the bossbabe podcast - 177. The Morning Routine of an Olympian, Real Behind The Scenes + Achieving Massive Goals With Louise Hazel

Episode Date: August 4, 2021

When you’re training to be an elite, Olympic-level athlete, reaching your goals becomes a non-negotiable.  So how do you build lasting habits and make mindset shifts so you can train on such an intense level every day? And how do you set yourself up to actually win? On this week’s episode, we’re joined by Olympian + fitness expert, Louise Hazel who is sharing her behind-the-scenes, Olympic perspective on just that.  She’s unpacking her go-to morning routine, unveiling the key mindset shifts she’s made and revealing how athleticism and entrepreneurship aren’t that different after all. Links: Soul CBD: https://www.mysoulcbd.com/pages/bossbabe The Societe: bossbabe.com/joinsociete Follow:  BossBabe: @bossbabe.inc Natalie: @iamnatalie Danielle: @daniellecanty Louise Hazel: @louisehazel

For me it felt like the ultimate fulfillment. I felt full. I felt like I'd achieved everything that I came to do and that is like the pinnacle. Like it's the best feeling on earth but it's also one of the scariest places you've ever been and the reason being the question is what now? And that's when I remember calling my mum after the Olympics and telling her I'm done, I'm done. I'm not doing heptathlon anymore. And she was like, what? What do you mean?

You've done it all your life. And I'm like, yeah, no, I'm done. That was my last heptathlon. You're not going to do another one? And I think my family were way more upset about it than I was. I was done giving the sport more than I felt it was giving back at that moment. This episode is brought to you by Soul CBD. Now I want to share a little bit about my favorite CBD line because if you've been following Boss Babe for a while then you know how much we love Sol CBD and one of my favorite

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brand. So check out our episode notes to learn more about the products and access our 20% off promo code using boss babe okay so that's 20% off all soul CBD products using the code boss babe a boss babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise keep going and fighting on she is on a mission to be her best self in all areas it's just believing Confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own vision of success. Welcome to the Boss Babe podcast, the place where we share with you the real behind the scenes of building successful businesses, achieving peak performance and learning how to balance it all. I'm Danielle Canty, co-founder of Boss Babe. And today, joined by two pretty special women, we have Natalie, my co-host over there.

What a surprise. You might know her. You guys. And our first ever Olympian, Natalie. Surprise! We're pivoting. What you didn't know about Natalie, that's what this episode is about. Natalie, if you did an Olympic sport, what do you think it would have been?

Pool dancing. Let's talk to the real athletes. Let's be be honest i'm not at that level with pickleball dancing is the furthest i got with there's time my athletic career yeah this is true but louise you're a heptathlete yes 2012 yes you were in our london we're all brits here i know i know this is amazing school How to move to LA. We all came on different visas. We should cover that one time. But yeah, like I want to hear about how your journey into athletics started. So I started running when I was 10 years old. In fact earlier than that if I think about it um I guess

my first memory of running was um sports day so in the UK I don't know whether you guys have it here in the US but sports day is a big event everybody has to sprint which is weird right but and also there's a winner like there's none of this like give everyone yeah a badge when we grow up it was like there's a freaking winner there's a winner and there's a loser that's it if you didn't win then you lost and so my earliest memories were winning sports day and not only winning but also beating the boys which was a really interesting thing I'm the youngest of three children and I have two older brothers so being competitive in that environment was that came naturally to me because I was always vying for the top spot with my brothers side by side and by my side. So it wasn't until I was probably a bit older, maybe 10 years old, that I had my first exposure to actual training.

And my dad was like a really kind of avid and passionate runner when he was young. Moved to London when he was 17 which is you know very young and pretty much gave up the sport so I think there was this he was kind of vicariously living through me when he forced me to go to my local running club and explore this natural gift that I had which was speed and so yeah within maybe a year or so I was was running at national championships. I was already an area champion in the 100 meters, the 200 meters. And then I started to take on other events like the long jump, which, you know, naturally lent themselves to the speed that I had. And it wasn't until I hit, I think it was around about the age of 12, I kind of quickly outgrew the

