In this episode, I take a hard look at the glorification of obsessive training habits in elite sport, using Michael Phelps’ famous claims—like eating 10,000 calories a day and not missing a single day of training for six straight years—as a springboard for discussion.

You’ll learn how research from top performance labs has shown that these types of extreme regimens aren’t just unsustainable, but unnecessary and often harmful. I talk about the real caloric demands of ultra-endurance events like the Tour de France and Race Across America, and how even those athletes only maintain extreme intakes for short periods of time—not year-round.

I also discuss the psychological cost of the “no days off” mentality, and why it’s so important to push back against this toxic messaging, especially for young athletes and their parents. You’ll hear about the groundbreaking research of Dr. David Costill showing how cutting training volume in half for seven weeks actually leads to peak performance, and we debunk the widely misinterpreted 10,000-hour rule. I share the incredible story of Donald Thomas, who became a world high jump champion with barely a year of training, in stark contrast to Stefan Holm’s lifelong grind. We also cover mental health struggles among Olympic athletes like Phelps, Simone Biles, and Caleb Dressel—and why balance, perspective, and accurate storytelling from public figures matter more than ever.

TIMESTAMPS:

There are many impressionable people watching and listening to star athletes who put out less than truthful advice on podcasts. [00:51]

The human is only capable of ingesting a certain caloric limit each day. [07:46]

If these athletes want to give advice, why not be truthful so followers can learn. [12:48]

An obsessive training approach is absolutely not necessary. [17:18]

Do you need 10,000 hours of practice to master your skill? [24:27]

If you are going to reach the highest level, know that the healthiest, most well-adjusted athletes are those that have a healthy, happy, balanced lifestyle. [32:33]

LINKS:

• Brad Kearns.com
• BradNutrition.com
• B.rad Whey Protein Superfuel – The Best Protein on The Planet!
• Brad’s Shopping Page
• BornToWalkBook.com
• B.rad Podcast – All Episodes
• Peluva Five-Toe Minimalist Shoes
• Michael Phelps Short – “every day for 5 years”
• No Days Off – Michael Phelps Motivational Video
• Phelps Instagram – every day for 6 years
• Katy Ledecky
• Caleb Dressel NY TImes
• Olav Aleksander Bu
• Podcast with Dr. Herman Pontzer
• Dr. Jim Loehr

LISTEN:
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TRANSCRIPT:

Brad (00:00):
Welcome to the B.rad podcast – where we explore ways to pursue peak performance with passion throughout life. I’m Brad Kearns, NY Times bestselling author, world #1 ranked masters age 60-plus high jumper, and former #3 world ranked professional triathlete. You’ll learn how to stay fit, strong and powerful as you age; transform your diet to lose body fat and increase energy; sort through hype and misinformation to make simple, sustainable lifestyle changes; and broaden your perspective beyond a fit body to experience healthy relationships, nonstop personal growth, and ultimately a happy, healthy, long life. Let’s explore beyond shortcuts, hacks, and crushing competition to laugh, have fun, appreciate the journey, and not take ourselves too seriously. It’s time to B.rad!

Brad (00:51):
This is the Alert episode. Let’s start with Michael Phelps talking about how he never missed a day of training.

Phelps (01:01):
I wanted to do something that nobody had ever done before, and that started with a dream and a goal. I wanted to be the greatest of all time. I went five straight years without missing a single day of workout, 365 days a year, every single day I was in the water and in the sport of swimming, when you miss one day, it takes you two days to get back. So I was already that much. I was continuing to build on that throughout that time. And, and, you know, that was, that was kind of just how I was. There are days you’re not gonna want to do it, sure, and everybody has those days, but it’s what you do on those days that help you move forward.

