Champions Mojo
Comeback stories, courageous causes, and meaningful mindsets—all toward better health, for a better you. Real resilience from world-class champions to everyday advocates, plus practical tips and powerful interviews. Hosted by Health & Comeback Coach Kelly Palace, world-class Masters swimmer and former Division I head coach. A podcast that champions you!
Champions Mojo
Four Pillars of Peak Performance, Olympic Sport Psychologist Colleen Hacker, ENCORE EP 286
In an encore presentation, we sit down with Dr. Colleen Hacker, Olympic mental performance consultant and author of Achieving Excellence: Mastering Mindset for Peak Performance in Sport and Life, to unpack the real tools champions use when it counts. No fluff here—just clear methods backed by science and forged in the fire of world-class competition.
We start by redefining confidence as a moving target and show how to build it by fixing your focus. If you’re replaying missed sessions, old results, or an opponent’s best times, your attention is fueling doubt. Dr. Hacker shares a practical reset: direct focus to controllables—race plans, turns, breath patterns, fueling windows—and let confidence follow. From there, we dig into the split most athletes miss: the brain that builds skill is not the brain that unleashes it. Training is analysis; performance is trust. Her race-day cue, “easy speed,” helps you shed tightness, stop micromanaging, and let your timing run.
We also get honest about pain. Instead of treating it like a threat, Dr. Hacker frames discomfort as the separator—the price of entry to personal records. You can make pain go away by backing off, but you’ll also forfeit your best. For masters athletes, we explore how wisdom, intrinsic motivation, and an appetite for science become competitive edges. We break down the four pillars of peak performance and show why you must train all four systematically to avoid leaving potential on the table. Expect actionable tools: breathing and mindfulness to balance arousal, imagery and self-talk to prime performance, and precise recovery strategies around sleep, hydration, and glycogen timing.
We wrap with a clear challenge: mental skills work when you do the work. If you’re ready to move from knowing to doing, this encore will give you the language, the structure, and the daily habits to get there. Follow the show, share this episode with a training partner, and leave a quick review to help more athletes find us. Want more? Grab Kelly’s new book False Cure and stay tuned for our 2026 reboot with fresh weekly conversations to keep your mojo strong.
Kelly's new book www.False-Cure.com
Email us at HELLO@ChampionsMojo.com. Opinions discussed are not medical advice, please seek a medical professional for your own health concerns.
Hello friends, this is Kelly Palace, host of Champions Mojo. I'm taking a short break right now from recording new episodes of Champions Mojo for two exciting reasons. First, I'm gonna be busy launching my new book, False Cure, which I've been writing for the last year. It's a whistleblowing investigative journalism book about a denied health epidemic. If you'd like more information on that, just check out the show notes. But the second and most compelling reason I'm on a break is that here at Champions Mojo, we're preparing for the January 2026 reboot of powerful new weekly episodes with expert guest interviews, inspiring topics, and tips to take your mindset, health, and personal performance to the next level. We will be announcing some incredible partnerships, and I guarantee that what we have in store for you will empower you to keep your mojo strong in the new year. While I'm prepping all this great stuff, I wanted to kick off our Encore series with some of the most powerful conversations we've ever had. Today's episode is with Dr. Colleen Hacker. I've personally listened to this episode at least five times. Her mindset tools for both sports and life change the way I think and perform. They will help make you a champion. My hope is that if this is your second time listening to this episode, you'll take away even more insight and motivation. Or if it's your first time, you'll love it as much as I do. So settle in and enjoy this encore presentation in its entirety with the brilliant Dr. Colleen Hacker. It's truly an honor to have Dr. Colleen Hacker, who is the author of her new book, Achieving Excellence Mastering Mindset for Peak Performance in Sport and Life. As a certified mental performance consultant and member of the U.S. Olympic Committee Sports Psychology Registry, she has served on six Olympic Game staffs, both winter and summer, and more than a dozen world championships teams working with Major League Baseball, the NFL, the PGA, the LPGA, Chrome Soccer, USA swimming, yay, crew, speed skating, track and field, and tennis, just to name a few. And in her day job, Dr. Hacker is a professor in the Department of Kinesiology at Pacific Lutheran University. Maria, today we're going to get to talk sports psychology, one of our favorite subjects. What more can you tell us about Dr. Hacker?
SPEAKER_01:Well, ESPNW named Dr. Hacker is one of the 30 women in the country who changed the way sports are played. And she's been inducted into seven different halls of fame, either as an athlete or coach. Her strategies for performance are sought by corporations, business groups, professional, and Olympic sports team, and both print and media. Her works appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and ESPN, just to name a few. And we're just delighted. There's so much to talk about. Thank you very much for being here, Dr. Hacker. It's an honor to have you on. Welcome to Champions Mojo.
