Coach Bob Bowman on Balancing Stillness and Excellence | You Have To Earn That Trust

Pre-orders are available for Ryan Holiday’s new book Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors The Brave - check it out at https://dailystoic.com/preorderRyan reads today’s daily meditation and talks to Bob Bowman, who is best known as the coach of 23-time Olympic gold medalist American swimmer Michael Phelps, about how athletes can maintain stillness while still performing at a high level of excellence, the importance of preparation and how to lean on your training, finding the balance between the pursuit of excellence and internal peace, and more. Bob Bowman is an American swimming coach who is the current head coach of the Arizona State Sun Devils swimming and diving teams of Arizona State University. From 2005 to 2008, Bowman served as the head coach for the Michigan Wolverines swimming and diving team of the University of Michigan men's swimming & diving team. From 2008 to 2015, he worked as the CEO and head coach for North Baltimore Aquatic Club. Check out Bob Bowman’s book: The Golden Rules: Finding World-Class Excellence in Your Life and Work Athletic Greens is a custom formulation of 75 vitamins, minerals, and other whole-food sourced ingredients that make it easier for you to maintain nutrition in just a single scoop. It tastes great and gets you the nutrients you need, whether you're working on the go, fueling an active lifestyle, or just maintaining your good health. Visit athleticgreens.com/stoic to get a FREE year supply of Liquid Vitamin D + 5 FREE Travel Packs with subscription. Talkspace is an online and mobile therapy company. Talkspace lets you send and receive unlimited messages with your dedicated therapist in the Talkspace platform 24/7. To match with a licensed therapist today, go to Talkspace.com or download the app. Make sure to use the code STOIC to get $100 off of your first month and show your support for the show. KiwiCo believes in the power of kids and that small lessons today can mean big, world-changing ideas tomorrow. KiwiCo is a subscription service that delivers everything your kids will need to make, create and play. Get 30% off your first month plus FREE shipping on ANY crate line with code STOIC at kiwico.com. LinkedIn Jobs is the best platform for finding the right candidate to join your business this fall. It’s the largest marketplace for job seekers in the world, and it has great search features so that you can find candidates with any hard or soft skills that you need. And now, you can post a job for free. Just visit linkedin.com/STOIC to post a job for free. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are, and also to find peace and wisdom in their actual lives. But first, we've got a quick message from one of our sponsors.

• 0:43Ryan Holiday?

  You have to earn that trust. You hear people talking about how you have to trust yourself, about going with your gut, about listening to your body. The Stoics might ask, have you really earned that trust? It is true that Aristo, one of the early Stoics I profiled in Lives of the Stoics, was a big believer in the idea that the philosopher simply knows. They don't need precepts or reminders or laws, he said, they just know. But the metaphor he used of a javelin thrower is important. An athlete trains for years to gain their intuition. It's thousands of hours of practice. Their faith in themselves and their instincts is rooted in evidence and experience, not hope. You realize why Marcus Aurelius journaled every day,

• 1:26Ryan Holiday?

  why Seneca wrote his letters, why the Socratic circle met regularly, was a form of training. They were trying to turn these teachings into muscle memory. They were trying to build a deep familiarity with wisdom and virtue, so that in difficult situations, their instincts would be based on something worth trusting. And you can get to a place where your gut is worth listening to, but it doesn't come easy. It's certainly not natural. You have to train, you have to put in the work, you have to earn that trust.

• 1:59Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. It's getting real for me. You know, there's a big distinction I once heard Cheryl Strayed talk about between writing and publishing. Writing is what I get to do sort of alone with my note cards, with the blank screen, with the books that I read. Writing is the part I love because that's when I'm heads down creating, making something new. And it feels like eternity ago that I first started talking about the book that I was starting. Recorded this podcast all throughout the pandemic, well before the pandemic. But basically

• 2:41Ryan Holiday?

  in December, January, I started really of 2019, I really started researching and thinking about the next book that I was going to write. I worked on it for about six or so months of just thinking and researching and accumulating and doing my note cards. And then the rubber really met the road. That's when I started writing in June 16, 2020, The Depths of the Pandemic. I know that it was on that day exactly because, one, that's what my journal says, but two, I started, I love starting books on my birthday. I actually started Trust Me, I'm Lying on June 16, 2011. That's when I basically started becoming

• 3:21Ryan Holiday?

  a writer. So 10 years ago, exactly, almost. And now to be, not just to hold this thing in my hands, but to be able to tell you the first time, for one of the first times here on the podcast, that like, you can buy it. My newest book, Courage is Calling, is now available for pre-order. It's called Courage is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave. And it's actually the first book in a four-book series. In the way that Obstacle and Ego and Stillness became a trilogy, this is actually a much more intentional trilogy. I'm doing four books on the four Stoic virtues, the cardinal virtues: courage, temperance, justice, wisdom. It just happened that I started with courage because that's the first one in the list of virtues. But as it happens, it is also

• 4:07Ryan Holiday?

  The most urgent of the virtues, none of the virtues are possible without courage. But I think we've seen in the last 18 months, the power of courage, you know, in the frontline doctors and nurses, even the essential workers, even the people who had to show up every day at a grocery store before there were vaccines, before we knew how you could get the virus exactly, before we knew how dangerous exactly it was. All the people who showed up and did their duty and did their jobs, you know, that's what courage is about. And, you know, there's really this distinction between moral and physical courage. But as I argue in the book, courage is really comes down to, can you put your ass on the line? Can you risk yourself for something else?

• 4:51Ryan Holiday?

  Whether it's risking embarrassment, whether it's risking criticism, whether it's risking a sure thing, like a safer, softer life, or if it's, you know, the risks inherent in running into a burning building or charging out to a field of battle. That's what the new book is about. I'm so excited to tell you about it. It comes out September 28th, but it's available for preorder now. I have a bunch of amazing bonuses. You can sign up at dailystoic.com/preorder. You can get signed copies from me as part of the preorder. And the thing I'm most excited about is you can get a signed page from the manuscript itself. As I write a book, I have to print out the pages as I'm writing. You can see my handwritten notes on them.

• 5:35Ryan Holiday?

  These are the pages of the book that I made in various states of completion. And so this is the only place you'll ever be able to get those. I actually got the idea from Steven Pressfield. He gave me a typewritten manuscript page from Gates of Fire, actually, the last page of the book. And it's now one of my prized possessions. So if you want to find out how you can get that, you can pick up Courage Is Calling anywhere books are sold. To do the preorder stuff, just go to dailystoic.com/preorder and you can get all those bonuses. You can buy it from my indie bookstore, you can buy it from Amazon, you can buy it from Barnes and Noble, you can buy it from Books-A-Million, you can buy it on Audible, you can buy it on iBooks, you can buy it on IndieBound, you can buy it at your favorite local bookstore. It doesn't matter. All the stuff qualifies. All the instructions are there.

• 6:20Ryan Holiday?

  dailystoic.com/preorder. Courage is calling. Fortune favors the brave. Can't wait for you to see this new book. I'm also very excited about today's episode of the podcast with the one and only Bob Bowman. Arguably, the greatest coach in the history of swimming, coached the greatest swimmer in the history of swimming, the one and only Michael Phelps. I first got introduced or connected with Bob because Michael Phelps kept mentioning Ego's the Enemy, or The Daily Stoic. And I was like, wow, this is crazy. And I reached out to some other people and traced it back. It was Bob who'd passed it along. Then I saw we followed each other on social media and we got to connect. And we've sort of gone back and forth every now and then.

