Champion’s Mojo Podcast – Ryan Murphy
Ryan Murphy is a three-time Olympic gold medalist and world-record holder in the men’s 100-meter backstroke. He swept the backstroke events at the 2016 Olympic Games and also broke Aaron Peirsol’s seven-year-old world record in the 100 back while leading off the 400 medley relay. Read about how Murphy deals with pressure, both in and out of the pool.
Below is an abridged version of the superb interview, conducted by Kelly Palace and Maria Parker. In every one of their podcasts, Palace and Parker identify key topics with their guest and provide listeners with valuable insights. Palace and Parker continually ask deep and information-gathering questions that offer the athlete the chance to provide an in-depth response. You can listen to the full podcast episode #67 at https://championsmojo.com or by clicking here.
Champion’s Mojo: Tell us a little about how you have spent this quarantine.
Ryan Murphy: I was out of the water for a couple weeks. I’m living in California so we still aren’t back to our normal pool situation. I train out at Cal and those pools are still shut down, so our training schedule is still a little bit sporadic. I had a couple of weeks off after the Olympic decision came down. Now I’m just kind of in the process of building back up my fitness for when we’re able to get back into our normal routine. I’m really excited to get back into that, to get in really good shape and really start putting the pedal to the metal and prepping for Tokyo 2021.
Champion’s Mojo: Was that time off sad? Frustrating?
Ryan Murphy: All of the above really. I think the sadness came from the Olympic decision. I was in a really good spot. I was doing things in practice that I’ve never done before. I was really excited about what I was going to do this summer. I was a little bit bummed that I wasn’t able to finish the job this summer. I’m going to get to finish the job next summer. That’s something that I’m really, really looking forward to. It’s also nice whenever I have a break to just really take a step back and live a normal lifestyle. I think there’s so many things that I sacrifice for my swimming. When I take a break, I guess it’s a time to kind of relax and just be a normal 24-year-old guy and hang out with my friends. I did enjoy that a lot and now the motivation levels are super high. I’m definitely anxious to get back into my normal routine and just start really, really grinding with training.
Champion’s Mojo: What does “normal life” look like for you?
Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick
Ryan Murphy: I was back home in Florida. I was hanging out with my parents a lot. Golf courses were actually still open in Florida the whole way through as long as you followed social distancing guidelines so I’ve played golf with my dad. Normally I would try to go somewhere cool and have a little vacation but that wasn’t possible this time around. There was just a lot of a lot of relaxing, kind of a lot of catching up with old friends, cooking, watching movies. It was definitely a different type of normal lifestyle, but it was still nice to have those two weeks to just relax. I don’t think it’s easy for my parents to have their 24-year-old come back into their life but I have what I think are two of the best parents in the world so it was a really awesome time to just hang out with them. They’re in Florida and I’m in California, so I don’t get to come home that often so I really do cherish the times that I’m able to go back.
Champion’s Mojo: Obviously there is a lot of emotions and confusion with everything right now. What have you been able to do to help you handle that? What do you do to maintain your mental health?
Ryan Murphy: I think the first thing that I tried to do in this situation is just realize that I’m not a public health expert. I talked to people that are or people that are in the medical field. Luckily my next door neighbor has his Ph.D in public health. He’s one of the top people at the Lawrence lab, which is Berkeley’s research lab. In talking to him I felt like I learned a lot about the situation and that made me feel a lot more comfortable. I think recognizing that as a human being, I have to do my part to help protect the medical community, as well as my local community, my family and my friends. I guess it’s easy to view this very individually and personally and to say, like, ‘I’ve had to sacrifice so much because of this pandemic,’ and I just don’t think that is the right mindset here. I think it’s like we have a moral obligation to help protect our communities so that’s what I’m doing in terms of the competitive side. The Olympic dream is what I’m working towards, but right now I have to be flexible with my plan. Everything is kind of tentative at this point but that’s ok. I’m working on a plan. That’s what makes me feel comfortable in the end. I just realize that I have these plans in my head and that, if something new comes out, maybe I have to adjust to that.I think that the biggest thing is just not getting so dialed in to what I want to happen and just kind of taking the news as it comes and adjust on the fly.
Champion’s Mojo: Have you always been able to be that flexible in life?
Ryan Murphy: I think that’s a little bit tough to answer. I think just on a daily basis, even if I’m talking about a singular practice, I’ve got to be able to be flexible with what I’m trying to do. It’s like, if I have a set of eight 100s at best average and then I get to number three and I’m feeling absolutely terrible, I’ve got to kind of adjust the way I’m swimming and be like, that’s OK. Like going into the set, I have something I want to do. If that’s not possible on that day then great. I’ll shift and work on something else. There’s little moments like that in every day so that’s on that very small scale. Obviously, this is much larger than a situation like that but I think the same type of mentality applies in both those situations.
Champion’s Mojo: So you won both the 100 and 200 backstrokes at the 2016 Olympics at your first Olympics and just 21 years old. Tell us how you handled that kind of pressure and thrived.
