Hey, welcome to Healthy Ish. I am Felicity Harley and today you're listening to an extra special episode of the Body and Soul podcast. Yes, this week we are celebrating our superstar Olympians and joining me on this episode is high jumper Eleanor Patterson, who I caught up a couple of weeks ago online from Spain. She explained the intricacies of her event, her pre Paris training load, and how
she's approaching the Olympics the third time around. Make sure you're listening to extra Healthy Ish, where she talks about how she finds extreme focus in the middle of her event. You can catch that one wherever you get your podcasts.
Eleanor. Really nice to have you on the pod. How are you.
I'm wonderful, Thank you, thank you for having me, and.
I should say congratulations and well done on another Olympics and thank you for champione US in Australia at these games.
Yeah.
No, it's it's super exciting and so any kind of ability to hype up the Olympics and even just the individual stories around athletes. I'm all about it for sure.
Oh good, me too, That's why I've got you on.
But tell me.
You're a high jumper. What do you love about high jump?
There's so much to me that I love.
It's such a strange thing to think that my career is running and jumping at a bar and trying to clear it and playing this game of chance in a lot of ways. But I was always a very hyperactive kid in a lot of ways, and I love sport.
I just love the outlet in which it creates for people, the community it creates creates for people, but also for me personally, especially as an individual athlete, which just as an athlete or you know, as a person that I'm able to find this as a hobby as a kid, essentially that it was, you know, this challenge but also exciting outlet for me to challenge myself in every facet, whether that beef is you play emotionally and mentally, and so it's that outlet for me, and especially because I'm
the one out there competing, there's no way to hide from whatever's going on inside your head. You've got to really back yourself and you've got to run and I guess obey a lot of physics to run around a curve and see if you can jump over a bar. And so it's many, many years of hard work, dedication, but at the same time, it's just you know, you've got to rock up on the day and be your best self and express your best self.
You know, I probably didn't appreciate how much of a mental game high jump is as well. I mean, we know it's physical, you have to run and jump and you want to have power and speed, but the mental side of it is I mean every sport is, but particularly high jump, because you've got to get yourself over the bar.
Yeah, yeah, it really is.
It is very mentally engaging, and you're out there sometimes for two hours even more, and you start at a low height and you're slowly increasing and you've got to be at your best at the end of the competition, and you're most mentally engaged, and you know, you might have really big jumps early on, but then it's what counts at the end as well, and at those final moments when you're tussling for a PB or a season's best or a medal or a first place.
Yeah, god, medal. What does your training involve, I mean, we're talking to your Madrid at the moment. What does it evolve leading into Olympics.
So yeah, it's quite a busy schedule in a lot of ways.
At the moment, I have one last competition about three and a half weeks out until the Games right now. But I have one last competition this weekend in Germany. From then on, it's just a normal programming and just training essentially. We're in a phase now where we'll start to like it's a competition season, so we're tapering off,
so like the load is lightning. We as a training group, my training group, we tend to do two gym sessions a week and two running sessions and one technical session, so the technical being jumping or bounding and.
Things like this.
But yeah, everything's kind of getting stripped back now. Like usually in the gym we lift, being a power event, lift quite heavy, but everything's becoming shorter and sharper and lighter weights, and so everything's starting to strip the weight off as far as like the load that in our legs essentially, And so yeah, coming into the Olympics, we're stripping that that workload off and so then when we can come into the Olympics and I can come into the Olympics, I can be at my best and the
freshest possible and just fly.
Essentially, they why do you strip the low back?
Is that just to let your legs kind of I suppose breathe, or just to give you your body a bit of time to rest.
Yeah, I guess it's more the rest element.
There's definitely that sweet spot where you want to be able to have a certain weight where it's heavy enough to activate yourself. But it's also if you're under too much weight and you're lifting weight, or if you're doing to a heavy workloads, it's very exhausting on your legs
and it makes it hard to be springy. Essentially, a lot of our event is very much involved in, you know, the central nervous system and being able to just fire and be able to be powerful and springy and really alert with our movements.
So yeah, that explosiveness and the springing. I like that.
Yeah, I like that word. Now, you've been to two Olympics. How are you approaching this one is a bit different? Or are you going in with the same a similar mindset?
Definitely quite different in a lot of ways. I feel like I've.
Been around for a long time. I'm only twenty eight right now, which in athletics, terms. Isn't crazy old at all. It's not, that's for sure, even though my young training partner who's nineteen, she always much around and calls me old.
But it's just all all fun and game. Not old, No, not at all.
And yeah, being my first one was when I was twenty the second when it was when I was twenty five in the end in Tokyo, and I feel like I've got so much experience coming into this one, that's for sure. I know what to expect. I think, especially in the last four years, I've been around the circuit a lot, especially for athletics in Europe, and the Diamond League competitions is where it's where it's at as far as like constantly competing against the best.
In the world.
And then I've been to many major championships, and so I feel like going into this one, it's obviously still so exciting and there's a lot of bells and whistles and it's just a lot of hype and it's you know, it's important to see that, but not besuaded by that. And so I feel like having just a number of years under my belt as far as this exposure to this, it's it feels far more second nature than it did when I was twenty, that's for sure, which is obviously given.
But what are you most excited about when it comes to Paris is going to Paris Olympics.
Oh so many things.
Obviously, you know, competing that's very exciting and just seeing you know, there's the epitome of athletics. But I think as well, for me, as much as it's you know, it's that end game, it's that goal, it's what we work towards for every four year cycle or three year cycle for this time around. But and it obviously means so much, but more often than not, it's about the journey.
And I also love the periods of time when we're in the village and you're hanging out with some of your really close friends and you essentially to live in each other's pockets, which and then you were able to live in the building with everyone in the Australian teainment. It's those moments where you're just able to hang out and just have breakfast together, enjoy a coffee together. That really kind of over my many years in the sport,
other moments that were really important for me. I think another thing that I'm really looking forward to is the fact that some of my family are coming across and being able to watch me compete, and so that's really really exciting for me. It means the world to have the support of my loved ones and they've not actually been able to watch me compete all that much in the last four years, and so it's going to be
really really special. But I think it's just those moments where you share with people that makes everything mean so much more.
I've got one final question that actually comes from my ten year old son who's just made the regionals for high jump, and here he wants to know, what's your highest jump that you've ever done?
Incredible.
My highest jump that I've ever done is two meters and two centimeters. That's my personal beast and amazing.
Hopefully that can fall this year.
I feel like I'm in korey best shape, so who knows, but yeah, two meters and two centimeters.
Well, all the best, and thank you for coming on healthish and good luck.
Thank you very much.
Good luck for your son at the regionals as well.
Thank you you like watching high jump I do just the competition and the extreme focus is quite amazing and inspiring. Hey, we do have a special Paris hub on bodyansoul dot com dot.
You, so make sure you jump on there.
Plenty of interviews and news about our fantastic Olympians. If you did enjoy this chat, tell us, rate and review well this episode, or you can of course subscribe to this podcast.
Make sure you're listening tomorrow.
We have got another great Olympian coming up. Are you following us on socials? Please do, or you can grab our print edition which is out in your local Sunday paper and until tomorrow, go Aussie and stay healthy