• 7:04Ryan Holiday?

  And I said, you know what? I'm going to interview him for the podcast. As you know, I love swimming and it's a big part of my life. So, we talk about elite performance here. We talk about overtraining. We talk about temperance in that sense, which will, as you know, be the next book in the series. We talk about trusting the process. We talk about doing the work. And we talk about the very special practice that is swimming. Bob has a great book you should check out called The Golden Rules: 10 Steps to World Class Excellence in Your Life and Work. That's published by St. Martin's Press. You can get that in the show notes. Here is my very fun interview with Bob Bowman. Enjoy.

• 7:44Ryan Holiday?

  You know, it's funny, I saw a meme in the middle of the election that said something like, somehow, somehow, it turns out that a lot of swimming every four years is exactly the right amount of swimming for me. It's weird how swimming is this huge sport, but only in this one period to the vast majority of people, although obviously it's your entire life.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. That's the way that most people think about it.

• 8:14Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. But, but, but what's so funny is like, if you think about it for two seconds, they're obviously only, it's not like they, they had day jobs for the last four years. This feat of greatness, you're watching someone in the pool for three minutes or whatever, was because for the last four years, they were training their ass off for this very moment.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  No doubt.

• 8:33Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. Well, I'm glad we got to talk. There's something I wanted to ask you because as I was writing Stillness is the Key, I came across this old Sports Illustrated article. I'm trying to, let me grab the date here. The Sports Illustrated article is from July 14, 1983.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 8:55Ryan Holiday?

  And it's about Vladimir...

• 8:59Ryan Holiday?

  Salnikov, am I saying that right?

• 9:01Speaker 01

  Yes, Salnikov, yeah.

• 9:03Ryan Holiday?

  And, and his coach, uh, whose name I, I'm pulling, I don't see, but his, his coach is Gorbunov or something like this, right?

• 9:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:10Ryan Holiday?

  And, and here's this passage, I found it when I was writing the book and I wanted to include it, but I gotta be honest, I didn't quite know exactly what it meant, uh, or how I could use it, but I figured you as a, as a swimming whisperer will know exactly what it is and be able to explain it to me. So here, here's, here's the, the two paragraphs, or actually just one paragraph. Uh, Gorbunov had watched Salnikov train. He took him aside an hour before the 1500 meter race. He led the 16 year old into a darkened room and lulled him into a sweet semi hypnotic dream of blue skies above and a gentle ocean below. Suddenly, far away, Salnikov heard his name. He blinked and sat up. It was the public address announcer.

• 9:53Ryan Holiday?

  The other seven swimmers were on the blocks, ready for the gun. "Go now," said Gorbunov. "Swim very quiet."

• 10:01Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 10:02Ryan Holiday?

  What does that mean?

• 10:05Speaker 01

  I think that's a, a relaxation technique, right? So he's putting him in a, a state, right? Um, and that's, that's similar to what, you know, when Michael was very young, uh, we had him go through a progressive relaxation technique, very similar. You try to put yourself in a place where you're relaxed, you're, you know, sort of in touch with all of your body in terms of sensations and how it's feeling. And then that's sort of the ideal state for you to visualize your races or to try to come up with your mental game plan. And I feel like he was state priming him. Isn't that, well, I think that's a good term for it.

• 10:46Ryan Holiday?

  But what do you think swim very quiet means?

• 10:49Speaker 01

  It means don't get out there and, and try to overdo it, right? When you swim quiet, you wanna swim efficiently. That, I tell my guys to swim pretty, same thing, right? Make sure it's pretty. You know, just keep your strokes looking good. Don't try to muscle it because I think particularly in 1500 meters, which is what Vladimir was swimming, you don't want to use all your energy too early. You have to use it up over the course of, you know, 15 minutes.

• 11:13Ryan Holiday?

  Is that sort of like golf where the harder you try at, at the worse you are?

• 11:17Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. Exactly. Yeah. You know, a big part of swimming is, is, you know, we talk about relaxation at top speed, right? And, and that's what you're trying to do. You're trying to swim at your top speed, but you're trying to do it in a relaxed, flowing way, not a, you know, over muscled kind of, you know, forced way.

• 11:38Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it's funny because when I was writing stillness, I think a lot of people took that to mean, you know, meditative or, you know, sort of detaching or disconnecting, like stepping away, which, which that is an important part. You have to have that.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 11:51Ryan Holiday?

  But really, I am fascinated with stillness in the midst of activity. You know, you're on the free throw line or you're, you're going up, you've got two seconds on the clock before, you know, you've got to make the throw or, you know, in this case, the race of your life. How do you, how do you have stillness while you're charging forward?

• 12:11Speaker 01

  I think that's what is called like a flow state, right? You're in a place where time slows down, even though you're in the midst of lots of time pressure and chaos. The Olympic Games is a perfect example. I think you get yourself in a state where everything slows down. You feel like you're a part of everything that's happening instead of just, you know, being there amongst the chaos and you're able to get your best performance because you're not in this sort of frenetic state. You're in a calm state. It's almost counterintuitive because everything about it is not calm, right?

• 12:51Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  But that's what the great ones do. They learn how to do that.

• 12:55Ryan Holiday?

  Right. You're calm when everyone else would be losing their mind.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 13:00Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, the, the, the next paragraph is why I'd found it because I was looking for, you know, things about the word stillness. But the writer says, "At sixteen, without knowing it, Salnikov had grasped the paradox. Out of stillness comes swiftness and out of patience comes energy. He had cross-bred the two seeds that grew on opposite sides of the wall."

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Oh, I love that. That's beautiful.

• 13:24Ryan Holiday?

  That's what I thought.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  Who wrote that article? That was amazing.

• 13:27Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it was like, it's one of those things, like a lot of Zen things where you're like, that's beautiful. And I'm also not sure I have any idea what it means.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  Exactly. I, I think I know what it means. It means, it's just what we just talked about. It's like an inner, you have to have an inner quiet and an inner calm in the midst of this outer, you know, cacophony.

• 13:46Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I'm trying, let me see, let me click here, see who wrote this. It was... Man, it's very weird. It's not saying the off, maybe it's at the bottom. But yeah, I, I think the idea of, of how do you get to, because it's funny, you know, you'll ask the athlete after, they'll be like, what were you thinking during the race? Or, you know, and the answer is like, nothing. They, they sort of went to a place where of no mind.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. For sure. And, uh, that's exactly what Michael would tell you. Uh, and he's been asked so many times, well, what were you thinking about that? He's like, nothing. I was just doing what he was trained to do. And that's really the big, that's why we spend all of these years and years of training, is to make the physiological aspect of the race automatic, right? You don't have time to make conscious decisions in a race that lasts 49 seconds.

• 14:39Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  You have to just kind of go and free yourself up to do what you've been trained to do. And I think the key component of that is shutting out all the outside noise, being able to just sort of, I'd say, turn on the machine, right? Turn off your brain, turn on the machine and let it run. Don't get in the way of it.

• 14:59Ryan Holiday?

  I got to imagine in any one of these races, let's say there's seven, eight, however many swimmers are there, all of them are physically capable of winning the race.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Yes, many, most of them. I wouldn't say all of them, but three or four for sure.

