Michael Klim Is An Olympic Swimming Legend

What exactly does it take to become an Olympic legend? Every elite athlete is devoted to mastering their craft. Some even strike gold on the world's largest stage. And every once in a while, we witness standout performances in consecutive Olympiads. But it's the rare specimen that can compete at the very highest level of sport across three Olympic Games to retire a legend. Meet Michael Klim. Awarded the medal of the Order of Australia (sort of like being knighted), Michael is indisputably one of Australia's most famous and celebrated athletes in a land that revers competitive swimming. A three-time Olympian with a slew of World Records, Olympic Gold Medals and World Championship titles to his name, he was part of a star-studded group of swimmers that took Australia back to the top of swimming in the late 1990’s & aughts — a group that included standouts like Ian Thorpe, Grant Hackett, Keiren Perkins, Leisel Jones, Libby Trickett, Stephanie Rice, and Susie O’Neill. One of the stars of the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Michael is perhaps best known as instrumental in Australia’s thrilling 4x100m relay victory, unleashing a world record lead off swim to win his first gold on the first night. Michael’s achievements also include: * '96 Atlanta Olympics: Bronze, 4x100m Medley Relay * '98 World Championships: 4 Gold, 2 Silver, 1 Bronze * '99: 2 World Records (100m Butterfly) * '00 Sydney Olympics: 2 Gold, 2 Silver & 2 World Records * '01 World Championships: 2 Gold & 1 World Record * '04 Athens Olympics: 1 Silver * '07 World Championships: 1 Gold Quite the successful entrepreneur after hanging up his budgie smugglers (see the Cambridge Dictionary definition), Michael is now the founder and managing director of a skin care line called Milk & Co. and conducts life optimization retreats under the banner Chosen Experiences. This is a conversation about Michael's extraordinary life as a lauded athlete, entrepreneur and parent. We cover his mental and physical success equation: the hows and whys behind his ascension to the very peak of elite Olympic performance. What was required of him to not just win, but keep winning. We discuss how he approaches high pressure scenarios. We cover his approach to remaining fit and how he parents his children. And we conclude with how he transitioned from decorated Olympian to successful entrepreneur — a pivot most professional athletes struggle with upon retirement. But most of all, this is a conversation about what is required to live a life of mastery, with more than a few critical takeaways you can implement into your own life. A personal hero of mine for as long as I can recall, I followed Michael's journey from the beginning. So it was a thrill for me to finally connect with him for this deep dive into his career and what makes him tick. I sincerely hope you enjoy the conversation. Full video version >>> http://bit.ly/klimvideo If you are enjoying the video versions of the podcast, please subscribe! Peace, Plants & Pools! Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Speaker 01

  I think we all understand that in sport, there's only a small percentage of athletes that win that ultimate gold on the championship or the world record, et cetera. I think there's so much more that you get out of sport that you learn about yourself as well. For me, sport was a great vehicle to prepare myself for life, lessons in the future. You know, being able to bounce back in life in general, it's what it's all about.

• 1:28Rich Roll?

  That's Michael Clem, this week, on the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:42Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:46Rich Roll?

  Hey, everybody. How you guys doing? What is happening? How are you? My name is Rich Roll. I am your host of this podcast, coming at you from my shipping container studio here in sunny, southern California. Pretty excited. Got a great conversation coming up in a couple few. Julie and I just got back from New York City the other night. I was there to do a speaking engagement for On Running, so I just wanted to thank everybody at On for having me. It was at WeWork Times Square, this really cool coworking space, and the turnout was great. So I just wanted to also thank everybody who came out to hear me talk. It was really nice to meet so many cool, like-minded individuals. We were also there to promote and do a bunch of publicity around the impending release of our new cookbook, The Plant Power Way Italia,

• 2:27Rich Roll?

  which comes out on Tuesday of next week, the 24th. We're very excited about it. So if you have not pre-ordered it or picked it up, please do so. I think you will be delighted. We're super proud of it. Also, one little housekeeping item that I wanted to kind of put out there. I've been trying to determine the best format for this show. As you guys know, it is ad-supported, and many have grousted about my long introductions. And so in the last episode, which was just Julie and I, in order to kind of shorten the introduction and cut right to the chase, I decided to play around a little bit and insert two of the ads into the middle of the conversation, which is something I've never done before and which, quite frankly, I'm not a big fan of. But I'm open. I'm open to experimenting

• 3:11Rich Roll?

  with the format. So I decided to post a poll on both Twitter and Facebook, asking you guys, should I put all the ads up front in the introduction, get it out of the way, sort of like how Joe Rogan or Tim Ferriss does it? Or should I cut to the chase, shorten the intro and break away, kind of like how James Altucher and many other big shows do it? The overwhelming response was to do all the ads up front, so I'm going to stick with that, at least for now. And also, I'm going to do my best to truncate the guest introductions, which I realize are likely overkill. I definitely got that feedback from you guys. That said, I do want to create the best listening experience for you, so I am open to tweak. So feel free to tweet me with any ideas that you have. Did I mention that I have Australian

• 3:56Rich Roll?

  Olympic swimming legend, Michael Clem, on the podcast? No, I did not. So I am doing that now. Michael is...

• 4:05Rich Roll?

  One of Down Under's most famous and celebrated athletes, not just swimmers, but all athletes. Because for those that are unaware, swimming in Australia is sort of like the NBA here. It's absolutely huge, which I love. Awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia, which I gather is something like being knighted. Michael is a three-time Olympian with a slew of world records and world championships under his belt, and very much a part of the star-studded group of swimmers that took Australia back to the top of swimming in the late 1990s and early 2000s. That was a group that included people like Ian Thorpe, Grant Hackett, who else? Kieran Perkins, Liesl Jones, Libby Trickett,

• 4:47Rich Roll?

  Stephanie Rice, Suzy O'Neil, and many others I'm sure I'm forgetting right now. Michael's Olympic and world record-setting achievements are far too many to list here, especially in the interest of keeping this intro on the shorter side, which I'm probably failing at. But he's perhaps best known as one of the undisputed stars of the 2000 Sydney Olympics, where he won two gold, two silver, and was instrumental in Australia's absolutely thrilling four-by-100-meter freestyle relay, unleashing a world record lead-off swim to win his first gold on the first night. An entrepreneur upon his retirement, Michael is now the founder and managing director of a skincare line called Milk, which is Clem spelled backwards,

• 5:31Rich Roll?

  of course, which is very cheeky.

• 5:42Rich Roll?

  Michael Clem. I've been a big fan of Michael forever. I've closely followed his journey from the beginning, so it was great to finally connect with him and go deep. We cover his swimming career, of course. We cover the experience of what it's like to be such a lauded athlete in a land that has such a rich swimming tradition, where swimmers aren't just noticed every four years like it is here in the United States, but where these people, Michael included, are just downright superstars. We get into his mental and physical success equation, why he thinks he was able to rise to the very top of elite Olympic performance. What he did to get there, how he approaches high pressure scenarios with quite a few helpful

• 6:23Rich Roll?

  takeaways. And also, we talk about how he was able to transition from sport to business into becoming this successful entrepreneur, particularly when so many elite athletes struggle with how to make their way into the world upon retirement. It was a great talk. Hope you guys enjoy it. So let's do it up.

• 6:45Rich Roll?

  Well, cool. Let's just rock right into it, man. Good to see you.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  Good to see you.

• 6:49Rich Roll?

  Nice to finally meet you.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  It's very nice to meet you. I've followed you.

• 6:54Rich Roll?

  Been following you for a very long time. So it's

• 6:58Speaker 01

  In common.

• 6:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, a couple of things, I think, you know. And it's funny, because this podcast has become like a, I don't know, like, it's become like the Australian podcast. I have so many Australians on the show. I just put up, do you know Paul De Gelder?

• 7:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:16Rich Roll?

  You do. So I just put him up the other day. Like, now I'm staring at another super ripped bald Australian dude, you know, and I'm like, I want to be an honorary Australian. What do they call it? You have the OA?

• 7:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:32Rich Roll?

  So that's like being, that's like being knighted, right?

• 7:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, yeah, Paul's, Paul's story is amazing.

• 7:40Rich Roll?

  It's crazy, right?

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I bumped into him in Bondi. I'm not sure if he's still living there, but he's, you know, his attitude towards the story is just phenomenal.

• 7:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, his ability to kind of transcend that experience and be this inspirational figure. Like, and I said this in the podcast, like, I knew his story was crazy, but I didn't have a grip on like, what a great storyteller he is and how inspirational he is and the way that he tells the story.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  That you're grave from the hospital, honey, that's gross.

• 8:10Rich Roll?

  It's unbelievable. So, yeah, he lives here now.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  Does he?

• 8:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he lives in Venice. So he's, he's having a go here. He does all the Shark Week stuff for Discovery Channel and

• 8:19Speaker 01

  That's unbelievable.

• 8:20Rich Roll?

  Making a name for himself out here. So, you know.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, you've got a big following in Australia, mate. Well, we, we love ultra, ultra sports. We love swimming.

• 8:28Rich Roll?

  Well, the swimming culture is insane. I mean, I don't think Americans really appreciate or can understand the reverence with which, you know, the swimmer is perceived in Australian culture.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's definitely our number one Olympic sport and it's, you know, in, in Europe, they probably send their kids to soccer training or, you know, learn soccer. And in Australia, it's learn to swim. It's a first sport, pretty much.

• 8:53Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  Soon as, in, in infant aquatics is like, you know, it's not compulsory in every school, but it should, it will be pretty soon, I think. So learn to swim with the first sport everyone learns.

• 9:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, right away, like as soon as you can walk, right?

• 9:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, pretty much.

• 9:07Rich Roll?

  But you're, you're originally from Poland, right?

• 9:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I've got a pretty interesting story. I was born in Poland. My parents, uh, my dad worked for the Polish consulate. So we traveled a lot growing up. So I moved to India when I was, when I was one and a half, I spent. So I actually learned to swim in India for a country that's kind of probably more known for its cricket and.

• 9:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, not a big swimming powerhouse.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  No, so, but it's funny how, how history repeats itself. Cause I'm, I'm living in Bali most of my time. And I go to a little bit of a country club. My kids spend most of their life in a country club.

• 9:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  So very much the way I grew up. And, um, you know, dad used to drop us off on the way to work and pick us up eight hours later. And, you know, the, the only thing I could do was just play in the water and have fun. And that's how I sort of got this affinity, kind of like this affinity with the water that, that I just can't describe. So, yeah, that was early on.

• 10:01Rich Roll?

  So you, you, you spend most of the time in Bali and then the rest of the time in Melbourne?

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I sort of split my time between my business, which I've got a skincare company now. And we sort of, uh, we've got a skin fitness range of products. And then we also, uh, and yeah, my kids live in Bali. So I split my time between Bali and Melbourne.

• 10:19Rich Roll?

  Do they, uh, do they go to the green school?

• 10:21Speaker 01

  They do.

• 10:21Rich Roll?

  Do they?

• 10:22Speaker 01

  The green school indeed.

• 10:24Rich Roll?

