We're elated to introduce one of Team USA's Sports Psychologist, Dr Colleen Hacker, a certified mental performance consultant (CMPC), author, and professor. Dr. Hacker uncovers the keys to achieve excellence in sports and life. This enlightening conversation is rooted in her latest book, Achieving Excellence Mastering Mindset for Peak Performance in Sport and Life.
How often do we consider confidence as a dynamic entity, especially for world champions? Dr Hacker challenges our understanding of this concept, inspiring a fascinating discussion about pain, risk, and the pursuit of athletic greatness. Highlighting the importance of physiology for masters athletes, we discover how understanding our bodies can propel us to new heights in our chosen fields.
Swimming serves as a perfect canvas to illustrate Dr Hacker's insights into the interplay of mental and physical skills in sports. Race strategies, strength, flexibility - all these elements interweave with mental tools like self-talk, cognitive restructuring, and imagery to create a triumphant athlete. Whether you’re a sports enthusiast, a high-achieving corporate athlete, or someone captivated by the psychology of excellence, this episode promises to engage and enlighten. Join us and discover the immense power of mindset in sports and life with Dr Colleen Hacker.
We're elated to introduce one of Team USA's Sports Psychologist, Dr Colleen Hacker, a certified mental performance consultant (CMPC), author, and professor. Dr. Hacker uncovers the keys to achieve excellence in sports and life. This enlightening conversation is rooted in her latest book, Achieving Excellence Mastering Mindset for Peak Performance in Sport and Life.
How often do we consider confidence as a dynamic entity, especially for world champions? Dr Hacker challenges our understanding of this concept, inspiring a fascinating discussion about pain, risk, and the pursuit of athletic greatness. Highlighting the importance of physiology for masters athletes, we discover how understanding our bodies can propel us to new heights in our chosen fields.
Swimming serves as a perfect canvas to illustrate Dr Hacker's insights into the interplay of mental and physical skills in sports. Race strategies, strength, flexibility - all these elements interweave with mental tools like self-talk, cognitive restructuring, and imagery to create a triumphant athlete. Whether you’re a sports enthusiast, a high-achieving corporate athlete, or someone captivated by the psychology of excellence, this episode promises to engage and enlighten. Join us and discover the immense power of mindset in sports and life with Dr Colleen Hacker.
Hello friends, welcome to the Champions Mojo podcast. I am your host, kelly Palace, and, as usual, I am co-hosting with Maria Parker. Hey, maria.
Speaker 2:Hey Kelly, great to be here today.
Speaker 1:Yes, and today it's truly a special guest and an honor to have Dr Colleen Hacker, who is the author of her new book Achieving Excellence Mastering Mindset for Peak Performance in Sport and Life. As a certified mental performance consultant and member of the US Olympic Committee Sports Psychology Registry, she has served on six Olympic Games staffs, both winner and summer, and more than a dozen world championships teams working with Major League Baseball, the NFL, the PGA, the LPGA, Pro Soccer, USA Swimming, Yay, Crew Speed Skating, Track and Field and Tennis, just to name a few. And in her day job, Dr Hacker is a professor in the Department of Kinesiology at Pacific Lutheran University, Maria. Today we are going to get to talk sports psychology, one of our favorite subjects. What more can you tell us about Dr Hacker?
Speaker 2:Well, espnw named Dr Hacker as one of the 30 women in the country who changed the way sports are played, and she's been inducted into seven different halls of fame, either as an athlete or coach. Her strategies for performance are sought by corporations, business groups, professional and Olympic sports team and both print and media. Her work's been appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, cnn and ESPN, just to name a few, and we're just delighted there's so much to talk about. Thank you very much for being here, dr Hacker. It's an honor to have you, and welcome to Champions Mojo.
Speaker 3:Well, right back at you, kelly and Maria Champions Mojo like what?
Speaker 2:a title. Let's do this.
Speaker 3:It really is a privilege to join you on and your listeners on your on your pod.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you, yes. So we do want to ask you some questions that we know our listeners will be like oh my gosh, we have the Olympic, you know consultant for mental skills here with us. What could we ask her? So, before we do those questions, can you just kind of tell us about your new book, which, oh, let me show you. I don't know if you can see here, got it. It's very beautiful and thick. Tell us about achieving excellence, mastering mindset for peak performance in sport and life. This is my new Bible. It is unbelievably comprehensive. There is nothing one could wonder about mindset for sports and our performance in life, and we always talk about on the show, dr Hacker, how sports mimics life. But tell us about this new book, kind of how it came about and let's go from there.
