It's Harps, it's Melissa, it's Bronti. It's it's you and us on the Bloody You Project for the millionth time. It's seven oh three in the thriving metropolis of Melbourne. Melissa Marie Cameron is over there in the number one seat because she's the actual boss of me and everything. She looks like Mary Poppins. She's a fucking tyrant. Don't be tricked when you meet her. She looks all love and light and unicorns and Jesus and stuff. It's not true. She's a weapon.
Hi. Hello.
It's a very special day to day, firstly because we have Bronti, and second because it's someone's birthday, big birthday. Let's not talk about that. But happy birthday, Harps. I was hoping you wouldn't bring that up.
You did.
We don't need to, We don't need to talk about that. Ah, Hi Bronti, let's ignore Melyssa. Hi, Bronzi, I'm not.
Going to AGNOMALLYSSA hello personally and happy twenty first.
Birthday is Come on, I'm thirty. Let's not be ridiculous. And I'm thirty. It's all right. Bat down the hatches, Melissa, thanks for that. That's your fifteenth, fifteenth warning, you're out. One more warning, You're gone, You're done.
That's what will happened.
Then I'll just then I'll just give her another I've been giving a warning, Spepper, I'd sack me before i'd sack her. Bronte, I'm shit. Yes, she's the wind beneath my wings. She keeps my life from going off the rails in many ways. How are you? Thank you for coming on the you project?
Oh, thanks so much for having me. I'm well. This morning I started my day with a little swim in the ocean, so I'm feeling great.
Just a lazy k or two was it? What did you? What did you crank out?
Oh? Not much so this morning. That swim of the ocean was a purely recreational swim. So I caught about four waves and then I came back in again. So that the thing is, you walk down, you order your bacon egg roll, and you get in and youm for twelve minutes, and you get out and your bacon may rolls ready for you, pick it up, and then you walk home and eat it. And that is the perfect warning.
That is exactly my protocol. Are we doing that straight? Out that everyone knows that's bullshit. I have the buoyancy of a of a I was going to say brick,
but yeah, not very I'm not very buoyant. What is speaking of buoyancy and floatability for one of a less science y term, and in terms of expending energy and being fast in the pool, I know nothing about this, So I'm just asking, is there a point where you have too much muscle, too little fat, and too much muscle, which means you've got to expend more energy not just to move forward, but to stay near the top of the water.
Yeah, sort of. It's probably less about like how much muscle you have and more about how you balance yourself in the water. So some people really struggle to float in general, but you can always teach people to float a little bit more. It's more about, like, mainly, when you see people really struggling when they're swimming, it's because they move a bit too much in too many different ways and it doesn't let the water like support you
and hold you up. If you can keep yourself streamlined and quite fill through your core and the upper part of your body, and then tilt yourself forward enough in the water through your hips, are far enough up you will be able to stay afloat while you move through the water. But lots of plann people are moving all part of their bodies at once, and as the water moves it becomes like less dense around you and fill up with bubbles and stuff. And that's when you see
people really start to think. So, yeah, it's the seems really simple, and then the more you get into it, the more complicated it gets. I'm not exactly a physicist, so I'm not into the full hydrodynamics of the of the thing. But I love going to local pools and public pools and you see people swiming. You're like, oh, maybe just change just one little thing and can a huge difference just keeping like your body still.
It's such a such a fine science, like at your level, you know, trying to get an edge. All I remember about the physics and thermodynamics and all of that stuff of swimming was Benuli's principal from about second year phizzed or second year human movement, which is all about the way that air and I think water moves over objects moving forward. But anyway, we don't need to go there. How's your body holding up? How's your body holding up? You you twenty nine year old.
Yeah, I'm basically I'm laughed. Now. I think that my name is BRUNTI the geriatric Campbell. That's like my fighting name.
Out of the blue corner. Weighing in it sixty three kilos or whatever your way, I.
Think I like sixty five. That's like my normal fighting weight. But it was very good, guess thank you. So yes, body's going well, thank you. I still have a lot of injuries that I manage, but they're being managed. And if people ask me, like, what's something I'm really proud of in my career, I'm really proud of the fact that my shoulder in particular has been a very tricky injury, and I've had that for over half of my career. Like I started getting injured in twenty sixteen, which is
now quite a long time ago. I've been going with it for seven years and still managing to keep on performing. So I'm kind of like weirdly proud of my injuries because they've taken me to a whole new level of professionalism to get to manage them. But they are actually being managed, which is really great thing. I didn't think I could do that. In twenty sixteen, I thought if you got an injury, it was the end of your career. So I'm pretty happy to still be here.
It's a real juggling act, I think, because I've worked with lots of athletes, so before I did all the stuff I'm currently doing, my first life was as an exercise scientist and working with teams and athletes and all that. And it's a real juggling act because you are trying to get the absolute most out of your body, especially you know, an explosive sport. It's all about power and speed and intensity and hard training and recovery, and you've got to be right at the edge where you want to.
You're almost getting injured, but you're not getting injured. You know. It's right up to the line of how hard can I train without breaking myself?
