The two coolest parts of the Olympic experience for me were the gym and the cafeteria in Olympic Village. In this post, I want to talk about the gym.

All my life, I have looked up to elite athletes. The championships, the highlights, the funny commercials. But what I really, really love is when we get a sneak peek behind the scenes at the work they do when no one is watching. That is what truly makes them great, and that is what gets me fired up!

It’s like the Rocky Balboa training scenes where we see him going to the no-name dirty gym before training for the title fight. When he runs in the streets by himself before sunrise or punches flanks of beef in the freezer instead of being in a fancy gym.

I’ve always felt able to identify with those scenes. Not because I’ve ever punched a flank of beef in a freezer (although that sounds kind of fun). But because I could relate to working out ingloriously in sweatpants far outside any limelight. I had big dreams that might have seemed delusional or unrealistic to most people, but to me were going to come true no matter what!

The gym in Olympic Village was a sneak peek behind the scenes for EVERY sport! And all of these sneak peeks were only five feet away from each other. I would be warming up on the exercise bike or stretching and rolling on a foam roller and within my field of vision was the gymnastics team from Argentina doing handstands and cartwheels to warm up, a kickboxer from Egypt literally kicking his trainer who was wearing a body pad, a 7-foot tall basketball player from France on the rowing machine, softball players from Mexico doing medicine ball throws, marathon runners from Kenya on the treadmill, powerlifters from New Zealand doing deadlifts, and a badminton player from Denmark working on his footwork. It was insane!

And every time I went in there it was a different group of athletes doing their different sports-specific training. The best in the world, all in one place.