Speaker 3:Well, first of all I have to comment on this little phrase that you use. We love to talk about the mental skills, we love to talk about sports psychology. I would say you love to do that because you cannot compete in sport without attention to that part of the game you can talk about you know, ironman. You could talk about distance swimming, you could talk about sprint swims, and I will argue till my last breath that those six inches between our ears might be the most significant real estate that we're going to face in the competitive cauldron. So there's a reason you talk about it, because the psychology of excellence is inextricably linked to the competitive environment. Now to the new book. Thank you for those kind words and I want to assure the listeners I didn't write that promo. That was exterperaneous from you and you actually hit on what we tried to do.
Speaker 3:This is my second book, 20 years in between the two, but this book really is the culmination of my career in this sphere and it reads that way. It is written primarily for sport, there's no question. But the folks at Human Kinetics, the publishing company, said we want it for high achieving corporate athletes. We want it in sport in any competitive domain, whether it's youth to intercollegiate, to Olympic, to masters, and if you heard that in the pages, like when you read it, if you hear that attention. We were very purposeful about that. And there's tons of books in this marketplace I'm aware of that and generally they are one or the other. They're like workbook-y kinds of things like here's a worksheet, do this work on this? Here's questions to ask and you don't have any understanding of what that recommendation is based on. Both as a speaker and a writer, everything I do is scientifically based, it's evidence-based, it is grounded in the literature, and then I try to speak and write as though it's not, if that makes sense.
Speaker 3:Like I try to translate that jargon and that rather esoteric kind of data and make it accessible and practical. So we talk about what each topic is, why it's important examples in sport, in life and in business to which they can be applied, and then every single chapter contains elements that say, ok, make it your own. Now. This isn't cookie cutter. This isn't one size fits all. This book allows each reader, each athlete, each high performer to overlay their careers where they are right now with the exercises and elements in the book. So it's been very intentional. I'm not going to be awesucks about it. I'm proud of what we did. The reviews and the responses from the folks I care most about, and that is the athletes and coaches and organizations, has been remarkably positive.
Speaker 2:Terrific.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is a true masterpiece, and I have been a collector of books in this genre for my entire life. My library is I've probably got 25 books and I have not read the entire thing, but I am absolutely thrilled. This is just. It is a true masterpiece. So what we wanted to do is hit, while we have this, you hear the guru the brain trust of mastering our mindset. What is when you deal with the US Olympic swimming team and we pre-recording? We talked about the fact that we've had many Olympic champions on our show and you've probably worked with many of them. What would you say is a common problem or a common issue that swimmers tend to have with their mindset?
Speaker 3:Well, it's a great question and just one slight correction. Usa swimming often hires one mental skills coach for the entire team. I am hired privately and individually by Olympic swimmers, so they have a team mental skills coach and then, when you get at the upper levels, they want their own person. I don't know how else to say it, not because USA swimming has a great track record, hires wonderful people, but I have been very fortunate to be hired from Olympic individual swimmers.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 3:Well, I don't know if I'm going to surprise you two or not, and I would love to hear you comment on this. When people hear Olympians, when people hear gold medalists, when people hear the word Olympic champions, they don't expect what I'm about to say. One of the common threads is the issue of confidence. They're like but they're world record holders, but they're Olympic champions, but they're in the top three in their discipline in the war confidence and there's a wonderful Robert Hughes quote that goes something like this perfect confidence is reserved for the least talented. It's their consolation. I love that and I think there's wisdom in that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the truly greats have exceptionally high standards. They don't assume because they swam well in preliminaries or in Munich that they're going to swim. So what does that have to do with the finals? Like they understand that each moment their training is on the line, their approach is on the line and, tactically, what their approach is in the early prelims may change when they get to the finals, right In terms of conserving energy, in terms of not giving too much away in their race strategy.
Speaker 3:So the truly greats, not the wannabe greats, not the hanger arounders in the edges, I would say to you that the confidence road is always under construction for those folks. They're either trying to get it back because they've lost it after a poor event or a poor meet, or they're trying to maintain it for a longer period of time, throughout a competition or in the run up to a major event, or they're trying to just eke out a little bit more. Most of us realize that our swimming changes depending on our confidence, right, I mean, I hate to say that bluntly yes, yardage, yes, nutrition, yes, sleep, yes, hydration. Yes, you know, elite performance is multifaceted. But confidence, individual confidence, which varies from time to time from athlete to athlete, from race to race, from a competition to a competition, from site to site, is incredibly variable. So I don't know if that surprises you. I would be curious, but I would say confidence is a recurring thread throughout a quad, throughout a four year time period.
Speaker 2:Let's say you experts, Well, I, I, I, yeah, you, you, well, I, I was just gonna.
Speaker 1:all right, Kelly, you need to go, I want to say, no, I'm gonna let you go, but I want to just let you both know that I'm in Florida in the middle of an afternoon thunderstorm that is rocking my world. I don't know if you can hear it but it's just booming. So if you lose me, keep going. So the reporting, and I'll edit this part out, but just know that I'm I'm gonna try to go out and come back in if I lose power. So go, maria.
