The Food Medic - S4 E6 - Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill

Episode Date: June 19, 2020

On this episode, Dr Hazel is joined by Olympic champion and three-times world champion heptathlete Dame Jessica Ennis Hill. Hazel chats to Jessica about her incredible career as an Olympic athlete, injuries and setbacks, announcing her retirement, how her day-to-day has changed - including her training, her new app, and being a mum to two young kids. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and a very big welcome back to the Food Medic podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Hazel Wallace. I hope everyone is doing okay and navigating lockdown as well as they can. It has been a challenging few weeks and as time goes on, I know motivation can dip and we can all feel a little bit fed up of not being able to do the things we want to do or go the places we want to go. Well, hopefully this week's episode will help you find that motivation again as I am joined by Olympic champion and three times world champion hip-athlete Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill. Now this woman needs no introduction and if you watch the London 2012 Olympics you will know just why. That incredible moment, along with her winning the

World Championships in Beijing in 2015, just 10 months after returning to training after the birth of her son Reggie, are in her words her proudest and greatest achievements as an athlete. Today Jessica is still incredibly busy, running around after two young children and commentating on major athletics events with the BBC and working as an ambassador with leading brands. When she's not doing that, she's in her garage gym devising circuits for herself and the Genus app, which boasts three different programs, Genus Pregnancy, Genus Postnatal and Genus Fitness. On this episode, I chat to Jessica about her incredible career in athletics, her injuries and setbacks, announcing her retirement and how her

day-to-day has changed, including her training and being a mum to two young kids. Well, thank you, first of all, for giving up your time. I know you must be super busy. The first thing I would love to know is whether you were always into sports from a young age and at what point did you think or maybe your family or maybe your coach think that this is what you could be really good at and that you should be doing kind of as something for the foreseeable future? Well I kind of you know me and my family always kind of joke about it. My mum says that she sent me and my sister off to a summer camp in the summer holidays for two weeks, because it was cheap childcare. And, you know, it was just a way to

kind of burn off so much energy for me and my sister. And that was really like our first introduction to sport really and athletics so it was literally purely by coincidence that you know my mom and dad thought athletics would be a fun thing for us to do in the summer holidays and and they took us down and from that point onwards I kind of never kind of really left the track you know I was age nine when I started and from that point I started training once a week I was asked if I wanted to train a little bit more I was then asked if I wanted to do competitions and it was like a slow kind of burner but it was just always progressing it was always something that has been a really

massive part of my life from such an early age really. Yeah absolutely and then you kind of I guess in your young age you started training quite I guess you started taking it quite seriously didn't you yeah I think when I first began athletics it was obviously my first taste of athletics so I just loved you know all the events I loved you know running around the track I loved the excitement of trying to win a medal and trying to be the best and being competitive with everyone there and then I suppose it wasn't really till the age of about um I'd say about 14 or 15 where I saw a completely different side to athletics so whereas before it

was just a massive hobby it was fun it was a social thing that I loved doing at the age of 14 and 15 I kind of saw that there perhaps could be a career in this for me and that you know I started to look at championships you know whether that was junior championships at that stage and then you know the whole olympics thing became really apparent to me at that age and yeah that's where it became really exciting and the the prospect of having athletics in my career became a little bit more real at that stage yeah and I mean reading through all of your accomplishments that everyone's very aware of is is amazing and I'm sure there's so many that stick out on your list of like that was a pinch me

moment but is there any particular moment for you that you can say was your ultimate career highlight um I think I mean you have so many ups and downs through you know your sporting career and um I've been very fortunate to have some great highlights but I suppose if I was to pick I'd probably pick two standout highlights for me and obviously London 2012 there's no way that couldn't be a highlight it was the most incredible year of my life and those two days of competition just ran so smoothly for me and you know I was able to produce my absolute best on the two days where it absolutely mattered and it was just such a huge opportunity that I was able to grab with both hands so I think yeah my my achievements and my performances within that year at the at the London Olympics and then for me having my son in 2014 and and having a small break from athletics

