Because

it will come up time and time again. If it happens once, may happen or maybe you missed maybe you've a say dodge the bullet, but you've maybe get selected doesn't mean you're not going to get deselected in the future or moved and transferred around. So that that could actually change very, very, very quickly. Was there a shift that you made between London and Rio? Was there a shift that you was there a big shift or yeah, what was the difference in yourself between those two games?

Yeah, massive. I mean, like night and day almost, but precipitated by the fact that I took another two years off from competitive sport. I because of that Olympic year was being was so stressful. I decided to take a year off to start with. I was just I don't know if I would come back to it or not. I just knew I needed to go away and book myself a year traveling around the world doing some things that I've been wanting to do for so long. And then part of that year was spending a couple of months in in Copenhagen in Denmark, where I met my now wife and actually never came home again. I finished my year of traveling, but my flights straight back to Copenhagen and had never moved home. So that year became two years of a break. And then in 2014, I kind of I saw my team doing well and we had a shot for the Rio Olympics, but there was there was still a space for me, I thought. So I decided to to come back for to give it a proper shot training from Denmark this time. So I didn't come back and train with the with the National Center. I kind of made some stipulations. I'd set up my life in Denmark. I was I was in quite a strong position. I wasn't committed to I wasn't bought into coming back to fencing. I needed to do it if I could do it in my in my way. And I'd done this work with the psychologist and I had this new kind of frame of mind, which was I'm not going to do it for in a stressful I'm going to do it for the joy of it. I'm going to yeah, it was all about the kind of they have really wanting to be there doing the training and the way that I wanted to that kind of to keep my motivation high. And so I actually kind of reached the highest levels of my my fencing, but only doing for example, only doing fencing training two times a week and then doing a load of physical training, which was kind of the opposite of what most fences will do in their training. And yeah, it just brought a kind of freedom to my performance and kind of joy and freedom to my fencing that allowed me to perform a lot better. And we started working with another sports psychologist who kind of helped us with our team kind of dynamic work. And that was also really, really pretty special. I also kind of I also described that process in the book. So yeah, it was it was night and day. It was really a it was a totally different me in a totally different kind of like circumstances that I was in for both Olympics.

That's such a common theme. I think that keeps coming up in these conversations that I've had. And funny enough, Francis Horton in in a previous episode had spoken about how once she released the idea of result and the sort of the outcome and just really focused on the enjoyment. And this was more for her last games that she had. And and she spoke about how that enjoyment factor was a and just being cliche for the best version of herself. She then felt at peace in some way, shape or form with her sport. And really found that was sort of like the pinnacle of sport really for her and competition because it took away that stress of the outcome and being driven by what that looks like and and focusing on yourself really. And if that gets to you to that level, great. Yeah,

I think it's important to note that the way I did it, the way Francis did it, it becomes possible when you put in many years, I couldn't have done two times training week from when I was 20 years old. I needed to do six, seven days for a number of years, kind of not grinding it out, but just need to get the hours in. I could do that kind of training later on. I was more knowledgeable. I had more better understanding. I had built up my technical level. So things become more available later on in your career. You're also you have more perspective about point naturally as you mature as an athlete. So you can kind of, it just becomes more more possible to to kind of set the results aside a bit. You achieve some results so you're not so wrapped up in like, I need to make it, I need to prove myself. But that said, there's a there's still elements and there's still parts of that kind of attitude, that approach that you can you can you can bring to young athletes, you're not going to turn them into that same kind of relaxed joyous free athlete that I and Francis kind of found ourselves in the age of 30 32. That's not that's not realistic, but you can definitely kind of nudge, nudge younger athletes more in that direction of like, Hey, you have a much better time, you'll enjoy it more, you'll actually perform better if you just let go of that result, kind of drive a little bit. So just turning those dials up a little bit for the young athletes is still

possible. That's such an interesting way of looking at it. And you're so right, like that you need to have that element of I'm driven to get somewhere because going in sport, it has a there is a win loss, there is a goal. And I think you want that success, if you do want to have that success, or even be just at the end of it, just the best possible athlete you can be, you have to you have to put in that work, you have to put in the the you have to sacrifice so many different things. And yeah, you can't just think here about it, you can't be going in with this this joyous, happy, go lucky view that's that's so, right. But then

again, you don't want to totally driven results or inteated as to that can take you, they can take you somewhere, but you burn tend to burn out quicker, and you tend to not enjoy what you're doing. And as kind of the heart of my message in my book is about is that if you're just focused on results, you might achieve it, but you it won't mean anything to you by the end, you'll finish your career and you'll look back and there was nothing meaningful about it, because the results themselves don't hold any meaning, it's what you did along the way. And the relationships you built up and the experiences you had. So if there if there was no awareness and enjoyment and joy around those things, if you didn't find meaning in that journey, if it was all about the result, then there won't be any meaning in that either. So I think we can do a far better job of like, you don't just let athletes have the attitude, okay, you're super driven, you're all about the results, fine, take it away mate, go and go and tag them. That we shouldn't be allowing, because we know it's we've got all the examples we need in the world now, if people have done that, achieved it all, and just a left the ref to left, depressed and empty. Johnny Wilkinson, classic example, Michael Phelps, like when your 20 gold medals make you feel empty and worthless, there's something there was something missing on the way.

