The Rich Roll Podcast - Apolo Ohno on The Weight of Gold

Episode Date: August 17, 2020

Over the years, I’ve had the pleasure of conversing with many an Olympian, each with a uniquely impressive journey from obscurity to heights most can’t fathom. But what happens after the medal ceremony wraps, the klieg lights shutter, and the career comes to a close? When your entire life is centered on a moment now passed, how do you then shift overnight from podium to pedestrian?  One would presume the many skills learned as an athlete -- mindset, focus, discipline, and teamwork -- would translate to seemless success in the civilian world. Ironically, that presumption would be misplaced. In truth, this transition is fraught, and has felled some the greatest competitors among us. We love to celebrate our Olympic heroes. We relish in the dissection of their habits, wrapt in what makes them tick; what makes them great; and what distinguishes the very best from everyone else -- all in service to that sliver of inspiration and applicability to our own lives. From private mental health struggles to debt, loss of identity and a lack of opportunities in retirement, the systems sending our athletes to the Olympics aren’t supporting them well in the long haul. And it’s gotta change. That change begins now, starting with the recently released HBO documentary, The Weight of Gold. Expanding upon a recurring theme of this podcast, the film presents a potent look at the mental health challenges our Olympians often face from their lived perspective. Executive produced and narrated by Michael Phelps, the world’s most athletically accomplished mental health advocate, it features a myriad of celebrated athletes, including today's guest. Meet Apolo Ohno, here to help untangle this dark thread that connects those who have stood in the spotlight. An eight-time Olympic medalist in short track speed skating, Apolo is the most decorated American Olympian at the Winter Olympics, and was inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame in 2019. He is a Twelve-time U.S. champion, a three-time overall World Cup champion and in 2008 he was Overall World Championship gold medalist. Despite his post-athlete career successes, Apolo knows well the mental perils of elite athleticism. Raised by a single dad, Apolo took his dream all the way to the very top. When it was over he didn't just face what might come next. For the first time he had to discover who he was off the rink--and reimagine his life wholesale. This is a conversation about what it’s like to have a passion with a shelf life. The mental health repercussions of Olympic pursuit. And the pitfalls of prodigious success at a young age. More broadly, it's a dialog about why we sabotage ourselves, and how to break this bad habit. And it’s about deconstructing those preconditioned beliefs we all have about who we are and what we are capable of achieving. Today, one of history's all-time great Olympians provides a master class in mindset and intention: how to use it to our advantage, and what it takes to break the mold of what is possible.  My hope is that this conversation will help you form a more holistic idea of who you are and what you seek to offer the world. I hope it encourages you to see the strength in vulnerability and the power in asking for help.  But more than anything, I hope it breaks whatever illusion you have about what an Olympic athlete is and what an Olympic athlete is not. The visually inclined can watch it all go down on YouTube. And as always, the podcast streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. May you receive Apolo with an open heart. Peace + Plants, Rich

Most athletes who are driven by some extreme nature have some form of microtrauma that is there, whether they recognize it or not, that is really driving them. And I think that's where it starts, is taking the layers of armor off and recognizing that you're human and you live on this planet, you're having experience. this planet, you're having experience and the choices that you make on a daily basis can be within your control, regardless of the circumstances that you're in, whether you've been put there by your own complicit nature, it doesn't really matter. And so I was chasing dreams that were taught to me at a very young age, that this is what it means to be successful. And this is what it means because you are a champion and you're different. And therefore this is what you deserve. I feel it now, you know, I'm driven, I think by something much different than what existed before in sport. And it's less about fear of failure and it's less

about winning. And it's more about how can I help people also feel the same level of kind of fulfillment and happiness when you're able to achieve beyond what you thought was possible. The human spirit is just so beautiful. And so I just want to help people unlock that spirit, unlock that fire, that Olympic mindset that exists within them. It's in every human in some capacity. You've been given such a gift to thrive in this planet. Don't throw this away. You don't have to self-sabotage. That's Olympic legend Apollo Ono, and this is The Rich Roll Podcast.

The Rich Roll Podcast. All right, welcome to the podcast. So, over the years, I've had the pleasure of conversing with a lot of Olympians, maybe a dozen at this point. And each of them have their own unique journey from relative obscurity to heights most of us can't possibly fathom. But what happens after the metal is draped around the neck, when the anthem is played out and the Klieg light shut off? Then what? How do you shift basically overnight from podium to pedestrian? One would think that with the many skills learned as an athlete, things like mindset, focus, discipline, goal orientation, teamwork, that all of that would quickly coalesce and translate to success in the civilian world. But ironically to most, this is often not the case. In fact, it's a challenge that's felt some

of the greatest competitors among us. We love to celebrate our Olympic heroes. We like to dissect their mindset, their habits, what makes them tick, what makes them great, what distinguishes the best from everyone else, all for this sliver of applicability to our own lives. But this particular story, the story of civilian assimilation, is less told, far less understood, and woefully underappreciated. is less told, far less understood, and woefully underappreciated. But I think it's a story that is perhaps more instructive and as compelling as the deconstruction of greatness. From private mental health struggles to debt, loss of identity, and surprisingly, a lack of opportunities in retirement, the systems sending our athletes to the Olympics aren't supporting them well in the long haul. And that has got to change. And I've touched on this theme many times

on the podcast over the years. So it was with great delight that I recently saw this difficult issue explored in depth on screen in the recently released HBO documentary, The Weight of Gold. Executive produced and narrated by Michael Phelps, the world's most athletically accomplished mental health advocate, I think it's fair to say. The film is kind of like this powerful cry for help. It's this look at the mental health challenges Olympic athletes often face out and after competition from their unique lived perspective. Adam and I discussed it in the last Roll On podcast. I really enjoyed it.

You guys should all check it out. I should say this is not an HBO sponsored thing. By the way, nothing is sponsored on this podcast unless I tell you it is for the record. I'm always transparent about that kind of thing. In any event, among the many athletes featured in this documentary is America's most decorated winter Olympian. And today's guest, Apollo Ono, here to help us untangle this dark thread that connects those who have stood in the spotlight. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time.

It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at Thank you. personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple.

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It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care

tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself,

I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay, Apollo, short track speed skating legend, Olympic Hall of Famer, serial entrepreneur, commentator, New York Times bestselling author. Oh, and this guy's so crazy talented and disciplined that smack in the middle of his athletic career in 2007, when he was at the peak of his powers, he didn't just compete in,

but he actually won Dancing with the Stars. When I saw the trailer for the HBO doc, I knew immediately he'd be a great person to help break down the issues that are explored therein, the mental perils of elite athleticism. Because this is a guy who was raised by a single dad who took his dream all the way to the very top. And when it was all over, he had to figure out not just what was going to come next, but actually who he was, fundamentally who he was as a person off the rink. So this is a conversation about what it's like to have a passion with a shelf life, the mental health repercussions of the Olympics and the toll placed on athletes and the pitfalls of prodigious success at a young age. More broadly, it's about why we sabotage ourselves and how to break this habit.

And it's about deconstructing those preconditioned beliefs that we all have about who we are and what we're good at. Apollo gives us a lesson in mindset and intention, how to use it to our advantage and what it takes to break the mold of what is possible. And my hope is that this conversation will help you form a more holistic idea of who you are and what you want to offer the world. I hope it encourages you to see the strength

and vulnerability and also the power in asking for help. But more than anything, I really hope it breaks whatever illusion you have about what an Olympic athlete is and what an Olympic athlete is not. So here we go. This is me and Apollo Ono, truly one of history's all-time great Olympians. Good to see you, man. Thanks for doing this. Of course. I appreciate you making the trip out here.

I wanna talk to you for a long time. And when I saw the trailer for the new documentary, Weight of Gold, I thought this is the opportune moment to reach out. So thanks for making yourself available. I'm glad you did. And thanks for letting me take a peek at the doc. We're doing this on July 29th, so it premieres tonight. Everybody's going to get to be able to see it by the time this comes out. And it was really moving for me. I certainly wasn't an athlete of your caliber or any of the athletes portrayed in the movie,

but this is an important subject that I've talked about quite a bit on this podcast, which is making that transition from being essentially a professional, quote unquote, amateur, whatever that means, athlete into becoming a civilian and the mental health implications of what that's like. And when I look at your career, or I look at somebody like

Michael Phelps or Sean White, who's documented in the film as well, the outsider perspective is that, oh, these people slid pretty graciously into a civilian career path. And I think that that perception belies the truth of just how difficult that is, even for somebody like yourself, who's done it very successfully, it's a traumatic process for anybody who competes as an athlete at the highest level. Yeah, you said that very well.

I think the transition that Olympic athletes face is, it's just, I don't wanna use the word unique because I believe everyone goes through the phase at some point in their life, right? So as you dedicate your career, your path, your energy, your time towards one specific goal and thing that really made you feel and give you confidence and has external signaling, whether

you're making more money or you're getting a raise or you're progressing and people are celebrating you. In the Olympic world, you kind of only really get celebrated once every four years. So if you've got a multiple Olympic career, call it two or three or five in some case for some of these athletes, you're only told you're really good when you're at the Olympics. And although that you know that you've got other qualities and attributes about your personality

that could potentially be transferable across any career paths, I think that you don't really feel it, right? You feel like, for example, in speed skating, we go in circles like for a living. I did that for like 15 years, literally working on the same things on a daily basis. And it was beautiful. I did that for like 15 years, you know, literally working on the same things on a daily basis. And it was beautiful. And I chose that path. And then I use this word a lot,

you know, that we have called the great divorce happens, right? So my first true love, no longer can I, you know, have this person in my life. It's there, but I've moved on and there's no more structure. And so Olympic athletes, there's no subsidization, there's no subsidy from the government. There's no salary per se to be a part of Olympic team. And that's the beauty of the sport because that's what you do it because you love it. And you do it for all the other ancillary reasons

aside from kind of progressing in your career. But there definitely is a very strong mental transitory challenge that exists with all athletes. And I only really felt that and noticed that. I was definitely afraid of it. I had heard about it, but I didn't know until many years into my retirement from competitive athletic sport. Yeah, it's basically an existential crisis. I mean, you characterize it as this is my love, my first love, but it's more than that because the identification with your sport is so deeply ingrained and integrated with who you are

that there's no distinction between the two. I mean, Michael Phelps puts it quite bluntly when he says, I'm Michael Phelps, a swimmer, but I don't know who I am, right? Who am I outside of this sport? Who is Apollo outside of speed skating? And making that leap and trying to figure that out is exacerbated in the Olympic context because of the very fact that it's once every four years

and that your entire life boils down to this very specific moment that happens in a snap and then it's over. It's not like a professional career where, you know, you're on television once a week or whatever it is during a season. You go from anonymity to being everywhere to suddenly being not just anonymous,

but without any clear trajectory forward. And as an athlete, you know how to set goals, you know how to work towards them. You have this kind of tunnel vision on how you approach that and move forward. And your whole life is consumed by that. And then in the wake of that, when that's over, there's just blue sky and there's no coach

and there's no clear path forward as to what you're supposed to do. And you're forced to reckon with yourself for perhaps I think a lot of athletes for the very first time. Yeah, it's something that I, when I went through that process, I was deeply afraid of not finding something

that would drive me in the same way that sport did, that the Olympic path did. And I also was deeply afraid of being that guy who came up out of retirement to go back into the competitive world of Olympic sport because I couldn't replace it. I think now I'm at a point in my life 10 years later. Is that why you think you stayed in it? No, I stayed in it because I really loved the sport and I loved what I was doing. And I think I was doing it for all the right reasons, but I was physically capable to go to another one,

potentially two more Olympic games. And I felt very, actually I felt at the top of my game at that last Olympics and things were starting to come together. It was making sense, but I was also hungry to kind of transition out and find what other facets of my personality I could grow.

