Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Sally Jenkins on How to Master Your Own Agency for Success EP 303

Episode Date: June 8, 2023

In a captivating episode of the Passion Struck podcast, a renowned sportswriter, Sally Jenkins shares insights from her new book, "The Right Call." Through her research and observations, Jenkins unveils the shared characteristics of athletes and successful individuals. Sally's exploration reveals that greatness is not inherent but a product of continuous improvement. By embracing small steps of progress and rejecting mediocrity, she empowers readers to take charge of their lives and pursue their aspirations. Sally Jenkins Discusses Her New Book The Right Call In this episode of Passion Struck, Sally Jenkins, a celebrated sports columnist, and author, joins John R. Miles to discuss how athletes can teach ordinary individuals to elevate their performance and achieve extraordinary results. Jenkins shares critical insights into the decision-making processes and successful practices of athletes and coaches. Her discussion centers on the importance of hard work, great habits, and being fully invested in one’s chosen profession, offering valuable lessons about agency and the pursuit of success. Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://passionstruck.com/sally-jenkins-master-your-own-agency-for-success/  Brought to you by Hello Fresh. Use code passion16 to get 16 free meals, plus free shipping!” Brought to you by Indeed. Head to https://www.indeed.com/passionstruck, where you can receive a $75 credit to attract, interview, and hire in one place. --► For information about advertisers and promo codes, go to: https://passionstruck.com/deals/  Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter or Instagram handle so we can thank you personally! --► Prefer to watch this interview: https://youtu.be/W8dVFS3P_8E  --► Subscribe to Our YouTube Channel Here: https://youtu.be/QYehiUuX7zs  Want to find your purpose in life? I provide my six simple steps to achieving it - passionstruck.com/5-simple-steps-to-find-your-passion-in-life/ Catch my interview with Marshall Goldsmith on How You Create an Earned Life: https://passionstruck.com/marshall-goldsmith-create-your-earned-life/  Watch the solo episode I did on the topic of Chronic Loneliness: https://youtu.be/aFDRk0kcM40  Want to hear my best interviews from 2023? Check out my interview with Seth Godin on the Song of Significance and my interview with Gretchen Rubin on Life in Five Senses. ===== FOLLOW ON THE SOCIALS ===== * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passion_struck_podcast * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnrmiles.c0m  Learn more about John: https://johnrmiles.com/  Passion Struck is now on the AMFM247 broadcasting network every Monday and Friday from 5–6 PM. Step 1: Go to TuneIn, Apple Music (or any other app, mobile or computer) Step 2: Search for “AMFM247” Network  

coming up next on Passion struck. It's a famous story in the NFL. Tom Brady used to pay practice players if they intercepted him in practice. A lot of quarterbacks resent it when the second or third teamer or some guy on reserve comes out and picks off the star quarterback in practice. Brady appreciated it.

The message to the team when Brady would pay a practice player for intercepting him was, hey, the guy did us a favor. He exposed me now, so I don't have to get exposed and deliver up this interception on Sunday. Welcome to PassionStruct. Hi, I'm your host, John Armiles. And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance

of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guest-ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators,

scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become PassionStruck. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Episode 303 of PassionStruck. Consistently rated by Apple is one of their top 10 most popular health podcasts. And thank you to all who come back each and every week to listen and learn how to live better, be better, and impact the world. PassionStruck is now on syndicated radio on the AMFM 247 broadcast network. Patch us Monday and Friday from 5 to 6 p.m. Eastern time on Apple Music, Tune in or wherever you listen. Links will be in the show notes. If you're new to the show,

thank you so much for being here. You simply want to introduce this to a friend or family member we now have episode Sturgerpacks, which are collections of our fans favorite episodes that we organize into convenient topics that give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the show. Either go to Spotify or PassionStruct.com slash stutter packs to get started. In case you missed it earlier this week I interviewed How Herschfield, an accomplished professor of marketing, behavioral decision-making and psychology at UCLA's Anderson School of Management. We discuss this new book, Your Future Self, How to Make Tomorrow Better Today. Please check it out and I also wanted to say thank you so much for your ratings and reviews.

If you loved House, Interview, or Todays, we would so appreciate it if you gave us a 5-star review and sharing it with your friends and families. I know we and our guests love to see comments from our listeners. Now let's talk about today's episode. We have a very special guest joining us, Sally Jenkins, New York Times best-selling author and a powerhouse in the world of journalism, with over two decades of experience as a columnist and feature writer for the Washington Post. For exceptional contributions to sports journalism have earned her numerous accolades, including being named a finalist for the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in 2020 in 2021. In recognition of her outstanding work, Sally was honored with the Associated Press

Red Smith Award in 2021, further solidifying her place as one of the industry's foremost voices. Breaking barriers and making history, Sally Jenkins became the first woman to be inducted into the esteemed National Sports Arters and Sportcasters Hall of Fame in 2005. Her passion for sports and her ability to capture captivating stories have made a lasting impact on the field of sports journalism. In her latest book, The Right Call, what sports teaches us about work and life, Sally delves into the world of elite athletes and star coaches to uncover the inner qualities

that allow them to consistently bring their A-game and high-pressure situations. Drong from breathtakingly dramatic sports, antidotes featuring renowned figures like Steve Kerr, Bill Bellicek, Pat Summett, Peyton Manning, and many more, Sally reveals the seven key principles of great decision-making that can empower ordinary individuals to elevate their performance and achieve extraordinary results. During our interview, Sally will delve into the fascinating stories behind these sports legends and their remarkable achievements. She would discuss how Peyton Manning's meticulous study of his worst moments paved the way