Brad (01:37):
Hey, that’s a lot of BS there and it’s BS that pisses me off. It’s not harmless. The first thing I’m gonna call Michael Phelps out on is that there’s no way he did not miss a single day of training. This video, he says five years. There’s another video on Instagram where he says he didn’t miss a day in seven years. And on that video, he details how he did four workouts every single day, 365 days a year for seven years, complete fabrication. And it’s a harmful one because there’s a lot of impressionable people watching, especially young athletes, but all of us who are getting this message embedded into our consciousness that this is a great champion and this is how the path to success comes forth. And the hidden message that’s not really detailed is that you have no freaking chance to be that good because you’re too much of a wuss to not miss a single day and do four workouts a day for seven years.

Brad (02:41):
Uh, so back to the specifics where I can call fabrication here. Serious swimmers do train at a tremendous volume, uh, rivaling that of any other athletes in the world. I would say that the Tour de France cyclists and the Ironman level triathlete are another two categories where the athletes are out there for multiple hours routinely every single day. So a serious Olympic level swimmer will generally engage in what’s called doubles. That means two workouts a day, and they’ll do that for many days a week because there’s no impact load that is preventing them from spending hours and hours as there might be for even the greatest marathon runners will put in a maximum of 130, 140 miles a week, which takes, let’s say a couple hours a day maximum, or 15 or 20 hours a week total if you count gym time. So, a top swimmer will indeed do doubles, uh, spending four or five hours a day total in the pool, uh, maybe even more when you count a super long workout.

Brad (03:46):
Uh, but if you’re someone who’s saying that you did four workouts a day, 365 days a year for seven years it’s a massive embellishment. And I will bet if I had an Olympic gold medal, I would bet that this is a stretch. And it seems like a pattern that certain elite athletes need to tell tall tales, I guess, to grow their mystique and to further intimidate the competition. It reminds me of Kobe Bryant describing how he woke up at 4:00 AM to train because hey, uh, if the competition’s waking up at 6:00 AM to train, then he’ll get a big edge on on those people. Let’s hear from Kobe, talk some more BS in the same realm as Michael Phelps.

Kobe (04:31):
You’re, you’re working out. So talk about that. Okay? So if, if, if your job is to try to be the best basketball player you can be, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative>. To do that, you have to practice, you have to train, right? You wanna train as much as you can, as often as you can. So if you get up at 10 in the morning, train at 11, right? 12, say 12, train at 12, train for two hours, 12 to two, you have to let your body recover so you eat, recover, whatever you get back out, you train, start training again at six, train from six to eight, right? And now you go home, you shower, you eat dinner, you go to bed, you wake up, you do it again, right? Those are two sessions right? Now. Imagine you wake up at three, you train at four, you go four to six, come home breakfast, relax.

Kobe (05:14):
So, so now you’re back at it again, nine to 11, right? You relax and now all of a sudden you’re back at it again, two to four, and now you’re back at it again. You know, seven to nine, look how much more training I have done by simply starting at four, right? And so now you do that, and as the years go on, the separation that you have with your competitors and your peers just grows larger and larger and larger and larger and larger. And by year five or six, doesn’t matter what kind of work they do in the summer, they’re never gonna catch up. ’cause you’re five years behind <laugh>, right? So it makes sense to get up and start your day early because you can get more work in

Brad (05:54):
Simple math people. It makes sense. What a bunch of nonsense. And again, a really harmful message to convey to the impressionable young athletes. There was a clip of kids in this video and all the met headphones on and seemed like they were already tuned out. They weren’t looking at Kobe, they were looking down at their device or something, which is pretty hilarious. Uh, but back to Michael Phelps’s contention that he, uh, trained every day four times a day. Maybe we should ask Katie Ledecky, who seemingly was more honest about her training patterns. She’s the greatest endurance swimmer of all time, completely dominant in the female long distance swimming events. So 800, 1500 being her specialty, and also she’s winning golds down to 400 meters. So incredibly versatile, has gone through multiple Olympic cycles at the very top. And she says, quote, in a recent interview, in Eating Well Magazine, I train about 25 to 30 hours a week, about 20 hours in the pool, and another five to 10 in the gym.