small club that I was at. And I moved to a big club which was called Peterborough Athletic Club and they had a full 400 meter track because at that time I was only sprinting on like a you know a short um you know 100 meter racetrack and uh that was like when I hit the big time I would say when I knew I was like 12 years old stepped up to a bigger club and within a year I was competing at the national schools championships which is called English schools and I finished fourth in the 100 meters in my first year and that was a I was complete rookie and so the interesting thing to that was to step up on that stage and all of a sudden you're not you're no longer you know competing in front of your

parents and your friends parents you're competing against all of the school kids in the UK, plus all of their parents and families onlooking in a stadium in Sheffield, not too far from where you're from, in front of thousands of people. And you're put under pressure and you have to perform. And then the following year, I actually won the gold medal in the 100 meters so um yeah I think you know we we can talk about I guess that transition of how I made it then to the Commonwealth Games but being a winner and having a real winning mentality was definitely something that came naturally to me yeah and I'm really curious as well because like we talk around um setting goals

a lot right you know okay I want to achieve this in my life. I want to go into this. When did you first start feeling, well, actually like, because, you know, I feel like setting a goal to go to the Olympics is like saying, okay, I want to build a hundred million dollar business. Like you're at the freaking top of the top of the top. Like when did you allow yourself to think, do you know what, I could go to the Olympics one day?

I was 10. I love it. I was 10. So you it. I was 10. So you had your sights set on it. Yeah, I just knew. I think at school, the interesting thing is they always try to usher you into a career path, which is always into employment. And there was really no other word for what I wanted to be other than a sportswoman.

And I remember at school, there was this huge poster as I walked into the sports hall every day for my PE lessons of Denise Lewis who was the gold medal Olympic winning heptathlete for Great Britain and I remember her just looking fierce her hair was slicked back she had this like all-in-one like tight like lycra suit she looked hot it had one arm missing and I was like I want to be like that and um fast forward I don't know eight years later and I was training in Birmingham with Denise's former coach and um meeting Denise on the infield for javelin tips oh my god I have chills yeah and so when you set your sights on something um from a young age things that seem unobtainable get closer and closer year in year out year of hard work and hard work and hard work and you become closer to that goal with without even knowing it and um

but yeah it was it's not something that's unattainable for anybody. Let's talk about that though, because, you know, when you set a stream as a 10 year old to be in the Olympics and, you know, even as you're getting older, you know, it's like, yeah, one day I'm going to do this. And there might be quite a lot of kids that say that they're going to the Olympics, but you kept going and going. And I know that we've had conversations previously around what it took for you to show up when everyone else was giving up. Do you want to talk about some of those key pivots that happened in your life that really kind of like showed you that it was time to dig in? Absolutely. You know, I think the most profound moment was the loss of my father. And that was in 2008. And 2008 was an Olympic year. I was supposed to make the Olympic team for the first ever time it was Beijing both myself and Jessica Ennis who then went on to win the London

2012 Olympic Games missed 2008 Olympic Games she was out due to injury and I completely underperformed not only did I underperform that, my father passed very early on in the month of May. My lottery funding was withdrawn, which is basically your national governing body awards you funding if you have the potential to go to the Olympics. And so that validation was taken away, that support, financial support was taken away. I was finishing my final year exams at university and my kind of whole world, the whole rug just kind of was pulled from beneath my feet and I found myself completely and utterly at rock bottom and there was this pivotal moment where I had to decide who I was. Was I still the 10 year old with the dream or was I disheartened? I broken could I recover from this and I remember there being

there was no question in my mind whether my journey was going to continue knowing that it was such a big dream for myself and also for my father I knew that I had to plow on in spite of the trauma that I'd suffered and I launched into a huge kind of sponsorship campaign to kind of get my sponsorship back I took on two part-time jobs one was at Selfridges a big shopping centre similar to like Macy's here and so I worked part-time in Selfridges selling coffee machines and I worked as a sports scholarship administrator at the University of Birmingham, where I was helping the other athletes there get paid for their scholarships and stuff like that. So I learned a ton of administration in this role, which came to serve me later on in life. And then I would go to training twice a day.