• 15:15Ryan Holiday?

  They're all in the ballpark.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 15:18Ryan Holiday?

  And, and so is it really, is it really as simple as getting in the right, like the difference between Michael Phelps and number two, or whoever in number two is who is in the right mental headspace when they went in the water? Or is it, is it that not right?

• 15:33Speaker 01

  It's a, it's a combination because the, the top three or four guys are probably in the right mindset, too.

• 15:38Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, sure.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  So I think that gets down to just your total package of preparation.

• 15:44Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  What made Michael invincible was an astonishing preparation for a period of years, physically, mentally, emotionally, getting ready to step up and, you know, compete in Beijing or a lot of the races that he swam in. But I think that's the difference is who's going to put the whole package together. Everybody has talent at that level. That's not a question. Everybody is doing the big things in training. Who, it really comes down to the details. Who's gone through every detail and checked every box? And the one who does the most of those is the one who wins.

• 16:20Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. And, and I was, I think it was Ledecky where it was showing something where it was like her like 20 best races are like the one through 20 spots.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, in 800 meters, right?

• 16:30Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. And, and so you're thinking about, well, what's the difference between the one and the 20 performance? Some of it's age, some of it's probably the conditions that day, what she's doing. But if it's like, clearly it's the same person, right? In all 20 spots. So it must be some microscopic variable, probably a mental variable, a place that they're able to go in the pool on that day. That's the difference between your fastest time and your fourth fastest time.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  I completely agree. Yeah, for sure. And the environment, a lot has, you know, they take the energy from it, the good energy from the environment lifts people like Ledecky and, you know, Phelps, they get better when the pressure is higher.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  That's what separates them from number two, three, four is a lot of these people, they are going to perform lower when the pressure goes up and those guys for some reason are able to give their best in those circumstances.

• 17:31Ryan Holiday?

  Is that the role of the coach too? Because I mean, of all the sports, the swimming coach, it has sort of the least input once the race has started.

• 17:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:41Ryan Holiday?

  Compared to most of the major races. I mean, like even, even a track coach can at least like, the person could hear you, right?

• 17:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:49Ryan Holiday?

  You can yell at them from the side of the track if you're running 1500 meters. Whereas in swimming, it's sort of like, it's like they're in a spaceship. Once they take off, you know, you don't have any contact.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:02Ryan Holiday?

  So is it, what does the coach do to get them in a position to, to, to get the best out of themselves?

• 18:10Speaker 01

  Uh, set up situations in training where they can do that and be successful at it, you know, and a lot of that means challenging them beyond what they think they can do, actually seeing if they can do it. If they fail, learning that you can come back and do some things differently and succeed the next time. Uh, you know, at the meets, my job is over when we get to a big meet, right?

• 18:33Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 18:33Speaker 01

  Everybody's like, what do you say before the race? It's like, I try not to say anything. I don't want to get in, we've talked about the strategy of the race for six months before.

• 18:41Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  In the last three or four weeks, we're just fine tuning things and maybe a little reminder here or there, but there's no real coaching that can happen at these competitions. It's only sort of, you know, just letting things happen that we've prepared for, for this very long, arduous time leading into it. And so the, the coach's main job is in practice every day. And that's what I love. That's why I do this. It's a, that kind of day to day. And I hate to use the word grind because it's every, that's what everybody says.

• 19:12Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  But you know, that, that sort of really intense. Consistent preparation and putting them in situations where they have to rise to the occasion and know they can do it. That's how they build their confidence. That's how they build their mindset. And the more they do of that, the better they are when they get to the big event of just letting everything go and doing what they're trained to do.

• 19:35Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I read something about John Wooden. As the team would leave the locker room to go out on game day, he would say something like, "Well, I've done my job."

• 19:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 19:46Ryan Holiday?

  And that's sort of the idea of like, now it's up to you and you have all the tools you need. You have the plan you have. It's now on you to execute those things.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  Exactly. You know, I can illustrate that with a very specific example from Michael leading into Beijing. Obviously, there was a lot of hype about it, a lot of expectations, and just 12 years of preparation on our part to get ready for it. And one week before the start of the meet, we always do something that's very fast in practice, and it's kind of the last thing we're going to do. After that, you're just kind of keeping them happy and resting up and doing those kinds of things. But one week before Beijing, I asked Michael to do three 100 butterflies from a push-off, not diving in. And they had a little bit

• 20:39Speaker 01

  of easy in-between, but each one had to get faster. And on the last one, he went 51.6, which is, it's kind of hard to describe to anyone. It would be, that's, you know, no one has ever done anything close to that in practice. If somebody ever went 52 in practice, I would be shocked. But probably three people have been 53 from a push-in practice, and Michael's 51. So he got out of the pool, came over, and I was like, "Well, that's it. I'm on vacation. My job's done. You're here. You just, you know, continue on, and you're ready." You know, and it's the same sentiment. It's actually a great feeling when you kind of know that, that you're really prepared.

• 21:26Ryan Holiday?

  Well, although I read that you had said something else to Michael in Beijing, something like, maybe I'm messing this up, but something like that you'd read an article that someone had said, "Maybe it would be better if nobody ever reached more than eight gold medals." And you sort of dropped that at him on, you dropped that on him at breakfast. So your work wasn't quite done.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, not quite done, but that was because it was such a Herculean task, right?

• 21:57Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  And you're talking about Michael, who I know better than anybody, right? And he knows me better than anybody. And that was for the 100 butterfly, which I knew was going to be the closest race. It was going to be so tight. And we had already gotten through the 400 free relay, which was like a miracle. And he was swimming well and everything else. And when I read that, I hesitated because I thought, you know, we never really want to think about the other people, like hardly ever. But Michael is, at that point, is so experienced and so seasoned. And I knew he was going to swim his race regardless of what happened. And I just wanted to give him every ounce of energy he could have. And I just dropped it on him. And when he said that, when I said that, he just physically,

• 22:43Speaker 01

  like, we were sitting at breakfast. And when I said that, he just got taller. He just sat, he's like, he said, "What?" And I said, "It'd be better for swimming if you didn't win eight." And he's the guy to do it. And he didn't say another word. I was like, "Hmm." But I could tell that just that little piece of motivation was going to add to whatever he was going to put into that race. I would hesitate to do that most of the time. But at that point, this was the only chance we're going to get at this. And I was going for it.

• 23:13Ryan Holiday?

  Well, it's kind of a, when I was reading that, I thought, you know, it's a little bit of a double edged sword. It's like you're playing with expert level materials there, right? Because

• 23:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, that is, that is the last half of a half a percent that I would use. And that's the only time I've ever really used it.

• 23:33Ryan Holiday?

  Interesting. Yeah, because generally, you do, you do want to be heads down on what you control and what you're focused on, on being your best, like the, "We're going to shove it in other people's faces," or "I'm going to prove them wrong."

• 23:49Ryan Holiday?