and then coming back into athletics and having so many people that kind of doubted me and didn't believe that I could be back at my absolute best and that following year I was able to win the world championships in Beijing and that was just such a huge sense of achievement and such huge satisfaction knowing that it had been such a difficult journey really you know over those past few months to get back to where I needed to be and I'd become a mother and my life was completely different I was just consumed with all these emotions of of my newborn baby but I still had that determination to go and want to be the best in the world again so yeah those two achievements really stand out for me and I'm yeah very very proud of those two moments. Yeah amazing I could just imagine it must have been just spine tingling because watching it it was so

it's just amazing but amongst all of your kind of achievements and goals you've also come up against some challenges and setbacks and including injuries and things like that without I guess going into specifics what mechanisms did you use to overcome them because I imagine there's been times where you've been training for something and then you come up against a know, you're very, very lucky if you go through your career and don't have any setbacks or any injuries and everything goes exactly the way you wanted it to go. That rarely happens. And I think we all have those moments. And I've absolutely had so many of them where, you know, I felt in great shape, I've been performing well, and then I'm struck with an injury, or I, you know, I feel like I'm performing at my best but I'm not quite where I want to be and I'm having to take a step back and it's so frustrating you know

you you just want to be the best you can be and when injuries and things get in the way to stop you from achieving your goal it can be really difficult and for me in 2008 was the you know it was the hardest year for me because it was olympic year it was going to be my first olympics and I picked up a horrible foot injury where I had three stress fractures in my foot and was basically told that my olympics was over before it had even started and I had to kind of go away and like recoup and trust in you know everybody around me that they would get me back to you know my absolute best performances and I think it's those days where you have those you know setbacks and those real lows and real disappointments that you fully appreciate what you've achieved to that point and also you have that you know that massive hunger

that massive drive to push on and prove to everyone else but also to yourself that you can overcome those hurdles and those barriers and be even better than you were before. Yeah absolutely and I mean you did prove that and then you made the decision to retire after the Rio Olympics in 2016 I can imagine just saying that out loud and telling the world was a huge I guess obstacle in itself to overcome did you feel nervous to do it or were you just excited and feeling like I'm ready for the next chapter I've had an amazing career and I'm ready to move on yeah I, I think I was really, really fortunate to be at that stage in my career. And I think after I had my son, I kind of had in my mind that I wanted to get back to my best and do one more Olympics. And if I could do that and, you know,

hopefully pick up a medal, then I would be absolutely so happy and so ready to call it a day. And I think I just knew and you know some of the members of my team my coach felt that I could go on for one more year he was like just do one more year go to one more world championships um but I just had that feeling of I'd done all that I wanted to achieve within my sport and that I didn't have that massive drive and that massive motivation to, you know, to put all that energy, all that physical work, all that mental work into going for another Olympics or even just another year, another world championships. So I knew that for me, that was the time that I just had to, yeah, happily walk away on my own terms, knowing that injury hadn't forced me out of sport,

you know, no other reason had forced me to stop it was purely my decision to say oh I've had a fantastic career I feel very fortunate I am injury free I can still you know walk and function properly like a lot of athletes struggle to do at the ends of their careers and was able to yeah move on to the next phase of my life really and it was a really exciting time yeah and I mean fitness is still a huge part of your life and we can see that like from your Instagram but also through your Genes app as well obviously when you were an athlete you were doing multiple events so I can imagine you had extremely varied and intense training do you still train in a manner that's varied or have you completely changed how you exercise and train no I I mean it's completely different in a way because when

I was you know a competing athlete full-time athlete I would train twice a day pretty much every day I would do three weight sessions a week which would be be like two, two and a half hour long sessions. I'd do plyometrics. I'd be running every other day. I'd be doing all my individual events as well. So all the technical work and it was, you know, it was full on, it was nonstop training. And I suppose now in my life, you know, I absolutely don't have that time to do that level of training with two children and everything else that's going on in my life at the minute yeah so I suppose I've taken some really key principles from my training I love doing circuits and that's what I've included in my app um I still love running I love doing hill runs and I suppose I just wanted to take all the really positive tough sessions