Right? Yeah, it's a tipping point. And then the extra the extra thing on is once you are injured, it's how much pain in this injury is too much? And how much is enough? So like, you're going to be in pain most of the time, but how much is so much that it's going to make the injury worse or it's going to snowball and make other areas of your body more painful because they're now compensating for the pain.
So figuring out for each new in like how much can I actually push this before it like impacts my training for the rest of the week, Like if I do less in this session, is that a better option than missing maybe a week of training because I've gone too hard in this one session. And actually that is the most tiring part of being injured. It's not necessarily managing the pain or like being in pain with the injury, which obviously sucks, but it's every single day having to
like second guess yourself and be like, am I being lazy? Here? Is this enough? Is this too much? Oh? No, I've gone too far up? What's a week of training? Okay, next time I won't do that, And then the next time it comes around, you're like, well, I really really just want to get this session done, and you push
too hard. So it's it's this constant battle of like trying to like hold yourself back and also push yourself as much as you can, and no one can tell you how to do it, and no one can like really give you advice because it's just up to you. And feeling your body. So it's definitely taken me a while to to figure that out of how much is too much and how much just gets the job done.
It's a really interesting point that individual kind of interpretation of all the biofeedback. You know, what your body's telling you, what your energy levels telling you, what your heart rate variability is telling you. You know, just in terms of all the data that your body is producing for you, and then being able to interpret that data, that biological information that you're being fed and then know what to
do with that. Because you know, you and Melissa, who aren't that different in age, Like if you were both elite swimmers and you did the same thing, Melissa, do you like the fact that I'm making you an Olympic swimmer for this story instantly? It's fantastic. Yeah, I know, No, just sit up a little bit taller. But yeah, if you even if you had the same injury, like a rotator car or whatever, you had an injury, you're both going to recover differently. And what might hurt Melissa might
not hurt you, Bronte. And so it's like everybody around you, excise physiologists and physios and surgeons and everyone's taking a very educated guess, but only you can figure it out sometimes.
Yeah, And I think that's a bit that I really struggled with was when I first got injured, I just wanted someone to tell me what to do to make it better, and no one those single person held the whole puzzle. There was what the different pieces from an amazing team and everyone was incredibly helpful, But at the end of the day, I had to really take the pieces that worked for me and figure out what those were and hold onto them. And it wasn't as easy as like it probably would have been easy if I
had a less complicated injury. If you have an injury that it's like a torn handstring or something, there's a pretty tried and tested protocol for fixing that. But my injuries were not that, not that easy to solve. So it was really a process of exploration that took about two years to figure out what actually works for me.
And what's harder for you, Managing your body or managing your mind.
I think they go together, and especially I just had a big break from swimming and people are like, oh, it was it a mental break that you needed or a physical break? I'm like, they sort of are completely into twines, and it's exhausting managing your body, like mentally exhausting, but your body is also like being in pain constantly makes your mind exhausted as well. So then I don't really see them as completely separate things. And I mean we all know, like if you're in a good headspace,
how differently your body responds. And I mean physiologically you can look at that and look at say the blood of someone who is lonely and unhappy versus the blood of someone who's happy, and the inflammatory markers and both of our bloods are different. So it's I think it's it's less separated than we think it is, so I try to look after both as much as possible.
Yeah, it's very true. That's very current of you with all that thinking about and the inflammatory markers and stuff. It's so true. Like we realize now that like we used to only talk about food and exercise and lifestyle and booze and sleep and all of those things which are really important, but we now realize that how connected you are or how you socialize, or how loved you are or how loved you feel you are and relationships is like a big, big health factor massive health factor, isn't it.
Yeah. I think the Health Journal in America that's his number one thing that he's decided to tackle, his loneliness. It's this number one health crisis. I mean, his data that he did his research on was showing that loneliness is a bigger health rist than diabetes because of all the extra things that it leads to. So, yeah, it's I get fascinated by this stuff because I think it's the science is very interesting because it kind of reiterates
what we knew in our societies for a long time. Yeah, it's things that we always crave belonging and its crave connection as much as anything else. And now we're sort of looking at the science of it and being like, oh, wow, we actually physically need this. This isn't just a mental thing.
And I think the more we connect the two, the more we can also bridge that gap between the stigma of what is a physical aimblement and what is a mental health ailment because they are super connected and we typically don't think about mental health is as important as physical health. By connecting the two, I think that that's a really a really interesting way of showing that it's not just one or the other, that they're both as important as each other.
Unsent. Well, we know that what we think depending on what we're thinking about. But what we think can have a physiological consequence. If you if right now you have a bad thought and negative thought and you think you or in trouble, or you're at risk, or you know but you're not but you think you are, there'll be a resultant kind of physiological shift, you know, heart rate and blood pressure and all of those things. How do you what would you have done if you never got
in a pool. Let's take out all the athletic options. What else do you think if you had have made a different decision at seven? I'm sure you weren't making life decisions at seven. You just wanted to get in the pool. But if you had have taken a different path and done nothing, something more academic or corporate or creative, what might that have been?
Well, every take me back to when I was seven. I very much was like I'm going to the Olympics for swimming. I was making this like big decision, Like I honestly just watched the Olympics and I was like, Okay, I'm going to be an Olympics swimmer, and like this was that my big thing, And used to walk myself down to the pool every morning and like watch the big kids train, and like I was obsessed.