And that's the unknown. That was the kind of fear part. Now, I was lucky because I was celebrated by NBC. They had the spotlight on me when I was racing around. They had showcased the stories. I had sponsors. But for every one of me, there's a thousand athletes who you don't know their name. They've trained just as hard as I have. They were alongside of me. They were part of my team for many, many years and we don't celebrate them. That's just the external signaling

that is the kind of culture that we live in. But, and so I've always thought, I was, you know, I've been writing this book around kind of, it's called Hard Pivot, which is about like, how do you hard pivot from one career or one path to the next? And then at what point do you decide that you can succeed down this other path? And what I found was a lot of the friends and a lot of the athletes that we were training with really suffered in a great deal from the mental kind of constraints of they're not good at anything else.

And then they'll never be good at anything else. And they'll never find that spark, right? So chemically, I mean, that's a whole new conversation. Nothing will ever be as exciting as that. How could it be? How could you walk into the opening ceremonies? I mean, going from the cover of Sports Illustrated one week to, you know, working at Home Depot the next week. I mean, Lolo Jones tells that story of working at the gym, making smoothies when she's on television, like winning in a track meet and how that just bent the mind of, you know, the person who she was given the smoothie to. Yeah. And there's countless stories like that. I mean, there's literally, there's, there's so, I talked to a

friend, I won't say his name, but I talked to a friend. He also retired on the same time that I did, had a lot of success in the sport. And I asked him where and how he was doing in his life. And his response was, oh, I'm doing fine. You know, then I, you know, the conversation continues on further. And about an hour into the conversation, I start to feel that this person who I've known for a very long time

is really missing something. And he started, he just breaks down. He essentially just tells me, he's like, I have all these kind of external things in my life that the Americana culture has told me that is the American dream. But I deep down am so lost. The only thing holding me together is my family. It's the only reason why I'm getting up and I'm going to do what I'm doing on a daily basis. And that was really, that was scary to me to hear because I have seen and

experienced friends who suffer from depression. I competed with them. They were part of my team. Some of these guys wouldn't leave their room for 48 hours and they were just sleeping. And I was like, are you sick? Like, what's going on? Like, he's like, oh, I just don't feel well. And you know, this is, this is like nearly 15 years ago. So we didn't know what, what some of these guys were facing. There definitely was no resources associated. There was sports psychologists and we had access to them. But you know, when you live in a sport where, you know, you don't want to show any weakness, you don't want to show any signs and you're kind of only rewarded when you can show up and be strong and tough and resilient and those things that we strive to be. You don't associate that vulnerability, I think, with, you know, reaching out and asking for help, which is tough. Yeah. I mean, that's another powerful point that's made in the documentary. If you blow your knee out, you're going to have access to all the best orthos and all the people that you need to rehab that knee and get you back on track. But if you're having a mental difficulty, A, you're not going to admit it because that's showing this weakness that you're trained to avoid doing.

avoid doing. And second to that, the resources, although perhaps available, it's not the same thing. It's sort of like, oh, well, you're on your own for that. It's not understanding the holistic nature of what it means to compete and stay healthy at the highest level. I feel like that's changing though. It's changing.

It's absolutely changing. And I think there's been much more kind of attention focused in and around, hey, how is this athlete, right? How, you know, not in terms of physically, but how is this athlete like on a daily basis? How is their sentiment? How is their energy? What is that? What are they happy about outside of sport?

And the much more focus around creating some balance associated. You know, these things didn't exist, I think, early on in the kind of Olympic careers and sports. And we didn't have all the other, I think, access to information in terms of social media and understanding. But there's absolutely, you know, the business of the Olympics is beautiful in one side. And on the other side, it's a business. And that business is how do we generate more Olympic medals for the US? And so as long as you're winning, we'll give you whatever resources that you need. As soon as you start to falter, we try to figure out how to bring you back to top. But if you don't succeed, we've got to find the next person online. So it's this kind of churn in the

wheel. I think some of the athletes, and I've never faced this, Rich. In my life, I've been very lucky to not have those kind of depressive thoughts. Or maybe I was just too scared to have them. So I just started running and that was my escape, but for sure. And for certain I've seen it and it was devastating for some of these guys so much so that people are taking their own lives, you know, speedy, you know, Jarrett Peterson, you know, we had been to various summits together. I've seen him, you know, full of energy and there's been many athletes who suffer from that same thing. And so now with, I think the world having this kind of understanding that these, these, these global epidemics and pandemics that are existing in our society, they're going to have these massive mental repercussions. And people recognize that Olympic athletes, although we look at them as

being superhuman, they're just human beings who focus on one sole task. Right. I mean, this documentary was meant to come out in the middle of the Olympics, right? There's no Olympics. It's being postponed a year. And, you know, I can't help but think about the mindset of the athlete who's been training their whole life for this summer, only for it to be deferred a year. And for the lay person, they might think, well, they just, it's another year, like just train, but they don't understand, like that might be their window. They might not be able to maintain that for another year or just the mental fortitude, the emotional strength that's required to endure the training for another year after that kind of setback is, I think, underappreciated. Like the toll that's being placed on these athletes right now to have

to wait out another year and not even knowing if that's going to happen has got to be devastating. It's devastating. And I think, but athletes, you know, on one side, the ones who are younger, this is a benefit to them, but they probably need another year anyway to really mature. Right, there's going to be those people that benefit from this, of course. But I guarantee the results are going to be different. What about the person who's trying to hang on? Or the veteran? Like this is their 2010 or whatever, you know, this is their third or, you know, are they going to be able to do that?

And it's very challenging, right? Someone who's, and just to put in context, right? Imagine you've said to your family and you said, hey, I need to focus on this. This is what makes me happy. Just live with me for four years. This is the last run. And then at the last minute you say, hey, I need another 12 months.

And we're talking, it's not just like, hey, leave me alone. We're talking about real severe financial kind of commitments associated with these sports. Because these athletes don't make a lot of money. Most are probably in debt between $12,000 and $30,000 a year, every single year, just to pursue this dream. Yeah. And although you can get subsidized by the NGBs, the NGBs is the national governing body. So, USA Track and Field, USA Cycling, USA Speed Skating, USA Swimming.

But it's pretty meager for the average Olympic hopeful who's maybe a national team member. Yeah. So if you go and you are the 0.001% of your sport and you go and you win a world championships in short track speed skating, you have a bonus of $12,000. That's like your prize money is $12,000. Now you can spend $12,000 on equipment in a year easily. So I think the financial repercussions, they are what they are. That's amateur sports. We're not on television consistently. We're not X Games material. We've tried to be. And so the broadcasting and the media side, there's no money for them to be able to reproduce that. But we as Americans love the

Olympics and we love what it stands for. And we love cheering for one team finally, right? And everyone comes together. And really the documentary, I think what Brett Rapkin and everyone has done such a good job of is bringing the awareness around kind of the mental repercussions associated with what the weight of gold actually does. Yeah. And there's no one, I'm definitely not one to ever say, hey, I'm a victim. You know, there's no resources for me. It is what it is, right? And that's my, that was how I led my life.

But there's many others who suffered much more than I did. And that's, I feel that. I have empathy and deep kind of, you know, I feel grateful for them to be able to share their voices. And then people who I consider to be leaders in that transition, people like Jeremy Bloom, people like Sasha Cohen, who have been very open about talking about their fears and how they've been driven by their own failures in sport

and how that transfers out. I mean, but even like, I'm curious, Rich, like with you, when you were going through your kind of your bottom, right? I mean, at some point your identity as being, you know, high powered, knowing your craft, and then moving into a whole new realm and changing your life. I mean, that is such an extreme,

it's such an extreme change. Like, how do you, I mean, how do you feel? I mean, it's, you know, it's a, it's a very inelegant process. You know, I, I, I experienced a very low level of what we're talking about when I retired from swimming. I swam at Stanford in the late 1980s and I swam with Olympic gold medalists and world record holders and the NCAA champions and the like. And I was very much a benchwarmer. I was okay. I was never great. But when I, but I loved it. You were good. Well, I was very much a benchwarmer. I was okay. I was never great. But when I- I think if you swam for Stanford, you were good.

Well, I was good, but I was not. I was never going to the Olympics. I was never that good. But I remember, but I loved it. And I put everything that I had into the sport. And when I made the decision to retire, I remember having, you know, I had a bit of an existential crisis

about like, what am I going to do? I didn't really spend much time thinking about what else made me happy. So I can only imagine like extrapolating from that, what the experience is like for somebody who's at the very, you know, peak of their powers. And I saw some of my teammates go through this who were, you know, much more successful than I try to figure out that transition. So I had some connection with that process. Then I had struggles with drugs and alcohol and I had to kind of meet my maker with that. So I've had many permutations of reinvention over the years. So by the time it came to walking away from the law, I felt like I'd already done it a couple of times. So perhaps it was a little bit less traumatic for me then,

but it's never easy. And I think in the context of being an Olympic caliber athlete, what's unique is this incredibly well-honed ability to focus singularly on a specific thing that gets you excited, right? This incredible opportunity that you have in front of you. And when that's gone,

you still have this amazing skillset of knowing how to set a goal and work towards achieving it. But somehow it feels like it doesn't, it's like jamming a square peg into a round hole when you try to apply that to the real world until you can find some lane that gets you just as excited or perhaps somewhat excited in comparison to what it's like to be an athlete chasing that dream.

Yeah, I think somewhat excited is probably- Yeah, it's never gonna be like going to the Olympics. And that's okay. Right. And that's okay. And I think that that took me a long time to come to terms with, where I felt that I needed to find something to replace the same fire and drive and passion and love that I had. But what you did was you started doing that while you were still competing. I mean, you not only did Dancing with the Stars in the middle of your career, you freaking won it.

And that was in like 2007, right? 2007, yeah. So you were still at the height of your athletic powers. So you were making moves while you were still an athlete. You weren't living the monk-like existence that perhaps many of your peers were. Yeah, you're absolutely correct. And I think that that experience was, aside from being like this crazy reality show that I had no experience or really understanding what I was doing. I just kind of, everything to me looked like a nail. I just work as hard as I can and just put in as much time as I can. And then I could beat everybody else. That was like the kind

of very simplistic mindset. And then when I experienced that on the show, it kind of opened my brain up to like, oh my gosh, there's people out there who don't watch the Olympics. Wow. I was like, that's weird. You know, I was like, I lived in this weird bubble where I just assumed that everyone watched the Olympics. And because, you know, what you're doing in your life seems to be the most important thing at the time. Right. And then it took me a long time post to really figure out like, okay, like, what am I good at? What do I want to do? What's important to me? Do I just want to chase making money?

Do I want to be successful? How do I win at business? How do I become the best at business in the world? But where did that impulse come from? I think it was just this preconditioned belief that's how I should be. So I'm like this guy who loves to win, really hates to lose. I'm willing to do whatever I can

to dedicate myself to be fully immersed. So whether it was chasing dreams in Asia, I'm learning about different cultures and businesses there, falling straight on my face and getting involved with businesses I knew nothing about. But all that at the time, I didn't know. I didn't start having the introspective conversation with myself probably like into my 30s. And that's, you know, I retired at the age of 27, 28 years old. It wasn't until like my early 30s and mid 30s where I really started to ask the question, what does Apollo want out of life? And what does life want for Apollo?

I think that a lot of athletes struggle with that question to even ask it, right? Or it doesn't get asked until the curtain is closed on the athletic career, right? It seems like you had the ability, the facility to start asking that question when you were still competing so that when the retirement came, you were already well set up to be able to figure out your next moves? I think maybe optically I was well set up. I mean, yeah, that's what it looks like. I think, but inside, because I have a poker face, right? That was the game for short track speed skating. I'll never show you what the real pain

that's happening beneath the first surface, right? Unless you really know me, that was really going on. So this like internal struggle and conflict was always, I cannot lose in anything that I'm doing outside the sport. And that's just, life doesn't work that way. Right, right. I mean, you're going to lose, that's how you learn. Well, speed skating, there's a lot of analogs to swimming.