Brad (06:52):
Now, since she’s an, uh, endurance specialist going up to 1500 meters where the race lasts for 15 plus minutes, she would arguably be putting in more training volume than someone like Michael Phelps who specializes in the sprint distance events. His events range from 48 seconds to four minutes. In the IM he was pretty versatile ’cause four minutes is out there more in the endurance category, but the longest event he ever swam was four minutes and change, not 15 minutes. So if Katie Ledecky’s training 25 to 30 hours a week, there’s no way a sprinter’s training for that duration of time and not missing a day. There’s all kinds of reasons why you would miss a day of training, and if you had this dogged mentality to not miss a day of training like Kobe expresses and like Michael Phelps expresses, that can easily lead to your downfall.

Brad (07:46):
And I’m gonna argue that these athletes excelled due to that amazing competitive mentality, competitive intensity, but perhaps in spite of an overly obsessive dogged approach to training, uh, despite not withstanding that they’re lying and embellishing that overly obsessive approach to go over the top, most likely to feed their ego or to intimidate the competition. Phelps, I mean, this is the same guy who told the British Press years ago, uh, what he ate in a day. And he described it and it was all printed in a major feature story that was picked up in many news outlets. I remember the USA Today newspaper cover story, uh, for breakfast, I have three Friday egg sandwiches, three cho chocolate chip pancakes. He makes sandwiches that use up the entire loaf of bread. He has a pound of pasta for lunch. He has another pound of pasta for dinner.

Brad (08:37):
And the writer actually took the time to calculate the caloric content of everything that Phelps rattled off for his daily calorie consumption. And the headline story became Michael Phelps eats 12,000 calories a day, and it became an international sensation that was bantered about with awe and fascination, even though it was extremely off base, ridiculous and embellished. Even Phelps had to deal with some fallout in the years following. And so in his autobiography titled No Limits, he admitted that the account and the calorie total was inaccurate. And he wrote a correction in his book to say that it was more like eight to 10,000 calories per day. Now Phelps is not an expert on human calorie consumption, but even this is completely off base and again, super irresponsible for a public figure to be spouting things like the caloric intake when it was wrong and, uh, not useful and potentially counterproductive to those listening and following.

Brad (09:42):
There’s great research from the bodybuilding community where these guys are so dedicated to extreme training methods to grow their muscles as big as possible, which requires maximum training load as well as maximum caloric intake. And interestingly, amongst bodybuilders, do you know what the limiting factor is for maximum muscle growth and maximum muscles popping out of their body? It’s not the amount of training volume, it’s not the number of hours available in the day to train. Sorry, Kobe waking up at 4:00 AM so you can train more. It’s actually their ability to process calories without blowing out their digestive system. The human is only capable of ingesting a certain caloric limit each day. Ronnie Coleman, one of the greatest bodybuilders of all time, amazing giant muscle physique, and he had a good long career. He was known to eat, uh, he was studied, and this is on, uh, actual research you can find on PubMed.

Brad (10:43):
He consumed around 6,000 calories per day eating, uh, six small meals throughout the day in order to successfully ingest and and process all those calories. And that was about his upper limit today with the great Norwegian triathletes, Blumenfeld and Eaton, their coach Olav Aleksander Bu has been on some podcasts talking about their advanced training methods where they’re highly quantifying everything, including their caloric intake and their ability to process maximum calories on board while training so that they can go so fast. In other words, they’re up there in the sugar-burning heart rate zones when they’re racing Ironmans at sub eight hour pace. And so they need a lot of calories ingested because they’re burning ’em at such a high rate. Unlike the kind of traditional approach to endurance training where we’ve, uh, tried to become good at burning stored body fat so we can last all day without falling apart and passing out.

