Podcast Info
Podcast Description
Apolo Anton Ohno is America’s most decorated Winter Olympian of all time, Author, Speaker on a life mission to help you become your best in health, work, and life.
Apolo Anton Ohno claimed his first major speed skating title at the US Championships at the age of 14—after just six months of training. Over the next decade and a half, he went from kid prodigy to the most decorated US Winter Olympian in history—a title he still holds—earning eight Olympic medals in short-track speed skating across the 2002, 2006, and 2010 Winter Games.
His new book, Hard Pivot: Embrace Change. Find Purpose. Show Up Fully, comes out February 22nd! Apolo shares his most valuable lessons for overcoming challenges with resilience, creativity, and purpose.
With Hard Pivot, Apolo combines practical guidance, personal stories, and deep insights from the psychology of success into a resource to help you through challenging times. Here he shares his most valuable lessons and tools, condensed into the Five Golden Principles:
• Gratitude: A daily practice to help you maintain perspective, cultivate empathy, and alleviate stress
• Giving: How to elevate your life’s purpose by offering your time, attention, and resources to others
• Grit: Exercises to build mental stamina, resilience, and toughness to persevere through hard times
• Gearing Up: Ways to prepare yourself to meet the unknown with flexibility and grace
• Go: Develop the courage to take risks, learn from success and failure, and come back stronger
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TRANSCRIPT
Apolo Anton Ohno
[00:04:10] Sean: Apolo, welcome to What Got You There. How are you doing today?
[00:04:13] Apolo: I’m doing great. Thanks for having me, man. Good to see you.
Intentionality
[00:04:15] Sean: Yeah, it’s very good to see you. One of the things I feel like has been a foundational pillar for you, both in your athletic career and then what you’re pursuing now is your intentionality. And I’ve heard you bring up one of the questions that I love and is, “What does Apolo want out of life? And also “What does life want out of Apolo?” I would love to know just your overall thoughts around intentionality and how you look at that going into your life.
[00:04:39] Apolo Anton Ohno: Great question. I think intentionality is one of the foundational pillars in which we approach the challenges, the successes, what we want and desire. It goes back to my Olympic training days. For the longest time, when we first started training as a team, when I first joined the team, this was many years, 20 plus years ago, we didn’t have access to the same ice time that other countries around the world did. So the Canadians skated twice a day. The South Koreans skated twice a day, sometimes three times a day.
And we in Colorado Springs at the Olympic Training Center only skated five days a week for two hours each day. That was all we skated. I just did simple math and I said, at the end of the four-year cycle, I’m training two years less than anybody else. They have a two years advantage over me in terms of the actual volume of training and time spent perfecting their craft. So how do I change that? I can’t control the ice time, that’s something that’s out of my control. The only thing that came deeply from my work with a sports psychologist, both David Creswell and Doug Dowdy who were influential in my life.
And they said, look, this is kind of the stoic beliefs. You’ve got these other exterior components that you can’t control so that’s all noise. You can’t control what they’re doing and you can’t compare yourself. Although it’s helpful to have some kind of metric-based tool to know where you are stacking up against these people, what is within your control? And the intentionality said, if I only have a two-hour window here, how do I maximize my both hyper-focused and attention pre-workout, the 30 to 45 minutes that lead up to a training session.
And then you combine that with every repetition, every lap, every rest, and recovery period should be kind of felt in its most present state. And so, deep breathing, focus on meditation, and being there in the moment to fully experience and also have the intentionality of why am I here? What is this training session? Why am I doing it? And then what is this? And how does this relate to the overall long-term goal? I think many athletes who get stuck into this realm of the four-year cycle of training for your Olympic games, it’s mundane and it’s boring.
And we often lose sight of why we set out upon this intention in the first place. Everyone who leaves a conversation may be with you or hears another person that they find to be highly inspirational for them for the mere, like two weeks to four weeks after the energy and the addiction to that motivation is very real and it’s exciting. But after that, it starts to fade over time. And that’s simply because we forget to set that intentionality in the beginning. Something that we did during the Olympic training phase was pre-workout like the five to 10 minutes before I even start my warmup, and then again, before I get on the ice is understanding why I’m here.
What is the actual training session? Many athletes don’t. They just kind of go through the motions and they get used to this program and they just assume that following the routine and the plan in place and a blueprint, will give them some semblance of success. And they’re probably right in some capacity, but to maximize what that looks like, there’s some level of obsessiveness that exists. And that obsessiveness is around the routine of saying, okay, why am I doing this training session? Why is this important? How do I fully become encompassed and entrenched in what I am about to undertake?
Let’s call it nine-lap lactic testing where effectively, we’re just trying to measure the lactic acid levels in our body by doing repeated sets of nine lap intervals. So we do a nine-lap interval at a certain lap time, boom, we prick the finger, we check the blood, we rest 60 seconds, do it again. And you do it again until complete exhaustion where you can’t even complete the nine laps at anywhere where you started this. And so it’s a scaling curve. This is a very hard kind of training workout mentally and physically. You have to push yourself to where you feel like the metallic taste in your gums and your teeth. It’s painful.
And the best way to prepare for that is to embrace that this is going to be very hard, but the reason why we’re doing this is to give you a gauge and a foundational principle in which you can benchmark yourself off of the rest of the year. So it’s really important to take this seriously. Now, just quantify that over many months and many years in many days of training and that’s what we did. So in the most simplistic form, I’m here for a reason. I want to set every single intention of what I want to get out of this workout. How do I want this to go?
And many times it doesn’t go your way, but the intention is everything. It’s always something that I reflect upon where when we start the year, our intention is X. And by the end of the year, oftentimes the result is Y and we have to go back and correlate, what happened? What went well, what didn’t go well, why did I get off track? How did I get distracted? What changed? What was out of my control? What was in my control? And why did I fall into that rabbit hole again? And am I self-sabotaging or am I displaying the same habitual kind of consistencies I did in the past? But remaining on that intentional path is important. It’s easy when you have a purpose.
