Natalie Coughlin on Training, Mindset, and Wine Making

It's so funny because I had more nightmares and more anxiety going into Chopped than I had before the Olympics than I had before Dancing with the Stars than I had really before anything, and it was crazy. My name is Jeffers Carrion and you're listening to four Courses with Jeffrey Carrion from I Heart Radio. In four courses, I'll be taking you along for the ride while I talked with the top talent of our time. In each conversation, I focused on four different areas from my guest life

and career. And during those four courses, I'm gonna dig, deepen and cover new insights and inspirations that we can all use to fuel ourselves to push forward. My guest for this episode has been a judge on Iron Chef and a contestant un chopped, is raising two children while building a wine business from the ground up, and she

happens to be an Olympic athlete. In fact, of the tens of thousands of men and women who have competed in the Summer Olympics since its inception, she is only one of fourteen who have won a dozen medals, Yes, a dozen, Without further delay, Please enjoy my informative and wide ranging discussion with a warm hearted and hard working Natalie Coglin. Hi, Hi, Jeffrey, It's good to see you again. It's good to see you again. For my first course,

we talked about all things swimming. She tells me about all the extensive support she received from her family, and she outlines the meditative benefits of being under hoarder for six hours a day. How in God's name did you get to a point where you knew how to do this? How? I mean, did you just decide like I'm just going to be a swimmer when you're eight. I always said that I was competitive from the second I got out the womb. You know, I was born competitive, and I

diaper exactly like. I can't remember a time that I wasn't competitive. And it didn't necessary, like I didn't have to be good at something. I always wanted to be the best, and like if it was dance class, I wanted to do three spins for everyone spin that the girl next to me did. I was a terrible dancer, but mind you, but I just wanted to do more in my little brain, you know, I wanted to be better. And I was better in the water than I was on land as a little kid, and so I joined swimming,

but I wasn't I wasn't good at first. I was just really really competitive, and eventually I got to be a decent age group swimmer. And then by about thirteen was really when I hit the national stage, going to junior Nationals, going to Nationals, and actually finally at Nationals,

all within one year, Like I will never forget. I was in Fort Lauderdale for my very first Nationals and I final and I remember the announcer saying in lane one, thirteen year old Natalie Coaglin, and that was just I mean, I I choked and I had an awful race. But yeah, I got really good, very very quickly in those preteen years. So how did your dad, who was a police officer

in your mom who was Filipino. How did they know how to enter all this and how did they guide you and take you on the road, Like there's a conversation between mom and dad, right like we gotta do this. She's really good, you think, So, like how did that happen? And how do your your siblings sort of fit in that narrative because there's a lot of work being on the road and all that. It's a lot of work. And by the time I was a teenager, they weren't

traveling with us. You know, we traveled with our team and we had chaperones and stuff. But yeah, the age group years, so from like six to probably eleven or twelve, my parents had to go to meets that lasted all day long and through really really hot California weather and cold, rainy California weather. It was tough. And they were the perfect athletic parents and that they pushed me to work hard and they helped me goal set, but they never

chose my goals for me. They just they they stupidly one year came up with a financial reward for every cut that I got, So five dollars if you get this PRT. But if you jump from one cut to the next higher cut, you got fifteen dollars. And I remember in one summer I got like six d dollars, which in the late eighties early nineties for my working class parents was a ton of money. That was the one and only summer they ever bribed me financially, because

I was very very driven. Oh, I guess, So did this leave you any sort of I mean, I know your your mom, I thought was very sweet because we're both Catholic, that she found a Mass for you. That's so sweet. I mean, just a dedication that was just so funny. Like, yes, I was very very Catholic um growing up, and my parents still are, and I went to Catholic school through high school. And even if we had a swim meet on the weekend, we found we found a Mass, and it could be a Spanish Mass,

but we still went. It's like, Mom, I don't speak Spanish. It's like, but it counts, okay. The communion is communion. You're going exactly exactly, we know what the gifts are and it's five o'clock in the afternoons, one every hour, so there's no excuse, right. It's so funny. Even when I had my first World Championships and I think it was Fukuoka, Japan. My parents got on a train an hour and a half each way to find a Catholic mass that fitted into their their schedule, which was in Japanese.