for success. Laird Hamilton's ice bath method for Pat Summits apatite for risk and Tom Brady's unique approach to motivating his teammates. Sally will also shed light on the power of fight strength, exemplified by coaches like Tony Dungee, and reveal what drove Diana N Nayed at the age of 64 to complete her ruling 53 hours swim from Cuba to Florida after four failed attempts. Join us as we uncover the profound insights from the right call and learn how these principles can empower you to make better decisions, overcome pressure, and summon your best self when

it matters most. Get ready to be inspired and discover the secrets to achieving greatness in both work and life. Let's dive in. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin. I am so excited today to get the opportunity to interview Sally Jenkins on Passionstruck. Welcome Sally. Thank you. Thank you. Passion's a good word. Well, thank you. So is making the right call, which is what your great new book is all about. What sports teach us about work and life. So congratulations on

that coming out. Thank you. It's a labor of love and it's taken a while to get it to this point, but I'm pretty delighted with the outcome. Well, I like to lead into these interviews by giving the audience some background about the guest. And you ended up graduating from Stanford. But what I wanted to ask you is how did your father, whose fame sports writer Dan Jenkins, influence you to have such a deep passion for sports and eventually becoming a sports columnist? He was a guy who really loved his work. That was his primary influence. He was very clear that most people don't like their jobs and if you can wind up with one that you like you're among a very small percentage of lucky people in the world and so he wanted us to see

how much he worked and how much he enjoyed his work and so he was a great example. I've started going to my first sports events when I was six, seven, eight years old. I know my first British open, I was only 11 in 1971. So I've been watching it my whole life and I obviously talked to him about the craft of sports writing my whole life, but more importantly about what was really important to him about his work. And what was most important to Dan Jenkins was to try to explain what he called the athletic heart. And he was endlessly fascinated as I am by how people who were born ordinary

rise to extraordinary heights. And so that mechanism was what he was really interested in explaining whether he was writing about Joe Namath or Jack Nicholas. And it's really what I try to do in the right call. Well, and I think that lesson applies not just sports, but tell almost any profession that you see people in. I agree. People who work from the heart, it's a real separator, isn't it?

People who are fully invested completely, that's the separator between people who are just okay. It's something in people who get to a level that's really good and sometimes even great. Well another thing that you write about in the book is that your father once told you that a lot of people and I think it's most people are afraid to win. And for years you didn't know what that meant. I wanted to ask what did you learn from famed Tennessee women's basketball coach, Pat Summitt about that quote? I went to Pat.

I was working on a book with Pat. And I said, you Pat, my father has always said that most people are afraid to win. But I've never quite known what he means by that. And she said, well, he's absolutely right. And she said, what he means is that most people are afraid to go all in. They're afraid to push all their chips

to the middle of the table. And to give something absolutely their last full measure of effort and commitment. A lot of people would prefer to look nonchalant because if you look nonchalant, it means that you didn't really get beat, right? You don't ever have to say, well, someone was really actually better because you with hell deliver something.

And so that allows you to say, well, maybe they're better, maybe they're not. It's now. And what my father always tried to impress and what Pat tried to impress was to waste potential is a kind of sin. It's the people who understand that and who really do go all in. And they at least can live with their reversals better because they have the knowledge that at least they died with their boots on for lack of a

to use an old cowboy phrase. I think a great example of this that you highlight in the book is famed tennis player Andre Agassi because when you think about Andre At the start of his career he was the supreme adana with this long hair and I'm a huge tennis fan and I just remember I had always thought looking at him at Pete Samperous that He was the one who was going to become what Pete Samperes had become at that point, which was the greatest player in the world. But a lot of it had to do with, I think, how Andre was approaching the sport, I think,

at first he was a little bit laxidaisical about it, but he completely reinvented himself and took on some of the very things that you just talked about from your conversation from Pat. I was hoping you might be able to just talk about that. Well, there's no question about it. I think Andre has been pretty eloquent about that himself. He was a child prodigy. He was pushed to tennis camps very young and resented it. And so he had some rebellion to do.

And he was rewarded very early on with huge endorsement contracts because he was a flashy little character. He was like an exotic bird out there and he had these great strokes. But Andre really arrived at a reckoning. I remember, and this is in the book, I did a piece on him for Sports Illustrated magazine when he was trying to mature. And he told me at one point, he said, my accomplishments do not meet my wealth. And he was quite aware that he was

in danger of drowning in the superficiality of his ad campaigns of not living up to his real promise. And he just decided he wanted to go all in. He wanted to see what he could really do. He started training. He stopped eating junk food. When I first knew him, he'd go to Chili's and order half the menu. Cheeseburgers and fries and the whole deal. And he got to a point where he ate more sensibly, trained really hard. He was running sand deals in the Vegas desert until he threw up literally. And he emerged this very burly shaved down man. He never lost his showmanship, but he had real substance

behind it. And he became number one in the world for a time. And it was probably the most dramatic and interesting personal transformation I saw of all the superstars I've covered over the years. I always admired him for that, because that teaches you that those sorts of habits, you're not born with those. Peyton Manning wasn't born with great habits, right? Tom Brady wasn't born with great habits. He was a

pudgy teenage kid at one point with popsicles in his mouth. You know, these people are very the thing that I would stress to folks is what athletes show you is the extent to which success is really made through your own agency. Well, speaking of athletes, you have covered a ton of them over the years, and the audience isn't aware of who you are. You were named the top sports columnist in 2001, 2003, 2010, and 2011 by the Associated Press. And then you were also the first female in 2005 to be inducted into the National Sports

Riders and Sports Caster's Hall of Fame. Now, I wanted to ask on a profession that has been really dominated by males, how did you break so many barriers? Well, I had a great advantage being Dan Jenkins' daughter. That certainly helped. I think I was treated with a certain amount of consideration. My father was really highly regarded by his colleagues and by athletes. So, I think that helped. I had some insulation quite frankly, but also look, being a woman in a man's world, that's the most common female experience in the world. And the people who do best with that not the victims. You don't play victim. You don't dwell in grievance. That gets you nowhere.