  Every day I hear about the green school. I have a very good friend here in Malibu and he splits his time between Bali and here and he just left again and both his kids go to the green school. I've got a really good friend who's a meditation teacher named Charlie Knowles. He's got a whole bunch of kids that go to school there. And so I'm always seeing photos and little videos of what goes on there. And then our mutual friend David spent time there. And so I'm very familiar with what goes on there. I mean, that place is unbelievable.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's insane. And you know, John Hardy founded it, the jeweler. And it's, yeah, it's quite insane. You know, in terms of, for me, I've seen the development in my kids, the growth in terms of their confidence. And it's just, it's just a different approach to education, which you know, they kind of, yeah, it's, it's, it's a community. It's very cult like sometimes, but it's

• 11:14Rich Roll?

  Right. I heard like, well, my friend Chris said, like, yeah, like, you drop your kids off from school and then all the parents hang out. Like, nobody's working. Like, what is going on there? And none, there's no walls, like, it's all outdoor education, essentially.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  Bamboo. Yeah, it's, you know, it's basically self-sustaining wall, they go water turbines. So, yeah, it's a really good sort of, for my kids, especially my son, where he's got a bit of a speech impediment. And he, he was really shy, especially socially. And within three years, he's now narrating the school play in front of hundreds of kids. And he, you know, like, he's got this air of confidence. But it's still, you know, I think it's just the school's empowered him to believe in himself. And he's still got a beautiful personality. So, yeah, so it's definitely, it gets them kind of street ready, in a sense.

• 12:04Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right. Yeah, it's super cool. It's really cool. All right. Well, let's talk swimming. So you grow, you grow up, you know, basically with wet hair, you know, as long as you can remember. Yeah, I mean, were you, were you, were you like a talent from the get go? Did you know, like, early on, like, oh, man, this is like my thing? Or were you just playing a whole bunch of sports?

• 12:24Speaker 01

  No, I was, I definitely played a lot of different sports, but for, for me, swimming was something that because when I traveled, as I explained earlier, went from India back to Poland, Germany, Canada, and then eventually moved to Australia. And all these things were changing in my life and um from languages, new school environments and new, you know, circles of friends, et cetera. Um, the only thing that kind of remained constant for me was my swimming. It was kind of like I could join any squad at any country and kind of fit in.

• 12:55Rich Roll?

  Did you learn all the languages everywhere you live?

• 12:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, pretty much. I had to learn English and, and German and um I'm still learning English, actually.

• 13:02Rich Roll?

  But Polish was your, is your native first language?

• 13:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:04Rich Roll?

  You still speak it? Oh, you do? Wow.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. So um, so yeah, so for me, swimming was something that I was, I used to gravitate to because I was kind of good at it and it kind of, you know, gave me, gave me acceptance around in, you know, in the circle of friends that I was in. But um, but yeah, my tennis is actually, my family's actually probably a tennis family. Uh, my sister played professionally and so did my dad. So I was the, I tried. I didn't kind of have the temperament for, for tennis, being a sprinter. I sort of um, yeah, too much time to think on the tennis court. So, but um, yeah, so I definitely um, you know, it was, it was something that I, I, yeah, I had a really good sort of strong idea that I wanted to pursue at for an early age.

• 13:50Rich Roll?

  And, and how does it work in Australia? Is it like a club program kind of thing? Or is it through the schools? Like, I know once you kind of, you get noticed as an emerging talent, there's all these, you know, there's all this structure that comes into play, but.

• 14:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. Look, it's still very amateur. It still comes through, you know, traditional club, uh, you know, club structure. And then there is state funding, state institute of sport and then. There's the, obviously the overarching sports commission who sort of facilitate through the Australian swimming programs, but it's still very much, uh, um, you know, the learned, the swim schools feed the swimming clubs and, and then you can obviously join the, some of the elite squads that still exist, but it's still predominantly a club, club setup. And, uh, yeah, we're still pretty, a small country and we've, we've actually in the middle of our Commonwealth Games trials at the moment.

• 14:39Rich Roll?

  Oh, is that what's, that's going on right now?

• 14:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, um, but yeah, it's still, um, you know, for us, it's, it's still a pretty simple, simple process.

• 14:48Rich Roll?

  Does Australian Institute of Sport still exist? I just remember when I was a kid, I would be like, man, what goes on there? Like that's, they look serious.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  Well, I spent eight years there. So when I was, um, I was 15, I was tapped on the shoulder by, uh, two, two guys. One was, um, Gennady Terescu, who was the coach of Alex Popov. And the other one was Jim Failey, who used to, who came from Etobicoke in, in Toronto.

• 15:13Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  And, um, so those-

• 15:14Rich Roll?

  That was Paul Bergen's team.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:15Rich Roll?

  Before that.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. And then Mitch Ivey before that. So, um, yeah. So it was, it was sort of at the age of 15 and they said, oh, we want you to move to Canberra and, and live there in the lead up to Sydney. And, you know, they already were identifying who was good, was could be good and could be a good fit for the relay. And, um, and for me, you know, the, you know, the coach of the greatest sprinter of all time just asked me to train with him. So, um, yeah, a year, year later, I packed up the bags and mum and dad drove me up the highway up to, uh, up to Canberra from Melbourne. So, uh, yeah. So I moved out of home and made that sacrifice to solely pursue swimming. And the institute is, you know, people sort of, um, they don't, they're not very complimentary about Canberra. It's a pretty, it's a pretty boring place, but-

• 16:00Rich Roll?

  Well, that's where Paul's from. He was telling me a little bit about what it was like there. I mean, it's definitely different from what you imagine.

• 16:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:07Rich Roll?

  Melbourne and Sydney to be like.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Absolutely. It's, look, it's, it's a military, it's a town and where it's now it's got a university, a couple of good universities as well. But for us, it was the idea for what we were doing, you know, just training, great facilities. Still the facilities are far superior to any other complex and- In Australia. So now it's more used for there's no more resident program that they should have supported. It's more sort of for camps, etc. Similar to Colorado Springs, actually.

• 16:33Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:34Rich Roll?

  And does it work the same in terms of Olympic trials and qualifying for the team as it does in the States where you have a meet and you get first or second and you go and other ones are at home?

• 16:43Speaker 01

  Pretty much. And you know, traditionally, we have our trials two or three months prior to the big meet. You know, having, having seen the success of the US team, this time we're actually having the trials from the Commonwealth Games, only five weeks out of the Commonwealth Games.

• 17:01Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  So I think it makes sense. It's, I think there's a lot of, you know, opportunity for error and, you know, a lot of things can happen between, you know, between now and then say two or three months' time. So I think eliminates the, there's always, there's always gray in a black and white scenario.

• 17:18Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, it's a super tricky equation. I mean, for people that are listening who aren't familiar with swimming, I mean, you basically bust your ass for nine months or however long and then, and then you taper down for a couple of weeks.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:29Rich Roll?

  You know, maybe a month if you're a sprinter like you. I don't know what your, you know, particular protocol is. And you hang it all out to dry in that one meet. And if it's trials, that's usually as competitive, if not more competitive, more high pressure than the Olympics itself.

• 17:44Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 17:44Rich Roll?

  You make the team and then you're looking at five weeks.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:47Rich Roll?

  And that's a very difficult kind of thing to approach because you can't just coast for five weeks. You gotta kind of build back up, but you can't build back up too much.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 17:57Rich Roll?

  And some people hit it right and some people miss it altogether and have really lackluster Olympic performances.

• 18:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Look, we've tried it and I think it's, look, I think swimming does. We only have that big meet once every four years, Olympia Games. And, you know, the world champs are on every, every second year. But it is, you know, we have two, two big hitouts a year in Australia. Not like the US, we've got the NCAA system and you can really race competitively and have really good sort of hitouts regularly. Whereas, so Australians have struggled finding competitions, being so geographically, so far removed from everything. But, you know, it's, you know, we're getting there. I was very fortunate that my era was, you know, we had the likes of Thorpe and Hackett and Perkins and, and O'Neil and Samantha Riley and, you know, Lisa Jones and maybe Trickett. Then, you

• 18:46Speaker 01

  know, it almost, they could, they probably got away with not racing as much, but the... You know, the depth of the in the world of swimming has changed, I think. You know, the Eastern European countries that have come up a lot and also the Asian countries are swimming really well as well. So it's a different picture to when I was swimming.

• 19:06Rich Roll?

  But you were a member, like a, you know, a gold plated member of the golden era of Australian swimming. I mean, that that period of time, I mean, was the ascendancy of Australian swimming. I mean, you guys were a powerhouse. It was unbelievable from, you know, I don't know, 98 to 2008 or something like that, 2006. And that Sydney Olympics was really kind of a coming out party for Australian swimming. I mean, you've been a, you know, a global power for a long time, but that was something else altogether. Right? Like it was really like, it was quite something.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were, you know, to get to get an Olympic Games on home soil for Australia. The one prior to that was in 56 in Melbourne and, you know, we, you know, the Aussies have so much pride in their sport. They're so fanatical, similar to to you guys. And it was a magical two weeks in Sydney. The weather was fantastic. There was no traffic. Everyone was happy and smiling. So I don't know, the Olympic, the Olympic, the Olympic kind of fever.

• 20:06Rich Roll?

  But the talent pool that you had was unbelievable.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, look, it was, you know, it was Hacky's first Olympic gold was Ian, he broke the world record in the 400 and won the silver in the 200, but won the four by one and the four by two with me. And yeah, we had, you know, it was Karen's last swim, but you know, we had the likes of Susie O'Neill still, you know, winning gold and a 200 freestyle. And yeah, it was just an amazing team and it sort of was led by these guys. We had a really good mix of up and coming, you know, the likes of Hackett and Thorpe, which I mentioned. But, you know, there's Susie O'Neill and Karen Perkins on the, on the latter end of their careers. And sort of myself and Jeff Hugel and a couple of others slotted right there in the middle. And yeah, I was very fortunate to, as I said, to have.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  You know, the Olympics on home soil was just phenomenal. And, you know, I was part of the the race that, you know, I'm all known in Australia for playing an air guitar.

• 21:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know. We're gonna get into that.

• 21:05Rich Roll?

  Well, we had, I had Anthony Irvin in here. So we talked about that a little bit. And I was like, I gotta get Clem in here to hear it firsthand. But I think like, that's, that is my, before I met you, you know, like, I'm like, that's my visual image of you. Like, I just remember, that's like imprinted, seared into my brain, like that moment. So, I mean, maybe walk us through that story for people that are new to the show, don't know it.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  Sure, sure. So, look, I mean, you guys, the Americans had never been beaten in the four by one freestyle relay in the Olympic history until that moment. So the inception was 1972, I think of the event. So, um, yeah, it's, and, you know, through the NC2A program, and, you know, you're just so strong and realize, you know, how to race them, how to put the team together, heats and finals. And we, we had one guy, Brad Hawke, who was racing in the 50 freestyle was from the Auburn system and Auburn University. And he kind of, he trying to help, helped us. How do, how could we put together a team that could challenge his superpower in the four by one freestyle relay? And, um, we had myself, who was, you

• 22:11Speaker 01

  know, I was the highest ranked freestyler, third, number third in the world. Ian Thorpe was a 400 freestyler, but had some potential.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  Chris Fidler was our oldest statesman, and Ashley Callas was a rookie. So we, we really didn't have a team that was, you know, like, in, in, the American team had pretty much, I think, had three, seven of the top 10.