By the way, Wow, they're very dedicated. I mean obviously that the physicality of swimming and running is something that you can't you know, if you're a musician, you can, like you know, exist on a fifth of whiskey and like some sneakers, right, because that's what they do, right. But if you're a swimmer or an athlete, what did you eat growing up so that you became so like? I mean, I was, I was looking at all these YouTube and videos of you. You're like in such great

shape at an early age you were as well. How did that all happen? Yeah? My mom was always conscious about giving me healthy food, nutritious food. And even though my mom worked full time, she came home after work every day and cooked us dinner. Filipino culture is such a nurturing culture in very many ways. And if you see, if you ever go to a holiday at a Filipino family's house, you think they're feeding an army because it's just so much. And my mom was always that way,

and she's continues to be that way. Like my sister just had her first baby last week, and my mom's going down to San Diego to visit her and is bringing coolers of food and it's going to cook her you know, breakfast, bunch of dinner. Yeah. Yeah, she's being a very happy grandma. And that my mom has always been that way. And I was very very fortunate. It was just your mom's Filipino and you know, we all the time like this, and you're just gonna eat ten

times as much. Exactly exactly did she bring the food along and and like in storage containers already prepped for like break Both my parents were always prepared. My dad was the one who got the pop up at the slim Meat and like the tent set up and got the location scouted out of. My mom always gave us the snacks and the food and it was a family operation. And you asked about siblings. I have a younger sister.

She was at the meats as well, and yeah, it's just the two of us and all of our teammates and getting fed by our parents and sheltered by them. It was. It was really fun. And those meats can be brutal because they're you know, three days, all day, but my parents get the best of it. They're all day. What do you do when you're not in the pool. Well, when you're a little kid, you run around and play tag and you're in your suit all day making friendship bracelets.

I don't know what the parents do to to stay busy. Honestly, they're not on their cell phone on their texting. There was no texting. Yeah, there's none of that then. But yeah, we would swim, you know, five races and there'll be maybe an hour or two in between races. And I have no idea what my parents did, but we were always run around with friends and make the most of it. But it is an all day affair. Did you work with anyone for any data collection for your body as

you were getting better and more exceptional and more exceptional. Yeah, so towards the end of my career, so when I was in my twenties and early thirties, we definitely did a lot more data collection in terms of blood work analysis, so you know if your white blood cell account is high,

or if your cortisol levels are really high. There are several different markers of overtraining which swimmers fall into the overtraining trap quite a bit because even though my race might be a hundred meters long, we have to train five six hours a day, six days a week. It's really brutal because I mean is full body, it's power, but it's also endurance. It's kind of a natural you're using like every single muscle in your body, so overtraining

can happen. And I started focusing on nutrition really really heavily in college and then post college, and specifically recovery nutrition. So right after a workout, making sure to get a proper balance of carbs, fat, and protein. I would always pack my smoothies because a lot of times after really hard training session, it sounds so stupid you're too tired to eat. So if you could drink your calories that

would That was always the best. So if I was traveling, I would actually travel with an ensure like the stuff that they give geriatric patients. But it was kind of a perfect food in that had plenty of sugar, it had fat, and it had protein and it was shelf stable. So that's what I used when I was in China or in Japan or just a place where I didn't have a refrigerator and I could just throw it in my bag. But if I was here home, I would make a really nutrient dense smoothie that was easy to

eat in the car ride home. But the recovery part is so important because again, as summers, we need so much stored energy, so glycogen in our muscles, and so keeping keeping the car bload up is actually quite important. And I know today you know a lot of people are trying to lower their carbs, but summers we really need to have a lot of that as well as a lot of protein. So the blood count work was

the person who did that? Internally? Did you have anyone giving you supplements like vitamin supplements, like you need x X y Z for your joints, you need x y Z for your metabolic side. You need this for your brain. I mean, the brain seems to be something the muscle that you would work. So you have to calm your brain and then rev up everything else. But your brain is performing at this rapid intensity and timing and thinking, how do you take care of here? I mean, did

you have a sports psychologist with you? We had access to a sports psychologist throughout my career, but it just never clicked with me. I have actually my degrees in psychology, so that's something that has always been very interesting to me. But I always would try to see the sports psychologist and I never quite understood how it worked. And the nature is I mean is that you're you're in your