In your bare feet and I heard you were going to be a fifteen hundred meter a swimmer.
That didn't I was, yeah, and that quickly didn't work out, But that's fine. Pretend I didn't do any of that. Pretend I never watched the Olympics or did anything. The other thing I really wanted to do when I was seven was be a potter, like make things in pottery. I was like obsessed with it, And during COVID I started doing some pottery again, which I've really enjoyed as a creative thing. As my parents pointed out to me, not much of a career in pottery unless you're very
very very good. But you never know. Maybe I could have been very very very good.
But statistically I'm probably just as likely to become rich or famous or successful in pottery as elite swimming or the average person is. So you probably you took the narrow path anyway, but it worked out.
Yeah. I definitely had some teachers at school, Like on career day when I said I wanted to be in a professional swimmer, who take me a time, Like, it's very unlikely, only like points zero one per cent of people. I think in for Olympics, it's like point zero zero is zero one to send or something of the population go to the lytic. So like, it's super unlikely, you should probably pick something else.
And then on top of that to become an Olympic medalist, Olympic gold medalist, multiple two time Olympic gold medalist. I mean, well, that's just now you're fucking showing off. Hey, do you know what I did last night in preparation for this. I was looking at so you were born in Malawi and you moved here when you were seven? Am I? Right? Seven? Yeah? And do you know how many Melissa, I'm going to ask you, do you know how many Olympic gold medals
Malawi have won? Absolutely no idea, but well I can tell you that Bronzia Campbell has won more than the entire And I feel bad now that I'm saying that. I don't mean that, But what I am saying is Bronti, if you had a stayed in Malawi and you had have kept swimming, you'd definitely be the most famous person in the country. You'd be a national hero. You'd have it's named after you. Do you ever go back there.
I've been back to Malawi once since we left, and I'm very keen to go back again. Lawi is a beautiful country. It's so gorgeous, but it really doesn't have It's a very impoverished country as well. Like when we went back in twenty ten, they were just starting to put in tard roads everything with dirt roads before that. There's one traffic light in the town that I grew up in, which didn't work most of the time because
the power didn't work most of the time. We're very lucky we could live a great lifestyle there that had a great job. But it's a very different country from Australia, very different opportunities. One thing Malawi does do very well is they're really good at netball. They have really good netball teams and really good netball players. So even in a country where there's not a lot of opportunity and definitely not many swimming pools, you still see people excelling
in these athleticstitutes, which is always always great. And I see the Malawi athletes at the Olympics, and we always like trade gear and stuff that actually have some Malawi gear even though I've never never been, never been representing the country.
So you have a dual passport.
No, I don't. I'm just purely Australian.
So so mom and dad were originally from here and you were just born over there, is that right?
Or no, they were from South Africa, right, So I actually had a South African passport and then we moved to Australia in two thousand and one, and yeah, we could have gone for duel citizenship, and so I possibly could have gone and represented South Africa as well, but pretty adamant that the place that we were living should be the place that year a citizen Ovens. I mean, there's a lot of pride in putting on a green and gold jumper, so I wanted to always be holding onto that. Really.
Yeah, a lot of athletes are weird, you know, you know that and have rituals and super OCD and like, I've worked with a bunch of Olympians summer and winter, mainly winter Olympians and teams over here. Speaking of netball, Melbourne Vixen's Melbourne Phoenix. You know, in the netball and AFL stuff, but a lot of them, like a disproportionate percentage compared to the general pop. I think have pre competitional pre game or even pre training rules and rituals, do you.
Not, really, I'm probably a little bit different in that space. I think the idea of having rituals and superstitions and stuff makes so much sense to me because the environment that we operate in is so uncertain and so give so little control often, and so you're trying to assert as much control as you can in whatever way you can,
even if you know it's kind of superficial. But no, I don't really like I just go through my process when I'm getting ready for AOLS rock up two hours before, start doing my physio exercises, jump in the pool like an hour intent out to my warm up. So all of that is fairly similar, and I guess that's what it takes the place of those superstitions and rituals for me.
If I had the thing is, I'm like not very organized and like very forgetful, So if I had a ritual or superstition, I would be worried that I would like forget to do it or forget to like bring this lucky thing with me, and then I would be very freaked out. So I've kind of like stayed away
from it. Like I'm the sort of person that I actually forgot my swimming togs when I was going, like I was warming up for the Olympics, and I didn't have my talks with me, so I had to like go borrow some That is like the level that I normally operate on. So I don't think ritual half for me because I'll probably just forget them.
But that maybe that's good because you don't suffer too much from anxiety or or you do like you seem laid back.
Yeah, I'm I am fairly laid back. It doesn't mean that you're not nervous before you race, Like the nerves are like ever present, like go and like have a little vomit before you race, Like you can't keep anything in your stomach, you don't want to eat anything. Like the feeling is like so intensely almost like I just want this to be over, like just get me through this race, so like these nerves could just be done.
But at the same time, I also kind of love that feeling, so you kind of dread it and you kind of love it, and it's a bit of a love hate relationship. But no, in general, like I wouldn't, I wouldn't count myself as a generally anxious person. But that doesn't mean that you don't get nervous. Nerves are all are all part of it.