  It's like, you know, Jordan obviously operated on that fuel as I was talking about in stillness, but it's also pretty corrosive fuel, right? Because then you have to go look for more targets after you knock each one down.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  Exactly, right. And Michael was very much motivated by some things like that. And that's why I use that because I knew that it wouldn't have a negative effect. It would only fire him up. And I've tried to stay away from that most of the time because like you said, it's kind of a negative motivation. And a lot of times it just can backfire on you. But at that point, that seemed to be the right thing to do. And you know what was crazy? When you watch that 100 fly race, right before it, before Michael steps on the blocks, he puts one leg up on the block and stands sideways and just kind of stands there until they call him to the block.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  Well, Kavik was in the next lane and he got on the opposite side of the block and did the same thing. So he was looking right face to face at Michael before this race. And I was like, wow, this is sort of intense when I was just watching it. So they swam the race, you know, Michael won by a hundredth, kind of crazy environment. But when I saw him after the race, I was like, what did you think when Kavik was staring you down like that before the race? And Michael goes, was he looking at me?

• 25:15Speaker 01

  He had no idea. He was in another world, right? He was like, I was just getting ready to swim. I didn't know what he was doing. And it was right in front of him. So I thought that was a telltale sign that that's what it means to be in your zone, right?

• 25:27Ryan Holiday?

  Well, and maybe if you asked the other guy, he would have been like, oh, I was very intensely staring at him. So it's like he was obsessed with the competitor, whereas the person he was competing against was not even aware of his existence at that point.

• 25:43Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 25:45Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, right. The lion doesn't sweat the flies kind of a thing.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 25:50Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I was, the other thing I was fascinated to get your opinion about as a coach is, is the other sort of, well, there's a handful of big storylines from the Olympics, but Simone Manuel's thing about overtraining. Because if the, if the coach is setting the practice, this seems like also the, also a really fine balance in your profession is that you want to push the person to, to get in their absolute peak conditioning. But if you push just 1% over, the whole thing can come tumbling down.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  Exactly. And sometimes it's very hard to tell because these athletes, they want to go, they want to go pedal to the metal all the time, right? They know what it takes to get where they want to go. And they don't want to back off. They don't want to take a day off. They don't, certainly don't want to take a week off. And they will sort of push through things in the early stages of a, you know, where a physiological overload in a way that kind of masks it, right? Because they're still swimming well, but you don't know that they're sucking it up to do it, right? You know, they're just gritting and doing, getting, use it just on grit, not on just the energy that they're normally use for training.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  So that's how you can kind of go over an edge. Then one day they come in, they can't do anything. So it's very tricky and you kind of have to really know athletes when you're pushing them at the edge like that. And Simone has been with her coach for a while. He's an excellent coach, Greg Meehan at Stanford. And, you know, he handled it, I think, as well as it could be handled. But you just sort of find yourself in a situation where, you know, you're past the line and it's very hard to get back behind it.

• 27:37Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I went through that a couple of years ago. It's actually right before I started writing Stillness. I, I, I found that, like, my mind wasn't connecting right exactly with what I wanted to do. I wasn't as motivated and like, I could start things, I couldn't finish them. And I was like, am I being lazy? Am I, am I not interested in the material? Is something wrong?

• 28:02Ryan Holiday?

  I kept getting sick, like I kept getting like flus and I had I had young kids. So I was like, you know, it's from daycare or whatever.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:08Ryan Holiday?

  And finally, after I'd gotten, you know, like what felt like my fourth cold in like, you know, three weeks, I I end up going to urgent care or something and they're like, no, you don't have anything, uh, just a regular cold. I I for whatever reason, my wife had texted me and I said, you know what? Can you give me a mono test too? And and I came back, I had mono.

• 28:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:28Ryan Holiday?

  And and it was like, and they were like, we have no idea when you could have, you could have had it for four weeks already. Right? And so it was like, I had no idea when I picked it up, but my my I was gutting. I could sense something was wrong, but I thought my instinct was to gut it out. And, you know, basically, that whole period was worthless. And and the irony is, I was reluctant to take time off because I didn't want to fall behind, but I ended up falling behind anyway because every all the work I did in that period was garbage. And then I had to, then I had to take a huge amount of time off to recover from the virus that I got.

• 29:03Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah. That's, that's what an overtraining syndrome is. It's, uh, you know, and I I look back in my younger days where you kind of weren't experienced enough to know it. And I, you know, would have kids and and they would just go through a kind of a down period in their meets and their practices. And and I would just assume, well, they're just tired or they're not motivated or whatever it is. And then they'd have a mono test and say, oh, yeah, you have mono.

• 29:30Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 29:30Speaker 01

  It's over now, but some, you know what I mean? But oh, great. Well, you know, so then you start to try to fine tune your ability to detect stuff like that, you know, it's, uh,

• 29:41Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  We learn.

• 29:43Ryan Holiday?

  No, we usually, usually the hard way.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 29:48Ryan Holiday?

  Well, and and you you sense something's wrong, but you, and I've talked about this with baseball players before where, you know, in a sport where Like writing, I guess, would be similar to baseball in this where you inevitably have slumps, right? So, you know, swimming, like, you know, obviously it could be reflected in your times, but it's not as visible as like, you know, they're just not connecting with the ball, right?

• 30:14Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 30:15Ryan Holiday?

  And so, so that you sort of, to get good, to get to where you got, you, you actually had to be good at ignoring poor performance, right? Because like, you know, you flip a coin enough times, there's going to be 10 or 15 times in a row where just by sheer probability, you get some, you know, you get a freak answer. So you get good at ignoring it, just as all athletes get good at pushing through pain or resistance, but then you're actually pushing through and damaging your future performance because you're ignoring all the warning signs.

• 30:49Speaker 01

  Exactly. That's right.

• 30:51Ryan Holiday?

  So what do you look for in a swimmer that, that might be dealing with something like over, overtraining syndrome? Like, how do you, I imagine you've gotten better at noticing the warning signs?

• 31:02Speaker 01

  I think the, the most important things for me are to watch their body language before they're in the water.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  You know, I coached remarkable woman, Alison Schmidt, who just won her, I guess, 11th and 12th medals in Tokyo. And she's trained with me since she was 16. She's 31 right now, right? So I know her pretty well. But she got in a situation, just like we're talking about, where she was doing great. She went to this International Swim League bubble, right? Thing for six weeks, did very well, came home, couldn't do anything. And we tried

• 31:49Speaker 01

  a few kind of stopgap things. And finally, I just decided that until she came into practice and her eyes were bright and clear, we just really weren't going to do anything. She'd do 1500 easy and that would be, so I, I think what I still try to look and I got to where I have a big window in the front of my office that looks out on the pool and all the kids have to walk past it to go to the locker rooms.

• 32:15Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 32:15Speaker 01

  So if I'm sitting at my desk, I'm looking out there and I can kind of know by the way they're walking past the window, what kind of state they're in.

• 32:24Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  Whether they're kind of walking dead, you know, so tired, they don't want to do it, or whether they're feeling good and they're happy and they're joking with their friends, you know, however that works. So those are the things that I start with now and I've done it enough and I know the kids well enough now that I can get a good read on where they are, just kind of look in their eyes when they came in. When Michael was swimming, I can look in his eyes when he walked in the door of the pool and know how practice was going to go. And that really helped because sometimes I would adjust what I had planned before we did it. Sometimes I wouldn't, I would say, well, we're just going to suck it up and do it. But I think those are the things you kind of have to start with. And then you're looking for some markers in training, what they can do, what they can't do, what

• 33:06Speaker 01

  their strokes look like, those sort of things. And we started doing blood work, regular blood work. So that really helps as well. Obviously you can tell if there's a, you know, a nutritional thing or, you know, you get the stress hormones, cortisol levels, all those kinds of things.