own head. And if you're someone who I would consider myself an introspective person, So in slimming, you're underwater for hours and hours and hours in the day, so you are in your own head and working through the demons and the angel and devil on your shoulder. You have to work through that, and if you do that in

a healthy way, that could be very very powerful. And I feel like the mental side of things I was very good at and just from practice, and people you know, are often trying to meditate, you know, it's the hardest thing, and especially today's society where we have our phones, we have you know, I'm constantly listening listening to podcasts when I probably as much as I love them, I would probably be in my own head a little bit more than I than I am. But swimming enforces you to

be in your own head. It's nice to be in someone else's head, you know, come on, it is just tell me what to do and I'll be okay, it really is. But yeah, swimming enforces you to be in your own head and you have to confront that. And so I think just through the years, I was able to work through that and become really really mentally strong. But I would always try and work with the sports psychologist, but it just never worked out for me. You did

so well in Athens and in London and Japan. How in God's name do you travel with the hours and how do you get your body? I mean, I know myself when I travel, I'm I'm I'm even when I'm doing everything right, going to bed, eating perfect, you know, getting extrasly, I'm never a hundred. How do you take that? That performance and that science and practice and hard work and like make the time zone and that being oddly out of your own you know, environment work. It's hard.

We would always give ourselves at least one day per time zone crossed. So if you're going, you know, eight hours ahead, give yourself at least eight days, if not ten. But the biggest thing is just suffering through that first day and going to bed when it's nighttime. So I was really good at that. Yeah, because so many of my teammates, you know, we would go to Australia and get there in the morning, and then they take a big nap that day and then they couldn't sleep that night.

I would just suffer through the first day, go to bed at nine or eight thirty, and then I was fine the next day. I was actually a very very good traveler because I was kind of able to sleep anywhere. I'm one of those blessed people who if you give me the time to sleep, I'll put on my imask and earplugs and I'll pass out like I could do

it anywhere. So that was fortunate because there there were times when it wasn't the Olympics, when it was just a World Cup or you know, lesser meat where there are times I I fu in the night before in France or in Monaco, and then the next day and you just you don't feel great, but you stuck it up. For my second course, Natalie explains some of the beautiful

stories behind your cookbook Cook to Thrive. Your cookbook, I was reading Cook to Thrive, and I was looking at some of the things you, and you know a lot of people have these cookbooks. They're unnecessarily healthy when which means everything is devoid of anything that's bad for you. And I love your dishes because it's they're healthy, they're they're wholesome. There's real food you have like actually peaches and cream, you have breakfast, fried rice, you have like

real food. But it's done with purity and sensitivity and portion control. And it really is a very good cookbook. It reminded me of something that Martha Steward makes. You make real ingredients the right proportion, Like it's not about

being on a diet is but lifestyle choice. You're eating correctly, Like it's okay to have cream once in a while, it's okay to have things that we continue to call a problem or naughty, and you know, you know, there's no there's no mention of like what's your cheat meal and all that, because everything has a bit of cheat in it. So it was kind of refreshing. Can you tell me about how that, how it came about and what expired you to make a cookbook like this? I

appreciate that so much. I remember in shopping the book around to various publishers, awful process, by the way, a very like unhappy process. It really truly is. And I remember shopping it around and so many publishers are like, hey, this one book worked, and we want you to have all healthy ingredients, and that's just not me. And it's so I'm not someone who just flogs myself every day and you know, eats chicken breast and broccoli and brown rice at every single meal. That is so boring. I mean,

more power to if you're someone like that. That's not my psychology. If you tell me I can't have something, all I do is obsess on it. So if I say I'm not going to have wine, I will obsess about a glass of wine. And having already two kids for those two pregnancies, I was like, all I want is a class of wine. Yeah, it's a lifestyle. You have to fit the things that you love into into your lifestyle, and it's more satisfying that way. You do end up controlling your portions that way when you have

real fat. You know, I'm drinking my coffee right now and I have heavy cream in it because it's delicious, and yeah, I mean, I'm not going to do skim milk in my coffee, Like that's disgusting, Like why why worry? Like why waste your time? Well? I love the book and I did this, I mean your mom's cooking obviously, did it? Really? I saw a few little things in there there where can you was there? How much influence