SPEAKER_00:Right back at you, Kelly and Maria Champions Mojo. Like, what a title. Let's do this. It really is a privilege to join you and your listeners on your pod.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you. Yes. So we do want to ask you some questions that we know our listeners will be like, oh my gosh, we have the Olympic consultant for mental skills here with us. What could we ask her? So before we do those questions, can you just tell us about your new book, Achieving Excellence: Mastering Mindset for Peak Performance in Sport and Life? This is my new Bible. It is unbelievably comprehensive. There is nothing one could wonder about mindset for sports and performance in life. And we always talk about on this show, Dr. Hacker, how sports mimics life. But tell us about this new book, how it came about, and let's go from there.
SPEAKER_00:First of all, I have to comment on this little phrase that you use. We love to talk about the mental skills. We love to talk about sports psychology. I would say you love to do that because you cannot compete in sport without attention to that part of the game. You can talk about Iron Man, you could talk about distance swimming, you could talk about sprint swims. And I will argue till my last breath that those six inches between our ears might be the most significant real estate that we're going to face in the competitive cauldron. So there's a reason you talk about it because the psychology of excellence is inextricably linked to the competitive environment. Now, to the new book, thank you for those kind words. And I want to assure the listeners, I didn't write that promo. That was extemporaneous from you. And you actually hit on what we tried to do. This is my second book, 20 years in between the two. But this book really is the culmination of my career in this sphere. And it reads that way. It is written primarily for sport. There's no question. But the folks at Human Kinetics, the publishing company, said, we want it for high-achieving corporate athletes. We want it in sport, in any competitive domain, whether it's youth to intercollegiate to Olympic to Masters. And if you heard that in the pages, like when you read it, if you hear that attention, we were very purposeful about that. And there's tons of books in this marketplace. I'm aware of that. And generally they they are one or the other. They're like workbooky kinds of things, like here's a worksheet, do this, work on this, here's questions to ask. And you don't have any understanding of what that recommendation is based on. Both as a speaker and a writer, everything I do is scientifically based, it's evidence-based, it is grounded in the literature. And then I try to speak and write as though it's not, if that makes sense. Like I try to translate that jargon and that rather esoteric kind of data and make it accessible and practical. We talk about what each topic is, why it's important, examples in sport, in life, and in business to which they can be applied. And then every single chapter contains elements that say, okay, make it your own now. This isn't cookie cutter. This isn't one size fits all. This book allows each reader, each athlete, each high performer to overlay their careers where they are right now with the exercises and elements in the book. So it's been very intentional. I'm not going to be all shucks about it. I'm I'm proud of what we did. The reviews and the responses from the folks I care most about, and that is the athletes and coaches and organizations, has been remarkably positive.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it is a true masterpiece. And I I have been a collector of books in this genre for my entire life. My library is, I've probably got 25 books, and I have not read the entire thing, but I am absolutely thrilled. This is just it, it is a true masterpiece. So what we wanted to do is while we have you here, the guru, the brain trust of mastering our mindset, when you deal with the U.S. Olympic swimming team, and pre-recording, we talked about the fact that we've had many Olympic champions on our show, and you've probably worked with many of them. What would you say is a common problem or a common issue that swimmers tend to have with their mindset?
SPEAKER_00:Well, it's a great question. And just one slight correction. USA swimming often hires one mental skills coach for the entire team. I am hired privately and individually by Olympic swimmers. So they have a team mental skills coach. And then when you get at the upper levels, they want their own person. I don't know how else to say it. USA swimming has a great track record, hires wonderful people. But I have been very fortunate to be hired from Olympic individual swimmers.
SPEAKER_01:Nice.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know if I'm going to surprise you two or not. And I would love to hear you comment on this. When people hear Olympians, when people hear gold medalists, when people hear the word Olympic champions, they don't expect what I'm about to say. One of the common threads is the issue of confidence. And they're like, but but they're world record holders, but they're Olympic champions, but they're in the top three in their discipline, in the work. Confidence? And there's a wonderful Robert Hughes quote that goes something like this perfect confidence is reserved for the least talented. It's their consolation for them. I love that. There's wisdom in that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Truly greats have exceptionally high standards. They don't assume because they swam well in preliminaries or in Munich that they're going to swim. So what does that have to do with the finals? They understand that each moment their training is on the line, their approach is on the line. And technically, what their approach is in the early prelims may change when they get to the finals, right? In terms of conserving energy, in terms of not giving too much away in their race strategy. So the truly greats, not the wannabe greats, not the hangar-arounders in the engines, I would say to you that the confidence road is always under construction for those folks. They are either trying to get it back because they've lost it after a poorer event or a poor meet, or they're trying to maintain it for a longer period of time throughout a competition or in the run-up to a major event, or they're trying to just eat out a little bit more. Most of us realize that our swimming changes depending on our confidence. I hate to say that bluntly. Yes, yardage. Yes, nutrition, yes, sleep, yes, hydration, yes, elite performance is multifaceted. But confidence, individual confidence, which varies from time to time, from athlete to athlete, from race to race, from a competition to a competition, from site to site, is incredibly variable. I don't know if that surprises you. I would be curious, but I would say confidence is a recurring thread throughout a quant, throughout a four-year time period. What say you, experts?