• 22:32Rich Roll?

  We had Gary Hall, who's the number one shit talker. So he's the one who instigated this whole thing. And Tony Irvin, and Jason Lezak. And who was the fourth?

• 22:42Speaker 01

  Was Neil Walker.

• 22:44Rich Roll?

  Neil Walker, right. And those are more prominent names at the time.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 22:48Rich Roll?

  Certainly Gary.

• 22:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. And look, I'm, I'm still, it's funny how sport, you realize how sported for us was everything, you know, like I was, for us, winning that relay, it changed my life, you know, people still walk down the street.

• 23:03Rich Roll?

  I'm sure they do. Yeah. And you, we should, we should point out that you broke the world record in the hundred free leading off that relay.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's to this point, it's still my best ever swim, you know. Forty eight one. Yeah. So it, it just, um, look, we basically, this is the strategy we, we, you know, we had, we basically wanted to try and get a lead somehow and, um, and then get the Americans to over race the each leg. And, um, they're not, you guys aren't used to coming second very often. So it was kind of, it threw them off the game.

• 23:34Rich Roll?

  Now we might be a little bit, but back then, no.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  Back then, no. So it's sort of, um, and we're just, our psychology was really just to make sure that last 20 meters into the wall was really strong. So, um, we're just, we're focusing on back ending every single leg. And, um, and if you look at the splits after the second, the second, third, fourth swimmer, you guys are always turning first at the, at the 50 meter end and we're turning first at the, at the, uh, and the hundred meter end. So it was, was just a real tactical event that, um, sort of fell our way. But it was, um, yeah, and look, to, to be honest, and to give Gary credit, he's, he's an amazing ambassador for the sport. He was the first one to shake my hand after the event. And, um, I'm actually still in touch with him these days. And, you know, that's kind of, you know, 18 years ago.

• 24:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 24:22Speaker 01

  Long, it's history, but it's, uh, it's sort of shaped the sport. He had a great rivalry with Popov that I used to watch in, in 96 and you know.

• 24:30Rich Roll?

  I mean, he, he was amazing because he brought entertainment to the sport by being this, you know, really bold, you know, kind of outspoken Muhammad Ali type character. And, and just for people that are listening, what happened was he went on record, he told some reporter, oh, we're going to smash the Aussies like, you know, like guitars or something like that. Right? And so when you guys won, you're all playing air guitar like.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was actually Ian, Ian Thorpe's idea. So, um, yeah. So it was one of those moments. So we're, it's still regarded for us in Olympic history as, as one of the.

• 25:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It's one of the greatest races ever. Um, one of the interesting, you just said, like you guys really focused on, you know, the last part of those 100 meter legs. And one thing that you. Are unique in is you have this very interesting way that you finish your races. You're the only person I've ever seen who lunges into the wall with a couple underwater dolphin kicks on your way in. I've never seen anyone else do that. Like, where did that come from? And why do you think that that was like your advantage?

• 25:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, look, I trained a lot with, obviously, Gennady Tereski being my coach. And initially, I started swimming trying to emulate Alex. And I wanted to have this beautiful high elbow recovery. But I very soon found out that it was, I wasn't six foot eight. I didn't have his physique. And I started, as a drill, we started swimming, we used to have dolphin kick freestyle with your head up. It was kind of a water polo drill, just to sort of emphasize as good dynamic recovery. And then I was, and then we have another drill, just windmill drill with straight arm freestyle. And then we just thought of combining the, both of them as a drill only, dolphin kick with straight arms,

• 26:13Speaker 01

  just to really emphasize each stroke and throwing your hand forward, etc.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  And I started, just my first time I did it, I just felt like I was floating from stroke to stroke. Each kick kind of gave me extra inertia from stroke to stroke. And then, and Gennady got me at like 24 points, something for a 50 free. And I was like, this could, this could actually work. You know, and my legs were my weakness. And, and probably psychologically, I always used to think, oh, I hope my legs don't go. I hope my legs don't go. And, you know, the less, when I wasn't psychologically strong in my races, I normally probably used to kick earlier than I needed to. But yeah, so it became a good way for me to keep momentum into the wall.

• 26:59Rich Roll?

  And why do you think no one else started doing this?

• 27:02Speaker 01

  Well, I think it's, you know, that transition from freestyle kick to dolphin kick, you have to really, it's awkward. Yeah. So, I know that, I know that Michael Phelps tried it a couple of times at the last Olympic trials. And, but I think, yeah, when, when he got to Rio, he went back to his original stroke. So, yeah, look, it's, you know, I had to be innovative, you know? I don't, I'm not, not much taller than the average, not much stronger than the average. And so I had to.

• 27:29Rich Roll?

  Pretty fucking strong, dude. Right now.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  I'm better now.

• 27:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, no, I mean, you're a big boy, you know, let's get that straight. But I think you, I think you innovated in another way, which is that you, you did have this like straight arm recovery in your butterfly as well. And now, when you look at swimming now, everybody's doing that. Like the swimmers look weird. Like it doesn't look like, I'm like, what are they doing? That doesn't look anything like the way that we used to swim. And, you know, I'm older than you, but I was at a, I went and did a swim practice with Connor Dwyer down at USC with Jonathan Dancheck.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:03Rich Roll?

  And got to swim with all these guys and like, they're all doing, they're all doing that, you know, and they're like, put your head down. I was always taught to put my head up, you know, like waterline here. And they're like, like the technique aspect, they figured out so many things.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:15Rich Roll?

  And I think your straight arm recovery was very unusual at the time. No one was really doing that.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. And look, I, we've, and that's actually touching back on the Institute of Sport, you know, there was, Australian swimming had to be resourceful because we didn't have hundreds of swimmers coming through and we were, we used to fall back a lot on physi, on all, you know, physiology and biomechanics and, you know, and nutrition. So we, we kind of had to use all, everything that was available to us to get the most out of our team. So, um, yeah, and then, you know, I tested, I tested the stroke a number of times and, and yeah, for me, it definitely gave me, I wouldn't say an advantage, but it just sort of kept me, when, especially when the suits came in and I had a, I had a stronger, sort of more aligned core, I could sort of keep my momentum into the wall.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  But yeah, as you said, pretty much all the sprinters are doing it now.

• 29:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's crazy to see, right? So what, like 21 world records? How many world records?

• 29:14Speaker 01

  Something like that.

• 29:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, 8,000 Olympic medals. And then you had that crazy world championships where you won like, I don't know, everything pretty much, right? I can't keep track of all the results.

• 29:22Speaker 01

  Seven medals, yeah, which is, you know, at the time, after Spitz was the first time anyone had won seven. So then obviously, um, you know, Michael came along after that.

• 29:32Rich Roll?

  Right, of course, and rewrote everything. But is there, is there a particular performance that stands out as your favorite? Or does it all bleed together as one big experience?

• 29:43Speaker 01

  No, I think for me, that week in Perth was. Uh as an individual performance was uh was probably not my most defining because it's sort of

• 29:53Rich Roll?

  Ninety eight.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, ninety eight. Yeah, I had broken the world record in a hundred fly in October and the world championships were in in January and I wasn't, yeah, I was in great shape physically and also I was still pretty, pretty fresh. I hadn't been, you know, I'd spent only a few years with with Alex and um and I was really sort of targeting the the two hundred free and I managed to win that on the first night, but um and I started getting really tired towards the end of the meet and, you know, I qualified only fourth for a hundred fly final and it's the first time that I in that week, I thought that shit, I'm not gonna, I've got a couple more swims to go. I'm not gonna even finish this meet. So um but yeah, I stood up and and and won that in a pretty close to world record time as well. So that was a week that kind of

• 30:39Speaker 01

  all my, you know, the the training with Ganati and the miles, we used to swim up to a hundred Ks a week, which is about sixty miles a week um at times and it all started really paying off, just, you know, falling back into that. My, yeah, I I had the mentality of every time the gun went, I would, I didn't really pace myself from heats to finals, whatever.

• 31:00Rich Roll?

  Just balls out no matter what.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  Pretty much. So um and it all just started coming coming into into uh into play.

• 31:08Rich Roll?

  So what did you learn from Ganati? Like, what what is the, what made him a great coach?

• 31:14Speaker 01

  I think he was a really interesting coach because he had um, he was able to adjust not only his approach in terms of the sessions, what we were doing um for every swimmer because we are, we're all different physically. You know, and we all recover differently and, you know, we we all need different stimulation and we have the, um, so he was able to to get the most out of all the swimmers and even creating five different workouts for five different swimmers on on the board in one session. Uh but then also being able to mentally get, uh, he would treat myself different to Alex, of course, and then Matt Dunn, who was also my my training partner, he'd have a completely slightly different approach. So that communication with

• 31:56Speaker 01

  With the athlete was probably his key, you know, like I knew that, you know, he'd probably leave me alone for most of my warmups and just appear out of, out of the blue, just for the, for the right time when he needed to, to see me. And he had a great eye. He could probably watch me for 10 seconds. I dive into the warmup. He could tell you how I felt.

• 32:15Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right, right.

• 32:15Speaker 01

  And so, and I think that having that real great intuition. So he was well educated, but had a great eye for the sport.

• 32:29Rich Roll?

  It sounds very similar to, to where Bob Bowman comes from. Like I was telling you earlier, I was listening to this podcast with Michael Gervais, interviewing Bob Bowman, Michael Phelps' coach, who's also coached a number of other Olympians. And he was talking about the importance of the coach athlete relationship and how it's a partnership and how you really have to individuate, you know, amongst these different people and how he could tell, you know, as soon as one of his athletes walked on the deck, he'd just look in their eye and he'd know like what kind of workout they were going to have because there, it was such an intimate, you know, close knit thing.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:04Rich Roll?

  And trying to crack like, okay, like what, you know, how, how is, you know, what makes Michael tick? Like what's going to motivate him?

• 33:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 33:13Rich Roll?

  You know, you come at him hard, you come at him soft? Like that's going to be different for every athlete. And I think it's, you know, look, when you're, when you're dealing with the elite of the elite and you got like 10 people you're coaching, it's one thing. And you're a club coach, you got 50 kids, you know, five in a lane or something like that, it's a different thing altogether.

• 33:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:29Rich Roll?

  But the more that you can understand, you know, what the, the sort of psychological makeup of that individual.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  And then, so people sort of wonder how we, you know, the swimmers still manage to break world records. And it's, you know, we've even, the suits have gone back to the, almost the traditional. So it's, it is, it's the training methods, it's being able to, I think that the coach swimmer relationship now is so different to say the 50s and the 60s where it was kind of everyone did the same thing. It was almost a survivor, survivor of the finish.

• 33:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah. That's the way it was when I was swimming.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. So now it's, you can really, you know, I think Brett Hawke, who's obviously swam for Australia now, coaches at Auburn, you know, he's, he's been able to, to pioneer that a bit further as well. And, you know, everyone's just the attention to detail, you know, from everything, from. You know, nutrition to strength training to yeah, technique, etc.

