WHOOP Podcast - Ginny Thrasher, Gold Medalist in the sport of air rifle, talks about the dedication and mindset necessary to go from beginner to Olympic champion in just 5 years.

Episode Date: August 27, 2019

Olympic Gold Medalist Ginny Thrasher discusses how she took up the sport of air rifle (4:18), going from a beginner to an Olympic champion in only 5 years (8:59), the research she did as a West Virginia University student that led to her getting on WHOOP (14:33), increasing accuracy by lowering resting heart rate (15:53), her Ted Talk and the growth mindset (21:34), affirmations and journaling (23:44), mantra-mindfulness (24:49), HRV's affect on shooting (30:33), what improves her sleep (34:56), her training diet (40:31), factors that influence performance (44:28), optimism takes work (48:01), and training for the 2020 Tokyo Games (50:41).Support the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

We discovered that there were secrets that your body was trying to tell you that could really help you optimize performance, but no one could monitor those things. And that's when we set out to build the technology that we thought could really change the world. Welcome to the WOOP podcast. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of Woop, where we are on a mission to unlock human performance. Our clients range from the best professional athletes in the world, to Navy SEALs, to fitness enthusiasts, to Fortune 500 CEOs and executives. The common thread among WOOP members is a passion to improve.

What does it take to optimize performance for athletes, for humans, really anyone? And now that we've just launched all-new Woopstrap 3.0 featuring WOOP Live, which takes real-time training and recovery analysis to the next level, you're going to hear how many of these users are optimizing their body with whoop and with other things in their life. On this podcast, we dig deeper. We interview experts. We interview industry leaders across sports, data, technology, physiology, athletic achievement, you name it. How can you use data to improve your body? What should you change about your life? My hope is that you'll leave these conversations with some new ideas and a greater passion for performance. With that in mind, I welcome you to the

What I really appreciate most about my sport is what matters most is effort, not gender, not how tall you are or how strong you are, how much deliberate practice are you putting out there. And it really is interesting because that matters so much more than your innate talent. And that's why my sport is, in my opinion, one of the best. What's up, folks? My guest today is Ginny Thrasher, winner of the gold medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics for air rifle. And she was just 19 years old. She took up rifle shooting after hunting with her grandfather at age 14. And just five years later, she's an Olympic champion. Really an amazing woman. And it was a fascinating conversation. We talk about the dedication and mindset.

to go from beginner to world champion in just five years, what she did to stay focused while competing at the Olympic Games, how her research as a West Virginia university student led her to using whoop, and how she's used to steady her shooting by improving her HRV and lowering her resting heart rate. This was really fascinating, folks, this idea of trying to lower your resting heart rate while shooting a gun to improve accuracy. And lastly, what she's doing now in terms of training, diet, and sleep as she prepares for the 2020 Tokyo Games at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. For anyone looking to succeed at any new endeavor, or simply just be better at what you do, I think you're going to find a lot of the principles and mindset that

Ginny applied to win her gold medal to be beneficial for you. So I hope you enjoy, and without further ado, here is Ginny. Ginny, thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me. you won a gold medal at age 19. You were a college sophomore and you win a gold medal in the women's air rifle. I mean, that's pretty amazing. It was one of those life-changing moments and I finished my freshman year of college. My sport of rifle shooting is an NCAA event. So my team won NCAA championships and I won the individual championships. And two weeks later, my head was still reeling from that and I went to Olympic trials and ended up winning. Next thing you know, I'm in a new country every other week, training, preparing for the Olympics, and then I go and I... Just like that. It's amazing. I mean,

19 years old, amazing. Congratulations on the incredible success that you've had. Thank you. Why don't you start by describing air rifle for our audience? All right. So there are two different Olympic rifle events for women. The first one is air rifle. And the second one, one is small boar so i shoot both of them so air rifle you shoot a 0.177 caliber pellet and you shoot at a bullseye right so you're indoors and the bullseye is 10 meters away and it's smaller than two inches and basically the closer you get to the middle the higher your score is with the maximum score of 10.9 but to get a 10 the bullseye is only half a millimeter so to put it in perspective with you what we're doing is we're shooting at a dot that is the size of a period at the end of a sentence

in Times New Roman size 12 font. Oh my gosh, that's incredible. If you hit that dot... I have a very clear image of what that is. Yeah. So if you hit that dot, you get a 10. If you want more than a 10, like a 10.4 or 10.5, you have to significantly overlap that dot.

So it's a very difficult sport. And then you do that, you do that 60 times. You do it 60 times. And are you shooting alone or are other people shooting at the same time? So everyone's shooting at the same time and you have a time limit. So you have an hour and 15 minutes for 60 shots. An hour and 15 minutes for 60 shots. And do you actually use that whole time limit or will you do it much faster than that?