SPEAKER_01:I am sure you're correct. And certainly that's been true in my own athletic career and professional career. Confidence seems to come and go, and sometimes you feel like a poser. But I guess since we work with masters, our audience is masters, and we're both masters athletes, I would ask you: has that been your experience with older athletes and older professionals that they also are struggling with confidence?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's a great distinction because the demographics of the athlete changes in the course of our lifetime. What we're chasing in terms of records or achievements, what our approach is to training and to competitions, is not fixed in stone and it's not linear. It changes, it can change throughout the course of a lifetime. One of the aspects of master's level athletes, and I deal with master's level athletes in a number of sports, and I'm speaking in generalities, which carries it its own risk. There is a wisdom and an appreciation to the process infinitely more than in, for lack of a better way to say it, prime of their lives, athletes, they're like, I'm snapping my fingers now. They want it now, it's immediate. They rise and fall on the last performance. It is a rocket ship of up and crash and up and crash. Master's level swimmers, I really will stand by that. There's a wisdom, there's a patience, there's a recognition, and I would argue, at least in my master's level athletes, a real respect and appreciation for the training and the process and the experience. The intrinsic motivation tends to be consistently higher and a driving force. They're not trying to get their next endorsement. They're not trying to rise and fall on the next gig. This is about something generally personal, meaningful, intrinsically valuable. I want to see if I'm capable of this. I want to see how far I can push me to my capabilities rather than getting caught up in the comparison game of you, me. I don't mean to indicate that results don't matter, they do. I don't mean to indicate that I don't know that I'm fourth and you're third. I probably do. But my focus, my primary, and again, I'm speaking in generalities, is about the process, the value, the goals, mastering, no pun intended, mastering the craft, trying to be a little bit better. And for masters, again, with my clients, for me myself, I'm still running marathons, have marathons. There's a problem in sort of, I don't know, I'll say it how I do. I'm the oldest I've ever been, and I'm busting it out. There's something you generally see in the life trajectory. You go one way or another, you don't just stay on a plateau. And so there's again this intrinsic pride of, I just had another birthday and I'm fast. I just birthday and I just cranked it out. It is so powerful and compelling.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So I love master's level athletes. It's it's the same, but it's different. That's how I'd say it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I love that.
SPEAKER_01:And I do too.
SPEAKER_02:I want to give you my response to confidence for a master's athlete. So yeah, I feel like that what you've said as a master's athlete, many masters athletes have different pedigree. I was an Olympic trials qualifier as a young swimmer, went to college on a full scholarship, continued swimming masters, now swim at a high level where I go to a meet, I'm trying to win a national title, get a number one time, set a world record or a national record. That's my trajectory. I swim with the range of people who are swimming in their first meet. They're afraid to dive off a block. So we all have different levels of confidence. But I, as this master's athlete that's trying to achieve something special for my age group, for like all the history that we talk about it. And the wisdom, it doesn't seem to make me any more confident. Maybe it's just a work in progress, like you said. You doubt that you're ready, you doubt that you've had the best. So I love that confidence is whether you're swimming at a high level, whether you're a brand new swimmer, whether you're an Olympic level. So let's talk about that confidence. And do you think that it applies to comparison? So when I'm lacking confidence, I might stand up and say, ooh, I'm swimming against swimmer A and swimmer B. And oh my gosh, they've had top times above me this season, and I'm scared of them. How do you find that comparison has to do with confidence?
SPEAKER_01:That's a good question.
SPEAKER_02:It is.