Speaker 2:Well, I, I'm sure you're correct and I've certainly that's been true in my own athletic career and and professional career. But confidence seems to come and go and you know, sometimes you feel like a poser, you know. But but I, I guess, since we work with masters, we are our audiences, masters, and we're both masters athletes I would ask you, has that been your experience with older athletes and older professionals, that they, that they also are struggling with confidence?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that that's a great distinction, because the demographics of the athlete changes in the course of our lifetime. What we're chasing are in terms of records or achievements. What our approach is to training and two competitions is not, is not fixed in stone and it's not linear. It changes. It can change throughout the course of a lifetime.
Speaker 3:One of one of the aspects of masters levels athletes and I deal with masters level athletes in a number of sports and I'm speaking in generalities which carries its own risk there is a wisdom and an appreciation to the process infinitely more than in for lack of a better way to say it prime of their lives. Athletes. They're like I'm snapping my fingers now like they want it, now, it's immediate. They rise and fall on the last performance. It is a, it is a rocket ship of up and crash and up and crash. Masters level swimmers. I really will stand by that. There's a wisdom, there's a patience, there's a recognition and I would argue, at least in my master's level athletes, a real respect and appreciation for the training and the process and the experience. The intrinsic motivation tends to be consistently higher and a driving force they're. They're not trying to, they're not trying to get their next endorsement. They're not trying to rise and fall on the next gig. This is about something generally personal, meaningful, intrinsically valuable. I want to see if I'm capable of this. I want to see how far I can push me to my capabilities, rather than getting caught up in the comparison game of you me. I don't mean to indicate that results don't matter, they do. I don't mean to indicate that I don't know that I'm fourth and you're third. I probably do. But but my focus, my primary and again I'm speaking in generalities is about the process, the value, the goals, mastering, no pun intended, mastering the craft, trying to be a little bit better.
Speaker 3:And for masters again, with my clients, for me myself, I'm still running marathons, have marathons. There's a pride, is sort of like I don't know, I'll say it how I do I'm the oldest I've ever been and I'm busting it out. You know there's something, you know, you, you generally see in the life trajectory, you kind of go one way or another, you don't just stay on a plateau, and so there's a sort again, this intrinsic pride of man. I just had another birthday and I'm fast. I just had another birthday and I just cranked it out Right. There's it's. It is so powerful and compelling.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I love masters level athletes. It's it. It's the same but it's different. That's how I'd say it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that and I do too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. And then I want to give you my response to confidence for a master's athlete. So yeah, I feel like that what you've said. So, as a master's athlete, many masters athletes have different, you know pedigree.
Speaker 1:I was an Olympic trials qualifier as a young swimmer, went to college on a full scholarship, continued swimming. Masters now swim at a high level. Where I go to a meet, I'm trying to win a national title, get a number, one time set a world record or a national record. Those are that's my trajectory. I swim with all the range of people who are swimming in their first meet. They're afraid to dive off a block, you know. So we all have different levels of confidence.
Speaker 1:But I, as this master's athlete that's trying to achieve something special for my age, for my age group, for you know all, like all the history that we talk about it and the wisdom, it doesn't seem to make me any more confident. It's like I don't know if that's just like, maybe it's just a work in progress, like you said, like it's always, like I'm just I. What is it the word that you know? You doubt that you're ready, you doubt that you've had the best. So I love that. Confidence is what? Whether you're swimming at a high level, whether you're a brand new swimmer, whether you're an Olympic level. So let's talk about that confidence, and do you think that it applies to comparison? So, when I'm lacking confidence, I might stand up and say, ooh, I'm swimming against swimmer A and swimmer B and, oh my gosh, they've had top times above me this season and I'm scared of them. So, instead of so, how, how do you find that comparison has to do with confidence?
Speaker 3:That's a good question it is, and, let me, you know, willfully choose to be repetitive. I want to come back and say the confidence road is always under construction. And that might sound like some cute little phrase, but there's power in understanding that, because I find that people are continually frustrated by how they're. You know, I'm confident, wise, I'm a cop, you know. It's sort of this, this nagging issue, and it's like we don't mow the lawn and go well, I mow the lawn, that's it for the rest of my life. We don't wash the dishes on Monday and go who, thank God, those dishes are done forever. We this, we normalize repetitiveness and that important things need to be done and done again, and done again, and done again. And then all of a sudden we get to confidence and we get not only is our confidence peaking, falling, but then we're frustrated over that fact and what I'm trying to do is normalize it by saying the confidence road is always under construction. So I want to say that. Secondly and all of these require some explanation, I'll try to do it in the in the most pithy way that I can, but confidence follows focus. I'm going to say that again and then explain it Confidence follows focus. Athletes want to know how do I get confident, how do I keep confidence, how do I stay there longer? And what I say to them, the beginning is to understand that confidence follows focus, so that when we are I'm putting an air quotes when we're lacking confidence, you know what we're thinking about. We're thinking about the sets that we didn't get in. We're thinking about the days we had to skip because we had a cold or we had all that shoulder injury that's flaring up again. Do I train, do I take a day off? And then that messes with her. You understand what I'm saying is, when you lack confidence, I can't say it's 100% of the time, but it's up there, it's an overwhelming majority.