Brad (11:39):
Now it seems like the extreme endurance athletes of the planet who are performing at the highest levels are able to ingest, uh, a substantial amount of calories while training, while exercising as well as throughout the day. So they can handle eight hour training days. As you can see on these YouTube feature videos of Christian Blumenfeld a Day of training or Jan Feno had a day of training where he did like five workouts, including running to the track twice and doing track workouts and swimming and biking. Crazy beyond my comprehension of what we were able to do in a day. But the limiting factor is caloric intake, not hours of training. So when Phelps brazenly pops off saying that he was eating eight to 10,000 calories a day, he is adding poorly and dispensing complete nonsense. Here’s an idea. Why not just tell the truth and publish your actual training logs from your days as an Olympic performer and even perhaps your dietary intake for the benefit of all, uh, athletes, coaches and people who want to analyze what the best are doing?

Brad (12:48):
Eluid Kipchoge, the great marathoner from Kenya did just that, where he published detailed accounts of his training patterns and then the exercise physiologists and the coaches had a field day dissecting it and publishing articles and information about what level of what, what time he’s spending in each of the training zones. It was an amazing insight that we detailed, uh, extensively in the book Born to Walk, where, Kipchoge spends around 83% of his weekly training volume in Zone One, not Zone Two, which is so highly touted as the aerobic training zone, but zone one. So most of his training comes at a comfortable pace, and that is a really great takeaway, insight for all of us when we’re trying to figure out, especially how to train for endurance sports. Look to the greatest of all time undisputed, the greatest marathon runner of all time, spending most of his time at a pace which equates to a medium or brisk walk for most marathon runners even accomplished marathon runners.

Brad (13:51):
Back to more of this calorie discussion. ’cause I think it’s super important to understand the research from Dr. Herman Pontzer, my former podcast guest In one of the world’s leading experts on caloric expenditure amongst humans and other primates. It suggests that the maximum sustainable energy expenditure for the human is around two and a half times basal metabolic rate. And this is based on data from Tour de France, the Amazing Race Across America bike ride, the nonstop race across America that I was fortunate enough to be a crew member for one time for Johnny G who crossed the country on his bicycle in 11 days. The record is eight days and these guys are pedaling on their bicycle for up to 22 hours per day with a two-hour rest period. They’re consuming four to 6,000 calories a day. And I guarantee you, there is no athlete burning more fuel than a race across America cyclist.

Brad (14:51):
And one of the big limiting factors to Johnny’s performance when I was right there in his crew was his ability and his desire to consume a sufficient amount of calories to fuel performance for going around the clock into the night and taking only brief rest periods, until getting back out on the bike and pedaling. Pretty soon he just couldn’t stomach any more food. He started to get sick of the special high performance nutritional shakes that we were handing him that were, you know, contemplated to give him the best and easiest fuel to digest in one of his race across America attempts. He had too much sugar in his mouth for too long a duration because he kept sipping the drink and the fuel that he was consuming. And so he dissolved a tooth during the bike race leading to some dental pain and other complications.

Brad (15:42):
So, Tour de France, they’ve shown that these guys are consuming up to eight or 9,000 calories per day, but only for a few weeks of the event. So they’re basically getting off that bike and chowing down as much as possible until the next day’s stage start. And right up there, uh, on par with the Race Across America are the extreme, uh, expeditions like expedition to the Arctic. And their caloric intake can rise really high for a very short time. So we’re talking about eight or nine or perhaps 10,000 calories in a day, uh, for, you know, a a handful of time. So if Phelps is saying that he’s consuming eight to 10,000 calories a day and training every day for seven years, we have a, uh, you know, complete distortion of what was really going on. Not to criticize him, because obviously he didn’t know how many calories he was burning, so he shouldn’t have said anything.

Brad (16:38):
And the writer on the USA Today might have, uh, done his journalistic integrity and realized that maybe this athlete was fabricating. But there’s a great link that has all this research and showing the upper limit calories, which when I said two and a half times based on metabolic rate. So for a athlete training over the long term, it’s around four to 6,000 calories per day would be the maximum sustainable ability to consume that much fuel and train at the highest level. And so that’s basically what we’re seeing with the bodybuilders, like the Ronnie Coleman story and with the Norwegian triathletes or the Tour de France riders.