So I would train in the morning. Yeah. And then I would work and then I'd come back in the evening. And that kind of came up in a conversation we had in another podcast danielle where you're saying you were really about to be at the top of your game ready to go to the olympics applying for that and then that didn't happen and you went and took a job at selfridges and somewhere else and there was no sense of entitlement the world owes me anything i'm better than this it was like seems like you were like no

I'm gonna do whatever it takes I don't get I don't care I'm gonna get there how old were you then? I'd have been 22 at that age and it was actually a very humbling experience because my performance was I would say average and it wasn't until the year that I took the two part-time jobs and then went on this fundraising mission and we called it 12 for 2012 I managed to drum up sponsorship from 12 local sponsors to not only support me for the year 2009 but then to support me all the way to 2012 so that I had the financial security to leave the work behind and focus solely on the sport. But yeah, it was humbling. But I also had my biggest breakthrough year,

the year when I was stretched beyond my limits, the year when I was programming my own training and the year when I believed in myself the most. And on paper, I shouldn't have been able to achieve what I achieved. I went from scoring a very mediocre score to coming back and coming in and booking my flight to the world championships a place where I'd never been in my life and I actually looked to my former training partner a lady called Julie Holman. Julian actually went to the Olympics in not in my place in her own

place in 2008 and when she came back from the 2008 Olympics she was retiring and I said don't retire I want you to coach me and she said but I don't know I don't know what I'm doing I've never coached anyone I said you know exactly what you're doing because we've been doing this together for the past you know five years or whatever as but as rivals you know me as an athlete and you can do this and we teamed up and we worked hard for that year 2008 right through to 2009 and I went to the world championships in 2009 and you know did personal bests in that competition and and then a year later I won the commonwealth games and I always say as well like you know when you're an entrepreneur you really have to go if you want to be successful you have to go where 90% of people

won't and that's what we had a conversation as well we're talking about training and you were kind of sharing the numbers as well for me you were like basically what happens as you're an athlete is people just start dropping off they can't go whether it's like you say training or funding or they're not willing to do two jobs and train twice a day. People just start dropping off. And so the pool becomes less and less, which I actually thought was a really interesting take on it. Do you want to explain that better than I have? Absolutely.

I think you explained it really well. I think it doesn't matter whether you're an Olympian or a businesswoman or an entrepreneur. The further you go down the line, the hurdles are not going to get any smaller. If anything, they just get bigger. And what you have to do in order to meet that hurdle where it's at is level up. And if you're not prepared or not willing to level up, then that hurdle will conquer you. And so there were a number of occasions in my athletics career where I recognized this is a level up moment. One of them was when my coach at the time, the guy that had coached Denise Lewis to her gold,

told me that he didn't want to train me full time twice a day. And I'm like, I know I have to train twice a day if I want to make it to the Olympics. Therefore, you can't be my coach. I need to find someone that will take me to that level. And so there were these um you know moments that kind of knocked at the door and I had to answer them every single time with the truth and with my best self and lean on in you know in time in a time when I was you know grieving in a time when I had

no funding in a time when I had no support system and it took the utmost perseverance to keep going and build the support network for myself but the thing that you said was was right I noticed probably around the age of 15 the athletes that I was competing against in the sprint events were just falling away they all of a sudden wouldn't turn up to training every day they weren't as committed as they they said they were or they weren't as committed when they started to lose. And this was the really interesting thing. I think a testament of your level of success is the way you react when you're losing, not when you're winning. But what is it that changes in you? And what is it that is sparked in you when the times get tough? Can you level up? Can you dig deep? Can you find that extra little part of yourself

and maintain a positive mindset in order to break through to the place where you're supposed to go and I think that's what being an Olympian is about and that's what being a female entrepreneur is about let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform Kajabi you know I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place so it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I

needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business you know. Get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students so if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial go to kajabi.com slash boss babe to claim your 30-day free trial that's kajabi.com slash boss babe I'm like having chills this entire conversation so many things that you're saying it's just it just solidifies why some people will

succeed and why some people won't because at every single stage there's a there's something there's an excuse there's something and it's always so inspiring to hear from people that see those things and are like no I'm gonna do it regardless I have a question that I've always wanted to ask an Olympian so this is a big moment for me so you were 10 year old when you decided I want to go to the Olympics for the majority of people their big life goal is something that they'll achieve when they're 50 60 70 very much later on in their life for you you, you got there very, very quickly. Well, 17 years. Yeah. But in comparison to most people's life goals, right? Like they have this goal of retirement or things that they're thinking about or building a business of X size and they are doing things to get their stepstones for a long time you got there when you're you were you know

