weeks the first thing I thought was I couldn't believe how skinny my dad was he looked so thin because he was just so worried he said he just was just consumed with worry and now as a parent I actually understand how awful that must have been for them because they just wanted the best for me and they knew the pressure and they obviously read all the articles and heard all the noise around what everybody expected me to do and that must have been so so hard for them but they were just so proud they just gave me the biggest hug and they were just like Jess you've done it you've done it and they were yeah just so happy little skinny Vinny I can't bear it I know he's in the other room now with my daughter I hope he's

not listening but he was so worried my dad bless him he's just such an emotional dad and he you know he'd obviously followed my whole career and you know if I ask him what my personal bests were he probably couldn't tell me but he was just so consumed and just so wanting his daughter to be happy and to yeah fulfill her dreams and yeah he was very emotional bless him I mean it must be astonishing to have a child who becomes an Olympic gold medalist when I don't think there's a history of athletics in your family I know that your dad sprinted a bit as a boy in Jamaica but other than that are you just a unicorn I well maybe yeah I mean there is no one else in the family that have gone down that sporting route and like you say my dad did some sprinting and

he was a good sprinter at like school level in Jamaica and I think my mum did a bit of high jump my granddad plays tennis and that kind of thing but there's no one that pushed it to this level and these heights so I suppose I'm a bit of an anomaly your third failure and I'm so glad you've chosen this one because I think it will lead into territory that lots of people can relate to and it is doubting yourself in relation to making the right decision to return to your career after having your first child so talk to us a bit about that about having your baby son and how you felt after that about returning to athletics possibly yeah so it was 2014. And it was obviously, you know, I'd had the highs of the Olympics and 2012. And it was a challenging time anyway, because I felt that after the Olympics, my motivation was so hard to find, you know, when you've achieved all you could possibly achieve and had a home Olympics, I found it hard to think, what's the next step step and how am I going to motivate myself and and anyway I fell pregnant with my son in 2014 which was incredible and I had like every new mum

you know you have all these ideas and these expectations about how life is going to be and how you're going to feel and how you'll get back to work and training and for me I was very focused I knew that I wanted to go back into training. And I knew that it was for a relatively short amount of time I had in my head that I wanted to do two more years to get to the Olympics, and then I would retire. And then my son came along and everything just changed. I'd never felt that way. I'd never felt that way physically, my body had changed completely mentally I was a completely different person and then I had these pressures from myself I put myself to wanting to

come back to compete and train but then the guilt and the pressure that I put on my other side of myself to be at home and to be the best mum and make sure that I was doing everything right and in the right way for Reggie so I yeah I I found it so, so challenging to know what was the right decision. And I just really didn't want to have any regrets from that time. And that was the thing that was always in my mind. Speak to us a bit about the physical changes that you went through. Because for every new mother, you have to come to terms with what's happened to your body but for an athlete to go through that I imagine it has lots of other impact on how you feel about yourself so how did

you feel about your body at that stage so I loved being pregnant and I remember everyone saying oh how do you feel about not having a six-pack and I was like do you know what I feel amazing because look at my body it's changed so much I'm growing my baby and I was just amazed by what the body could do so that didn't bother me at all but then I had no idea how much my body would change the understanding of how your hormones change and you know hormones like relaxing shooting around your body and affecting your ligaments and your joints and I remember having physio regularly and my physio would say wow your hips have never been this lax this flexible and that obviously has an impact on how you train and how you perform because you need to have

that kind of rigidity and that stiffness to your muscles so like a coiled spring you need to be able to react and respond to the ground and if your muscles and your joints are really relaxed and loose then that can create so many different problems and I found that after having my son I was kind of plagued with Achilles heel injuries so my Achilles were just so fragile I was picking up tears and problems with them constantly and that was you know a result of all the changes that you have physically when you go through pregnancy it's almost like your son became your Achilles heel metaphorically as well he did he did all those changes that happened within me and physically and mentally, but he was such a driving force and a motivation that allowed me to come back and refocus again and continue my career.