SPEAKER_00:And let me willfully choose to be repetitive. I want to come back and say the confidence road is always under construction. And that might sound like some cute little phrase, but there's power in understanding that because I find that people are continually frustrated by how they're cop, you know, I'm confident wines and my cop. It's this nagging issue. And it's like we don't mow the lawn and go, I mowed the lawn, that's it for the rest of my life. We expect to mow the lawn again. We don't wash the dishes on Monday and go, whoa, thank God those dishes are done forever. We normalize repetitiveness and that important things need to be done and done again and done again. And then all of a sudden we get to confidence. Not only is our confidence falling, but then we're frustrated over that fact. And what I'm trying to do is normalize it by saying the confidence road is always under construction. So I want to say that. Secondly, and all of these require some explanation. I'll try to do it in the most pithy way that I can, but confidence follows focus. I'm going to say that again and then explain it. Confidence follows focus. Athletes want to know how do I get confident? How do I keep confidence? How do I stay there longer? And what I say to them, the beginning is to understand that confidence follows focus. So that when we are, I'm putting in air quotes, when we're lacking confidence, you know what we're thinking about? We're thinking about the sets that we didn't get in. We're thinking about the days we had to skip because we had a cold or we had, oh, that shoulder injury that's flaring up again. Do I train? Do I take a day off? And then that messes with her. Do you understand what I'm saying? Is when you lack confidence, I can't say it's 100% of the time, but it's up there. It's an overwhelming majority. What did I want to do is peel back the layers and say, what are you focusing on? What are you thinking about? And chances are when your confidence dips, you're thinking about how you haven't swung well in that city before, or in that pool before, or at that time of the year before. Do you see what I'm saying? Or at that meet, or you didn't match up well against that particular swimmer before. Well, that was then. This is now. Do now well. And we carry that baggage, literally baggage. Imagine if I put a 10-pound weighted vest on your body and say, go get them, tiger. That's what you're swimming in right now. And you'd go, Why on earth would I swim in a weighted vest? But we do that psychologically and emotionally by carrying test baggage into the present performance. And then my phrase is we tend to swim heavy. We tend to swim heavy. I want to say another common issue that is related to confidence and related to focus. Athletes don't realize, and again, I struggle with do these phrases make sense without explanation or how much explanation? But athletes, by and large, a majority of their time in their sport, they benefit the process of putting skill in, the process of putting speed in, the process of putting technique in, whatever it might be, stroke, turn, start, finish. That process requires effort, thinking, repetition, attention to detail. Not yet, do it again, not yet, do it again, not yet, do it again. And loving that process. But the process of pulling out that talent, pulling out that work is entirely different. That's when we don't want to think, we don't want to analyze, we don't want to critique moment by moment. And so there's this tricky little dichotomy that I have benefited. I'm as good as I am because of my attention to detail and I sweat everything and nothing's ever good enough. And I'd say, good on you. Exactly. So put excellence in, it requires that. But to bring excellence, then you have to trust your training. You have to let go and trust your training. Okay, so let me give you an example. And I won't tell you who. I hope that our listeners won't be able to guess who because I want to protect this. This is a multiple gold medal swimmer that I worked with prior to a particular Olympic Games. Remember, I said the process of bringing skill out, the performance element is almost the opposite of what went into it. And so she's swimming. And so we try harder when we train. We try harder. When you try harder when you're swimming, you're tighter. Timing is off. So the phrase that we use for her is easy speed. We didn't want her to swim at a hundred percent. Do you guys get what I'm saying? Yeah. Let's not swim at a hundred. Absolutely. Tight shoulders make slow times. So we wanted her to have this feeling of easy speed. And again, now I'm whispering. Not because we didn't want to win a gold medal, not because she didn't want to swim fast, not because she didn't want to get a PR. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. But running for it, minutely monitoring her stroke, her turn, her split. That's not the process of bringing skill out. That's the time to let go and trust your training. This is a great point to ask about pain.
SPEAKER_02:So yeah. Love, love, love. And easy speed is a term in swimming and tapering that we always talk about. When you taper and you're properly prepared and you're in the right place, you just easy speed come. So that is a term that I think many elite swimmers know and I love. And that's a good trigger for when you dive in. Easy speed. But for those of us like Maria and I, and this would be one of the questions that we're listening to that we talk about a lot because we do have a lot of triathletes, so endurance athletes. The thing that freaks me out more than lack of confidence, more than anything, is when I'm standing behind the block, and I know many people do it, and Maria's on her bike, ready to go for 12 hours, and I'm about to swim a mile, I am afraid of the pain. I literally fear that pain because I know, yes, I can have easy speed on the first 800 of a 1500, but when I hit the halfway point, it's a different story. If I'm on the threshold of that aerobic anaerobic threshold, I have to maintain that pace to hold the pace to set the record. It's just excruciating. What strategies could you share with us that those of us that are afraid of the pain could use?
