Olympian Ryan Crouser Prepares for Paris 2024

Joel Totoro (INTRO):

This is The Thorne Podcast: Performance Edition, the show that navigates the complex world of sports science, and explores the latest research on diet, nutritional supplements, and the human body. I'm Joel Totoro, Director of Sports Science at Thorne. As a reminder, statements in this podcast have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Any products mentioned are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

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Hi everyone, and welcome to The Thorne Podcast: Performance Edition. This week we're speaking to Ryan Crouser, two-time Olympic gold medalist, current world record holder in both the indoor and outdoor shot put, and he's been awarded the Jesse Owens Award, which is USA's Track & Field's highest honor. Ryan, welcome to the pod!

Ryan Crouser:

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Joel Totoro:

That was just a small bit of your impressive list of accomplishments, but we'd never get into the meat of the pod if we listed everything you've accomplished in your career. It's been a great career, and we're happy to be a tiny part of it here at Thorne. Can you give our listeners just a little bit more about your journey to where you are now and how you found Thorne along the way?

Ryan Crouser:

Yeah, so I mean, for people at home that aren't familiar with shot put, because I mean track and field's not the premier sport in the U.S. I mean, everyone associates it with the Olympics, and it gets popular every four years with the Olympics coming around. But yeah, so what I do is I throw a 16-pound ball as far as I can, and my best is 77 feet. For perspective, the best analogy that I can come up with is if you went to a bowling alley, go and pick up the heaviest bowling ball that's at the bowling alley, and then go to a basketball court, stand at the free throw line and turn around and make a three-quarter court shot with that bowling ball, you're right at the world record in the shot. So that's, kinda to put it in perspective.

I mean, I didn't think really ever that I'd be a professional shot putter until I really was one. I grew up playing all sports, basketball, football, baseball, soccer, did track. Even when I was in track, I was doing the 100 meters, the long jump, shot put, discus, high jump, I was doing a bunch of events and didn't focus solely on throwing until I went to college on scholarship to the University of Texas. So from there at the University of Texas, studied economics, I got my master's in finance while I was still on scholarship my fifth year and graduated in May. Skipped my master's graduation to go to my first professional track meet. And then in June of that year, made the Olympic team in 2016, and then won the Olympics then in Rio in 2016. Have been professional since then, and won again there in the 2020 Olympics that happened in 2021. So two Olympic Golds, world record.

Yeah, it's been an interesting journey, because I've been relatively self-coached, have some background in performance nutrition, sports nutrition with my dad running a family business selling retail sports nutrition. And I had a fun job in the summer of delivering all the RTD, ready to drink, drinks to the 24 Hour Fitnesses in the area. That was a really, really fun summer job, little sarcasm there. I mean, have a little bit of experience in the retail side of it, but it's always been a key part I think of sport performance is how you're fueling your body. And what you put in is what you get out at the end of the day.

As an elite athlete, that's one of the cornerstones. I mean, everyone's training hard, but if you're fueling your body well, and if you're recovering well, you're going to be at a better outcome at the end of the day than somebody who's still training hard but not recovering. And so, because no one at the elite level is slacking off and not working hard, and so you're looking for any centimeter you can get, especially in the shot put. I mean, I've lost a world championship by one centimeter. So yeah, it's the smallest units of measurement are the ones that at the end of the day are the difference between winning a world champs and losing a world champs.

So yeah, I've been working with Thorne for coming up on a year now, and I mean for me as an athlete in a drug-tested sport, I actually was tested by USADA in about three hours before this interview, they showed up at the house. So, it's absolutely a requirement for me that anything I'm putting in my body, I know that it's been third-party tested, that it's safe and it's clean because I get drug tested 20 to 30 times a year. If you take anything that you're not supposed to take at this point with a stringent level of testing, you're going to get caught. And so, for me, it's just a matter of I have to know what I'm doing is going to protect me as an athlete and not give the sport a black eye as well.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, I think that's a huge part of it is people don't understand that how frequently the drug testing is. You can't risk it, right? We are coming up on a point where 20 years ago you used to have to try to get a banned substance in your system. Now, it can happen accidentally, so you really do have to take that and I always say I'm not a drug tested athlete, but I want those same assurances out of my supplement to make sure that it's clean, it works, and doesn't have anything in there that I don't want in there. A little more important at your level, significantly more important at your level. But yeah, it's something I think we always talk about. We take pride in the NSF certification here at Thorne.