from what I used to do but kind kind of just change them, adapt them a little bit to make them shorter. So they fit into like my new life really, and how, you know, how much time I have and how much energy and motivation I have to train now. So I train in a very, very different way. Yeah. But I think most people then relate to that in that, you know, you just mentioned you have to fix it around your own schedule you may have to shorten your sessions but maybe make them more intense um and I think for a lot of people that's the struggle it's fitting it in especially like you said when you've got two kids so I'm interested to know what a day in the life looks like for you now I guess it's going to be

slightly different because we're in lockdown we're slightly slightly restricted. But in terms of your day to day, what's it like being a mum running an app, being a businesswoman, being a spokeswoman? I mean, I can't really remember those days. It seems like such a long time ago now when we were kind of, you know, out the house and doing our normal kind of week but yeah so my son's at school so I try and do as many school runs um I take my daughter to nursery she does two days a week and I fit in my work when they're both at school and nursery so that allows me to work on all the content stuff that we do for the genus app and work on all the pregnancy stuff which I'm really really passionate about

and that was you know a huge part of why i decided to develop the app and then i still work with some fantastic um companies that i've you know worked with throughout my career so like some adidas and vitality and santander and people like that so i have some great opportunities to do you know some really fun things with them and then I try and fit in all the BBC commentating that I've been doing recently which has been so much fun because I've I've been able to you know sit there and actually watch the amazing athletics and those amazing performances that you don't normally get to see when you're competing because you're in your own individual bubble so it's been really really nice

to to travel a bit and you know watch the next generation of athletes coming through so yeah weeks are very very different now and I have such variety and it's just nice to have opportunities to do different things and you know be at home to spend you know this really important time while my kids are still really young and growing up and changing so much yeah absolutely and it's it's really nice that you're able to stay in the sports world but offer something different and I guess you know exactly what's going through those athletes minds when they're you know going out to perform and um I can imagine it's a nice feeling kind of looking back on what you've been through but also relating to what they're going through. It's so nice. It's so nice because like you say, it's that feeling of actually when I'm sat on the sidelines

watching the heptathlon or whatever event it might be, I still feel that adrenaline and that nervous energy that the athletes are feeling. And it's really nice to be, you you know from that kind of standpoint now just you know watching on and being able to talk about how they might be experiencing the event and you know what their lead-up's been like and just some of the kind of behind the scenes things that you don't often see you know as a spectator when you're watching the performances on the track um you know so much happens behind the closed doors of the warm-up track and you know the media zone and all the different various things you have to do as an athlete before you

conform yeah absolutely and obviously you've been in this your entire life and probably have lots of experiences to share with us but do you think kind of as a woman and an athlete that gender equality in sport is still a big issue and how can we encourage more young girls and more women to get in sport and kind of raise the profile of all these incredible women who are in sport yeah I think there is still an equality and I think that obviously has been in the past and I think there are and there has been plenty of steps to try and you know reduce that gap between the genders and to kind of understand how we can promote you know women's sport on a much higher level and I think for me it's about having it's obviously about having the funding and the marketing to be able to put behind these sports and you know some of

the sports are minority as well but also being able to create behind these sports and you know some of the sports are minority as well but also being able to create fantastic role models and I think you know we created so many amazing role models off the back of the London 2012 Olympics across a range of different sports that young girls might not have been exposed to before and I think being able to do that to create those role models to then go back to schools inspire young girls you know give them the opportunity to get involved at grassroots level is such an important thing and I think you know year on year we you know we find more ways to to make those improvements and to you know to make sure that female sports are showcased in the best

way possible. Yeah, absolutely. I think role models is really important and just kind of shows girls that, you know, women are athletes too and can do similar sports and can excel in them as well. So it's really amazing to see, I guess, sportswomen like yourself on Instagram and on really accessible platforms where people can have an insight into your life and how you train and things like that and I guess your app Janice also gives people an opportunity to maybe grasp an insight into how you train now

and I think that's what would be great to like chat about next because this app is obviously developed by you and I'd be interested to know kind of what was your drive behind it and who did you create it for? So it was something I was thinking about for a while once I'd retired and I wasn't sure kind of what exactly I wanted to get into and what I was passionate about what really you know meant the most to me and I think having retired and having had Reggie you know in the midst of my career and then going back to competing the whole exercise in during pregnancy the support and physical exercises and all the various things you have to do postnatally