SPEAKER_00:Respectfully, I would argue that without the pain, you would not be a master's level swimmer at the highest level. I would respectfully argue that you love the pain and you hate the pain. True. That which we achieve too easily, we esteem too lightly. You guys feel me on this?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00:Oh yes. So there's lots of different ways. You understand phraseology, but love the wind, love the rain, love the hills.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:You can't go in fearing the hills, fearing I need it to be perfect, right? It the weather and the course or whatever it is, whether it's cycling or running, swimming, I guess it would be open water versus a controlled environment. But love the wind, love the rain, love the hills. That's a metaphor for the pain is coming. And the pain is the separator. The pain is the separator, right? Are you willing to endure? And now I'm gonna go back. This is what I love about truly authentic conversations. In my mind, we come back to one of my earlier answers. It's personal, it's intrinsic. Nobody's making you do that. I'll tell you how to stop the pain, Kelly. Here's how you make the pain stop. Go slower, choose shorter races. I was a national level inline skater, like where you're down low, all quads. You guys with me on this? Yeah. Here's how I can make the pain go away in a billionth of a second. Stand up. I have goosebumps right now because I would argue that pain is a hook for you. That pain is a hook. You hate it and you love it. You know that it's a separator. And you're saying, yes, I'm willing to go there. And I would argue to be at the level that you guys are, not only are you saying, yes, I'm willing to go there, I'm willing to endure longer and deeper than you. That's true.
SPEAKER_02:I wish everybody could see Dr. Hacker's face. I just gave the most You look to the left and to her right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Adorable look to the left, look to the right.
SPEAKER_02:I love it.
SPEAKER_00:If you remove the pain, my hunch is that you'd find a different achievement domain. I think it's inextricably linked to the pride and the challenge and the difficulty of the events. Because frankly, you could make it go away instantly. You're choosing not to. Embrace that. That's your superpower. That's your superpower. I know in advance that this is gonna push me to my limit, and I'm gonna want to quit. And I know I won't. And I know I have trained so that I don't. You understand what I'm saying? Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:That's beautiful. I want to build on that fear question with a different, maybe kind of fear for masters athletes, which is as we continue to challenge ourselves, my family is always saying, Stop. You're gonna hurt yourself. And sure enough, I do hurt myself. I overdo it or I try something new. I'm challenging myself to learn new swimming skills right now, also trying to learn some new balance skills as I'm in my 60s. And yet there's risk associated with that. There's risk of injury, there's risk of maybe long-term disability. What do you say about that? Like, how do we walk that line of the real fear of hurting myself, I suppose, is the simplest way to put it.
SPEAKER_02:But I want to add embarrassment to that. And embarrassment. And embarrassment because that's what I hear from people. I'm embarrassed to go to a meet and dive off the block funny, or hurt myself, or be laughed at, or get last.
SPEAKER_00:What those two questions have in common is fear, but the origins and the solutions are, I would go two different directions with that. So I don't have a one answer for both of your questions. But one of the things, it's it's a little bit like what I said about achieving excellence. You cannot know about science, but it doesn't make it go away. You cannot know about physiology, but it doesn't make it go away. You cannot know about muscle repair and the different timing of nerve repair versus muscle repair versus joint repair. You cannot know any of that stuff, and it doesn't mean it goes away. And so I'm gonna go back to what I said earlier. To me, and again, do I deal with a ton of masters athletes? No. Who are my clients? I'm just owning it. They tend to be the best of the best in their craft, right? So I have to own that. But these folks, as a result, intrinsic, personal, now they're studying the science of refueling, of hydration, of listen, I have a meet in two weeks, but this muscle is going to repair on its own time. And so what I'm saying is, most masters athletes that I'm working with, the breadth of their knowledge about psychology, about physiology, about their own body. The folks that can stay in it and in it at high levels for a long time, they are tuned into the science. They are tuned into the science. Where younger folks, for lack of a better way to say it, they have handlers. They have handlers that tell them what to do. They moderate the load. They've just got an entourage of sports scientists. Most masters athletes are their own entourage. And so, Maria, to your point, there's a joke, show me an elite athlete and I'll show you an injured athlete. Well, there's some truth to that. Love that. And our ligaments don't have the same elasticity, the same recovery speed in our 21s. Now, I might be a 70-year-old master's athlete who has the physiology of a 25-year-old, but not an 18-year-old. You know what I'm saying? Like, in other words, I'm an outlier in my age cohort, but at some point, physiology wins. It's science. We don't live forever, right? And so I go back to earlier comments. There's a wisdom and a patience and a personal control and personal agency that I see in master swimmers, masters athletes that I don't see in the younger cohort. They go to somebody and say, fix it. Here's the event. This is what I have to have happen. And they're willing to do short-term fixes and they're willing to cede power to external sources. So, Maria, what I would say to you is, and I get it, I don't know this, but if I actually asked you to talk about your physiological knowledge journey, I would suspect you'd say you started here and you're here. Like you know things now that 20 years ago you didn't attend to. And I would argue that the science is changing.