And that's one of the things I've learned from the people I've covered too. This is really a trueism in sports. If you hear a coach or a team bitching about the officiating, you can be almost sure they're going to lose again the following year, right? But if you see a team that catches a really bad break or gets a bad call on the field, and they're not complaining about it afterwards, they're talking about all the other things that they could have done to win the game, that's the team that's going to come back the next year and the one that you're maybe going to see

in the Super Bowl or the NBA finals. So over the years, in covering these people, I began to realize that they were shaping me as much as my father, as much as a parent, not directly, but by observation. The examples that I was watching began to really slowly but surely work on me. I was shaped by a Chris Everett and a Martina Nevratilova as I was by my dad. The same is true of a Steve Kerr or a Steph Curry or a Peyton Manning. Quietly over the years, I began adopting some of their habits, simply to see if I couldn't do my own job better. And I did do it better when I started emulating of their methods.

And so what I wanted to do with this book was look at the broad array of people that I've talked to and covered and say, what do they have in common? What methods do they share? Because I noticed commonalities. So I wanted to write those commonalities down and see how they operate to arrive at the right action in the moment, the right call under pressure, the right decision when it counts,

and the best performance when it matters the most. So that's what the right call really is. It's an attempt to collate all the things I've heard from athletes and coaches over the years and organize those thoughts. And we're going to deep dive into all of that. One of the things I did want to ask you before we go there is you write in the book that I did want to ask you before we go there is you write in the book that being a sports writer, you have arguably one of the best seats in the house, but for you, you coveted that seat for another reason. What is that? The proximity to greatness. It is a great seat. It's a real good view of the game. There's no question about it. But the main thing that it does is it really puts you right next to these people who are doing extraordinary things

in the moment. And the ability to study that right up close to watch a patent manning in real time and then be able to talk to him directly after the event, somewhat in depth even, to get their thoughts right in the midst of the winning and the losing and the post-game locker room loser or winner. Those are very real emotions and very real insights. It's a very privileged position to be in to be someone like me. And to get to not only watch the game from a great seat, but then talk to the competitors afterwards. So many people who make decisions that matter in America. Do so behind closed doors.

decisions that matter in America do so behind closed doors. Bob Eiger, when he's making decisions for Disney, we don't see him operating in real time. We see the aftermath of his decisions or the outcomes of some of those decisions, but we don't really watch him work to arrive at those decisions. Athletes are making micro decisions every single moment right in front of our eyes and so are coaches.

And that's an incredible sort of window to use. I feel like we really understudy and underused coaches and athletes. There's a nagging question with all of us. What's important about sports? Are we watching these games just because they awe us and they're entertaining? Or is there something more we should be taking away from them? And I think the answer is there's something more we should be taking away from them. And what we can take away from them and apply to our own lives, no matter what we do, or how ordinary our endeavor is their decisional process, their commitment, their organization, and the methodology by which they arrive at sound decision making. by which they arrive at sound decision making.

It's interesting. I was recently watching the recent movie about Kurt Warner and his rise to getting in the NFL. And when you think about someone like Kurt Warner and other athletes as you just brought up, we're often over-odd about the wrong things and we overlook the merits of the right things. Can you discuss that a little bit? Sure, a guy who says it better than I do is Eric Spolstra, the coach of the Miami Heat,

who's on an incredible run right now. He says, everybody overestimates what you can get done in a day and underestimates what you can do in months and months of work. Athletes and coaches are really good at focusing on the one to two percent improvement that they can make in a day or a week or a month. The rest of us tend to look for magic bullets, don't we? Hacks, right? Everybody wants a hack. Athletes don't take the hack, right? They don't cheat the grind. They really don't. They work very systematically in a highly organized way.

And not only that, but they work to identify, diagnose and distinguish their weaknesses, right? Some of us, okay, let's say we decide to pick up the guitar. We practice on the guitar until we get pretty good and then we plateau. Athletes don't stop there. They keep going all the way through. Steph Curry has worked as hard on his left foot as his right. They work on their non-dominant hand. They work very hard to cure really minuscule weaknesses with the knowledge that those tiny

improvements add up over time to the 20% and 30% that the rest of us are looking for in a day. One of the stories that I love that you covered is I'm a huge Philadelphia Eagles fan and so I hope they're not making too many excuses because I'd love to see them come back and win next year. But we were lucky enough to have Andy Reed on our sidelines for many years. And unfortunately, he just couldn't win the big championship and so the Eagles got rid of them.

But I think we're now seeing him in his full splendor. And as we all know, and you just covered sports demands, decision making in special intensity because of the speed of the game. What can we learn from Andy Reed about how in maybe the most pinnacle moment of his career when he was going against the Tennessee Titans to get to the Super Bowl, how he was able to cut through the noise and the potential career consequences because let's face it if he would have not made it again, he might have gotten cut, but he ended up making the right call on

that fourth down play. Yeah, it's a fascinating thing to watch Andy Reid make a call on fourth down. He leaves the announcer screaming sometimes with his audacity and that didn't come naturally to Andy Reid. There was a phase in his career much earlier in Philadelphia where he was probably more conservative. What he's learned over the years, if he's got enough sound practice and enough guys that he thinks he can really rely on in the moment, he can make the bold call.