pretty young what was it like to hit that goal to to hit the goal that that 10 year old little girl wanted to hit you hit it and you were still so young and you have this whole life ahead of you what did that feel like that is a great question Natalie I've never been I've been waiting I've never been asked um I think for a lot of people for me it felt like the ultimate fulfillment I felt full I felt like I'd achieved everything that I came to do and that is like the pinnacle like it's the best feeling on earth but it's also one of the scariest places you've ever been and the reason being the question is what now and that's when I remember calling my mum um after the olympics and telling her I'm I'm done I'm not doing heptathlon anymore and she was like what what do you mean you've done it

all your life and I'm like yeah no I'm done that was my last heptathlon you're not going to do another one and I think my family were way more um upset about it than I was I was done giving the sport more than I felt it was giving back at that moment I'd achieved already you know a gold medal at the commonwealth games like this is a piece of of armor that is a culmination all of my hard work blood sweat and tears a piece of metal that I'll be able to pass on to generations upon generations of my family. And also my name will go down in the history books as the Commonwealth gold medalist in the heptathlon. And so I was like, well, what more is there to go? I've done

the Olympic Games. If I compete or try and hang on for another four years and go to Rio in 2016, unless I go and win the thing, my life doesn't change. And also the other thing was, I always had this mindset of track running and sports and business. And I said to myself, I'm a London 2012 Olympian. This is as marketable as I'm ever going to be. So this is the maximum, like my earnings this year, this is going to be the maximum that I'm ever going to earn so this is the maximum like my earnings this year this is going to be the maximum that I'm

ever going to earn in this sport and as I started to see the sponsors pull out one by one and then go and focus on the Brazilian athletes I knew that we'd had our run and I knew it was kind of time to bow out gracefully I think it's really important to know when to go out on top and know when your your time has come and that's what I was going to lean on it's just like it's really important to know when to go out on top and know when your time has come. And that's what I was going to lean on. It's just like it's really important as personal brands as well. Like, you know, you were your business. And just being able to look at that very analytical

can be actually really challenging. So like amazing that you're able to have that. Like, hang on a minute. I'm going to just take emotion aside from this for a second and just see what's on paper and what's going to happen is really, really important. And just thinking about taking emotion out, I cannot imagine what it was like to walk out

in front of your home country with millions of people watching. How on earth did you deal with those nerves? Like, I'm just like everything you've been doing for four years or 17 years if you want to look at like that way like gearing up to this moment like well what was your routine for that the interesting thing is um at the olympic games or any championships what you'll have um which you won't know about um is the athletics track and then underneath the stands

is almost like a corridor that runs all the way underneath um the seating area oh i didn't know that you're getting some intel exactly so i like it let's take for example the uh 200 or whatever for the the olympic games they hold you in these little pig pens underneath the stadium and so you can hear the crowd warring with whatever's going on outside it's like someone jumps big and it's a huge roar of emotion and you're there and you're just like okay and you know eight minutes we're going to be on the track setting up our blocks and for the London Olympic Games obviously it was a home championships which made it that much more special but I didn't realize how special until I was under the stadium and I remember because I saw the girl I spoke to the girl on Instagram the

other day I had my rucksack on and my head's down because I'm focusing on my event and as I walk through the tunnel I start to see all of the girls that I competed against that were now volunteers that didn't manage to get to the Olympics and compete. And I bumped into a girl called Neda and she's like, go on, Louise, go get them. And Neda and I had, you know, competed against one another. We'd been teammates. And then you would walk past, you know, another volunteer who didn't know. Go on, Louise.

And so you're walking down this tunnel and say the tunnel is maybe like three or four minutes. And there's a person just cheering you on every single time and then I remember when we actually came out for the hurdles which was our first event and the heptathlon was the literally the first track event and so I was the first Olympic athlete from Great Britain to enter the stadium in London 2012 and when they saw my vest the crowd went insane because obviously the anticipation and they waited for this moment it was like gladiators stepping into the arena it erupted and I was like oh shit like everyone is watching you and you cannot in your peripheral vision ignore the big

screens with your face on you just can't you're looking at them you're checking your makeup should have done my hair better that day and all of a sudden you're lining up and it's set and the moment passes like that yeah it's intense do you do any like breathing exercises before i'm already nearly in tears and I am I've got goosebumps and what's crazy is I literally watched you you did I watched you yeah I didn't know you at the time I didn't know you at the time but yeah you're like oh Daniel's watching I'm gonna meet her yeah I was waving to you in the crowd no but like it was everyone in the country was just like behind all the UK athletes and we were watching and supporting and every country was just like behind all the UK athletes.