Speeds vary. I probably take about an hour each time. okay so on average it's a minute a shot now the cool part comes after you shoot those 60 shots so what they do is they take your 60 shots they add them up and then they take the top eight people in the competition so if you're in the Olympics they take all the scores and they take the top eight people and they go to a final so when you start the final you start back at zero and it's an elimination final so you shoot a certain number of shots and then you kick out eighth place and then you kick out seventh place. And then the last one's standing, has a gold medal. So what's interesting about the process you're describing is it seems like it rewards consistency as much as accuracy. Like it's not just the person who can hit the period, so to speak, or the target, so to speak, you know, the most accurately wants. It's someone who can be really, really close to it or hit it over a long, long, long process.

Exactly. And it's consistency over time, but it's also being able to deal with the mental effects of it. It's pretty easy to hit a 10 once, but can you do that 10 times? If you've done that 55 times, can you finish out and have a 600? So it's a, I like to say it's more of a mental sport than a physical sport some days. Yeah, I bet. So let's go back for a second. So in the qualifying stage, you do 60 shots, right? And if you take out the target, you'll get like above a 10, right? Yes. If you're really close, you're going to get like an 8 or a 9? At the Olympic level, you're probably going to be getting more like a 9.9 might be your lowest score all day. Oh, wow. So a 9.9, how close is that to the period? That's very close, a hair away. So you're telling me you do 60 shots, and the most you're going to miss a Times New Roman 12 period is a hair. That's the goal. That's unbelievable, isn't it?

I mean, how did you know you were going to be into this? Like, was this something that you were always excited about? Was there a sport you watched growing up? Nope. So I tried a lot of different sports growing up, and I'll be honest, I'm not very coordinated. I'm probably the most unathletic Olympic gold medalist. But I actually wanted to go to the Olympics in figure skating. And to be honest, I was never at that level in figure skating.

And when I started high school, I had gone hunting with my grandfather. And then when I went to high school, they had a varsity air rifle team. So I went out the first day to just, just check it out. And most people stay for like an hour, hour and a half shooting. And after three hours, my mom had to drag me away from the range. And how old were you when you started? I want to say it was 14. Wait a sec. So you started age 14 and five years later, you're the best in the world? Yes. That's pretty unbelievable. I mean, really. Like, I mean, most Olympians I talk to, it's like they started doing their thing at age like four or five.

You know, you're describing this age 14. Okay, you do this thing for three hours. Now what? Well, I just want to go back and touch on the five year. Obviously, that's not a typical path in any sport, including my sport. But what I really appreciate most about my sport is what matters most is effort, not gender, not how tall you are or how tall you are. strong you are, how much deliberate practice are you putting out there. And it really is interesting

because that matters so much more than your innate talent. And that's why my sport is, in my opinion, one of the best. Yeah, it's really interesting. So at what stage did you realize you were good at it? I think I always knew I was decent at it and I really liked it. So after that first night, when they dragged me off the range, I joined my high school team, and then a year later, I joined a more competitive travel type team. So after I joined the travel team, I got recruited to compete in college, and that's when I went to West Virginia University. So that's only a few years after you start, right? You probably get recruited at age 17, right? Yes.

So within like two or three years of first trying this thing. thing, you're, you're now getting recruited to do it in college. It's pretty amazing, frankly. West Virginia has a great legacy on their rifle team and a great rifle program. And so it was really, for me, it was an honor to be able to go there. And my freshman year was just, you know, a very large slope of improvement. And it was really amazing to be in that culture. In the Olympic setting, so you talked about, you know, you go through this first stage where you do 60 shots. I'm like really interested in that strategy of shooting every minute.

You know, like for someone who's very naive about this, I could picture you almost want to do it much faster than that because maybe you get like locked into the right position. But I could also see how it sounds like you want to almost reset with each shot. Just explain that to me because that to me seems very strategic and really interesting. I think it is strategic. and interesting. And it's one of those things that you're right. If you get in a rhythm and it's going smoothly and you're kind of in a flow state per se, then you want to shoot, I don't want to say with

speed, but you want to shoot at a good rhythmic pace and get as many shots down while you're still there. But there are other times when you're struggling and you want to come off and take a break and go talk to your coach for five or ten minutes. Oh, that's interesting. So you can actually stop and just you like do a full reset. Yes. So I, there are some people, they never take a break. They go, start, shoot all 60 shots. I am not one of those people. Oh, interesting. I'll come off the line and talk to my coach at least once a match, if not three, four times. Wow. That's really fascinating. And what are you thinking about when you're shooting? Well, ideally you're thinking about the process of shooting. And the goal is to

really simplify it because it's a long and complicated process between loading, having smooth movements, focusing on your breathing, how you approach the target, a smooth trigger pull, and follow through after the target. So it's really a lot. So you want to simplify it to honestly what you're best at. And so when I'm in practice, I'm working on the things that need improvement. But when I'm trying to compete and perform, I'm focused on the one skill that I am best at that I know will give me the best performance possible. And what is that one skill? For me, it's follow through. So once I pull the trigger, it's having a smooth follow through.