Andy Reed goes for it on fourth and short, which is a really problematic, torturous circumstance for most coaches. Andy Reed, it's an interesting thing. He's very comfortable with the call in that moment because he's sure of what he's got in his hip pocket. He's got a team that has really practiced hard and it's going to execute the play exactly the way it's designed under pressure. Now, the other team may be better. The other team may do something that's too good. Competition is proteum, very proteum, very fluid,

but Andy Reed has a tendency to be right more often than not. Because of all the work, all the diagnosis, all the deliberate practice that he and his team do going into the game. It's a really fun thing to watch him on fourth down, go out and make a call, and everybody knows it's coming, and yet they execute it anyway. Well, I think to level set for the audience, what constitutes a good decision?

Well, a good decision is ability to sort through shifting factors and arrive at a conclusion that allows you to enact a deliberate piece of action. That's what a decision is. It's the ability to sort through clarify and act in a very short period of time. And athletes make micro decisions every second. Even the most intuitive fluid-seeming player like a Steph Curry, decisions he's making out there. When to take the shot, how to take the shot,

when to let it go, how to gather his feet underneath him, whether to use a screen or whether to pull up micro decision after micro decision, it's really fun to study the neurological processes that athletes use to get to those snap judgments. They're not intuitive, they're not acting on intuition, they're not acting on some fortunate jolt of inspiration in the moment. They are acting on method and calculation much more than the average spectator would ever dream. And so one thing I wanted to do in the right call was explore those processes so that people understand that their own decisions can be so much more deliberate. You can start by simply categorizing your decisions. One of the things we don't realize in our own lives is there are

decisions that are like first down decisions and there are decisions that are more like fourth down decisions. They have different stakes and different consequences so you don't make every decision in exactly the right way with exactly the same sense of pressure, right? But we're not very, we're not as good at organizing and categorizing our decisions as athletes are. And so that's one place where you can start, actually, if you go, I wanna be a better decider in my own life. You can start by simply calculating the stakes

of the decisions that you're making. I'm glad you're bringing this up because, as you and I talked about beforehand, this podcast is all about what you're just talking about. And it's amazing how many behavioral scientists I have had on the show. And every single one of them brings up that it is the microchois that you make every single day that either accumulate into the end result that you want to achieve or into the opposite direction. And what's happening, I think, with so many people today, is they live their life on autopilot. I often call it living the pinball life where

it just bounce off of their normal routine instead of being deliberate about how they're playing the game of pinball. And I think one of the biggest takeaways from your book and I took two things and combined them. It's that fact that great performers aren't born fully formed and consistent champions don't just drift through their day. They do what you're just talking about. Everything that they do is deliberate. Everything is with a goal of becoming the best that they can become. And I think it's such a huge lesson that applies not just to athletes, but to anyone who wants to live a limitless life.

I think that's so true. I call it drifting, right? A lot of us just drift or we let events decide us. Quite frankly, a lot of the time that's what happens is you just get over taken by an event and it ends up making the decision for you. One of the things that was really fun to study in the book was Peyton Manning, the early training that he got just in the ability to make a decision in and of itself, because a lot of quarterbacks will hold the ball until the decision is made for them. One of the first things that David Cutcliffe, his offensive coordinator at the University of Tennessee, what teacher young paid manning was, you make a decision and you get rid of the ball before something bad unintended happens to you.

Just the willingness to make a decision is taught to athletes very early on. And it's something that I enjoy watching because it's a lesson in taking responsibility, right? Which is something we'd like to teach all kids, wouldn't we? Watch a really good coach work with a young quarterback or a young point guard and tutor them in responsible decision making on behalf of a larger team. One of the things Peyton Manning learned to do in the way of decision making and accountability, he learned to look at tape. He really talked at length about

this for the book. He was great in letting me pester him for his insights. And one of the things he explained to me was that he wouldn't just look at tape after a season was over his touchdown passes and where he did everything well. He looked at tape of all the interceptions he had thrown and then he looked at another tape which was more hidden tape which was all the interceptions he had thrown. And then he looked at another tape, which was more hidden tape, which was all the passes he threw that should have been intercepted but weren't, because he just got lucky

or the defender dropped the ball. And all the potential touchdown passes that he should have thrown but didn't, because he made a wrong decision and something happened and they didn't score when they should have. And so it's important to know that's how hard Peyton Manning worked at becoming a Hall of Fame level

decider. By his third gear in the league, Peyton Manning's record as a quarterback, people forget this. It was only 32 and 32. He was a 500 quarterback. The other thing was he led the league in Interceptions. The guy was an absolute interception machine. So he was not a defined great quarterback.

He had great talent. Everybody knew that. As he said it to me for the book, it was a question of, who am I really going to be? And he was very lucky that he fell into the hands of Tony Dungee, who came in to take over the Indianapolis Colts. And he really worked with him on cutting down

his interceptions and reworking his mental wiring a little bit on when to let it rip and when to just take what the defense is giving you. There was a fascinating chapter in the book about how Peyton Manning goes from a 500 quarterback to a Super Bowl winner. Well, and I think there are many parallels.