Like you're somebody who is trying to control the variables all the time, right? And as a speed skater, you can control your training, your mindset, how you're prepared physically and mentally for every single race. You can't control your competitors. And that's perhaps the biggest distinction between like swimming, you're not all in the same lane, crawling on top of each other,

like you are in short track. But there is this sense that if I can just control everything, then I'll be able to get the outcome that I want, right? And that doesn't work in life at all. No. I mean, we are in the driver's seat, right? And we're steering, but what's coming at you, you've got no control over. It's just really how you react and then eventually respond to those types of kind of circumstances. Someone asked me when I was, I think I was 17 or 18 years old, we used to have these things called the Olympic Summit.

And so they'd bring together all of the Olympic hopeful and existing Olympic team members together once every kind of two or three years. And we would go to like a Colorado Springs or we'd go to a Utah. We would talk about all of these things, all these transitory challenges you're going to face. And it's right over my head. Don't even hear it. And someone asked me, and I wrote this down. I think it's still in Utah and one of the universities. And they're like, what do you want to do when you retire? I was like, retire? What are you talking about? I was built for what I'm doing right here.

There's nothing else that exists after this. There's no space to entertain that because that's a distraction from the goal that you're seeking. You're jumping out of the airplane, trying to land on a target and you have no parachute. If you land, you're safe. If you don't, you're gone. And that kind of commitment level,

I thrived on and became addicted to, it's probably not the most risk adverse, especially in a sport like short track where you run the same race four times and probably get four different winners, but there's an addictive quality to kind of those types of things. And we develop, I think these conditional habits

based upon how we live in that sport, whatever it is. I mean, to me, swimming was such a, you know, I was a swimmer when I was very young. I had dreams of going to Stanford when I was a kid. It is cool that you started as a swimmer. Yeah. I like that. It was awesome. My swimming career, which cut short quite fast, probably like 13 years old, I stopped swimming. But I was like, I was 12 years old. I was. I was, did you swim for Multnomah or one of those club teams? I swam in Seattle for Highline Swim Club, um, at the time. And, uh, Bill Christensen was my, was my first coach, great coach. Uh, but I noticed pretty fast that it wasn't like swimming was

probably not going to be for me. Uh, and then my dad was always trying to push me into all these different kinds of athletic activities simply because I was just had so much energy and he didn't want me to get into trouble. So let's take it back. You grew up with your dad, single dad. You've characterized him as a tiger dad of sorts, right? It's kind of amazing the sacrifices that he made to try to get you in the right lane. Yeah, my dad did. He's amazing. And growing up in a single parent household and then having my father kind of dedicate his life to me, literally, could care about nothing else. At a very young age, I noticed that my dad just pushed me and pushed me and pushed me, whether it was trying to push me in academics, whether it was trying to push me in sport. He placed me in all these different activities just to figure out this kid's got to be good at something.

There's got to be some spark there. Then when he saw the sport of short track speed skating, that's what really made him kind of, you know, push a little bit forward. I originally was like an inline speed skater, which is even much smaller sport. It doesn't even exist in kind of most of these areas of the US, but in Seattle where it rains a lot, you kind of go this indoor track and you basically, it's like speed skating, but on inline speed skates. And my dad used to make me get up at a very early age, a very, very early time. And he used to make me go skate

inside of these church parking lots at like 3.30, 4.30 in the morning before he had to go to work. I remember you talking to Mike Gervais about this. He'd wake you, he literally, because there was only the ability for you to practice like once a week or something like that, because of track times in his work schedule,

that he decided that you guys were just gonna wake up at 3.30 every day and go find some parking lot. And he was gonna coach you. He's gonna put this like minor's light on me. It's like classified as like child abuse, I think pretty much now. That's intense, man. When I think about like the mindset that you adopted

to be the champion that you know, when I think about like the mindset that you adopted to be the champion that you are, I can't help but also think of, you know, the impact of how you were raised by your dad. And, you know, in so many ways, all of us, you know, our behaviors get locked in, you know, based upon our experiences as young people. And we manifest those traumas, whether macro or micro in different ways. And as well intentioned as he was, and I'm certain that it all came from love, how much of that do you reflect back on and think,

I'm being fueled with, by something that perhaps is not super healthy as a result of those experiences. I think a lot of that perhaps is not super healthy as a result of those experiences. I think a lot of that fuel is unhealthy. It can generate a very healthy kind of result. But I think I would argue that most athletes who compete, not even at the highest level, but who are driven by some extreme nature,

have some form of micro traumarauma that is there, whether they recognize it or not, that is really driving them. And sport happens to be that outlet and that catalyst that allows them to express themselves in a way where you've got these guardrails up and you've got rage, you've got fear of failure, you've got insecurity,

all these elements I think that we all go through, depending on what fuels you. And you can just kind of ping pong your way back and forth to reach the finish line. And sport was like that for me, right? And there was times when I had rage, when I used pure anger for no reason. I have no idea where it's coming from, right? Complete fear of failure. And that obsessive OCD just cannot get this sport out of my head for even a fraction of a second of a day.

It's just everything that I do has to be controlled. Like you said, it has to be dialed in. Somebody on the other side of the world is training harder than I am, who wants it more than me, who's more genetically superior than I am. Therefore I have to be better in all these other elements, whether it's nutrition, recovery, training, mindset, meditation, visualization, and it's obsessive.

And it can be and became at times in my career, very toxic to the point where there was a lot of self-sabotage. And there's all kinds of things that happen, I think, in the sports world that we see. And I feel like when I see some of these documentaries now on athletes, I'm like, when I watch them, like I know exactly what that guy's thinking.

I know why he's doing what he's doing. I know what he's driven by. And I hope he knows the reason why. I hope he recognizes that this is the reason why he is what, and the way he's reacting, but to his teammates, to his family and his own personal life, because if it's not understood, I think it can be very, very detrimental down the line when you have to retire.

So flipping that lens on you, what do you think was the driver? Like when you're this young person and you're discovering sport and you show an adeptness at a very early age, where did the impetus come to be so successful at it or to basically become this champion? What was behind that? So there was many points in my career where it slightly changed, but there was times where I was driven by, I just want to make sure my dad is happy. So when I was much younger,

I just want to show him that, hey- Approval from dad. Approval from dad. I think I still probably want that today in various forms, right? Because that's how I've been hardwired. And then there's times where the psychological pain of losing was so great, I couldn't sleep. And give you an example, in the 2006 Olympics, which was in Torino, Italy, I had raced the 1000 meters. And I had a dream like several nights before the final of this race that I had made a strategic move in which in this dream, I won the race. In the actual final, I never performed on that idea and that dream. And instead, I got third. And so while everyone around me from

the sports psychologists to my existing teammates and coaches were like, yeah, that's great. Like two games back to back, you're on the podium again. That's amazing. I, you know, trying to go to sleep that night, looking over at the ice rink, because we had this apartment that overlooked the ice rink. I couldn't sleep. I was tormented. It was like this, this nightmare that I couldn't sleep. I was tormented. It was like this this nightmare That I couldn't stop thinking about and so that obsession. I mean I ran the race the race is already over I ran the race thousands of times over my head and kept asking myself Why did you not move? Why did you hesitate? Why did you do this and I became and I got stuck in this hole And it was this downward spiral where I just shut the world out.

I couldn't communicate with anyone because they didn't see and hear what I had. So that psychological pain was so, it was so deep that that's why I think I trained so hard later in my career was I couldn't deal with that feeling. Do you think that that comes from an internal drive to like this sense that you didn't live up to your own personal potential

or is it an external thing where it's being driven by the performance of other people? Like you said, you hate to lose. So is it about being the best version of yourself or is it about beating other people? Like you said, you hate to lose. Like, so is it about being the best version of yourself or is it about beating other people, like internal versus external? So it was never about, for me, it was never about beating other people, although that was used the tool often, right? Or being beat maybe. Yeah. So being beat or when I beat myself was kind of the biggest thing. So when I was training in my sport, I always was probably my greatest asset and my biggest enemy, always.

Well, you talked about, you mentioned self-sabotage, so explain that a little bit. So like in short track speed skating, you know, four to six people are on the ice at one time. No one has their own lane. You're racing around this ice hockey rink around these blocks and 111 meter track. Strategy is very important. So in a thousand meter race, which is nine laps around, time doesn't really matter. It's all about the strategy of the race. So you can win the race and the time can be very slow. It doesn't, it just depends on who's leading and what, you know, when people are attacking during this race. And so what I noticed quite early, probably in like the early two thousands, like 1999, 2000 was that I was so strong physically because I had been training so hard and I was just so dialed in technically that I started to win easy, very easily.

And that became not enough. So when I started to win too easily, I started to kind of delay when I would attack at the end of the race. So if there's a nine-lap race, I wouldn't attack until like lap number – you know, one lap to go, two laps to go, which is very dangerous. Because had I just skated towards the front of the pack in position one or two versus in being position five, six, or seven, I have to pass all those people. And all of those people who I have to pass is a potential for them falling and me making a mistake, the ice being brittle, breaking out, one of these things. And so I became addicted to that feeling of waiting until the last minute and seeing if I can still thread the needle every time. And then that kind of gratification started to – it was – I would delay it, delay it, delay it, delay it. It was, you know, I delay it, delay it, delay it, delay it. And I remember one time,

one of the guys who I really looked up to in the sport said to me after a race that he had just watched me barely actually qualify for the next round because I had done that exact same strategy of waiting. This French Canadian guy, he's like, Apollo, you playing with fire, man. You're gonna get burned. What's interesting about that is it's a strange brew of out of control ego.

Like I'm so good that I can linger in the back and still pass all of these guys in the last lap because I'm so much better than everyone else. And I don't deserve to be in the front, right? Like I don't feel comfortable leading the race. So I'm gonna hang back here. And that's a very, that's a weird, it's weird that those two senses,

if I'm getting this right, can coexist. You're the first person who's ever said it in that way. The reason I noticed it is because it's a unique thing. Like I'm in recovery for a long time and that's a unique kind of quality of alcoholism where you feel like you're better than everyone else and you're the biggest piece of shit in the world. Yeah. And part of the work is like confronting that and working your way through that. I dealt with that for many, many, many years. There's times where we would,

I would just do these workouts, these training workouts that just make no sense. They don't fit in the training program. They're additional training sessions. They're more detrimental than beneficial. And I just wanted to see how close I could get to cracking my own kind of mental ability. How hard can I train in the most obscene hours of the day, doing the most crazy workout that I normally never do when I was fresh with fresh legs.

How do I go climb the Manitou incline after doing something really stupid? How do I go drive there at the end of the day at like 9, 10 at night, bring flashlights, bring a 45 pound weight vest and do skating jumps up this thing? I've done the incline, that's brutal. Yeah, that was like our training ground.

That was like a test in Colorado Springs was like, doesn't matter how fit you are, it just hurts the same. So you develop this extraordinary mental fortitude, but essentially you're somebody who, when I know a little bit about your training regimen, it seems like you were over-trained all the time or on the verge of being over-trained. 85 to 90% of the time.

When you look at short track, the track is so small. I mean, it looks like you're taking about, I don't know, six strides or strokes. I don't know what you call it, per side. Pushes per side before you take a corner. It's so quick. I mean, you're a sprinter, essentially. Even the longer races are essentially sprints.

Yeah, you're an animal. For you to be like training the way that you were training, like you were doing an Ironman or something like that, which I know you've done. We can talk about that. But the sprinters that I know from swimming and from track and field, like they're very careful not to do too much.