Photo Courtesy: Becca Wyant
Ryan Murphy: I did a good job the entire year, kind of just downplaying the moment. That was my way to deal with the pressure. At practice and every meet, I always put a lot of pressure on myself to perform. One of the things I say all the time is the best way to deal with pressure is to deal with pressure. That’s what I try to do throughout the year, put pressure on myself, like making something like a college dual meet more important than it actually is. In my mind I’m like, okay, I gotta be ready. I’ve gotta go. I’ve got to perform really well here. That was kind of my practice to perform on the Olympic stage. Then also realizing that it’s just a 100 back and it’s just a 200 back. Those are races that I’ve done hundreds, if not thousands of times. It’s against a field that I had raced before. There’s not really too much new in that situation. The only thing that’s different is the amount of people that are watching it. I feel like I recognized that going in, that when you combine all of those thoughts, obviously I was nervous, but I didn’t have any sort of crippling nerves that some people talk about on the Olympic stage. I try to take the highs I feel and the lows I feel as a human and try to decrease the range of that. I like to just stay a little bit more neutral in everything I do and pressure is no different. I don’t want to feel a ton of pressure when there’s a lot of it and I also don’t want to feel no pressure at all because then I’m not even excited to perform. I’m always trying to operate kind of in the middle and I think that’s worked out well for me so far.
Champion’s Mojo: Did you come up with this on your own?
Ryan Murphy: I think it’s something that I really learned at a young age from my parents. I just have a very accepting type of family. They were very understanding that people have good days and bad days. That’s life. If someone in my family was in a bad mood we would acknowledge it, but give them that time to get it out. This is a bad move, but tomorrow will probably be better. It’s really just kind of recognizing and accepting your emotions. I just think that it kind of brings down those emotions. I’m in a really bad mood and I just say, hey, guys, I’m not in a good mood today, I just kind of want some space. I feel better just after saying that statement. It’s the same thing on the top end. If I’m feeling really, really excited it helps me come to grips with that emotion as well. That way I can either amplify it with the group, or realize I need to switch it off a little bit.
Champion’s Mojo: Do you have any role models?
Ryan Murphy: Matt Grevers is someone that I always looked up to. He has always been very, very nice to me. Given me advice when I have wanted it and when I have needed it. So he’s someone that’s great. Tyler Clary is also someone that’s super nice. Ryan Lochte is someone that I grew up kind of seeing a lot. I grew up in Jacksonville, Florida, he grew up in Daytona. That’s an hour apart so I’d see him at meets growing up. He was another guy who, even as I was a 12-year-old, would take time to talk to me behind the blocks. He is just someone who is very willing to lend his time to help people out. Aaron Piersol was probably the person I looked up to the most and honestly, like a super incredible competitor, absolutely dominant, which is really cool. What I was drawn to is kind of his way behind the blocks. This dude would walk out with no cap on, no goggles before an Olympic final, and then just put his cap and goggles on 20 seconds before he jumps in, wins Olympic gold, and then is still cool as a cucumber. I just thought that was awesome and totally different from me. More recently, I’ve become super close with Lenny Krayzelburg. He is the general manager of the LA Current and is a big reason why I swim for them. He is an absolute workhorse. One of the things I say a lot is I don’t feel like I find too many people that I feel like can outwork me, and Lenny Krayzelburg is someone that can outwork me. He would be calling me about L.A. current stuff at like 9:00 p.m. on a Saturday night. “Here’s what I’m working on. What do you think of this?” I’m like, dude, like it’s 9:00 p.m. on Saturday night, let’s chill it. Of all the great backstrokers, I think I am most similar to Lenny in my personality and how I approach things.
Champion’s Mojo: Who would you say is the opposite of you?
Photo Courtesy: Annie Grevers
Ryan Murphy: Aaron Peirsol. Aaron Peirsol is kind of like a philosopher, he’s very deep. You ask him a question and the things that he comes up with are just so different from me. I say I feel like I think like an operator. With him it’s like you’re talking to Socrates or something. It’s absurd.
Champion’s Mojo: What do you think made Peirsol so great?
Ryan Murphy: I’ve never asked Aaron that, but I have talked to Jack Roach, who was a staple on those Team USA trips. He’s a guy who developed a really good relationship with someone like Aaron. He says what made him so great is that Aaron was never satisfied with the race. He could have broken the world record, and he got out and would say he feels like he could have done a little better. Aaron said it when he retired. He was like, I didn’t feel like I could swim a race better than I did in 2009 in the 200 back. It was just an incredible swim. He recognized that as well. He felt like he’d reached his potential on that swim, so he decided he was done. That was his career.
Champion’s Mojo: Do you have that same feeling after a race?
Ryan Murphy: I can’t say I have been like that. I feel like I was closer in short course yards than I ever had been in long courses to feeling like I had reached my potential. I just feel like I have more room to improve. There’s a feeling and rhythm that I have hit in practice, but never hit in a meet. That is a little bit frustrating for me that I haven’t quite put it all together at a competition yet. Even those Olympic performances and the world record performance, there’s things that I did wrong in those races that I could improve.