Yeah, that's that's so true. Did you feel anything when you when you finished after Rio? Did you go through that feeling? Did you have anything in place that you felt kept you steady, I guess, or did you feel that experience?

I so again kind of lucky or I'd already coming back from the two-year break, I made kind of made a plan to try and qualify for the Olympics for two years, but knowing that was going to be when I'd retire. So I also spent those two years preparing what was coming next, and I actually had a part-time job for the last year in a fencing club as a performance director. So I was working part, I'm already, I knew that was something I was going to continue with. I'd started working with the Triathlete Project already before the Olympics, I was kind of planning that anyway. So I was completely ready, I was ready to retire, and I was happy to, I was happy to kind of, to put those and kind of hang my swords up. But it takes some preparation, it takes, I mean, not everyone gets that opportunity, if you get suddenly injured at the peak of your career, you don't necessarily have the opportunity to prepare, then it kind of points to the fact that you need to be always prepared, anything can happen. So you can't really allow yourself just to be left with nothing suddenly in an identity crisis. So you can start talking about dual career and kind of having having your studies alongside, I just think it's important to have a rounded identity to have different parts of yourself, all the way through that you're not just an athlete, 100% because that's what's going well, because at some point it won't go so well.

Yeah, I almost see it as chapters of a book really, like it is, and people do talk about I've moved on to my next chapter, but it is understanding that if you're especially going into the high performance end and you're making a career out of your sport to recognize that it is a part of you, it's a part of what you do or what your journey will be, and it's okay to give it 110%, but also don't be naive to think that it will last forever and also be prepared for that next bit. I really like the things looking at people like the rock, like Dwayne Johnson, like he is now one of the world's biggest movie stars, the star as a wrestler, and he's, you may not, people will grow up knowing him as this huge movie star, but may not have remembered him when he was in WWE, and like that's when I remember him, like I remember him for watching that stuff, but it's just a real clear show that he had one career in the sport or entertainment business, and then now he's in this much bigger, broader sense, and he's almost a completely different character, and people like, I guess you could look at Will Smith, people who have had these multiple different roles and multiple different identities, depending on who you are, and that for me is something I always look at for athletes, and there are so many different athletes out there that maybe had a career in an Olympic sport, but now perhaps politicians, and that's something that shows there's a part where that career of what you are growing up and driving yourself to be moves aside, and this new birth happens of a new role and a new life that you get, and if you can have one eye on that early on, and recognize it, just be aware of it and just be and not dwell in that journey that you think is the one and only path, then when it does end, it's just that little bit easier to take. It doesn't make it easy. I don't think it's making it like this soft landing. You will go through it, but you will have at least some sort of tool or some sort of outlook on life to recognize that, okay, it was a journey, it was a part of me, and it will forever be a part of me, but this is where I can go to now, and this is an insane truder like who you are as a person all along the way.

Yeah, and actually, no, you say I remember distinctly feeling like it would be such a great thing. I really like love the idea of after I finished my own fencing career to do something so different and achieve something really big in a totally different field, to the point that people were like, at some point find out you were an Olympian as well, and then again, in something else, and my friend who might want to talk to Kath Bishop was an Olympic rower. She won a silver medal in Athens together with Katherine Granger, then moved on to becoming a conflict zone diplomat for the British Foreign Office, and now is in her third era, and is a business and leadership coach. And I just think that's what I like, you're talking about the rock and the Smith, those people who have just achieved something, have driven themselves in something totally different. I always thought that was the coolest thing. It hasn't happened yet because I carried on living and working in fencing, but it's still hope to.

Yeah, that's exactly where I think I'm at with it now as well. I look at it, and it's tough because even though I'm still playing the sport on the weekends and I'm helping and coaching people, and they tend to be around the sport that I play, and I've still got this part of me that's like, right, get ready to just put the bags down and move away from it. You don't know when that will be, but maybe that's a part of that journey that eventually there'll be a nice little segue somewhere that will just, that's the path we're going on. But we've spoken about, you've mentioned the book, and I think it's great to just talk about some of the things that are in it, and I know there's a section around that I'm really interested in. So becoming a true athlete, obviously we've mentioned it very lightly, but the true athlete project, that's actually how I met you. It was a mentoring system and a mentoring program for young athletes, and I was a mentor. You got the guys got me on as a mentor, and what was the, I guess done, I'm really where to start with this, let's perhaps talk about the true athlete project, and the catalyst for it and why it exists.