Like when you swing a baseball bat and after you make contact, you don't just stop the bat. You complete the motion. Very similar in shooting. Like when you pull the trigger, the gun is making some kind of a recoil. Is that where you're talking about the follow-through? Like, you're making sure that you're following the gun through that shot? Or are you actually talking about the moment that you press, there's some kind of emotion that needs to happen?

More akin to the first one. There is recoil with our guns, but it is very small, much smaller than any typical rifle you've shot. These guns are very, well, to be honest, if you look at them, they look like they're straight out of Star Wars or something. They're enormous, by the way. I mean, the photo of you, you know, age 19 holding this enormous gun winning the Olympics is amazing.

I will say, I'm only 5'1. Yeah, right. The gun looks like, you know, it's three times the size of you. And they're pretty heavy. Not literally, but it's enormous. They're pretty heavy, too. They can weigh 12 to 14 pounds. Okay, so that is heavy.

So there's this slight recoil, and that's where the follow-through comes in. Now, let's talk about your resting heart rate. And I read here that you wanted the best wearable for sleep and heart rate because precision rifle shooting requires a high focus level. This is a quote of yours. So that's how WOOP comes into the equation, which I think is so cool. So I'll actually tell you about how I got into Woop and found it. In college, I majored in biomedical engineering. So I wanted to start doing research.

I started doing research with the Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute at West Virginia. and they introduced me to a lot of different wearables. And at first, I was just really interested in the science behind it because that's what I was learning about in class, and that was really, really fascinating to me. And so I ended up choosing WOOP to be my main wearable after testing several because I thought it was the most accurate, and that was really important to me.

After that, it kind of became, how can this improve my athletic performance? How can I use this to help me? And then as I kept doing research with it, it really became, how can I help the sport of rifle shooting? You know, this is not a sport that's studied very often, and it's a very mental sport, but there are some physical things that really make a difference. And I thought, what if I can isolate the variables that actually matter to rifle shooting? And that's where I am now. And explain to me how you'll try to lower your heart rate and how low it can get.

So resting heart rate is very important, obviously. And there's kind of two factors to it. So one is genetic and one is your general fitness level. So I have to really just shout out to my dad for some good genetics there. So my resting heart rate, I would say on a normal day is probably around 50 and I can get it into the high 40s if I'm exercising pretty frequently. And when you're doing Olympic, let's say you're in the Olympic shooting, right? How low will you get your heart rate? I don't know that one for a fact, but what I do know is the lower your base resting heart rate is when you get into that performance zone when you're not resting, you know, even though you want to shoot between heartbeats and therefore the lower your heart rate, the better, if you get in

a pressure situation, sometimes that's just not feasible. But if your resting heart rate's naturally lower, then your upper limits of your heart rate are going to be different, too. Have you measured your heart rate at all while you're shooting? Yes. And it's definitely highest during a final situation. And that's where there's the most, I would say the most energy in the room and the most adrenaline going on. So let's focus on that.

So you're in the Olympics. You've got, you're one of six people. And it's a knockout stage. Like, is your mindset, I want to be perfect on every shot, every shot of the time, or are you almost like saving a little bit in the tank? You definitely don't have to be perfect in a final, but you have to be able to shoot the best you can. And I'm a big proponent of you shoot the best you can and you see where the cards fall at the end of it. So finals are actually where I thrive, I think, because I really enjoy that kind of focus, competitive environment. So when you're in a final, you only have 50 seconds per shot.

It plays to my advantage because you can't overthink it. And I'm an overthinker. So when I'm in a match and I have the luxury of being able to come off the line and talk to my coach and do all that, it's hard to have that competitive, fierce mindset for all 60 shots, especially when it's over such a long period of time. So when it's 50 seconds, go and you have to take one shot, there's no choice. There's no, well, maybe I should do this. No, you take a shot and it's a 10.