Brad (17:18):
Now, here’s another important point for reflection when we hear from Michael Phelps, and that is that this type of obsessive approach to training is absolutely not necessary for success. And it comes with a high risk of fallout in the area of mental health. This type of obsessive mindset and refusal to miss a single day and forming the belief system that if you miss a day in the water, it takes two days to get back to where you were. This is complete garbage and nonsense and it’s been proven conclusively by exercise physiology. The great work of Dr. David Costal at Ball State University, human performance lab world renowned. And his work was on swimmers of all people, of all people that Phelps should be familiar with. And it goes back to the seventies before Phelps was even born or started his career. The Costel research revolutionized old school endurance training where it was thought that more and more, more was better. And then he did some amazing research on tapering. We’ve detailed this in a few of our books because it’s just such a mind blow. that if you reduce your training volume by 50% for seven weeks, you know what the result is. Do you get outta shape? No, you actually achieve peak performance. So this group of swimmers that tapered, again, this is back in the seventies, that blew the minds of coaches and exercise physiologists everywhere. A massive, massive taper. Imagine cutting every single workout you do in half for almost two months. And then you do a performance test at the end to compare to the performance test you did before you started the taper. And more swimmers improve their times or maintain their times versus regressing. Let’s hear more blather from Phelps. With this My life, Beautiful dramatic, my

Phelps (19:14):
Career is not a smooth, easy road.

Brad (19:15):
Listen to the music. I had a lot of ups and the motivation of video,

Phelps (19:18):
I went through a lot of tough times. After 2012, I fell into a major state of depression. That was probably the hardest fall for me. I didn’t want to be in the sport anymore. I didn’t wanna be alive anymore. I just never forget just being in my bedroom at home and literally sitting in there for three to five days and just not wanting to be alive. I’ve never been somebody who’s given up and I didn’t want to give up in that moment. So for me, I thought there was a different road that I could go down. I went six or five or six straight years without missing a single day. Doesn’t matter, a holiday, a birthday, if I’m sick, this or that, it doesn’t matter. I wanted to make that sacrifice to do something nobody else has ever done. So for me to go five or six straight years, that meant I had 52 extra days a year.

Phelps (20:04):
But also in the sport of swimming, if you take one day off, it takes you two days to get back to where you were. That’s where I’m getting six years straight. So I’m getting that much more ahead of them. I’m getting that much more work. I’m in that much better shape. I wasn’t racing anybody else. I was racing myself. I didn’t care what anybody else did. If I went to times that I had on my goal sheet, I knew there was not another soul on that planet that could have done the times that I had written down. There were days where I didn’t want to get outta bed. There were days where I’m sore, I can’t move, I don’t want to swim, I’m tired. I don’t feel well. This, that, the other, I’m sure we all have days like that. If you really want something and if you care about something that much, it doesn’t matter if you’re not super successful the first time. ‘Cause if, if it’s something that you’re truly passionate about, you’re gonna get up and do it again and do it again and do it again. It doesn’t matter how many times you get knocked down, it doesn’t matter how hard it is to get there. If you really want something, there shouldn’t be a thing in this world that should stand in front of you and accomplishing that goal. And that’s the bottom line. ‘Cause our mind, if we put our mind to something, we can accomplish truly everything.

Brad (21:11):
Alright? Yes, good job on the video. Great editing, great music. I too am inspired by someone who has tremendous passion for his goals. And, I relate tremendously ’cause I’ve had a long journey of high level and high intensity, high competitive intensity pursuing my athletic goals and dreams. But do you see how they are trying to program our minds to think that this is the path to success? And boy, it’s pretty polished and measured. I’m sure Phelps had a great speech writer or presentation helper to spew out these perfect anecdotes, uh, to capture the fascination and the appreciation of the crowd. But again, I really want to, um, look at the dark side here and peel off the blather and the dramatic classical music Phelps of all people, uh, is a great subject for this because he’s been really honest and open and vulnerable with his mental health struggles.

