WHOOP Podcast - How to Maximize Your Flow State with Skeet Shooting Legend Vincent Hancock

Episode Date: July 10, 2024

On this week’s episode, WHOOP Founder and CEO Will Ahmed is joined by Vincent Hancock.  Vincent is a 3 time Olympic Gold medalist and former sergeant in the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit who earned the National Defense Service Medal and the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, among other service accolades. He was the first person to win back-to-back gold medals in skeet shooting when he took home gold in Beijing and London. He is also the first person to win 4 World Championship titles in Men’s Skeet. Will and Vincent discuss how Vincent got started shooting (1:36), the sport of skeet shooting (3:31), getting recruited to the US Army Marksmen Unit (7:28), the process of competition (12:55), Vincent’s training program (15:11), the power of a flow state (18:26), how Vincent uses WHOOP (31:58), Vincent’s WHOOP data (39:49), competing at the Olympics (50:04), and what to expect in Paris (1:03:50).Resources:Vincent Hancock's InstagramFollow WHOOPwww.whoop.comTrial WHOOP for FreeInstagramXFacebookLinkedInFollow Will AhmedInstagramXLinkedInSupport 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

What's up, folks? Welcome back to the Whoop podcast. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of Whoop, and we are on a mission to unlock human performance. If you're thinking about joining Whoop, you can literally try Whoop for free. That's at Whoop.com. On this week's episode, I am joined by three-time Olympic gold medalist Vincent Hancock. The former sergeant in the U.S. Army marksmanship unit earned the National Defense Service Medal and the global. Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, among other service accolades. He was the first person to win back-to-back gold medals in skeet shooting when he took home gold in Beijing and London. He's also the first person to win four world championship titles in men's skeet. And he wears Wu. Vincent and I discuss the sport of skeet shooting and how Vincent got started, getting recruited to the U.S. Army Marksman Unit, Vincent's training program and his competition process,

the power of entering into a flow state. This was particularly fascinating. how Vincent uses his whoop and competing at the Olympics and what to expect in Paris. If you have a question once you answered on the podcast, email us, podcasturop.com. Call us 508-443-4952, and we will answer your questions on a future episode. Without further ado, here is my conversation with skeet shooting legend Vincent Hancock. Vincent, welcome to the book podcast. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Excited to do this. You have a fascinating life and career. So you grew up in Georgia, and it must have been at a young age that you got a gun in your hands. It was. I mean, I grew up in the middle of nowhere, Georgia, too, a very small town, Eatanton. And so I remember when I was probably three or four years old, my dad and my brother were both competitive shooters. And so my dad had a BB gun in my hand pretty shortly, pretty quickly, and just shooting cans and doing all kinds of stuff like that. And then it kind of morphed into when I was about... 10, he took me out to the skeet field for the first time. And I got to shoot a clay target.

Now, watch it explode whenever I actually hit it. And then kind of progressed from there. And I didn't even know that shooting was an Olympic sport for the first two years of me shooting. And then kind of just went crazy once I found out, hey, this is an Olympic sport. Let's do this. What age were you when people were like, okay, this kid's really good? Oh, I don't know. I don't know exactly when other people kind of started. seeing that but well when did you feel it for me it was when i won my first junior national championships in 2003 so i think i was 14 okay and i was the youngest one to ever win it and i won it by like 10 or 10 or maybe even more targets than that and i almost made the open men's final

which were the top six athletes and all those guys were in their 20s and 30s i'm like okay i think i can do this yeah and then the next year 2004 i won my first four i won my first event in the open discipline. I was 15. It was on my 15th birthday. It was the final Olympic selection for 2004, the Olympics in Athens. And being able to win that was like, okay, apparently I'm good enough that I can compete against these guys. Now I need to really push myself and see how far I can take this. Describe for someone who doesn't know what we're talking about like what are you shooting? What's the competition like? How does it work? So skeet shooting a lot of people think that the clay target itself, a lot of people say, hey, I'm going to go out

and shoot some skeet. Well, skeet is an actual discipline. It has a high house and a low house. And the targets cross over a central point. There's eight different stations set up in a half circle. And it's a total of 25 shots. Now you have trap, which is a one machine in the center of a field, and you have five different shooting stations you shoot on that. Again, 25 targets. There's also sporting clays, which is kind of like golf with a shotgun. That's a lot of fun, but everything is done based off of a clay target. And for one of our competitions, a domestic competition is based on 250 targets, shot over the course of four days. So we do 7550, 7550. And then the top six athletes go into the final

afterwards, and they start back over at zero. And then basically it's just a shootout to see who can hit the most targets out of 60. And whoever does that, they get the gold medal. And the 60 shots are pretty well-understood shots. It's not like there's some kind of trick to the competition. These are similar shots to what you'd practice. It's similar shots. And in our finals specifically, we're the only discipline. We're actually our finals a little bit different than what we qualify on.

And because on the three stations that we shoot for our finals, it's all done with doubles. So two, both targets coming at the same time. And on station three, typically in qualification, we only shoot the high house target. first, and then we shoot the low house. But in the final, we also shoot the low house target first and then the high. So it's a much more difficult double on Station 3, and then we also shoot what's called the reverse pairs, reverse pair on 3 and 5. And so we don't get to practice those for basically three days. And then we get to just go out and say, okay, guys, have fun. See who can hit the most. And well and behold, we changed the targets too. You know, you're shooting flash

targets, so they puff when you break them. So we had to reset the targets, different speeds, different heights, relatively the same, but always can be a little bit different. So you've got to go out and immediately perform because a lot of the times now it's taking, with more of the professionalization of this sport, it's taking 58, 59, 60 targets out of that 60 to win. Practicing for something like that, is it as simple as you just keep doing the 25 round that you might otherwise do at home? Or are you trying to create some chaos to the environment? Are you trying to force yourself to do it quickly or have your heart rate be high or be nervous or whatever? So there's lots of different things that I do to vary my training.

Yes, and a portion of my practice is done based on the qualification, what I call competition rounds. And then from there I go into the finals work where either I'll shoot a 40 or a 60 target final. And I'm keeping track of all these scores too because I'm looking for averages. And then after that, that's when the real training begins. It's okay, I'm going to do station specific training. or I'm going to do distance training, where I'm backing away or getting closer to the targets, trying to add as many variables in it as possible. Because what I like to tell my students is you have to become comfortable being uncomfortable.