And that's the fact. So that's why I like finals a lot. Yeah, that strikes me as a winning mindset. You know, it's different, though, from a sport like, say, I think what you're doing is mentally quite exhausting. But I'm thinking about a sport like, say, boxing, right, where, which was sort of of where that strategy was coming from this concept is like if you're up in a fight you may actually try to conserve a little energy force your opponent to make more you know throw more punches to try to get

that to make that person force themselves to get back into the fight and it sounds like in you know air rifle it's more of a every shot you're going to shoot the best possible shot you can definitely and i think that can lead to total domination where you're in first from the very first time or it can lead to, okay, I'm in eighth place, but I keep, you know, I keep an optimistic mindset and I keep shooting the best shot I can and someone else makes a mistake and all of a sudden I'm in fifth place, you know, and you just work your way up. And when you won the Olympics, what place were you in throughout each of those knockout stages? Was there like a moment where you were fourth and they eliminated the fifth person or were you always first through each one of those rounds?

I think there was one round I was in second, and that was, like, one of the very first rounds. I think I maintained first through the majority of the final, and out of the 20 shots, 19 of my shots were tens in the Olympics. That's amazing. Yeah. And it was one of those, I have cue words. So what I say to myself during each shot, and for me, the cue words in a match are different than the keywords in the final, because the more intense it is, the more adrenaline, the more

you need to simplify, right? Interesting. Yeah, I like that. Throughout the final, you know, my heart's pounding. My hold was not what I wanted it to be, but I simplified my keywords to just see and react. So every shot, I'm saying see and react. And the goal is to just, when you're coming down onto that target, you just have really fast reaction times and you just use that to your advantage. And when I got to the very last

shot, so there's only the first and second place standing at this point, I knew if I could just shoot a 10, I would win. If I shot anything less than a 10, I might give my opponent the opportunity, right, depending what she shot. Yeah. So I knew I just had to shoot a 10. So I kept my keywords very simple, that shot. And I said, shoot a 10. And if you watch the video, I shot a 10.4 on that shot. And afterwards, it's just, it's just a sigh of relief, to be honest. So there's a big mental aspect to this. You gave a very compelling TED talk that we'll put in the show notes. And I really enjoyed. But you talk about this idea of a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset. Describe a little bit about that. So they're pretty self-explanatory in some ways.

So a growth mindset in the most basic definition means that I believe through effort, I can grow. I can improve. And you can apply this to anything. So if you've ever heard someone say, I'm just not a math person. I'm not good at math. Well, that's a very fixed mindset, whereas someone with a growth mindset could say something like, I'm not the level I want to be at math, but I bet if I do my homework every night, I'll get better. And positive affirmation sounds like a big component in your story, right?

This inner belief, this telling yourself, I'm going to shoot a 10. How have you used affirmations in your life? I would say I've actually used affirmations quite a bit. And I'm really lucky to have a circle surrounding me of people who are very in tune. with who I am and how I function, and they really want me to succeed. And so they've also been a big part of it. I'm a big believer that you have to know who to go to and know who can help you because it really takes a village to create a really great athlete. And you have to, you know, you can't have the ego of, I want to do this all myself. You know, I think it's really important

to have coaches and have other people in your life, your parents, your family, your friends, who are on the same page and encouraging you. And I think it goes to the other end of if there are people in your life that aren't helping your athletic performance, they need to go. It's totally true. I mean, I think if you're driven, there's people you have to cut out of your life as much as there's people you need to surround yourself with. It sounds like that's something you've found.

Back to the affirmations for a second. Like how, in a very literal way, how will you use them? will you write things down? Is it more the things that you visualize and tell to yourself? Is it a combination? I would say I do a lot of journaling and I do a lot of mindfulness. So for me, the journaling is about being intentional. It's about being positive, understanding, and being able to articulate what my core beliefs are. Because as I speak about a lot in that TED talk, you mentioned, your core beliefs are what drive your behaviors. And that's why most New Year's resolutions don't work,

is you just try to change the behavior instead of changing the core belief behind it and letting the behavior come from that. So I think the journaling for me is very important and also as a way of self-reflection. You know, what did I do at practice today? Was it really helping me? What can I do tomorrow to be more effective, more intensive? more intentional. I also like to use mindfulness a lot.

So there's a few different types of mindfulness. You know, most people have heard of breathing mindfulness, for instance. I really like mantra mindfulness. And like we talked about earlier with keywords, it's a good way to have those positive affirmations. And in mantra mindfulness, you repeat a saying or a phrase or quote over and over in your head. and it really just locks everything down, I think. Well, I love a lot of what you just said.

It's obvious why you've been so successful. In terms of the mantra mindfulness, what do you like to say to yourself? So I have a mantra that I say to myself a lot while I'm shooting in the qualification, and I've tried to replace it or change it, and I just always go back to it. But my mantra is trust the process, commit to the 10. And there's two really important. I love that. I feel like that extends well beyond air rifle.