Having been prior to Thorne, I was 15 years in college sports on the sports side and the amount of pallets of ready to drinks I've loaded and unloaded, definitely it helps with the core strength, but I certainly didn't get as strong as you, but I loved your analogy, putting it into perspective. I think the throws side of track and field is very under-understood. Obviously, strength is a part of it, but there's so much more athletics that's involved in it. So being able to balance that speed and size and precision for as long as you have is super impressive.

What would you say, so you said you were largely uncoached, and you didn't have your eyes set, you didn't start to be a world record holder. What are some of the things as you made the jump to college, or from college to the professional level, what are some of the things that you've seen you've changed or learned made a difference in your training, in your recovery, kind of handling, injury, illness, everything?

Ryan Crouser:

Yeah, to clear up, I don't really want to say uncoached, because simply I've had some coaches in my life and throughout my career that have been really good and kind of laid the foundation to let me coach myself I feel like is the best way to put it. Some of it is just happenstance. I mean, my dad was my coach through middle school and high school, and I mean I still check in with him once or twice a week and talk shop with him. And then my college coach, Mario Sategna, they've been really good about instilling in me the understanding of what I'm doing instead of just, I see, not to talk down about coaches, but I see kinda two groups of coaches.

There's the ones that are, they understand what they're doing and what they're teaching their athletes, and they want their athletes to understand that. And I think those are the best coaches. And then you have the other ones that, whether they think that they have the magic touch or they're not completely confident in what they're pushing or putting on their athletes, and then they get upset when you question them. It's like “my way or the highway,” and it can work, but I was really lucky to have coaches that helped me understand what worked for me.

And I mean, every athlete is different. That's the later I get in my career, the more I see the divergence between athletes, and not only across athletes, but in an individual athlete throughout their career. I mean, what I'm doing at 30 is so much different than what I was doing at 20. And some of it I wish I had trained smarter when I was 20 or 21, but some of it is too, you're just a different athlete at that age. You can get away with a little bit more. You can handle a little bit more volume and push the intensity a little bit. And so, I mean, I've learned a lot along the way.

I'd say the biggest thing that has helped me as an athlete is just trying to record as much as I can and collect as much data as I can to look back and reflect on it. I've constantly, being self-coached, I mean writing all my programs, recording everything I can, not just weight room numbers in terms of how many kilos did I lift on this set, but bar speed, calculating wattages, all of that is a factor. And recording kind of short-term, mid-term, and long-term goals and then looking back and evaluating how we did on training towards that block. So, for this week, I mean I just finished a heavy squat workout earlier today, and so the goal for today is kind of working on this.

We're transitioning from a GPP to a strength phase right now, so I'm trying to start to add a little more intensity to the end of a GPP phase, which for anybody that does GPP or general preparation phase, they know that when you start to add intensity to it, it's pretty miserable. So, we're doing a lot of eccentric front squats right now, which is not fun, but I have the goal for today's workout for this week as we transition to strength, and then it's for the entire fall block and for the year. So I think constantly collecting data, evaluating the data that you have, setting forward goals and then reflecting on the goals that you had and you might have achieved them, you might not, and constantly trying to evaluate both going forward and looking retrospectively at how you can improve and make just slight, slight improvements over a number of weeks, days, months, years is kind of the key to long-term success.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, I think that's a really good point about you know, being wiser now than you were earlier, but having that data too as you get that wisdom, and even as science and technology of value too, “Oh, okay, this is what this meant then,” right? I know we can get lost in too much data, but there is something to have putting some numbers behind a feeling, especially as in an individual sport where you have to be your own performance coach. Yes, guidance of others and whatnot, but nobody knows what you're feeling inside. Until recently, it's been pretty hard to even measure. We could get force outputs, right? But the more you have, the more information you're like, "Okay, this is actually improving." Or for me, it's when you get a little further in your career when you're like, "Okay, this number isn't where it should be. Is it my nutrition? Is it my recovery? Is it my sleep? What is different?"