The Gas Principle
[00:10:07] Sean: One of the key things that you’re hitting on though is just that presence, that quality in that moment. I’m even thinking about someone in the executive world they’re going from meeting to meeting, each one they’re not fully engaging with, they’re not deeply immersed, like asking“why am I here.” And you can’t develop that level of quality. You can’t reach the depth you could if you went to that intentionally. I just think that’s such a crucial component. For you both previously when you were training and then your business, I’m thinking about the undulation between full-on all out full immersion and then dialing back, do you put that same intentionality into your recovery?
[00:10:46] Apolo Anton Ohno: Well, the Gas Principle is a critical piece to understanding this. So we’ve got these amazing figures who are very publicly spoken around, whether it’s the David Goggins of the world who takes no days off and he’s grinding every day to battle his internal demons and weaknesses to not give in. The Jocko Willinks who push and push and get up consistently day in, day out. We’re all built differently and I love those guys. They inspire me. I look to them in the same well, but we’re still human beings and we’re not machines yet.
And because of that, we have to pay very close attention to what we call the Gas Principle. I was an athlete for a long time, I still consider myself an athlete, there’s only so much that you can do at a high level that is very high quality. And at some point you have to disengage, you have to allow the body to re-assimilate, to recover, to regenerate, and also have introspection. It’s hard to do that when you’re in the fight. If you ask someone who’s in the middle of an MMA arena to have introspection in the middle of a fight is probably not going to get punched in the face and maybe even lose.
After the fight when they come back down, the adrenaline is no longer at its all-time high. You’re not in this fight or flight mode, but instead of reacting, you’re now able to respond accordingly to what happened. Why did these things take place? And so that recovery period is really important, both physically and physiologically, but also psychologically where it allows you to have these moments of clarity and understanding and introspection. And for me, that happens to be in places of nature, but I’m in New York City. I’m in these places where “I’m just go, go, go.”
It’s hard for me to disengage and not become isolated, but at least have moments where I can relax. And so whether that’s going to a cabin in the Pacific Northwest, going into the mountains of Utah, and spending time there, those are places for me where I can make the best decisions, to be thoughtful around, am I on the right trajectory? And am I tired? Am I abusing caffeine? Am I staying up too late at night? Am I just creating a long-term trail of fatigue where I feel like I’m doing a lot because I’m creating these busy motions daily, but the quality of my work is deteriorating every single hour?
I like to seek progress and I see that in the way that I’m grinding and pushing every single day, but am I advancing? There’s a combination of, you can’t stray away from doing the hard work. You need to be smart about that hard work. And then also making sure that you have the recovery time associated so that when you come back to the tasks, to the goals, to the challenges at hand, you’re doing so with a renewed sense of both leadership energy and mindset and you’re strong.
So like anything in life your body and your mind are like a muscle, yes, you can train it to be more fortified and stronger to have broader shoulders and carry more weight. But at some point, you have to recover. And so every cycle is like this, and you have to think about the Gas Principle. Now I’m going to sprint, now I’m going to let off the gas and allow myself not to coast, but to recover so that I can sprint again. And that’s the best, that’s what’s worked for me and the most effective.
Other Foundational Pillars
[00:14:12] Sean: Well, I think that’s so helpful. Many people confuse action with progress. They love checking things off the box, but when you look back, what did you accomplish? I think of this like zoom in zoom out. You want a 30,000 feet view, that’s your recovery time out in nature, but then you can dive into those hyper details, which is so crucial. One of the things I’m so appreciative of you for is you’ve done the inner work. You understand all this. And I know this takes a long, long time to go through, but I’m wondering, what are some of those other foundational pillars for you that you’re basing your life on?
[00:14:44] Apolo Anton Ohno: Well, the foundational pillars, I wrote about this in this book that I just completed called Hard Pivot. And foundationally it is rooted in something that I call the five golden principles. I probably wouldn’t be able to articulate these five golden principles had I been in the middle of competing in the past, but having done a lot of deep work and by the way, I’m still doing work. I’m still improving. I’m still hungry for progress. This is a never-ending script. It doesn’t like that all of a sudden I become the guru and master. I’m so far from that.
Let’s just be very real, but I’m open and I’m transparent and I’m willing to own those vulnerabilities and those weaknesses. And instead say, I choose not to remain as is. I choose to seek a better path to move forward. And so the foundational part is, my five are gratitude, giving, grit, gearing up, and then getting into action. So gratitude, I think it’s pretty self-explanatory, we’ve talked about this over the past five years. It’s a really powerful tool to use to be very present. That’s what I use. We typically, as human beings, adapt very quickly up and down.
When you fly first class for the first time it’s amazing, now you never want to fly coach. You fly private for the first time, whoa, this is different. I could get used to this. We get used to things. We also need to figure out ways in which we can remain very grateful for the things that we have. And we typically don’t reach those states of gratitude until things are the most chaotic and messy and there’s real fear or there’s real failure.
And then we just want simplicity. We no longer want those things anymore. We just want the most simplistic of things to breathe, to have a loved one, et cetera, et cetera. So having moments of gratitude for the most simplistic of human experiences, I think is very powerful to setting the stage to be present, and being thankful means you can do your best work. It also means that you’re no longer angry or sad. You’re just here and now.
What’s Driving You?
[00:16:49] Sean: You talk about going into the eye of the storm, into the fire, facing that trauma to come out to the other side to new things from a more simple perspective. I think about the F1 CEO of Mercedes Toto Wolff, he says, he thinks all of the greats have gone through deep trauma in their life. And I’m wondering, do you feel like that’s a necessary component of coming out on the other side? Like you’ve got to face those demons, you gotta face that evil to reach that other level.
[00:17:16] Apolo Anton Ohno: I think every great story in human history has shown an incredible challenge that has been overcome. That’s the reality. There’s no great life that is worth living without its troubles, aches, and pains. That’s a part of the process. That is why we have this unique human experience to adapt and mold and shape our way to be who we want to be. It’s just like when you’re creating a samurai sword. The perfect sword takes so much dedication and time and many times, many failures to find the right blend of making sure that metal and the honing and the sheathing of this particular craft is done. And the same thing for the human mind, the human spirit, takes time.
