"Sir, you are the world's greatest athlete."
That’s what King Gustav V of Sweden told Jim Thorpe when the American won the Decathlon at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics.
96 years later Bryan Clay earned that moniker by winning Decathlon Gold at the 2008 Beijing Games.
Ten track and field events across two days is a gruelling prospect to most people.
But for Clay it didn’t come close to the amount of work he put into training.
“I trained a little different than some other people train for the Decathlon,” Clay told the Best in the World with Richard Parr podcast. “My goal was to make myself as uncomfortable as possible on a daily basis so that when I competed, the Decathlon was something that was easy.
“I always told people, as much as I hated doing the Decathlon - because of where you have to take yourself during a Decathlon - I hated training even worse, because I felt like we do more than Decathlon in practice sometimes. The amount of repetitions that I would do during one practice was incredible.”
Clay would lift weights between 7-9am each morning before his training sessions would even begin.
“The reason why I did it before was purely a mental thing. Again I totally get it, maybe it's not the best thing to do. A lot of times they say not to lift before because of your fast twitch muscles and things like that. You're frying that system and those things take a longer period of time to recover or you're using all your glycogen stores and so that takes a little while for it to come back.
“But for me, the reason why I did it that way is because I knew that every time I got into a meet, one of the thoughts that went through my head was, I'd show up to the morning of the Decathlon, I'd walk out on the track to warm up and I would think, ‘Man, I feel great. I didn't have to lift this morning. I'm fresh because I didn't have to lift this morning.’ And if I didn't have to lift this morning, then I know that there are things that I can do. And so I had the bare minimums that I was trying to meet. And I would meet those times or those distances in practice.
“So the example is if I went out, and I was getting ready to run or I was getting ready to long jump, and I was a little tired from long jumping, I would think to myself, ‘Well, listen, I haven't even lifted this morning.’ I didn't do all this other stuff. And on any given day, at practice, I know that I can jump 7.70 metres or 7.75 metres.
“So when I was at a competition, I knew that even if I was a little tired or I wasn't feeling just right I knew that I was still fresher than I would normally be on a practice day. And I knew that on any given day at practice, even with lifting and dead legs and my hardest week of training, I could jump 7.75. I knew that when I got onto the runway it didn't matter what I felt like, what the conditions were, I was going to jump at least 7.75.
“So my goal during practice was to make myself uncomfortable. It was to take myself through and to get the mental discipline to not care if it was raining. So we practiced in the rain. To not care who I was competing against. So I would compete against the throwers and the 400 metres runners and the individual event guys. But it was to put myself in situations where I had to focus on my ability and what I was good at and I had to challenge myself to be better than what I was and to take myself to an uncomfortable spot all the time, so that when I got to a competition, the competition was easy.”
You can listen to Bryan’s full interview on the Best in the World with Richard Parr podcast on Apple and Spotify.
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On the ‘Best In the World’ Podcast, Richard Parr talks to sports stars who have reached the pinnacle.
World Champions, Olympic Champions, World Record Holders & World Number Ones.
The show reveals what these athletes do differently from the rest of us to be the best. This includes training techniques, nutrition, relationships, sacrifices, mental health, time management, home environment and much more.
Richard wants to know what they do so we can improve our own lives.
Connect with Richard on social media @richard_parr.