• 34:22Rich Roll?

  Right. So you were competing in the era of the technical suit. And there was that thing like, well, these, these records are never going to get broken. Like, they're just going to stay forever, right? And then sure enough, they've all, are there any records that still stand from that era?

• 34:37Speaker 01

  I think there might be a couple. I think, uh, Biederman's 200 freestyle still exists. But yeah, there aren't, um, there aren't too many, which is, which is amazing. Oh, it's just good to see.

• 34:47Rich Roll?

  No, it's good.

• 34:48Speaker 01

  You know?

• 34:49Rich Roll?

  But it just, it begs the question of like, what is the outer limits?

• 34:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 34:53Rich Roll?

  Capability? Because when I look at swimming now, like I, I'm like, what are they? Like, I can't even relate to these times. Like, I didn't think that that was possible.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 35:01Rich Roll?

  You know, it's, it progresses so quickly, much more quickly than track and field. You know, it started to slow down a little bit, but it's amazing the frequency with which world records and swimming get broken.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:12Rich Roll?

  Um, what do you, when you look at that, like, what do you attribute that to? I mean, you kind of touched on it a little bit, but.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  Hmm. Look, I, I think the, um, I mean, we spoke about, you know, the specific sort of training approach. And I think it's also swimmers don't tend to over, over swim as much as what we're used to. I think it's become, it's become more quality rather than quantity. And, um, and, you know, even, even I know some of the open water swimmers that swim, you know, 10K and 25K, they're only really training, you know, 50 to 70 kilometers a week. But it's quite intensive. It's, um, so it's, I think it's, yeah, I think the, the quality of the training and, um, just periodization. So it's really well planned. I think it's, it's just more, I, I think, yeah, I think we've just become a lot more clever, or they have.

• 36:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, when I, you know, in the eighties, it was just get in. I mean, we would, we'd be putting in 20,000 meter days with regular, like all the time, you know? I'm just, I just walked around like a zombie, like periodization, like what is that? You know, like there was no conscious awareness of any of that kind of stuff at that time.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  And it, the, the most common thing, I'm sure you probably remember, like, most people would miss their taper. They would just never come up.

• 36:27Rich Roll?

  Like your whole year was about that, you know?

• 36:30Speaker 01

  So, you know, like you were so tired three weeks out of out of trials of your main meet, but you just, you probably need another three weeks.

• 36:37Rich Roll?

  I know. I don't think there was an appreciation for recovery and like if you beat yourself down that hard, like just how long it's going to take for your body to bounce back. And I think I was chronically overtrained like my entire career.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And it's funny, I don't know, it became, I don't know who led that, but I know that, you know, I know that the Russians were training a lot. I know the, you know, the Aussies were pretty well known for overtraining as well. I think, and I think it just, you know, the word spread around the swimming pools that you have to do this much, but yeah.

• 37:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there was that era in the eighties. There were, I mean, the coaches in the US that were really hitting that hard, you know, Mark Schubert was part of that at Mission Viejo, Dick Schulberg, Paul Bergen, you know, Paul Bergen was like notorious for just like, you know, you'd hear stories about these workouts that these guys were doing. And you're like, well, I gotta do that, you know? And, and there are only a few people that could weather that and survive it and excel at that.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 37:31Rich Roll?

  But now with periodization and rest and being very specific about what you're doing and why you're doing, it's like, you don't just jump in and go all out every set.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

• 37:41Rich Roll?

  What about the strength training regimen?

• 37:44Speaker 01

  Look, I think there is, I think the jury's still out on that. I think there's anyone really yet to nail that in terms of what is, what really, what really actually transfers into the pool. It's such a, you know, the, the mass of water that we pull through the water and the hand being accelerated through the movement rather than, you know, doing a, doing a seated row is not quite, doesn't.

• 38:07Rich Roll?

  Translate, yeah.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  So it's, I think there is, there's certainly a lot of power movements that have, you know, I started doing a little bit of powerlifting that which was great for my start and great for starts and turns. But in terms of overall sort of. You know, weight training, it's still, you know, and I think some of the conditioning, it's, it's, you know, I think the core, definitely sort of core stuff is really important. But I think, yeah, they're still trying to probably work it out. I, I've used to experiment a lot. That's the most things I used to experiment with.

• 38:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think there's still a lot that can be learned there. I mean, I remember at Stanford, like Jeff Kostoff, who held the high school national record in the 500 free for like 30 years and, you know, one institute, went to the Olympics, like incredible distance swimmer. He could, he used to like make fun of him because he could only do like one push up. Like he literally could barely do a push up, you know, he's like one of the greatest swimmers ever, you know, that era. And it's, and you're like, oh, well, I can't, you know, obviously with, if you're swimming the 50 free, the 100 free, it's a different equation. But it's like, why can't he do that, but he can do this?

• 39:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And it's, you know, then there's so many variables in, in swimming, obviously, you know, but also, you know, we, people that can't swim appreciate that, you know, how important feeling for the water is and, and working with this medium that is that we have to actually work with rather than, you know, push through it or work against it. So, um, yeah, but, you know, having, you know, seeing Caleb Russell, for example, you know, he's, the physique is slightly, you know, now that the suits don't exist, you know, I think the guys is a little bit leaner. They're still super powerful, but they're not as, not as bulky as what they were probably 10 years.

• 39:48Rich Roll?

  There's a lot of tall guys though. It seems like the guys are, are bigger in general, maybe not as bulkier, but I mean, I remember watching the 50 free final, Rio, you know, cheering for, for Tony. And I was like, he looked tiny compared to all those other guys. And he's a tall guy, you know? It's like, man, sport has come a long way.

• 40:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, you know, and it is, it does sort of vary. I remember, you know, just before my era, you know, Gustavo Borges, Alex Popov, Gary Hall, you know, Gary Hall was the shortest at 6'6". So, yeah.

• 40:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's crazy, man. Well, what's interesting about your career is it's easy to go, oh, 21 world records, like all these Olympic medals, you know, incredibly storied. Swimming career, but you know, it wasn't, it wasn't all roses, man. Like you had, you had a lot of misses, you know, along the way and like a lot of obstacles and hurdles that you struggled to overcome. I mean, despite like these relay golds, you still struggled to like, you know, medal in the individual event. I mean, you set the world record for by one hundred free relay, but like you didn't make finals in the individual event. Like, how did you like mentally, you know, approach trying to, you know, deal with that kind of thing? And why do you think you struggled in the individual events when the relays like, you know, went so well?

• 41:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I was definitely, um, to this day, all my, all my relay splits are definitely my, you know, my, my, my best splits. And, um, I think psychologically I, I was sort of, I knew I definitely put pressure on myself to perform in relays. But I don't know if it almost like I felt like having the camaraderie of the team, it almost, um, deflect some of that. And, you know, I, I think in, you know, as one, as I said, I had a very sort of simple approach to my swimming. I used to pretty much have one strategy and, um, and I used to tense up a little bit and, you know, I never progressed too much from heats to finals and, um, you know, and yeah, I think so.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  You know, as soon as you tense up a little bit and sprint, it's, you know, it, it costs you. So, um, you know, I was able to win a few individual sort of big meets, but the one, you know, obviously even leading, you know, the hundred fly with about 10 meters to go and then being touched out for silver. And then same with a hundred free in Sydney, it's, it just sort of, um, yeah, it was sort of, I could see that there was, you know, there was some bad muscle memory that was coming in, creeping in in some of those races. So I think 98 was a success because I hadn't created those, some of those bad sort of patterns.

• 42:19Rich Roll?

  And how much does, you know, the external pressure play in? I mean, it had to be so heightened in Sydney.

• 42:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was definitely hearted and because the Hundred Fly was towards the end of the program, was day six and I hadn't won an individual and I was sort of, you know, and I had some pretty bad heat and so, you know, the pressure was even greater. Yeah, so I'm an incredible sort of eighty-five to ninety meters, but unfortunately they don't hand out the medals then. So, yeah, but look, to be honest, you know, I've had some amazing races where I have handled the pressure. So it was, yeah, because of my, you know, being able to stimulate myself so quickly behind the blocks and sometimes I would over stimulate and go over the edge, sort of. But,

• 43:05Speaker 01

  yeah, so if I look at, you know, my downfall, sometimes having that ability to progress in terms of time from heat to finals.

• 43:13Rich Roll?

  What is your like sort of mindset approach to, to, you know, gearing up for a race? Like, do you have a ritual or how do you like you do visualization? Like, what was your practice?

• 43:24Speaker 01

  Look, I was very, I used to try and warm up as close as possible to the event. So, pretty much I would get out of the, and there was, I was very, I was very routine driven. So, pretty much from the moment I walked through the door, I had the set routine. It was very dynamic and active warmups. So dry land and getting in the pool and pretty much it was pretty intense. It wasn't very long, but I would normally, you know, swim a lot at pace and, and pretty much from that point go and suit up and minimize any time where I could sort of, you know, get distracted or, but yeah, so for me, the approach was really just to not

• 44:09Speaker 01

  to overthink. That's why I tried to, if I had a, if I had a spare hour and a half, I would probably swim that race over about a hundred times in my head. But I tried to have, the routine just kept me moving through and getting to the blocks without overthinking it and, you know, playing the race in my head. And that's normally the downfall.

• 44:28Rich Roll?

  Right, I got you. Are you motivated, are you somebody who's motivated internally or externally? Like, are you thinking about how to have your best performance or are you thinking about how to beat the other guy?

• 44:41Speaker 01

  Look, I think most of the time is how to get my best performance. It's almost how to put it, eh, I knew how to get it, how to put that performance together. Could I, because I've done it so many times. It's almost just hitting a certain number of cues that I had in my race. So, you know, my, my breakout and my underwater kick was obviously one of my strong points. My breath control in that first thirty meters, um, approaching the wall correctly. Then, you know, so I had a, a, a number of cues that I tried to hit and it's, I used to focus on those. And, um, when I was distracted and when I wasn't hitting those, then I'd start thinking about the other guy. Look over my shoulder and that's, that's times where either I was, you know, swam over the top of or whatever.

• 45:23Speaker 01

  So I think it's like, like with anything, the clearer my head was before the race is the better the outcome always. So.

• 45:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's interesting in swimming because it's, it's you and the clock and you're in your lane and you have a choice whether to look over to the next guy and see what he's doing or not.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:39Rich Roll?

  And ultimately it just comes down to you putting in your best effort. And yet at the same time, it is a competition. Like some people feed off of that. They want to, you know, and when you were swimming butterfly, like you're breathing to the side, right? You're doing like a Mel Stewart thing where you're like checking the other guy out.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  I love Mel Stewart.

• 45:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he was the first guy to do that. So, I mean, was that a conscious thing? Like I want to be watching what the other guys are doing or?

• 46:04Speaker 01

  Oh, no, definitely not.

• 46:06Rich Roll?

  It was more an efficiency.