Speaker 3:What I want to do is peel back the layers and say what are you focusing on? What are you thinking about? And chances are, when you're confidence dips, you're thinking about how you haven't swum well at that city before or in that pool before, or at that time of the year before. Do you see what I'm saying? Or at that meet, or you didn't match up well against that particular swimmer before. Well, that was then. This is now Do now well, and we carry that baggage, literally baggage, only it's psychological baggage. Imagine if I put a 10 pound weighted vest on your body and say go, get them, tiger, that's what you're swimming in right now. And you'd go. Why on earth would I swim in a weighted vest? But we do that psychologically and emotionally, by carrying past baggage into the present performance. And then my phrase is we tend to swim heavy. We tend to swim heavy.
Speaker 3:I want to say another common issue that is related to confidence and related to focus. Athletes don't realize and again I struggle with are these do these phrases make sense Without explanation? Or how much explanation? But athletes, by and large, a majority of their their time in their sport, they benefit the process of putting skill in the process of putting speed, in the process of putting technique in right, whatever it might be stroke, turns, starts, finish. That process requires effort, thinking, repetition, attention to detail, not yet do it again, not yet do it again, not yet do it again and loving that process. But the process of pulling out that talent, pulling out that work, is entirely different. That's when we don't want to think, we don't want to analyze, we don't want to critique moment by moment. And so there's this tricky little dichotomy that I have benefited I'm as good as I am because of my attention to detail, and I sweat everything, and nothing's ever good enough, and I'd say good on you exactly. To put excellence in, it requires that. But to bring that excellence out, then you have to trust your training. You have to let go and trust your training.
Speaker 3:Okay, so let me give you an example, and I won't tell you who. I hope that our listeners won't be able to guess who, because I want to protect this. This is a multiple gold medal swimmer that I worked with prior to a particular Olympic Games. Remember I said, the process of bringing skill out, the performance element, is almost the opposite of what went into it. And so she's swimming. And so we try harder when we train, we try harder. We want, when you try harder, when you're swimming, you're tighter, the timing is off. So the phrase that we use for her is easy speed, easy speed, easy speed that we didn't want her to swim at 100%. Do you guys get what I'm saying?
Speaker 3:Yeah let's not swim at 100%.
Speaker 3:Tight shoulders make slow times, so we wanted her to have this feeling of easy speed. And again now I'm sort of whispering. Not because we didn't want to win a gold medal, not because she didn't want to swim fast, not because she didn't want to get a PO. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. But trying for it, working for it, analyzing for it minutely, monitoring her stroke, her turn, her split, that's not the process of bringing skill out, that's the time to let go and trust your training. So do you see there's so, there's this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's beautiful, all of it, all of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is a great point to ask about pain. So love, love, love and easy speed is a term in swimming and tapering that we always talk about. When you taper and you're properly prepared and you're in the right place, you just easy speed comes. So that is a term that I think many elite swimmers know and I love and that's a good trigger for when you dive in easy speed.
Speaker 1:But for those of us like Maria and I and this would be one of the questions that we're listening to that we've talked about a lot because we do have a lot of triathletes, so endurance athletes the thing that freaks me out more than lack of confidence, more than anything, is when I'm standing behind the block and I know many people do it and Maria's on her bike ready to go for 12 hours and I'm about to swim a mile, I am afraid of the pain. I literally fear that pain because I know, yes, I can have easy speed on the first 800 of a 1500, but when I hit the halfway point it's a different story. If I'm on the threshold of that aerobic, anaerobic threshold, I have to maintain that pace, to hold the pace, to set the record, and I'm just it's just excruciating. What strategies could you share with us that those of us that are afraid of the pain could use?
Speaker 3:Well, respectfully, I would argue that without the pain you would not be a master's level swimmer at the highest level. I would respectfully argue that you love the pain and you hate the pain. True, that which we achieve too easily, we esteem too lightly. Right, you guys feel me on that? Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Oh yes.