Yeah. So I think there's two important parts. So the first part, trust the process. You know, you have to believe in what you're doing in a big picture sense of your process of how you choose to have your life, what you choose to do, your actions. and even if the results you're getting at the moment are what you want, you have to trust in that process and continue. And when you're shooting, you know, there's a thinking mindset and a trusting mindset. So when you're in practice, is a great time to have a thinking mindset

and be able to make changes and intentionally improve. But when you're in a match, like I said earlier, you just want to execute. You just want to have that performance oriented. And to do that, you really have to have the trust in your skills. It's not the time to make changes. It's the time to trust and therefore execute. So that's kind of the big picture and the small picture of that. I love it.

Now, you say our core beliefs are the primary driving force behind our behaviors, right? You made this point about how New Year's resolutions fail because you're just focused on the behaviors. I think that makes a lot of sense. Talk to me about your core beliefs. I think everyone has core beliefs that drive them, right? So one of the examples I use in my TED Talk, which I really love, is I have a friend who eats really, really fast. Every time we go out to lunch, he eats so much faster than I do. So just to experiment, I would try things to make him eat slower. So I would have the courses brought out separately. Or I would try to talk to him and give him to talk instead of eating and it never changed how fast he ate because I was trying to change the behavior so finally I asked him why do you eat so fast well it turns out when he was a kid in their family if you

didn't eat faster than other people the other people would pick off your plate and eat your food yeah right so the reason his action was of eating really fast was because of that core belief that was stemmed from childhood. And so your point there is, okay, this person had had the wrong belief. If he can shift that belief, ultimately the behavior will follow. Yes. And the other interesting point is I can't change that belief for him. No matter how slow I want him to eat, he would have to himself take a new belief of,

well, eating slower is more healthy for my digestion. and you have to really believe in that and then practice it and then act in direct opposition of your belief that's already there to change that belief. Really fascinating. Let's talk for a minute about a day in the life of Jenny, right? You seem like someone who's really dialed in. What do you do first thing in the morning? If I'm really on my game, I will journal first thing in the morning. But I have to be honest with you, I'm not a morning person, so journaling normally waits until later in the morning. Okay, so you'll wake up whenever you feel ready to wake up. Sounds like you're not someone who needs to be up at 6 a.m.

No, I definitely don't need to be up at 6 a.m. But in college, I would say I lived on a very strict schedule. That's how you have to be if you're an NCAA athlete. So I would wake up and go to class from 8 to noon. then I would eat lunch and then practice from one to five and then work out and then do my homework and go to bed. So that was most days for me. So, you know, it sounds like overall pretty, pretty simple, right? You're not adding a lot of different things in your life, right? It sounds like you're very focused on what you want to achieve. Yeah. And I think it is important to have

balance, however. It is important to take days off and to be able to make it. So when you come into the range, you're being as effective as possible. And if you're burnt out, then you can't do that. And that's one of the reasons I really like Woop. Yeah, tell me how you've used Woop. So actually in a few different ways when I was in college. And now that I've graduated, my schedule is more heavy onto the shooting and less onto the studying, which is good too. So when I was in college doing this research, what we did my senior year is we took every single variable that whoop measures. So resting heart rate, how long I slept, the quality of sleep, my strain, and we did correlation statistics between all those variables for the day of my match, the day before my match, and the two days before my match, and compared them to all of my NCAA scores. from my senior year.

Okay, and what did you find? I'm on the edge of my seat. It was actually really interesting. There was only one variable that had a correlation with how I shot. It was my HRV. Wow, yeah. And at first I was pretty surprised by it. And then the more I thought about it, the more I realized, oh, this makes sense.

So what I found was that when my body was in, the fight or flight mode, right, with your parasympathetic nervous system. So when I was in the fight or flight mode was when I shot the best. Now, this didn't make sense to me at first because when your body's in that kind of survival mode, your heart starts racing faster, right? Which is something we don't like for shooting. And all the blood goes to your extremities. And you're getting ready to either, you know, start running or to pick up that spear and fight. And there are some consequences of this that aren't good for shooting. Like the heart rate, like your peripheral vision really becomes greater, which is not something you need for shooting. And you're almost

kind of nervous. You know, you have that adrenaline. That's not necessarily what you would think is the ideal for my sport. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized what else was going on. My reaction times were getting better. My vision in general was improving, which is very important for my sport. And it was my body's way of saying, hey, I'm ready to go. And when I could get into a match and realize, okay, I'm a little nervous, okay, my heart's racing more than I want it to be. but I can use the positive aspects of being in this fight or flight state and I can really perform today, that's when I would do the best. So on days you had higher heart rate variability, you did better.