Douglas Malloch, one of my favorite authors and poets, writes that “Good timber does not grow with ease. The stronger wind, the stronger trees.” I firmly believe athletes and sports specifically there’s a lot that is missing from the wholesomeness of an athlete perspective. And sometimes they tap into rage and insecurity and anger and fears of failure, whatever they are. It doesn’t matter. Those are levers and tools in which people can use. Some of the greatest business minds on the planet, what are they driven for? If you have multi-billions of dollars what’s driving you?
What is there underneath the surface that is causing you to wake up every single day and keep grinding? And sometimes there’s this insatiable desire to be recognized, maybe it’s ego, whatever those things are, you’re correct. The microtraumas that occur to us throughout our life experiences, especially typically at a young age are what we lean on in our actions moving forward. I think that there are two avenues here, one which is controlled by those experiences. That’s, what’s a little bit dangerous.
You’re no longer in the present, and you’re just merely trying to satisfy something that happened in the past to reach it in the future. So you’re not here and present. You’re just living in the past, but also trying to strive for something in the future. And then pretty soon you’re old and you’re trying to recoup your health. I think that the Dalai Lama said it best, that quote around man not living in the present and always living in the past while also seeking, believing he’s going to live forever.
And then he spends the rest of his life trying to recoup his health, never having lived in the present. So I think these things are pretty important, I agree with you. Trauma is in everyone’s life, and it occurs in different phases. It could be someone stealing lunch from you when you’re like an elementary school. And that had some like weird impact on your way in which how you are dealing with money or the way that you deal with finance or with friends and family or business, whatever that is. And that probably trickles down for many more years and much deeper than one can realize.
When I talk about the two differences here, one is what you’re controlled and when you’re controlled by this, sometimes that internal voice gets quite toxic. And that’s what I don’t want people to dive into. And everyone responds differently. Some athletes, when you give them negative criticism, it’s almost like, I’m going to prove this person wrong. It gives you fire, but a lot of people, you give them that criticism, they cower back and they kneel back and they become paralyzed. They need positive feedback to move.
Finding out what works best for you is really important and also not becoming so enslaved to that voice, to where it’s so internally toxic between your two ears, that you can no longer make progress. And then your whole day is spent trying to satisfy this unhappiness with what had just happened. That’s a dangerous place to be. And I speak from experience in that perspective. I spent many years of my career listening to that voice and battling internally, this voice of, you’re not good enough. You’re never going to be good enough. It’s never good enough. There’s more to give. There’s always so much more to do.
You go win a world cup or world championships, you don’t go celebrate with your teammates at the after-banquet, and instead, you go back to your room and you’re watching skating tapes while packing your bags. You just won. What’s going on here? Something internally that is unsettled in that capacity. What we need to do is spend our time catalyzing and metabolizing those failures and those traumas in a way that progresses us further. But instead of being controlled by them, we recognize and face them and say, yes, this has happened in my life.
I understand that I’m willing to do the deep work. I don’t necessarily need to heal from them, but I need to understand why I’m behaving in this fashion. Sports psychology is deeply rooted in trying to optimize the highest possible performance regardless of conditions. That is sports psychology in its essence. How do you deal with your internal negative voice? How do you deal with external factors outside of your control and how do you manage this voice or this experience that maybe happened many, many years ago that you need to still perform on the world stage.
The greatest athletes in the world and the greatest performers in the world, they use that to their advantage in a very powerful way. It’s up to you, the individual, you can either be controlled by these things or you can use them to your advantage. And I choose the latter. I think everyone can.
Obsessiveness
[00:22:55] Sean: You’re hitting on some stuff that neuroscience is just proving out. First is the awareness, uncovering the reason for the behavior that you do, but then how do you rewrite the story? You mentioned those challenging times and rewiring the narrative to, this challenging time is going to help me progress moving forward to my ultimate goal there. I just think that’s so important in rewriting that narrative. One of the things you hit on a second ago,you talk about the totality and the wholesomeness of the athlete.
And even earlier you mentioned your obsessive nature. Even this psychotic type drive towards your competitive nature. And I’m wondering, could you have reached the level of success you did without that drive, without that internal scratchiness? You’ve mentioned winning Olympic gold, and I’m thinking about the next thing. I always think about Nick Saban, the legendary Alabama head coach. You see him win a championship and he’s barely smiling and onto the next one. So I guess the broad question here is can you achieve that level of the top .001% without that constant tension and discomfort? Or could you dial it back a bit?
[00:24:00] Apolo Anton Ohno: I’ve asked myself the same question. And one of my childhood friends often believes that we can’t, he believes that to reach that last quarter mile of this entire journey takes tapping into the darkness a little bit. And that darkness is your self, your fears, insecurities and self-doubts, and such. The obsessiveness is interesting. I play around with that often. I wouldn’t change anything in my career, but I can tell you that the person I am today is entirely different from the person I was 15 years ago. I mean, so different. I’m unrecognizable to my teammates.
And I only know that because I talked to some of them and they’re like, dude, you are so different than before. You’re so much more patient. You have empathy. So these are our attributes and traits that in business today, your vulnerability and your empathy towards other humans, is critical communication pieces to understanding each other and establishing a connection. When I was competing, I didn’t have that. It was pretty brutal. And I didn’t understand that there could have been a different path. But just to answer your question directly for me, I do not think I would have been able to reach the level of success without having that same type of obsessiveness.
And the reason why is because there’s a genetic code that exists in sport, some athletes are built for certain sports. They’re designed body type-wise, Michael Phelps for swimming. This person is for track and field. I actually wasn’t genetically designed to be a speed skater. And you don’t know this because you don’t know the technical aspects, but my hips are pushed back a little bit. I’m a little bit too short. My legs are not long enough. The best athletes in the world in the short track are typically 5’9 to 5’11. Their hips are tucked under, almost weird.