Speaker 3:So there's one of the different ways you understand the importance of phraseology, but love the wind, love the rain, love the hills, right, right you can't go in fearing the hills, fearing I need it to be perfect, right the weather and the course, or whatever it is, whether it's cycling or running, swimming I guess it would be open water versus a controlled environment but love the wind, love the rain, love the hills. That's a metaphor, for the pain is coming and the pain is the separator. The pain is the separator. Right, are you willing to endure? And now I'm gonna go back. This is what I love about truly authentic conversations. In my mind, we come back to what one of my earlier answers it's personal, it's intrinsic. Nobody's making you do that. I'll tell you how to stop the pain, kelly. Here's how you make the pain stop. Go slower, choose shorter races, don't switch. You have like right now. I used to.
Speaker 3:I was a national level inline skater, like where you're down low all quads, you guys with me on this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, pain pain pain, pain, pain, fire, fire.
Speaker 3:Here's how I can make the pain go away in a billionth of a second. Stand up. Stand up Right. I have goosebumps right now because I would argue that pain is a hook for you. That pain is a hook, you hate it and you love it. You know that it's a separator and you're saying, yes, I'm willing to go there, and I would argue to be at the level that you guys are. Not only are you saying, yes, I'm willing to go there, I'm willing to endure longer and deeper than you. That's true.
Speaker 1:I love that.
Speaker 2:I wish everybody could see Dr Hackers face because she just gave the most To the left and to the right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, adorable. Look to the left, look to the right. I love it, that's my answer.
Speaker 3:If you remove the pain, I think you'd find my hunch we're just chatting is that you'd find a different domain. I think it's inextricably linked to the pride and the challenge and the difficulty of the events Because, frankly, you could make it go away instantly. You're choosing not to Embrace that. That's your superpower. That's your superpower. I know in advance that this is going to push me to my limit and I'm going to want to quit and I know I won't and I know I have trained so that I don't you understand what I'm saying. That's part of the superpower. That's beautiful.
Speaker 2:I want to build on that fear question with a different kind of fear for master's athletes, which is, as we continue to challenge ourselves. My family is always saying stop, you're going to hurt yourself. And sure enough, I do hurt myself. I mean, I overdo it. I try something new. I'm challenging myself to learn new swimming skills right now, Also trying to learn some new balance skills in my 60s. And yet there's risk associated with that. There's risk of injury, there's risk of maybe long-term disability. What do you say about that? How do we walk that line of the real fear of hurting myself, I suppose is the simplest way to put it?
Speaker 1:I want to add embarrassment to that and embarrassment. Because that's what I hear from people. I'm embarrassed to go to a meet and dive off the block funny, or hurt myself or be laughed at or get last Fear, fear of.
Speaker 3:Yeah, those. What those two questions have in common is fear, but the origins and the solutions are I would go two different directions with that. So I don't have one answer for both of your questions, but one of the things. It's a little bit like what I said about achieving excellence you cannot know about science, but it doesn't make it go away. You cannot know about physiology, but it doesn't make it go away. You cannot know about muscle repair and the different timing of nerve repair versus muscle repair versus joint repair. You cannot know any of that stuff and it doesn't mean it goes away.
Speaker 3:And so I'm going to go back to what I said earlier to me. And again, you know, do I deal with a ton of masters athletes? No, who are my, who are my clients? They, I'm just owning it. They tend to be the best of the best in their craft, right, so I have to own that. But these folks, as a result, intrinsic personal, now they're studying the science of refueling, of hydration, of listen, I have a meat in two weeks, but this muscle is going to repair on its own time.
Speaker 3:And so what I'm saying is most masters athletes that I'm working with, they are the breadth of their knowledge about psychology, about physiology, about their own body, the folks that can stay in it and in it at high levels for a long time. They are tuned into the science. They are tuned into the science where younger folks for lack of a better way to say it they have handlers. They have handlers that tell them what to do, they moderate the load. You know they've just got a. You know an entourage of sports scientists. Most masters athletes are their own entourage.
Speaker 3:And so, maria, to your point, you know there's a joke show me an elite athlete and I'll show you an injured athlete. You know there's some truth to that. And our ligaments don't have the same elasticity, the same recovery speed in our 21s. Now I might be a 70 year old masters athlete who has the physiology of a 25 year old, but not an 18 year old. Do you know what I'm saying? In other words, I'm an outlier in my age cohort, but at some point physiology wins.
Speaker 3:I mean, it's science. We don't live forever, right? And so I go back to earlier comments. There's a wisdom and a patience and a personal control and personal agency that I see in master swimmers, masters athletes, that I don't see in the younger cohort. They go to somebody and say fix it. Here's the event, this is what I have to have happen, and they're willing to do short term fixes Right, and they're willing to seed power to external sources. So, maria, what I would say to you is and again, I don't know this, but if I actually ask you to talk about your physiological knowledge journey, I would suspect you'd say you started here and you're here like you know things now that 20 years ago you didn't attend to that. 20 years ago you were, and I would argue that the science is changing.