Yes. You know, that makes sense to me. I mean, we see this across a ton of different sports, obviously. We've worked with probably 15 different disciplines where we've measured the relationship between things like heart rate variability and our analysis of recovery with performance. And across the board, higher heart rate variability is better. So that does make a lot of sense to me. I think it's interesting that some of the other factors like, say, resting heart rate

or sleep independently were less important. Like we see, for example, sleep as an independent variable correlates very well with performance in other sports. It's interesting that it was probably, it seems like it was a little less important in the case of air rifle, but you could argue that the better your sleep, in some cases that will correlate with higher heart rate variability, so you can't rule it out. Well, one of the, you know, just to preface this, I don't have enough matches over the course of my senior year of college that I can really have something

that's too statistically relevant and the other thing is I've you know I'm a big proponent of good sleep and sleep is something I've cared about long before I started using whoop so I would say my sleep is fairly consistent and also

hopefully my scores are fairly consistent too so I think it is hard to find that correlation when the range just isn't there Let's talk about your sleep habits. So when do you like to go to bed? I like to go to bed around 10.30.

And what's your routine leading up to sleep? So using whoop, I found several things that influence my sleep. Some are good, some are bad. So what I know influences my sleep most positively is reading before bed. So I like to read before bed. Cool. Yep. What kind of stuff do you read?

Oh, I like to read a little bit of everything. thing, you know, definitely in the fiction, fantasy, sci-fi, but I'll also read a lot of nonfiction, you know, sports psych type books. I just read a really good book on negotiating. So I like to just, I love to read, to be honest. Okay, so you like to read. You see positive benefits with that. What else? So I know that for me, if I do not set an alarm, I just let myself sleep and go to bed at the same time every night, I will sleep for approximately eight hours and 24 minutes. Wow, that's nice. That sounds really nice. Yep. So to me, that correlates to nine hours in bed. So I know that I like to give myself a window of nine hours from the time I put my book down to the time my alarm goes off. Now,

I don't always get that, but that's my ideal. Now, you're saying, though, you don't necessarily, you won't necessarily set an alarm. No, I'll set an alarm. Okay, okay. But if I don't, that's what happens. Okay, got it. So that's your routine. And are you doing anything around the temperature of your room or how dark it is?

Or do you like to take any supplements, like melatonin, magnesium, anything like that? I use a weighted blanket. And I think that's, yeah, I think that's really helpful. and I feel like when I use a weighted blanket, it helps me stay asleep better. So once I fall asleep, I feel like I stay into a deeper sleep better when I have the weighted blanket. I have experimented with blackout curtains before, but I find that it's just much harder to wake up in the morning. So I like to have a little bit of sunlight to just help me naturally wake up. I also use one of those smart alarms that you give it like a 30-minute window and it wakes you up, supposedly, whenever you're in the best, the upward part of your sleep cycle, your REM cycle.

You know, you made a good point about the blackout shades. Like, I talk to athletes all the time about what's right for them. And if they have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, I find that the darker the room, the better. However, it sounds like in your case you don't have an issue with that, so it's more about waking up, and that's where the natural light can be quite helpful. Yeah, I definitely have no problem falling asleep, and that's one of those things that's pretty genetic. So my mom can sleep anywhere at any time, and I am the exact same way, which is really helpful on planes. You know, I travel a lot to compete all over the world, and that's one of my focuses for this year is how to get better with jet lag and how to make your children. travel days the most recovery they can be. Because sometimes you're just in a situation where

you're leaving for the airport at four in the morning and then you're in a middle seat for a 10 hour plane ride. And how can you make the most of that? So you're making this easy. How do you make the most of that? Well, I think for me being able to sleep anywhere I can, if you do see me on a plane, it's pretty amusing because I have the biggest neck pillow that is in existence. And I have I have an eye cover, and then I have headphones on. So, and then I'll just, I'll just rack out. So you've got headphones, you've got this big, this big pillow. What are you thinking from a nutrition standpoint? Do you change your diet at all when you travel? I think hydration is really important when you travel, and that's one thing I try to do, especially if you're getting on an airplane.