Brad (22:13):
He was the featured athlete in the great documentary titled Weight of Gold that profiled many of our favorite top Olympic athletes and the tremendous struggles that they endured behind the scenes. And a lot of these struggles are due to the amazing amount of pressure and attention that we heap upon them as athletic celebrities and the internal drive that gets outta hand and also fueled and supported by their circle around them, by the coaches and the hangers on, and the sponsors and all the people that are looking to get something from the success that the athlete has. Here’s a quote from New York Times article about Phelps. Toward the end of his swimming career, Phelps began talking about the anxiety and depression he experienced as he became the most decorated Olympian of all time. While the gymnast Simone Biles and tennis player, Naomi Osaka, have both taken time off from their sports to focus on their wellbeing.

Brad (23:13):
Caleb Dressel another compatriot of Phelps and maybe like, uh, the next most amazing long-term Olympian swimmer besides Phelps. I think he has like nine gold medals or something. Here’s a quote from the article, Caleb Dressel, after winning five gold medals at the Tokyo Olympics, Caleb Dressel publicly discussed struggling with mental health, including depression and panic attacks. He took an eight-month break from swimming to address these issues. Dressel has also spoken about feeling like the imposter syndrome and the immense pressure leading up to and after the Olympics, which contributed to his mental health struggles. So I’m really, I give these athletes a tremendous amount of credit for coming forth and telling their entire story rather than being just BS posers on the cover of the serial box, showing off their gold medals, but not talking about their health struggles. Actually, Phelps and others I don’t think had a choice. That little clip that you saw in the a motivational video was him getting booked in the police station for his high profile DUI and then a stint in rehab that he had to endure in the middle of his career. So I definitely, realize that he missed some training days there.

Brad (24:27):
But anyway, I want to give a shout out to the young athletes watching this stuff and hopefully watching this presentation, please don’t listen to this and don’t buy into it lock stock and barrel and parents also especially be on the alert for anyone walking around spouting this 10,000 hour rule philosophy as applied to young athletes. And if you’re not familiar with the 10,000 hour rule, this is a principle advance by the scientist Kay Anders Erickson. And it was highlighted prominently in a book by Malcolm Gladwell that this 10,000 hour approach was the key to success in high performance activities.

Brad (25:14):
His research, Erickson’s research was on violin players that reached the highest virtuoso master mastery level. And it turns out that they had an average of 10,000 hours of practice before they reached the mastery level. But even Erickson refuted the commentary, the guy who came up with the 10,000 hour rule did not like how Malcolm Gladwell portrayed it in the book. And now there’s been a tremendous backlash against this rule, which I should explain it in general. It’s the idea that you need to grind out 10,000 hours worth of practice to achieve mastery in something really competitive, like being a master violinist or being an Olympic athlete. And it just doesn’t hold to actual scientific research. David Epstein in his great book, the Sports Gene, he’s a former podcast guest, you can go listen to that show, uh, but he has a great chapter that I especially enjoyed called The Tale of Two High Jumpers in his book The Sports Gene.

Brad (26:16):
And he talks about compare and contrast to two of the world’s top high jumpers. One of ’em was Donald Thomas from The Bahamas and the other one was Stefan Holm of Sweden. And Holm was captivated by the event when he was a young boy. And so he started high jumping like crazy, like at the age of five or something, and he ended up winning the Olympic gold medal in Athens in 2004. He has the record for the highest height jumped over his head, so he stands around 5 10, 5 11, and he’s jumped up there at seven foot 10, seven foot 11. So two feet over his head. Of course it doesn’t count for any official record, but it is a pretty awesome record, you know, one of the greatest high jump achievements of all time, this Donald Thomas character was goofing around talking trash with some basketball players at a junior college outside of Chicago.