It doesn't seem obvious when you look at it to paint and story and court-warner story because when her owner was in college, she was benched because the first thing he wanted to do was escape the pocket. And so his coach wouldn't start him until he learned how to survive in the pocket. And then even then, when he went into the arena league, it was learning the quickness of the arena league,

readjusting his footwork, and that repetition that I think made him what he was by the time he got to the NFL, because he was reacting so much more quickly than many of the people who played his position. And the other interesting thing I wanted to bring up is I happened to interview Dr. Nate Zinser last year who's a performance psychology expert in his taught at West Point for a few decades, but he personally coached Eli

Manning. And it's interesting because neither of the manning regardless of how much natural talent they had were destined for greatness until they each figured out their weaknesses and for Eli. It was he didn't possess an eight confidence that he needed to take him to the next level, which is something that he worked on and with an 18 of really focusing on it, actually won the Super Bowl. So it's interesting to your point

how these people don't achieve this greatness just by it happening out of thin air. It's from determination and repeat and constant work ethic that gets them to this next level. I can't emphasize enough that they're not born with good habits. Those habits were acquired. They were taught to them. They had good teachers and they imitated others with good habits. Archie Manning, their father was a pro quarterback and so they did have a head start in terms of some understanding of the game of football and they were probably gifted with some fortunate genetics, but honestly, that was probably 20% of the equation with Peyton and Eli Manning certainly no, no more than 20% was the privilege or the advantage that they were born with.

Well, you cover a lot of different athletes all the way from someone who swam across the straits of Cuba to Florida, to football grades, basketball grades, tennis grades, surfers. What is the chief characteristic that all these high performers possess? That's the question that drove me to write an entire book. It struck me that I was really covering a wide variety of people. I've written about Larry Hamilton, the greatest big wave surfer in the world. Diana Niyad, who swam from Cuba across the Florida straight to Key West. Swam continuously for almost three days. Andre Agassi, Jack Nicholas, you name it.

And I just, I wanted to see what they have in common. And if those commonalities amounted to an exportable method. And they did. And I started going through my notes and interviewing them, whether it was Steve Kerr of the Golden State Warriors or Pat Summett or Andy Reed or Bill Bellachack of the New England Patriots, they all had certain remarks, or Tony

Dungee or Peyton Manning, they all made certain remarks that were so similar. And so I would write those remarks down and start categorizing them, recatalogging them. And that's how the seven principles in the book really came up. Those seven principles, they cut across all sports, they cut across all types, they cut across all types of athletes and all types of coaches. They all follow these same basic principles, no matter how different the championship is that they're seeking or how big the wave is that they're trying to ride. Well, let's unpack some of these. So one of the people that you feature in the book is Michael Phelps.

And I think when you hear a lot of people talk about Michael Phelps, you commonly hear that the reason he was so great was because he had this physique that was just made for the water. They talk about the immense arm length that he had and just how his body resembled a fish in so many ways. But as you got further into researching him, it wasn't his physique that really took him to the next level it was absolute drudgery. Can you explain. Yeah, he look a little bit like a calamari right, but it's Scientific American and actually measured his torso and his arms. Scientific Americans set out to see whether Michael Phelps really had an unusual body. And the fact is that he didn't. He was six foot four. But apart from his arms were maybe a touch longer than

the average six foot four man. But that was about it. There was nothing really extraordinary in his physique. His coach Bob Bohn, I talked with at length for the book, said, the thing that made Michael was the work. I use Michael as in the chapter on conditioning, one of the principles, the seven principles in the book is conditioning, understanding the deep neurological value of conditioning, not just physically, but conditioning your mind, because they go hand in hand. Phelps basically was like a great pianist who has practiced measures of music so deeply and so repetitively that they've become ingrained and so he can now play by feel. He could feel his rhythm in the water, he could feel the stroke, he didn't have to count.

And it helped him in a single greatest race of his life when he's going for a record eight cold medals at the Beijing Olympics. And he's in a real duel with Michael Cavitch. And by the way, by the Olympics, all swimmers have incredible torsos, right? Phelps doesn't look a whole lot different from anybody standing side by side with him, including Michael Cavitch. Coming down the stretch in that race, Phelps realized that his rhythm was just slightly off. He was too close to the wall to take another full stroke. And he had to make a decision and a split second decision. He had to gauge whether he was better off just gliding to the wall

or whether he could take another half stroke and do what they call chopping the wall. to the wall or whether he could take another half stroke and do what they call chopping the wall. He elects to chop the wall and that wins him the race by one one hundredth of a second. And he goes on to break Mark Spitz's record and become the greatest flimmer of all time because of a micro decision that he made that earned him a one one hundredth of a second. He was able to make that decision because neurologically he was so well conditioned, so deeply conditioned in the water that he understood what the right thing to do was. Or at least he understood his chances,

if he chose to chop the wall, he understood, he stood a better chance of being right than wrong. He could have been wrong, but he wasn't. Well, the next area you highlight is practice and it's funny to me because I just saw a commercial the other day that had Iverson in it where they're joking about. You're not talking about practice. And I think when you look at the New England Patriots and what has set them apart for so long, it's Bill Belichex intense focus to treat every single day of the week

as if it was a Super Bowl. And I think it's that doggedness of focusing on making every single day count that becomes kind of the whole culture of that team. Did you see some of that when you were observing him? Absolutely. And I talked about a chick about it. The most interesting thing that he said to me when I talked to him was, you, first off, you have to be able to execute something in practice without resistance, right? If you can't execute a play or execute a plan

without resistance just while you're practicing it, you don't stand any chance of really executing it in the face of resistance. But the other thing that Bella Check talked about was a lot of people don't practice. They're well-intentioned when they practice, but they don't practice in the actual circumstances in which they're going to be asked to perform. The classic example of that would be, let's say, to go back to swimming for

a second, would be someone who wants to train for a triathlon, but they do it in their pool, and then when they get in an open body of water, which is black and much, much colder, and you can't see, and there's a bunch of other people around you. They kind of panic and they find that they can't really swim the way they want to. Or a golfer who beats balls on the driving range and then gets on the golf course and doesn't understand why they can't hit the shots on the course that they hit on the range. What Bill Bellichek did with the Patriots was he was willing to practice that team at a more intense level and a lot of times they would practice against the first team, which a lot of NFL teams won't do.