And in the lead up to the Olympic trials and the lead up to every one of the Olympics I've competed in, including the one that's going to be coming up soon, I'll actually bring people in, friends of mine and say, okay, I want you to do everything you possibly can to make me miss. And like no holds barred, the only thing you can't do is physically touch me because I'm never going to have anybody coming up and like pushing me or pulling me down from my vest and things like that, which they still do, but it makes it a lot more difficult. But I don't have people with branches out in front of me, waving them around, holding cameras down, clicking, you know, yelling at me, throwing things at me, loud music playing. Again, you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable because you're not going to be comfortable at the games. There's going to be so much stuff going on around you that you can't control the environment. So learn how to control what you can control, meaning yourself.

And that's, it helps me handle the chaos a little bit more. Now, you got tapped by the U.S. Army marksmanship unit really early in life. I did. Yeah, they started recruiting me when I was 16. And is that typical or did that just speak to how good you were? I think that it's not necessarily typical. I think that they start looking at a lot of the kids coming out of high school, so maybe 17 or 18. But they pushed for me because I won my first open world championship at 16.

I'm still a youngest person to ever do that in shooting. It's amazing. And so they knew that what the coach told me is like, look, we know we can't beat you anymore. So why don't you come here and shoot with us? So that way, you know, we've got you too. And you get to shoot for free. So I was like, okay, well, I was weighing my options. Okay, I can go to college and shoot on one of the shooting teams.

But I'm not going to get to do exactly what I want to do on an everyday basis. I can stay at home and burden my parents and still go to college but locally and have them still pay for everything. Or I can go to the army. I can get paid to shoot and free ammo, free targets, free travel, everything else. And I get to do everything that I want and they'll pay for my school afterwards. It's like, all right, it seems like a no-brainer, so let's do this. What is the function of the U.S. Army marksmanship unit? The function depends on who you ask and when you ask, but what the original mandate was, it was set up in 1956 by President Eisenhower, with the sole distinction of beating the Russians in the Olympics.

Oh, really? That's what it was. And because there are so many shooting events that the U.S. was struggling and still can struggle at times. to win enough medals to be able to win the Olympics overall. And so he designated, okay, there's no reason why our country should ever lose in the shooting sports. And we weren't doing that great. So he's like, all right, we're going to make this unit. And we're going to specialize in doing this.

And we're going to go beat the Russians. It's not badass. Yeah, right? But that's Eisenhower for you. And then, so since then, we've won from the marksmanship, you know, I believe, like two dozen or over two dozen medals at the Olympics. And now it's more of a training opportunity for, you know, people come in from across the military, whether that be Navy Army Marines. They come there for rifle and pistol marksmanship proficiency classes. And we do a lot of train the trainers.

I say we have been out for a decade now, but they do go out and do all those things. But we still go out and compete on the world level as part of the marksmanship unit, as part of Team USA, and do the best. to win as many medals as possible. And it sounds like it's really designated for this competition versus combat. So there's different sections in the marksmanship unit. There's the service side of things, which is service rifle and service pistol. That's more so train the trainers, train the combat actual soldiers. But a lot of things that they teach are trickle down from the methods that the international

or the Olympic athletes and the unit are doing. The Olympic side of things are smaller now. There may be 15 total athletes on shotgun at the most than maybe 15 or 20 in rifle and pistol. But you're talking about the best of the best in the world that are there, that are training, that are coaching these other people on, okay, this is how you shoot. This is more proficient. This is more accurate. They're doing a lot of testing and research and development there. And a lot of the new forms of firearms and honestly bullets, like, I mean,

nation payloads that are being used by military around the world have been developed specific and designed at the Army Marksmanship Unit. Hmm. And how did your role evolve during that period when you joined? For me, it was a lot of understanding, yes, I'm here to compete, but I'm also here to help with recruitment. I'm here to help with any of the soldiers that need to understand, okay, how to, the biggest thing we do in shotgun is we point and shoot, we don't aim.

you look at your target and then you point at it and then you fire and so being able to help our soldiers be able to more quickly and accurately designate target find that you know aim and fire those kinds of things is helped them to increase their proficiency and in an overseas combat theater and so what basically what we're looking at is yes we're a part of recruiting yes we're a part of competing but we're also a part of making our soldiers more proficient so that way they can be protected basically more for themselves and be able to protect themselves. I like this language of point and shoot versus aim. Would aim be a better way to think about, say, using a sniper?

Yes, definitely. And you're looking at sites. And on a shotgun, yes, we have sites, but we don't really use them. If the firearm fits you properly, then you don't need to line up your eye down the sites It's because you're basically your back eye is your rear sight. And so through the millions and millions of practice mounts that I've done, I can close my eyes and mount the gun and it's going to be in the perfect spot every single time. And that's part of the development.

The shotgun or. Yeah, so mounting the shotgun and it's putting it on your shoulder. It's putting it in the shoulder and in the face. Yeah. It has to, you know, proper cheek weld and proper shoulder position. And so in my discipline, I have to start with the gun down by my hip. And when I call pull to release the target, I have. have, it's a computer generated. It's a microphone system. So it picks up my voice on when I say

pull. And then I have a zero to three seconds of delay on when the targets can come out. So I don't know when my targets are coming out. So I have to be in this ready position with a gun down by my hip. And when the target comes out, I have to mount, acquire, match the speed, see the target clearly, pull the trigger. It's kind of a little bit of my process. And all of that happens in about point seven seconds. You know what's fascinating about that is when I was picturing you doing this, I was picturing you've got it all mounted and then you say pull because that's kind of the amateur way to shoot skeet. Like I've shot skeat before and you know, you've got the whole thing in position and then

you're like pull and then, you know, so the fact that it starts down, that actually adds a whole other layer of complexity and difficulty. Definitely. And that's what I tell everybody is my sport isn't hard as far as like the targets that I'm shooting. Yes, the targets are fast. They're traveling 65 miles an hour. basically I'm shooting my single and again about 0.7 seconds, 0.7 and 0.74. And then my double, on the doubles, I'll shoot the second target in an additional about roughly 0.4 seconds. So everything happens within roughly 1.2 seconds. And I'm going to go from down. So the hardest part is the mechanics, is getting the mount in the body movement working together in a way that creates a stable platform tool to rotate on. The biomechanics are, they're not that difficult.