Champion’s Mojo: What are your hobbies and things like outside of swimming for you?
Ryan Murphy: I think it’s really important to have balance in life. I would not be able to swim for probably more than like six months if I was just a robot and only thinking about swimming. Only thinking about my swimming performance. I try to have really good balance. I mentioned golf earlier. Golf is a really great hobby. It’s cool watching the Michael Jordan documentary where he talks about golf as his release. When you’re playing golf, if you’re thinking about someone, something else, or someone else, you’re gonna hit the ball and it’s going to go any direction but straight. I love golf because it’s very technical. You have to be locked in mentally.I’m a huge sports fan. I love watching sports. This quarantine period has been a little bit tough because there’s just been a lack of sports content to watch. I think one of the things that I was super conscious about when I turned professional in swimming is I was always someone that was interested in school and took school really seriously. I never want to feel like I am losing my capacity to learn. One of the things that I do to keep my mind fresh is I follow the stock market. It’s kind of a nerdy hobby, but I love it. I am fortunate to be in a position where I’ve got some really great sponsors and I like to invest the money that I save and, with the stock market, you can look at the financials and learn so much. Learning about consumer psychology and what will affect the market. I think that’s a really fun hobby that I really enjoy.
Champion’s Mojo: Have you had any real obstacles in your life?
Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick
Ryan Murphy: I definitely have had some very challenging situations. I think every day is just made up of thousands of decisions and in those decisions, even if it’s almost second nature, you have to make some hard decisions. I think a specific scenario for me would be in 2016, just a month out from the Olympic Trials. I was in the weight room just doing some pretty light, quick squats and I felt something in my back. I’ve never had an injury before at that point. I didn’t feel good but was going to work through it. I swam that day and it was starting to feel a little bit better but I woke up the next day and I could hardly stand up. I could hardly get out of bed. This does not feel good. I go to practice and try to swim it off. I couldn’t do a flip turn. I went to a physical therapist and I was diagnosed and they were giving me some exercises to do that to help it loosen up but it was still a week before I could do a flip turn. It was three weeks before I could do a backstroke start. That was a week before the Olympic Trials. That was a really, really challenging situation. Obviously physically, it was tough, but more mentally. I was on fire in training that year. I was just bummed out really hard that potentially my Olympic dream was not going to happen because of this back injury. There was nothing I could really do. That was a really tough situation, but luckily it came all together for me right in time for Olympic trials and ended up having a really good meet at Olympic Trials and then was even better at the Olympics. That was definitely an obstacle that I had to deal with.
Champion’s Mojo: Were you able to use what you’ve learned from training and going through hard stuff with that?
Ryan Murphy: It was terrifying. One of the things that I believe in is that anytime you have an injury or sickness, you’re in front of professionals. I was in front of a really good physical therapist and I learned a lot about my body. I learned about what kind of things may trigger my back to get super tights like that. So now, I’m doing things to prevent my back from ever locking up like that again. It was good because I learned a ton about my body on the mental side. There wasn’t anything I could control in that situation. I couldn’t mentally force my back to heal any faster. All I could do is follow the directions of the physical therapist and do what they say and really just stay positive that all of the progress I had made in that season wasn’t going to go away because I couldn’t do a flip turn for a week. So that was kind of the biggest thing mentally, just realizing that, in the grand scheme of things, that week wasn’t gonna make a huge difference in my Olympic performance.
Champion’s Mojo: What other routines and rituals do you do on a regular basis to make you successful?
Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick
Ryan Murphy: I do think that success comes from consistency. That’s really what I try to do on a day to day basis. It doesn’t matter whether I’m feeling great or terrible, I’m trying to come to the pool and really just approach my day with the same type of attitude no matter what. I think that’s really important. I think that having that kind of mental strength and that mental consistency is definitely a differentiator that I do think contributes a lot to my success. I think I am kind of a creature of habit. Almost every night I have kind of a similar routine. That’s typical like brushing your teeth, washing your face, putting in my retainer, like that type of stuff. But before that, I try foam roll or stretch as the last thing I do to end my day so that the last thing I do is helping my body recover. That’s something where, at this level of sport, recovery is almost the most important thing. I really make a big commitment to my recovery.
Champion’s Mojo: What’s exciting you about the future, besides the Olympics?
Ryan Murphy: I do want to point out that we just finished May, which is Water Safety Month. I want to make sure that people are being aware and staying as safe as possible around the water. I think something that’s tough in this time is that beaches and lakes and public areas of water are opening back up and swim schools are still closed. I really just want to encourage people to stay safe around the water. If you’re a parent or guardian, keep an eye on your kids around the water. I want to make sure that everyone can have fun and not potentially be in a bad situation.
Champion’s Mojo: Thank you for a great interview Ryan and best of luck!
Ryan Murphy: Thanks for having me!