• 33:22Ryan Holiday?

  Was, was that part of the, the break that Michael took? Was, was it really sort of burnout from the sport? Like just, you, you can't commit to something for so long with so few interruptions at that high of a level without coming to, to sort of hate it or resent it or need some distance from it to, to come back to it with that kind of enthusiasm and passion that you're talking about?

• 33:47Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And if I, I would have done that whole thing much differently, obviously. We learned the hard way. Um, Michael was in a very unusual spot after he won the eight gold medals because, you know, that's an amazing achievement, but he, I, and most other people that know anything about the sport know that that's not happening again in 2012. So then for him, it's like, well, what are my goals? Do it again? That was, and we just kind of, I couldn't put my head around what some goals were either.

• 34:25Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  So we just kind of kept doing what we were doing. And it was like, why are we doing this? So I think if I could, if I, number one, I would have mandated he take a year off or six months or some incredible amount of time off. And then we would just kind of start from scratch and pick a couple of events and try to just decide what we're going to do instead of just trying to keep it going on a somewhat normal kind of pattern for us, even though he took three months off. It just didn't make sense and I didn't handle it well at all. And that didn't contribute to, you know, making it better until much later. And then after a couple of years, we kind of figured out what needed to happen and got into a decent rhythm.

• 35:09Ryan Holiday?

  Well, in a way that this, that requires like, clearly you don't, you're not Michael Phelps or Katie Ledecky or Simone Manuel without an incredible amount of self-discipline or Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan or whomever. But it's almost as if the highest level of self-discipline is how do you discipline your self-discipline, right? Like, how do you say, just because this is the direction trajectory we're going, doesn't mean we're going to continue. We're actually going to stop, we're going to scale back, we're going to pivot slightly, we're going to do this intentionally as opposed to just, you know, letting the momentum and the expectations of everyone else determine what and how we do things.

• 35:52Speaker 01

  Exactly. And after we, we did get to that point, it just took two years. And by the time we did that, that affected his London performances for sure, although I thought he did a credible job based on kind of how he had prepared. But what I just, I'll tell you how I got to that, how we got out of it was I was at a breaking point too. Like, you know, Michael was doing things like not coming to practice for two weeks. Yeah. He never missed a practice in 12 years, right? You know, it was like, okay. Um, and that was sort of our hallmark, right? We're here, we're invested, we're doing all this stuff nobody else is doing. And that's what makes us great.

• 36:36Speaker 01

  So instead of kind of, you know, understanding what he was going through, I just doubled down on the, you know, you're throwing your career away, you're letting everybody down. You know, I did everything you could do that was stupid in that part. And finally, our agent, Peter Carlisle, who's such a tremendous resource for both of us. I was talking with him about it and I was frustrated. Michael wasn't coming to practice and he wasn't going to be able to do this. And this meet was coming up and we needed to do this, but we didn't do it. So it was might as well just not even go and all this kind of stuff. And he, he said two things. He's like, I'm going to give you a book, Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  And he sent it to me. And I, I would suggest that in this circumstance, how about we just let everything go, except for when Michael comes into practice, you give him the best practice you can give him on that day and leave it at that, you know, be present, right? Yeah. Focus on the present, not what didn't happen, not what's going to happen. And when I started doing that, the practices weren't too bad. And he kept coming back. So that's kind of how we got out of it, but it just, and, and of course I read The Power of Now. I've probably read it seven or eight times now.

• 37:57Speaker 01

  And that really changed my outlook on how to deal with a lot of things, not only just in swimming, but in my life. And I just think that was a very powerful learning thing for both of us. And Michael's read that book a couple of times now. We both sort of rely on it.

• 38:14Ryan Holiday?

  Well, that strikes me as a very sort of Phil Jackson approach of like this sort of jujitsu zen approach to like, don't try to force it. You're not going to get this from a top-down way. How do you sort of strip things down to their essence? Think about what this specific person needs in this specific instance. And that usually, yeah, letting go and being present gets you there better than force, or as they say, sort of willful will.

• 38:43Speaker 01

  Exactly. And, you know, I think when I started coaching, just because of the coaches that coached me and kind of the environment of sports when I was, you know, in the 80s, when I was kind of really doing it. I got into it and it's the classic example of when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

• 39:03Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 39:04Speaker 01

  And you get very good results with that quickly, right? But what you find is over time, you just, oh, you just create so many more problems than you solve by doing that. And you kind of hope that you'll get the result at the end of the season and everybody's kind of bought in again to do it again. And then you kind of double down on the, I can be, make you do this, right? And, but that's just no way to have sustained success. It's not a really way to teach people what to do. And, and I feel like as a coach, that is my biggest growth area is that I've gotten away from that kind of, what the coach says goes and you do this to, here's what we're going to do. Here's our plan. Buy into it.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  I'll push you for sure. And I'll let you know if you're not kind of doing what you said you wanted to do. But I just feel like the whole mindset of what we do is different now. And that's a very good thing.

• 40:00Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, that was what was, I think, most striking to me and I think most missed about what Simone Biles did during the Olympics was it wasn't even a coach. It was, she noticed it in herself, that she wasn't where she needed to be. And she had the discipline and I would, I would say the courage and the confidence to be like, no, this isn't right. I'm going to adjust in the following way. When, when there must have been, I mean, you just think of the financial pressure, the cultural pressure, the teammate pressure, the coach pressure, all of that pressure, she was able to somehow have the self-awareness and the sense of self.

• 40:43Ryan Holiday?

  To make a decision that clearly must have violated all, every core of like the athlete's commitment to the game as well.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  Exactly. It was an amazing thing to just witness and see how it took place over the period of those games. And I was very impressed with her and just her self-awareness, I guess is the word, right? You know, you know yourself, you know what you're capable of. Obviously, we know she's capable of doing amazing things, but just to be able to do that in that environment was really impressive.

• 41:23Ryan Holiday?

  And to me, what's actually most impressive is like, if she had just said like, I'm not feeling it, because I think we've all done this, any person that also has some like leverage in their career knows this, it's why celebrities throw like tantrums and storm off. You're like, I'm not feeling it, I'm out, right? Which is, which is often rooted in actually a kind of self-awareness, but you don't have the self-control or the discipline to explain yourself to, like, she, like, she could have just said, like, she could have just flown home, right?

• 41:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure.

• 41:56Ryan Holiday?

  And, and it would have been also a controversy, but there would have been like no consequence. She could have just left. What I found so impressive is that she stayed and she competed. So it wasn't even like an all or nothing thing. I mean, she still won a bronze medal. So you're like, she was able to have not just like the vague sense of awareness that some of us have, where we're like, something's not right, I don't want to force it. She was able to dial in specifically to what she could and couldn't do, compartmentalize it enough to do the thing that she could do at such a high level that she was the third best in the entire world, you know, in that brief moment, even despite all the controversy, distraction, attention and focus.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 42:44Ryan Holiday?

  So the power of now hit you. Have there been some other books that have been influential for you as a coach?

• 42:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, all of yours. I've read all of them. And that's just not because I'm on here. That's the truth.

• 42:57Ryan Holiday?

  I love that.

• 42:58Speaker 01

  The Daily Stoic, you know, I gave it to Michael.

