Champion’s Mojo Podcast: Josh Prenot Discusses His Secrets to Success
Josh Prenot is an Olympic silver medalist and American record holder in the 200 breaststroke. A Cal alum, Prenot was an NCAA champion in the 400 IM. In this interview, he talks with Champion’s Mojo Podcast hosts Kelly Palace and Maria Parker about how he handled the disappointment of the Olympic postponement, the journey to where he is now, and gives advice to those wanting to follow in his footsteps.
Below is an abridged Q&A of the interview with Palace and Parker. You can listen to the full podcast episode at https://championsmojo.com or by clicking here.
Champion’s Mojo: Tell us a little about being sponsored by Adidas?
Josh Prenot: Adidas is awesome and has been so cool to work with. They’re a very data driven company so it’s really cool to see them put all these resources into sports. They do so much work with body analysis just to make sure that everything is fitting properly and swimming racing suits are very, very tight. They literally just scan swimmers’ bodies with this big laser machine that creates a 3-D model of their body to figure out exactly how tight our swimsuit needs to be in different spots. They’ve been so cool to work. I was able to visit their headquarters in Germany which was awesome. It’s in a very small town in Germany where Adidas and Puma are both headquartered. They were founded by brothers.
Champion’s Mojo: Earning a physics degree while swimming at Cal must have been challenging for you. What attracted you to physics?
Photo Courtesy: Becca Wyant
Josh Prenot: I didn’t really have that much of an idea of what I was getting myself into. I think I was pretty good at school in general in high school, but I didn’t really know what I wanted to do in college. I was mainly going to college to swim and to pursue my dream of becoming a professional athlete. I had taken one community college intro physics course while I was in high school and I was like, ok, that sounds cool. It ended up being a great choice and I’m really glad I was able to stick with it. I’m very stubborn so I told myself I just wasn’t going to change majors. Being able to study at Cal, under these amazing professors and Nobel laureates who are publishing this groundbreaking research, was awesome and something I’m glad I was able to stick with.
Champion’s Mojo: Give us a little update on where you are right now with training and quarantine.
Josh Prenot: Quarantine has been good for the most part. The Bay Area has done a good job of controlling COVID so I’m fortunate to live here. I’ve been trying to get outside in a safe manner as much as possible: running, working out on my bike, and going on some good hikes. When pool space was a little more limited than it is now I was doing some swims in the bay, but that water is very cold. We’re fortunate that we have a couple of different options for pool space now. I’m not back in the water at the actual university but that is hopefully coming soon. We have a pretty good weightlifting setup at home. For training purposes, we were taken care of. We’re blessed to have probably one of the best situations you could find in the world right now.
Champion’s Mojo: Tell us about swimming in the bay?
Josh Prenot: Aquatic Park in San Francisco is the most popular spot. It’s like a little protected cove so you don’t have to deal with all the big waves. I swim in heated pools year round so I’m used to being in nice, comfortable water. In the Bay the water temp has been in the low 60s recently which is honestly not bad for here. There are these four buoys set up in a straight line about 50 meters apart that people swim in a circle around. You use the buoys instead of the black line. You can either do that or swim out toward the bay, towards where the big boats are. That’s a bit longer, probably closer to 600 meters. I wasn’t swimming there everyday, but it was good to get back in the water. At the end of the day, even if the Bay wasn’t ideal, water is water.
Champion’s Mojo: Was doing all these different activities a nice change of pace or was it frustrating not being able to train?
Photo Courtesy: Diana Pimer
Josh Prenot: I certainly enjoy all the other activities, but not being able to workout specifically for one thing, my job, was frustrating. I am thankful that, living in the Bay Area, there is no shortage of different types of cross training. I was on my bike a bunch, going up and down hills, so all-in-all it was a good situation.
Champion’s Mojo: What was it like being able to realize your dream?
Josh Prenot: Awesome. I mean it’s definitely great. I am very fortunate to be able to do what I have always wanted to do for a living. That being said, once you achieve a big goal, you have to be able to reset that goal. That’s what I dealt with after college, having to reset that goal to decide what you want to go after next.
Champion’s Mojo: Tell us a little bit about that time after college.
Josh Prenot: It was definitely an interesting transition to make. I was fortunate to have people who had gone through it already who were able to help to guide me through it. It was a whirlwind in those months between my last year of NCAA and Olympic Trials and the Olympics. Having to try to find a sponsor and all kinds of other things. Since then, things have settled down. I’m in a rhythm, going through the day to day of a professional swimmer.
Champion’s Mojo: How did you handle the Olympic postponement?
Josh Prenot: My teammates and myself at Cal were very down about it. In hindsight, they made the right call. Can you imagine if they still had the games this summer, with all the athletes who haven’t been able to train. It’s only a once in every four years thing, which makes it a lot harder to deal with this unexpected road bump. We took a little time away from the pool. I took probably a week to decompress from everything, then we got back to hitting it hard. Running. Biking. Doing pushups. We didn’t want to completely reset so close to the Olympics. We wanted to carry that momentum into next year. Normally your season is only 12 months long. There’s now basically a 16 month season until next year that we can use as an opportunity.
Champion’s Mojo: How was this an opportunity for you and your teammates?
Josh Prenot: If you look at what we were able to do with shorter seasons. Especially with the short college season. So now, with 16 months to train, we can make the best of this. It allows you to relax a little bit because you know you have all this time.