And my biggest thing at that time was, like I said, I just didn't want to have any regret. I would have hated to sit here now and look back at that time and thought, I wish I'd done something different. I wish I'd done something different I wish I'd changed I wish I'd not pushed on or I wish I just didn't want to look back and have any regrets and thankfully I don't which is such an amazing feeling to have and is that how you eventually came to the decision because it sounds to me like there was a struggle in that your athleticism is an instinctive thing and your mothering is an instinctive thing it's almost like these two gut instincts potentially you might have felt were pulling

you in different directions so how did you come to the decision it was so difficult I remember speaking to a sports psychologist a lot a good friend Pete Lindsay who I just spent time going to his offices and just chatting through everything with him because like you said I felt like the first time in my life I was being tugged in two directions and it was heartbreaking and I felt that I didn't know what side of me to trust I just didn't know if I was doing the right thing and that was the only time in my career that I really really truly doubted myself and thought do you know what should I just stop should I just give up I've become Olympic champion I've done it at home games what am I doing why don't I just stop and you know focus on Reggie and I've had an amazing career so far but actually being able to speak to my

sports psychologist and speak to my family and yeah just kind of understand it a bit more and how I could work through this time and the positives and the benefits that it would bring, you know, a year, two years down the line were huge. And Reggie was part of that whole journey towards the end of my career. He was such a motivating factor and he inspired me in so many different ways. And I was able to use those fears and those doubts and those questions that I constantly ask myself to a positive gain for both of us and yeah I'd say that it's probably one of my proudest parts of my career the latter stage where I struggled through issues and injuries and mum guilt and everything that comes with having your firstborn and was able to come out the end

successful and and retire on my terms as well which was important to me and I think it's so important to show that it can be done and we're seeing a few more women now returning and competing at the highest levels after they've given birth but I feel like you were one of the first just 15 months after you give birth to your son you win the world championships it's your right to be really proud of that and I wonder if you also felt proud because there was something feminist about it as well it was like showing how strong a woman can be yeah it absolutely was like you know I had so many people doubt me I was doubting myself and then I had some people within

my team and some people in the wider team around me just saying no she's had a baby she's done you know that's the end of her career and questioning whether I would ever come back and I think as an athlete you're so highly driven and so motivated to be successful and make sacrifices to perform and then to have a child and be a mother every mother is so driven so motivated so incredible in so many different ways and to couple those two things together makes the most incredible athlete and I think for anyone to doubt any athlete that comes back after becoming a mother that they will not be successful is very very foolish and it's so incredible now like you say to see so many other sports women coming back and knowing that they will not be successful is very, very foolish. And it's so incredible now, like you say,

to see so many other sportswomen coming back and knowing that they don't have to end their career and then start a family, that if they want to, they can do both. And, you know, the likes of Alison Felix and Serena Williams and seeing all these amazing women do it, it's an amazing thing for me to see now. And yeah, I'm very proud that I was one

that started that journey. Have you met Serena Williams I haven't she's one person I haven't met and I would love to meet her yeah she's incredible let's make it happen Jess the two of us together we'll do a pincer movement I'd love it but I'm interested that you chose this, the way that you phrased this failure, because you phrased it like the failure was doubting yourself. Is that how you look at it now, that you shouldn't have doubted your own instincts? was and what I'd achieved so far. And I shouldn't have questioned myself the way I did. I put so much pressure on myself, asking myself the same questions over and over again. And I should have trusted in my instincts and known that obviously, when I went back to training, training had to change. And it did, I made drastic changes. So instead of being at the track all day, six days a week, I cut my training back, I said to my coach, look, I'll be at the track all day, six days a week, I cut my training back. I said to my coach, look, I'll be at the track for three hours in the morning.

Then I have to go back and sort Reggie out. And then I'll be back for a couple of hours. I put a weight lifting facility in my garage so I could do my weight sessions at home and not have to travel to the track. So I made all these changes and adapted things and made sacrifices where I needed to for the sake of my son. And I shouldn't have questioned myself the way I did. I should have trusted in what I was doing and not put so much stress on my shoulders. And yeah, I should have just gone with it. But I learned from it and I'm so glad I did push on and continue.