but it's hard to do over and over and over again. That's the hardest part is, yes, the mechanics, but the repetition, doing it the same way every single time. And that's why it takes so much effort and so much work, so much time to be able to build that, you know, the myelin fiber,

the mile and sheath, all those things working together what people know is muscle memory. It takes that time, people to build that to where you can actually get to the target in time. The targets are only 20, maybe 25 yards away when I was shooting them,

so it's not like they're very far, but the angles, the mechanics, the movements, all that stuff, that's what adds into the complexity and the difficulty. What are ways that you've improved your focus, concentration, reflexes? I think one of the biggest things for me in increasing my abilities has been focusing on, one, what I can I control, so the process, two, understanding exactly what the targets are doing each and every time. And honestly, one of the biggest things, and you've been over the last few years is understanding the geometry of the game, the angles. It's just a game of angles. If you can

understand what the target's doing and where it's going, the trajectory, then you can more properly align yourself with what the target's actually doing. And so with all of my students that I work with and multiple other Olympians that are competing with me in Tokyo or competing with me in Paris as well, that's where I've been a huge help to them is saying, okay, this is what you need to understand. This is where you need to start to evolve your game. Yes, you're a really good shot. You know how to break targets, but do you truly understand what you're doing every single shot? And so through being a coach, that's helped me more as an athlete because I see it from a different perspective. I'm looking over the shoulder of somebody and seeing how their barrels matching up with a target. Okay, were you moving at the right speed? We're you, did you see the target clearly? And it's weird, like, oh, how can you tell if somebody sell the target clearly? I can tell by how the barrel matches up with the target. Because if the target isn't clear and the barrel isn't matching the speed, the barrel isn't ever actually going to truly match on and lock on. You can actually see like a little bit of a slowdown too. Right

before they pull the trigger, there's a little bit of a slowdown, what I call like the connection point. And so when you see that, you're like, yep, you locked on. That was perfect. That's exactly what you're looking for. Otherwise, they're just kind of moving in a steady rate and they don't actually lock on the target. There's just so many things that I've learned from being a coach that that's the single biggest factor in helping me become as consistent as I have over the last eight years as an athlete is knowing exactly what is going on every single step of the way from the very beginning when the target comes out to after the shots already completed. It is fascinating how when you pull yourself out of the act and you're observing other people in it, you actually can get better yourself.

I mean, a very amateur example, but I remember when I was like 13, 14, 15, I was learning how to play golf and I'd play all summer. And then, and I'd gotten to being maybe like a 10 handicap, but then my talent was a lot better than that. And then I started caddying and the process of caddying and watching what headcases, the people I was carrying. the bags for, or made me realize what a headcase I actually was. And, you know, in the same summer that I was playing less golf, I went from like a 10 handicap down to a two handicap. And so it's just a fascinating. That's what I was thinking of as you were describing it. Obviously, yours is at a completely different level. But it's such a powerful reminder how giving yourself a different perspective on something that you're very used to can still give you an edge.

absolutely and it's funny that you mentioned that with golf because shooting is almost identical to golf yeah there's a lot of similarities as you're describing it with the form and you know understanding angles and yeah i mean there's also just a huge aspect to having i would imagine like a very short memory like if you miss a shot you almost immediately need to forget you missed that shot right it has to go in and out. But there's a process to it as well. And when I was younger, I was thinking, okay, yes, I have to just forget about this. Don't think about it at all immediately and show no emotion, all those things to just kind of help go past that and move beyond. And what I found now is, yes, that's an aspect of it, but you have to do something first before you forget it. So it's always,

if I miss a target, it's okay, where did I miss it? Why did I miss it? And how do I fix it? You know, you have to go through those three steps to be able to tell yourself, recognize what the problem was, why was the problem there, and then how do I fix that problem going forward? Will you process all three of those questions between two shots at the Olympics, for example? It'll be within seconds. Wow. Now, it's going to process, and then it'll be done. As soon as I tell myself, okay, this is what happened. This is what I got to do next time. It's immediately gone, and I'm just focusing on, okay, what is my process to break the next time? And what might be an example for why you missed? Oftentimes, what happens is the target will come out. I'll move with the target with the barrel. And I'm kind of seeing a shadow of the barrel because you need to

know where the barrel is in relationship to the target. So when I'm really on, I have 90% of my focus on the target and about 10% awareness of where the barrel is at. If I'm a little bit off, I'm going to have to go to like a 70.30. And so 70% on the target, 30% on the gun. So a lot of times what happens is my instead of going in front of the target because it takes lead to break a moving target right as fast as the ammunition is that we're shooting my my ammunition is about 1335 feet per second on average right and the target's traveling about 65 miles an hour so with that you have several feet of lead that you have to to use to be able to break the targets depending on what position you're shooting from and so with that I know what the site picture is supposed to be

And if you don't mount to that site picture, then you're going to be behind. I'll go more to the target and I'll be behind and then I have to try to pull away. And that's going to make a, you have to make a correction. It's not always going to be perfect. You're always going to have to make some corrections, but you're trying to make as few as possible. Right. And so when you make that correction, if you're on the double, whatever correction you had to make on the first target, you're also going to have to make on the second target too.

So you're just basically making it way harder on yourself if you don't do the first target perfect every time. and so that's my focus is make a perfect move on the first target and if something goes wrong it's usually either again usually I'm now I'm to the point where I don't really get surprised occasionally it'll surprise me if it's an instant out just because typically we're going to see delays from about three quarters of a second to two and a half seconds but sometimes some ranges they have the timer set on okay when you think the P for pull the target's coming out and so you get surprise and you get a little bit behind. Most of the time it's just me not paying 100% attention to getting in front and staying in front of the target and therefore I have to make a correction.

I keep using golf as an analogy in my mind because I know that sport very well and I know a lot of professional golfers. And there's this fascinating balance between thinking about why a shot was suboptimal and creating these little self-corrections in your mind versus being in a state almost like a flow state where you realize you're not thinking at all. Yep. And you're just looking and that's where the ball's going. And it kind of all feels a little bit magical. And I could imagine when you're really on, it actually doesn't feel like you're thinking at all.

Exactly. And you've reached the point of complete and utter subconscious competency. And you're to the point where your body just takes over. Now, that's the muscle memory truly taking over and flowing, like you said, that flow state. is that's what we're looking for. That's what you're always hoping for. It's just really hard to find. It doesn't happen very often,

but when it does, it's unbelievable. Those are the points in time where, you know, I've set all my world records, on the Olympic records, you get into that frame of mind where it's just easy.

I can't, I literally can't miss at that point. And that's why we train, you know, conscious competency leads to subconscious competency. And we're working to develop those things every single, every single day we're in practice.

is. You're working on that. And so what I've found is the easiest way for me to be able to kind of let go and let my body take over is to have a very simple but effective process. So when I step into the station, I have simplified my process down to where I don't almost do it organically or subconsciously where I go to my natural point of alignment. I go to my whole point. I set my eyes. And then I tell myself simply hold it. Hold the target. If I can when the target comes out, if I mount the gun and I'm matching the speed, seeing it clearly, that's a period of time where I'm holding the target. It's in my shoulder, in my face.