So just having some kind of clues to guide you into figuring out, “Why isn't it working the way I want it to?” Or, “Wow, that worked great, what did I do different?” Instead of just having to guess, having some of those variables dialed in. Super important and a great way to look at it.

You kinda mentioned a little bit about coaching and understanding the two different kinds of coaches, and I think I agree with you pretty strongly. It takes a confident coach to really allow the athlete and be reactive to what your athlete's telling you instead. There's no such thing as a system shot putter, right? Like it’s so individual! So, you've ventured into coaching a little bit. How is flipping the switch and having that hat on, has that impacted the way you see your own training or just a continuation of what you've always been doing?

Ryan Crouser:

Yeah, so I mean for me, coaching has been, I mean simply to say good. But it's been interesting as a professional coaching college kids, because I've been in their shoes. And at 30, you view the world, especially being eight, nine years removed from the collegiate system, you view the athletic endeavor that you're pursuing in a different light and much more of a professional aspect. So, kind of laser beam focus on my end, and seeing the potential that college kids have, but also the little bit of distractions that they have going on in their lives as well. And having to reflect on myself and saying there's a lot of variables that college athletes have to deal with that pros, I mean, you have different ones as a pro, but you have a lot more distractions, and you're a lot less mature as a college athlete. But I've been lucky enough to work with really good college kids and that makes it a lot more fun.

But I think the biggest thing for me that has benefited in terms of my performance is you have to have a level of understanding, while explaining a novel idea to somebody that is much more than if you're simply thinking about it in your head or your own understanding. The best analogy I have is that there's one point you want to get across to a kid, whether it's a technical movement or something in the weight room, but you have to explain it 10 different ways and hope that one of them sticks, instead of you have one way in your head that you think about it, and that's the way you think about it. You have to get creative and come up with 10 different ways to explain it. And they're all shades of the same thought process, but that level of understanding that you have to, have to convey that has to, you're almost analyzing the way that you think about a process that you up until that point thought you had a rock-solid understanding of.

I mean, the movement in shot put is relatively straightforward, but when you take a really deep dive into it, you can go as far down the rabbit hole as you want. I mean, you can spend hours and hours and hours talking about just the technical aspect, and then you have the whole biomechanical advantages, and there's a lot of different schools of thought in terms of yeah, the physics of it, the technique. There's numerous, numerous different kind of geopolitical parties almost if you have the American system, and even within the American system you have certain college coaches have kind of created their own model, which then their athletes branched out and became future coaches. There's kind of three or four models within the U.S. There's a couple European models, there's a New Zealand, Australian model as well. So, there's a lot of fragmentation within what seems like it'd be a really simple, simple movement of just trying to throw the ball as far as you can.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, I think one of the things that a colleague told me is, “You're not an expert until you can explain why you do things to a five-year-old,” right? You know what you're doing instinctively, but until you've been asked enough questions like, “I've never put that down on paper. I've never said that in words why I do what I do,” right?

Ryan Crouser:

Yeah.

Joel Totoro:

So it is that inflection, and you learn all right, “I'm a coach, I'm a professor, I'm an athlete,” and you figure out that mix and it does, going on the coaching side, does really make you think about “Why do I do some things I have never really put a process to?” and then, “Gosh, how do I get somebody else to get this?” It's something you've done so many times. How do you coach at the most instinctive level? So kinda as you were going on talking about some of those adaptations to those changes, at what point kind of does 23.5 or 77 feet, what does that come into, “Oh, this is a possibility?” When do you switch into like, “Okay, this is in my reach?”