were so so important in me being able to get back to the shape that I needed to and also mentally be prepared to move forward and to take on new challenges and I think those opportunities and those amazing people that supported me during that time really made me feel like I want to kind of help as many pregnant women going through this you know phase in their life and postnatally where you know your body's changing so much you're often really nervous about exercising and knowing what you should do and how you should do it and I kind of just wanted to develop an app that could create this journey to support women through these different phases

of their lives to you know to continue exercising to feel confident in exercising and also with the fitness section for it to be relative to you know to our lives now when we've got children when you don't have time to do everything and go out for a long hour run you just need to you know fit in really efficient you know really kind of intense exercises in a really short amount of time so kind of that was my inspiration and it's been fantastic to kind of make it a reality and and develop the app and there's still so much going on behind the scenes so I'm really excited for the future of Janice as well yeah absolutely I mean there's so many different fitness apps and fitness programs and

things like that but you're absolutely right and that there's not really anything catered towards women who are pregnant or postnatal and I think there's also obviously like a lot of concern for women questions around that time whether it's safe for them to train what they can do what they can't do but you get lots of support from physios and it's kind of like a big team of you who work on it right yeah and that's the thing I think you know I was very fortunate to have you know fantastic physio a doctor and a great coach and great support team around me who really were all so passionate about getting me back to fitness and doing everything the right way and most women don't have access to even

going to have a physio once a week so it's just being able to provide that extra support and to help women understand their own bodies and how they're changing and things they can look out for things that they can easily correct themselves by doing simple stretches or really low level core stability exercises but just being able to provide yeah some more support during that time because it is a crazy time in your life where everything changes and you perhaps feel like you are lacking a bit of control so to put that control back to those women during that stage in their life is I think it's really important yeah absolutely and really important for their health and onward health as well when you had your own children did you feel there was a huge amount of pressure for you to get back to I guess your pre-pregnancy body or your fitness level I imagine with your first

child so your son because you were still you know doing sport there must have been a massive amount of pressure for you to get back into your kind of pre-pregnancy fitness yeah I think I kind of was quite naive at that stage and I you know in my head I was like okay I'm pregnant you know I can't wait to meet my son and have this gorgeous baby in my life and then I want him to be part of this journey of me going back into training and you know I'll bring him down to the track and he'll just sit in his buggy at the side while I do my session and I had no idea of you know how challenging it would be and you know how hard it would be to get back to full fitness and

how much your body actually changes during that time so it was a massive eye-opener for me and again I was really fortunate to have a fantastic physio and coach and team around me who knew the exact right approach to getting back to full fitness and by by no means at all, did they rush anything, it was all about taking time, we'll set these long term goals. But, you know, it's all about hitting these targets before we get there. And that was really the massive foundation for why I was able to go on and perform the way I did the following year at the World Championships. So yeah, and then when I had my daughter, I was kind of back into that same, like phase in your life where your body's changed so much. But this time, I didn't have my coach,

I didn't have my physio or anyone there saying, right, training now, let's get going. So I had to kind of find my own way back into fitness. And, you know, I massively relied on everything that I learned the first time I was pregnant and all the exercises that I did. And kind of just took a really slow process back into exercise, knowing that, you know, my body would go back to, you know, something similar to what it was before, you know, if I just took my time and did everything in the right order and the right process. Yeah. And I think that's the the thing it's like taking the time and and not putting any expectations because having a baby is such an amazing thing in terms of what your body physically has to go through yeah there's just so much pressure from particularly

from a just kind of an appearance point of view but I like that kind of looking at the things that you talk about even on the blog is that it's not kind of it shouldn't be something that's rushed and it the most important thing is your health above everything and I think that's like a message that we really need to hammer home to women who are going through this at the moment and may feel pressures for whatever reason is that you know this is a huge physiological change to your body and your your mind and everything that that goes along with it it's nice to hear that you didn't rush yourself you didn't put any expectations on yourself and you just kind of set some achievable goals and yeah and I think that