I see the target clearly. I hold it, pull the trigger. If I do that every single time, I will not miss. And so if I tell myself those things, I can keep it simple, and then I can let myself more easily go into that flow state. It may not be a 100% flow state until the nerves really kick in. Because that's when, for me, I've noticed, I don't get into a full-on flow state until I've reached about 160 beats per minute with my heart. And the adrenaline's really pumping where my body takes over. But under that, I can still think clearly enough that other things can come into my mind.

And so being a guy, typically guys can only think about one thing at a time. I fill my mind with positive outcomes, meaning one step of the process at a time. And so that's helped me to simplify my mindset and my mental game for most of the people out there that are thinking about those things. My mental game is my mechanical side of the process. Well, there's a few things I want to highlight about what you just said, because I think it was really powerful. The first is just actually how simple the language is that you're using when you talk to yourself. You know, I think a lot of a lot of amateur competitors have much more complicated messages that they're giving themselves.

Again, I keep going back to the golf analogy, but I often see, you know, up-and-coming golfers using very long sentences to describe what they need to be about to do when they're standing over a ball. And the idea that you can get that down to two words or have one very simple thought, To me, I think that's a much more powerful and effective method towards success. The other thing that you hit on, which is a subtle thing, is how nerves actually increase the likelihood of getting to that flow state. There needs to be a notion of pressure and stakes for your body to almost like elevate to that next level. And that's a really powerful phenomenon. I remember interviewing Alex Honnold on this podcast.

You know, Alex, the famous rock climber, he scaled El Caputown without a rope in Free Solo. Part of the reason he loves free soloing so much is that it immediately ratches him up into that place, right? Where, like, obviously your nerves are heightened and you go into this flow state. Anyway, I thought it was just very powerful the way you described that. I'm curious outside of being in that arena moment, and obviously you're a whoop guy, which I love. Like, have you found certain behaviors outside of your craft, you know, diet, meditation, visualization, like all sorts of different things I can imagine might affect your ability to enter into that flow state? now as I've gotten older with the family and businesses and things like that that I've got going on it's much more difficult to go into that state outside of the competition thing I bet yeah

you know because there's just so much other stuff but when I was younger and if I have the time I'll still do it here and there it's the realization and visualization it'll basically just it's basically a meditation state but I lay on the floor and I start from my head and I basically just let my whole body become not necessarily numb, but it's more of like a, I can feel the blood pulsing through every inch of my body. And so that, it takes me a couple minutes. Now it used to take me 10 or 15 minutes when I was young, now 13, 14, 15 years old and I was first learning these things to be able to actually truly release my whole body, let all the muscles relax. And then once I get into that zone, then I start the visualization aspect.

And what I visualize is myself shooting a round of targets or a final. And, but I don't just do it in real time. It's all in slow motion. Everything is slowed down. So that way, it, it almost mimics that feeling of when you're in a true flow state and you're shooting at, or competing at the most optimal level of your body, time seems to slow down. Yeah. Because again, you're using adrenaline, right?

Yeah. And it's, it's fight or flight. So when you choose to use that adrenaline, those nerves in a positive way, then you can dictate how your body responds to it. And so, again, starting first on the relaxation side of things, we're going through and I visualize a whole round absolutely perfect. If something, if one of my targets in that round isn't perfect, I'll just redo it. And I make sure that I see the biggest puff.

Basically, when we puff a target, a white puff, so we're using pine resin targets so they've both white now and we do that that's a perfect hit and then we move on to the next target and so as you're going through all those things it's a lot of fun doing it because you get to shoot a perfect round oftentimes you fall asleep doing it because you're in a state of just complete relaxation and it's nice tool to to do those things and just kind of so like yep this is perfect I can be perfect and so then you go out and then you're looking at it from a okay I'm competing side of things. And when you go into that frame of mind where you feel the nerves coming in,

so like in Tokyo, you feel the nerves coming in on Station 1. My legs were shaking so bad on the first round of the first station in Tokyo. And at this point, you've already been a gold medalist. Yeah, I mean, I've already won two. Yeah. And I've got four World Championships at that point. And so I've won everything you can win on it, but it doesn't matter. It's the games.

Yeah. Yeah. It is the biggest sporting spectacle the world that will ever see. In Beijing, I think it was six billion people were watching. So yeah, it's pretty awesome to go out and compete with it. But when I was out there, practice or shooting and competing in that first station, I was shaking so bad. I mean, my guy could actually literally watch my gun in my peripheral vision bouncing because of my heart rate. Oh, man. And so when I came back off of that station, thankfully, I hit all the targets. And I was trying to stand and my knees wouldn't hold it. And I'm like, I was shaking so. bad that my knees were giving out. So I literally had to lock my legs. Like, okay, well, don't pass out first off from locking your legs. But lock them so you can just stand. It was crazy. And I'm actually laughed. I chuckled to myself as like, well, you know you're alive. This is why we do it because this is you don't get this feeling with almost anything else. And so using that and I had to think to myself, okay, you have a choice. You can either use this for you or it's going to use you. And I tell my students this as well, when they start feeling the pressure, you can see the physical and mental changes in them, changes in their eyes, changing in their body posture, all of these things and how they're holding the gun, how they're shooting the targets.

Like, look, you either choose to fight or you're going to flee. You're going to run away and you're going to be scared and it's going to control you. Choose right now to control this. You're going to fight and you're going to use all of this adrenaline, all of this energy that God's given you right now through your body. to be able to be your best. Yeah, it's powerful. It's fun going through that change. It's good life advice too.

It applies to a lot of different things. And I haven't found that until just recently when I can actually pay attention to think about it from a different perspective, especially as being a dad, but relating that to the kids and saying, look, you're going to go through times in life where things aren't easy.

You have to make tough choices, but you have to make the right choices and use all of this energy that you have to be good and to do good. What's up, folks, if you are enjoying this podcast or if you care about health, performance, fitness, you may really enjoy getting a whoop. That's right. You can check out whoop at whoop.com.

It measures everything around sleep, recovery, strain, and you can now sign up for free for 30 days. So you'll literally get the high performance wearable in the mail for free. You get to try it for 30 days, see whether you want to be a member. and that is just at whoop.com. Back to the guests. How long have you been on Woop? Oh, gosh. I think it was the end of 2021, so coming in on probably three years now.

And what do you use it for? It's a couple different things. Actually, a lot of different things. But for me, it's a, it's more of a tool that I use to see where I'm at and where I need to be. It's not my end-all be-all. When I look at it, I don't look at it. I don't look at my recovery score or my sleep score or what my, my HRV is and say, okay, I've got to be able to get this.

I'm not optimal today. I'm not doing all those things. I look at it more of a, okay, how did I perform throughout the course of the day? And what was all of my information leading into the day? And so I don't look at my scores until the end of every day. I don't wake up and look at it because I don't want to know because I want to go through the day, not knowing, and then see how I feel. and then apply those numbers to how did I feel?