• 43:01Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, wow.

• 43:01Speaker 01

  He reads it. Yeah, I give it. That's probably the one I give out as a gift most often.

• 43:06Ryan Holiday?

  And I'm on my- Next time you're giving it away, tell me and I'll send you, I'll send the leather ones for you.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  Oh, that would be awesome. That would be beautiful. I think I'm on my third time through it.

• 43:17Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, wow.

• 43:17Speaker 01

  You know, I read it every day regardless. Like when I went to the Olympics, I took it with me. So every day, the first thing I do in the morning is read that day's passage. So it has a big effect, you know, impact on me. And I like it because it's small enough that it doesn't take a lot of time to read, but it can have a big impact. And then I try to have a cup of coffee and just sort of reflect on it before I start my day. So that's the first thing I do every day.

• 43:43Ryan Holiday?

  What other books have worked for you? Like what other books do you pass to athletes?

• 43:48Speaker 01

  Power of Now is a big one. A New Earth, right? You know, same kind of thing. To athletes, I try to keep it, you know, I like Stillness is the Key was the one I've given out the most.

• 44:02Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, wow.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  Because I think it's easily accessible to them. And I think it teaches them a lot about how to be. I think in their worlds today, there's just so much noise, right?

• 44:11Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  So much iPhone and constant stimulation. And to be able to get yourself out of that, I think is one of the most important skills they can learn.

• 44:24Ryan Holiday?

  I read a daily book that you might like called A Calendar of Wisdom by Leo Tolstoy. He, you know, of A War and Peace and all his famous books. But he, he collected like what he thought were his favorite quotes or ideas. Sometimes they're Bible passages. Sometimes they're passages from the Stoics. It's not, it's, it's a little less like put together. It's not like quote story, quote story or something. But I love to flip through that every day.

• 44:55Ryan Holiday?

  And it's it's part of my morning routine. I think.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  Oh, that's a cool one. And what's the name?

• 44:59Ryan Holiday?

  It's called A Calendar of Wisdom.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  A Calendar of Wisdom. I will definitely get it.

• 45:04Ryan Holiday?

  Do you do you see that as part? I think people sometimes think that, and I know, obviously, just disproven it because we've talked about it so much. But I have been amazed at just what a big focus sort of personal development, reading, philosophy even, has been in athletics. Not just with coaches, but with athletes and and actually what a bond it is between athletes and coaches. Like, I did this book, Letters to a Young Athlete with Chris Bosch. And he was talking about, like, almost all his favorite books were given to him by a coach at one point or another because they addressed like a very specific issue or part of his game or personality that he was working on.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. Now, I I try to use that more and more now, particularly with college age athletes. I think it's a great thing. And, you know, I was trying to go some, oh, I did all the Mickey Singer books. You ever read those?

• 46:00Ryan Holiday?

  No, I've never even heard of them.

• 46:01Speaker 01

  Oh, well, the Surrender Experiment, The Untethered Soul.

• 46:06Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, I know that one, yeah.

• 46:08Speaker 01

  You know, that's like was Oprah's favorite book of whatever, some year. But it's more Eckhart Tolle type stuff. It's based on some Buddhist, you know, he is was Buddhist. But it's an amazing story, his personal life. And I've actually shared that with some athletes because it just lets you think about your life in a lot of different ways. One of the things that I kind of try to think about with myself when I'm trying to be philosophical is that, you know, you want to be in alignment, right? And I don't want to get too religious or anything else, but like, if you're in alignment with the source, right?

• 46:44Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  You're you're making the right decisions, you know, you're you're doing the stoic, making stoic decisions, right? You want to do the right thing first before everything else.

• 46:53Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 46:53Speaker 01

  And a lot of times, trying to get to that, I feel like just surrendering and letting it happen and letting it go, that's when your life starts to flow. When you try to resist a lot of things that happen to you in life, they they persist, right? Whatever you resist persists. So I'm trying to teach my kids that, you know, the less resistance you put up to things, the easier you solve problems and the more flow you have in your life. And I think these books teach that.

• 47:23Ryan Holiday?

  Well, that must, that makes complete sense to me, given the sport that you practice, right? Swimming is all about reducing unnecessary resistance in the water.

• 47:34Speaker 01

  Of course, of course.

• 47:36Ryan Holiday?

  And so it's, it's probably perfect that you would also be thinking about how do you reduce resistance everywhere?

• 47:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 47:45Ryan Holiday?

  There is something special about water. Like, I find I, the pandemic has disrupted my swimming, so I've been running and walking and biking more. But, but, and the pool at my house, this is a very first world champagne problem. My house, it came with a pool and we bought it and you can't, I mean, it'd be insane to tear out a pool and put in a new pool. But it's only nine yards long, so I can't like swim, I can't get to, like, there's something really special about whatever the distance, like a pool, there's a certain distance, I think, where like, a pool becomes this magical, like repetitive flow state that you can get into. Nine yards is not it. And, and even like, I swim sometimes at Barton Springs here in Austin.

• 48:30Speaker 01

  It's a long one, right?

• 48:31Ryan Holiday?

  It's, it's an eighth of a mile, and that's not actually right. You know, like, it's, it's wonderful because you're only doing eight laps to a mile, but you're not getting into the same like back and forth-ness that, that I actually love the most about swimming.

• 48:48Speaker 01

  Sure. Well, the pandemic enabled my swimming because the only thing I could do was just, there was one pool available where I could go up and swim, but

• 48:55Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, wow.

• 48:55Speaker 01

  I'm on board. And I didn't swim for 30 years.

• 48:58Ryan Holiday?

  Really?

• 48:59Speaker 01

  No. And I hurt my knee and needed to do something. And we were training at this great JCC pool for, while our pool was being fixed, our deck was being built. And so I got in and just swam 500. I was like, wow, I forgot about that. And it's just what you were talking about. It's just a, a way to get in. And some days I'll get in and I will swim, you know, a mile without stopping, right? And I'll think, wow, how did that?

• 49:28Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  Can't be. And then some days it's a little bit more of a struggle, but I just can't want to keep, you know, as a numbers guy, I have to hit my number, right? Or I can't live with myself. But anyway, it's been a tremendous experience for me, just for the experience of being in the water. From a, a mood standpoint, nothing is better. You know, I'd, I'd love it.

• 49:51Ryan Holiday?

  There's, to me, a sign of a good swim is when I have lost count in my head of how many laps I've done. I actually like the Apple Watch because

• 50:00Speaker 01

  Oh, same thing.

• 50:01Ryan Holiday?

  Then I don't, then I don't, I know I don't have to even think about it.

• 50:06Ryan Holiday?

  And then you, you check it and you're like, oh, I'm further along than I thought. That's fantastic.

• 50:11Speaker 01

  Exactly. You know, I actually, um, I see a therapist just because I think it's a good thing to do. But, uh, she told me that, uh, your brain loves a cadence of any kind. So that's what swimming is, right? You get into a cadence. So it's, it is like meditating. Cause I told her, I was like, you know, I cannot meditate. Sorry. I just can't sit and not have thoughts.

• 50:34Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 50:34Speaker 01

  But I can swim and not have thoughts. And, and she said, a lot of times your brain, when you get into that sort of physical cadence, it can free itself up. And then you're basically meditating when you swim.