They pick their hard moments very carefully. They're like cheetahs. Yeah, exactly. They sprint and they rest. Full recovery, sprint and then rest. And I think there's, now we know, I think we kind of didn't really know back then where I was really over-training

and most of the time my coaches had to pull the reins back on me and say, hey, this is not necessary. You're actually digging yourself into a deeper hole. And I had something in my head that a sports physiologist told me when we were training in Lake Placid one time and doing our VO2 and Wingate tests. And he said, we were doing them at altitude and they were doing them again at sea level. And he says, you need to live at altitude because your body's natural adaptation phase is very high. So you will benefit from living in Colorado Springs, from living in Salt Lake City, Utah at being at 4,600

or 6,300. Your body's ability to recover was extraordinary. Yeah, to clear lactate out of its system. So you need load and you need volume. So he told me that when I was like 15. So that was ingrained in my head that I needed more. And I also felt like I did need more, but probably not the degree that this extreme training, but I wasn't seeking the physiological benefits. I was seeking something, I think it was just testing myself. Do you think on some level

there was a self-punishment aspect to that? Absolutely. And I've heard you talk about this often where, you know, it's like, again, there's this addictive quality to how close can I get to the end? How deep in the hole can I get and then still come out?

And that racing strategy was something that I battled with my early coaches for a number of years. And it became the kind of like the style of skating that I was known for. And so with my early coaches for a number of years. And it became the kind of like the style of skating that I was known for. And so athletes knew to prepare for that at some degree. Yeah, what's interesting about your career also is early on,

I mean, you clearly showed this prowess and you have this talent, although perhaps not the most, you know, technically dialed in of the skaters. You had incredible success at a very young age, but that success tended to be erratic. Like you would win and then you would lose and then you would take time off and you were kind of all over the map.

So a big part of your maturation of an athlete, I suspect had to do with trying to normalize your success and trying to create consistency in your approach. And the consistency is the number one aspect that I think I was missing when I was younger because I was so erratic, because my mind was all over the place. It was like honing in these like thousands of laser beams

into just one that was concentrated, that had a goal, that had a target and had some guardrails around it. And that's the beauty of like professional sports teams or Olympic teams is you have these kind of support systems to guide you along the path. But I've had many, many instances in my career and in my life where I've just gone in the wrong direction because the guardrails weren't up. And I think now the guardrails are not my team, the ones that I set for myself. So I've learned more about myself

to know what my tendencies are, what my kind of preconditioned habits or what I go to as a reaction versus like taking a deeper moment and saying like, does this kind of fit into the overall theme and goal of what I'm trying to do? And it's taken me a long time to come full circle in that regard and not,

you know, saying no to things, you know, is very difficult and pursuing things that I think are really important and meaningful, I think in life and in society. And how can I help other people make less of the mistakes perhaps that I've made in my life and learn from some of these kind of painful questions around,

you know, like why I did what I did during these times. And I mean, there was many times in my career, Rich, where I kind of just threw, I just, I was throwing the dice with my own life. Like I was just literally throwing the dice. Like I had everything you could possibly imagine when it came to being dialed in for the sport. I was 14 years old. I'd been training for eight months,

like professionally with like a junior national team. It's just after you moved to Lake Placid. So I was invited to go to Lake Placid and live and train in this Olympic training center. And eight months later, I was number one in the United States. And so that like skyrocket to fame. Like, what does that do to it?

That's like a child actor, right? That's not good for your psychology. You have no idea. Now I'm living and traveling with grown men who are double my age, who understand dedication and sacrifice and goal setting and visualization. This was all just a pure raw talent at that point. Yeah.

You know, and yeah. It's kind of amazing that you didn't, I mean, you say you went sideways, but in many ways you didn't. I mean, you could have, you could have, you could have pulled a crazy Tiger Woods move or a Todd Marinovich type situation. You had a similar kind of dad situation, it sounds like. And then you were in these very structured environments

with a bunch of people trying to figure out how to make the most of this talent that you had. But for the most part, you've had some maybe slight errant moves in one direction or the next, but for the most part, you know, you've had some maybe slight errant moves in one direction or the next, but for the most part, I feel like you've kept it together pretty good. Yeah, you know, I mean, I feel like that. And I think that that's got a lot to say about my dad.

I mean, make no mistake, I've made tremendous amount of kind of falters and missteps in my life post-career. I think that I just, I look at them differently now, so they don't affect me in the same way. And by that is I don't dwell on them as much. I believe it's all part of the process. I kind of have a much more open view around, you know, how we live as human beings and how I used to think that I was this very special person who possessed this special gift that no one else in the world had. I just don't, I don't know if I believe that.

I believe in myself and I'm confident in myself. I just believe that anyone can do it. They just have to find a way to unlock that inner potential or that fire that exists in there that it maybe has never been touched before, felt. And what do you think that is about? Like when you look at sport in general or just success in general, what is the differentiator between the also ran and the gold medalist?

Like, you know, in Olympic sports, it's nothing, you know, it's a thousandth of a second, it's a 10th of a second between the guy who gets the medal and the person that goes home without anything. What do you think it was about your approach that fueled you to such heights from like a mindset perspective? So I can't speak for all sports because, you know, basketball and football and soccer, these sports are massive. And so there's way more athletes who are competing in those realms. But in short track speed skating, it was a fairly early, you know, kind of a new sport to the world of the Olympics. It was introduced as a demonstration sport in 1988. And I just saw when I first started really concentrate and dedicate my life towards the sport, I saw that

the other athletes who around me, who are my teammates, I saw that they just followed the program in a simple way, right? They just followed, they just did what they were told. And which there's nothing wrong with that. The training program was hard. It was difficult. It was built by people who understand sport science and physiology.

And I just felt like, how can I beat them if they're better genetically designed for the sport than I am? If they're technically better and we're doing the same program. Were they technically better and we're doing the same program. Were they technically better or were you just, was that the insecurity in you speaking?

Either way it's true. Okay. In my head maybe, maybe not. And I just felt like I have to find something else here that exists that I can somehow latch onto and dig. And so that's where that kind of self-exploration became. I started reading about meditation. I was introduced to kind of visualization when I was 15 through someone who's our sports psychologist and that exploratory phase of becoming more cerebral and just trying to

find ways to improve, I think, the mental toughness, how much pain I could handle, how much harder I could train, really came through just a hunger and desire for more knowledge around the sport. And then trying to break the mold of what people thought was possible. Back in 1997, 98, 99, people would go home during the off season for three to four months after the world championships. And I was like, why is everybody going home? Why don't we just keep training here in Colorado Springs at altitude? Why would I go back to Seattle? There's nothing there.

There's like no training there. There's no athletes there. Like, I want to stay here. So I decided to stay in the training center. And that was kind of these small steps towards if I can shave off recovery time here, if I can spend more time at altitude, if I can eat a little bit cleaner here, if I can get more rest, if I can stay in the game longer, if I can practice biofeedback training, they just seem like all advantages to me. And so the other athletes on my team trained very hard and they were very dedicated.

And if someone was here who was my teammate, they would probably say Apollo works very, very hard. He was willing to commit himself more than I think probably the rest of the team. I was just obsessed, completely, utterly obsessed. Nothing else existed in my world except for this kind of psychology of not an almond more, not an almond less. So walk me through a day in training at the peak. Yeah, so in terms of like volume of training,

it's usually probably kind of the late summer. So we're talking, you know, wake fairly early, probably like around six 6 jump on the bike bike to the ice rink warm up again Was this when you were in Colorado Springs? Were you living in the dorms there? I was living in the dorms there

so this is like a typical day in Salt Lake City where we moved in 2007 to train for the last three years of my career so bike to the ice rink that's about a 27 to 33 minute bike ride, depending if I hit the lights. And then I get there, throw the bike in the locker room,

put my running shoes on, run for 35 to 40 minutes as a warmup. I mean, I'm already warm. I mean, again, this makes no sense. Go outside and run, come back inside, do about a half an hour to 40 minutes of what we call dry line exercises,

which is essentially skating imitations off the ice in your tennis shoes. Stretch, do some kind of quick like mental checks, throw your racing suit on, get out on the ice, train for two to three hours with the team, get off, do a stair workout or some kind of plyometric workout, usually on one leg. We do these kind of up the stairs

right next to the ice rink, or we find like a curb and basically just do skating jumps on this, just to kind of create this neuromuscular feedback. And then eat, refuel. I would then, I actually wouldn't eat. I would ride my bike back home. So another 33 minutes or so on the bike go back home make like two eggs

And like some tabasco or something and then two hours later. I'm back at the ice rink warming up again So in that two-hour time period i'm usually Kind of just resting on the couch. I would watch skating tapes during that time So I would like visualize like the times where I felt really good and the times where I was like, that's it, that's the feeling I want. That's where I wanna get. I'd watch an athlete who I just, I'd adored the way they skated.

Like I wanna skate like this guy. And I would just visualize myself in that moment. Then the afternoon I would get on my bike, ride back to the ice rink again, tennis shoes out again, go warm up for 15 to 25 minutes, then either have another dry land session or like a fartlek workout, which is, we'll do five minutes of running

followed by five minutes of downtime, which is like in the skating position, five minutes running, do that for like 45 minutes or an hour, or we'd have a weight session. And then after the weight session, we would then jump on the ice for another hour session, usually speed work at the end of the day. And then everyone was done. Everyone's got the Normatec boots on.

Everyone has got the ice. Everyone is just recovery mode. Wheels are off. Everyone's exhausted. I would go home. And then at the time, I hired the strength and conditioning coach to come live with me. And we started training additionally in my house cause I couldn't get enough.

And then, so we would go through like a third or sometimes a fourth workout where we would essentially do these training intervals on the treadmill. And it was just this high intensity bursts of energy for like, I would say on average about 30 to 45 minutes, sometimes up to an hour. Then I would jump in the sauna and meditate. And then my day was over.

And that was like, I mean, that, you know, you do that enough days. It's full on, I mean, relatively obsessed, I would say. Pretty obsessed. Yeah. And it was, I was obsessed with like weight and like, you know, I saw what these Tour de France cyclists said, hear these stories about guys like going out

and like a super long bike ride and then coming home not eating and then just going right to sleep to create kind of more catabolic activity to kind of strip away the excess muscle mass that exists up top. Was that part of the pivot in 2010? You dropped like 20 pounds, right?

Yeah, I dropped a significant amount of weight. The sport was evolving. So in 2002, athletes were much more anaerobic and we were doing things like power cleans and power snatches and heavy leg press and heavy legs and squats and a lot of kind of low repetition, but high plyometric movements.

So everyone was focused on how fast can you go. And then in 2006, it changed to kind of more middle distance training. So the South Koreans had developed this like, I know everyone's fast, but why don't we just go to like 85 to 95% of the speed, like five laps earlier and basically, you know, take off. How long can you maintain 95% of your VO2 max? That's like the goal, right? Like that's where the focus of the training went to. Yes.

As opposed to these explosive off the line maneuvers. Yeah. of the training went to, as opposed to these explosive off the line maneuvers. Yeah, and so the efficiency mechanism of your technique in combination with your body weight started to really transform the sport. So guys who were competing in 98 and then in 2002, they were no longer competitive by sheer body type. They just, they couldn't, they were too heavy, they were too tall.

It started to get much more sports specific. So guys started having much less shoulders and back development and biceps. Like that was out the window. Like, what do you mean you do curls or put our benches in the gym? Like no one was doing that anymore. And we'd race against these athletes

who don't even lift weights. They just, they're so skinny. They weigh like 116, 122 pounds and they're the same height as me. And then from 2006, 2010, that became even more extreme. And what we saw was that the ice conditions at the Olympics would change consistently and we could never prepare for them.

And most of the time, it was very, what we call soft, which means a top layer of the ice doesn't glide as much as you'd like it to. And it doesn't have as much grip. And so power athletes would never succeed typically at the Olympics because the ice conditions were such a big part of that. And the athletes that did well,

the athletes that were light and they were smooth and they were technically efficient. And so this obsession came around. What worked in the previous two Olympics will not work moving forward. If we need to become competitive, I need to wipe the slate clean. I need to clear my head around this recipe for success and this blueprint and create a new one and kind of look at how I could move forward.