Like an old man would walk with his shun shoulder. That typical stance is that the greatest athletes in the world in short-track speed skating have that naturally. Now it’s not good for any other sport, but only for short track. I was the complete opposite. I was built to lift weights. Erect back, shoulders back, I’m very stable like you would go into a back squat that is the complete opposite of speed skating. In speed skating, you’ll be crouched over and it’s like a hunched-over position. And because of those genetic things that I couldn’t change, I used to watch my technique, Sean, and be so disgusted with what I saw.
I would be winning races and my coaches and my friends and teammates would be like, that was incredible. And internally I wanted to keel over and vomit because the way that I’m skating is so ugly. I wasn’t satisfied. And that’s insane because I just won races. I was beating some of the best athletes in the world, but I think underneath that silver lining contains this competitiveness and this drive and obsessiveness around just wanting to do more and overcome what I thought that I was at a disadvantage for.
Always in the back of my head, I thought that I was at a disadvantage and the athletes were better. They just genetically were designed better. They had better training, better equipment, better technique. They physically were stronger. And so that led me down this very obsessive path of never being satisfied. I was crazy, man. It’s all that I thought about every single waking moment of my day. I couldn’t break free. That was my prison. But it was also very beautiful at the same time. There are always two dichotomy vision points there. One, which was toxic and it was obsessive and it was very intense and there was zero balance in my life.
On the other hand, it allowed me to understand how capable the human mind, spirit, and body truly are when it remains committed to something. So now, having been almost 12 years, retired from my sport and understanding a bit more about myself and why I behave the way that I do, I see similarities in many other people in their career paths in terms of what they’re facing in terms of the challenges that they’ve had. And trying to find ways to say, “Hey, there could be a better path here.” I’m not saying don’t do the work. That is the path and a part of the path.
I wasn’t willing to accept myself when I was training. It was only until the last four years of my career, where I looked in the mirror and said, you are imperfect in so many ways and some athletes are better than you. Do you accept that? Well, in this present state, I have to come to those terms. I have to surrender to that current state and outcome in a way that allows me to then take that weight vest off and say, I break free. And I choose to begin working to be the person who I want to become in this sport, in business, in life, et cetera.
But it wasn’t until I could have that open conversation with myself, because if I was always hiding behind this poker face and telling myself that I don’t have weaknesses, and it’s all this BS around like there are no cracks in the armor. That’s great when you’re in a competitive state, but the reality is at some point you know the real answer and only you can answer to yourself. And so I just think it’s really important for people to have this kind of transparent, open communication with themselves. Figure out why you behave the way that you do.
What’s triggering you and then utilizing that and catalyzing it in a way that creates healthy obsessiveness. But no, I don’t think I would have reached those levels of performance because I was insane, man. The training we did, I wish we recorded it because it’s unfathomable the amount of volume of training we did and the intensity that we did for the duration of time. We’re not talking about one season. We’re not talking about one game one month, six months, we’re talking about years and years of never letting off the gas in terms of the mental focus of knowing that that’s there.
We go through these phases of recovery and such, but I was just always dialed in and we developed this mantra of not an almond more, not an almond less, talking about nutrition because I had to cut a ton of weight without losing too much strength. And the only way to do that was to take a series of very extreme training and dietary restrictions.
A Preview of the Work-outs
[00:30:32] Sean: What you were saying a minute ago, makes me think of this Brene Brown quote, “Your armor is preventing you from growing into your gifts.” It’s so true. It’s like once you unleash those shackles, we can develop so much more with human beings. But I know what you’re talking about that athletic ego, we’re so tied to that so often. I know about some of those psychotic-type workouts, but I would love for you to just give a preview of what that was like at the moment. Because it’s still unfathomable to me what you were doing consistently for years.
[00:31:01] Apolo Anton Ohno: We would wake up around 6-6:30 in the morning. I’d be at the ice rink anywhere from 7:30 AM, begin warming up by 7:45 AM. Our warmup was one hour. Off the ice, I’d run like a mile and a half, stretch, I do some skating exercises just with my running shoes, do some they’re called crossover bands. They look like basically long seatbelts that we wrap around ourselves and someone else holding them so we can simulate the lean in the corners. And we’re drenched in sweat, and then we go change into a racing suit, jump on the ice by 9:00 AM.
And from 9-11:30 AM or noon, we have a two-and-a-half-hour interval training session. And that can be a wide variety of different lap times and lactic capacity, strength, whatever we’re trying to target that day. After the ice session, we’d get off, put our running shoes back on, and then we have like a 30 minute super high, intense plyometric workout. If you ever want to see kind of what that looks like, the only thing video I think we have is by this guy who did something for Time Magazine. It’s called How They Train by Time Magazine. I think it’s on YouTube.
[00:32:22] Sean: We’ll have it linked up.
[00:32:24] Apolo Anton Ohno: You can see us do some of these plyometrics and jumps. We do that after, and then after, so that’s like around 12:30 -12:45 PM, we have a break. A break is anywhere from two hours to three hours to four hours depending. If I had my food with me, I’d eat right away. I’d go back to my house, kind of decompress. I’d rest. I typically watched skating tapes in that downtime, come back to the ice rink around 2:30-2:45 PM, warm up again, this time for like half an hour. So different types of warmups.
More plyometric-based, more explosive-based, jumping in the weight room, do some very high-intensity weight workout for about an hour. And then jump back on the ice for another hour and a half-speed training session. We wrap around 5:30 PM or 6 PM and go to the recovery center. We put the Normatec boots on, maybe get some bodywork done, lower back, maybe some electronic steam on any injuries. Then the day’s over for the national team, and then I would go home. I built in the basement of my house, this is back when I lived in Utah, my little mini-training center.
I had a treadmill bike and weights and all this stuff. And we would do a sprint interval workout from like 7:00 PM to 8:00 PM. And then at 8:00 PM, I would jump in the sauna for half an hour to 40 minutes. I’d eat dinner and then sharpen my skates and go to bed. That was like every day. So you think about that, there are not even 30 minutes there where I’m wasting time. When I’m in transit, driving my car, I shifted my body weight to sit on my right butt chic so that my left hip was lifted. When you’re in the corner, you want to be like this. I want this shoulder to be up because when I lean, everything becomes leveler.