It's a really interesting thing, nerves and like you said, the physical and the psychological or intertwined one hundred percent. And sometimes you get people who are really talented, really well trying physiologically or genetically gifted, but they just can't keep their shit together under pressure, you know, they just
can't self regulate in the middle of competition. What percentage of people do you think or swimmers perhaps really struggle with that, Like they're talented, they're gifted, they're well trying, they're physically ready, but they just can't self regulate well in competition.
Yeah, I definitely think it's something that you see people struggling with in swimming and other sports. Swimming is a very very unforgiving sport. It's you versus other people, but also you versus a clock, like an objective time that doesn't change. Versus other people is almost easier because you're can adapt to how they're going. If someone's going badly and you're going just a little bit better than them,
you win. But the clock like doesn't lie, it just keeps on ticking over and like for reference, if in the fifty free style, if I'm one percent of my best, that's point two of a second. Point two of a
second is the difference between first and nighth place. So that's that's the sort of level that you're you're the error margin that you're operating under is both more that any little slip up can make a really big difference, and everything's really got to go perfectly, And that means that physically and mentally you have to bring both of those presences one hundred percent, and you do see people really struggle with that under pressure.
Without throwing back to a science lesson, what are some of the variables around speed through water? Like how I mean obviously, like I'm strong, for example, but I can't swim well right, so I'm not going to be fast. So what talk about technique versus strength versus I don't know, body shape versus like position in the world water? Tell us about that stuff?
Well, probably the biggest thing in swimming that you don't have another sports is the drag of the water. So anything that you can do to make yourself more streamlined is going to be very helpful. And that then goes down to body shape and position in the water and how you can hold yourself in the water. All of
that sort of combines. So that's the main thing is if you can if you're thinking about like actual speed speed, like I'm talking about if you're swimming at fifty meters or one hundred meters freestyle, as you taper and freshen up and get stronger, your body position or change in the water, you'll sit a bit higher in the water. So like you know, when you get a speedboat or even like a tinny and you really rever and it
sort of like sits up in the water. You can see people like fit a bit higher in the water and less that their body is in the water, and that creates way less drags. So for us, like one of the biggest things is how do you eliminate drag as much as possible in your stroke while getting as much power through the water at the same time.
And so what's what's the plan moving forward? Because you had a break, did you have like a year and a half break recently in the last couple of years.
Yeah, I did. After Tokyo Olympics. I had eighteen months out of the water or out of the water, out of the swimming pool. I was learning to surf during that time instead of swimming, so that was that was fun. So I stove in my arms, but in a slightly different way.
You are you any good at that?
I'm really good at bady, I'm not that as good as surfing. I'm getting there. I'm getting there. There's a nice, nice crew down there who sort of took pity on me and gave me lots of pointers as I was starting out. Yeah, it's a great sport, but I'm not I'm not going to like now there or anything anytime soon.
And the intention is to go to Paris.
Is it for surfing? Yes?
Yes, not imagine that. Imagine guess what everybody breaking news. Brodie Kenniball has changed sports. It's still aquatic, but she's on it, not in.
It, and somehow, without ever having some before, she's going to think she's going to be the best in the world. Sometimes I do think I'm Steph Gilmore. Then I see a video of myself surfing I'm like, yeah, you're really really not Steph Gilmore.
But if one of you had to swim away from a shark, she would get eaten.
Yeah. Probably. I mean, let's hope that never happens. Let's let's hope that that's Sinnario ever eventure.
Let's hope that's purely just a hypothetical. Yeah, and so, so how do you stay or do you need to stay focused and pumped? Is it is it something that you think like next year, it's next year, Wow, that's next year, that that you need to that you need to do. Or is it something you're still excited about and passionate about and you know you want to go like you desperately want to swim.
That's that's the only reason I came back to it. So I had eighteen months off. I went away from the sport completely, like said, the only thing I was doing was was surfing. That's as close as I got to it. I was working at ey and Business Consulting, going through my nine to five job, putting on a suit in the morning and catching the ferry to work and doing all the things. And I'd finished my business like a grown up, like like actually pretending to be
a grown up. Yes, so I put on my big girl pants that went out into the world, and I really wanted to do that. I needed to do that. I've been swimming, like I said, a start. I started this dream when I was seven, and I realistically finished school and qualified for the Olympics four months later, and I've been a professional athlete ever since and studying on the fire and bits of work on the slide. But I've never been able to like hold down a proper job.
It's just not possible when you're training six hours a day. So being able to go and do that was great for me to prove that I can do it and also to learn heaps from doing it. So I enjoyed doing that. And then the choice whether to swim or not really became a choice between two options. So it was would I like to swim and have a shot at the next film this or would I like to keep doing this career that I'm currently doing. It didn't become a choice of do I swim or do I not?