Speaker 2:Right, it is.
Speaker 3:So what was recommended? I've had ACL surgery. I have a really dear friend who is a national on the national Canadian national basketball team. Her ACL was career ending. Do you see what I'm saying Now this?
Speaker 2:is decades ago, right.
Speaker 3:But I've run marathons and 50 half marathon since my ACL. She's not running across the street to get the mail. So science is changing. Technology is changing our knowledge. Our scientific knowledge base is exploding and I would argue that masters level, more than others, are availing themselves of that knowledge. These are aware, these are voracious readers, these are consumers of quality and to me that's the ideal. Most people would say I wish I was who I was now when I was in my 20s. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3:If I had this, all of the this is that I just enumerated Right, the tactical awareness, the technical expertise, the physiological awareness. Right, there's four pillars of swimming right, the technical, the tactical, physiological, the psychological. Masters swimmers, by and large, are tuned into all four pillars. Younger, super talented people. They think the answer is go fast, go fast and win. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Again. I'm so what you're I think I hear you saying it to mitigate the risks as you age. Just learn. Learn what you gotta learn.
Speaker 3:Learn learn, learn, not knowing. The science doesn't make it go away.
Speaker 2:You've got to read.
Speaker 3:There's a reason Kelly said I have 25 mental skills training, because she's emblematic of what I'm talking about. I'm a voracious reader. Look at how you're adding. If I'm hearing you, you're adding either new elements to your swimming or new technical changes, like whether it's hand position or kick, or body position or entry.
Speaker 2:Frankly, I'm learning to swim. I'm learning to swim the whole thing.
Speaker 3:This bar into your life and your career Right. That's the beauty of master's level. I have a phrase that says if you're green, you're growing, and if you're ripe, you're rotting.
Speaker 2:I heard you say that before. I love that. I totally love that.
Speaker 3:I want to be green and growing and I want to work with athletes who are green and growing. Don't get me wrong. Look, I wish you well, but there's champions that are ripe and rotting. I don't know if you know this about me, but I have 12 world records. I don't know if you know this about me, but I got 10 gold medals. I don't know if you know Like I'm good, I'm ripe and I'm rotting, green and growing.
Speaker 3:The edge, the edge, the edge. I want people who love it. Because of its uncertainty, because of its pain, because I don't know if I can, but I'm here for it. There's something about that hook that keeps us coming back. If we knew it, I think it would lose some of its shine. If it was guaranteed and predictable, I think it would lose some of its shine To the best, to the best, subbest, kind of like predictable, right they. Kind of like knowing. It's comfortable, it's familiar, nothing like that. I'm not disparaging that, I'm just saying unless we're willing to go to the edge of our capabilities, we literally don't know what's possible, and there's some people that revel in that unknown.
Speaker 1:I love, love, love that. And before we go to the last question, can you break down a little bit for master Summers technique tactical physiology and psychology.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I take that for granted. And, kelly, you're so, so wise and a good listener to follow up. I would say this about cycling. I would say this about running. I was any sport, but let's keep it to swimming. So what I'm about to say applies to every sport at every level, but the details are different. But now I'm just going to use swimming as the model.
Speaker 3:Swimming is comprised of what I would call four pillars of swimming. And before I get into each one of them, unless you are consistently, systemically and appropriately training all four pillars concurrently, what I will tell you, athletes, is you're leaving some of your potential on the table. You will never know. It has to be all four pillars, scientifically, systemically and consistently. It's not one and done, it's not this month, it's not early in the season. You get what I'm saying, right, okay? So what are the four pillars?
Speaker 3:Swimming is comprised of the technical aspects of swimming, and I kind of alluded to those. That's how it's broadly. How is breaststroke different from freestyle? How is butterfly different from backstroke? But then, if we looked within freestyle, it's how high I bring my elbow out of the water, my entry point, my finger placement, my kick speed, my rhythm, my body position in the water, my breathing patterns when I breathe, the side that I write technical, the technical aspects that make swimming swimming and not basketball.
Speaker 3:Okay, tactics now we're getting into a tactical approach to training and a tactical approach to competition. Let me make it simple. And swimming, just so. Here's a tact. This is a tactical example of swimming. Do I go out fast and try to hold on, or do I go out consistent and then kick you out of the finish at the end? You have to worry about me. Oh, she's right on my heels and I know she's a fast finisher. Oh crap, I mean, I would love to do that to my opponent. So tactics are your race strategy, your race plan. Tactics are what I alluded to earlier.
Speaker 3:Without using that terminology, how will I approach the preliminaries, the semifinals, the finals? How will I approach the Munich try? Or the Munich versus nationals, versus worlds? You have different tactical approaches to different events at different times. Tactics and training are when do I go? High mileage, high yardage? When do I build on strength? How am I weaving in flexibility?