I wanted that to be a natural state because it wasn’t natural to me. And so I forcefully did this every single day to make it feel much more natural, almost like I had scoliosis. That’s what I wanted. I wanted it to be like this because this is the position we always would want to be in the skating rink. So like just compound that over long periods. I started focusing on recovery. How do I bring the food with me so I can cut back the time from when I complete my training session to begin ingesting the types of calories, proteins, fats, and carbohydrates to begin the recovery process right away.
What does that look like? If I can do that five minutes faster, three minutes faster each day, over years, it adds up. And so that’s where the second intensity of focus comes in, and just the measurement. And then I remember on a Saturday afternoon and Sunday is completely off for the athletes, but I was always training. Christmas day I was training twice a day, Thanksgiving Day, I was training twice a day. Birthdays, don’t matter, it’s just another day. So that was the process. The intensity of the workout is really where it gets pretty aggressive when you talk about just the sheer volume of the training.
And speed skating is one of these unique sports where it requires the consistency of technical training because it is such an obscure, weird body position. It’s not comfortable for human beings unless you’re genetically designed to sit in that position. And then you carry like 2.5 to 2.8 G-forces around each corner on one leg, that’s a lot of pressure. It’s like a 550 pound, one-legged squat repeatedly over and over and over again, every day that you’re training and skating and you can’t replicate that in other areas off of the ice. And so that’s why we spent a lot of time there.
The weekends are typically spent between meditating, I was a big sauna user. I think that was a big part of my recovery, both psychologically, and also from a physiological perspective. I think one of my real secret weapons was using hot and cold therapy as a part of my recovery. Nutrition was dialed in. We were eating cyclical, ketogenic diets, 15 years before it was ever even popularized. We were doing hit workouts and Tabata before anyone was even talking about it. I didn’t know what these things were, by the way, these were just training.
I remember the wrestling athletes in Colorado Springs, talk about inventing CrossFit, which comes from the military and the wrestling background. Wrestlers have been doing CrossFit type training from when I first joined the Olympic Training Center in 1996. That’s when I first saw these guys do these insane types of workouts. These things are popularized in our area to push the body, spirit, mind in ways. And I learned a lot from all those different experiences, but the load that you’re talking about is important. And it requires a lot of mental focus because most of us when our body is fatigued, it’s easy to get injured.
So if you’re doing box jumps with a 45-pound weight vest, and you’re doing it over and over and over again after you just got out of the squat rack you need to remain focused. One lapse of concentration, you may slip and bang your shin or whatever it is. There’s going to be an issue there. So the concentration factor is something that is, oftentimes we spend so much time developing our physical self, but the mind is where you need to remain the sharpest. And it’s also the one that typically goes before the body. Which is interesting if you think about that.
Setting a Schedule & Discipline
[00:37:56] Sean: One of the crazy things you bring up is that concentration element, the number of stair runs and one leg bounding jumps up steps. I can’t believe you didn’t twist an ankle. The concentration over years is incredible. One of the things I just want to highlight, that I think this is consistent amongst the elite of the elite. You mentioned when you were driving in your car, like literally elevating on the right butt cheek, just to strengthen that.
I view these as “reps hidden in plain sight” where other people might be in the car, and have no idea you’re working on something. And the greats are finding every little opportunity to do this both physically, and then also the mental component. Someone’s hearing this, they’re probably like, what the hell? This is crazy, but I want to know what your internal game is like, what’s the dialogue going on during all of this? You get back to the house at 7:00 PM, you’re about to jump on the treadmill for a sprint workout, what’s Apolo saying to himself?
[00:38:46] Apolo Anton Ohno: It was different every day. Some days I was deeply motivated and I feel inspired and hungry and I feel very high energy and there are days where I just don’t want to do it. So the beautiful thing about setting a schedule and discipline for yourself is you no longer give that option. Don’t get a vote in what you’re doing. It shouldn’t get a vote. You have a plan in place. It’s much easier to divert from an existing plan if it’s not written down in front of you because you can tell yourself, I don’t need to do that. But if you’ve got tasks set in front of you, this is the reason why intentionality is what I have to do.
This is what’s important. I may not go to the intensity that I’d like, but I’m going to get it done in some capacity. And it was hard. Again, I didn’t do this all alone. I had a team around me. My strength and conditioning coach was there. I hired him to live in my house to monitor everything because I didn’t want to have a lapse of a day. I felt like I needed that because I knew the levels of extremity that we needed to go to for me to exhaust all of the options in my preparation to see what I was made of.
I didn’t know if I was going to be able to get on the podium again, the sport had been evolving in a certain way. I used to tell myself that I wanted to have zero regrets when I finally arrived at my final Olympics games. And that’s hard to have because as competitors, we typically are so tied and married to the result as a success point and as a sign of accomplishment, that if we don’t get it, we’re deeply dissatisfied.
And so I wanted to go beyond that contextually and say, well, I just want to get to the Olympic games and be able to say to myself that this is my best, this is my absolute best. And I can look around the world and say, I don’t think anyone else went through what I went through and maybe they did, but if they did that’s kudos because I was willing to go to the line time and time again and cross it in terms of over-training, cracking under pressure, all these things. And there were many times when we went over that line and it was deeply hard to get back off, like on the treadmill.
[00:41:09] Sean: Have you come across a competitor who you feel was equal or exceeded that intensity in their training as consistently and for as long as you did?
[00:41:22] Apolo Anton Ohno: I’m sure that there are many. We hear stories and I’m never one to compare, but I hear certain people talk about certain athletes. There’s a couple of iron men and iron women who talk about this, who did the ultra-endurance Ironman stuff. You’ve heard Kobe talk about his obsessiveness around the training associated with long durations of time. Olympic athletes are somewhat unique because there’s no monetary component here.