What were my emotions, what were my feelings? What was my body saying? What was my mind saying? What was I doing throughout the course of the day? And was I being my best self? And then I can look at it and say, okay, well, I had a suboptimal day of sleeping. And my heart rate was elevated all day. And something was a little bit off.

And I could say, okay, well, that could lead to this. or I had a great night's sleep and a great recovery score and everything was right. I was just a little bit off throughout the course of the day. Something just wasn't there. So it's a very important tool for me to be able to use and to see how everything stacks up because then I can apply it to when I'm feeling this way, I know that I can still accomplish the tasks because I have to. As a dad, as a husband, as an athlete, as a business owner,

I have to go and still be successful each and every day, no matter how I feel. But when I'm feeling really, really good, I know that typically I can go out and be truly my best self. But again, as an athlete, some days we don't have the best night's sleep. Sometimes we don't have the best recoveries. We're not, we're off, we're sick, whatever it may be, I still have to go out and compete and I have to do my best. Otherwise, I'm going to fail to achieve my goal.

It's not, I'm never a failure because I don't win. it's just I'm if I don't win something then that's just me not accomplishing that specific goal but I can move on to the next one. I'm always trying to have a positive mindset on everything and this allows me to use the data to track and see okay when am I being my optimal self what can I do to make more of those days but also proving to myself that even if I'm having a little bit of an off day I can still manage to overcome that. What are what are things you've learned that increase your likelihood of being

optimal. Consistent sleep. That's one of the biggest keys for me and trying to reduce stress on the business side of things. Funny enough. I just, I opened a new business, the beginning of last year, and that's probably been the single biggest stressor on my life to this point. Outside of the athlete side of things, I don't think I've ever felt as much pressure as being a business owner. And so that's, I would happily take competing at the Olympics over having to deal with, you know, hundreds of customers and trying to deal with getting everybody to be happy and realizing now over the course of the last year and a half, I can't make everybody happy. But this stress is starting to go away a little bit. But I had to take a little bit of a step back too. And we were running super lean, my business partner and I for the last year.

And that wore me down pretty good over the winter. but coming into after the Olympic selection in this last March, I'm like, look, I've got to take a step back from the day to day. I've got to be more of an athlete because my goal is still to go to Paris and won a gold. And so managing that stress has been one of the biggest things for, and I'm still learning. I'm still trying to use this data and figure out, okay, how can I get more consistent, not just with the sleep, but also with the stress.

and the biggest thing for me has been time with my family. If I can get consistent sleep and I can have more time with my family, I am way healthier and I feel a lot better. It's interesting, the business side of things and how much stress you've felt from that. I mean, I've spent the last 12 years running a business. And like one thing that I think is easy to underestimate about becoming an entrepreneur or starting your own business is, is how all-consuming it feels and how much it stays with you no matter what you're doing.

Yeah. Like, I know that competing at a very high level for any sport or activity has a notion of that, but there is a cleaner break, I think. Like, it's easier to go into that arena, so to speak, stadium, fill in the blank. And you're exercising and you're sweating and there's an indoor. from release and then all of a sudden, like, there's a little bit of closure in that the thing is over, right? And yet in business, especially if you're running your own business, it never really

feels like close of business, right? You don't feel like you have that sort of moment where, okay, the thing's over and now I'm going on to the next thing. And I do think that's one of the hardest things about building a business is figuring out how you can drive your attention towards the business without it becoming something that's suffocating you in all other aspects of your life. Yeah. And compartmentalization took me a number of years to figure out on the athletic side of things.

And I finally was able to do that and to be, when I'm home, I'm home. I'm a husband. I'm my father. Yeah. When I'm at the range, until I step on the field, I'm still who I normally am. I'm a friend of whoever I'm there with, whatever I'm doing, I'm that guy.

And then as soon as I step on the field, that's when I'm an athlete. And I can make it, like you said, it's a clean break. And it took me a few years to figure that out because I started when I was so young. But as I've gotten older,

that's gotten easier and easier. I can compartmentalize down to each station now, even during a round. I can take myself in and out of that competitive box. But on the business side of things, that's been the difficult. part because you're right in 60 to 80 hours a week of just nonstop working on okay what's the what's the growth plan how are we going to keep up with this what are we going to do for the you know hiring

more people because we have to have more staff and we have to have all these things and like okay well you're managing all of these different fingers and it's just it's all consuming and like well yeah I went I went to school for this I understand some of these things but it's totally different than anything you'll ever experience when you're actually diving off into it and doing it And thankfully, I've got a really good partner who, you know, run a multimillion-dollar businesses before. But at the same time, it's still so hands-on between the two of us that I'm learning from him on the, you know, the admin side of things, managerial side of things. And then he's learning from me on the skill and the technical side of things because we own a shooting range. But we also were home to over 400 youth athletes every week.

And so we're developing that side of things. We're growing on the corporate side of things. We're growing. we're partnering with other businesses within the industry that are seeing what we're doing and we're like, oh my gosh, we want to be a part of this. So we're doing tons of sponsorships this way. And so all that growth has been a lot of fun, but managing it all and the expectations that I have for myself, it's like, okay, I need to slow down for a minute. I still have to go to the Olympics this year too.

Well, you shared your data with us. And one thing I noticed in it was that your non-activity high stress periods were pretty, high. And I think that's probably speaking to this new business chapter in your life. It definitely is. And depending on when it is, some days it can be pretty low stress. But at the same time, like, and half the time, you know, the whoop, I'm out, when I'm out moving machines or resetting targets and cleaning up and loading machines, all these other kinds of things, now this recognizes it as a two hour long activity. And I'm like, okay, I have to put this on the other side of things and just listed as another. And then when I go back home, either I'm

doing my workouts at six o'clock in the morning or I'm doing my workouts on our off days in the afternoons or I'm doing them in the evening. So I can't be super consistent with that either right now, which is super frustrating. Because some days when we have events, I've got to be at the range at 6 o'clock in the morning. I'm definitely, I like my sleep way too much. And I sleep really good in the mornings. So I'm not going to get up at 4 o'clock in the morning to do my workouts. I'm like, all right, realistically understanding myself, I'm going to have to go back tonight and I'm going to have to work out later and just try to manage all of these things. So it's it's been difficult to understand what I need to do pro tip on what you just described it's good

that you log these other activities or you know label them because what that will then do is it'll make when whoop detects high stress that's non-activity stress it'll be isolated to maybe what actually is more psychological right like it'll be isolated to okay that wasn't situation where Vincent was thinking about his business or whatever, right? Versus moving around and sort of, you know, having what otherwise might be driven by low activity, right? Having the stress be more isolated to times when you were clearly not doing something active, that's a very interesting metric to look at.

