When Olympic swimmer Katie Ledecky returned to the pool this summer for her third Video games, she took on her most grueling agenda but: a by no intention-before attempted distance of 6,200 meters of total swimming—practically twice the distance that Michael Phelps swam in his legend-breaking 2008 Beijing Olympics.
The patience take a look at modified into as soon as value the fight as Ledecky emerged from Tokyo with four medals, including gold in the critical-ever girls folk’s Olympic 1,500-meter freestyle and her third straight Olympic gold in the 800-meter freestyle. With a total of six, Ledecky has won the most particular person gold medals of any female swimmer in history. (Her total gold count, including relays, is seven.) Her 10 total Olympic medals attach her on the relieve of handiest Natalie Coughlin, Jenny Thompson, and Dara Torres—every of whom has 12 medals—for the most among female swimmers.
But Ledecky might perhaps perhaps surpass them when all is alleged and accomplished, as she plans to advance to the Olympic Video games in 2024 and per chance 2028. What she isn’t so obvious about is whether she’ll slim her focal level to a specialty distance luxuriate in the 1,500 meters or proceed to enter four events on the championships.
“I could perhaps want to pay attention to because the years stride on as I growth as an athlete,” Ledecky tells SELF after the Tokyo Video games, “and judge what I want to total to assign myself in the absolute most realistic role transferring forward to symbolize Crew USA on the stage I hope to originate at.”
For now, her focal level is on celebrating one other profitable Olympic Video games and taking time to kick again and unwind with family and traffic in her native Bethesda, Maryland. One component she’s having a await is hitting up her current restaurants in the D.C. attach for a talk to and treating her traffic and family—along with her Wells Fargo Active Cash Card, now that she’s partnered with Visa—to their meals.
One in explicit she will’t wait to fetch relieve to? Ize’s Deli in Rockville, Maryland. When Ledecky modified into as soon as in highschool, her mom ordered her the the same publish-swim-follow omelette so over and over that the deli ended up naming the dish after her, she tells SELF. Even at that time, Ledecky knew the importance of fueling her physique adequately—and deliciously—for the extraordinary exercises that had been needed to her success in the pool.
Over the years, Ledecky has honed in on what works for her and what she wants to total to live on the cease of her sport—tricks of kinds which she’s persisted to explain for the length of competitions. SELF bought the total puny print from Ledecky on how she modified into as soon as in a position to grab on the most grueling swim agenda in Olympics history—and advance out on top.
1. Ultimate the pre-bustle routine.
Although she’s handiest 24, Ledecky is now a USA Swimming extinct with three Olympic Video games appearances below her belt. Lustrous what to await at a predominant world championship makes a world of distinction for athletes, who might perhaps perhaps be very attached to their common routines.
Tokyo, nonetheless, threw a wrench in that regularity, because the swimming events operated on a reverse agenda than championships quit in overall: The preliminary rounds had been in the night time and the finals in the morning to coincide with the primetime broadcast window in the united states.
A trade to a tried-and-criminal routine might perhaps perhaps be stressful, which makes developing—and sticking to—a consistent pre-bustle agenda mighty more critical. Ledecky says to put together for her morning finals, she made obvious to wake up three or four hours before her bustle to fetch her win ready and begin hydrating. For breakfast, she ate oatmeal with a banana, two eggs, fruit, and bread. Then she headed over to the pool with huge time to put together, as early as two and a half of hours before her bustle.
“I fetch in a while for the bus to be boring,” she says. “It is advisable to study out about that on the Olympics.”
About 60 to 90 minutes before the bustle, she’d warm up in the pool, trade into her racing swimsuit, then fetch relieve in the pool for one other short warm-up about 30 minutes before her call time—the final live before the bustle itself, when athletes impress in on the ready room.
2. Streamline the restoration direction of.
To efficiently tackle legend-setting swimming yardage, Ledecky leans immense on restoration.
True away following a bustle, she refuels with chocolate milk, a successfully off offer of protein and carbs, plus water for hydration and some sort of energy or granola bar.
Then she’ll start her “warm-down,” which takes 20 to 30 minutes and contains 1,000 to 1,500 meters of “in actuality easy swimming,” she says.