SPEAKER_01:Right, it is.
SPEAKER_00:So what was recommended? I've had ACL surgery. I have a really dear friend who was on the Canadian national basketball team. Her ACL was career-ending. Do you see what I'm saying? Now, this is decades ago. Right. But I've run marathons and 50 half marathons since my ACL. She's not running across the street to get the mail. So science is changing, technology is changing, our knowledge, our scientific knowledge base is exploding. And I would argue that master's level more than others are availing themselves of that knowledge. These are aware, these are voracious readers, these are consumers of quality. And to me, that's the ideal. Most people would say, I wish I was who I was now when I was in my 20s. You know what I'm saying? It's like, oh my gosh, if I had this, all of the this is that I just enumerated, right? The tactical awareness, the technical expertise, the physiological awareness. There's four pillars of swimming, right? The technical, the tactical, physiological, psychological. Master swimmers, by and large, are tuned into all four pillars. Younger, super talented people, they think the answer is go fast. Go fast and win.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So what you're, I think I hear you saying it to mitigate the risks as you age, just learn what you gotta learn.
SPEAKER_00:Learn, learn, learn. Not knowing the science doesn't make it go away.
SPEAKER_01:Correct, correct, right?
SPEAKER_00:There's a reason Kelly said I have 25 mental skills training.
SPEAKER_01:Right, right, right.
SPEAKER_00:Because she's emblematic of what I'm talking about. I'm a voracious reader. Look at how you're adding. Uh if I'm hearing you, you're adding either new elements to your swimming or new technical changes, whether it's hand position or kick or body position or entry.
SPEAKER_01:Frankly, I'm learning to swim. I'm learning to swim the whole thing.
SPEAKER_00:This far into your life and your career. That's the beauty of master's level. I have a phrase that says, if you're green, you're growing, and if you're ripe, you're rotting. I I heard you say that before.
SPEAKER_01:I'd love that. I totally love that.
SPEAKER_00:I want to be green and growing, and I want to work with athletes who are green and growing. And don't get me wrong. Look, I wish you well, but there's champions that are ripe and rotting. I don't know if you know this about me, but I have 12 world records. I don't know if you know this about me, but I got 10 gold medals. I don't know if you know. Like I'm good. I'm riping and rotting, green and growing. The edge. I want people who love it because of its uncertainty, because of its pain, because I don't know if I can, but I'm here for it. There's something about that hook that keeps us coming back. If we knew it, I think it would lose some of its shine. If it was guaranteed and predictable, I think it would lose some of its shine to the best. Some best can quite predictable. Right? They tricked knowing. It's comfortable, it's familiar. Nothing like that. I'm not disparaging that. I'm just saying, unless we're willing to go to the edge of our capabilities, we literally don't know what's possible. And there's some people that revel in that unknown. I love, love, love that.
SPEAKER_02:And before we go to the last question, can you break down a little bit for Master Summer's technique, tactical physiology, and psychology?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I take that for granted. And Kelly, you're so wise and a good listener to follow up. I would say this about cycling, I would say this about running, any sport, but let's keep it to swimming. What I'm about to say applies to every sport at every level, but the details are different. But now I'm just going to use swimming as the model. Swimming is comprised of what I would call four pillars of swimming. And before I get into each one of them, unless you are consistently, systemically, and appropriately training all four pillars concurrently, what I will tell you, athletes, is you're leaving some of your potential on the table. You will never know. It has to be all four pillars, scientifically, systemically, and consistently. It's not one and done. It's not this month, it's not early in the season. You get what I'm saying. Okay, so what are the four pillars? Swimming is comprised of the technical aspects of swimming. And I kind of alluded to those. That's how, so broadly, how is breaststroke different from freestyle? How is butterfly different from backstroke? But then if we looked within freestyle, it's how high I bring my elbow out of the water, my entry point, my finger placement, my kick speed, uh, my rhythm, my body position in the water, my breathing patterns, when I breathe, the side that I right, the technical aspects that make swimming swimming and not basketball. Okay, tactics. Now we're getting into a tactical approach to training and a tactical approach to competition. Let me make it simple and swimming, just so this is a tactical example of swimming. Do I go out fast and try to hold on? Or do I go out consistent and then kick you out of the finish at the end? You have to worry about me. Oh, she's right on my heels and I know she's a fast finisher. Oh crap. I mean, I would love to do that to my opponent, right? So tactics are your race strategy, your race plan. Tactics are what I alluded to earlier without using that terminology. How will I approach the preliminaries, the semifinals, the finals? How will I approach the Munich try or the Munich versus nationals versus worlds, right? You have different tactical approaches to different events at different times. Tactics and training are when do I go high mileage, high yardage? When do I build on strength? How am I weaving in flexibility? I know that sounds