Which I think is that which is scarier choice, almost like do I do this or do I stop doing it? And I don't know what I'm going to do after that, and for me like the opportunity to try go to one more Olympics, to have one more shot at this once. Once that chapter is closed, the whole book is finished, I'm done, and I just I know that I can. I will have to work the rest of my life, whatever that ends up looking like, but I will have to do that. I've got the whole rest of my
life for this. Just put in, realistically, eighteen more months of work and see if you could make it to Paris. And that was another thinking behind it, and I started training. I was like, you know what, start training, get back in the pool. If you don't want to be there, you'll know pretty soon. We're pretty good at knowing the things that we don't want to do. So I was like, okay, just give yourself like three months to get fit and then reevaluate and say like do you want to keep
doing this or not? And I really enjoyed getting back in. I really enjoyed the training, enjoy working hard. And it's something I don't think many people get to do, is put everything all into one race and everything all towards one big goal. And I really I really like doing that. So I've got one last shot that at doing that, and I couldn't really.
Pass it up in order to find interesting about from a physiology point of view and from a performance point of view and a career, length of career and age of retirement point of view, swimmers seem to peak really early. But within other sports that are a lot about strength and power and speed and acceleration, you know, they peak in there, often peak in their late twenties, early and
even mid thirties. Like when we look at track athletes and field athletes, sometimes some of the best in the world are five, six, seven years older than you are right now. Why is that? Do you think? Like, why are people kind of almost you know, old in inverted commas by the time they hit thirty in swimming?
Yeah, it is a really interesting thing, and I don't know if I have like an actual answer for you. I know that in rowing, the average age of a metallist is thirty years old, and we don't currently have anyone who's over thirty on the team. I mean, hopefully me and my system make the team next year, that would be that would be us in our thirties. But it's very unusual and I think we when you train for swimming, you have to do a lot of training
comparative to other sports. I think about track and fields. Track athletes walk around on their legs all day, or every single person does, so you get all this like class like just this really low level conditioning of your legs. You don't get that in your arms just incidentally every day, so we have to train that in the pool. We typically train longer and further than an equivalent track athlete would.
So say a track athlete was running four hundred meters, which is about the same time that would take us just from one hundred meters, So you think got the same length of exertion there in both of those races. The amount of training that we do, the amount of aerobic training that we do for that is dramatically more than a track athlete because we don't have this like walking around every day conditioning in your arms, which is like sort of part of what you need. And then
I think that just takes the toll over time. Traditionally, there's also not been a lot of funding or way to make money in the sport, and that can't be discounted because it's all very well to be earning twenty thousand dollars when you're nineteen, that's like amazing, you're like stoked. But by the time you're twenty nine, if you're still on twenty thousand dollars a year and try to make
your life work, it's not going to work. And I don't like the sport's in a fairly good place now, But if we look at past champions especially in Olympic sports just in general, and amateur sports in general, it's a big part of why people retire.
Yeah, well, how does a normal training week look for you at the moment? I not varies through the year depending on where we're at in terms of competition and stuff. But for them, like, now, how much you in the pool do you? Are you doing strength training at this moment? What does that look like? What's all the kind of ancillary stuff that you do around that, stretching, recovery, rehab stuff. Yeah, give us an idea of a week at the minute.
So a week at the minute, I normally it's normally I train twice a day every day, but what those sessions are look different, So like.
On a Monday, so it would be like two swim sessions, once in the morning and once in the afternoon, with the afternoon being a main session, and then maybe on a Tuesday it's one swim session and the other ones a gym session and the recovery session. So I do quite a lot of gym heavy lifting. In the gym. I'm sprint athletes, so power and stre there's really important to me. So I do my gym session and then I go to recovery after so like ice bath and stuff after the gym in the afternoon.
How much do you bench bro I don't bench broth at all? Actually, I know, I'm not kidding, by the way, everyone that was a joke. It's the least functional exerciseable time and really bad for your shoulders. What kind of strength training do you do?
Chin ups are like the best thing for assuming that we do a lot of chin ups, So I do doing chin ups my whole life, but we do weighted chin ups. So at the moment I would do Yeah, my final reps would be like two sets of one rep of thirty five kilos, so my body weight with thirty five ons, so wow, how much how I say much of my sixty five kilos plus thirty five Yeah, so it's pretty much one hundred kilo chin ups.
So that's about adding Yeah, like thirty something per What is that like, No, that's more than half your body weight.
It's like fifty of my body weight.
Wow, that's heavy. That is that is firstly, anyone, firstly, just go and try. Now, if you're not a gym goer, clearly don't go and try. And you know, if you're not a gym goer, just try and hang from something. You know, the amount of people Bronte who can't and again this is not a slight it's just a matter of fact. The amount of people who can't even just hang and hold their body weight for like ten seconds is a lot of people.
Yeah, it's It's something that I've been doing since I was a kid, so it's easier for me, right, But there's so many things that I can't do. Like lower body wise, I do a bit, but like that's probably like just your average gym goer could probably do better lower body stuff than me. Is very very special.
Really, what kind of leg training do you do? Do you squat? Do you deadlift your leg? Do you what do you do?
Yeah? I don't deadlift because my back doesn't love it, but I do like Bulgarian squats and sits down squats and like hip thrust stuff and jumps and all of that, So get strong and robust doing all of that as well as like a bunch of just those really little exercises, so lots of like monster walks and banded walks and all of that, getting all getting everything fired up properly. My biggest thing with gym is trying to make myself as strong as possible with as fewer injuries as possible.
So a lot of my gym is doing all the little boring things as well. So I incorporate all lots of my physio exercises into the gym and incorporate them into the actual movements when I'm doing heavy stuff.