Ryan Crouser:

Yeah, so it's an interesting conundrum simply because I have a different perspective than everyone else because I'm doing it day to day, and I don't want to say completely on my own, but I mean a lot of workouts on my own. And then people don't see the day to day, two workouts a day, six days a week. They see like these big macro jumps, and they get glimpses at a certain competition and then world champs and Olympics. And so it's like they're throwing out these massive numbers of like, “Oh, 23” when I first had thrown 22, and then when I got 23, it was like, “Oh.” And now it's the next one is 25, and I haven't even hit 24. But they're not realizing that if I can get 10 or 15 centimeters a year, that's a fantastic year in my opinion. You only have so many years in your career. But just, yeah, when you're working at it day to day, you don't really see the massive jumps or the massive breakthroughs, and it's really hard to put a top-end limit or a maximum goal because it's so far from where you're at today.

From my perspective right now, I'm wanting to throw a PR hopefully, personal best at the Paris Olympics this coming August, but I have so far to go until that point that I'm just trying to be a little bit better each day. That's what I tell all my athletes in terms of setting their long-term goals, but if you can go into any competition and throw a personal best, that you cannot be upset with that. I mean, to walk out and say with confidence after throwing a personal best that I'm the best I've ever been today, that's such a special feeling. And it's so rare to be able to say with 100 percent confidence that I'm the best I've ever been, and you can see the hard work and dedication that went in up to that point to achieve that. That's kind of what has made me pursue track and field and pursue shot put is the ability to say I'm the best I've ever been.

From day to day, I'm just looking at trying to be a little bit better. I mean, the goal today was add five kilos onto my top set on front squat than what I was at last week. And so I did that, and today felt like a victory. But in terms of looking at the big picture, it gets frustrating to try to really put those big numbers out there. And on a side note, before I had the world record, I talked with Mac Wilkins, who's a great American discus thrower. He had the world record, and he had made his goal for a number of years to throw the world record. And then he said he felt like when he did it, he was like, "I don't know where to go from here. I'd spent so much time trying to break someone else's world record, and then when I did it, I felt like I kind of lost my sense of direction."

I've tried to not be as motivated by someone else simply because they're a completely different athlete. They have different physical abilities than what I do, and so I can't control what any of the other athletes are doing. All I can control is how I throw, how I can compete. If I can go out there and throw a personal best, that's awesome. If I can throw enough personal bests, eventually I'll get a world record. And I've been lucky enough to be the one person that has had enough personal bests to get the world record, but in terms of pushing it out to a certain set numerical distance, I just want to throw as far as I feel like I can throw, and not really focus too much on that set objective number.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, I think that's phenomenal insight into yourself, but also just an amazing way to sum up anyone chasing goals, right? We talk a lot of podcasts that performance is personal, and it may be as personal to somebody to try and run their first 5K. They have to make all these crazy adaptations and have all these frustrations. So hey, if you're better today than you were yesterday and you're giving it your all, like it's not about, “Hey, did I run the fastest 5K ever?” It’s, “What did I do today? Was I better than my last one? Did I make the steps to do that?”

So, I think a great analogy that pushes over to it really puts down to the why you're doing the performance goal. It's not the number, it's what you feel in the journey and all that stuff. So you know going a little bit more macro with that and applying it to life, but that's just a great perspective and you know, I think it's important to stay... kind of keeps you focused on what you're doing for you, right, which like you said, gets lost a lot.