One thing I noticed in your data, which you shared with us, is, you know, your baseline sleep performance is 77%, which is high. but when you go into competition you really crank that up so like in the rome competition uh which was just in june you were averaging 87 percent sleep performance is that something you're consciously doing just trying to get more sleep during competition yeah and it's my body takes on so much more of a mental fatigue the course of the day that that affects me physically too so and oftentimes with uh like in those competitions i'll actually supplement my sleep just a little bit with either a melatonin or some type of other sleep medication just to help me and get a little bit

better sleep because I tend to have a difficult time falling asleep when I'm in active competition. But then the other thing is, okay, I'll take a melatonin and it'll help me sleep at the beginning, but then I can't stay asleep. And so I kind of regulate what I'm doing, what I'm feeling based off of, I'm going to go to sleep early every night because I know that when I go to sleep early, I tend to have better sleep throughout the course of the night and but then sometimes like when we're traveling I have to be able to day two was our first official day of practice and so I'm not

recovered from jet lag at that point so what I'll do is the first day I'll take melatonin and like an avilpm and then because I mean I rarely take medication unless I absolutely have to sure and then each night after that I was either taking a melatonin if I wasn't tired to get my get myself to fall asleep or I would take an Advil PM to help me stay asleep through the night. But again, just taking very small, just one 200 milligram pill just to kind of help me sleep through that. When I'm at home, rarely do I ever take any type of sleep medication and only on the rarest of occasions. But here it helps me a little. When I go on a business trip to, I don't know, the Middle East or Europe or something, I'll try to take some kind of sleep medication

for the flight or right when I get there. so that I get on the right time zone. Yep. And I do find that makes a huge difference doing that. A lot of hydration helps me. Yep. And one other one for me has been just not eating on flights. I find that when you eat on flights, it makes you lethargic and kind of can throw your

body a little bit out of whack. Yep. I agree with that completely. And I can't sleep on flights anymore for whatever reason. I just have an aversion to sleeping on the plane. So I'm up the whole time. And so I'll stay awake until. you know, it's time to go to sleep wherever I'm traveling to, and I'll be miserable.

But then if I take the, you know, take the melatonin, that helps to get me on this more of a proper sleep schedule. I'll typically sleep for 12, 13, 14 hours, that first night. And then I'll get up the next day, get a good workout in, go and do something else, keep me up active all day. And then I know that the first three nights are the hardest three nights. Night three is the hardest. And typically, when I'm going on competitions, because we travel in such short time period, days, day three is going to be the first day of my competition. So I have to be able to be on by that day.

That's the only reason that I supplement with some type of sleep medication. But I do watch, again, on how much I take because I don't want to be lethargic when I wake up in the morning. And again, what you're saying, traveling, I don't really like eating on the planes. Now, I'll snack a little bit here and there, but I don't like eating big meals on the planes because it does make me feel a little bit off. hydrate like crazy. It doesn't matter seemingly how much I try to hydrate on the plane. I always come off dehydrated. And so constantly trying to make myself better in those regards to help myself recover. And you track in your whoop journal, alcohol, creatine, and caffeine, or those are three of the things you track. What do you find with those three? Do you consume all

of those or none of the above? I mean, I may have caffeine maybe a handful of times a month. It's very infrequently. It's very infrequently. I take that back. The only time that I'll take, I think of caffeine as, okay, I'll take a pre-workout. Okay. In the mornings when I'm waking up and I'm having a hard time waking up because, again,

I love my morning sleep. Sure. I'll take a pre-work out then. And then, but outside of that, and I don't drink any coffee. And I think I have alcohol on there just of like the rare occasion I do it. I drink alcohol less than a handful of times a year. Yeah. And I just, I've never really drank before and never chose to.

But I put that on there because my partner loves wine and he's got some really good wine. So occasionally, whenever we go over and have dinner somewhere with him, I'll write that on there. And I know that alcohol does not have a good effect on me, even just like one glass of wine. Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah. Especially for people who very infrequently drink, it's amazing how negatively when they do

drink, it affects their body. And creatine, is that something you take often? Yeah, I do. So I was taking it a lot more for the last two years, and I've slowed down on taking any supplements over the course of the last, like, six months. Now, my body started, whether it be through the company that I was using, they're very clean, but it was still trying to figure out what it is. My body was reacting a little bit adversely to supplements, starting to affect my stomach. And so I started trying to find other forms of trying to get the protein so like the way isolate is affecting my stomach in a negative manner now sure i've basically cut out all that type of protein i've gone to now a beef isolate and that's been able to be it's more like a bone broth type mixture it's in a powder form so i still

doing the same thing and that's a lot easier for my stomach to digest for my body to digest and handle but i've just been okay i was like okay i'm having issues with my stomach and my digestive system and just how I'm feeling, so I'm going to cut everything out for a number of months and figure out, okay, I'm going to try to eat just more cleanly based on pure whole foods, right? And so with that, my body started doing better, but it wasn't all the way better yet. So I've still yet to figure out what's the cause of some of the issues that I'm facing, but I know that a lot of it had to do with the way. So taking that out, feeding in the beef broth side of things, that's helped more, but I've still slowly been implementing creatine back in,

but I haven't been doing it a lot. So I'll do it for a few days. I'll see how my body feels and then I'm good. But I have to make sure, okay, if I didn't hydrate well that day, I don't take the creatine. I have to make sure that it's just one of the things that I've set myself as a standard of, I have to make sure that I am well hydrated to take the creatine

to actually get the full use of my body because that's where I feel like I perform the best. When I'm on that, using it, I have good muscle growth, but I have to drink water. yeah i discovered creatine really for the first time a year ago uh i shouldn't say discovered because i was new about it but i wasn't i haven't been someone who takes a lot of stuff really in general and uh and i started taking it about a year ago and i found that it really improved muscle recovery probably above everything else for me i know there's also said to be some mental benefits to it

uh and you know i think i've gotten a little bit stronger over the course of taking it I think also just I had like little nagging things. Like I play squash competitively still. So like my right shoulder will sometimes be a little nagging or my Achilles will be a little nagging because of like the start stop and whatnot. And I found from taking creatine, it actually helped a lot with that. And again, everyone has to kind of find what's right for them. But creatine is one of the most studied supplements in history.

And so it's a pretty, it's a safer bet for people who are trying to find. find performance benefits, and it's both for men and women. And the biggest thing, I think, to your point of, the two biggest things are you got to hydrate when you take it, and you got to see if it affects your digestion at all. So we got Paris coming up, and you've already won three gold medals in your life. what's the feeling of standing on the podium with a gold medal around your neck? There aren't many feelings in the world like it. I get asked the question all the time of what's the best experience in the world.

