Cross Country Skiing

On the professional side, I don't think financial success plays into achieving your definition of success. On a personal level, having enough money to live comfortably can help reduce stress and provide a sense of security. However, too much money can also create stress.
 
Transcript: "The question is, do you think financial success plays any role in achieving your definition of success? I'm going to answer this two-pronged. For my profession, I don't think financial success played into it at all. I lived for 30 years, lived working paycheck to paycheck, and had a successful and enjoyable coaching career. If I'd been paid five times as much, I don't think I would have coached any better. On that side, I'd say no. On the personal side, I'd say yes. If you can't pay your bills and you're stressed over it, it makes it tough. You need to have enough success, enough finances to feel like, okay, I can do what I want to do. That said, I feel there's a sweet spot in how much money anyone needs. If you don't have enough, you're always worried about paying the bills. I think if you have more than enough, you're always worried about trying to make more. It's a funny thing. There's a comfort level if you have enough to pay the bills, but you're not stressed about trying to make as much as you can. I never understand the pro athletes who are fighting to get $50 million a year instead of $45 million a year. Anyone should be able to live on $2 million. It's just kind of a funny thing. Too much money also creates stress."

I balance personal success with the success of those around me, such as family and friends, by helping them be happy and supporting their goals. That way, we can all be successful together.
 
Transcript: "How do you balance personal success with the success of those around you, such as family and friends? Oh, this is an easy one. My definition of success is being happy, and I'm happy when I can help people. So if the people around me are happy, I'm happy. I feel like if I've helped them become happy, then they're successful. We're all successful. There's no competition at all there. It's just we're all trying to help each other be better, happier people."

Taking a break and resetting can help break out of a period of flat performances.
 
Transcript: "What are some strategies you use to break out of a period of flat performances? Often rest is a big one. I think oftentimes when you have flat performances like you're either borderline sick or just a little tired. So resting is good, taking a reset like if you can get go somewhere I don't know if you're like traveling for skiing or like competing, going home, taking a break, sort of getting away from it, and then coming back maybe a few weeks later and like trying to reset, really like get back into it and allow yourself the time to come around can help break out of the like that slump."

My favorite dinner recipe is a honey Dijon miso-glazed salmon served with brown rice and roasted broccoli. For dessert, I like to make a gluten-free pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting.
 
Transcript: "Hi Michael. Okay, I love baking and I love dessert and I also love to cook. I just I really enjoy great food. So I would say my favorite cooking recipe like for dinner is I love to bake salmon and I make this honey Dijon miso-glazed. So I mix 1 tablespoon each of butter, sweet white, miso paste, Dijon mustard and honey. And I mix that together and I smear it on On a piece of salmon and I bake it in the oven at 425 until I can poke it with a fork and it's done. And then I serve that with, like, brown rice and roasted broccoli in the oven, and it's a quick easy dinner, it always tastes amazing. And then I pair that with, I don't know. I'm kind of the team cake baker for birthdays. So lately, I've made a really good gluten, free, pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting. That was pretty delicious."

Strength training is essential for skiing, both to prevent injuries and to generate power. I do a full-body lift twice a week with dynamic warm-ups and plyos, as well as circuits with med ball slams, quarter squats, and jumps. This helps build the core, legs, and upper body.
 
Transcript: "So strength training is super necessary for skiing. And I actually love getting the gym because I think it's super fun to train a different way. We actually spend a lot of time doing different cardio work and I think having the opportunity to get in the gym and make sure our muscles are really strong that really, really helps because not only is it great for injury prevention and also for our postures, you know, we spend a lot of time kind of in this hunched over position double pulling and, you know, leaning into the hill and You sure that we strengthen, the opposing muscles so we can stand and sit with good posture and not end up with that curved spine all the time. I think that's really important. So twice a week, we go into the gym and we have an hour-long. Lift it focuses on a lot of dynamic warm-up. So we make sure that we're ready for what we're going to put our bodies through. And then we do a lot of plyos I end up doing pretty full body lifting so the phase I'm in right now we end up doing Doing these circuits where it's a lot of, like Med ball. Slams that are really activating the full body going right in, you know, from that into quarter squats with quite a bit of weight back into jumps. You know, you kind of going through different systems and it's working the core of the legs and the upper body. And I think it's really necessary, not just for injury prevention, but power. So if you have a mass start race and it's 10 kilometers and it all comes down to the final. Final Sprint and in the last little bit you know you have 10 people spending for the line, you need to have the strength to generate the power to get to that line first. So I do think strength training is necessary for a number of reasons."

I bring my own pillow, peanut butter or almond butter, Aeropress coffee, and American gum on the road with me for cross-country trips.
 
Transcript: "Okay, so I actually meant to ask this question for everyone in the cross-country team, but I realized I should probably answer to because there are a couple things that I bring that are really important. I actually bring my own pillow on the road because we change beds basically every week and I want one consistent thing so that I can sleep really well. No matter what kind of bed I'm on where I am in the world that really helps me. I also bring my own peanut butter or almond butter because that is a Race morning food that I really really like and I know sits well and we don't usually find really great options in Europe for peanut butter. The other thing is I bring coffee at Aeropress and I also bring gum from the US because for whatever reason I don't like the chewing gum in Europe very much and I really like to have it and so I bring my own"