Speaker 3:I know that sounds like physiological, but I'm talking about when and amount and timing. Those are all tactical aspects of swimming, physiological again, without using the term. I've already commented on them, so I want the listener to say, oh yeah, that's what she was talking about. What are physiological elements? Well, people think right away physiology. They think strength, anaerobic power, aerobic power. Okay, the obvious right Strength, fitness, flexibility, anaerobic, aerobic, max, vo2, blah, blah, blah, blah. I shouldn't say blah, blah, blah, blah. Let me backtrack. That's the low hanging fruit. But let's expand physiology.
Speaker 3:Sleep, wake patterns, napping, not napping. How long to nap? Hydration, what to drink, when to drink, the timing right. When are we restoring our glycogen stores? There's a window when our muscles are going give me, give me, give me, I want me some food. You missed that window, you missed your window. So, in between preliminaries and semifinals, right. So it's hydration fuel, nutrient dense, the right nutrients at the right time, in the right proportion. And you who? There's general guidelines, but those are individually. We're biochemically unique and our biochemical needs in our 70s are different from our 50s and are different from our 20s. So here we go. We have people doing at all phases of their life what they used to do because it used to be successful. You see what I'm saying. So, sleep, hydration fuel, all the fitness that's physiological.
Speaker 3:Well, mental skills are just like physical skills. You're not born with them, you don't. There's no DNA like blue eyes, brown eyes. There's no DNA for height. There's no DNA for fat storage locations called. Thank you, who contributed the DNA to my, to my body? Right, you know, genes will out, physiology wills out, but psychological skills are.
Speaker 3:We know them, we know how they affect performance and no matter where you are on the spectrum of mental skills, whatever you have, the goal is to develop more or greater control. So it's issues like like what we did before the podcast somatic control, breathing, mindfulness, getting sympathetic and parasympathetic systems in balance and recognizing when one is out of balance. It's self talk, it's cognitive restructuring, it's imagery, it's goal setting, it's confidence. You guys with me on this, like, just like I could say bicep curls, tricep extensions, leg extensions, leg curls, gastro, toe raises right, we have all these different body parts. That's the same thing. Mental skills are just like physical skills. Yes, each of us are born at a certain baseline. But can we get stronger, urr? The answer is yes, each of us have a baseline speed, but can we get faster, urr? Yes, same thing with mental skills. They are skills. So, if you want to improve any skill, what do you do? You identify it, you target it, you practice it appropriately. It's that simple.
Speaker 2:Love it.
Speaker 1:But yeah. So to put a bow and wrap it around this whole conversation, I think three of us sitting here as elite athletes would say that even if we had 100% tactical, technical and physiological, if we were zero on the mind, none of those mattered. None of those mattered If you were A plus in your training, your tactics and your technique and you were zero in your mind it's not we will never know how good you could be and you will never know how good you can be.
Speaker 3:What I act out like when I'm on site with athletes, like I'm sitting on a four-legged chair right now I don't know, you guys are probably on wheels or whatever, but just think of this, and I'm not trying to be clever, just literally do this. There's four legs on my chair. Can I balance? And you can tell the listeners that I'm trying to. I'm balancing on three of those legs right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Am I comfortable? Is this good posture? Can I maintain this position for hours at a time? So the chair has four legs for a reason. That's what provides the foundation, the platform. Can you swim without attention to the psychological dimension? Yeah, you could swim, but not at your best, not at the edges of your capability. And I will tell you, you will never know how good you could be unless you have an equal and concomitant investment in the psychological skills.
Speaker 2:That's great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is a great place to wrap this. Maria, you wanna ask the last question.
Speaker 2:I have so many more millions of questions, One of which is like how do you have time for all this training?
Speaker 3:How do?
Speaker 2:you, but we'll have to have you have back for that. The last question is is there anything else that you would like to say that we haven't specifically asked? That you think is really important?
Speaker 3:I think you've been wonderful host and I think you've asked the practical questions, or some of the practical questions that athletes would be curious about. I think my only point would be to say this and this is from decades of an investment in the professional literature and the science of mental skills training is this there is no question that mental skills training works. There's no question. The question is are you willing to work the mental skills? They work? Are you willing to do the work? That chasm between knowing and doing is a critical chasm of excellence. It separates the accomplished from the pretenders.
Speaker 3:The accomplishments from this is gonna sound disparaging but kind of sub-elite. I was gonna say, wannabes, but edit that out right, that we know what to do. If you ask the average American do you know foods that you should eat more of? Yes, do you need foods? What food should you avoid? Yes, okay, raise your hand. If you do that Most days, oh, it's not knowing what to do. You get no benefit for knowing what to do. The only benefit occurs when you do what you know. It has to be action-based.