• 46:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, and efficiency and you're trying to keep it was, then Pankritov did it after Mel Stewart. And then, you know, obviously I, um, I, you know, adopted it as well. It's more just keeping the body nice and flat. Um, you know, Michael Phelps and Ian Crocker, they're kind of, Ian was a bit higher, but Michael would just, you know, keeps that really low body position, you know, with a flat breath. And, um, I was able to do that with turning my head slightly. It become, became a little, you know, became habitual after a while.

• 46:34Rich Roll?

  Right. So two, so two, around two thousand one, you start having these injuries, right? And it kind of sets you back. So you're like, I couldn't figure out, like, did you, you still started, you were swimming, you swam through two thousand seven.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:47Rich Roll?

  But you just, you kind of struggled, right?

• 46:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 46:49Rich Roll?

  Shoulder problems and things like that.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  It's, it's funny that we're sitting here right now because that, that injury that actually. Ultimately, you know, cost, you know, my career and I cost my career, but I retired because of it. Well, I broke my ankle when just before the Fukuoka World Championships. So we were playing some basketball to warm up before, before some practice.

• 47:11Rich Roll?

  Smart shit, never play basketball.

• 47:12Speaker 01

  I know, I know. I know. And, you know, that, that sort of followed, you know, that led up to have causing some issues with my lower back and I had back operation at the age of 25 the following year. And then, you know, that led to, you know, being off balanced and that created some more pressure on my shoulder. And then, you know, three shoulder operations later, I qualified for Athens in, in, in the relay squads and swim all those. But, you know, I never had that sort of individual success that I had prior to 2000 or 2001.

• 47:42Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right.

• 47:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, there was, yeah, it was, it was probably, you know, mentally, that was a really tough time.

• 47:48Rich Roll?

  It had to be.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I.

• 47:50Rich Roll?

  Cause you were, I mean, it wasn't, how old were you at that, like 2006, 2005?

• 47:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, 2006, I was 28, you know.

• 47:57Rich Roll?

  So you're still in the game. Like you could still be, you know, crushing it at a high level. So I would imagine that was frustrating. So you retire, but then you, you, then you try to make this comeback for London also, right? Like, why, why would you do, why, what inspired that?

• 48:11Speaker 01

  Look, for me, fitness and, and exercise and swimming is still a big passion of mine. I still love to do it. And I swim more in the open water these days, but, you know, I always feel better after it. And I, I was started, I actually did a few crazy things. I did a couple of adventure races down in Tasmania, which is, you know, probably the coldest, the rugged place in Australia was a week long sort of adventure racing. And I did a bunch of runs and swims and got on the bike even. I was a lot skinnier. But, and I was still in reasonable shape and, you know, I started having a family. I had two kids at the time, started my own business and I thought, look, it's. It was a couple of things. One, I wanted to prove to myself that I could still, I was still

• 48:55Speaker 01

  in good shape. I wanted to see how fast I could swim with all these different new variables in my life. Um, but then I also wanted to, to kind of show my kids, you know, set an example of, of being able to achieve a pretty high standard of, in my sport. And, um, in it, you know, it was a bit of a dare initially and it kind of turned to this eighteen month campaign. And, you know, ironically, I, I end up swimming the same time as I did at the trials, what I did on my last meet when I retired. So I managed, you know, seven years later, uh, maintained it, or five years later, get back to similar levels. So, um, unfortunately, we had the birth of, uh, you know, James, James Magnusson came, came through and, um, Cameron McEvoy and those guys started

• 49:39Speaker 01

  going, you know, in the, in the low forty-seventh, which, you know, I was, uh, I was nowhere near that big, that pace.

• 49:45Rich Roll?

  But that takes balls to give it a go like that, man. I applaud that.

• 49:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, my, my, yeah, we were expecting a third baby at the time. It's probably easier to be in the swimming pool than to change nappies and to manage your.

• 49:58Rich Roll?

  Training is very simple. You're this monk-like existence where everything is like organized for you, you know.

• 50:04Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And, you know, that's, you know, that's, and that was the thing that I realized, you know, I, I had started and on your business, you know, had this growing family, all these variables, still swimming. And, um, you know, people say, how did you manage to, to swim so much? And how did you stay focused? I'm like, I wish I, all I had to do now was just.

• 50:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah, life would be easier.

• 50:33Rich Roll?

  One of the things I think is really interesting about your story and, and perhaps unique is, you know, that between you and Ian Thorpe and Grant Hackett, I mean, you guys, I mean, you guys were super, superstars in the wake of Sydney. Like, you know, American audiences, you know, I don't think could really fathom, like I said earlier, like the extent to which you became, you were just thrust into the media in like a massive way. And that's a very difficult thing to figure. Your way through, you know, and you seem to be somebody who who figured that out like, and I think it it seems as somebody who doesn't know these individuals and just is kind of looking at it as an outsider looking in from 10,000 feet, you know, that's something that that I think

• 51:16Rich Roll?

  really, you know, probably took its toll on on Grant and on Ian, like they've had their sort of very public, you know, kind of struggles with trying to figure out, you know, who they want to be. And, you know, you go from this place where, like you said, everything's taken care of for you. You know exactly what you're doing. And then suddenly it's like a free for all and a free fall like, okay, what do I do with this now?

• 51:39Speaker 01

  Hmm. Yeah, it's definitely been a very, um, it's not just swimming. I think in and it happens here in the States. I think our identity as athletes is so strong and, you know, people reinforce that in every opportunity they have. And and then probably for for guys like Ian and and Grant and, you know, they reached their success. Ian won the 400 freestyle world championships when he was 15. Like my oldest daughter's 12. I can't imagine her going to

• 52:10Rich Roll?

  Being a world champion in a couple of years.

• 52:12Speaker 01

  So, you know, and he became, you know, like Ian, obviously, there was so many eyes and

• 52:16Rich Roll?

  It's like Michael Jordan in Australia.

• 52:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And, you know, and and I think, yeah, and then Ian definitely struggled with that. There was a lot of pressure on him and the level of expectation. So I think it's just realizing that identity, it's that swimming identity, even though it will live on forever, it's only temporary and having sometimes a fear of that transition into life after sport is, you know, it can be can be daunting and or even finding your place in life and what you actually, because you're so good at swimming, what's going to replace that void and what's going to give you

• 52:53Rich Roll?

  And who's going to help you figure that out? I mean, you know, when everything is being taken care of for you, you know, it's like, well, what do I do now? Like, your whole life is premised on, okay, I'm going to be on this podium at the Olympics in Sydney. But there's no thought that goes into what happens the day after that, you know?

• 53:09Speaker 01

  It's sort of, um, the guy, I've I've been fortunate enough to work with a group called The Chosen Experience and we sort of talk about purpose and intention and and, you know, looking after all these different areas of wellness, if it's spiritual and emotional and Um, environmental, social. So I sort of think, I think when you, you know, you, when you're actually in that swimming bubble and the sport bubble, you're, you're kind of taken care of. And when you come out of it, there's a lot of areas of that wellness that fall off. Um, especially social, socially, you know, your swimming fraternity is your, is your family that no longer exists, you know, you've, you know, spiritually, swimming is very meditative. I'm

• 53:50Speaker 01

  sure you probably agree. For me, it's the most meditative exercise that I can do. Um, you know, yeah. So from, and from a fitness point of view, and, you know, we're talking about nutrition, everything was gone all in place. So you have to start to, until you find that, those sort of dimensions, how you're gonna be able to fill them. And, and it takes, takes time. And, um, some people do it better than others.

• 54:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think that, and I've mentioned this in the past, that, that, you know, sports organizations, whether it's swimming, or the NFL, or the NBA, or, uh, the NC two A, or in whatever specific discipline, you know, within that, needs to have organizations or like governing bodies that are charged with helping athletes make the transition into civilian life. I mean, it's the same, it's the same with like a soldier coming back from a deployment. Like, there's a sense of confusion, you know, it's like, well, this was my career. Now, like that, snap your fingers, it's done. And you're just a normal person. And that can be very destabilizing for a lot of people. And I think the higher you've, you, you know, the, the higher your

• 54:56Rich Roll?

  achievement, the more, the more kind of challenging that transition can be. I mean, obviously you have opportunities and cool stuff comes your way. But trying to figure out like, well, who am I? Like, am I, I'm not the swimmer anymore. So wait, who, who, like, I mean.

• 55:12Speaker 01

  What's the new passion? Where did I put this energy that I had for this drive? You know, how do you suddenly replace, replace this drive that you had? And, you know, you, you see most people swimming on, you know, like there aren't too many swimmers that actually never, you know, don't, don't swim on because it is such, plays such a big role, you know, probably more symbolically than anything. But it is, um. Yeah, it is quite tricky and I think it's better through the N C two A system because of the education that that provides with, you know, the athletes. But in Australia, I think we've struggled with, you know, um, certainly, you know, the athletes aren't supported financially from from the sports, so they they need to find careers and then that becomes a, you know, it becomes quite daunting on them.

• 55:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. How is Grant doing? Are you in touch with him?

• 55:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, he he spent a fair bit of time with Michael Phelps.

• 56:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I knew that.

• 56:02Speaker 01

  Recently, and he's been, he's back, he's living in Melbourne, he's working in in in corporate finance again. So, um, again, for him, the physical exercise plays a big role. So now, even though he came back, he missed London as well, but, um, he's still back exercising and, you know, he's got a good routine. And so, yeah, I think he's back on track.

• 56:23Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. So you knew that you, did you always know that you wanted to be an entrepreneur? Like, when you were swimming, were you hatching your plan for how you were gonna start a business?

• 56:32Speaker 01

  Certainly not. Like, I, you know, I had a, obviously had a good sort of example with my dad being in, he was export and import and he sort of did a lot of trades and things like that. So I sort of had, I watched him do do his thing, but, um, I didn't have a tertiary education. Most of the, you know, most of the guys, uh, uh, you know, went to uni or whatever. I sort of fell out after my first year. So, um, but I, you know, I I had to realize I want, I've been exposed to branding and marketing. I've been a product for many companies in the past. So I had a little bit of insight into what it takes to promote and and and and sell something. So, um, yeah, the the opportunity came about when, um, there's two companies within a couple of months that approached me to to

• 57:17Speaker 01

  endorse the skincare products. So I thought, oh, there must be something in that. I'll just, uh, so I did a bit more research and the the skincare market in Australia was definitely growing, especially for men. Um, and yeah, so I sort of, uh, you know, did a A four business plan on a bit of paper and and spoke to a few different people and then, uh, pardon the pun, but took the plunge into, uh, into becoming a, I wouldn't call myself an entrepreneur, but I guess, yeah.

• 57:42Rich Roll?

  I think you are. Yeah, why not? Why wouldn't you call yourself that?

• 57:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, so look, it was a, you know, it was incidental sort of the way I fell into it, you know. Being a swimmer, you know, you have to wash yourself from the chlorine and you protect yourself from the from all the harmful UVA and UVB rays. So I sort of had a little bit of insight from my history and I had to apply that into into life after sport.

• 58:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, we just walked around with super dry skin and green hair.

• 58:14Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 58:14Rich Roll?

  There's no like dude product.

• 58:16Speaker 01

  Chlorine would.

• 58:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, lick your hand. The whole room smells like chlorine.