Ryan Crouser:

Yeah, and I feel like if you have those little day-to-day goals, if you can constantly be hitting the little goals instead of feel like you have that one big goal, but you're constantly falling short of it. I'll take 100 little victories instead of the one giant victory every single time, because if you have just small wins every day or even throughout the day, multiple days in a row, you can be so much better off than if it's like I'm swinging for the fences for the entire month, but every single one, you're feeling like you're coming up short. Just that level of confidence that you build as an athlete or as an individual with feeling like you're getting little wins throughout the day. I mean, that's a big win in the long run.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, you got to stack those wins for sure. So we've had actually recently, there's been a lot of talk about, NFL has played a couple games in Europe. That's one game, one day in a different country. I think part of your sport a lot of people don't realize is how much of your competition schedule is overseas, but not even just overseas, country to country, meet to meet. How have you kind of learned to adjust with that and keep some kind of schedule when so many variables are changing out of your control?

Ryan Crouser:

Yeah, so that's a huge, huge part of being a track and field athlete because, yeah, it's a predominantly European sport in terms of where we make our money. Financially, it's a very European sport, and so, you get paid for performing in Europe for a large part of it. So yeah, travel and all of that is a huge, huge key to performing well, staying in the sport to make enough money to stay in the sport. And yeah, you see guys that are extremely talented that struggle internationally, and you see guys that aren't necessarily the most physically talented or have the most top end potential that execute well internationally and they make good money, stay in the sport longer than some of the more talented guys and end up having longer, better careers. And so, it's a huge part.

I feel like everyone is a little bit different, and I kinda feel like that's a theme that I keep going back to. But I just know from experience, there's things that I know for a fact I can't do when I travel internationally that other athletes do, and they seem to perform well doing it. I mean, for me, if I had to boil it down to a number of things, I'd say the number one that has had a big benefit to me is getting sleep before you leave on a transatlantic flight. So, it's so easy, and I had a terrible habit of this and still fight not to have this habit of staying up. You'll leave in the morning. And if I'm leaving in the morning, being up late the night before and packing is the worst thing you can do because now you're starting a 25 to 30-hour travel day sleep-deprived. So, if you can get nine, 10 hours of sleep before you leave, that's a huge swing.

Obviously, hydration is a huge, huge part of staying hydrated while you're traveling, so I use Thorne Catalyte for that. But yeah, to continue on the hydration, not just drinking water, but also making sure electrolytes are in balance. Zinc to help boost your immune system, vitamin C as well. Once I arrive in Europe, shoot, for me, the biggest disparity that I see between myself and other athletes is to take a nap or not. So, you get there late morning, early afternoon, and what do you do until bedtime? So, the easy thing is to take a two, three-hour nap. For me, that just absolutely does not work. I have to stay up as late as I can that night, try and push my circadian rhythm back as far as I can. Avoiding coffee all day that first day makes a big difference for pushing that circadian rhythm back and getting on an adjusted sleep cycle that first night in making sure that I do sleep through the night.

Then the next morning, high carbs in the AM, helps to adjust for me, and a relatively high intensity workout that first day off the plane. Your CNS is all over the place. Your body kind of doesn't know whether it's in a sympathetic or parasympathetic state, and it's actually pretty easy to touch into that sympathetic and kind of have a pretty twitchy dynamic first workout. And I can use that to my advantage if I'm wanting to adjust to a longer trip, I'll bump that intensity up, have an aggressive first workout, and so I'll sleep really well that night. And dor a long-term adjustment, that's the way to go.

If it's quick, I will try to not touch on that because if I do have a high intensity first full day workout, the jet lag will hit me more on days two and three. So that's kind of a really complicated rundown of what international travel kind of looks like for me. I mean, if you guys want to know more, I can go into more detail on it. But yeah, I don't know how many of the listeners are actively traveling internationally and wanting to really perform well on day one, two or three post-transatlantic flight, but that's a basic rundown of what works for me.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, I think it's super important. And even just to understand that how much travel impacts you as much as it does. I mean just the, you talk about relatability to our audience, just the amount of people don't even realize a three-hour flight at pressurized cabin dehydrates you, jacks up your gut, all these things. Obviously, we're not asking after a cross-country flight to a meeting, not asking the same of our bodies, but some of those basic core principles definitely apply.