• 50:46Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, I, I think so. And, and it is, it's better than most meditation I find because it, it, it's like a sensory deprivation tank as well.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah.

• 50:57Ryan Holiday?

  It's, it's turning off everything else.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 51:02Ryan Holiday?

  Do you find, uh, like, I know some swimmers like listen to music when they swim. Like, I love listening to music when I run, but part of what I love about swimming is that I can't do that.

• 51:11Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. You know, sometimes when I swim, I'll sing a song or something.

• 51:17Speaker 01

  And most times not, but there are times where I'll just kind of start singing a song and just kind of do that the whole time. But that's the only music I want. I wouldn't want external. I don't think I would enjoy that.

• 51:27Ryan Holiday?

  I think you're right about the cadence. So there's a, a quote from Nietzsche where he says, like, only thoughts that were had while walking have any worth. And my theory of parenting is that like 90% of all problems can be solved by a walk. Either you leaving and going on a walk or you putting them in a stroller and taking them for a walk, or you making them go outside and go for a walk. There's something I think very primal about the rhythm of traveling or, or crossing a distance or, or getting lost in the, I just gotta like walk from here to here, or I'm going to starve to death, kind of a thing.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  You know, there's this quote that I saw and I'll have to look it up. I think it's Einstein. Another one of these social media things, but Instagram that we shouldn't be on all the time, but I am. But anyway, it says, "I think 99 times and nothing happens. I swim in silence and the answer comes."

• 52:23Ryan Holiday?

  I could, I could believe that Einstein said that. He seems like someone who might swim. I know sometimes when he was stuck with a math problem, he'd pick up his violin and play the violin for sure something.

• 52:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think there's definitely, you know, that's where the stillness comes in, right? You have to put yourself in a place where these things can come to you. And if you're constantly distracted or moving around or, you know, just not quiet, I don't think you can get those sometimes.

• 52:49Ryan Holiday?

  Well, and again, I don't know him, but it strikes me from what I've understood of Michael's story, that part of his evolution, this goes to what we're talking about over training, it's that you can become very singularly obsessed or unbalanced in the pursuit of a certain goal or excellence or whatever. And that what we're talking about, whether it's playing the violin or it's, you know, you know, for you, it's swimming, even though it's, it's, it's having something else than the thing you are singularly good at to balance you out. And it seems like as he balanced himself out, it happened more towards the end of his career, but this is where that final great performances come from. And then

• 53:29Ryan Holiday?

  also his more sort of sustained happiness and mental health has come from his sort of evening out the, the, the obsessive parts of his personality.

• 53:41Speaker 01

  Without question. And golf is his thing. I don't know if that makes, sometimes it doesn't even him out, but he plays a lot and I think it's really good for him, being outside, walking around.

• 53:52Ryan Holiday?

  Why are they all golfers?

• 53:54Speaker 01

  I just think it's fun and they like being outside. It takes some time, you know, and you get to hang out with your buddies when you do it. So I think it just gives him a, it's sort of a nice respite because, you know, like you, he has young kids, three under the age of five. So there's a lot of stuff happening at home. So if he can get away and play, it's a good thing.

• 54:15Ryan Holiday?

  That's like, those are all the reasons I don't like golf. I've never gotten into it. It's like, I don't like being outside for extended periods of time. And I don't like doing anything for like, longer than like, two hours, right?

• 54:26Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 54:27Ryan Holiday?

  The idea of like, oh, let's go do this activity for four hours. I'm like, I would, I would rather do anything than that.

• 54:33Speaker 01

  You know, one of the things I learned, particularly from Michael, because, you know, a lot has been made of his ADD, right? ADHD, excuse me, ADHD. And I never really noticed it in swimming. You know, a lot, I think a lot largely because the physical demand sort of, you know, tampered down the excess energy. But what I did learn was, you know, kids or people who have ADHD, once they get focused on something, they are hyper focused on it.

• 55:01Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  And that's why I think he likes golf, because once he's focused on it, he is hyper focused on it. And it's just something he can do for a long time.

• 55:10Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I think, when I think about swimming at the professional or the, the, the level that, you know, even your college athletes are at, I think people just don't understand. You mentioned the word grind. You know, it's, it's probably even more than like marathon run. It's, it's probably the most punishing of the sports. Because as, as wonderful as it is to swim as a hobby, you know, you're not spending hours in the water, staring at a tile line at the bottom, you know, hearing nothing, seeing nothing. You're almost like in some form of like solitary confinement. To me, it's like running on a treadmill

• 55:48Ryan Holiday?

  without a TV or something of view to look at. I'm just like, I can do two miles of this, but I could go run 25 miles outside. And I'd rather do that.

• 55:59Speaker 01

  And the only thing they hear is my voice when they come up telling them what they're doing wrong, right? Maybe you can do this better.

• 56:04Ryan Holiday?

  Right. And they, and they have no control. Do you know what I mean?

• 56:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:08Ryan Holiday?

  It's like you're, it's like a designed punishment. You're, the thing sucks. And when you're done, somebody's telling you, actually, no, you're not done. You have to go do X, Y, and Z.

• 56:18Speaker 01

  Exactly. It's character builder, right?

• 56:22Ryan Holiday?

  Um, well, and then the other thing I think is swimming that that I actually I would say is a character building that I always think about every time I do it is that the willpower required to jump in the water, right, is different than stepping onto the basketball court or stepping up to the tee or stepping into the batter's box. No other sport is as immediately unpleasant as it maybe, maybe like UFC fighting or something, right?

• 56:48Speaker 01

  Right, right, yeah.

• 56:48Ryan Holiday?

  Like, like no other sport punches you in the face like at the outset, practice or or competition like swimming.

• 56:57Speaker 01

  And it's also the, yeah, for me, the hardest part is I jump in, I don't dive in most of the time, but like whatever, you know, like getting in the water is by far the hardest part. And once you're in, it's all good. But that first couple of seconds is like rough, particularly when it's cold.

• 57:12Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, right. Like when you're, when you're like, let's say you're gonna go for a jog, you know, you start cold, but you, and you warm up, but the process of warming up doesn't suck, right?

• 57:23Speaker 01

  Exactly. It's just very gradual, right? Yeah.

• 57:25Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, but when you jump in the pool, like you said, like I rarely dive in too. I love the Los Angeles Athletic Club when I'm in LA and you jump in and, you know, you go down and then you come up and then you have to push off the wall to swim and, but you really don't enjoy swimming until like two laps in or three laps in. So.

• 57:43Speaker 01

  Ten. Yeah. It takes a while to warm up in the water, for sure.

• 57:47Ryan Holiday?

  Right. So, so it's actually, it's like, I read this, there's this great book called The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp, but she's a great choreographer. And she was saying like, for her, the workout is actually, it's from waking up, getting dressed, walking downstairs, and getting in the cab. If she can do that, then the workout will happen, right? Because like, once she gets in the cab to go to the studio, she's never, she's never not, not followed through from there. But if she doesn't do the preceding steps to start the process, obviously, nothing else can happen. And I feel like, really, the willpower in swimming is, is the, I'm willing to jump in the cold water at 6:00 AM and swim those couple crappy

• 58:32Ryan Holiday?

  laps. That's the, what separates the amateurs from the professionals.

• 58:37Speaker 01

  Exactly. For sure.

• 58:41Ryan Holiday?