Brad (27:05):
He was talking with some, uh, track and field athletes. He was a basketball player and they were talking about the high jump, this event that he’d never heard of. And he says, oh, I bet you I could do pretty well at that. And they’re like, oh, you don’t realize how hard it is. They took him out to the track his first time he’d ever seen a crossbar and a pit in basketball high tops. As the legend goes, he cleared seven feet in the high jump. His first time ever, the track guys marched him straight over to the track coach and said, this basketball dude just jumped seven feet in high tops. They got him into the sport of track. Less than one year later, he was the world champion in the high jump in Osaka at the World Track and Field Championships.

Brad (27:46):
So the complete refutation of the 10,000 hour rule that this guy can come outta nowhere and compete head to head with Stefan Holm, who has indeed put in those 10,000 hours. So this is a vote for genetic competency, athletic gifts, people being naturals and sitting down at the piano for the first time, and being able to write a high level concerto like Mozart did when he was nine years old or whatever. And all the negative aspects of the 10,000 hour rule, thinking that some reliable path to mastery lies in putting in a massive, massive amount of hours. When you think about what 10,000 hours is, if we work 40 hours a week for 50 weeks a year at a job that’s 2000 hours, right? So that would be five years of 40 hours per week, full-time grind at some sport or some endeavor, and then expecting to achieve mastery at the end.

Brad (28:41):
In fact, if it’s just not in the cards for you, even that number of hours might not bring home the gold medal at the end. There was a great story from a golf journalist up in Portland, Oregon who decided to put the 10,000 hour rule to test in real life. So he was an a decent golfer. I believe he was like an 80 shooter or a low nineties, someone who enjoyed golf and wasn’t that great, but certainly wasn’t terrible. He decided to quit his job and go on a quest and chronicle the whole thing in his journalistic style to see if he could be a professional lever level player after putting in 10,000 hours of golf practice. And so he logged his hours and wrote a blog and chronicled his participation his improved scores over time, and he practiced and practiced and practiced, imagine practicing golf or playing golf for 10,000 hours, how many rounds that is, and how many buckets of balls for how many years.

Brad (29:42):
And guess what he only made it to around 6,000 hours and then he crapped out and he got to be pretty good, obviously much better than his starting point. He was now shooting in the seventies, whatever the mid seventies or the high seventies on an average public golf course in Portland, Oregon. Nowhere near professional competitor level because it just wasn’t in the cards for him. Despite all that practice and as many golf experts contend and experts in other sports too, an extreme amount of practice can actually be counterproductive. Now, in swimming, you have less risk of, you know, getting slower and slower as a swimmer because the injury risk is lower. And generally, you know, the more hours you put in, you’re gonna get better and better up to a certain point. And that’s why the great swimmers in collegiate level or Olympic level are training really hard for many hours a day.

Brad (30:40):
However, for every Michael Phelps, this is literally true. There are dozens of dudes who flamed out and never made it all the way to the top due to burnout, injuries, illness, performance, regression, inability to absorb and benefit from the extreme level of training heaped upon them by modern coaching and team dynamics and all the things that we see. I’ve associated with so many young runners who have come after me. Remember, I was a burnt out, frequently injured, frequently ill collegiate runner where my career just went up in flames. I was actually sick or injured five seasons in a row at UC Santa Barbara. I never was able to run in an official track meet despite trying for three seasons. And in cross country. I did okay my first season coming outta high school where I was not trained by the program at the extreme level.

Brad (31:36):
And then I had pneumonia, mono, stress fracture, shin splints, knee problems, and kept bombing out early into the season well below my potential before I finally quit and went off on my own to pursue the amazing new sport of triathlon and able to train in my own cycles, in my own patterns and be more sensible and reasonable rather than adhering to the template and the flawed competitive intensity dynamic that is often seen in endurance sports where the athletes are pushing each other day after day after training and training to the extent that we exhaust ourselves and leave our best performances on the race course. Same with Kobe Bryant and basketball players. Yes, if you want to get better and you wanna play significantly, even at the high school level, the level of competition is so high. And at a high school where there’s 1000, 2000 or 3000 students, remember there’s only 15 kids on the basketball team.