Ryan Crouser:

Yeah, I mean even, I just know for me, I hadn't done a vacation in a really, really long time, but I went on a fly-fishing trip this fall to Mexico. And just like using the tricks or travel advice that I have given myself and learned, it was so much easier to travel when I wasn't having to worry about training, but I was still doing the normal things that I would do as if I had to compete. But traveling felt like it was a breeze, and just my quality of life once I got there was so much better. And like you were saying, paying attention to the gut biome and taking some prebiotics and EnteroMend as well, just the little things like that. I think that the common person, if you’re just going on a short flight for a vacation, they don't realize how much they can really enjoy their vacation more, pay a little bit of attention to taking care of your body during travel.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah you almost have to trick your body into relaxing like, "Hey, I got you. Like this is our time now. This is okay, we're going to actually calm down." So, what you've talked about has given us an idea, but so what does your path to Paris 2024 look like? And by that, I mean you've done it in 2016 Rio, you've learned some things, 2020 in Tokyo. Do those past experiences kind of change the way you perform, or is every Olympic different for you?

Ryan Crouser:

Yeah, so yes and no. I mean, every Olympics is similar in that it's just hectic, and you have to plan on a lot of stuff going wrong. I mean, every single Olympics, every single major, I mean, the best thing you can do is just expect everything to go wrong, and then you won't be too disappointed because it's always something, whether it's transportation, whatever it is. I mean, I remember my first Olympics, so I was fresh out of college. In your mind, you put the Olympics way up on this pedestal of the premier sporting event, and then we get the schedule and we're a same day qualifying, so we have to be there, I think I had to be out the door at 5:00 a.m., so I was up at 4:00 or 3:50 a.m. on like the meet that I'm supposed to perform the best of my life. I'm waking up before 4:00 a.m., so that's just not ideal.

And then we had the same day, so we had to qualify in the morning and then come back in the evening and perform at 9 p.m.. And it's 90 minutes driving between the village and the track. And so, it's like wake up at 4:00, 90-minute drive there, compete, 90-minute drive back. You're back for only a few hours, and then 90-minute drive back. And so it was, essentially, you're thinking in your head as a young athlete that it's the Olympics, it's the pinnacle of sport. Everything's going to be perfect when in reality, it's one of the most difficult to perform at of any sporting event in the world.

I mean at Tokyo, we were competing and the day of the final, so you ideally roll up and compete right away. It was the hottest day in Olympic history. I think it was 135 degrees on the track, and we had taken 17,000 steps, all of it outside before we stepped onto the field to compete. So, 17,000 steps on the hottest day in Olympic history before you've competed is just not ideal preparation. And so that's the common theme. That'll be, I'm sure something like that will come from Paris. You don't really know what it is until you get there, so just keep your expectations low, and you'll be pleasantly surprised if everything goes off accordingly or as you dreamed it would.

I mean, it's different this year for me as an athlete, just because I'm older. I think every Olympics is a little bit different. 2016 to 2021 to 2024. So, load management for me is a big, big focus this year. I just can't compete as much as I could when I was younger. I mean, I could compete every two weeks when I was 23, 24 and feel like I didn't lose anything, and now the intensity, I can hit higher levels in terms of my intensity, but I can't do it as often. So, it takes me longer to prep for it, and takes me longer to recover from it. So, load management, number of competitions is kind of a big focus for me this year. I feel like I still have as high of a top end, if not the highest top end I've ever had for potential, but executing, on the day, I can do it, but I have to put myself in the possible position to be able to execute, which is laying the groundwork, laying the foundation, and not blowing my load so to say, too early.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah. All right. I think that's a great way to close up the first part of this interview. We'll be right back to answer some questions from our listeners after this short break.

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Joel Totoro:

Hey, we're back. Now it's time to answer some questions from the community. Our first question comes from a listener who asks, if competing is so much of your job, what kind of activities do you do or what's the relaxation side of it?