  Well, this is fascinating. Anything else you think people should know?

• 58:46Speaker 01

  I don't know. I think we covered a lot of ground.

• 58:48Ryan Holiday?

  I think so too. And we finished faster than I expected, like your Michael Phelps practice session. So maybe we should just take the win while we have it.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  Sounds good.

• 59:00Ryan Holiday?

  No, this is so awesome. And I was totally flattered to hear that you read the books. And I've seen Michael mention it a few times, which is always fascinating to me. And I'm so glad we got to connect. Oh, tell us about your book. Let's end there.

• 59:14Speaker 01

  Oh, the golden rules.

• 59:15Ryan Holiday?

  Yes. What are the golden rules?

• 59:18Speaker 01

  They're just, you know, over the years, so many people have asked about the process that we go through with Michael and all the other swimmers about goal setting and about time, you know, all the things that go into high performance. So I just wrote them all down and kind of, you know, gave them, I tried to couch it in terms that aren't swimming. It's not a swimming book.

• 59:39Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 59:40Speaker 01

  And I think anybody can kind of learn from just the principles of time management, goal setting, you know, all of the things that go into the process of high performance and just put it in a little book.

• 59:51Ryan Holiday?

  Well, what are some of the ones that you find yourself thinking of the most in the last, you know, difficult year or so?

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  The most are kind of staying with it when you just can't like see a reason why, like, why are we doing it, you know? And what I would just say is like, you know, one of the things I've tried to work on pretty hard for myself when I have a big problem or like we've had right the last year is like, what is the smallest thing that I can do right now that'll have a positive impact on this? Not what's the biggest, right? Not some big change or something. What is the smallest thing I can do right now that'll lead me where I want to go or where we want to go as a program or help these athletes go where they want to go? And that's been really helpful. And I think that's part of the book is like breaking things down into parts, right?

• 1:00:43Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  And that's how you, you know,

• 1:00:47Speaker 01

  What is it? How do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? It's that kind of thing.

• 1:00:51Ryan Holiday?

  It sounds like what you're talking about is like trusting the process, but you're doubting that it's gonna pay off.

• 1:00:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:57Ryan Holiday?

  But that's what everyone does and why everyone quits.

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  Exactly. And what you find is, once you've gone through it a few times and you're kind of, you know, experienced at that, you know, going through it, is that the process is the best part, not the outcome. That you'll, you'll find out that the journey to get there, and it's so like another Instagram thing for you, right? The journey is better than the outcome, but in so many ways, that's true. Because the things that you went through in that experience stay with you and guide you going forward. And while it's absolutely wonderful to have a breakthrough performance, or to show that you could do something, or, you know, get that medal around your neck, the next day you go back home and, you know, there's still bills to pay and problems that you have.

• 1:01:43Speaker 01

  And what you learned in the process of getting there actually helped you get into your next phase, whatever that is.

• 1:01:49Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, Lance Armstrong told me once, he was like, I liked to practice. They paid me to compete.

• 1:01:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:56Ryan Holiday?

  And I thought, that's an interesting, it's like, I like writing, and then they pay me to do books, right? Or they pay me, what they're really paying me for is the promotion of the books.

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:05Ryan Holiday?

  Which is the part nobody wants to do.

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:02:07Ryan Holiday?

  And, and of course, you'd rather be writing. That's the fun part, but the, what, what allows you to keep doing it is your ability to deliver it on stage or in front of people when the moment demands.

• 1:02:20Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:02:21Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, that's the, that's the hardest part, especially because if the thing is really difficult, and you're, it's, it's cut up into small enough pieces, it doesn't, it's not clear how the 300 or the 100 that you just asked the swimmer to do, it's not clear what that has to do with the gold medal that they want to win in four years.

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So the big part of my job is drawing a line for them to that, right?

• 1:02:49Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 1:02:50Speaker 01

  So I'll have to say, well, you're like, you're gonna have to finish in this time. And if we want to finish in this time, then, uh, say it's 50 point, right? You're gonna finish in 50 seconds and you're 200 free, or whatever it is. Well, between now and Paris in 2024, we need to see that.

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  A hundred times in practice.

• 1:03:14Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  Not three, not two. You know, they do one and they think they're there. Oh, well, I just did it, so I'm gonna go, you know, 145. No, once you've done it a hundred times, once you can get up in the middle of the night and do it, then you'll be ready because the key element about high performance is, you know, I think a lot of people feel like at the critical moment, right? When your opportunity comes and here's your big moment, that you'll somehow rise to the occasion, right? And you'll perform better, which is kind of what I said Michael and those guys do. But what really happens is you fall to your lowest technical level in practice. That's where you compete at the big moment, is at your lowest level of your practicing.

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  That's why practice has to be so good.

• 1:04:02Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  And that's what Michael did. Every day on a scale of one to 10, he averaged a solid eight every day. There weren't 10s every day, there were eights. But there were never fours, maybe one four every six months. But pretty much every day, there was a pretty high consistent level. And once you're in that mode, then when the pressure's on, that's kind of where you're gonna be. You're not gonna rise up and do, you know, eight level work when you're doing two every day in practice.

• 1:04:32Ryan Holiday?

  Right, right. And it's not clear, like, the pages that I did this morning, you know, how I approached them, how I think about them, it's not clear how that contributes. Like, that's such a miniscule part of the next book, which is itself part of a four book series, right? So it's like, you have to cut it up into pieces to be able to do what you're doing, but you have to be able to take each thing as seriously as if the whole of it depended on that thing.

• 1:05:05Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah, that's right. And that's the essence of our job, is that we take the two hours we get from 2 to 4 in the afternoon, and that at some point is gonna have a very significant impact on what you're gonna do for two minutes in three years. It really will. It sounds ridiculous to think that, but there are enough of them that add up. It's a huge thing.

• 1:05:30Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, and I would also say for people who are not swimmers, knowing what that two to four is for you. So like, like... I could never do my best writing from two to four, right? Like, we talked about sort of woo stuff. For me, energy really matters. So what's the energy in the room at the time of day? So for me, it's like, I gotta bang out my two to four actually from 8:30 to 10:30 or 11:30. That's my window.

• 1:05:58Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:05:58Ryan Holiday?

  And you gotta know how clocking enough of those great windows gets you to where you can perform at Beijing, or Tokyo, or London, or wherever it is.

• 1:06:07Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:06:08Ryan Holiday?

  Even though, again, it seems like they're totally disconnected and unrelated from each other.

• 1:06:12Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:06:13Ryan Holiday?

  Well, Bob, this is amazing. I'm so glad we connected and hopefully we can meet in person one day.

• 1:06:20Speaker 01

  I would love to. Thanks. Keep writing those great books.

• 1:06:22Ryan Holiday?

  I'll try. I'll try. Thanks. Appreciate it.

• 1:06:27Ryan Holiday?

  My newest book, Courage is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave, is now available for pre-order. We've got a bunch of amazing bonuses. You can get signed copies, of course. I'm so proud of this book. General Jim Mattis has called it a superb handbook for crafting a purposeful life. Matthew McConaughey called it an urgent call to arms to each and all of us. I do hope you check it out. It's my first in the Four Virtues series, courage, temperance, justice, wisdom. Courage is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave. If you want to pre-order it, I'd really appreciate your support. Go to dailystoic.com/preorder.