They're afraid of injury. A lot of times the first team defense would go out there and give the offense a full speed look, as they called it, because they wanted Tom Brady and their offense to actually be conditioned to what they were going to face when the opposition was real and not just a teammate. It's a kind of a famous story in the NFL. Tom Brady used to pay practice players if they intercepted him in practice. A lot of quarterbacks resent it when like a second or third team or some guy on reserve comes out and picks off the star quarterback in practice, Brady appreciated it.

The message to the team when Brady would pay a practice player for intercepting him was, hey, the guy did us a favor. He exposed me now, so I don't have to get exposed and deliver up this interception on Sunday. The secret to the Patriots was execution and the willingness to practice in the face of resistance that was much closer to what they would be facing on Sunday. That's interesting. I had the opportunity to interview Sean Springs and he joined the Patriots after having spent time with Seattle and then Washington. him when you were around Brady, was there something different about him than any other quarterback? And he said that I faced Tom many times as a quarterback, but he goes, I didn't realize it until I saw him every day in practice. He said that Ian Bill would go day by day to see who would get there first,

but both of them would show up around five o'clock to five, 30 in the morning and he said, Tom was always a last person to leave and you would never out work him. But he said that the most amazing thing about him was how positive he was. And he said, if you would take Tom and give him the worst performing high school team in

the nation, he would be able to turn that team around by the end of a season just because of how inspirational he was and how he was so focused on trying to make every player on the team better. And that said a ton to me. I think that's very true of Brady. You could see it when he went from New England to Tampa Bay. He instantly elevated the entire franchise. Peyton Manning did the same when he went to Denver. Their habits become very contagious. When the hardest working man on the team is your star quarterback, no one else has the room to do it anything less than at that level, right? And Brady was always

very cognizant of that. The other thing he's cognizant of is, Brady had spent some time as a college player with a lousy attitude. He was very resentful when he was at Michigan as a third stringer playing behind guys. He felt like he wasn't getting his fair shot. He told Michigan coach Lloyd Carr, and Carr told him, hey, worry about yourself.

And Brady sought out a sports psychologist at the University of Michigan. Brady complained, I only seem to get on the field when it's like third and eight. And the sports psychologist said to him, Tom, what's the problem there? If you can do it when it's third and eight, that means you can do it when it's third and two. That's an opportunity for you to prove something. And it really changed Brady's mindset, and he quit pitching, and he quit worrying about how unfair life was. And he started focusing on trying to show that he could do it on third and eight.

And he took responsibility for the guys around him, and made some plays. It took him forever to win the Michigan starting job all to himself. He was halfway through his senior year before anybody really believed in him. And then of course he goes 198th in the NFL draft because nobody in the NFL believed in him. And then of course, he goes 198th in the NFL draft because nobody in the NFL believes in him either. What he had was a great attitude.

He just was going to see, well, what happens if I absolutely work as hard as I can at this? He went all in. Talk about a guy who went all in. Well, it definitely went all in when he told Robert Kraft, he was the best decision he had ever made. Yeah, it's a great story. I Kraft, he was the best decision he had ever made. Yeah, it's a great story. I'm going to be the best decision you ever made. Yeah. Yeah.

And he would show up in the middle of the night. Patriot's executive started getting calls. There's this kid who's here at two o'clock in the morning looking at film or throwing footballs at targets. He really worked at it. He's about the most-rated great I ever watched. Brady at the end of his career was more accurate in his last four years than he was in his great prime in the middle of his career and he threw the ball with a little bit more velocity. He actually found a way to put

some more RPMs on the ball because every year in the off season he was working with a great throwing coach named Tom House who kept refining his motion and looking for a 1% improvement. If you look at his stats, go look at his completion percentage for the last 3, 4, 5 years of his career and compare them to other earlier stages of his career. And it's remarkable that he threw the ball better at 40. Well, I think you're absolutely right. And it was interesting watching his stats even over the last three years. People could have said that this last year that he played, it was one of his

worst years. But when you look at his stats, it didn't show that at all. Not in the numbers. If team didn't play that well collectively, but his numbers, his personal contribution, I think, was right up there with what it had been in other years. They didn't quite have the team around them. They got really unlucky. They had some terrible injuries on the offensive line.

They had some very young players on the offensive line and they got injured in the backfield. It was a lot of work to glue that team back together from week to week with all the injuries they had. Well, the next discipline, or I should say, the next characteristic that you cover is discipline. And I wanted to ask you this through your observance of watching Steph Curry. And you had the opportunity to at one time get to see his hands. What did that teach you about the self-discipline that he had to become the great that he is? Well, again, that's why it's the greatest seed in the house, right?

Because you can not only sit at court side and watch Steph Curry play, but you can go to practice and say, dude, can I feel your hands, which I actually said to him, I put my hands out like this and he put his on top of mine. Steph Curry looks so silky. His shot is so soft. And for some reason, I expected that his hands would be soft, which if you think about it, doesn't make sense at all, because the reason his shot is what it is

because he shoots 2,000 shots a day, the pebbled leather of the basketball, the calluses on his hands, it was like feeling the hands of a logger. It was a big, thick, flaking calluses all over his palms. He tries to use manicure wax to soften his hands, but he said it doesn't really work too good for him. But yeah, what that tells you again is that Steph Curry is the product of agency.