Ryan Crouser:

Yeah, so for me, I mean outside the track and field, I'm a really, really avid fisherman, both just conventional bass fishing and then fly-fishing as well. So, I try to get out two to three times a week in the afternoons, evenings. It kind of gives me a chance to unwind and take a step back and relax. And shoot, I would like to say completely relaxed, but I mean fishing for me can be as intense and as focused as throwing is, so I jokingly tell all my fishing buddies that my shot putting is really getting in the way of my bass fishing career.

Joel Totoro:

We had a couple of different questions, all kind of going in the same way. Are there any sports in your opinion – you said you're a multi-sport athlete – that would lead yourself to being more likely to be able to pursue the throwing arts, or how would you recommend somebody who's younger that thinks, “Hey, this is something that appeals to me, how do I get started?”

Ryan Crouser:

Yeah, so I mean, great question. For me, it's a little bit counterintuitive because everyone always thinks, “Football, that's the number one thing.” It's like, “Oh, big strong kid, alignment, or D end, that's your shot putter.” But in reality, I mean for me, basketball was way more of a correlation to throwing shot put, the footwork, so I was predominantly a post player playing power forward, a four, sometimes a five, sometimes a three. But I mean, the footwork in the post is very beneficial, the rhythm. But I mean just the athletic movement, the body awareness, the proprioception in basketball had helped me so much when I want to become a full-time thrower.

And that kinda leads me to my next thought on younger athletes is I see so many kids in this day and age specializing so early. And while yes, that skill acquisition is very important, I think building an athletic base across all sports is so much more important than focusing super early. And if you focus year-round in the fourth, fifth, sixth grade, yes, you're going to be really good at that age. But if you're wanting to compete at a high level, I think branching out and playing multiple sports at least up until eighth grade, freshman year of high school, and then starting to look at specializing in one, I would say two sports is so much more beneficial if you're wanting to go to the collegiate level.

I mean, as a college coach, if I'm looking at a high school kid who's been year-round for four or five years, it's not a red flag, but I would take a two or three sport athlete with lesser marks. I would say that kid has way more upside potential because he hasn't been training year-round at essentially a collegiate level for four years. He's been doing three sports. He's probably a good athlete, but he's probably very raw, and it's easier to teach a kid the athletic skills specific to a sport or to an event than it is to build an athlete or expand a single laser beam focused athlete and up that athletic potential. So that's what I would recommend to younger up and coming athletes.

I mean, if you want to get involved in track and field, USATF has a number of resources, that's USA Track & Field, [and USATF is] the national governing body for professional track and field but they also handle all of the youth events. And so yeah, you become a member with USATF, it's I think $20 a year, it's pretty affordable. You get full access to a bunch of different meets in your area and qualify for states, regionals, and nationals. And it's not just limited to kids. They have all ages starting from, shoot, four or five years old all the way up to the open and pro division and then onwards with masters. So I think once you turn 30 or 35, then you can start competing in masters divisions all the way up until as long as you want to go, you can do track and field.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, that's amazing and it is such a great community. But I think your answer there, I mean, I think you and I could do a full podcast on the importance of youth development and specializing and becoming a full athlete first, but I think that's really important regardless of what your area you're trying to progress in. I mean, we see so much research coming out that overspecialization young, especially when your body's still growing, can definitely, if you learn how to use your body in an athletic way while it's still growing, the impacts are significantly greater as your career keeps going.

We're going to throw a little fun one in here. You're able to travel all over the world, do you have a favorite food city that you've competed in or trained in?

Ryan Crouser:

Oh. I would say yes and no. The one that I would choose would be Tokyo, but we were not allowed to leave the village at all. So I love Japanese food, sushi especially, but with the COVID protocols that we had in place, we were not allowed to leave the village. So, I would love to go back to Tokyo simply for the food, which I got to experience some of it in the village, but not the full Tokyo food scene. So, if I had to choose one, I would say Tokyo. Out of everywhere else that I've been, that's a tough one.