[00:42:00] Sean: I’m intrigued by this. You’re going out on a limb and you’re like, I’m betting all of myself and then I’m going to sacrifice everything and suffer. I admire the hell out of that.
[00:42:10] Apolo Anton Ohno: Yeah. It’s interesting because there’s no guarantee. There’s no next season in the Olympics. You have to wait for four years if you want to go on the beat again on the world stage that people are paying attention to. In a sport like mine, where there’s not a lot of competitors around the world. It’s not like basketball or golf or football where there are millions of participants. Short track speed skating is a small sport, it’s changed now, but back then it was dominated by only very few countries. We would go to competitions in Slovakia. And there was no one in the stands, in the dead of winter, like a negative 10.
The hunger and desire to win had nothing to do with who’s watching. We still very much wanted to be there and we’re still training in the same way. There’s a sense of, I think, both purpose and purity and true north that exists in the Olympics space that I have yet to find anywhere else. And I’ve seen that with climbers. People who are climbing around the world and some of these weird obscure sports don’t receive world acclaim, but the commitment level and the dedication is there that is sometimes unfathomable. And I think that’s beautiful. I love that. I love seeing people do that today, even in the smallest of crafts.
[00:43:30] Sean: What were you most drawn to? Was it the actual sport overall? Was it the opportunity to compete in the Olympics? Was it the training? What was it that lit you up inside?
[00:43:40] Apolo Anton Ohno: All of it did. I enjoyed the training. I enjoyed the competitiveness daily. To me, it was a competition between myself and my teammates. I use that a lot. They may not have known that. I was doing all these extra training sessions, so they probably didn’t know about, all the time. I would show up on a Tuesday, on a Wednesday, already fatigued, way more fatigued than the rest of the team. But I had set a standard for myself where I said, well, even at my most fatigued state, I should still be completely dominant over this workout.
That was the standard by which I wanted to conduct myself so that when I was rested, it was like night and day difference. There was no competition. I don’t care what everyone else is doing as long as you’re competing for second through 10th. Because the spot on top that’s reserved for me. So yes, we’re all competing, but let me know how second through 10 does, that is my psychology and it was arrogant and brash and aggressive. But I was a competitor. I remember like every two years there was an athlete on the team, and by the way, I love all these people, they’re incredible. But I would set these weird scenarios in my head to make it very personal for some reason.
I don’t know why I did that, but I didn’t need to do that. So it was very abrasive at times, but I’ll give you an example. So every two years, sometimes every year there was someone, every national team trials, which is a domestic competition to see who makes the world team and in the world team then goes and competes in the world championships. So I had like one like 10 plus of these in a row, like back-to-back-to-back undefeated right in the domestic stage. So to me, that was very all ego. I was like, if I can’t dominate the US, I can’t dominate the world.
I want there to be so much of a gap between when I win and the person who is second, that it’s like, we’re racing two different races. That was my whole goal. But every couple of years, there was someone who was skating well and they would try to threaten what I would consider being my throne. So stupid, now that I say it. And so I would use this in a way where sometimes I was afraid. I was like, shit, this guy has what it takes to win this domestic competition. I can’t let that happen. That can not happen. That is unacceptable to me.
I remember like one of these races where I had won, I just beat this person, and I remember just raising my fist in the air and looking him right in the face, and I could see he was so angry that I was just flaunting this in his face. It got in his head. There’s like all these psychological games that we would play in the sport where my whole goal was to try to beat my competitors before we even actually raced. So if they were watching me in practice, if we were doing the warmup, if we were domestic, and if we were internal as a team, be so strong during training that they just assumed that I was crazy and that there was just no chance to ever win.
I wanted that to be embedded in the psyche, which made it easier for me when we did compete. But I say that because all these things didn’t necessarily need to have happened. And by the way, they created friction on the team. They did because technically I’m the leader of the team. I’m the captain of the team. But here I am trying to overpower my teammates when it doesn’t matter what we do in the domestic competitions. I was so ego-driven around not wanting to lose to my friends that it caused this deep, personal conflict in the way that I trained and performed.
But I’ve seen, I know that Jordan did that. I know that Kobe has done stuff like that. I know that Phelps has done stuff like that, and many others. It’s unique. The culture that is built through sports can reveal character quite a bit. And I think over time, it’s interesting how we adapt and grow from that, from being so isolated and zoomed in to zooming out and saying, Hmm, how do I become a better leader so I can win and also help lift others in the process. That’s a much more healthy and respectful approach.
Setting the Standard
[00:47:56] Sean: I’m smiling because I remember back to my athletic career, I know exactly what you’re talking about. You’re playing games with other people that they are not even aware they’re playing. Most people think, are you just playing to win or lose? The level that you’re competing in is such a different level. The other people aren’t even aware of it. But you said, that’s not a healthy thing, I understand in terms of actually creating friction within the team, but do you think those internal games you’re playing with yourself are necessary for you to find new things to go after.
[00:48:26] Apolo Anton Ohno: Well, I think it worked for me. So I think, yes. And I also think that I remember hearing teammates of mine say that when I was at the training session with the team, the level of professionalism and people being on edge or being ready was different. So if I had left to go do something like an NBC shoot in Los Angeles or something, and the team was there for two days in which I wasn’t there, my other teammates would text me and be like, the sentiment on the ice, the energy is different now that you’re not here.
And then when I retired the same thing. I brought this level of intensity every single day and that’s hard. When you’re leaders on your team, your squad, or bring this level of intensity and cadence daily, everyone wants to match that. It’s very infectious in a really good way. And when the whole team starts to come down, that’s also infectious and you don’t want that. That’s why success breeds success, iron sharpens iron. And I didn’t know this at the time, but the consistency in which I showed up fully every day, regardless of what kind of internal mechanisms I was using to motivate myself, was very powerful.