was there? Yeah? So the cookbook, there are several family recipes, and I was very fortunate in that my grandma is still alive, my mom is still alive, and my great grandma was alive until I was in college, so I had had access to all of the recipes. Yeah. I

was very very fortunate. And so I was calling my grandma quite a bit in the process, asking her because you know, she doesn't write any of her recipes down, so I kind of tortured her and that, Hey, Grandma, I really need you to write this slom Via recipe down. I really need you to write this Ponset recipe down and recipe testing with that, and then combining the way that my great grandma, my grandma, and my mom all made adobo into the way that I like it. It's

kind of a mix of all three. And so my adobo I use coconut cream, which is something that my great grandma did, but my grandma and my mom never did. It's kind of homage to the women in my family that have always cooked for me, and I wanted to share those recipes that make me so happy. And testing those out for the cookbook just brought me back to Thanksgiving and Christmas and Mother's Day and Eastern all of our holidays where the kitchen was filled with those aromas.

And for my third course, we got to talk about a favorite topic of mine. Wine Now explains how she spontaneously agreed to partner on producing a wine label and how she's needed to summon her Olympic spirit to overcome the surprising challenges of the wine business. Gratulations. You just had a baby recently, right now, I did. I just had my second, so I have a five month old and to almost two and a half year old, So

obviously you must do this stressful pandemic period. You must have drank plenty of Gooderian wines, which is your winery and NAPA. Right. Yeah, well not as much as I would like, because I was pregnant up until October, but I made up for it since. But not good timing, A lot, a lot of tasting and spitting, but yeah, we I started Gadarian Wines with my winemaker back in and yeah, we've we've been slowly growing. Our two flagship wines are Shannon Blanc and Peino Noir. We have a

very lovely, lovely shan In Blanc. It's old wine Shannon. It's one of seven acres left in Napa Valley of Shannon Blanc. And this is any It's at least fifty years old, but there aren't any records prior to fifty years, so it's a unique, very unique vineyard. Last year we won gold at the Somalia's Choice Awards with that Shannon and then also our Rose of Peino Noir and it was great. And then you know, we had we had to suffer through the wildfires that a lot of people

did last year, but fortunately our vineyards were intact. We just had a lot of smoke damage, so we lost all of our red wine last year, but we were able to produce a good Shannon Blanc and a Rose of Peino Noir. So how did you come about owning co owning a winery? That mean it to me? It's it's I mean, the restaurant business is hard. The wine businesses like relentless and you know you're at you know,

at the mercy of God. Basically, how did that come about? Yes, and I've I've learned that I've learned in the past four years, we've had a wildfire every year. It's It's something that I've always been really interested in. My parents were always into wine, and I've and once I became of age to drink wine, I would go out to Napa Valley. It's only an hour from where I live, and I wanted to learn more about it. I wanted

to explore. And as I was learning, one of my husband's old teammates from college, he got married and his wife is now my business partner. But they moved out here, out to California, and she worked her way up in the wine industry. And I was always very vocal with her on how much I admired how talented she was and how quickly she rose from you know, sell a rat to analogists to winemaker. And one day she texted me and was like, do you want a partner on

a on a on a label? And I was like yes immediately, And I had no idea what I was agreeing to the best way to go into a business plan, it really is. It kind of this and that's so my personality. I mean, this goes back to the confidence that I have gotten because of sport. I've always been very successful in sport, and that's just kind of my mentality. I say yes to things and then I figure it out as I go, and so far, so good, you know,

knock on wood. What part of the process of wine is? Like, you know, I obviously drinking it's great, but I love all the sides of like how they determine how many days it stays in that barrel and then it goes to stainless steel and then it might be fined and it might be unfine. I love that how that person makes a decision based upon the breed, the sugar, the you know, the weather. I mean, it's fascinating to me.