And we were watching and supporting. And every country was probably doing the same. Like I still watch the Olympics now, you know, even if it's not in the UK. So did you let that psych you out at all? Like I felt like sometimes when I'm going on stage, I'm like, okay, don't think about it. I'm just talking to this, like, I'm just talking to Natalie. Even this podcast, I'm just talking to Natalie and Louise right now. So like how, like, I don't know how you block that out so I think the weird thing it's it's for me it's excitement and it's a thrill and so being on the big stage is a place where I feel the most

at ease and the most at home because I feel drawn to it it's almost like a threat you know like a moth to the flame um but there's that moment before you race where there's complete silence and you can hear a pin drop and um again that's the moment where you have the opportunity to potentially doubt yourself because you're now being asked to react to that gun and not hesitate and not preempt the gun because exactly and so it's a lot like business it's about timing it's about knowing when to push knowing when to hold back literally knowing when to push your luck and ask for more or ask you know ask for more than you deserve or knowing when the right time is to make your move or your pitch and so sport is very much for me like it's an art form and the timing of a race it's like for

exactly you know the hurdles and even the 200 you can go out hard even in a sprint race and if you go out too hard you tighten up and so the key to running a perfect race or executing especially when there's tons of pressure is like a relaxed aggression and flow and finding what that flow mode is. And so there are tons of techniques that I used to use. A lot of them was positive self-talk or even just I would have these patterns. So for example, in the hurdles, it was short first ride, drive, drive, drive.

And that to me was a very calming mechanism. Yeah, it's very centering and so I knew exactly how I had to execute the race if I just went back and repeated this one thing to myself and did you have any specific routines or rituals that you would do before a race so the night before um this is a funny one I would always like I'd have the what I call the big shave so um maybe three days out from a competition I'd have the what I call the big shave so um maybe three days out from a competition I'd kind of let all my body hair grow out and I'm quite like you know fair skin and dark haired so I would basically shave arm hair body hair anything that could be

caught on camera it's going and then um after the big shave because because you typically, you might be sharing a room or whatever, and then I would put my kit on, and then in the bathroom, I would just find a mirror, and then I would just kind of do some affirmations, and just really visualize, like, my whole competition, I'd be like, this is how the hurdle's going to go, this is how the high jump's going to feel, and so I would see myself executing and winning and performing well and the timing and the rhythm and I would play it through. It was bloody exhausting.

Like when you're doing a mental heptathlon before you've done one. But so powerful and something that majority of sports people do do. We talk about that and how you can do that in business as well. Like whenever we're speaking, I really try and like visualize

what it's going gonna be like walking out onto stage like what the light's gonna be like we've been doing a lot of virtual and just really kind of like prepping yourself and i think that's a tool that's taught to a lot of sports people but not really transitioned into other areas of your life and you really can do it yeah my husband was a professional gamer and he said the same thing before every game um when he'd go out he would visualize going out on stage playing the entire game in his head all the little things that was going to happen and he said that generally is exactly how it went because he was just so good at visualizing it okay you guys i'm just interrupting this episode real quick because i don't want you to miss out

on this you're getting to know louise pretty well and you're probably understanding that she is a pretty phenomenal woman and you're probably thinking, how do I be more like her? How do I have this mindset of determination? How do I become not necessarily an Olympic athlete but how do I achieve the goals that I go after? And let me tell you, we have just the place because we twisted Louise's arm. We were like, Louise, you have so many amazing things. You know exactly how to set goals. You know how to create annual plans. You know how to identify your end game. You know how to increase your mental endurance. We would love you to teach this to the women of the society. So drum roll, please. Louise has actually come in and taught a masterclass called Learn Goal Setting

from a Gold Medalist because so many of you will set goals and you just want to achieve them. That's the facts of it and that's not how we play in the society. We want to equip you with the tools that you need to make sure not only you set the goals but you actually achieve them too. So if this sounds like something that's up your alley, if you're like, you know what, I've been faffing around for so long wanting to start that business, wanting to achieve that next mindset plan, like all these things that you want to do. If you want to understand how to show up for yourself daily, if you want to maximize your chances of success, if you want to create a winning mindset and you want to learn how to apply theories of periodization to you and your business, then join us. All you need to do is sign up at bossbabe forward slash join society. It's less than a latte a month, you guys. Okay. So that's bossbabe forward slash join society and join us in there. So without further ado, I'm going to let us dive back into this episode with Louise