He's not big enough to play in the NBA, right? There's no way that guy is big enough to play in the NBA. And yet he's going to go down as one of the greatest players the league ever saw. Well, it's interesting because if you ask people who played with Larry Bird or Michael Jordan, they would also tell you that they would show up for the games two hours before hand, shoot thousands of shots

before they even took the court. In fact, I think Michael was like Tom Brady. Every single day, he was the first person to the practice arena, regardless of how great he was. They have commitment and they understand something critical, which is the degree to which preparation relieves pressure. As Peyton Manning said, pressure is what you feel when you don't know

what the hell to do. That's pressure. And when you have a preparation and you have a plan and you have some fallback contingencies, you just operate a lot more smoothly under pressure. You're not as prey to the anxieties and the fears that come with real pressure in the moment. One thing I try to do in the book is explain what pressure does to you neurologically. Pressure has an actual force. It's a physical property. What happens in your body under pressure is the fight or flight response and your body begins shunting blood from your small muscle groups to your large muscle groups so that you can run away, right?

It costs you fine motor control. And that's why you'll see a tennis player possibly double fault under pressure in a big moment, or you'll see a PGA golfer three put on what should have been a very routine put. And it happens to all of us sitting at our desks. If you're transposing numbers, or you're suddenly having trouble typing because you're on a deadline,

that's because blood has left your fingers. And athletes really understand these physiological, neurological effects and they compensate for them with preparation. And so if I'm on a deadline and I'm going to be expected to write a thousand words in about an hour and 15 minutes after a super bowl, do I really want to be starting from scratch, not having a word written? That's the way I used to operate when I was younger. What I learned from athletes was to have a bunch of paragraphs already written of material that's likely to be useful.

When the final score is posted up on the score board, and I've got to try to write the narrative of what happened, I keep running accounts of plays that I know are going to be critical. I have lots of quotes and observations from earlier in the week that I know are likely to be relevant when the final buzzer goes off. And all of that makes it easier to put together a thousand word essay or account of a game on deadline. I didn't come natural to me.

I learned that from athletes. I learned that from watching them and listening to them talk about how they go about their own business. And so what I really wanted to do with this book was to tell people, look, these methods are exportable to you. You don't have to be Michael Phelps or Peyton Manning to use this stuff and see real improvement in how you go about your own work.

Well, one of the areas I definitely wanted to cover was intention. And I love that you use Tony Dungee in this chapter. He's someone given that I live in Tampa Bay that I have seen a number of times walking down the street and he's probably one of the most humble people you will ever want to meet. The other thing that strikes you is how quiet he is. And it's interesting because it took Tony a decade and a half to get a head coaching job because people of Sam is too mild and quiet. But when he took over the Buccaneers, let's face it, they were a terrible team.

They hadn't been good in two decades, I think at that point. How was he able to get them to the playoffs in his second year's coach? Because it truly is remarkable. Done, she's great quality. And it's a quality again that's shared by all the people in this book. And she's great quality as a leader was that he never presented a problem without presenting the solution. And it's a critical distinction between people who think they're leaders, but aren't. They may be very charismatic personalities or big personalities, but they rise to the top of an organization and then the organization doesn't perform very well.

And everybody goes, Hi, I wonder why that big personality turned out not to be such a great leader. Usually, as they're not great explainers, they don't care what other people think about their decisions or they're not very good at conveying the importance of their decisions. Tony Dungee was one of the great explainers and one of the great connectors of the dots. He didn't have to yell to do it. He didn't have to be the most charismatic man in the room to do it. But he was really great at sitting a patent manning down and showing him his interceptions and going through every one of his 30 interceptions or 32 interceptions and somehow not making me any defensive in that position, but rather saying, when you do this, we look great.

When you do this, yeah, it's an interception. We all look terrible, nobody more so than you. But when you do this, look at the outcome. Look at the chain of causality. Look at the better position we're in when you just complete the screen or you complete the underneath pass rather than trying to rip at 35 yards down field.

And so he worked with Manning with a real clear explanation every step of the way. He had to get Manning's intellectual buy-in. He had to explain to him why it's better and looks more right in what the numbers are when you do it this way instead of that way. That's how he flipped Peyton Manning's interception performance and he ends up throwing 50 touchdowns to just nine

interceptions, goes from being a guy who throws 30 interceptions, it cuts those down by 2 thirds and is throwing 50 TDs. Because now Manning could really sting a defense. And it is all because Dungee was a great explainer and did not present the problem without presenting the solution. Well, if you look at his time with the Buccaneers, the way he was able to analyze and build that defense into arguably one of the best top five defenses of all time was incredible as well. And I know a lot of people who are native.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers fans will credit Dungee over Gordon for that Super Bowl that they won because it was really that team that he had built. Absolutely, I think that's right. He built the defense first. Their offense was not very good. I think they got real and lucky. They had a bunch of injuries to quarterback. And so it was remarkable that Dungee got the buck and he was as deep into the playoffs. They got to the conference championship game

with second and third stringers at quarterback. And the glaciers got very impatient and thought, well, we could have made the Super Bowl if we'd had any kind of offense. Eventually, it became disenchanted with Dunji, and it was one of the great miscalculations that an owner has ever made. They had exactly the right guy in the house, and Dunji ends up going to Indianapolis improving that he can put up more offense than anybody than any coach, with paid men, and once he cures those interceptions. So.