That part. It's almost overly scientific, but at the end you realize it, well, how did this wine come about? What's your favorite part of that process? I love? So I am not technical. Retired from swimming, but I'm not competing anymore as far as I know. But what I miss about swimming is the physicality of it. And there's a physicality to making the wine. And I love that

part of it, especially with our Pinot noir. We're about a hundred fifty cases a year of our of our red pinot, and so we're able to ferment in small, small batches, and so we do the punchdowns by by hands. So the punchdowns meaning you know, you have the must, you have the grapes and the juice all together in a bin, and a cat at the very top forms and you want to keep that cat moist. You don't want it to get to dry out because you want the ferment to be even. And so what we do

is we sanitize. You know, you have a tank top, our shirt on. You sanitize your arms up to your shoulders and you just bend over the bins and you just stir the wine with your arms and it's like you're swimming through the wine. It's the coolest thing. We didn't drill. We did a drill in swimming called sculling,

where you just go back and forth. If you think about like a rower with the paddle, you just use your arms as a paddle and you kind of do that motion to store the ferment when you're doing this hands on punch down like that and so Pinot noir is a very delicate wine and so you have to be delicate with it through the fermentation, and so we do that by hand. And that's my favorite part. I

love it so much. It's like I love Lucy when they're in the wine barrels and in that episode, you remember that, I do, actually I do remember that there was stomping on it with your feet, but I think that you know, you get the picture. Yeah, exactly. That's my favorite part. The physicality of it, and then the whole process. Like I love going and tasting the ferments when it's still bubbling and you could like put your ear to the barrel and you could hear that. It's

a it's a living product. It's yeah, I love that. I love the entire process. And you know who doesn't love drinking the final product? Are you selling that director consumer? Mostly? Yes, we are probably direct a consumer. We had some good restaurants partners, but with the pandemic and California, I mean it is shut down. I mean we're opening up soon, but it's been, as you know, really really tough for restaurants.

So yeah, direct to consumer. We have a great wine club, very loyal in that and then some wine shops and grocery stores and we just got a distributor in southern California, which is really exciting because it's it's mostly word word of mouth and social and things like that. Do you I mean, it seems like it's really a passion for you. And I love this story about the the swimming in the wine, which could be an Olympic event if we you know, if we suggest that it's your name on

the event now. And one of the things is a fifty wine swim not a bad idea. That sounds so great, very expensive, but it sounds lovely right, very expensive, but you know, come on, do you want to expand this business? Is this something that you like, You're actively like, this is what you want to do for the next you know, legacy of of this is one of your legacy pinnacles of your life. Yes. So currently it's a two business or two person business. So it's myself and our winemaker

and that's it. And we're growing, like we want to get to about five thousand case a year, so that's kind of the goal right now. And we've been growing thoughtfully every year, adding some varietals. So from the Shannon Blanc in the Peanot noir. Throughout the years we've added rose of peinot noir, which typically we sagnier, meaning we just siphon off the peano. Last year we did a whole cluster press because we weren't making any red peano

last year because of the wildfires. But we also have a chardonnay to piece like the chardonnay lovers are people who just have to have a chardonnay, And we have a Cabernet Saumignon and a Petite Sara and then this year we're going to add m or Low So after this year we'll have a full panel of wines. Wow, so people, what what did you? I mean, it's like when you jump in with your eyes clothes you realize like I didn't know this? Yeah, what didn't you know?

What was the biggest shock other than the temperature of the water when you jumped in. Well, I didn't think we'd have to deal with wildfires every year. That's been tough and scary. Last year our production facility UM we produced a Honeycut and my winemaker, Shana Harding, is the winemaker at Honeycut as well and Honeycut. It's deep in St. Helena, right on the Calistoga border, and it suffered a lot of damage. The press pad was demolished, one of the houses burned down. There was a lot of a lot

of damage. And this is right as harvest was starting this past season, So that was particularly challenging and endangerous and scary. That has been been really hard. And then just kind of the flakiness of it all, Like you could, you know, meet someone who has a restaurant and loves you know, supposedly loves your wine and wants to get it in there, and you have this handshake deal and you might be on the way to delivering the wine,

and then they claim bureaucratic tape. But it's it's it's the flakiness is frustrating for someone who I am not a flaky person. So I just do not understand when people make a handshake deal and then don't follow through. So that part is something that I learned early, and it's it's still frustrating, but it doesn't it doesn't kill me like it did in the first couple of years. Yeah, I mean I'm the same way as you. I'm in

the business. I'm like you want to do this, Yes it's a yes or no. It's not you know, to me, yes it is a yes and no is a no. But now I've learned that maybe is also a no, right exactly, And don't jerk me around. I'm busy, Like you're not going to hurt my feelings exactly, Just say no. It's so frustrating and it must be. You know, you're a you're an elite athlete, but you think like everything is supposed to be correct and done correctly all the time.