Do you I was listening to you on The Imperfects last night. Great interview by the way, great chat, very vulnerable, They sound like fun. How many times have you been interviewed and spent ninety percent of the interview talking about your sister and your relationship with your sister?
Yeah, a lot, like particularly at the start, like everyone's if I honestly had just just even not even a dollar, just fifty cents for it. The number of times people ask like, oh, how's the sibling rivalry, Like, I honestly I would be able to afford the house that I would have been rather than rent it. Like, but it's I totally get it as well, Like it is an unusual thing to have two sisters in the same event and to compete against each other, And I totally get
the fascinations. So I don't really mind the questions. The only time that I minded if someone like can't really let it go. I've had a few interviews like that where they really really can't let go of it and they're like, but when are you going to beat her? When will you beat it? Don't you want to beat her? I'm like, are you kind of missing the point of what I'm saying is that we always had this dream
to do this thing together. And it's like, for me, it's never been about like, oh, I step out, mind the blocks, and I'm trying to beat Kate that one person. I'm always trying to better myself and better the clock, and yes, beat every single person in the race if I can. But I'm not standing behind the blocks thinking about my sister in the way that some people get really fixated on it.
It's so silly and also you were saying something like this, so clear clearly Kate is in the very best way of freak and you're also a freak, but in a loving,
caring way. But you're talking about when you and like Kate would just maybe beat you in a race by whatever the smallest of margins, and people were like, you said that, talking about when you're going to beat it, when you're going to do this that it's like, but if she and your sister, like, you're literally better than everyone in the world in that moment in time except
one person that happens to be your sister. And rather than people going what you're doing is fucking amazing, they're like, yeah, but what about you said they were driving nuts?
Yeah, it can be. It can be challenging, and it definitely has been in the past. That's it's very frustrating to not be seen in your own light. And I think, yeah, what I was talking about there was sometimes when I was literally second in the world but still not first in my family. So people would really hone in on that, just just constantly and just say things to you that
you wouldn't really expect people to say. I mean, like if you were in in your average, your normal job, and you were second in the world at something people would probably congratulate you on that. They wouldn't come up to you and say, oh, you know, you got to simm a bit faster. You know, you got to beat her like while she's standing right next to me most of the time as well. And awkward, awkward for everyone.
People say some pretty weird things to you, but it's you got to learn to deal with it over time, but it does. It is difficult when you know that everybody's comparing you to somebody else and you just like all of this is taking place while I was really young, like I was nineteen twenty twenty one, and you're kind of trying to figure out who you are as a person, and you're getting reminded every day that lots of people
are seeing you in relation to someone else. So it makes it very difficult to figure out how you're seen just by yourself.
And also, you know, the funny thing is that like the public, we might look on and go, you know, Caiten Brons and blah blah blah have a in our mind about you and your sister and whatever, and it might be unique or you know, weird in a good but for you, it's just completely normal. You've never known anything else, Like you one of five. Your sister swims fast, You swim fast, Like this is just you, this is
just your life. It's only kind of wildly fascinating for people outside, you know, but you're like, yeah, it's not fascinating to me. It's just fucking Tuesday.
Also, I love wildly fascinating because what I do in my life is not fascinating at all. Like if someone had to sit through the grind, that is the I mean in my training week, I got up to Tuesday then because like nobody wants to know what the rest of the week looks like, because I guess what, there's more of the thing. And then you just do that day in day out for months and years. And not only do you have to turn up to those sessions, but you have to make them quality sessions, Like they
have to be of the highest quality. No point in going to a session if it's if you're not going to be giving one hundred percent to it. So you have to like mentally bring yourself there every single time you're there. At the pool, it's really boring. Everyone sees like an Olympic Games or a Comonwealth Games or something like, oh wow, that looks great, that looks fun. It's like, no, ninety nine point nine percent of the time, it is grinding and grinding when you really really don't feel like it.
And that is that is what my life really looks like. So it's not it's really not very interesting except for when it's really interesting. So maybe it evens out.
Well, what was the year and a half off? Like, I mean, I know you're still active, I know you still be becoming a better version of Steph Gilmour and all that and just making a killing in the corporate space, But what was it like for you? Was it weird? Was it a relief? Was it? What was it?
Yeah?
It was it was a bit of everything. It was. It was very weird. It was great to not have to train, but at the same time, it was very hard to get out of the mindset of having to train. So I spent a lot of time like beating myself
up that like, oh I wasn't doing enough. I didn't do like exercise today, and I was very used to exercise, being like I do four to six hours of exercise every day, So I was used to it being this thing that was really difficult, and it had to be difficult for it to be worth something, rather than like, Okay, you just moved your body today, that's fine, and realizing like when you're working a corporate job, like just getting out and moving your body can seem very difficult, like
you're you're very stationary, You're at a desk so much. And I did struggle with being so still and then not being able to move around enough. And then if I did go exit, if I went for a surf for half an hour, I'd be like, oh, it wasn't good enough, Like I didn't do enough surf. Yea, my heart rate probably didn't get up. Was even worth it? Like it's it's hard to get out of that mindset of like reevaluate, evaluating what you're doing all the time
and thinking that you should be better. And the same went for my job, which was a new thing to me. And I'm used to being able to check whether I'm good or bad at something like all the time. So in swimming, I like every single hundred meters, I can look at the clock and I can figure out how I'm swimming. I count my strokes every lapse, so I
know how my stroke counts going. I know from like one stroke too many, or if I'm like feeling good and I'm one stroke less or whatever, like I like measure everything and then to go into a corporate environment and like you're doing a little bit of work and you look at it, you're like, Okay, I think that's great. I don't actually know I think it's good. Let me like send it off, let me get some feedback on it, and if it's and if it's possible, it'll just get accepted.