yeah and I think you know I think for many women it's it's so normal to feel that pressure you know initially after you've had your baby whether you're going back into a career or whatever you choose to do you still feel that overwhelming feeling of I want to get back to where I was I want my body to be the way it was and it's just having that kind of understanding that it can't go back that quickly and it's taken nine months to get to that point and so has changed, it would be completely unnatural for your body just to kind of slip back into exactly the way it was in, you know, a matter of weeks, it just doesn't work like that. So it's just having that understanding and that patience, which is

really, really hard, but trusting that if you do the right things, and you follow the right process of doing the correct exercises, then you will get back to you know to whatever fitness level you were at and you'll also not pick up any issues or any long-term issues that um you perhaps would have got if you you know rushed that whole process yeah absolutely one of the things I guess during this time is everyone's you know at home and trying to be as productive as possible. And I can imagine that you're still very busy and you probably have to be homeschooling as well. Is there anything that you do to, I guess, unwind? Do you ever have a day where you're totally unproductive and you just want to line the

sofa and watch Netflix? Oh, I would love to do that all day. I think I feel like I've had one of those days today. But unfortunately, my two-year-old and my five-year-old would not allow that. Firstly, I'm not allowed to watch TV because they dominate with their cartoons. But yeah, I definitely, definitely have those days where I just feel, you know, energy levels are low, you know, you're lacking motivation. And life is so different at the moment you know we are confined to quite a small environment at the minute we're not socializing the way we normally do and you know the kids have been absolutely fantastic and have adapted so well but there's still like you say the challenges of homeschooling and trying to get through maths and writing and reading with a five-year-old can often be quite challenging so the days yeah and you know with a two-year-old as well where Liv's just kind of hanging off me and she's just wanting

to play and mess around so yeah I mean it's it's definitely entertaining and there's there's loads going on at the moment that we're all kind of taking as our norm really for the foreseeable future trying to navigate and do you do anything when you do get the opportunity do you do anything to unwind is it going for a run is having a bath is it a glass of wine yeah I think for me just being able to exercise and have that you know half an hour 45 minutes time frame where I can just go out for a run go in the gym and just do a circuit session just you know you just feel like you can just get a for a run, go in the gym and just do a circuit session. You just feel like you can just get a sweat up.

You can just kind of forget about everything and just work your body quite hard and just have that time, that headspace. And then when the kids have gone to bed, it's me and my husband, just total downtime. It's just sitting in front of the TV, gorging on Netflix. I think we watch everything on there at the moment and um yeah definitely a glass of wine is is needed i think people will be surprised to hear that you you have days as well where netflix is um something that you just

kind of you know sit down and binge watch as well but oh there's so many good movies on there there is do you have a current favorite at the moment um we're watching the last dance at the moment which I absolutely love it's been brilliant I don't know if you've seen it um documentary yeah it's a documentary about Michael Jordan and it's oh yes I've heard about it oh amazing I'm gonna put it on my list yeah um so obviously you've you know you've done so much already and you're still pretty young but what is your what's next for you do you just want to see where things go are you focusing on your family are you focusing on the app yeah I think I'm I'm

just in that phase where I'm really happy I feel I have kind of struck a really nice balance with work and having home time and you know spending lots of time with the kids while they're young so yeah I mean I'm really enjoying the commentary that I'm doing the BBC and I'm looking forward to the Olympics when that finally goes ahead and you know I'm really excited about the next generation of athletes that are coming through so I'm very eager to follow them and be involved in yeah commentating and talking about their journey which is great um and then obviously yeah my app the the Janice app is is taking up a lot of my time and that's really exciting as well so I feel like I've got my hands nicely full with you know

between work and the kids so but yeah it's nice it's nice to be busy and it's nice to you know to have that quality family time as well yeah absolutely I think you've got a a nice balance well hopefully it's balanced for you and you are getting some nights um where you can chill so thank you so much for for giving us your time um oh whilst you are so busy no it's lovely to speak to you oh thank you so much okay guys that was dame jessica ennis hill what an incredible woman and what a surreal moment to be recording the podcast live from my living room while still in my pajamas with an olympian i really enjoyed that conversation it was such a joy to speak to jessica um i could have chatted to her all day. So I hope you guys enjoyed the podcast as much as I did. If you do, please do leave us a review and rate the podcast. It really does help

spread the word. See you again next time.