I would say probably Croatia. I really like Croatia a lot. I go there pretty much every year for they have, one of the premier meetings is in Zagreb, Croatia, and it's a beautiful country. Fantastic place if anyone's looking for a place to vacation. But the food there is really, really good. It's relatively simple. I mean, nothing too fancy, but just like lots of meats, potatoes. I mean, kebabs are a standby there, and it's not the kebab in terms of meat on a stick. It's sliced meat on a big, almost pita bread-esque. Yeah, looks like a taco combined with a pita bread. I don't know, they call it a kebab, but whenever I tell people in the U.S. about kebabs, they're like, "Oh, shish kebobs, like meat on a stick." And it's not at all like that.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, you've got a dietitian and a weight thrower, we're going to be pretty easy to talk about food for a while here. All right, we're going to end with just one question, which I think is always interesting. Do you have like any superstitions or routines that you try and stick to?

Ryan Crouser:

I feel like I've had a lot of yes and no answers on this. So, I try to avoid routines as much as I can if there are things that I can't 100 percent control simply because I mean, you have so many variables as a professional athlete traveling internationally and competing internationally. I mean, you'll have an officiating crew that doesn't speak English. You'll have a meet that doesn't let you warm up beforehand. If there's something detrimental to athletic performance, I can guarantee you, I pretty much had it happen to me. Like they'll just take your phone away from you, or take your whole bag, or make you tape over every logo you have on your uniform. It's just like craziness. So if you have anything that you get really attached to, I've seen so many athletes that are like, “I have to do this warm-up, I need eight throws in warm-ups,” and it's like, "Ah, well, we get one." And it completely takes them out of their entire competition. Like you lose your whole mental space, all of it. And so, the more flexible you can remain, I mean, that can be a huge, huge advantage.

But I mean, I do find solace in some little things. Like I have the same pair of socks that I like to compete in, and I've competed in the same pair of socks. I mean, I wash them between every comp, but same pair of socks for like four years. Just when I thought, “Okay, that's a pretty good safe one,” I had a comp last year where they took my socks away and said I couldn't compete in them because they had a design on them. I did get them back, but I was not allowed to compete in them. So just when you think you have the foolproof system of, “Yeah, lucky socks, that can't really throw me for a loop, that's not going to get messed up” now, they took my socks. So moral of the story is don't get too attached to any one thing. If you can be confident in being flexible, that'd be the number one thing to have as an asset, as a professional athlete.

Joel Totoro:

I think that's a phenomenal answer. I think your yes and no’s have been really complete answers, so I'm glad you kind of went that way. So yeah, there's a comfort in routine, but then you're like, “Why would I introduce a variable when there's already so many variables going on?” So, I’ve really enjoyed our time, Ryan, we’re all going to watch,follow along, and root for you on your path to 2024 in Paris. Where can our followers keep up with you on social and whatnot?

Ryan Crouser:

Yeah so best way to keep up with me is on Instagram, just @rcrouser, so that's my predominant social media that I use. I'm not as active as some people would like me to be, but I try and put the post that I put up, I try to have them be quality and authentic. The stuff on there is all me, I'm running it myself. Not a ton of posts, not a ton of activity, but it's authentic.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, you mentioned USA Track & Field website. It's a great place to find out where the events are because if you've ever taken a weekend and watched a track and field event, it's really a lot there, and a lot of people don't take the time besides every four years. So go there, you can see all the upcoming meets and the competition season, and watch Ryan as he continues his path and get a little bit more invested in a really dynamic sport. So, Ryan, we really appreciate your time, and as always, thanks everyone for listening. Until next time, have a great day.

(OUTRO)

Thanks for listening to The Thorne Podcast: Performance Edition. Make sure to never miss an episode by subscribing to the show on your podcast app of choice. You can also learn more about the topics we discussed by visiting thorne.com, and checking out the latest news, videos, and stories on Thorne's Take 5 Daily blog. For this Performance Edition of The Thorne Podcast, I'm Joel Totoro reminding everyone to stay active, and stay hydrated.