Was that something that your teammates were also doing as well or was that something you took upon yourself to do solo? I don't think that my teammates were doing it in the same way. So like after the 2009 World Championships, instead of staying in Salt Lake City, I decided to drive my car from Salt Lake City to Colorado Springs, kind of where my career began. And I just lived in the dorms alone. And I trained for like four and a half months and just doing these like really insane workouts. I mean, I didn't talk to many people there.

I was like, my Saturday nights were me driving up into the mountains, like looking at the stars and like my treat was like a couple of pieces of like dark chocolate and like looking out and being like, you know, like, is this the right path? And is this what I'm supposed to be doing? Do I still have it? That was a question I used to ask myself a lot.

Do I still have like the mojo? Like, and you know the feeling, right? Like when you feel strong and you feel good and you have that race and you want to replicate it man there's nothing better than being in that flow in that zone and it feels automatic and easy and there's nothing better that i've ever experienced it's like that and i've only had it a handful of times and i hadn't had it in many years in 2007 2008 2009 i haven't felt it i haven haven't, you know, psychologically felt like I was losing it and the world knew

my self-sabotaging strategy so they could prepare for it very easily. They knew, hey, here's two laps, Paul is gonna come. I'm gonna skate a very defensive track. And so I just wanted to just basically reinvent myself. It is a beautiful time, Rich. It was, man, it was, you know, sports is awesome because nothing else exists except for this moment.

Right. Life becomes very simple. Very simple. But what's also interesting is that your teammates and your friends are also the same people vying for that Olympic slot, right? In short track, what, like six guys make the team or something like that? Like only the tiniest number of people get to go. So these people that you're training with are also your competitors. Yeah, you spend 10 years of your life training with your team and pushing each other

and making sure everyone is trying to be their best. And then you have a one weekend window where everyone's vying for the same spot. Everyone wants to compete. If you wanna compete in an individual distance at the Olympics, then you have to be top two in that distance at the Olympic trials. And some people peak early, some people don't peak at all.

And there's been relationships shattered because of the Olympic trials, right? It's like, how, what do you mean that we've been brother and sister this whole time, right? And then I just tried to pass you and you basically threw an elbow in my face and I fell and my Olympic team dreams are over. I will never forgive you for the rest of your life for that.

You know, and that's happened. Or guys who have trained their whole life, the week of your life for that. And that's happened. Or guys who have trained their whole life, the week of Olympic trials, they fall and break an ankle. And it's just stuff like that is, it makes me wonder, how did I train all those years and actually never get hurt? How did I not fall? And so I just consider myself very, very lucky in that regard. Well, you had your crashes though, less than opportune moments. I did. Let's talk about intentionality.

I know that in swimming, you may train four hours a day, but every workout, two hour workout, there'll be a main set or maybe two main sets. And that main set really boils down to perhaps that final interval. And the workout's really all about that. So it's about being aware and present and available for those specific opportunities and moments. And I suspect it's no different in speed skating.

So talk a little bit about the approach to training, the intentionality that you have to take to it and how that translates into, how do you carry that into the world? I love intentionality and I love, this is what I talk to the team now about is, you know, this younger generation who's training in short track. I say like, you know, what is your intention on day-to-day basis? It's very easy for you to fall on the routine of doing the same workouts on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and just doing the same thing every single week. And you kind of get lost in the cycle of normalcy. And you're in the, I call it the green zone, right? This is green light.

Everything is comfortable. I know this road before. Here's my markers. I know I should be starting to get tired around this kind of lap time. I know I should be starting to get tired around this kind of lap time. And so what I felt was and what I was trained from all the sports psychologists that I was able to kind of go down and then all the books that I was reading, whether it was an Eastern philosophy or kind of the battles always within, your intention that you set for that particular workout greatly indicates the outcome in some capacity. And I just, I saw huge jumps in my performance when I was intentionally going to the ice rink with a specific task and a purpose for what I was doing versus going through the motions

and not really understanding why I'm doing this training. And what is that, how much of that is about your relationship with the coach and the communication that you have? Well, it's huge. The why. The why is very important. And so, you know, in short track speed skating,

a sport which is dominated by many of the Asian countries, the cultural norm in Asia is the coach is kind of like the king and he just tells the athletes what to do. The athletes don't, they don't talk back. They don't question. They just do. It's just, I say this, you go do it. And me being this like, you know, American kid and having a South Korean coach and him yelling at me to do anything,

I would say, well, hold on. Why are we doing this training today? What energy system are we training? I just needed to know and understand. And now the hardness was okay. I'm okay going hard. That's not a problem. I need to know what is the purpose? Where does this fit into the overall plan? And then I think once my teammates started to understand that, they too were much more willing to accept these impossible workouts that were set forth before us. Right. And then how does that translate in the real world? So I think it translates in the real world to an even greater degree, right?

No matter what career path you're going down or you're making a big change, it's very easy to fall into the same patterns and routines that feel normal to you because they signal this sense of control to reach for the handful of those peanut M&Ms, which was like my thing, my issue, right? Or whatever that kind of self-sabotage is, it creates a sense of, even though I know I'm doing this, I know it's not good for me, I'm still gonna do it because it gives me this subconscious level of control in some capacity.

You gotta break that cycle. And so having the intention multiple times a day and being consistent with it is so important in terms of how you live your life. I feel it now, Rich, in terms of, I'm driven, I think, by something much different than what existed before in sport. And it's less about fear of failure

and it's less about winning. And it's more about how can I help people also feel the same level of kind of fulfillment and happiness when you're able to achieve beyond what you thought was possible previously. And how did you make that pivot? Because that's a pretty dramatic shift from when it all costs, I'm never going to let anyone beat me to a more service minded approach to how you live. I think it was, it's been a, I consider it to be a 10 year and

probably going on a 20 year and then 30year journey that I work on every day. I think a lot of it had to do with coming to terms with who I was as an athlete, the core tenets and the core principles that helped me succeed. And then using some of those core tenets and applying them towards the next path. But then just recognizing that I wasn't in a stagnant state that I grow. Empathy was not something that came naturally to me. And I don't know if this is because of being in a single parent household, having a father and not having a mother. I'm sure that there's some correlation there in some capacity. sure that there's some correlation there in some capacity. And then so just being more inquisitive about like, man, life is short. Am I living this life to the best of my ability? Am I living this

life to help benefit not only myself, which is very easy because I'm in a selfish Olympic sport, which is about yourself, but how do I do it in a way that people can thrive and learn and embrace their insecurities and understand them and then turn them into these incredible opportunities for growth? Because I felt it. I felt those feelings of insecurity. I felt those fears of failure. I felt that kind of lack of, I'm not good enough. I'll never be good enough. There's this obsessive nature that's beautiful on one side, and I believe it's necessary in certain elements of your life. But it has to be controlled in a way that is healthy. And I think that – so to answer your question, this process that I'm continually going down and I'm learning all the time about myself and people like you who are intentional about talking about this openly, I think that's where it starts is taking the layers of armor off and recognizing that you're human and you live on this planet, you're having an experience.

And the choices that you make on a daily basis can be within your control regardless of the circumstances that you're in, whether you've been put there by your own complicit nature, it doesn't really matter. And so I became very obsessed with not only personal development, but really just feeling like what basically it was like this. I was chasing dreams that were taught to me at a very young age, that this is what it means to be successful. And this is what it means because you are a champion and you're different and therefore this is what you deserve. And those are external signals that like, they feel like they're very easy for me to go on that road.

And so, yeah, that makes sense. I get it. Like that's the direction I should go. And then there's a bigger question, which I feel very lucky and grateful because I've had people in my life force me to ask those questions. And I would ask them for an answer

and they would respond back with a question. Right. And I was like, what the hell is this? Like my dad does that. And I think that inquisitive nature, I just, I found it to be just so deeply satisfying to see and recognize that there's people in this world who may have not been Olympic athletes,

but their stories are so compelling and they're fascinating and they're interesting. And the human spirit is just so beautiful. And so I just wanna help people unlock that spirit, unlock that fire, that Olympic mindset that exists within them. And it's in every human in some capacity. And we may not even, some people go their entire lives and never even feel it, taste it, touch it,

see it. They don't even know that it's there because they've been conditioned in another realm of telling them that you can't do this because this is not what you're supposed to do. And hey, genetics are a big part of sport. You know, natural tendencies to do certain things are, we know some people are amazing artists naturally. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that I felt a deeper connection to people in general after my experiences in sport.

And I look back on that and I say, well, you know, what are the things that helped me kind of achieve these things that people thought were impossible in the world of the Olympics? And how can I teach others, maybe not teach is the right word, how can I guide others in a way through my own setbacks and experiences so that they can come to their own realization and recognize that, man, I've been searching all over the world and all over the internet for these answers. And all along, I actually had the answer and it was deep within my own psyche and my own self. And I had to go through this process in order to feel like that. And what are those principles, if you had to define them, that are teachable? So the principles, and I think everyone has kind of their own set of what this is. And I

call it the five golden principles. I think number one is for me has been gratitude. You know, sport like short track speed skating, you run the same race. I said before, four times you get four different winners. Anything can happen at any moment. Be grateful for the opportunity that you have. If you are living, if you are breathing, if you are here, if you have a family, if you have a second chance, that gratitude power is very real. And I would win races, Rich, in the past and I wasn't grateful. So how did you come into a place of embracing that from the punk kid with all the talent

who was erratic into somebody who could appreciate the opportunity? Through failure, through just banging my head against a particular path or journey or decision and not winning and then recognizing, hey, like you have, you've been given such a gift to thrive in this planet and don't throw this away. You don't have to self-sabotage. So that, that kind of gratitude and being grateful and being present, I used to keep my medals in like the sock drawer, right? Cause I was like, I never want to, I don't want to be that. I don't, I don't want to look at them and gloat. I don't want to look at them and have

them feel like I've arrived. I want to keep the kind of underdog mentality. And at some point I was like, Hey, why don't I look, I actually took them out. This is like, you know, since COVID started, I started looking at them. I was like, man, this is, I've actually never even looked at these. What the hell?

Really? It's so crazy, right? I'm just so deathly afraid of going down that path. And then finally I was like, hey. Of ego attachment to that or this idea that you're trying to distance yourself from that because you want a new definition of who you are that isn't related to that past?

I mean, both. And I've come to terms with the fact that like people, you know, may always see me as Apollo, oh no, dancing with the stars. And that's okay. Like before, like really- Who don't even know that you have eight Olympic medals. Yeah, no, or they know they don't care. Apollo, that's great, that's okay. Like before, like really pissed me off. Who don't even know that you have eight Olympic medals. Yeah, no, or they know they don't care.

Paul, that's great, that's great. Tell me more about the dancing with Julianne Hough, right? So the gratitude process was something that I think I work on daily and I think it's something that you have to be consistent in terms of your habits and setting intention. It's a practice. It's a practice, it is a true practice.

And gratitude's tough, right? Because it starts with like, you know, the three levels of like feeling and then you start to do and it goes kind of deeper. And the second, so the five golden principles are number one is gratitude. The second one is giving. I think giving both in terms of others, time, energy, resources, whatever that is, giving yourself a chance to really thrive. I think a lot of people hold themselves back

and they usually kind of hold themselves back because of their own self-sabotage, just like I did in my own life. Third part is grit. I think we live in a society which really rewards instantaneous feedback right away. And I think recognizing that sometimes you won't have the answers right away

and that it's gonna be painful and it's not gonna feel good and that's okay. That's a part of this resistance, right? At some some point my friend was telling me this other day it's like going in terms like a rubber band you're like going back going back and then you're letting go and all of a sudden you're just hurtling through the air and you don't know when that let go is but you just so you feel like you've been going up against this resistance for so long so sometimes going towards the fire is where you can really find who your true self is And then the the fourth is kind of gearing up your personal expectations So if you've created some kind of self

Forming habit that is really detracting away from what you want in life and what life wants from you You got to you got to change that immediately and you have to consistently hammer away And mitigate the natural tendency to go towards what was normal before. And that only comes through repetition and practice. There's no hack shortcut. It just, the human brain, you know, I mean, you had Andrew on the other day,

which I thought was really fascinating. That's how the human brain works. And so you gotta form the new habit to make that the new normal. And the fifth is just getting into action, just going and just doing it. Cause the paralysis by analysis is real. Like what would be an example of how you're applying that in your life now?