And I do believe ultimately whether the athletes on the team wanted to beat me or they wanted to dethrone me, or they just were better than me I think it just rose everyone’s level. And that’s the ultimate goal. When they rise, it also causes me to rise, and then it goes like this boom, boom. And before you know it you’re in this state where you’re thinking, wow, I don’t think I actually would have ever been at this level of commitment, sacrifice, intensity, and expectation for performance than before. That’s the reason why I went to live in South Korea in 2007. We called it going into the lion’s den.
To go learn why they are so good at this sport. What are they doing that’s different? Waking up at four in the morning, getting to the ice rink by 4:45 AM, and then seeing by the time I get to the ice rink, the rink has already been open and there’s like eight, nine, and 10 and 11-year-olds training for an hour before I got there, doing technical work in ways that are far more beautiful than I was doing. So that was the highlight and the light bulb that says, wow, I understand the level of commitment and expectation and also the standard.
We talk about the standard always and often, if the standard is here, you’re going to rise to that as an occasion. If your standard is here, this is where you’re going to start from. So again, as we begin our transformations, there’s this dichotomy of self-acceptance, love, and understanding yourself that you’re not perfect and you’re not a machine. And the other is have you had enough? Have you had enough of not getting what you believe you deserve? What you see other people getting that you feel is unfair and that they’re lucky and that they’re less smart and talented than you, but it doesn’t matter. They have it.
You don’t have that. So who has to answer for that? The lottery ticket number person? The random meme coin they bought that shut up like 10,000 X in return? It doesn’t matter, you don’t have that. So what are you going to do about it? No one else is going to hand it to you or give it to you. That’s up to you as an individual. And so the beautiful thing is when the ignition switch goes on and the light bulb says I’ve had enough, I no longer will accept the way that I’m operating today. And therefore my standard in which I will operate on a morning and afternoon and evening basis rises from point A to point B.
We see that in people’s eyes, the eye changes. When you look at someone, in the face and you see them and we haven’t seen them for a year and they seem different, energy has changed. What has changed? They’re the same human being as they were a year ago, but something internally said that they’ve had enough. And they desire something different. And I can’t do that for that person. My book Hard Pivot can’t do that for you. It can only show you hopefully some semblances of what is possible through my pain and suffering internally that I’ve kind of set my obstacles, but also to understand that the human spirit, sometimes science can explain some of it, but not all of it.
And that’s what we want to tap into. That’s the beauty of the Americana culture is that it goes against all these types of other theologies around success. We believe that if you do the work and if you don’t stop until it’s done, you will reach that level of success that you desire like that is the American dream. And so, again, I get fired up talking about this because I see my friends and family and loved ones and there are others who I meet. I do a lot of talking both internally to our venture team as an investor and also to a lot of other companies that I work with.
And we talk about, have you had enough? Are you ready to make the shift into what you can truly become? And I don’t know what that is for each person. Maybe that’s a 2% incremental gain. Maybe that’s a 200% incremental gain. I don’t know, but it’s just all about staying on fire and I love it when people are on fire and they’re dialed in and they’re motivated. Get out of that person’s way because they will find the path in some capacity.
[00:53:58] Sean: I don’t think there’s anything better than that. Most of them felt that internal pull. You’re not being pushed. You’re being pulled towards something. You mentioned that standard in one of your earlier books, you had a great story about your dad. He was talking about that standard and he’s saying the only ceiling you have Apolo is the one on our house and it is just like, let’s go after it. Let’s just get after that.
Transitioning into Business
You’ve mentioned doing some of your stuff as an investor, what does that internal work look like as you’ve progressed out of sports? The way I think about this is I want to be a corporate athlete. You have to approach your business and life the same way you approached your competitive nature. And so I’m just wondering what that looks like for you today. What is your training like to be a better learner, a better investor, a better businessman?
[00:54:43] Apolo Anton Ohno: I feel like Sisyphus pushing the rock. I’m 39 years old. I’m turning 40 in May 2022. One of my business partners, Sean, is 26 years old, the other one’s 24. They are in their savant level genius, like incredible. But I got 15 plus years in some of these guys. And as I think about that, I’ve got 15 years that they don’t have of experience, but they also have an entire lifetime living in a world that was unfamiliar to me. So I feel like, again, I am playing catch-up. And so now, instead of being handcuffed to the less than approach, I embrace it.
And I say, I don’t have all the answers, and I may not be the smartest person in the room or the most experienced in this particular venture, but I’m willing to learn. And I want to connect with both founders, with the companies, how do we figure out solutions to help you succeed and thrive? And so the hyper immersive state is something that I’m deeply passionate about. I think that there’s nothing better than that. Setting the personal board of directors so you’re starting five, as you will. Sometimes it’s not five people, maybe it’s four, three, or two, but those people that have your best interest in mind that will push you, that will support you.
And that will call you out in terms of ownership when you need to be called out is critically important. And those people that can give you the guidance and the guardrails to help you in the trajectory of reaching your goals are really important. And then also going in and kind of diving deeper into the five golden principles. Learning what were the attributes that made me great as a speed skater and applying them in the same way, the same type of rigor and intensity in this new venture, in this reinvention stage, knowing full well that the previous blueprint will always want me to go back to what was more comfortable, what was safer.
And instead, understand that for me to grow, I have to be thrust out of the nest time and time again, that’s important. All of us have to, so don’t shy away from the feelings of feeling stupid or don’t know what’s going on. These are part of the process, embrace them. And then when you have the next opportunity to display, you are prepared, you are ready. So my process today is similar, but also much more deeply rooted in empathy and vulnerability and openness, but I still play the game.
I think it’s just much less about me and much more about us as a team, and trying to help uplift others. And so I never tried to take the spotlight when we have zoom calls and conversations around what my career path was and my personal beliefs and these things and said, I want to highlight my teammates. And, that’s what’s important to me. I also deeply feel a sense of passion around my purpose of just seeing and helping other people win.
[00:57:42] Sean: I’m intrigued by that journey from looking at yourself to now, you just want to unleash the potential in others. And that’s speaking to me too. That’s what I love to do as well. And I just want to know how that progressed for you.