Speaker 2:And if you have any question about what to do, get Dr Hackers book and it's laid out line by line.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we don't need. If anybody has questions, it's in the book. It is definitely there. So, dr Hackers, thank you both. Thank you, yeah, thank you for spending this time with us. Our listeners are gonna get so much value out of this we really appreciate you Very grateful Bye you guys.
Speaker 2:Take care, bye-bye.
Speaker 1:Take care Well, maria. Dr Colleen Hacker what a superstar, and I this. For me personally, I might have gotten the most that I've ever gotten out of an interview.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was well. She's an expert, so, yeah, and she was so full of enthusiasm for her subject matter. Yeah, it was great. I wish we could have talked to her all day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she's so passionate and so professional and scientific and educated and just it was amazing. So my first takeaway, and I feel like the main learning point for me of the whole interview, was the four pillars that we need to succeed, and she specified them for master swimmers or for swimmers, which is the technical part of being a great swimmer, which we know is the stroke mechanics, et cetera. The tactical part, which is season planning, race planning. The physiological part, which is am I getting the right sleep, am I strength training? Do I know that? Am I training my anaerobic system, my aerobic system, my flexibility, my nutrition, all those things physiologically. And then, of course, her main expertise is the fourth pillar, which is the psychological part. And we kind of rounded this up with the fact that, yeah, you can be an A plus on all three of those, first of the four pillars, but, like she said, if your chair has four legs and you're not using that fourth one or any of the four, then you're not gonna succeed.
Speaker 1:So, technique, tactical, the physiological part and the psychologically psychological part. And then you said your first takeaway had to do with how these are actually applied.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I loved how she said this. She uses words so well. But she said these four skills have to be applied consistently, systematically, appropriately and scientifically. And that was really speaking to my earlier question, which was how, as masters athletes, do we keep from hurting ourselves, getting injured, how do we perform? And she said, basically you gotta know the science. You gotta, if you're gonna be successful, you've gotta apply these four things by knowing the latest science, and it's different now than it was 20 years ago, and it's different for a 60-year-old than it is for a 40-year-old or a 20-year-old. So I love that. I was like, yeah, yeah, I mean, you gotta take responsibility for knowing your stuff if you're gonna continue to improve.
Speaker 1:Yes, wonderful. Well, my second of many, many takeaways. Like you said, I think you have four pages of notes.
Speaker 1:I have three pages of notes, my the one that just hits home for endurance athletes is that fear of the pain factor. I still believe staying in the present moment, not fearing the pain, is a great way, which we've talked about a lot. But to have a new tool in my tool bag of dealing with pain was her approach. Her strategy is that, hey, the pain is. I hate the pain, I love the pain. It's gonna rain, there're gonna be hills, so embrace that pain. And no, and this is the key for me that really clicked is that the pain is what makes you have a peak performance. The pain is what makes you go faster. If you slow down, you're not gonna have a good time. So the pain is an indicator of, hey, I'm going fast, I'm gonna have a good time. And the final part of this is that the pain is what can separate us from the competition. Love that.
Speaker 2:I love that. And yeah, which she said you want the pain to go away, just stop, yeah, yeah, so, yeah, I love that. That was that's so good. Pain is what, and we know that you and I have said that to each other. We're willing to endure pain and discomfort, maybe more than other people, and that's what makes us achieve what we can achieve. So I love that. I love that we're beasts, yeah we're beasts and that's what we have to keep telling ourselves Beast.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2:So the last takeaway for me and I mean I had heard her say this in another podcast and I just love it, so appropriate for older people If you're green, you're growing and if you're ripe you're rotting. So basically, it's okay to be here. I am learning really learning to swim. That means I'm green, that means I'm not gonna do it right, that means it's gonna be embarrassing, but I am growing and I'm learning new stuff and that's good and I'd rather be growing than ripe and rotting.
Speaker 1:So great for me, yes, and great for master's athletes and even if you are an experienced, long-term master's swimmer. So somebody like me who's been master swimming for 35 years I'm taking away. Being green for me is doing new things in swimming that I haven't done so recently. I've been trying to breathe every third. I've always my entire life breathed every stroke but, I've been breathing every third a lot in practice.
Speaker 1:I even did the first half of a race the other day breathing every third, and it's just to change it up Just well, this helped my shoulders. Does this relax my neck more? Am I more balanced in my stroke? And we can add are you dolphin kicking off the wall? These are elite skills, but they are skills that I'm green at, so I think there's always, there are always ways within.
Speaker 2:Even within your sport that you're very good at, you can always be green, even within something that you're really good at find things you can be green in. Yeah, love it, love it, that's great.
Speaker 1:All right, Maria, what? A great interview.
Speaker 2:Thanks, love you and see you on the next one. Okay, bye-bye, Bye.