That comes from right, your mom and dad particularly, but also the way you've lived your life is somewhat of an example of how to live your life. And so just give it to me straight, right exactly. Like we had this major hotel in San Francisco that said they wanted a lot of cases, and literally we had the car packed on the way and then they just flaked on us, like I was, like, I was furious, But it happens, and fortunately we we've learned from from those lessons.

And yeah, but it's it's just that's that's the hard part of this this business. I couldn't end my discussion with Nalie without discussing your appearance as a contestant on Chopped. For our fourth and final course, we hear are all about her mindset during the contest and her clever use of gatorade to make a salad dressing. I watched the tape of your cooking on Chopped. Was I was interested in seeing the What was remarkable is I think everyone

there had such speed in the jili. They're all real athletes, like they weren't. I mean, I'm sorry to say some athletes aren't like so physically fat, but you had you would like so graceful. And I was interested to see your basket. And as I recall, I think it was salmon. I mean you get four baskets and chopped four items. I think it was. I think you had gatorade, right, and kale and salmon and some one other thing. Maybe it was peanuts or something I forgotten, like candy coated

peanuts or something candy coated peanuts. So can you just could you describe when you open the basket your first thoughts and like how that translates from an athlete's standpoint to like, Okay, now I'm doing something. It's an outer body experience, so described for the listeners, like what like to open that basket. And by the way, just those of you know, I'm I'm a judge unchopped, and there's no way you know what's in their basket. There is

there's it's complete secret. Everybody said, oh they know, they don't know. We don't even know sometimes because they want the judge's surprise as well. What was your stomach reaction and what did you make? I remember like the blood pressure is just like so high as um, you're getting ready, you're getting set. You have your hands on the basket, and then you know whoever tells you to open it up, and you see that red light of the timer go and you just have to make a decision. You have

to do it quickly. You have no time. And I will complain right now. I remember that the entree, when you open up the basket, everything's labeled. So everything's in brown packaging and twine and everything's labeled. And I remember seeing full let mignon and I was like, oh easy, put that to the side, and then I started working

on everything else. And so I think that basket, this was the second one, is like fule mignon chocolate covered marshmallow was maybe a spinach, and I can't remember the fourth ingredient, but regardless, I saved the full at Minyon because it's like that takes no time. And then I opened it up and as beef tenderloin, and I like, I just remember being like, oh my god, like that's not even properly labeled. But and I tried to do a whole tender loin in like ten minutes, which didn't

obviously work. I just remember being so frustrated and I was like, that's not full avignon. There's I mean, I could have broke it down obviously, but you don't think straight when there's a timer going and you have like you're seeing the time just be whittled away. Did you make something like Filipino out of one of your main courses as every call? I did like a sweet and sour kale, So that first dish was the salmon and the kale and the gatorade, and I reduced the gatorade

so gatorade like sugar and salt. So I did like a sweet and sour kale. Yeah, So that that that was that was very good, Like that one out of all of them was probably turned out the best, I think with the chocolate covered marshmallows. In the next dish, I try to make some sort of reduction with red

wine and it was too sweet. Your style points are really high, but you're also just awesome and to talk to in such an exceptional, exceptional human being, and I wish we had more time, but I'm just fascinated by what you do and how how you do it. And congratulations on Aussie and you're I think it's any may your rather your rather try to thank you so much. Don't worry. You'll be hiking up those mountains soon enough, and you'll be you'll be wishing you had some some

time back because and have a glass of wine. And I'd love to join you one day with a glass of wine in the kitchen. Please, anytime you're in St. Julena, let us know and and I'll show you around. Thanks very much for listening to Four Courses with Jefferyszcarrian, a production of I Heart Radio and Corner Table Entertainment. Four Courses is created by Jeffrey Zcarrion, Margaret Secarian, Jared Kello, and Tara Helper. Our executive producer is Christopher Hasiotis. Four

Courses is produced by Jonathan Haws Dressler. Our research is conducted by Jesselyn Shields. This episode was engineered by Molly Swanson and Natalie Coglan and edited and mixed by Joe Tisdall. Our talent booking is by Pamela Bauer at Dogtown Talent. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.