because there's so much more to learn. But in the meantime, make sure you follow that link and join us in there. of kind of self-reinvention at that age yeah what was that like because you said you called your parents you're like I'm done so that was like closing one chapter and opening this full blank chapter where you have a ton of experience behind you but it must have felt like who am I now who am I without being this the athlete doing you know training twice a day who am I yeah absolutely I think a lot of athletes fall into that trap of identity crisis who am I now I'm not running now I'm not throwing a ball and for me it was quite the opposite I was like I'm more than an athlete and this is why I choose to leave the sport or dump the sport the sport isn't dumping me and so there was something very empowering about that whereas I'd seen other teammates get dumped by the sport or have to leave through injury which is the

often when you find the saddest stories in sport is when it's not your choice and so I would say to people um in business if it comes to work or whatever like leaving that career yes yeah yeah take ownership of your own career make your own decisions um and do them preemptively think about and keep your eye on the future but i think knowing that i was more than an athlete and i somehow had this feeling i had more to give and more to offer the world and it wasn't until i'd retired from sport that i was able to sit down with myself and let it come and the answer came in this my programming you know the skill that I was left behind was this weird and innate ability to to program training programs and before I even had a personal training qualification

I was like I need to get everything that I've learned about training down on paper. And I created a plan that was 12 months long and it was called the podium effect. And you now know it as Slay. So that's where the Slay empire began. Absolutely. And what's that journey looked like? A hot mess. As with any business, it's like a squiggle.

There's no real rhyme nor reason there has only really been my overarching vision and that was to create sustainable training for women across the world to get women to understand that there is there's exercise and there's training exercise is very unstructured can be very random can be very enjoyable um but it also keeps you in this hamster wheel of no progress in fact you will see progress through doing exercise initially and then you'll start to feel frustrated and um you know all of the people that i was coming into contact with through personal training were feeling frustrated and i'm like the reason you're feeling frustrated is because you don't have a plan training on the other hand is structured um it can be rigid but it can be

very um enjoyable and still very fun because you're constantly learning how to self-improve and so for those people who are very goal-driven um and always looking to kind of go one better um always looking to upskill I would say the thing that hasn't really been presented to them is the option to train and improve their bodies. And there are so many other benefits, you know, mental, physical and social benefits of engaging in training over exercise. I mean, you know, we've met up a couple of times

because I literally came and trained with you, which was so fun. I'm literally moving so I can be closer to Louise for training um I thought that was very brave by the way I would be terrified to train with an Olympian well exactly most people are I was like there's a bit of trepidation but this one I was just I mean I just like I'm one of those people that I'm like I'm gonna say this opportunity. You don't get this opportunity very often. I'm coming along. But what you said to me, which really made me think, and I actually have not heard you explain it, that exercise and training, and I'm definitely that one who's exercised and

felt like they've not got anywhere. But you said to me, you're like, okay, when you train for the Olympics, you say, this is my target. And then you work backwards from there there which I feel like not many trainers actually do with people you don't say okay what are your targets let's work this back week on week on week on week okay this is where we're starting so this is what it needs to look like absolutely penny drop for me I was like oh all these years this is where I've been going up wrong so yeah I'm moving closer so I can train so So you can slay. Yes, I'm slay, exactly.

But yeah, that sense of, you know, setting your sights on a goal. And then once you set your sights on the goal, everything else that you need to do falls into place. And I hate weight goals, but let's face it, like, you know, most women set themselves a weight goal, losing 10 pounds. Great. I want to lose 10 pounds in a month. Okay, great. That breaks down to like two pounds a week. How are we want to lose 10 pounds in a month okay great that breaks down to like two pounds a week how are we going to lose two pounds a week what how what's the calorie expenditure what does your diet need to look like how many you know what does your workout need to look like do you just want to lose the 10 pounds or do you want to gain strength because that's a

completely different program that might take us um two months instead of one month and so you know very much of being able to map back is where my brain is and it's a geeky weird weird kind of skill that I never thought I would would end up with and a purpose that I never thought that I would be here to deliver and I was like oh like I never thought that I would be an Olympian and a gold medalist but then I would use all of that knowledge that I'd learned and absorbed from all of the coaches that I was around and then create my own thing from it and then be able to touch so many women in so many different ways and empower them to press forward with their health and fitness goals. But in a way that gives them strength. And empowers them in their everyday lives too.