• 58:21Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 58:22Rich Roll?

  Um, so then, so you start this company, Milk.

• 58:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:25Rich Roll?

  Which I, like, I don't know why, but like, I didn't even think about it until like yesterday. I was like, oh, that's Klim backwards.

• 58:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right.

• 58:33Rich Roll?

  But that's so obvious, right? It's a great name for a line. It's cool.

• 58:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we, you know, like we've initially, we just had skincare products for men. And as you said, you know, we're guys in generally in Australia and the US are still, you know, they still need a bit of prodding when it comes to, you know, self maintenance and looking after their skin. So I wanted to create products that were easy to use, multifunctional, affordable, but guys were still cool. Like, they still were pretty, would be proud about having them on the base and in the bathroom. So I created a really simple sort of range, but it wasn't smooth sailing, that's for sure. I made a few costly errors and, you know, and, you know, obviously, I think that was probably, it was more, I think, the business world has been much more challenging than swimming.

• 59:23Rich Roll?

  Why?

• 59:24Speaker 01

  There is a lot of things that are out of, when in, you know, like even when we're talking about.

• 59:29Rich Roll?

  You can control everything.

• 59:30Speaker 01

  Pretty much everything.

• 59:32Rich Roll?

  Except the guy in the other lane.

• 59:33Speaker 01

  Exactly. And even then you're trying, you think you can, but, but, you know, in business, you're dealing with so many different variables from, you know, retailers to manufacturers to partners and stakeholders, etc., whatever. It might be, it's so vast. And, and then people are just, you're actually liaising with and dealing with people on a daily basis. And it becomes, that becomes a skill, you know, how you manage those situations.

• 59:57Rich Roll?

  What did you learn from your swimming experience that does translate into being successful in business?

• 1:00:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'd say there's probably like. Four or five key sort of learnings that I I take from it. The first probably that sense of sense of team. So I, you know, our business is very much a horizontal business. We don't have not very hierarchical at all. So, um, you know, making sure that culture within your business is is right. And it doesn't have to be a business. It could be any, could be a club or organization. So I think it's, you know, people that enjoy coming to work and or having things in common or having even maybe things in common, but common values. So, um, so that was for me was really important. I think that that was what made the Aussie swim team so great. It was almost like this unwritten code that we had. We had no idea what there was, but it was. The camaraderie.

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. The teammanship. Innovation too, I think, obviously something that as you touched on with my stroke and the suits and, um, I think always, you know, like if, if, you know, we came out with some great products that were selling okay, but you can't just rest on your laurels. So you have to innovate constantly. Um, I think knowledge as well, I was, um, I think when I was swimming, I think I had about twelve of probably double thick books like this. Literally, I would log every stroke, every session, every, um, so all the sessions I would, I wouldn't even need to write, you know, write it down on Poldak. I would remember pretty much everything that we did. Um, and I would, and I've got about, yeah, as I said, a dozen of those books.

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  So I think you you gain knowledge about yourself to then make better decisions with with training, et cetera. So in business too, I think it's really important to know your business and know your numbers. Um, so then we can make better decisions if we're investing money in certain areas and marketing, et cetera. So, um, and then now we can, you know, uh, now I guess in swimming, people can get information about other swimmers a lot easier than what we could. But yeah, so I mean, the business world, we really try and tap into, you know, data about your competition, knowing, knowing your competition is really important as well.

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  I'm not sure what else.

• 1:02:06Rich Roll?

  Well, I would think, I would, I would think, and I'm probably projecting, but you know, the mindset that you have to have to be competitive, you know, at the level that you were in swimming, takes a very sort of singular, you know, focus and ability to kind of hone in on a goal and like work your way towards that, right? And so obviously business is a little bit different because you have all these people and personalities and all of that. It's not just you, right?

• 1:02:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:02:33Rich Roll?

  And as a swimmer, you can be kind of a control freak, like this is what I'm doing, you know, all that kind of stuff.

• 1:02:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:39Rich Roll?

  So there has to be some aspects of that that translate into you're like, okay, like to be, just to be determined and like, this is what we're moving towards, you know? But then also having to let go of certain things that were important in swimming.

• 1:02:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:51Rich Roll?

  To let other people in and delegate and things like that.

• 1:02:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's, yeah, it's almost like you, you know, I was being empowered to do what I was, you know, what I was able to do in the pool, whereas I think in, in business, it's almost me empowering other people.

• 1:03:07Rich Roll?

  You have to be the coach.

• 1:03:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, so a little bit. So that's, and look, as I've said, I've had some great coaches in my career. So I've been able to fall that, fall back on that as well. But I think, and then just the other thing, which is, I just remembered is just the relentless nature of, of, of, of running your own business. It's very similar to, to swimming and, and sport where you, you definitely have bad sessions, bad swings, but just the ability of come back, coming back the next day, no matter how bad it is. And you know, you may, you may show up in not the best mood, but you still show up.

• 1:03:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  But so that was, yeah, so probably those are my key learnings, but.

• 1:03:45Rich Roll?

  And so now how you, you, are you got, you're shipping in countries all over the world, right? Like, are you in the US?

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we're not, we're in the, on, we're on the, in, on Amazon in the US, but we're, we're sort of, our focus is sort of Australia and the proximity to Australia. So all the Asian countries from China to Korea to Japan and Hong Kong and Singapore. So really sort of our products lend, lend itself really well through, especially the baby range, which is all natural and. Sort of really sort of simple and and it seems to be going really well into that region. So, but I think, you know, culturally, we're so similar in the lifestyle between

• 1:04:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:25Speaker 01

  sort of Melbourne, Sydney, etc.

• 1:04:27Rich Roll?

  What? No, I can see it doing well here and I like like it's a, you know, it's it's clean and it's it's like minimal in its design. Like it's just very like, simple in kind of a beautiful elegant way.

• 1:04:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you.

• 1:04:40Rich Roll?

  I haven't tried the products yet, but just based on like following you and stuff and reading up on it. It's cool. So, so that's cool. So that's your main thing, right? I know you do these retreats too, the chosen experiences.

• 1:04:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a chosen experience. It's actually good because it helps me to, you know, I sort of facilitate some of them. I do some of the the goal setting workshops and some some water skills and swimming etc. But it also helps me to recalibrate every now and again because, you know, we're sort of get, I know what what the tools are for me to be the most effective person. But sometimes, you know, in life, it, you know, you get when you get busy or, you know, there's things that don't always go your way. So, um, yeah, so chosen has been a great way to meet amazing people, meet successful people from different walks of life. But then, you know, do things that are really good for yourself spiritually, mentally, physically as well. So I enjoy that. I still, um, you know, enjoy talking to the team, working with the SIM team.

• 1:05:35Speaker 01

  Um, I worked with them in the lead up to Rio, which was unfortunately wasn't a great games for us. But, uh, um, you know, it's great to see these, you know, the youngsters that are, I wonder if I was that mature and people looking at me back then. But, um, it almost the way they hold themselves and with all these extra distractions, I think that, um, they seem more professional than what we were back then.

• 1:05:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like they come out of the womb now like media trained because everybody is a public personality now.

• 1:06:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's unbelievable.

• 1:06:03Rich Roll?

  And the awareness that young people have around that is interesting, but it's also like. It's so distracting, you know, it's so easy to, to fall into a, you know, social media hole rather than do the hard thing that requires you to turn the phone off.

• 1:06:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:17Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 1:06:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. No, so look, I think they're, um, yeah, so I still enjoy working with, with those guys, but it is tricky actually, because I, I think I heard you say the other day, I still enjoy, you know, I enjoy being on Instagram every night.

• 1:06:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I do too.

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  Seeing what other people are doing and, you know, sharing my thing, my stories, especially, you know, if it's something cool. So, um, but I do, you know, when I have a digital detox at Chosen or whatever it might be, I do appreciate the other side as well.

• 1:06:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I was looking at the website for Chosen and you get, you get, there's a lot of trips, man. It's like, well, you know, do you go to all of them?

• 1:06:56Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:06:56Rich Roll?

  It's like they're happening all the time.

• 1:06:58Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, there is, there is a bunch. There is, you know, there's a bunch in Bali. Iceland is a very amazing location. I just came from Guatemala. I was there last week and I was there as a guest. So that was, was nice to take it, take a week off for myself and to recharge a little bit. But, um, yeah, and New Zealand. So those are the four iconic locations.

• 1:07:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's cool.

• 1:07:19Speaker 01

  They also tend to have volcanoes and, um, you know, I don't know what else, but they're always seem to be in a very, very exotic kind of pretty rugged environment.

• 1:07:29Rich Roll?

  I'm not, I want to go to Iceland so bad.

• 1:07:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:31Rich Roll?

  Never been.

• 1:07:31Speaker 01

  We'll have to get you there.

• 1:07:33Rich Roll?

  When you look back on your, your swimming career, you know, what do you, like, what do you think you were able to do that others couldn't? Or like, what can, you know, what do you attribute your success to beyond just sort of train, you know, the training and whatever God given talent you have? Like, do you, I know you, you mentioned being an innovator, but do you think there are certain things that you were keyed in on that others weren't that allowed you to get that extra advantage to?

• 1:08:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think definitely my, the innovation in my stroke definitely helped me a lot because I think if I hadn't had find, found that, that the stroke that really worked well for me, I, I think, I'm not sure where I would have been. I think I was, I think that was the key, but I think almost that I had a really, really sort of strong drive for, for my sport from a very early age. And I think that, um, I think growing up, Eastern European sort of background and it almost like people ask me, where did you have it from? I said, I don't know. I just, I just had it.

• 1:08:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:37Speaker 01

  It's something that I, this purpose that I wanted to swim, you know. So I think that was my, definitely an advantage and, and I think when it, when it did come off, my mindset was really, you know, I was able to, you know, I was pretty strong mentally when I, you know, and most, most of the time, there was obviously a few where I wasn't, but, uh, so I think even, you know, my mindset put together with my purpose and then, and I guess, you know, um, with, you know, with the new stroke, et cetera. I think those three things.

• 1:09:06Rich Roll?

  Did you ever think, I mean, you're, you're a Polish citizen, right?

• 1:09:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:10Rich Roll?

  You could swim from Poland.

• 1:09:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I probably could have. Yeah. I know. But I, I wouldn't, wouldn't feel right, you know, especially after so much time and money invested by the Australian.

• 1:09:19Rich Roll?

  But what about during, in the comeback up to Lon- to London though?

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  Well, the Polish team is doing so well now. There's,

• 1:09:25Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah.

• 1:09:26Speaker 01

  There's a bunch of guys that are in the hundred free and hundred fly. So it probably wouldn't have been that easy either.

• 1:09:32Rich Roll?

  When you look at, at what Michael Phelps was able to achieve and the impact that he's had on the sport, like, how do you, you know, conceptualize that? Like, what does that mean to you?