And before I can answer, typically people say, is it getting the gold medal hung around your neck? And it's awesome, yes, but it's not the best one. So I'll come back to that in a second. Okay, good. the first medal in Beijing was a and it was a fight we I went into it I was expected to win I was number one in the world I won everything beforehand 19 years old youngest one there and get into the final at that time we don't go back to zero so it's just a we shoot 125 targets and then it was an additional round of 25 and so I was leading by one I missed one in the final and then we went into a sudden death missing out oh man and so like I'm I'm back there waiting for this shoot off and I've got an ice vest on that's pumping you know ice water through the vest trying to cool me off because I'm just sweating and that's allowed it's it's allowed yeah because it's and just I have ice packs all over me

one on my head one of my legs and one I'm moving all over the body it cannot cool off because it's like 98 degrees there's zero wind and it's just stifling in this in the stadium because we have mountains up on the north side and stadium with like 10,000 people back behind us watching, right? So it's hot. And can't cool off, drenched and sweat. I'm like, all right, well, I have to go back out and I have to win this thing. And so we walk out and we do, that was before the final week. We go out. I miss Target. And then I'm just like, okay, I'm so hot. I'm drenched. I've got to do this. Sudden death. I'm shooting against a friend of mine, Toro Brelville from Norway. And he's like 15, 20 years older than me. Very experienced. Great shooter. And I'm like, okay.

Well, this is what we're going to do. We're just going to go out and win, right? So he steps up, he's shooting first. He breaks the first pair. I go in, I break my first pair as well. He steps over. And just so I understand sudden death, if you had missed there would be over. Whoever misses first, that's it.

So do you feel like there's more pressure or less pressure to going first or second in that format? A lot of people like to go first. Yeah. Because they're like, okay, I can hit the pair and then I put the pressure on the next person. I prefer going second. I like having the pressure on me knowing what I have to do. Bad us. And so he shoots the second pair.

He misses a target. And then from that point on, it's almost like an out-of-body experience. I remember stepping into the station. I don't remember closing my gun. I don't remember calling Cole. I don't remember anything. Outside of, I can still to this day, I can visually see myself almost in a third-person perspective moving, breaking the first target, breaking the second target, and then just

like raising up my hands. Because at that point, you had won. At that point, I had won. and there was a lot of pressure obviously right afterwards on the podium he tells me he's like hey you see those guys up there in the stands that's my king and queen i'm like oh awesome well that's i thought i had some nerves but uh yeah okay you win that one but ha still one yeah right so did he miss both of them or he hit one he just missed one so i had to get both there's yeah there's still a big feeling there and then you know so getting the gold medal hung around my

neck it was just it was a culmination of of a rush of emotion So many things going on all at once. It's a dream come true. It's something that I've worked for my whole life feeling. And then getting to stand there knowing that I'm representing the military, because I'm a private in the Army at that point in time, and watching the flag being raised and listening to the national anthem, looking over in the stadium or in the stands and seeing my mom and my dad and my wife.

And it's just like, it doesn't give any better than this. But going back to what I was saying, what is better than that, the only thing that that tops winning a gold medal, and this goes for all three of them, it doesn't matter. Each one of them have been its own unique experience and its own dream, become reality. But walking into opening ceremonies is better than anything I've ever experienced in my career. My family is separate. Again, I'm compartmentalizing here. Family births of my girls, by far the best, because that's the best part of me. But walking into opening ceremonies. And the story that I like to tell is in Beijing is my second opening ceremony. So my first

one was the Pan American Games in 2007 in Rio. The loudest opening ceremonies ever been in my life. I was walking with a buddy of mine right next to each other. When we walked in the stadium, it was so loud. My vision was vibrating. Couldn't hear a thing. That was cool. But walking into Beijing, I was, I think about 10 yards or so behind the flag, maybe. And we're in this in this tunnel, it's pitch black. You can't really see anything, but you can see the literal light at the end of the tunnel, which is the entrance to the stadium. And you can feel the energy. The whole team, 600 athletes almost just hyped out of their minds because we're walking into the bird's nest. We're walking into the Beijing Olympics where we're going to be competing

against all the countries in the world, especially in China, who's, you know, we're competing with them to win the medal count every time. We want this. It's my first one. It's a lot of people's first. So we're walking in and you can see where the flag's at, but you can't see it because it's black, right? So when it's we're walking and they're starting to call the U.S., and then the flag hits the light, it's the brightest red, white, and blue you've ever seen in your life. And that color just pops, and the crowd goes crazy. That's awesome. And the athletes go crazy. And I'm just like, I'm literally bouncing from the energy, bouncing on my toes as I'm walking out and like, this is what I'm doing this.

I get to represent my country. Whether I win a medal or not, it doesn't matter. This is so much more than just medals. This is every country in the world being able to come together as one. It doesn't matter what your views are from any other country, any other perspective. We are all one here. It doesn't make a difference. We're all athletes. We're all going towards the same thing. We all have the same dream. It is as common ground as you can possibly get. this is the opportunity to go out and do what you love, do your best, and see how it turns out. And also arguably one of the great meritocracies. Absolutely.

In my mind, it's probably the greatest form of meritocracy because you get out of this, what you put into it. It's solely based on that. And yes, there are times where the best don't win, but that's the times where, you know what, just because you were the best doesn't mean you're the best every single day. Anybody can be beaten on any given day. you have to go out there and you have to do the best that you possibly can and hope that your best is good enough well, I can tell that you're well trained at visualization from the way that you recounted these different feelings you had because you really bring someone there with you

and obviously being good at visualizing is being able to feel and touch and see and even to some degree smell something that you're creating in your mind. So thank you for taking us to opening ceremony. I could feel it too. You know, you describe a real, I think, love for competing for your country, which I think is common amongst Olympians and I think engenders a kind of a beautiful sense of patriotism and nationalism for the Olympic Games. Where do you think that patriotism comes from? Do you feel like you kind of had that sense growing up that you wanted to give back to your country. Oh, I think a lot of it had to stem from watching the torch run through my hometown

on the way to the Atlanta Games in 96. Now, that was a turning point for me because, I mean, just seeing, it was my teacher that ran it through our town, so my second grade music teacher, she ran the torch and super nice lady, awesome. And being able to do that and then watch the games and watch the American. compete and watch them win medals, that inspired me to want to do more, wanted me to be better, wanted me to be as American as possible, just because that was the standard that I'd set for myself when I was seven years old when that happened. And so quickly thereafter, I found the