Ledecky tries to bask in a beefy meal about an hour after the bustle. In Tokyo, the athletes in actuality had their meals ready for them on the pool, so that they might perhaps perhaps bask in their dinner before they hopped relieve on the bus or on their journey relieve to the Olympic Village. That, says Ledecky, helped lower down on wasted time and allowed her to fetch some additional minutes of mighty-wished sleep.
As antagonistic to making obvious to bask in and hydrate for the length of this publish-bustle window, Ledecky says she doesn’t follow any snort dietary tricks.
“I criminal stride according to feel and I want to make sure I’m by no intention hungry,” she says. “It is advisable to live ahead of any hunger that it’s likely you’ll perhaps feel.”
3. Sort out what’s next—no longer what already took attach.
A packed swim agenda can mean quite a lot of races to ruminate on. But that sort of contemplating, as Ledecky discovered, can snatch far from the focal level it be critical to snarl at what’s criminal in front of you.
“I strive to grab it one bustle at a time and no longer think too far ahead,” she says.
That mindset modified into as soon as especially needed in Ledecky’s hardest stretch in Tokyo: the 70-minute turnaround between the 200-meter freestyle final and the 1,500-meter freestyle final.
It modified into as soon as a rapid length of time to physically recharge, and Ledecky couldn’t waste any of that time on unhealthy rumination. Within the 200 meters, Ledecky accomplished a disappointing fifth, while her rival—Australia’s Ariarne Titmus—won gold. The day before, in the 400-meter freestyle, Ledecky earned silver to Titmus’s gold. (Again in 2016, it modified into as soon as Ledecky who took residence that double gold.)
Ledecky needed to seek out a mode to refocus on the 1,500 meters and the likelihood to score a ancient first Olympic medal in the tournament.
“After the critical bustle, I shift my mindset to the 2nd bustle almost straight away,” she says. “Whether or no longer the critical bustle goes in actuality successfully or no longer as successfully as I would net hoped, I know that I in actuality want to stride on from it in actuality snappy and formula the 2nd bustle luxuriate in it’s my first of that day and my handiest bustle of that day.”
Not handiest did Ledecky, who is the sector legend holder in the tournament, efficiently dominate the bustle, but she also led a 1-2 U.S. sweep with fellow American Erica Sullivan.
“It modified into as soon as in actuality particular,” she says of her ancient gold medal victory. “I indubitably modified into as soon as contemplating of the total female U.S. swimmers that hadn’t had that different [to race the 1,500 meters at the Olympics], and we wished to fetch Crew USA began on the absolute most realistic that it’s likely you’ll perhaps perhaps bear in mind demonstrate for that bustle.”
4. Lean into the joy and vitality of camaraderie.
When requested to name her current Olympic 2nd, Ledecky doesn’t level out her 1,500-meter freestyle gold or her 800-meter three-peat, which modified into as soon as her final bustle of those Video games.
As an different, she talks about hanging out in the pool along with her relay teammates and lingering over dinner in the Olympic Village.
“There had been so many newbies on the personnel, so it modified into as soon as in actuality enjoyable to fetch to know them, and I already omit them,” she says, relating to the practically dozen teenage swimmers on the personnel who made their Olympic debut in Tokyo.
The Stanford alum says that non-public connection and personnel energy makes relay finals a more “enjoyable” journey than diving off the blocks for an particular person tournament, and she’s discovered to harness that feeling to bring about mighty more vitality to her racing.
“There’s so mighty pleasure and energy,” she says of relays. “We’re having a quantity of enjoyable on the relieve of the blocks together, and it’s in actuality easy to fetch up for a Crew USA relay and to throw down a terribly like a flash swim.”
For lumber, Ledecky produced one of her most impressive swims of the Video games in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay final, handing over the quickest damage up of the total relay to anchor Crew USA from third to stable the silver medal.
“It is advisable to total it for your teammates and you luxuriate in to pray to total it for your nation. that three other other folks are counting on you to offer your very easiest. All four of us that had been on that relay did that,” she says. “Because the anchor, [the teammate who swims last], and getting to gaze their swims before mine, I could perhaps perhaps look that they had been having the absolute most realistic that it’s likely you’ll perhaps perhaps bear in mind swims, so I had that energy and pleasure to exit there and provides it my easiest as successfully.”
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