Like where are your blind spots and what are the challenges that you're still trying to overcome? Oh man, you have a couple of days? Yeah, I've got plenty of time. Go as long as you want. I face challenges with all five of those principles every day, but I have them written down.

They're on my desk. They're a part of my daily routine in the morning. They're a part of my daily routine in the evening. And even then, there's times when I misstep and I don't do them. And I don't be intentional about what that looks like. And that's okay. I have a beautiful fiance who has kind of reminded me time and time again of these simple things

that we should and are grateful for. And there's times when I'll be out for a run or I'll be doing something kind of solo in nature and I'll kind of just smile and be like, God, she is so right. She is so right. Why am I chasing that thing again? Why am I chasing that elusive feeling that I thought would make me happy, but it's got nothing to do with it. It's really got nothing to do with it.

So, yeah, it's interesting that as somebody who has achieved such heights of success, that it's still a challenge for you to realize that that's not the answer, right? To the wholeness that you seek or the sense of personal satisfaction. And it's a personal journey and a feeling, right? It's hard for people to kind of articulate what these emotions feel like when they're going through them. And, you know, I think that many things in our life, we've tried to control to the utmost detail and minutia and being able to say, like, I can't control all the aspects and looking at life more of as an adventure versus a script. Although I love the idea of writing your own story and being your own hero.

But the growth is in the letting go, going from this very controlled environment where it's all about minimizing the variables into embracing the fact that there are variables you will never control and developing a comfort with that, right? Letting go, that's a challenge that I have. I still, I'm always drawn back to that kind of,

I've got 25 years of conditioning that I'm trying to break on a daily basis. So what is the practice like? You said you wrote it down. Did you write down, you're writing down the things that you're challenged by or the actual practices that you undertake every day? So the practices that I undertake on a daily basis are pretty ingrained where I don't need to write them down. I mean,

I do them naturally. Kind of, you know, I call it the kind of how do I prime and set my day intention-wise for the remainder? And then how do I wind down that day and reflect upon what just happened? What went well? What didn't go well? how can I improve for tomorrow? What am I happy for? You know, kind of those attributes. And then the letting go aspect is really tough though. It's something that I struggle with often, letting go of a previous identity, right? Learning to reinvent, being okay with people labeling and identifying you as one particular thing and just saying saying that's all right. That's totally cool. Instead of like being like,

hey, why don't you recognize me as this? Or I'm so much more, why can't, let me tell you all the cool things that I am doing. Let me explain how cool I am. It's easy to fall victim to that. And so it's been fun. I mean, the life journey of learning and growing and sharing with others,

kind of the vulnerabilities that exist within these superhuman feats of performance that exist in the Olympic space, but then also going deeper in terms of that mindset and how we can curate different experiences for ourselves if we really desire them. What are some of the books that were instrumental in this process for you?

And the first book that was instrumental for me was a Dan Millman book, the way of the peaceful warrior. Classic. Yeah, I thought that was a really fascinating book. There's a book that I recently read about by Francis Fukuyama called Identity. I actually was gonna send this to you

because I was watching one of your podcasts a while ago when you were talking about some of the political strifes that exist in the country. And I felt like this author and his 20 year work understands how we got to where we are today. And he talks a lot about kind of the recognition identity that exists and the fight for why people have this massive polarization and beliefs inciting with political ideas.

And anyway. Identity. It's called identity. I'll check that out. It's a short read, but I thought it was fascinating. To me, it helped me understand why certain parts of the country or why certain people believe what they believe in and what are they fighting for? What do they believe that they're fighting for?

And then which ideologies and which things do I hold to myself that I think are true, but maybe aren't. And so that was interesting. And then I've just been deeply obsessed, I think, with more lately around, I think, much more around the kind of the Eastern philosophical viewpoints and understandings.

And they've kind of helped poke some holes in my previously conceived beliefs around my path, my control over my path. And I just, I love the fact that, you know, I believe that I have control over my path. Like I, when I say that, I believe it. And then when I read these, you know, these like ancient texts and scripts

from these amazing philosophers from around the planet, and they're like, there's so much of this world that you don't control. You're not, you know, like you're... It is a weird disorienting thing. And as an athlete, it's all about controlling your destiny. Your fate is in your hands. It's up to you. How hard are you going to work? How much do you want it? And then grappling, reckoning with these broader truths about our place in the world and how little control we have and how so much can be learned in the letting go process and how that can actually foster the evolution that you seek and fill some of those holes that perhaps didn't get filled through sport and accolades and all the other things that you were chasing

as a younger man. And the journey never stops, right? That just continues and it continues. And I think, you know, when I look back at my career, I think that there was times like, this is it. Like, this is it. This is the pinnacle of life. It doesn't get better than this moment.

I've got thousands and millions of people screaming and cheering my name and Team USA. And this is the most important thing in the universe that exists today. Right, right. And then coming and spending time in Los Angeles and then traveling around the world and getting different perspectives and being anonymous in Asia. And people looking at me as just like some long-haired dude who like walk in this room. Right, unless you go to South Korea. Then they recognize me pretty fast.

That's a different thing. That's a different story, yeah. It's just, I find it fascinating. And I know that you've kind of done, you've done a lot of deep work on yourself and your path. And man, I've always wondered why do companies and organizations and schools not teach more about kind of the very important raw elements of growth as a human? And we learn about these fundamentals, which I think are important and they're obviously necessary. But like when you join a nice corporate gig and a job, no one teaches you how to be a better human.

They just teach you how to do your job better or what they think to do your job better. What if they taught you these elements of, this is gratitude. This is how you give to yourself and to others. This is what grit is really all about. This is what you're gonna face during your career here and it's gonna be okay.

This is about how we expect you to gear up your personal expectations, both at the office or virtually and at home, because we want you to thrive at home. So when you come into work, you're better. And then how do you put all this stuff together? Well, 100%, it should be taught to young people and it should be part of any kind of ongoing education

for any human being, but wisdom has to meet willingness. You know, it's sort of like when you were a young athlete and you were sitting at the training center or wherever you were, you were telling the story of being told like, okay, you need to start thinking about your life outside of the Olympics. Like you weren't ready to receive that information

at that time. So we can teach these things. I suspect that for a lot of young people, they're not going to be interested in it. It's not until you get older where these things become relevant enough where we seek them out in our life. But I think that we need a wholesale revolution of our education system to pivot away from this kind of Victorian era of memorization, et cetera, towards learning how to be more fully actualized human beings and how to be good team members and listeners

and life learners as opposed to test takers. And not even in the younger generation, even if you go to any corporate environment now, you can kind of count on a handful in a boardroom of how many people have actually sought out real true kind of personal growth and development and understanding of self. I feel like that's changing though.

I mean, you're somebody who does a lot of public speaking, right? So you go to these corporations and you get to spend time with these people. And I don't know if that existed 20 years ago where these companies have a budget that they set aside for bringing people like yourself in to help them with that.

So I feel like that's becoming more a part of the kind of curriculum of these larger organizations that are around like how to sort of be well outside of the office. So I think that's a good thing, but certainly a lot of work remains to be done. And we hope that the one positive element of these circumstances the globe is facing right now is that people are taking time to recognize what's really important to them, trying to find

sense of purpose and meaning in whatever career path that they're currently in. And as people go through this transition or this reinvention or hard pivot, they can find ways in which they can start to really start to dive deeper into who am I? What's important? How do I impact more? How do I show up in a different energy in a way that is bright

and highlights the things that I care about? And maybe that's the path forward is that these organizations are gonna say, hey, look, we may have cut 50% of our workforce, but those who are remaining, we're willing to say, hey, we wanna reinvest back into you. And it's got nothing to do over here

with what you're doing in your business. It's got everything to do with you as a human being, how you live your life at home. And we want you to thrive in that environment. I mean, that to me, like I would love that when I was competing is to say, hey, Paul, what are you doing when we don't see you during the day? Like, are you healthy?

Is everything okay? Like, are you going home and just being like this like manic, insane, obsessive guy who like can't stop thinking about the sport? Or is there a better path here? Is there like another way that we can train you to give you some distance and give you to disengage for a second

and then come back and you're refreshed and hungry and happy and more willing to train in more specific environments? And just like I think in maybe the world that we have to have those times of complete detachment away from the rat race and spend time in nature and go out. And some of us don't even have access to those things, right? Because we're just, people are trying to put food on the table

and they feel like they are just, the gun is there, right? And they have to keep going. Well, this forced moment is forcing us to confront that. You know, my hope is that, you know, people can identify a silver lining in it and an opportunity and a way to find some level of gratitude in the experience, which is very hard for a lot of people. Like, look, I'm speaking from a place of great privilege. I get to do what I do for a living, et cetera. A lot of people are losing their jobs. It's very difficult out there for a lot of people, but to the extent that there

is, you know, some opportunity to be had here, I think that, you know, helping people recognize that is worthy of discussion, whether it's something personal. Like when we're forced to stop and suddenly we have to confront ourselves in a way that's uncomfortable. And I think that that is part of all the kind of vitriol that we're seeing played out in social media where people are entrenched in their particular points of view and expressing that in unhealthy ways across the know, across the board, to the extent that we can refrain from that and reflect internally on ourselves and how we can be better and how we can use this moment to reimagine what we want our lives to be. And

that's a luxury. I understand that. But I think even if it's five minutes for somebody in a day to be able to use this moment for that purpose would be a win. Very well said. I don't know. I like that. I can't let you leave though without talking to you about the Ironman. You did that in, what was that, 2014? Yeah, yeah, 2014.

How did that all come about for a sprinter? Yeah, I can't- A sprinter who trained like an endurance athlete though. So the Ironman came about, I mean, to be honest with you, it came out because a sponsor had come on board and said, hey, do you wanna run the Ironman? And I'm like, no, absolutely not. I've heard many stories about that. That is not what this body type is designed for.

And I also heard, I also read that like the human cells age like 20 years or something during the course of the Ironman Is that true? And they recover. Someone told me some kind of metric or something associated that like there's so much damage done and obviously you bounce back and it's okay. But anyway, so I said no.

And then finally I said, yes, I think I just got this like deeper desire to like try things that I've just never done before. And then I recognize also the kind of uniqueness of having a slot at Kona, which I didn't really understand what it was until I started having friends and other triathletes telling me,

it's like, hey man, it's only like, this is really hard to get into number one. And number two, like, don't take this lightly. Like this is pretty serious. Like, sorry, I started asking friends like, well, how fast can I go? And they're like, I don't know, don't worry about it, but probably not very fast, right?

Like we've ridden with you, like we've ran with you, like you can know your capability. Yeah, well, you came from a swimming background, you rode your bike for your training. It wasn't like you didn't have experience in these disciplines. I had experience, but nothing in that degree and in that kind of zone of heart rate for that duration

and in that heat, which was the biggest issue there. But I gotta tell you, I loved it. It opened my eyes. I always thought when I say you guys, I mean like endurance athletes and ultra endurance. I was like, you guys are just completely insane. Like this is, what do you mean you're gonna go for a 20 mile run today?

Like I just, I couldn't, you know, we do two by 10 times, you know, 150 meters. Like that's our track workout, you know? And then like long periods of rest. So it was unique and I loved it. I was given this coach who was gonna help me train for the Ironman in like, I think it was like seven months. Her name was, it was unique. I loved it. I was given this coach who was going to help me train for the Ironman. And like, I think it was like seven months. Her name was Paula Newby-Fraser. I'm sure you know Paula. And she was, she was just amazing. She understood

me as an athlete. She understood my psychology. She knew how to kind of hold the reins back and, and she just helped create this amazing training program. Yeah. Cause for a guy like you, it's,, it's gonna have to be about holding you back, right? Because you're gonna wanna just go train 30 hours a week right out of the gate, right? And you'll end up injured. Yeah, and all in the wrong energy systems, right? Right, right, right.