• 1:09:41Speaker 01

  Uh, look, I was lucky enough to be in Rio and see his twentieth gold and also, you know, see all his swims and raced him a bunch of times as well. So, you know, I've realized how hard it is to come back and not, not only just to come back, but to come back and dominate, um, especially in, and he's been, you know, in the, I guess in the dumps a little bit when it came to, you know, he fell out of, you know, a lot of people fell out of love with him and, um, and he was able to, I just, you know, I think, you know, I could see how, how important swimming is to him as a person. And, you know, he, he did definitely, he had that, he had the drive that was probably 10 times greater than mine as well. But, um, I like to see that, I like the story because it, it did sort of, uh,

• 1:10:26Speaker 01

  You know, he did, the career did take a downward turn, but he was able to, to bounce back, which was, was an amazing feat for me. Um, but just his, his, you know, his ability just to be able to come back from race after race. I did it once, once and once in a blue moon.

• 1:10:43Rich Roll?

  The longevity is unbelievable. And I think it was, it's only natural that something's going to break along the way. Like you can't maintain that for 20 years, you know?

• 1:10:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:53Rich Roll?

  And so, you know, shocker, like, you know, that, that there are going to be periods of time where he doesn't want to go to the pool. Like, you know, that has to be the case in order for him to be able to continue and perpetuate.

• 1:11:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:06Rich Roll?

  And I think it's super brave how he's kind of come out and, and spoken publicly about the mental health issues. And I hope that he does more of that because I think it's so powerful.

• 1:11:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:16Rich Roll?

  And could be transformative for, for other people. And it's amazing how, you know, it could have gone left, you know, he could have, it could have gone sideways for him, even with all the performances, just how he was acquitting himself in the public eye. And then for him to like pull it together and like transcend that and to become this, you know, this, this, this person that he is now. I think it's quite remarkable.

• 1:11:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's great to see him and being, I think he's expecting his second bub soon. And you know, he's a, he's a, you know, he's found, he still seems pretty fit. I think, I know he's obviously swimming still.

• 1:11:50Rich Roll?

  There's that like, oh, is he, is he gonna do it again?

• 1:11:54Speaker 01

  Well, look.

• 1:11:55Rich Roll?

  I hope not, actually.

• 1:11:56Speaker 01

  He left, you know, he left Rio. Just, I don't think, well, I don't think there's any more room on his chest is there. Like I saw those medals.

• 1:12:04Rich Roll?

  No more, he's gonna tip over.

• 1:12:06Speaker 01

  Exactly. But, um, you know, he, he was, um, him and both Ian, like, you know, for, for me to actually watch them swim. I saw one session actually, which I'll, um, was Grant Hackett, Ian Thorpe and Michael Phelps training together on the Gold Coast once. And it was, it was so amazing. They had all the guys that were actually in the pool, swimming with them. We actually just got out and watched them because to have the, you know, probably the four, you know, three of the greatest freestylers and, and or swimmers of all time to have going head to head, it just became like a show. So it was a, um, it was, it was a great pleasure to, to watch them swim and swim in the same era, but. Just, you know, it's mental toughness is probably the thing that stands out for me,

• 1:12:50Speaker 01

  especially in the last one where Chad declared was declaring himself the champion and that was,

• 1:12:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:55Speaker 01

  You don't poke it there.

• 1:12:57Rich Roll?

  That guy needed media training because that's the last thing that you say to Michael Phelps. Unless you want to lose, you know, it's like, I don't know what came over that guy.

• 1:13:05Speaker 01

  If anything, you always put them, you know, make them the favorite.

• 1:13:08Rich Roll?

  I know.

• 1:13:09Speaker 01

  Deflect.

• 1:13:10Rich Roll?

  That's the one thing that gets Michael like, you know, out of bed in the morning.

• 1:13:14Speaker 01

  Fired up, exactly.

• 1:13:14Rich Roll?

  It's crazy.

• 1:13:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:16Rich Roll?

  And, and I think, you know, we'll be seeing the impact of, of him for, for decades to come. You know, like the inspiring young kids and the next generation of swimmers coming up. I mean, it's, it's, it's going to be cool to see kind of what he does next.

• 1:13:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. He seems to like golf.

• 1:13:33Rich Roll?

  I know, I know. I don't know. We'll see what's going to happen.

• 1:13:39Rich Roll?

  Let's talk about like what fitness looks like for you now.

• 1:13:43Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:13:43Rich Roll?

  Like what's your, what's your typical routine? I mean, you're still super fit.

• 1:13:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I sort of, I do, um, I'll probably do two or three kind of structured, modified CrossFit like sessions, so pretty intense sort of circuits.

• 1:13:59Speaker 01

  And then I probably do two, two swims a week. They're, they're pretty, pretty cruisy between 2,000 to 3,000 meters and just to, uh, and it's actually, that's my real, my real solo time. I really enjoy that.

• 1:14:14Speaker 01

  And then, and then that other incidental exercise, you know, surfing and, um, playing with the kids and that sort of stuff. So, um, I probably don't get more than, than five structured sort of sessions in a week, but that seems to be, uh, you know, with work and three kids, et cetera. That's kind of manageable at the moment.

• 1:14:31Rich Roll?

  Right. And I mean, you've been able to keep it together, dude. You look, you look like you're ready to go right now. If, if you got up on the blocks right now, what would you throw down in 100 free?

• 1:14:41Speaker 01

  I don't know. I think I would probably go close to 50, oh, 52, 53.

• 1:14:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm glad I didn't swim at the end of the day.

• 1:14:49Speaker 01

  But you could know that's only one off, you know, I'll probably blow my shoulder or something like that.

• 1:14:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's funny how like all these devices now are on the market where people can wear, you know, earbuds during swimming and listen to stuff. That's the last thing I want to do when I'm swimming.

• 1:15:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I even tried that for a while, but now it's even, yeah, just that even the sound of the water just rushing past your ears and all the, you know, I can almost hear, you know, you can definitely hear breath, you can hear a heart. So for me, like, I appreciate swimming for different reasons now completely, you know, I swim with my kids and, you know, it's, it's a skill that I'm so glad that I've got. So it's much safer in the pool than I am on land, that's for sure.

• 1:15:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so where do you see this all going? Just continuing to grow milk?

• 1:15:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:39Rich Roll?

  Like, what's next for you?

• 1:15:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, for me, I think, you know, with the business has been going nearly 10 years. So for us, um, you know, I think it still has some great potential and looking at, you know, different partners along the way to, to try and get it to a global brand. I think we're still, you know, a, a small fish. So, um, yeah, you know, putting, putting that together, but still, I think for me, you know, spending time with my kids and seeing they're kind of, I've got the six, nine and the 12 year old. So, I used to travel a lot, um, between Melbourne and Bali and sort of for me, it's actually finding a little bit more, you know, being more grounded. Um, it was sort of, uh, yeah, pretty, pretty hard to juggle everything. I went through a divorce a couple of years ago as well.

• 1:16:22Speaker 01

  And that sort of took a bit of a toll on me physically and mentally and just trying to be everywhere for everybody. So I think it's been a pretty interesting time just to prioritize health, kids, you know, my partner, there's raised.

• 1:16:36Rich Roll?

  It's hard to balance all that stuff, man.

• 1:16:38Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:16:39Rich Roll?

  It's like, you know, and then coming, coming from swimming where it's just like, I can train five hours a day.

• 1:16:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:45Rich Roll?

  You know, eat and nap and all of that. And then they're like, there's business, there's kids, there's, you know, whatever, like trying to apportion your energy across all of those. Things and being somebody who is driven, who wants to excel in all of those areas. Like it's a hard equation to solve.

• 1:17:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is. And it's sort of, for me as well, I'm probably, I wasn't great at saying no in the past. And then probably I don't, I think it's, I'm sure, but I'm not, I don't really like letting people down in terms of the thing.

• 1:17:15Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, when people are asking you to do stuff, though, it's probably cool stuff, too, that you want to do.

• 1:17:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, sometimes. Sometimes it's, you know, like, it's, you know, and look, I've been very fortunate because people have done me a lot of favors. So I sort of feel like I have to repay them. But yeah, so it's definitely, I think, you know, I'm at a phase in my life where I'm just, you know, much better prioritizing.

• 1:17:37Rich Roll?

  Well, thanks for saying yes to this.

• 1:17:39Speaker 01

  No, no. Thanks for you agreeing, for yourself to agreeing to see me.

• 1:17:43Rich Roll?

  When you, when you look back on your career, are there things you wish you had done differently? Or any regrets that you have? Or do you feel like, you know what, I laid it all out there, man?

• 1:17:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I definitely, look, I definitely, in terms of my approach and my training, I definitely didn't leave a stone unturned in the pool and in the training pool. I think probably, you know, overcoming some of those, I wouldn't say, you know, like we were talking about the slightly mental sort of toughness and right, some of those big individual events. But I wouldn't say it's regrets. It's probably being able to work on that a little bit better, identifying that early in my career. But, you know, I think I was, I certainly, you know, I certainly did the work. I was, I got so much out of the sport. I had great, great friends. And it gave me an opportunity to, you know, to move forward in life as well. So I'm pretty,

• 1:18:39Speaker 01

  pretty, pretty happy.

• 1:18:40Rich Roll?

  If you were, if you were going to coach young, up and coming Olympian swimmers, what would you focus on? Or where do you think like the white space is? Like, what do you think? Like, when you see these kids coming up, or you see what coaches are doing, do you see like, oh, why, why are they doing that? They should be doing this? Or do you look at it differently?

• 1:19:02Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't know. I think the guys are pretty on the money, pretty revolutionary already at the moment. Obviously, they keep improving. It's a really good, good question, which I don't know. I think they're. You know, I think what I've I've liked, um, and and there's some of the Aussie guys are still they're still being kids, you know, a lot of them when I was growing up and I loved the sport and I remember, you know, coming back from one of the sim sessions in Perth and I saw, you know, Hacky and Thorpey and the guys on the Playstation, it's just being, they were still fifteen, seventeen and, um, you know, I think probably if anything, it sometimes becomes too serious and, you know, and, um,

• 1:19:46Speaker 01

  so, yeah, I think having, yeah, let them, I just, you know, having fun with it and I think I, you know, if it gets too serious too quickly, it can, you know, it can burn burn out. But in terms of training methods, I think they're, you know, on the money, they're certainly better than what I was doing.

• 1:20:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:20:03Speaker 01

  So I can't tell them what, you know, what to do anymore.

• 1:20:07Rich Roll?

  I wonder when, who the next huge star is gonna be. I mean, the the shadow that that, you know, Phelps leaves is so massive, like, who who could ever possibly, you know, eclipse that, but you see some guys like Leclerc coming up, have the potential to make a.

• 1:20:23Speaker 01

  Well, I think Caleb, obviously, Dressel was.

• 1:20:25Rich Roll?

  Oh, right. That's who I meant to say. Caleb Dressel, yeah. I mean, he just did, was it, it's just like short course worlds or something like that? He's like breaking world records in breaststroke.

• 1:20:32Speaker 01

  In breaststroke, yeah. So I think, you know, I think we've found him, to be honest, like, and he's doing in events like the Hundred Free, Hundred Fly, Medley, he's, you know, so versatile.

• 1:20:44Speaker 01

  You know, it'd be interesting to see how, if he can repeat that in in in Tokyo, I think he won five gold and in the the world champs. So, um, yeah, so he's he's the next one to watch for sure.