Olympic discipline when I was 12 and knew that, okay, I've watched every Olympic since 96, I, winter and summer. I love sports. I love the American industry of sports just because I was a big baseball player. I loved watching football, basketball, baseball, anything I can watch was a sport. I loved it. And knowing that as I got older and realizing what the Olympic sports really held was the opportunity to represent your country, that was kind of where it based my mindset of it's not just me and at the beginning it was i'll be very honest i was a 15 16 year old boy that was winning world cups and world championships at a very young age i became very cocky and was thinking it was myself because it kind of morphed it was like okay i'm able to do this for the country but then oh wait

i'm winning so i want to do this for myself and back and forth and thankfully i had some really good friends in mine that said hey check yourself like you're it's not how it's supposed to be so i learned a good lesson in humility. And so with that, that humility, it helped me to understand that I'm not just doing this for myself. And then once the military started pursuing me and got to go into the military, I went between my, I went to basic training between my junior and senior year of high school. And so I did what's called a split-out program. I did this because it was the only way that I can compete for the military and go to Beijing and compete in 08. Because if I graduated graduated high school in 2007, if I would have gone in right afterwards, I would have missed the

first Olympic selection. So I had to do it that way. And going in at such a young age, I got to go in with a lot of people that were now either just a little bit older than me or all the way up to 35 years old. And knowing what the military meant for those guys and the opportunities that it gave for them, that changed me in a very, very big way. And so then I got to come back and I got to see high school from a totally different perspective. like, this is not how I want to be. And going to the military and spending, you know, the next six years and active duty and competing for the marksmanship unit, it taught me a sense of responsibility. It taught me a sense of respect. It taught me a sense of honor and doing and duty as well.

As an American citizen, I am so thankful that I have, what I have. And it's only because of this country that we have the opportunity to do what we do. And so it started, I think, from seeing that torch run through my hometown and having a passion for the U.S. and the sports to growing into the military side of things. And then once I got to actually go and explore the rest of the world and see different cultures, it got me to appreciate what I have here and the opportunities. So that is what I want to bring to the rest of the world is showing people what we have available here in the U.S. Why it we are, it's the, in my mind, the greatest country in the world. And I'm just let them know, hey, for as many different opinions as people have around the world about the U.S.,

we can give them a good experience with us. Be humble, be kind. And what I tell my girls all the time, it's not hard to be nice. Just make that choice. It's a powerful message. And, you know, thank you for everything you have done for this country. And I often think about how grateful I am to be American and to be born in the U.S. Like my father's an Egyptian immigrant came to this country with very little. And at 22 years old, I was able to start a business out of Harvard that now is this, you know, multi-billion dollar company with hundreds of employees and we're building technology that's used all around the world. Like, I don't know that I'd be able to do that anywhere else in the world. And so for me, it's, it's always refreshing when I get to meet

someone who has given back to the country as much as you have. It's been an honor. It's been a privilege. It's just, it's been a whole lot of fun, too. It really has. Well, I admire your career enormously, Vincent, and what should we expect for Paris? What do you think is going to be maybe characteristic of these games that might be different for prior? No, I've been trying to keep up with a lot of the different sports that are coming through and seeing just as a team what we're going to look like. The U.S. as a whole. Yeah, that's cool.

And I think that for some reason, it feels like we've gotten a little bit younger, this quad. And that's a good thing. I think that that's going to build off some of the energy that we need to really go out and excel because there's going to be a lot of driven people that are going out trying to prove themselves. Yeah. And then from my perspective and going out and competing, I know that I'm competing against the best in the world. I always have been, but the best in the world have gotten even better over the course of the last four, eight, 12, 16 years I've been competing. every single Olympics is getting more and more difficult to win.

Totally. And I know what my expectation is. In practice, my expectation is perfection every day. And that's my goal for going over and doing that in Paris. And being able to be there as an athlete, be there as a coach for those that I'm coaching that are actively competing there too. I've given them everything that I can, but they're going to have to go and do it themselves. And that's one of the things that I try to stress for them is, look, you go out and you win an Olympic medal. it's not because of anything that I did.

It's because you as an athlete went out and you won it. I've helped you get to the place that you are, but I will never be the one that's winning a medal. So don't tell me, thank you, don't tell me anything like that. All these other guys are telling people, it frustrates me. People come in, they say, hey, congratulations for your athlete winning. And I'm like, all right, they say congratulations to me because they won a medal. I'm like, don't tell me congratulations.

Go and tell them that. They're the ones that win and won it. Because I know how difficult it is as an athlete to go and win. Yes, the coaches are awesome. We need them to help develop us and do all those things. But coaches are there to help. They're not winning the medals. You describe the sort of transition from being someone's coach and teammate, right,

to also sort of then becoming their competitor, right? And I imagine you have to create some guidelines around that. Yeah, that's before the match starts, I told them if you have any questions, you come and ask me. I'll be helping you get everything set. So hold points, understanding what the targets are doing. I'm going to give them all the information I possibly can. But as soon as the official training starts,

and basically that's the first day that competition scores don't count, but it's official practice, then you're on your own. Yeah. Like you have to go and we have to have a clean cut. I have to focus on myself as an athlete and you have to focus on yourself. We each have our own processes. Everybody's a little bit different. You know exactly what it takes for you to win.

And I know exactly what it takes for me to win. And now we have to go head to head and see which one's better. I think that's a healthy, like, expectation setting that you've created. I have to because I've made that mistake in the past when I first started coaching of not clearly setting those guidelines. And those lines have blurred a little bit for the athletes and said, you know, they'll come to me and I'm like, look, I can't do anything for you. And now I'm competing.

And so I've tried to make sure that now, before we even start at the beginning, the first thing I tell them is, okay, here's your list of things, but also here's the rule. The rule is during a competition, I'm competing. Until I'm done competing and I'm retired, I can't help you during a competition. Well, we're going to be pulling for you, man. This has been a real pleasure. Grateful to have you on Woop. And thank you again for everything you've done for this country.

I appreciate you having me on. This place is awesome. And thanks for the great tech too. All right. Thank you, man. Thank you to Vincent for joining me on the show today. We're wishing him luck as he goes for his fourth ski shooting gold medal in Paris. If you enjoyed this episode of the WOOP podcast, be sure to leave a rating or review. Please

subscribe to the WOOP podcast. You can check us out on social at WOOP at Will Ahmed. If you have a question you want to see answered on the podcast, email us, podcast at WIP.com. Call us 508-443-4952. If you're thinking about joining WOOP, go to WOOP.com and do a 30-day free trial membership. New members can use the code Will W-I-L to get a $60 credit on W-W-A accessories. And that's a wrap, folks. all for listening. We'll catch you next week on the WOOP podcast. As always, stay healthy and stay in the green.