I also think it's really easy in an airplane, you know, at an airport to eat unhealthy foods. So I try to pack snacks. So I'm eating less of fast food or the food they serve on the plane and more of healthy snacks. I already have pre-portioned. You know, one breakthrough for me has been not eating on planes. I've found that I feel so much better when I travel. I adjust so much better to time zones. I mean, I travel a lot myself.

and I just got this tip that eating on planes is really bad for you because it's pretty bad for you because your body is effectively limiting all its bodily functions when you're at altitude. And so digestion becomes one of those things that it's limiting and therefore you get really lethargic when you eat on planes and it can affect you for hours later. So I've actually heard that too. And what I find is if I eat on a plane, oftentimes my stomach will hurt. But I find that if I bring my own food, my stomach doesn't hurt nearly as much. And you're usually eating less because you can't pack as much. But it's a balance for me because I get very hangary if I don't eat. And nobody wants a hangary travel day, Ginny. So I have to eat a little bit. a 15-pound gun in her suitcase. So, yeah, definitely have to eat a little bit. But, yeah, I think there is a balance there.

That's a really good point. And what is your diet during the day, you know, normal day? What kind of stuff are you eating? I try to eat a lot of protein. I think, well, shooting's a very interesting sport because diet doesn't matter as much as like wrestling or gymnastics, something like that. So the most important thing for us is to stay consistent with our weight. So if we're consistent with our weight within a pound or two, then our suit is going to fit optimally.

So I try to stay very consistent. And the other interesting thing is caffeine. So I do not do any caffeine, no coffee, no tea, none of that, because I find that that makes you very jittery when you're shooting. you know it makes a lot of sense frankly i remember uh when i quit uh drinking coffee for a couple years i got better at putting in golf right and i don't know putting's the closest analogy i have to what you do although i know it's totally different but you it's all about just having a really steady hand right so uh that that makes a lot of sense would you say most of your competitors don't consume caffeine either uh no i would not go that far to say that i think

especially a lot of of my European competitors do drink caffeine because just culturally it's so you know having a a cappuccino or whatever is very common there but I would say most of them are pretty good about they do it at the same time every day having the same amount and I think that's definitely the way to to minimize the effect if your body is really used to it do you ever drink alcohol very very occasionally I do find that alcohol affects my sleep a lot and I'm also pretty petite. So the threshold for how much alcohol that affects me is pretty low. So for instance, when I wake up, Woop asks me if I had two or more drinks within two hours before bedtime. So for me, I check that box if I have had one or more drinks within

three hours before bedtime because I know that affects me. And it sounds like that's not something you're doing particularly often? No, I'll never have. I won't even have a glass of wine the night before I have practice. So the only time I would really drink is, you know, socially if I'm on a break or something. And do you ever take naps? Oh, yes, big napper. How long will you nap for?

Either 20 or 90 minutes is what I try to do. I find if I do anything in between that, you know, I'm pretty, pretty groggy when I wake up. So a little 20, 25 minute cat nap or if I really have time or if I'm trying to adjust to time change, I'll do a 90 minute nap. And that, of course, affects what we were talking about earlier with my eight hours and 24 minutes. That is if I don't take a nap. On the day of the Olympics, would you ever take a nap? Well, I competed at 8 a.m., so no. Normally we compete in the morning.

The Olympics is actually a pretty interesting day because it was over an hour. hour from the village to the venue. So I was getting up at like 5 a.m. It's also kind of stressful because you have to figure out how to get there. Yeah, I mean, that's. Wouldn't you want to wake up like right next to where you're competing almost? I think as long as you're used to it. And that's why, you know, you go to most competitions, especially if they're international competitions several days early for the Olympics. You're going over a week early to get used to it, you know? Yeah, I mean, that's kind of your growth mindset at work.

You're trying to say to yourself, I'm going to learn how to optimize around these harder conditions, and I'm going to learn better than my competitors, right? 100%. I believe that the only thing that really affects your performance is how much deliberate practice you put in and what your mindset is the day you're competing, you know, and have you done the mindset work. So if you have that core belief, which is one of the core beliefs I have, it makes it really easy to say, well, this is what I like to eat for breakfast, but they don't offer that in the Olympic Village. And you know what? I'll be okay. That doesn't affect my

performance. What's the next best option? Instead of spiraling when something little doesn't go your way. Right. I love that. Now, do you feel like you always had this growth mind? or was there a shift that occurred, you know, was there a specific event that made you reevaluate things? Did this come from your parents? Did you read a lot about it? Like, you strike me as having a remarkably positive attitude, which is something I always respect in people. I think there is a misconception of people with growth mindset or with, you know, who are very optimistic that it just happens naturally. And that is not true. I think there are definitely things in your life that prime you to be that way, like your parents and everything. And I definitely think I was primed

to have a growth mindset in some areas of my life, not in all. But in the end, it's a choice and it's a daily choice. And it's also a spectrum. It's not either I have a growth mindset or I have a fixed mindset. It is in this one area of my life, where am I on the spectrum and how can I get better? So I think it is a choice and it's not an easy choice and it's one of those choices where there have been times in my past when my growth mindset isn't as strong and that's something I have to work on more and more. Or there's times, you know, I'm still working on it every day, but I feel like I'm in a better place with it. But I really think for me, the turning point was coming to college. West Virginia has a sports performance consultant we work with. His name is Dr. Raymond