• 1:20:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's pretty exciting, man.

• 1:20:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:57Rich Roll?

  So if if, uh, if a swi- if a swimmer or any athlete for that matter, young person who's trying to excel in their sport is listening to this and and and maybe they don't have the greatest coach.

• 1:21:08Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:21:09Rich Roll?

  They don't have, you know, the Australian Institute of Sport at their disposal.

• 1:21:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:21:14Rich Roll?

  But they're trying to figure out on their own through podcasts and the internet or whatever, like how to be the best athlete they possibly can, like what can you? Convey to that person.

• 1:21:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, you know, I think, obviously, I think we all understand that in sport, there's only a small percentage of athletes that win that ultimate gold or the championship or the world record, et cetera. I think there's so much more that you get out of the sport that you find, learn about yourself as well. So I would encourage, I mean, my kids aren't great in any sport in particular, but they still do it. They still, you know, I think the routine is really important, the structure is important. And I think the ability, I think it prepares you, that toughness, that being, you know, being able to bounce back in life in general,

• 1:22:06Speaker 01

  it's what it's all about. You know, I think it's, we, you know, there's certainly adversity is around the corner and that's how we manage through that. And I think for me, sport was a great, great vehicle to learn my sort of prepare myself for life lessons in the future. So, yeah, I think, you know, and not just physical development. So I think, yeah, I would say definitely have a crack, which is a bit of an Aussie saying, but, you know, just being able to, just perseverance, being persevered day to day, you know, that's, keep chipping away.

• 1:22:44Rich Roll?

  I think for a young person, it's gotta be hard in our social media fuel culture because you go on Instagram and everything looks easy and sexy and romantic. And it's like, it ain't, to be great at anything is the most unsexy thing ever, because you gotta show up every single day and like slog through the mud and it sucks, you know, and you feel like shit. And that doesn't translate well, you know, on Instagram, you know, but that's the truth. You know what I mean? Like, it's fucking hard, you know, and it's about consistently showing up for whatever you care about, I think.

• 1:23:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's finding that. You know, we've, I mean, these words keep coming up, but obviously finding the drive or whatever that purpose is and, um, you know, so and it's funny because sometimes in my squad, I've had a couple of people, even in my, in my club squad, the people that are most driven and most passionate necessarily weren't the best swimmers in, in our group, you know, some of the best ones probably had the most talent and things used to fall into place for them, but the ones that tend to, we used to fight the most were the ones that probably didn't have the most talent when the, so, yeah, I think.

• 1:23:53Rich Roll?

  I take that guy any day over the super talented guy who doesn't show up for workout.

• 1:23:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly, exactly. Cause that, you know, prepares you for life after sport.

• 1:24:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, were you one of those sprinter guys that like slagged off? Like it was always the sprinters like, oh, he didn't show up for morning workout again.

• 1:24:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, unfortunately not. I think, you know, I was actually, when it came to training, I, it was one thing that I really enjoyed and I, um, I was, you know, I was pretty punct, very punctual. Um, I used to get, get more, we used to cheat a little bit when sessions, when that coach was, you know, put on some crazy sets and then, you know, just maybe cut the warm up down a little bit.

• 1:24:32Rich Roll?

  What was the hardest set you ever did?

• 1:24:37Speaker 01

  I don't know if I, it was mainly, mainly just lactic sort of tolerant stuff. So you can really sort of, as simple as doing, you know, three max one hundreds on, you can do it really simply on 10 minutes and then just that.

• 1:24:53Rich Roll?

  Balls out.

• 1:24:54Speaker 01

  Balls out. Oh, but you know, doing, um, you know, we did six as well, six 50s max on, on two minutes as well. So, but it's, it's, it's just getting race ready. Um, so I, you know, I didn't do a great deal of high intensity, um, you know, short rest training because of my events, but, um. That lactic tolerance was work was probably the toughest.

• 1:25:16Rich Roll?

  It's painful.

• 1:25:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Um, all right, man, we gotta wrap this up.

• 1:25:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks, thanks for having me, Rich.

• 1:25:22Rich Roll?

  Super awesome to talk to you.

• 1:25:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you.

• 1:25:23Rich Roll?

  Very cool.

• 1:25:24Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me.

• 1:25:24Rich Roll?

  What do you, uh, what else you have going on here in LA?

• 1:25:27Speaker 01

  So actually, um, I'm, I'm here supporting my, my partner, Desiree. She's got a fashion label. So she's got a bit of a publicity event tonight. So it's called SWF Boutique. So I'll be, uh, I'll be probably the Instagram husband tonight.

• 1:25:41Rich Roll?

  Oh, that's cool.

• 1:25:41Speaker 01

  So, but I'm, yeah, just making my way back home from Guatemala. So I'm enjoying this, this crisp weather you've got in LA.

• 1:25:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And are you going straight to Bali?

• 1:25:50Speaker 01

  I'll go, I'll go to, I'll go to Melbourne first and then go back to Bali. So I'll be back in Bali next week.

• 1:25:55Rich Roll?

  Well, I'll hook you up with my friends in Bali.

• 1:25:56Speaker 01

  That'd be great.

• 1:25:57Rich Roll?

  I'd love to meet you, so.

• 1:25:59Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me.

• 1:25:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, appreciate it. Uh, if you're digging on Michael, the best way to connect with him, milkingco.com is your skincare line. And you got like nutrition products and stuff like that too, right?

• 1:26:09Speaker 01

  Um, we, we don't anymore. We used to have some protein products, but, um, we, we basically it's got the skin fitness range. So we've got it, um, a chlorine wash, which is great for summers, a sunscreen, a bunch of other products for, for active people. And it's some natural products for babies and some more pampering products for women. So, yeah, check it out.

• 1:26:28Rich Roll?

  Is the, and the men's line is called, is called?

• 1:26:31Speaker 01

  Clean.

• 1:26:31Rich Roll?

  Clean, right?

• 1:26:32Speaker 01

  And then the other, well, it's funny, you know, the blokes out there, they didn't kind of like, like yourself didn't, didn't get the idea that milking co was clean backwards.

• 1:26:40Rich Roll?

  They didn't, they didn't, they couldn't do that math?

• 1:26:42Speaker 01

  No, it's funny when I, you know, when I do a couple of corporate keynotes and they, uh, and I tell them the story that it, you know, I've just looked in the mirror and no. I mean, obviously I knew my surname was, was milk backwards for many years, but, um, yeah, it doesn't always jump out. So we did a bit of study on our products and, and guys thought it was a little bit too feminine, not quite natural enough.

• 1:27:02Rich Roll?

  Well, those Aussie guys, man.

• 1:27:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, we just, we'll be tough and simple.

• 1:27:08Rich Roll?

  What, I'll put this on my face?

• 1:27:11Rich Roll?

  Um, cool. And then you're at Michael Clem on Instagram.

• 1:27:14Speaker 01

  And Michael Clem one, yeah.

• 1:27:16Rich Roll?

  Right, Michael Clem one, right, cool.

• 1:27:17Speaker 01

  So, yeah.

• 1:27:18Rich Roll?

  And, uh, and any other chosen experiences coming up?

• 1:27:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we got, we got a bunch of chosen experiences with the, coming up in, in Bali. So if you guys want to check out chosenexperiences.com, um, there's all the dates and, and, and locations. But, uh, yeah, come and do us, I've got a swimming week, uh, coming up in July. So that should be, uh, uh, should be good with a bit of, uh, skill work, a bit of surfing, a fair bit of, uh, a little bit of gym work, but it's, uh, it's a pretty fun week.

• 1:27:46Rich Roll?

  That's awesome. And it's chosenexperiences.com?

• 1:27:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:50Rich Roll?

  There are people to find out more about that. All right, man. Well, uh, we'll close this down by saying, uh, uh, my man Dan McPherson says hello.

• 1:28:00Rich Roll?

  And, uh, I told you earlier, like Garrett Weber Gale called me yesterday out of the blue, who also, you know, won a gold medal in the four by 100 free relay in his subsequent generation. Um, in an epic, that was an epic race as well. And I, and I was like, oh, I got, I got Clem coming over to the podcast tomorrow. I was like, do you know him? Like, what should I talk to him about? And he's like, I don't really know him. He probably doesn't remember me. But he said that he was at a meet in 2005. I don't know what meet it was. Did he tell me? I can't remember.

• 1:28:32Speaker 01

  Montreal World Championships, I think.

• 1:28:35Rich Roll?

  Some world championships or world university. I don't know, something like that. And, and he said that, uh, like he came up to you to meet you because you were like a big hero to him. And you ended up giving him like all your Aussie gear.

• 1:28:49Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 1:28:49Rich Roll?

  And he's like, I still have it. He's like, I'll never forget that. It was like super cool. So he was like a big hero.

• 1:28:54Speaker 01

  Oh, thanks.

• 1:28:55Rich Roll?

  So he, he, uh, said to say what's up.

• 1:28:57Speaker 01

  Oh, beautiful. It's nice. It's nice when that, you know, and it, when you get that feedback after many years, it's you, because you never know who that person might, you know, turn, turn to, or what, what effect that might have on their, on their career.

• 1:29:09Rich Roll?

  And then he ends up getting the, you know, winning that relay.

• 1:29:12Speaker 01

  Winning that relay in eight, oh, wait, that was an amazing race. Actually, Jason Leesack's anchor leg was just.

• 1:29:16Rich Roll?

  That is probably the greatest relay race of all time, you know?

• 1:29:20Speaker 01

  Phenomenal. Second, second to us.

• 1:29:23Rich Roll?

  Well, we'll leave that open for debate.

• 1:29:24Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:29:26Rich Roll?

  All right, man. Great talking to you. Thanks, dude.

• 1:29:27Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:29:30Rich Roll?

  All right, we did it. Hope you guys enjoyed that conversation. Please let Michael know what you thought of the exchange. He is at Michael Clem AUS on Twitter and at Michael Clem one on Instagram. As always, check out the show notes for links and resources related to today's conversation on the episode page at ritual.com. And if you haven't done so already, please pick up a copy of our brand new book, The Plant Power Way Italia. It's coming out on Tuesday, April 24th. It might already be out by the time you hear this. So what are you waiting for? If you enjoyed our first cookbook, The Plant Power Way, I guarantee you, you're going to freak out for this one. 125 delicious plant-based recipes inspired by the region of Tuscany's rich culinary tradition. Super proud of it.

• 1:30:12Rich Roll?

  Can't wait to share it with you guys. It's available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, wherever you buy books. And if you would like to support my work, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, share this episode or your favorite episode with friends on social media or one-on-one in person. All of this really helps us out and it makes it easier for me to book the very best people for future shows. You can also support the show on Patreon at ritual.com/donate. And finally, I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today because I certainly do not do this alone. Jason Camiolo for, this guy does everything, audio engineering, he edits the show, he handles production, show notes, he even writes a lot of the interstitial music and takes my calls late into the night when I'm having a panic attack. Michael Gibson

• 1:30:56Rich Roll?

  and Blake Curtis for video and graphics and theme music as always by Anna Lima. Thanks for the love, you guys. Peace. Plants. Namaste.