Yeah, so the true athlete project was set up by our CEO and founder, Sam Parfett in around 2014, and I got involved in 2016 straight after the Rio Olympics. He set it up as a kind of, the mission is to create a more compassionate world through sport, and a more compassionate culture of sport, and we do that kind of revisiting the athlete as somebody who trains mind and body for kind of to make a contribution to the world, and re-envisaging sport as a kind of a ground, a fertile ground for developing these true athletes. So we have a range of programs, kind of NGB coach development programs, retreats, we do mindfulness for athletes, classes, and I got involved with the mentoring program very quickly. When I joined in 2016, they were just piloting the first mentoring relationship, and I kind of got to come in and had lots of ideas of how we can put some structure around it, and what I thought young athletes could get the use benefit in learning early on. The kind of things that pitfalls that I came through, and that most athletes do come through, that you can help younger athletes avoid, sometimes quite simply, just by hearing them hearing the right message from the right person, and sometimes with a bit more practice. And so that program just kind of just grew and grew from there, it just became just such a joy to be involved in. It was a voluntary job, it still is for me. So in Sam is actually still the only employee of TAP at the moment, and the rest is just kind of done by volunteers. And they have that mentoring program grew from one relationship to seven, a cohort of seven pairings, which you were involved in, and then 17 next year, and our current cohort is 34 pairings, and across 33 different sports and 10 countries. So it's a global program just really mixing, matching senior kind of elite, mature kind of parent pick and impact athletes with aspiring young athletes. And they go through a year-long relationship meeting pretty regularly, everyone to three weeks working on a curriculum that we kind of designed with these kind of themes around performance and mindfulness and identity and values and community responsibility. And the final theme is nature and connectedness. So it's a really holistic program. And from the beginning, we'd kind of talk about it's a unique charity. It's a charity in the US, actually, that's a pioneer nonprofit in the UK. And it's an organization with a really unique vision for sport. And a positive vision on the one side, but kind of recognizing where sports failing to live up to that vision, to its promise on the other side. So we talked for kind of right early on how cool it would be to have some kind of manifesto of like this vision, what is it that we stand for and we believe in the power of sport, but what needs to be done? Where do we see it not living up to it? What needs to be done? And then that kind of manifesto turned into an idea for this book that I started writing just over a year ago. And that's what the book is. It's not quite a manifesto anymore. It's we call it a practical philosophy for athletes for flourishing through sport. And it just in kind of encompasses everything that we think is missing in the current kind of athlete development. All of these kind of traditionally terms softer kind of elements gratitude and self-compassion and vulnerability, which are not soft in any sense. They're the most kind of the things that really build up the most resilience, the most kind of like yeah. Anti-dose to burn out and drop out and abuse like it's really a total of cultural paradigm shift that we're advocating for here. So the book itself is kind of hugely idealistic, but in one sense, but it's also got some tools and strategies very on the ground like for athletes like what can you do here and now what kind of training can you do every day to help yourself and to build this culture of sport.

Yeah, I think the biggest thing out the program I got as well was because you don't match athletes to similar athletes in similar sports. So you don't put athletes that have come from the same sport. Sometimes it's completely different. Like my athlete was a fencer. Like you put me with Jack and he was a fencer. But it was so interesting and you spoke about these pitfalls and these journeys you go through as an athlete and it's just the same things that they're going through. Like you almost assume that they must be going through different experiences, but once you start having conversations, once you start seeing where they're thriving or struggling, they're exactly what you did. They're just holding a different piece of equipment. They're just in a completely different team, but the whole experience around what they're doing is very, very similar. And that's what I think the best thing that that program showed was how everyone can learn off everyone. Everyone just can learn off and the group sessions and both with the mentors talking to each other and then the mentees having their experiences shared that was it allowed people to feel not alone as well. Like really not alone in what they're doing. Okay, this is okay. This is a part of what I should be experiencing. And that's again, almost from where this podcast is birthed, like just hearing those experiences because once you hear them and you're okay, well, someone else is feeling that, someone else is feeling self-doubt, someone else has had a poor performance and probably doesn't have the, has lost that feeling of worth in where they're at. And there's so many different areas you can split off to, but ultimately it's all the same experience is just a different sport.

And for those young athletes to hear multiple Olympic champion talking about their own struggles and doubts and feelings of insecurity or losing confidence. I mean, it's completely, it completely humanizes those athletes that you tend to see or young, that kind of young athletes tend to look up to and think, well, they just got no troubles. They're just got it all together. And then suddenly they're working with them in tour or they hear from somebody that is struggling or has struggled with all the same things. And it's just hugely important for them to get the real message that it's not these super human, super humans that achieve that level. It's normal people like all of us who just have found their way through and have put in the work and put in the hours and they end up making it. It's not something magical.

Yeah.