Champion’s Mojo: Were there any tools you used to handle that disappointment?
Photo Courtesy: Adidas Instagram
Josh Prenot: We definitely talked to each other a lot, my teammates and I. We had already been discussing what may happen before everything began shutting down and meets were canceled. I tried my best to think about swimming less. You can only put so much energy and thought into swimming, or whatever your thing is. When we’re training, we need to be focused on that, but when you’re home, you have to be able to let the pool go. That’s what I made sure to do during this time.
Champion’s Mojo: Can you share an obstacle or disappointment you’ve had to deal with?
Josh Prenot: The one obstacle that felt really big at the time was the fall of 2015. I had a difficult course load and was preparing for Trials and NCAAs. There was this lab course that was only offered during practice times, meaning that during the Olympic year I had to miss a ton of swim practice just so I could graduate. I was making up my workouts during lap swim times and at other strange hours. That professor told me that there was no way I would be able to graduate while remaining on the swim team and that comment really motivated me to get everything that I had done. I was fortunate to have the support of my lab partner to help me get everything done. I had to manage my time well. I think what really helped me was NEVER multitasking. Instead, I focused all my energy into one thing at a time to get it done.
Champion’s Mojo: What traits do you think you have that have helped make you successful?
Josh Prenot: A healthy level of stubbornness has got to be part of it. Something that has helped me is being very internally motivated. Swimming is a sport where you control your own outcome. What you put into it controls what you get out of it. You don’t have any impact on your opponents performance. I definitely want to make sure that my goals in the sports are about me and achieving my potentially. Being the best in the world or winning a competition are out of my control. I can only control putting my best into it and doing the best I can.
Champion’s Mojo: You say that you don’t like to multitask, so do you apply that to your goals as well?
Photo Courtesy: Reagan Lunn/Georgia Tech Athletics
Josh Prenot: I think it’s healthy to have a long term goal as well as short term goals. My longest goal is only a few years out because I don’t think I can know what my life or even the world will look like in a few years. I don’t want to put my time and effort into planning something when something outside of my control could come along and mess things up.
Champion’s Mojo: Do you have any habits or routines that are important for you?
Josh Prenot: I like to do a sort of debrief after a workout. I like to approach a practice with a list of things I would like to work on then, after the workout, run through how I feel about how I did on those things and what else I could do to work on them. That ritual doesn’t take that much time, no more than 15 minutes.
Champion’s Mojo: How do you apply what you’ve learned as a swimmer to other parts of your life?
Josh Prenot: I think there’s something to be said about the process of learning to be better at something, the process of improvement. That’s what you’re chasing every workout. That process of getting better at a skill is applicable to every aspect of life. That can be applied to everything. That analysis of what you’re doing and what you can do to get better.
Champion’s Mojo: What is your mindset as you walk out on that pool deck at the Olympics or Olympic Trials?
Josh Prenot: Walking out on deck at the Olympic for finals I was chilling, enjoying the moment. I had reached my goals so I was swimming with zero pressure. Up until 2016 my goal was just to make the Olympic team. Obviously I was going to do the best I could, but I wanted to enjoy every moment of the experience. At the Olympics I was taking it all in, whereas at Trials I was the most nervous for a meet that I have ever been. The stakes are so high since, if you don’t win, or get second, you have another four years to wait to have another shot at achieving your dreams of making the Olympic team. Thankfully, being process oriented, I was able to put those nerves aside and focus on swimming how I knew I needed to.
Champion’s Mojo: Being so focused on qualifying at Olympic Trials but then being focused on enjoying the experience at the Olympics themselves, how are you able to combine those to find the best approach?
Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick
Josh Prenot: I wouldn’t say that I was completely outcome oriented at Trials. I would say I was more process focused. Obviously the outcome, qualifying for the Olympics, is on your mind. You’re looking at the opposite end of the pool, at the podium, but that doesn’t change how you approach the race itself. That doesn’t mean that you’re thinking the whole time about getting first or second. I’m thinking about the process of it and how to do it. I was using the information from my prelims and semifinals swims to help me. I needed to be at least half a second faster or I had no chance. That half a second had to come from the last seventy five meters of the race. I knew exactly how I wanted to approach it at Trials in the final. That’s the most perfectly I’ve ever executed a race. Conserving energy where I needed, using that energy and speed when I needed, all to get that outcome, my time.
Champion’s Mojo: What are you thinking about in that situation, during that race?
Josh Prenot: It depends how dialed in you are and what you’re feeling leading up to it. There’s so many things that you have to think about in swimming technique wise so it totally depends on what’s automatic for you, like what happens automatically and what you have to think about to make it go right. Those things can shift so much.
Champion’s Mojo: What advice would you give to a young swimmer wanting to follow in your footsteps?
Josh Prenot: Working hard is like the baseline. Everyone who wants to be good is going to work hard. There’s a difference between trying hard and working hard. Trying hard is just effort. You go to practice, get your heart rate up, exert your muscles. That’s trying hard. Working hard involves a lot more than that. Working hard is improving technique.Thinking about what you can do outside of practice. Taking time to make yourself better. Nutrition and hydration. It’s so many other things than just showing up to the workout like everyone else. If you want to kind of separate yourself from the pack the act of trying hard is not going to be enough.
Champion’s Mojo: Thank you for spending this time with us today Josh! We wish you all the best!
Josh Prenot: Thank you! It’s been my pleasure.