Brad (32:33):
So you’re definitely gonna have to put in tons of work just like Kobe, that was the title of his documentary, Putting in Work. And that’s great. But at a certain point, if you’re waking up at 4:00 AM and working out till six and then going again at nine to 11, and then going again at three to five, you are most likely going to burn out and develop flawed mental perspective and philosophical perspective about your sport. So to the young kids, take all this stuff with a grain of salt or stick your tongue out directly and say, what a bunch of nonsense. I would love that. Train sensibly, get plenty of rest. Find other hobbies to diversify your approach to life rather than become obsessed with your performance in a narrow level of activity, even if you are going to reach to the highest level, the healthiest, most well adjusted athletes are those that have a healthy, happy, balanced lifestyle.

Brad (33:29):
Are you familiar with the author Dr. Jim Loehr? He’s written books about mental training and mental techniques for athletic peak performance for many years. Great stuff. One of the world’s leading experts, and he contends that the athlete with the ideal competitive mentality that he’s seen is Steph Curry, Golden State Warriors, one of the greatest basketball players of all time, greatest shooter of all time, three point shooter overall, just an amazing wizard on the basketball court with a wonderful career still going strong for Golden State. Guess what he does in the off season. Yay. He likes to play a little golf and he is so fricking good at golf that it’s absolutely mind blowing that this is his hobby. He’s actually played on a secondary level professional tour event and competed notably with professional golfers and then the celebrity golf event that they have every year up in Lake Tahoe.

Brad (34:24):
He’s a former winner. You can see him on YouTube hitting a hole in one at the Tahoe Celebrity Golf Tournament. So this is a guy who’s got golf in the background from, of course his very, very intense basketball career. But it helps serve as a wonderful balance, especially in the summertime when he needs to get away from the court and away from all that practicing and away from all that dribbling and start focusing on making putts. And yes, there’s athletic competency that carries over from different sports. We hear so much criticism and commentary about the early specialization in youth sports and how it leads to, uh, greater injury rates, greater rate of burnout, even, uh, strains the family. Because if you wanna be a good volleyball player, you gotta join the club team and pay thousands of dollars and travel all over the place and take up all these weekends playing and playing and playing just for the odd chance that you might have an opportunity to play in college.

Brad (35:17):
And by that time, many of the athletes are burnt out anyway. So let’s think about Steph Curry leaving the court and going and teeing up the golf ball instead of Kobe Bryant telling us to work out at 4:00 AM again at 9:00 AM and again at 3:00 PM Ha. Thank you so much for listening, watching and sorry to trash on you top athletes. I love you guys. I love what you’ve performed, but as a public figure, we have a deep, deep responsibility to first be very, very accurate and precise with the truth about how we train and eat and sleep and live and whatever else we’re asking you about. And secondly, to keep that ego in check and dispense advice that might be really sensible for everyone, especially with an eye toward mental health. Thank you Michael Phelps for being the centerpiece of that documentary Weight of Gold. But I don’t see how this commentary that we watched on video goes hand in hand with that at all.

Brad (36:18):
It’s actually a disgrace. So, put it all in perspective everybody. Thanks for listening, watching. I’d love to know your comments and feedback on the show ’cause it’s a pretty controversial topic. But I’m glad to hit hard when something really hits me hard. Thank you so much for listening to the B.rad Podcast. We appreciate all feedback and suggestions. Email podcast@bradventures.com and visit brad kearns.com to download five free eBooks and learn some great long cuts to a longer life. How to optimize testosterone naturally, become a dark chocolate connoisseur and transition to a barefoot and minimalist shoe lifestyle.