like physiological, but I'm talking about when and amount and timing. Those are all tactical aspects of swimming. Physiological, again, without using the term, I've already commented on them. So I want the listener to say, oh yeah, that's what she was talking about. What are physiological elements? People think right away, physiology, they think strength, anaerobic power, aerobic power. Okay, the obvious, right? Strength, fitness, flexibility, anaerobic, aerobic max VO2, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I shouldn't say blah, blah, blah. Let me backtrack. That's the low-hanging fruit. But let's expand physiology, sleep, wake patterns, napping, not napping, how long to nap, hydration, what to drink, when to drink, the timing, right? When are we restoring our glycogen stores? You know, there's a window when our muscles are going, gimme, gimme, gimme. Allow me some food. You missed that window. You missed your window. So in between preliminaries and semifinals and right? So it's hydration, fuel, nutrient dense, the right nutrients at the right time in the right proportion. And Yohoo, there's general guidelines, but those are individual, we're biochemically unique. And our biochemical needs in our 70s are different from our 50s and are different from our 20s. So here we go. We have people doing at all phases of their life what they used to do because it used to be successful. You see what I'm saying? So sleep, hydration, fuel, all the fitness, that's physiological. Mental skills are just like physical skills. You're not born with them. There's no DNA like blue eyes, brown eyes. There's no DNA for height. There's no DNA for fat storage locations called, thank you, who contributed the DNA to my body, right? Genes will out, physiology wills out. But psychological skills are, we know them, we know how they affect performance. And no matter where you are on the spectrum of mental skills, whatever you have, the goal is to develop more or greater control. So it's issues like what we did before the podcast, somebatic control, breathing, mindfulness, getting sympathetic and parasympathetic systems in balance and recognizing when one is out of balance. It's self-talk, it's cognitive restructuring, it's imagery, it's goal setting, it's confidence. Just like I could say bicep curls, tricep extensions, leg extensions, leg curls, gastro, toe raises, right? We have all these different body parts. That's the same thing. Mental skills are just like physical skills. Yes, each of us are born at at a certain baseline, but can we get stronger? The answer is yes. Each of us have a baseline speed, but can we get faster? Yes. Same thing with mental skills. They are skills. So if you want to improve any skill, what do you do? You identify it, you target it, you practice it appropriately. It's that simple.
SPEAKER_01:Love it.
SPEAKER_02:So to put a bow and wrap it around this whole conversation, I think three of us sitting here as elite athletes would say that even if we had a hundred percent tactical, technical, and physiological, if we were zero on the mind, none of those mattered. None of those mattered. If you were A plus in your training, your tactics and your technique, and you were zero in your mind.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, that's we will never know how good you could be, and you will never know how good you can be. Well, what do we act out like when I'm on site with athletes? Like I'm sitting on a four-legged chair right now. I don't know, you guys are probably on wheels or whatever. But just think of this. And and I'm not trying to be clever, just literally do this. There's four legs on my chair. Can I balance? And you can tell the listeners that I'm trying to. I'm balancing on three of those legs right now.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Am I comfortable? Is this good posture? Can I maintain this position for hours at a time? So the chair has four legs for a reason. That's what provides the foundation, the platform. Can you swim without attention to the psychological dimension? Yeah, you could swim, but not at your best, not at the edges of your capability. And I will tell you, you will never know how good you could be unless you have an equal and concomitant investment in the psychological skills.
SPEAKER_01:Great.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that is a great place to wrap this, Maria. You want to ask the last question?
SPEAKER_01:I have so many more millions of questions. One of which is like, how do you have time for all this training? But we will have to have you back for that. The last question is: Is there anything else that you would like to say that we haven't specifically asked that you think is really important?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I think you've been wonderful hosts, and I think you've asked the practical questions or some of the practical questions that athletes would be curious about. I think my only point would be to say this, and this is from decades of an investment in the professional literature and the science of mental skills training, is this. They work. Are you willing to do the work? That chasm between knowing and doing is a critical chasm of excellence. It it separates the accomplished from the pretenders, the accomplishments from sub-elite. We know what to do. If you ask the average American, do you know foods that you should eat more of? Yes. Do you need foods? What food should you avoid? Yes. Okay, raise your hand if you do that. Most days, oh, it's not knowing what to do. You get no benefit for knowing what to do. The only benefit occurs when you do what you know. It has to be action-based.
SPEAKER_01:And if you have any question about what to do, get Dr. Hacker's book and it's laid out line by line.