Not training. I just wanna go climb mountains and do hill sprints. She's like, no, no, no, we're not gonna do that. We're just gonna go ride for two and a half hours. We're not even gonna look at the watts. We're just gonna go ride. Just put your body a half hours. We're not even going to look at the watts. We're just going to go ride. Just put your body in there. And, you know, this was four years into my retirement.

I had been much heavier than I had liked to have been probably at that time. I'd been traveling a lot. My diet was all over the place. I was experimenting and eating everything and anything in Asia and in Europe and all over the, I just was living my life. So I thought, and then this opportunity came and it kind of helped me redial in my love for athletics and spending time on a bike with no headphones for hours at a time is, you know, you have a lot of internal conversations and it was beautiful. So a lot of the people that get those, I mean, it's essentially a celebrity

spot, right? Like you get gifted this spot, you didn't have to qualify for the race, they just allow you to have it. A lot of the people that are in that position, they just kind of, you know, don't take it seriously and show up and somehow get through it. But I have a different,

I have a sense that you actually took it seriously. And in that seven month period, you really wanted to see how well you could do because that's fundamentally how you're wired. I think I took it seriously as I could, still traveling a lot, but I recognized the value of that slot. And I didn't, there's two things. One, I deeply respected the endurance community because I just, these guys, they did things that I could never believe that I could do. And I was just, I just thought it was, you know, this is what they train their entire lives for. So it'd be like, if someone was given a slot to go try out the Olympic trials, I'd be like, Hey man, you better, if you were given the slot, like show me, show me, I don't even care

how good you are. Just show me that you put in the time and energy associated. And so that's what I wanted to do. So it was out of respect for the existing community. And then two, there's something beautiful and magical about training for those longer endurance races. And I hadn't felt that feeling since I had been training for the Olympics. And so it was this amazing opportunity that I didn't want to waste. And I found a lot of kind of deeper answers that I was actually searching for about what it was to go and compete in an Ironman. And it was awesome. And the Ironman competition is, you know, unless you're a pro is really instilled then it's really just about yourself, you know, like, and I love that. Yeah. It's certainly not about anybody else, which makes it different from

short track in a lot of ways. And just the fact that it's about economy and efficiency, it's about making sure your heart rate doesn't go over a certain threshold. That was so strange to me. As opposed to trying to see how high you can get it. That was, you know. I used to always be riding our bikes and I'd be with Paula and she'd be like,

you know, like, how do you feel? I'm like, good. I was like, I don't feel any lactate. And she's like, you're not supposed to. Right. If you do, then you're gonna have to slow down. I mean, we're used to like feeling lactate in our teeth, you know, like just being in a state of just pure pain.

But it was, man, Kona and just reliving that moment, kind of waking up very early and going out there. And the locals, they beat these drums at the beginning of the race. And you've got the pros, the guys who are gonna do these amazing, you know amazing speed completion of this Ironman and everyone's in the same water

at the same time. I was like, man, this is unlike anything I've ever experienced. This is really cool. Yeah, it's pretty unique in that way. It was really beautiful. And then being out there in the Queen K and it was, man, it was hard.

There was many times I cracked. You got it done though. Got it done. That was the purpose. And it wasn't until, by the way, halfway through the race, I was like, what the hell am I doing? And then the last six miles of the run,

you know, in the end, I was like, I get why people do this so much. Like I understand this feeling that I have right now is maybe perhaps what they're all feeling every time. And it was, it was a very addictive feeling. Yeah. This Olympic swimmer, friend of mine, sprinter, Garrett Weber Gale, what's up Garrett,

asked me one time a long time ago, he said, what do you think is, what do you think is harder? Do you think it's harder to swim the 50 freestyle or to like compete in the Ironman? And I thought about it, cause it's an interesting question. And I think the answer is that they're both hard. Like if you wanna be the best,

if you wanna be a master of either of those disciplines, it will require all of you. The 50 freestyle is 18 seconds or whatever it is. The Ironman is gonna take, you know, for the best people seven and a half hours or whatever that is. But the athlete to reach that potential in each of those is gonna have to meet their maker in an equal way, you know?

And as somebody who, you know, has done both, how do you think about the difference in those disciplines? They're both very hard. And, you know, if you said to me, Paul, you have to go train for a living for the Ironman, I would be very concerned that I could actually be competitive. I just, you know, I'm very good.

But- Well, you're wired as a sprinter. Wired as a sprinter, wired as a power athlete, wired as this like, you know, lack to capacity threshold type of a skater. It was different. It was really different. Definitely transformed my body

and it absolutely trained the sprint out of me, which is fine. Oh, it did? Yeah. So you lost all your power and your strength? I mean, I don't know if I lost it all, but I definitely cannot jump anywhere as high afterwards. And I had continued the training on

for like another year after because I became very addicted to that feeling. But it was training for an Olympic race, you know, that is 40 seconds long and you have to be absolutely perfect in that feeling. And, but it was, training for an Olympic race, you know, that is 40 seconds long and you have to be absolutely perfect in that realm. You know, the tens of a second, hundreds of a second, thousands of a second,

the difference between winning and not making the podium sometimes. And then being out there on, during an Ironman and you know, like seconds still matter. I mean, they still matter. I mean, they still matter. And to me, the psychological game is the same. It's still very much the same. And kind of the hardening of the mind when you're out there

and seeing, when I was competing in the Ironman, I stopped doing the race pace that we had set forth, which was like around 10 hours and 20 minutes or something like that. It's what Paula wanted me to do. And I deeply wanted to break 10 hours because a triathlete friend of mine told me I never would. I asked him, I was like,

well, what happens if I break 10 hours? He goes, don't worry, you won't. And so I was like, okay. And I just, I wanted to see, you know, I have become addicted to seeing what that threshold is and where that limit is. And it's pretty easy to push yourself to exhaustion, right? And find things to do that are really challenging.

But the Ironman was tough because of that heat was just so brutal and that humidity. And then having that experience with the energy lab and then like looking forward to it as you run down to that area and being like, all right, I'm here, let's do this. I hadn't had anything in my life like that for like four years.

The queen case so disorienting too, because things are so far apart, but you think they're closer than they are. Like there's an optical illusion that takes place on that road for some reason. Yeah, that plays head games with you for sure. What kind of head games happened with you when you were doing your five? Well, I've never done the Ironman actually.

I've done the Ultraman a couple of times, which takes place on this. It's a three-day race, double Ironman that goes all the way around the big island. And I've trained a lot on the big island. The third day is a 52 mile run from Javi to the old airport, which is basically right by the pier

where the Ironman starts. So I've spent a lot of time on that road training and also racing. And what kind of conversations are happening in your head? Oh, I mean, you know, come on. All kinds of insanity that, well, listen, you know, as somebody who not only is an Olympic athlete, but as somebody who trained for the Ironman, you're spending all this time alone with yourself and just you and your thoughts, right? So you become very connected to all the stories that you tell yourself about what you're capable of and what you're not, and also where your mind tends to linger when you're not paying attention. And I think for me,

that process has been incredibly instrumental as a growth tool, like all that time alone, where you're with yourself. And I was doing that at a moment in my life when I was trying to figure out who I was and what I wanted to do and who I wanted to be. I was at a transitionary phase of my professional career and how I thought about myself. And that time alone was really this gestation period that allowed me

to work through a lot of that confusion in my life. And I think it's a big reason why, you know, I was able to answer a lot of those questions for myself by virtue of the training. And, you know, probably wouldn't be sitting here talking to you today had I not done that stuff. So I think they're tools, I think they're tools. I think they can be leveraged for personal growth, or as you know, as well as anybody, they can be used to run away from your life as well.

There's that trope in Ironman, like the Ironman widow or whatever. There's a lot of people who can use endurance sports as a way of not dealing with their life, as a sort of a denial mechanism. So I think it's all about your relationship to it. Yeah, it's like a beautiful sword that is a tool that can carve amazing things

or it can cut you very deeply, self-inflicted. So tell me about the book. Yeah, so the book has been many years kind of in the making. The book is soft titled, Hard Pivot. And it started out as a journal of me kind of writing down my thoughts around this very difficult transition that was happening from what I thought was my only identity

into trying to find what my next identity was, the struggles and the trials and tribulations of why I made certain mistakes, why I made the same mistakes over and over again in certain different paths with different people, and then trying to find a better path forward, a more productive and a healthier path, both psychologically and also, I think, a more productive and a healthier path, both psychologically and also I think physically

and emotionally and spiritually. And that led me down the path of, we all are reinventing ourselves, whether it's every seven years, whether it's every couple of years, we're always reinventing in some capacity. And I became very interested in why certain people have had a tremendous amount of success reinventing themselves when others have failed miserably or myself have kind of

not tried and not been able to figure out like, how can I thrive and receive the same type of satisfaction that I was receiving before? I was so good at doing these things. I've got these attributes in my pocket that are transferable across any career path. Like why is it not clicking for me? And then that led me towards having conversations with athletes and business women and businessmen and artists and entertainers and people from all over the globe and planet around. Like what makes you tick? Like what is the driving force? Is it the micro trauma? How do you reinvent? Is there a better path? How does gratitude play a role? What are the five golden principles for you personally? Those things may be totally different. And it was really this younger, it's this memoir. It started out as this young,

is this memoir to a younger Apollo say, Hey hey, look, you're gonna screw up a lot throughout your career and post-career. And I hope that this book can give you some tools and strategies and just some insights around what to potentially expect from both yourself and from the world and the way that you interact with it and the way that you play in this world, the way that you work in this world,

the way that you live your life. And there is no right path for you. It's just a choice that you make and there's obstacles and challenges and how you turn them into opportunities is solely within your perception. And so it's a blend of kind of this psychological kind of conversation that I had with myself and kind of the dark places that I went to around why I was forming these bad habits around whether it was bad business partners, bad businesses, running away, going to Asia because I didn't want to be here in the States facing the identity of what Apollo Ono was here because I was recognized in checkouts or driving or whatever that was.

And I was very hungry to form a new identity. And then hearing the stories from other athletes who also struggled in the same way and was like, man, that guy didn't win any medals. And he feels literally identical to the way that I felt. And I started talking to people who weren't Olympic athletes and started hearing from them about their own personal struggles and reinvention

and feeling like they've lost everything mentally and physically and that they've gotten no skillset in how they move forward. And so that led me to believe it. Like, God, there's gotta be a set of people and population in this world who are going to feel like this

or who have already felt like this or perhaps looking for some additional guidance in terms of how to choose better, how to live better, how to create changes that stick, that are there and that can resonate with you, that are important to you, and how to have deeper introspective questions with yourself that are really hard to do. Because that means looking in the mirror and knowing that you're human, which means you are full of flaws. And that's an ongoing book that I'm writing. I think just resonate with individuals and people who are looking for a change and recognize that whatever was done before is not going to work moving forward. And then having that light switch turn on, which we've seen in friends and family all around us of people who've been that man or woman on fire. They're a changed person.

And that to me is like, that inspires me. So hopefully that can show them. Not as like, I'm not speaking from a place of being like, I'm the guru, I've figured it out. It's more of, here's what has worked for me. Here's what I know has not worked for me. Here's what these people have said about how they live their life and the experiences associated. And here's how you can draw from those things. Because I think as human beings, we're connected to each other in a certain way that is potentially sometimes unexplainable, but we wanna get drawn to those stories. We wanna hear from those and create these similar paths

and say, I feel what that guy's feeling, or I know what she went through because I had the same type of feeling or background or childhood and we crave them. And so that's what the book is. Yeah, that's cool. No, I gather that it comes from this genuine, authentic place of being informed

by your own struggles with this, right? And the reflection of understanding that you went to Asia as much to run away as much as it was to pursue these entrepreneurial ventures, right? Like that's like maturation to recognize that because it would be easy to say, oh, I'm doing this for a business.