And there's just not a lot of that same sort of self feedback that you can give yourself because you don't actually know what good looks like.
It's hard to get hard data. Like we're swimming. It's like certain times, certain strokes, certain outcome, and it's it's there's no opinion in that, that's just data, right. But when it's a really kind of you know, you're doing a subjective thing and you're being objectively observed by others, and then you kind of got to look to them in some way when you're unsure in that space of how am I going.
That's a new phenomenon, Yeah, it's new, and just even not one percent knowing what good looks like. It's like, go over crack at this, and I'm like, I don't even know what good looks like. I'm just going to do what I think is good and then well then we'll see what happened. So that was definitely different, and it was Yeah, it was a bit of a challenge figuring out how that works. But I really enjoyed it. Obviously, I like I like challenges, so I liked that it
was challenging in that space. But it's I don't want to give people the impression that I left swimming, and to be honest, I wasn't always one hundred percent sure whether it was going to come back or not. And
then it was just clean and plain sailing. Like particularly in the first few weeks, I think I turned into a little bit like I was a little bit erratic, as like Bart that was like, okay, just remember you've gone from doing like forty hours of exercise a week to now doing pretty much nothing, like even just within your body, like the amount of endorphins that you are used to versus what you're getting now, You're probably not going to be feeling absolutely great and energized even though
you're doing less work, you're probably going to have less energy, which definitely reflected how I felt. So it's it was good that I had good people around me to sort of help me through it, because even though I had a good plan and everything, it was still it's still a tricky change.
Well, and also considering that, so what were you twenty seven at that time?
Twenty eight?
I think, yeah, and you'd started swimming at seven, and from seven you wanted to be the bloody best, right you want to be an Olympian and a world champion. Really, so for twenty years your life had been consumed by this one thing, and then you're like, wow, I'm not doing that now. I mean it's like you're you know, you were kind of like an eighteen year old in some ways in that you're stepping into this new grown
up world. Not that you hadn't been a grown up, but it's in a different area where you're like trying to figure shit out. So it must have been very hard to step out of that repetition and that groundhog daness of training and competing and sleeping and eating and recovering, and now you don't need to think about any of that Bronti. That must have been very strange.
Yes, you can't just flick the switch and turn it off. And anytime I'd be doing something new, I'd be like, oh, this could be good for my swimming, it would be good for my training. It was like, no, you don't have to think about that anymore because you're so right, Like, not only is it the time in the pool, it's like the recovery time in between. Like every time I do something, I'm like, Okay, how will this set me up for my training session this afternoon? Should I do
A or B? Should I walk to the shop or should I get my screwter down? Because like, how much do I think I'm going to need my legs tonight? Like every single decision I make is in the context of swimming, So you don't just like flick the switch and that completely turns off. It definitely takes a while to to start see your life in a different sort of context without swimming sort of looming over it.
Did you feel guilty at any stage? Like when not that you should, of course, but when you've been doing something so much for so long, did you go, oh, I'm really I should be doing this. I should like just doing not that you were doing nothing, but in the swimming sense doing nothing and just teating the breaks.
Well, I felt guilty like almost every day, like if I went for a walk instead of going for like a run, which by the way, I'm not a runner, so terrible idea. But yeah, like almost every day felt guilty about like I'm not doing enough, doing enough exercise. It's not like I'm not as fit as I should be. Oh, my body's going to change. Oh this is terrible. Like almost every day you're like evaluating yourself and being like, I feel like I'm not doing enough just because it's
not what you used to do. And when the standard previously was enough training to be an Olympic athlete, you're probably never going to do that standard again. And at the same time, I didn't actually want to do that standard, like I wanted a break from it, but then you felt guilty because you weren't doing it. People are very complicated, Like that is It's a bit I was thinking two things at the same time, then saying I don't want to do that, and then feeling guilty for not doing it.
And I'll laugh where you said you or not, you're not a natural runner. One hundred years ago. I used to train a lady called Tammy van Wissa. Do you know who that is? No, Tammy van Whissa was, for a very long time pre you Australia's pre eminent ocean swimmer, multiple world records, swam lock ness, you know all of that in that Susi Maroni era where and I remember tim I met her. She came to me and said all she did primarily when I met her was swim,
not heaps of other training. This is in the nineties, right, so it's a long time ago. But the first day that I trained her, I said, well, we'll just do some different stuff, right, Let's just get out of she's or get out of the water, and let's just do things that you don't normally do cross training, so that
stimulating your body in a different way. And before she came, before she came to the gym the day that the first time I ever trained it, she'd either swum three or five k's right, which for her was not a lot because she's an ocean swimmer, but or an open water swimmer. And so I said, well, let's just do
a little run. There was a outside the gym out the front door around the block was one k. I said, let's do a lazy jog, will warm up, then we'll stretch and we'll do some other shit, and that one k jog Nelly killed her and it was so fucking and she's like, I'm not a runner. I don't like
I'm aquatic, I'm not terrestrial. I don't you know, this is not my natural habitat put me in wi water, and it was so interesting for me to like this person who's highly trained, incredibly fit, resting heart rate of thirty eight, whatever, all that stuff. And then yeah, different environment, different task, different requirements physiologically. Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it.