SPEAKER_02:If anybody has questions, it's in the book. It is definitely there. So Dr. Hacker. Thank you, Bill. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for spending this time with us. Our listeners are going to get so much value out of this. We really appreciate you. Very grateful. Bye. You're going to take care. Bye-bye. Take care. Stay tuned for the takeaways. Well, Maria, Dr. Colleen Hacker, what a superstar. For me personally, I might have gotten the most that I've ever gotten out of an interview.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. She's an expert. And she was so full of enthusiasm for her subject matter. It was great. I wish we could have talked to her all day.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, she's so passionate and so professional and scientific and educated, and just it's it was amazing. So my first takeaway, and I feel like the main uh learning point for me of the whole interview was the four pillars that we need to succeed. And she specified them for master swimmers or for swimmers, which is uh the technical part of being a great swimmer, which we know is the stroke mechanics, et cetera. The tactical part, which is season planning, race planning, the physiological part, which is am I getting the right sleep? Am I strength training? Am I training my anaerobic system, my aerobic system, my flexibility, my nutrition, all those things physiologically? And then of course, Hunger's main expertise is the fourth pillar, which is the psychological part. And we rounded this up with the fact that yeah, you can be an A plus on all three of those first of the four pillars. But like she said, if your chair has four legs and you're not using that fourth one or any of the four, then you're not going to succeed. So technique, tactical, the physiological part, and the psychological part. And then you said your first takeaway had to do with how these are actually applied.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I loved how she said this. She uses words so well, but she said these four skills have to be applied consistently, systematically, appropriately, and scientifically. And that was really speaking to my earlier question, which was how, as masters, athletes, do we keep from hurting ourselves, getting injured? Or, you know, how do we perform? And she said, basically, you gotta know the science. If you're gonna be successful, you've got to apply these four things by knowing the latest science, and it's different now than it was 20 years ago. And it's different for a 60-year-old than it is for a 40-year-old or a 20-year-old. So I love that. So you gotta take responsibility for knowing your stuff if you're gonna continue to improve.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, wonderful. My second of many takeaways, like you said, I think you have four pages of notes. I have three pages of notes. The one that just hits home for endurance athletes is that fear of the pain factor. I I still believe staying in the present moment, not fearing the pain, is a great way, which we've talked about a lot. But to have a new tool in my tool bag of dealing with pain was her approach. Her strategy is that, hey, the pain is, I hate the pain, I love the pain, it's gonna rain, there are gonna be hills. So embrace that pain and know, and this is the key for me that really clicked is that the pain is what makes you have a peak performance. The pain is what makes you go faster. If you slow down, you're not gonna have a good time. So yeah, the pain is an indicator of, hey, I'm going fast, I'm gonna have a good time. And the final part of this is that the pain is what can separate us from the competition.
SPEAKER_01:I love that. And yeah, which she said, you want the pain to go away, just stop. Yeah, I love that. That's so good. And we know that. You and I have said that to each other. We're willing to endure pain and discomfort, maybe more than other people. That's what makes us achieve what we can achieve. So I I love that. I love that. We're beasts. Yeah, we're beasts beasts, and that's what we have to keep telling ourselves. Yeah, so the last takeaway for me, and I'd heard her say this in another podcast, and I just love it. So appropriate for older people. If you're green, you're growing, and if you're ripe, you're rotting. So basically, it's okay to be here. I am learning, really learning to swim. That means I'm green. That means I'm not gonna do it right. That means it's gonna be embarrassing, but I am growing and I'm learning new stuff, and that's good. And I'd rather be growing than ripe and rotting.
SPEAKER_02:Great for master's athletes. And even if you are an experienced long-term master's swimmer, so somebody like me who's been master swimming for 35 years, I'm taking away being green for me, is doing new things and swimming that I haven't done. So recently I've been trying to breathe every third. I've always, my entire life breathed every stroke. Wow. But I've been breathing every third a lot in practice. I even did the first half of a race the other day, breathing every third. And it's just to change it up. Just will this help help my shoulders? Does this relax my neck more? Am I more balanced in my stroke? And we can add, are you dolphin kicking off the wall? These are elite skills, but they're skills that I'm green at. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So I think there are always ways within your sport that you're very good at.
SPEAKER_02:Find things you're you can be green in.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Love it. Love it. That's great.
SPEAKER_02:All right, Maria, what a great interview. Thanks. Love you.
SPEAKER_01:Love you.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you so much for revisiting this champions mojo Encore with me. If it inspired you, please follow the show, share it with a friend, and consider leaving a quick review. It truly helps. And don't forget my new book, False Cure, available on Amazon and Barnes Noble. I'll be back in January 2026 with all new episodes to help you live well, swim well, and keep your mojo going.