[00:57:57] Apolo Anton Ohno: I don’t know. It’s 15 years of solely focused on me, everybody else and everything else in my life was number two, number three, number four, prioritized. Everything else was centered around helping me be my best version. And as selfish as that was, it was important, but I also realized as I play the game of life and as I go through my script I needed to find something that wasn’t solely based on my fulfillment and my happiness. And at times I needed to figure out ways in which I could help other people.
I found that no matter what businesses that I was doing, whenever I would come back to the US and I would give a speaking engagement or connect with people in person, there was a sense of joy that I didn’t have doing other things in my life. Does that make sense? I love business and I love investing and I intertwine them today, but when I spend time with someone on a one-on-one or when we’re I’m diving deep with an executive team, and I see the light flicker in their eye again, after feeling like they’re tired, they’re mundane and they’re doing the same things over and over. And for a second, I see it turn back on.
I see a sense of play, of joy, of fulfillment, of purpose, of excitement again, that is very addictive to me. It’s like being in a flow state of being an athlete. That’s what I seek. That’s what I’m hungry for. That’s what I want to be inspired by. I just want people to realize that they have been living their life in the passenger seat. When they realize that they’ve had their hands on the steering wheel the whole time. They can’t control what’s coming at them through the windshield, but they can control how they react and then hopefully respond in ways that best really give them the best light to move forward. And that’s the ultimate goal. That’s what I want to leave as I continue on this path.
Influential Books
[00:59:48] Sean: Gets back to the stoic philosophy where we started. Control what you can control. I know we’re going to finish this up here in a minute with just a couple of quick more questions. It is so apparent Apolo how much inner work you’ve done. I know a lot of that is just understanding your inner game, but you also learned a ton. What have been some of the influential books let’s just call them that have just been like earthquake books where your worldview changed?
[01:00:09] Apolo Anton Ohno: There are so many. Ryan Holiday’s Daily Stoic is such great assimilation. I’m so glad we have someone in the modern era who has decided to commit his life to revamping our association with some of these stoic beliefs. That’s a really powerful book. There are so many. I wish you could see all these books here; Thinking, Fast and Slow, Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
[01:00:48] Sean: Speaking of Campbell, my favorite all-time quote of his is; “The cave you fear to enter, holds the treasure that you seek”. I feel like that embodies Apolo Ohno, right? Just continually going out in the deep end, you don’t know what’s going to happen, but you can control what you control and give everything you’ve got? And I just love that it’s clear you’re just like the embodiment of a lifelong learner, a searcher, someone who deeply cares and embodies this. I just love the hell out of that.
[01:01:12] Apolo Anton Ohno: I’m curious, man. I think that’s a big part of us. We have to remain childlike in our curiosity. So all kids are relentlessly curious. Why does this work? What is this? Everything’s new and novel and exciting, and they want to understand what’s happening. As we grow, we tend to tell ourselves that we have all the answers and we know these things and it’s not true. We have to pour the cup out. If you want to grow, create the beginner’s mind.
That’s the superpower that I hold to my heart is that I am naturally curious. I love to learn, why does this work? What’s going on here with this business or this venture? Or why do you do that? I think that’s an important part of the play that we can’t release. As we all get super hardcore and focused, don’t lose the essence of play because that’s where you can find some joy in what you’re doing on those days especially if it’s really hard.
Long-form Conversation With Anyone Dead or Alive
[01:02:15] Sean: I got to share a quick story, a mutual connection of ours shared with me, Adam Robinson, chess player, legendary investor. Akira Kurosawa, one of the legendary directors in Japan, this is about 20 years ago. So he’s receiving the Oscar for the Lifetime Achievement Award. He gets up there he’s like 88 years old. He’s done more work than anyone else, and he gets up there and he says, “I’m not deserving of this. I’m still a beginner.”
Wow, this guy reached the pinnacle of his craft, and all he’s saying is complete beginner’s mind. So I love that. I know how much you embody that. So final one here Apolo. If you could sit down and have a long-form conversation like this, anyone dead or alive, just not a family member or friend, who would you love just getting to talk with?
[01:02:56] Apolo Anton Ohno: It changes all the time. Marcus Aurelius is one. I think Lincoln is another. I would say, John F. Kennedy, another Martin Luther King, Gandhi. Some of the most impactful and powerful people on the planet. And, there are probably many, many others from different countries, but I think I tend to go towards people who lived in very volatile and conflicted times that had to make very hard decisions where today it seems well, that makes sense. It makes sense to make that decision, but, imagine being there in the moment, you don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong.
I just want to talk to that person about what that psychology was. How did they remain steadfast in their true north, in their moral beliefs and conviction that this is the choice not knowing that we’re going to read about it in a hundred years? And it’s going to be celebrated as being something of a luminary figure instead of saying, this is what’s important. So selflessness, I think, is a critical piece to learning from that process. And so there’s a lot of people. There are people all over the planet.
[01:04:23] Sean: Apolo, there’s so much in that answer alone. So obviously we’re going to have all your socials, website, new big book linked up, but where do you want the listeners to be directed? Where should they check out the book? What do you want them to know about it?
[01:04:34] Apolo Anton Ohno: The book is about some of the things we talked about today. It’s about reinvention. It’s about the loss of identity. It’s about learning how to thrive and then how to survive and then thrive through the chaos. And then how to show up fully, regardless of the outcome, time and time again. How do we inspire the inner warrior in a way that is both kind and strong in the same way? So it’s feasible. It’s attainable. It’s possible. Everyone’s path looks different, stop comparing. It’s all noise. The grass is not greener. You never know what’s going on in between someone else’s two ears, so continue on your path and begin today.
[01:05:15] Sean: Apolo Anton Ohno, I can’t thank you enough for joining us on What Got You There. You guys made it to the end of another episode of What Got You There. I hope you guys enjoyed it. I do appreciate you taking the time to listen all the way through. If you found value in this, the best way you can support the show is by giving us a review, rating it, sharing it with your friends, and also sharing on social. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it. Looking forward to you guys, listening to another episode.