Pryor. And he really opened my mind to all of this growth mindset and how to how to truly perform up to your potential. And I work with him a lot. And I really appreciate him. He's in my circle. So describe what a session like with him might be like. Yeah, I think a lot of times we're working on core beliefs and how to change your core beliefs. Because if you can identify a specific behavior you want to change, then you can look at why am I behaving that way? Where did that belief come from? What belief would give me the behavior I want? and how do I change to that belief?

So definitely, and sometimes that's a tough process, and sometimes it can get very, very vulnerable, very deep, to be honest. We also do a lot of team building and different exercises with him as a team, as well as individually, and now he actually works with USA shootings, so my national governing body. You know, I think a lot of what you said about the growth mindset and optimism is spot on. I have a pretty, I think, positive attitude,

or at least I try to. And I think what people underestimate when they see other people with positive attitudes is they think that all of it's coming naturally or all of it's coming easily, right? Because we normally have positive attitudes. We always have positive attitudes. And in fact, I think that there's a lot of times,

and this is more for me personally, where I'm like trying to remind myself, you know, stay positive, like go back to those core beliefs, think about the process, find ways to turn this around. Because, you know, inevitably, whenever you're trying to achieve something, you face challenges, you face setbacks, and doubt creeps in, right? You know, doubt creeps in. And so I do think that it takes work. And a lot of what you are describing here is work. Like, it takes work to have a growth mindset. It takes work to stay optimistic. Would you agree with that? Oh, 100 percent. I would agree with that. And I think it's one of those things that it's easy to have a growth mindset or to be

optimistic when it's easy, when the situation is easy. But let's be honest, when you're at the Olympics or at Olympic trials or you're dealing with something in your personal life, it's not going to be easy. And that's the time when you really need to put in the work. But that's also the time when you rely on the people in your life who you've already, you know they're there for you and you know they share the same values you do. And that's when they can honestly say to you, Jenny, look, you need to get it together. You're not being in a growth mindset right now. And then you have to listen and choose to do that, you know. Or the flip, though, which I think is the misconception that people make where people will say, oh, of course that worked out for Jenny. She just has, you know,

a good attitude about these things. Of course, it's going to work out for her. Right. Like that's them applying sort of a fixed mindset to understanding your growth mindset, which is you actually are constantly, you know, thinking about these things to improve on them. And they're looking at that from a fixed way and saying, well, it's, you know, it just comes naturally to her. She just does it. Exactly. And that's one of the reasons I chose to do the topic I chose for my TED Talk. was I felt a lot of people were thinking, you know, oh, she just, she became an Olympic champion in five years. She must have so much talent. Well, that's not why I was able to be successful on that day. You know, all the hard work that I put in, especially mentally, was why I was

able to be successful that day. And I just really enjoyed shedding some light on it. Yeah. I mean, look, I think your whole attitude's amazing. It's no surprise to me that you're massively successful. You're only 22 years old. What's next in terms of competition? So next is actually the first part of our Olympic trials. So we have a two-part Olympic trial system. So one part in the fall, one part in the spring. You add those scores together and you know who the U.S. Olympic team is. So we're ramping up for that. Wow. Well, really exciting. It's so amazing to have you on Woop. Very proud to have you as part of our community. If people wanted to learn more about you or find you, where can they do so?

I am on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, all under Ginny Thrasher. You can also check out my... Thank you. Yep, very proud of the name. You can also check out that TED Talk if you're interested. And we'll put the TED Talk and all of your social handles in our show notes. Ginny, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for coming on. Thanks for having me. Really enjoyed it.

Many thanks to Ginny for coming on the podcast and best of luck to her as she prepares for next year's Olympics. If you're not already a WOOP member, you can join our community for as low as $30 to begin. We provide you with 24-7 access to your biometric data, as well as analytics across strain, sleep, recovery, heart rate variability, and more. The membership comes with a first. free whoopstrap 3.0. We offer 612 and 18 month memberships. The more you sign up for, the more you save. If you enter the code Will Ahmed at checkout, that's W-I-L-L-A-H-M-E-D, will give you $30 off a membership, just for listening to this podcast. For our European customers, the code is Will Ahmed E-U, and that'll give you 30 euros off when you join. And for our current

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