Seeking Progress Over Perfection with Olympic Champion, Apolo Ohno
If you have ever wanted to hear directly from the mind and heart of a champion about the mental toughness and daily habits it takes to be a high performer, you are in for a treat on this episode of Start With A Win! Adam talks with none other than Apolo Ohno, the most decorated US Winter Olympic athlete. He discusses how he shaped his mentality as a child and the progression of that mentality to competing on the world’s stage.
In this episode of the Start With A Win podcast, our guest is Apolo Ohno, an 8-time Olympic medal winner, Dancing with the Stars champion, author, motivational speaker, and philanthropist. Apolo's high levels of achievement derived from his childhood by the foundations laid by his father. As a single parent, Apolo’s dad wanted to make sure Apolo was enrolled in plenty of activities and applied the right mental energies to those endeavors. He taught Apolo discipline and work ethic within a growth mindset, emphasizing that he had control over his own effort and consistency.
At the age of 12, Apolo watched short track speed skating on television for the first time, and he knew almost immediately that he wanted to get into the sport. Short track speed skating takes place on a 111-meter track with 5-7 athletes on 1.1mm wide skate blades reaching speeds of 35-40 miles per hour and experiencing 2.5-2.7 G’s of pressure at each turn during a race that lasts about 40 seconds. Apolo says that there are hundreds of thousands of variables that could affect each race, so there is great volatility in the outcomes. Speed skating taught Apolo the importance of being adaptable, responding instead of reacting, seeking progress over perfection, and overcoming mental barriers, lessons that he has carried with him into all aspects of his life.
When he was 14, Apolo set a goal to go to the Olympics and become the greatest speed skating athlete. While he didn’t fully understand the requirements and sacrifices that would be a part of that process, those ultimate goals drove every daily task and routine he instituted from that day forward. Along the way, he learned the necessity of absorbing inspiration and motivation from all available sources, pushing to see his own potential, and switching on the high-performance mechanism on demand. On a daily basis, Apolo evaluates his final goals, reverse engineers what it will take to reach those goals, and sets milestones for monthly, weekly, daily, and hourly timeframes as necessary. He says that stress and pressure create beautiful things and that pushing past self-sabotage and shifting established paradigms are crucial parts of the growth process.
Join us on the next episode for the conclusion of our conversation with Apolo!
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