And now, do you just know to go with your instincts? Are you an instinctive person now? You just have a hunch and you're like, no, that's right for me. Yeah, I think so. I think there can be so much noise around you. And then there can be so much influence around you as well. And I think a lot of the time with whatever field we're in, we question ourselves. But I think for me, my gut instinct and how I feel initially about something is normally the way to go and the right thing to do for me so it comes with experience and I've experienced a lot now in my 35 years and I feel that I'm confident enough to trust in my instinct now and I hope that I always do. You've described yourself in the past in interviews

as, and this is a quote, it's not just me, a scraggy little thing. No, those are not words that I would choose to describe you. But it just interested me because earlier when you were talking about Chenova, you talked about that image of you looking so little in comparison. over, you talked about that image of you looking so little in comparison. Is that something that you've also used as fuel? Yes, absolutely. I was a scraggy little child. I was so small and I was so skinny and I was quite shy and not very confident in myself generally. And it wasn't until I did get involved in athletics and I grew as an athlete that I gained so much confidence. And even going into the heptathlon, I remember all the girls were really strong, Amazonian looking women, so much taller than me, really muscular. And most athletes would look at me and think, oh, I'm not even going to think about her, that one over there. She's not one to worry about. And that gave me such a drive and a confidence to stand up and be like, well, do you know what? I might be small, but I'm going to be 10 times better than you.

I'm going to train harder and I'm going to make sure that my technique is perfect so that I'm better than you on the day. And yeah, I think that definitely fueled me and helped me push on and be confident and strong in myself. And are you still competitive now? And if you are, where does it come out your competitiveness? Yes, I am still competitive. I think my husband and my friends will always say that I'm competitive. But I have two children that are so competitive now that it drives me mad. They are competitive about absolutely everything. So I constantly hear myself saying, it's not a competition, it's not a race,

it's not a competition to the kids all the time. So I think that's kind of toned my competitive side down. I'm just going to allow them to enjoy it and take over now, I think. But if you're playing a game with your kids, you know, some parents pretend that they're worse than they are so that they let their children win. Are you that kind of parent? Or are you like, no, I'm going to win this? Yeah, I am that kind of parent that's kind of like, no, I'm going to win this. And then, but my son is so competitive as well that he will have a total meltdown and then I'll have to withdraw and let him win so through massive frustration though. And what's your daughter like in this respect

because incorrectly there is this sort of cliche that girls are less competitive than boys which is definitely not my own experience but what's she like in this area oh gosh she's so competitive she's so driven already knows her own mind and is a force to be reckoned with we look at my son and he's very athletic and he loves playing tennis and swimming and you know he picks up new skills really easily but I think to be honest lives the dark horse and I think that she might be the one that surprises us all because she's got that gritty determination that I can see in her already and she's only three so yeah who knows they might take up sport and they might love it they might achieve great things but also they might just enjoy being active and that's great as well so yeah we'll see you know sometimes I look at

three-year-olds and they really know themselves in such a profound way. And I'm like, wow, you're so enlightened that you just know who you are. And she sounds like that, Liv. She absolutely is. And I think her personality from a young baby is still very much the same now. She is very assured and she knows what she wants.

And she's just an amazing character with such great humour and she keeps us all in check so yeah I'm very excited to see what she becomes and what she does as she grows up. Oh Jess I have really really loved this interview and just hearing you speak and I suppose my final question to round it all up I'm super interested in asking you now how you perceive success and failure because in the past I guess a success for you as it would be for anyone is winning a gold medal but do you think the parameters of what you think of as real success and failure have changed now? Yeah, I think as an athlete, it was all very, obviously performance focused and medal focus. It was all very tangible. I love that environment. I love being stimulated

in that way. And I loved having success measured in that way, because it's very clear, it was very black and white. But for me now, success is so much more than that. It's like my family life. It's happiness. It's balance. It's just feeling valued and being able to be who you are. And I think more than anything, success for me is my family, everything that my family brings to me. And the medals are great, but there are more important things to me now. Where do you keep your medals? there are more important things to me now where do you keep your medals they're just in their shoe box kind of shoved away my sister was shouting at me the other day she was saying you've not put them in a box but some of them are in boxes and some of them are just put on top of each other and she's like at least put them in an adidas sock or something Jess but they are they're just kind of put away in the cupboard and you know I know, I'm very, very proud of them. And I bring them out every now and again.

And I like to tell the kids, you know, mommy used to be a really good athlete, but they don't need to be out on display all the time. You remain as grounded as you have ever been. Jessica Ennis-Hill, it has been a delight to have you on How to Fail. Thank you. Oh, thank you so much.

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