It's, yeah, I feel very privileged and very blessed. And the beauty of it is, like you say that's a transferable skill. Not just from like physical exercise. But you're teaching a society masterclass on this. Because, you know, it is so powerful. Like setting those targets and working back and understanding. Okay, what's going to come up for me okay what about resilience and i know like in the masterclass you're really sharing it you know these skills that you've learned as an athlete but actually really really play into being an ambitious woman whether you're

building your own business or you're wanting to do that career move because it's like you feel like i'm getting a broken record i've said this so many times but you've got to be able to go where no one else can go and all of these things yeah and you have to have that mental strength to do that absolutely and i always whenever somebody walks into the gym um i'm always sizing them up and i'm thinking oh yeah you're a heptathlete that i competed against you're a shot putter that i competed against and so um when you talk about transferable skills I there's a part of me that like hates the term transferable skills I just think skills do you know what I mean because you're either aggressive or you're not do you know what I mean you're either organized or you're not your skills

are complete and that doesn't mean that you're not other things. It's like knowing exactly what your skills are and leaning into them in every single area of your life. If you're highly organized, then you can like highly organize your fridge. You can highly organize like your clothing to go and work out. And, you know, these things will lend itself. It's more a case of, are you necessarily, are you showing up here in your working life organized? And are you showing up as a hot mess when you hit the gym?

And so really it's very much about leaning into your skillset and knowing exactly what makes you like a G, like what makes you stand out from everybody else and lean into that because I never in my mind once said that I was a shot putter I always said I was a heptathlete the shot put was just one of the heptathlon events you know I had to do it and I had to be good enough at it in order to win in the heptathlon and so I needed to show up in the shot put as if I was the best shot putter in the world, even though I knew I wasn't.

And what does training look like for you now? I'm really curious. Good question, Nat. Not as good as it was when I was training for the Olympics. I think one of the things that is, you know, is my heart, is being able to serve other people. And I feel so privileged to be able to do that. But as a result of serving other people, I think serving myself often takes the backseat. And so I'm now at that place in my life where I'm trying to find the daily balance of serving myself and filling my own cup and keeping it full so that I can pour into others every single day and then also pour into into the business as well and so I don't think that we ever fully figure this out because I think that that balance and the the amount of

pouring changes it can change week to week it can change day to day but being very mindful of the fact that it's really important for me to keep my my cup full so that I can change day to day but being very mindful of the fact that it's really important for me to keep my my cup full so that I can serve people to the best of my ability is something that I hope to kind of keep nurturing and growing so yeah I love that I think it was such a like good quality to have in life I feel like very much what goes around comes around as well like you have that good energy and it comes back speaking of i really want to ask you a bit more juicy gossip about the olympics because it is going on now so i want to know this olympic village malarkey like what what is going on in there right now what do you think like i know whatever you can imagine is it really as scandalous as they make it out or is actually everyone on their

best behavior that times 10 so I have to say so one of the I don't know whether you know we've all heard stories about the Olympic Village they're all true um so in the Olympic Village say for example in London 2012 we had our residential building I remember um Prince William Kate and Harry turned up one day to kind of visit all of us athletes anyway long story short london 2012 we had our residential building i remember um prince william kate and harry turned up one day to kind of visit all of us athletes anyway long story short across the road we had like um our medical center where our treatment was physiotherapies um a little gym and then we had like a social area but in the medical center there was a bowl and the bowl was full of condoms no yeah and uh that bowl was empty within about two days no yeah and so i think one of the kind of rites of passage in the olympic games is that

everyone seems to think that it's going to be this absolute like orgy yes this complete orgy and so big orgy exactly and it is competitive um i'm not going to tell you which nation comes out on top excuse the pun but um the reality there's a specific nation that comes out on i couldn't possibly divulge um but is there one couldn't reveal my sources what clarifies that they come out on top or not? So the interesting thing is, so there's a natural kind of hierarchy. When you think about sports and the nature of competition, there are natural alphas. There are alpha males, there are alpha females.