Well, and I'm going to end with two questions. You were lucky enough through your career to be able to observe the Lee Jane King, Chris Everett, Martina Navratilova, Steffi Graf, Anne Serena Williams, five of the most incredible tennis players who've ever played. By observing them, what did you learn about identity and what it takes to become a champion? Oh, how lucky was I, right, to be exposed to all those people, especially young. I was in my early 20s. I was just out of college when I first met Billie Jean King when I was covering one of the very first stories I ever wrote as a professional was about Martina Navarrova at the Virginia Slims of Oakland when I was

literally I think 21 years old. They were nice to young women. I tell you something they they went out of their way to be welcoming. I think they knew being a woman in a man's world being female athletes in a heavily dominated male culture of sports, made them sensitive to a young female sports writer. So they were helpful and easier to get to know than male athletes probably would have been to me otherwise. And I was profoundly influenced by all of them in slightly different ways. I remember Billie Jean King telling me,

people who bet on themselves tend to win, which was very similar to Pat Summit sentiment that most people are afraid to say that's the best I can do. They taught me to go all in, all of them. When you write about a Chris Severed or a Martina Navaritlova or a Billie Jean King, you want to meet their excellence with your own. You just don't want to have to pass it. You want to write up to the subject. And they were great examples for me as a younger person.

They were the first people that I had the opportunity to watch really closely for their methods and how they became as great as they did. Understand this. Chris Everett is five foot six and 125 pounds. Okay. She was a squirt compared to some of the people she was playing against.

The Margaret Court was over six feet tall, right? Martina Navaradolovo had two inches and 20 pounds on her. Billie Jean King is tiny, right? For one thing, great examples that what matters is precision, grace under pressure, preparation, what sorts of things,ibly well drilled in what they did. Incredibly well practiced. I watched him hit. I'd watch him go out and practice against each other.

Whenever we get furious, if for practice opponent couldn't keep the ball in play enough for her to really groove or stroke. A long answer to the question, but it's because I'm so fond of those people and I owe them so much. Well, Chris Everett, when I think about her game, she was such a huge study of being as technically on her game as she possibly could be. And I remember the way she would defeat on her game as she possibly could be. And I remember the way she would defeat a lot of the players that she went against was she allowed them to defeat themselves because she constantly wore them down by just moving them all over the court until they got into their own heads and she was able to through sheer grit and intelligence overcome some people who who were stronger, like you were saying,

athletically, but she was extremely strong mentally. Well, she was a great technical striker of the ball, and that took incredible work. There was a lot of grind and a lot of sweat behind her game because in order to put the ball so deep on the lines, the way she did and to move the ball, she could really move the ball around deep on the lines the way she did and to move the ball. She could really move the ball around with her racket. So I don't want to discount Chris's physical work and there was a very death lettucesum there that was very deceptive as well.

She was an incredibly economical athlete, efficiency as great an athletic quality as anything and she had that. She had real technical mastery over the racket. But the other thing she did have, we were talking about this not long ago actually, she said, I knew I was going to be there on every single point and every single ball, whereas other people would drift in and out with their concentration. She had to play that way. She had to be there on every single ball because she didn't have the physical gifts

of the Navratelova. It took more out of her to tell you the truth. Chrissy had to use all of her emotions, all of her focus. Navratelova could come and go in a match and still be okay. Chrissy couldn't. And so I think that's why probably Chrissy's career was a little bit shorter. But I never saw an athlete use up more of themselves in pursuit of excellence than Chris Everett. She absolutely scraped the bottom of her mental physical emotional barrel. She used everything she had.

Well, Sally, thank you for sharing that. And the last question I have for you is someone picks up this book. What are the main messages that you hope they get from it? I hope they get a new respect for athletes. I feel like athletes, we boo them and we cheer them. We call them losers sometimes. And I think we can mistreat them. But we also underestimate them and their value to us in our day to day. I hope people watch them more carefully, more empathetically, with more understanding and regard for what they really do and for what they're really demonstrating to us.

Well, Sally, thank you so much for joining us today. It was such a fun conversation and what an incredible book as well. Congratulations. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. I'm proud of it. Thank you. Hi, Thirley enjoyed that interview with Sally Jenkins and I wanted to thank Sally, Simon and

Schuster and Jill Siegel for the honor and privilege of having her here today on the show. Links to all things Sally will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com. Please use our website links if you purchase any of the books from the guests that we feature on the show. All proceeds go to supporting the show. Videos are on YouTube at both John Armiles and Passionstruck Clips. As I mentioned at the beginning, you can now catch us on the AMFM 247 National broadcast every Monday and Friday from 5 to 6 p.m. Links will be in the show notes. Avertise your deals and discount codes are in one convenient place at PassionStruck.com slash deals. I'm on LinkedIn where you can sign up for my newsletter or you can also find me on all the

social platforms at John Armiles where I post daily. You're about to hear a preview of the PassionStruck podcast interview that I did with Stephanie McNeil, a senior editor for Glamour magazine and a former senior cultural reporter for Buzzfeed News, who takes us behind the curtain into the secretive world of influencers in her brand new book Swipe Up for More inside the unfiltered lives of influencers. So many people spend so much time on Instagram and following influencers and being influenced by influencers in their shopping habits

or their parenting habits or their health habits. And I think it's something that a lot of people don't really think about in a really thoughtful way, at least until the past few years. And I wanted to dive in and really explore it because I have seen how influencers and following influencers have impacted me in so many ways and so many of my choices in terms of how I dress, how I cook, how I work out, how I parent, but there isn't a lot of actual thoughtful analysis of the industry

itself. The fee for this show is that you share it with family or friends when you find something inspirational or useful. If you know someone who loves sports, I think this episode would be terrific for them. The greatest compliment that you can give us is to share the show with those that you love and care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live with you listen. And until next week, go out there and be passion struck.

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