This is what I need to do. But to understand that you were to some extent running away from yourself in so doing, I think speaks to somebody who's done the work. Like you've done quite a bit of work to get to that place. Yeah, I've done a lot of work. What did you learn in talking to all these people that you didn't know going into this project?

I think I knew them going into the project. The thing that seemed like the similarity and the tone amongst everybody was everyone's path was very hard at some point. And so hard to where they really questioned Why they were doing it or if there was going to be something that was going to turn the corner I just had a conversation a couple of days ago where someone was saying that There was this inner voice that kept telling him and reminding him that his work was not over

And that even though he was tired and exhausted and he was running a different business He started another one. This new business was the one that he didn't look at as a business. He was helping people with their own pain. And I was like, man, that's so interesting. Like, what is this inner voice? And you know, is it religion? Is it spirituality? Is it like your own inner God? Like what was this voice? And he's like, I don't know. And this, this man was very emotional when he was telling me the story. He would just, he just checks in with it. Like is this it? Is this the right path that i'm going towards and so what I noticed that people were having that kind of conversation Not everyone, but the ones that I really felt like kind of understood it and did some work

um They were having these conversations like is this the path? they were having these conversations like, is this the path? It's like that connected to their intuition. Connected to that, I call it the inner voice, right? Your true north, your compass, like, is this it? Like, am I doing this for the right reasons in the right timeframe?

And is this important to me? Is this important to my family? Is this important to the world? And sometimes it's hard to answer that question. Like if you're like an accountant and you're like, is this, is what I'm doing right now important? Like in the whole grand scheme of like, sometimes the world physics is going to implode. And I don't know that the answer to that, but what I saw was a similarity is that everyone had this introspective resistance and challenge. And the ones who had success were the ones who were able to either

stick with it or pivot and continue on that kind of consistent drive towards something is greater than myself. And I believe that's important to what I'm doing. And then there was others who were like, I love what I'm doing. And that was interesting too, right? Is people who had this natural curiosity of just growth. And those are the ones that seemed to me were masters at reinvention. They just were like, it looked like they had the Midas touch. And then upon deeper analysis, they didn't have the Midas touch. It's just the way they spoke about their experiences

and their perceptions of the challenges that they had made it seem like they had the Midas touch and they were winning. And they genuinely felt that. That's interesting. Yeah, because I'm typically jealous of those people. Take like a musician, for example, somebody who picks up a guitar at a very young age and that's just their thing. And they do that their whole life and they love it. And eventually they're able to craft a career around it versus someone like yourself, an athlete, there's a shelf life on that passion.

At some point, you're gonna have to give it up. And that sucks, right? Why couldn't it be something like guitar that you could do for the rest of your life? Right? I love musicians and artists because it just, it seems like the purest form of expression, right? You're up there and, but I agree. I think that there's, look, the world is full of the face that you give to the world, the face that you face in the mirror and the face when there is no mirror and there's no one else around. And I think the deeper that you can understand

those three phases of the face and get closer to the one face is I think the happier we all can be. I've got Apollo, the speed skater, this person who represents certain things that we like about the Olympic space, is dancing with a stars character, this entrepreneur.

And then there's this person who exists beneath that layer, behind the curtain. Like, who is that person? Does that person resonate with each one of these personalities that on an external view are looking in at? And then how do I form a more holistic and full-bodied understanding of who am I? Like, what do I want in this world? And what does this world want for me? And how can I impact this world, even in the smallest of micro seconds in someone's day to where they can for a second say, oh, I know what he's feeling. I know what that is. I know I should be doing this and I can do something about it. And that to me is this driving force now that I think is Taking that relentless drive that existed about something that was Very personal and and selfish in a sense, right? I want to win a gold medal for me

Um, and then saying like I want to help people win their own gold medals In their own personal lives and do it for the right reasons. And that seems like an impossible task that I love kind of going down. And there's many people pursuing this, Pat. That's the beauty about this, is there's many people helping and seeking and trying to guide and just love interacting with other humans about,

hey, let's share these experiences with each other. What can I learn from yours? And how can I share mine that maybe you can draw upon to help do more self-reflection, have a deeper conversation just for five minutes and be able to look in the mirror and have the cold, hard truths and be like, look, dude, like you are screwing up.

You are not in the place because of you. No one else, no one else put you here except for you. Are you okay with that? Most of us will say, hey, you know, like, it's hard to have that conversation, it's painful. Well, most people don't wanna take ownership of that for themselves. They'll wanna point the finger

and say it was somebody else's fault or it's because of this external circumstance, et cetera. But, you know, I love the way that you put that. It was beautifully put and it's this amazing journey to what I see as somebody grappling with self-integration. Like, how do I live more authentically myself, right? I have to take these characters and these personalities and find a way to weave them into a greater sense of not just who I am, this story, this identity that I carry with me, but how I channel all of that and then share with the world for the benefit of other people. And I think finding a way to create that integration is about identifying those values and then bringing your actions into alignment with them.

And that's what creates this merger that you just so eloquently articulated. But it's hard, man. It's hard work, I think. And it's easy for somebody to look at your story and say, well, this guy has just been winning his whole life. Everything he touches like goes well, you know? That's not the case. Yeah. And I think, you know, it brings it all the way back to the beginning in this documentary

and understanding that there's a lot more going on here with somebody who is trying to be, whether it's somebody who's trying to be the best in the world at the Olympics, or just an everyday person who's struggling with, you know, how to get through the day and how to pay the bills and how to feel a little bit happier when their head hits the pillow every night. Yeah. And that's the dream, right? Is that we'd like to look at other people's lives and say, like, they've got this natural genetic talent, or they've got this opportunity, or they've got this gift, and that's why it's so easy. That's why that they run this company and the stock price just shot up. Or that's why they're so charismatic.

And what we don't see is the complexities beneath those faces that people are wearing during those times. And human beings are complex. They're emotional. I mean, all of us, we're just so, we're complex individuals. And I just, I remember even looking at others and sometimes and sometimes and seeing like man that guy seems like he has it all and then Like kind of like like later on laughing and chuckling myself be like wait You don't know how that guy's life is you have no idea what's happening in his own head his between his ears Maybe the biggest enemy of all he may actually be the most tormented

and that's why he's pursuing or having so much success in the water or doing this. And, you know, the documentary, I think, highlights that and it brings light to show. Certainly Michael Phelps is a perfect example of that. And I think that's why it's so difficult for people to wrap their heads around why somebody who's that successful could possibly harbor, you know,

any kind of like mental issue whatsoever. And I think that's why documentaries like this one are so important in helping people to understand that you guys are human beings, that this is part of the human condition. And that if we want to heal and become more integrated, we have to have the courage to confront these problems, to understand that strength comes in that vulnerability and to give people permission. I think that's the thing that I took away from it the most, like the permission to raise your hand and saying,

I'm having a hard time and I need some help and that that's okay to do. And I think it begins with a change in the way that the culture of sport exists, because the culture of sport doesn't, it has never trained the athletes to allow that. Yeah. And we need systems set up to take care of the athletes better, you know, to have programs that are available to not just the Olympic athletes, but to every kind of athlete, whether you're in the NBA, the NFL,

or you're on the junior varsity volleyball team at your high school. I think that we need mental health. Mental health has to be part of the curriculum and there has to be an acceptance that availing yourself of that kind of service is just part of what it means to try to be your healthiest, the healthiest version of who you can be.

Yeah, it doesn't matter how many medals you've won, how much money you have, how handsome or beautiful you are, mental health and the disease of depression has no name. It will touch anyone and everyone and you don't have a choice. And that's what people, I think, hopefully will understand from the documentary is that the insecurities or the flaws that exist in all these athletes is a part of the reason why they rose to so much success. Is there something missing there that doesn't fully form this human. But when that competition is over or when that issue has never been addressed fully, that is potentially a very

negative downward spiral. And I think everybody can recognize that regardless of whether you're an athlete or not, is that because we're human beings, we have a brain and that brain means that we have emotions and those feelings and they're real. And we have to recognize and be able to openly speak about these things and change the culture of sport in a way that still hardens you and still creates resilience and strength and all these things that we love about sports, but also has a deeper conversation around, hey, it is okay if you struggle in certain parts of your life And the faster and the earlier that we can kind of head this off at the past The better that your life will be when you retire when you move on and your potential career because that balance brings in light It doesn't have to be this radical seesaw

Right where you just cranked on one side and all this stuff over here in your personal life has to suffer You can have this delicate balance and people have done it. And hopefully that will be, this film will bring more light and attention awareness around, hey, we can do something about this. And it takes everybody to kind of say, hey, I also feel that way. And it's totally cool. And that's all right. That's a part of who I am as a person and I'm working on it. And that person is too. And that person is too. And that's all right. That's a part of who I am as a person. And I'm working on it. And that person is too. And that person is too. And that person is too.

And that's how you create this collective, I think that is happening now, not just in sport, but around the world. Yeah. I think that's a good place to end it. Thanks for having me, Rich. I feel good. It was good.

The movie's amazing. Everybody should definitely check it out. How's your dad doing? My dad's amazing. Yeah. Is he still out. How's your dad doing? My dad's amazing. Yeah. Is he still up in Seattle? He's up in Seattle. My dad goes to work every single day, seven days a week.

Still hairdresser still? Still hairdresser. I don't know who's going to see him. Does he cut your hair? He hasn't cut my hair in a while. I call it the COVID 15 inches. My dad's doing very, very well. My dad, yeah, we have great conversations.

He's still- Relationship is strong there? Stronger than ever. My dad is always, I think the older he gets, the more philosophical he gets towards me, which is really interesting. So I always ask him a question, "'Dad, are you coming over for Father's Day?'

And he responds back with like this long text about like the Olympic mountains and like the clouds. I'm like, wait a second, wait, is this for me? And then I have to like read deeper into the riddle. It is my dad. Cool, man. All right, man, well, come back and talk to me again. This was super fun.

Yeah, thanks. Stay in touch, man, thanks. If you wanna connect with Apollo, what's the best way? Instagram? Instagram, yeah, at Apollo Ono, Facebook. I'm across kind of all the channels cool and when is the book anticipated to come out depends on when i finish the last three chapters come on man you're in this quarantine you got no excuse yeah that was

when i began this quarantine i was like oh i'm gonna write two of these books right this can be nothing and then uh i'm hoping by the end of this year, I'll be completely done with the book and then probably launch by 2021. Cool. All right, man. I look forward to it. Come back and talk to me when the book comes out. Yeah, let's do it.

Cool. Peace. Plants. What do you think? Wise young man, that Apollo. Thoughtful, deep, considerate, polite, introspective. I can't say enough good things about this human being. And I really appreciate the way

that he moves through the world. And I hope you got as much out of that as I did. Give Apollo a shout of appreciation at Apollo Ono on Twitter and Instagram. Check out the doc, The Weight of Gold on HBO. Again, not a sponsored thing for the record. And if you wanna dive deeper into Apollo's story, check out his two books, his autobiography,

A Journey, the autobiography of Apollo Anton Ono, and Zero Regrets, Be Greater Than Yesterday. These books won't disappoint. If you'd like to support our work here on the show, subscribe, rate, and comment on it on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube. Share the show or your favorite episodes with friends or on social media. And you can support us on Patreon at richroll.com forward slash donate. I appreciate everybody who worked hard to put on today's show. Jason Camiello for audio engineering, production, show notes, and interstitial Music. Blake Curtis for videoing today's program.

Jessica Miranda for graphics. David Greenberg for photos. DK for advertiser relationships. And theme music by my boys, Tyler, Trapper, and Hari. Appreciate all of you guys. I love you. It means so much to me that you tune in and listen each week. And I'll be back here in a couple days with what's next.

I think we might have another roll- on episode with Adam to look forward to. Until then, be well. Thank you.