When you put all of those alphas in one village amongst the best athletes of the world, it becomes a breeding pot. And what happens is, you know, I think the swimming and the um gymnastics is first so as the competitions start to conclude the parties start to happen yeah so what happens in london for example is you finish your competition and you have a pass which allows you back into the village and back to compete and um it also allows you into a number of nightclubs

and so every night once you finish competing, obviously, you would take your Olympic pass and it would get you into a number of nightclubs across town, but you would gather in groups of friends from rival nations or whatever. And often parties would happen and people would go out and get drunk and have a good time. And then there were tales of a very well-known sprinter

having multiple women um back to his hotel room you could probably google it at one or guess uh yeah i think there was a whole team i think of swedish sprinters at one point female sprinters oh my god that is hilarious and so there's just you know rumors and it's very entertaining um who knows what's true and what's false? So it's just a last sport to go. Good for them, though. They've worked hard for this. Four years, perhaps.

Listen, I'm all for it. You've got to take care of yourself. Wait, is it true, though, that you really shouldn't be having sex before your event? Well, this was the interesting thing. So I remember being, I don't know whether it was Olympics or maybe it was the World Championships, and often a lot of the propositions go on in the food in the canteen. And I remember a proposition that I received was, you know, we should hang out tonight, basically. And I was just like, no, no one does that thing before competition.

Oh, no, it's been proven that it's really good for women. It's actually bad for men so you're good oh okay i've heard that too actually exactly so even you know there's this bargaining that goes on where you're just like i'm still i'm still good like even if this is going to make me run twice as fast i'm good okay i'm going to press you on this like country thing like what do you mean someone comes out so let's put it this way let's look at the top athletes in the world typically um tend to come from the usa okay so the usa are amongst the worst team players when it comes to the sex olympics good for them i'm waiting for that the

types of sports you can imagine like the sprinters testosterone those power events i need to get myself to an olympic camp just kidding you're married just seems like fun um so which sport is last in the olympics because i know you watch the olympics in a whole new light going like oh those swimmers are done they're're getting laid tonight. You know what they're getting up to. And the poor, like, is it like fields? Like track and field? I don't know whether we're last. I guess the relays. I feel like the relays conclude the Olympics, do they?

Those poor sprinters in the relays. They must have a lot of tension pent up. Yeah, exactly. The reality of it is they're there for that whole kind of two weeks and, you know, they're the last to compete so what happens after that big party i just want to be in a camp to observe this it just seems like hilarious well i will give you this one of the best after parties i've seen and witnessed was the world championships in 2009 um and this was the year when usain bolt broke the world record you know

the one where he's looking around but there's no one there yeah um blue track anyway i think jessica and i yeah we just completed the heptathlon so we were literally on the start line of that race we were on the track when we saw that world record blow and i remember duane chambers our athlete was in lane one so we're screaming one duane but we're not really because we're watching usain yeah of course anyway the night after because obviously smash those world records and then um so it was a party and we turned up to this nightclub in berlin flash the passes usain's um agent was there ricky great guy he's like girls come on up vip of course it's vip we walked up to the vip there was platters of mcdonald's chicken nuggets and fries

and then I was just like what the this is nuts I've never seen anything like it but obviously at the time Usain was talking so much about how when he goes to foreign countries I'm just sticking with McDonald's because that's what I know it's not gonna upset my stomach I thought that was the pinnacle he then got up and DJ'd for two hours. What? Got up and DJ'd. And if you've had the pleasure of attending a Usain Bolt party, then it's an event you'll never forget. He's a lot of fun.

He's a great guy. I'll get that on my vision board. I haven't had an invitation. There's still time. There is. This was so fun. I felt like I'm going gonna be watching the olympics in a whole new light quite honestly i really am louise where can everyone find you where can they

find out about slay absolutely so we offer online training uh the slay challenge which is amazing by the way which is our 21 day slay challenge it takes place once a month um so look out for details of that or you can head over to our, www.slaychallenge.com. You can always find me on Instagram, firing off inspirational tweets. Thanks to these girls. My content game is going through the roof. You're an IIK consumer. Absolutely.

We also have a free trial. If anybody literally wants to just jump in and try that. Again, same website, slaychallenge.com. And we'll be dropping some really interesting products coming very, very soon. So keep your eyes peeled on our social media channels. I'm at Louise Hazel. We're going to drop the links below and put a link to your society masterclass as well. I can't wait to dive into this masterclass. Oh, my God. I'm so excited. Louise, thank you so so much You're so welcome you