It's so interesting and very true that most swimmers just can barely do anything else. But it always blows my mind, like I think that I should be better at this stuff than I am, because like I said, I'm like objectively quite fit, But then you put me on like the ground and asked me to run somewhere, and I just find it's so difficult, and like I don't even know what it is like every I think it's embarrassing because like, not everybody learns to swim, and not everybody
is in a swimming environment during their life. But like every single person, like most people, if you've got two legs and you're able to walk around, you walk around like you walk around, you run around when you're a kid. Like everyone's done this at some point, So the fact that they can't do it is like pretty abysmal.
You can run five ks though, right, I don't know.
I mean definitely I don't. I honestly don't know like to find running like I could like get myself through that that's fine, But I think my actual problem is probably my problem in general, as they go too hard too early. So I think like running is like sprinting, but it's not always If you're going to run five k'd run a bit slower.
Are you telling me that you were saying before that you count your strokes when you swim. Are you telling me that when you're competing you're literally counting your strokes?
Yeah, lots of the time I do, so occasionally I won't, or I'll count in a different way, Like I'll count like in between my breaths, So if I was in one hundred, like I might count like one, two, three, four. I normally breathe fours and then the way back, I'd be like a three or four, six or six or four and then like fifteen strokes to the end, so I'll count those, or I'll count like one to thirty six on the way out and then like it's like normally one to forty or forty one on the way back.
So yes, I do. It's a habit that have gotten into When I was younger, it was sort of drilled into me. It's very hard to count your strokes while you're racing, but I got used to doing it. And see, most of the time I do.
Apart from your sister, person you most admire in the pool, like that or that inspires you or that was the biggest influence on you. Another swimmer, not a coach, not a family member, but another swimmer that you go, fuck, I love that person. They inspire me or they helped me to greatness.
Good question. I probably don't have like one single person, but I do try and take things from lots of people constantly, particularly when I started dealing with injury, Like I would go talk to people who had been injured and just pick up little pieces from them. And I think in general, someone like so one of my good friends in swimming. Her name's Lea Neil. She has been on the team for six, seven, maybe even eight years.
I don't even remember when she first made the team in the four hundred freestyle, ton a freestyle, turn a freestyle relays. Like someone like Leah who just like goes about her business quietly gets her all done. Someone like that who's none of us are really in it for the glory, but some of us get to have the glory. Like I don't think anyone starts them because they want to be like this big famous person. They start something because they love the sport and they love being able
to do well at it. But a lot of like I've been so lucky that I've had like great sponsors in my time. I've had a lot of recognition for the work that I've done. But someone like Leah, who most people wouldn't know, even though she's at the top of her sport for six or seven years, it just gets it every day and gets it done and tries to be her best every day without there being this
big external validation. Someone like her, like watching her do her stuff is like, yeah, that's that's what it's actually all about. So being able to pick up little things from other people, is like sort of how I like to operate, and just asking questions from people. When I was younger, I would like so afraid of asking people questions. I thought it made me look like stupid. You're like, oh,
I don't know I'm asking a question. But as I've got it older, I'm like, oh, this is fascinating to just ask as many questions as possible, even if you may know you think you know the answer, maybe you don't know the answer. So I spent a lot of time asking people, Oh, why are you doing that? What are you doing that Forlorence? Pick up lots of things along the way, And do you you.
And k trying together these days or separately?
No, we trained separately now for the first time in our careers. So we trained together from when we were seven and nine until we were twenty eight and thirty. And yeah, now our coach that we were with for all that time, so we're the same coach for twenty one years. He's retired from swimming and from pull deck coaching. He's moved into another role and so now we're training in different states. So Kate's training up in Brisbane, and I meant Canberra at the AES for sure, rollingson, How.
Would you describe We're nearly done, don't worry, I'll let you off the stand in a moment. How would you describe your relationship with her? Just in terms of is it a typical sisterly relationship?
Is it?
Well, it can't be because of your background, I guess, but how is it?
No, it's it's fairly typical. It's I mean, it was probably very different for a long time, and that we saw each other every single day, regardless of whether you
made time for each other. So it's actually nice now and that we've got I mean, obviously I miss her, miss having her arounds, but it's also nice that because we have space, it means that we we intentionally seek out each other, which is very different from just it's sort of like those incidental friends that you have at school when you do them every day versus like you make time for them. And so it's really nice that give cat call and run away to and from training
and have a little chain Adams. In October, we're about to head overseas and do World Cup competition. So there's like these three competitions in Berlin, Athens and Budapest, and she's going to be away on that trip with me, so I get to hang out and spend some time together. So I would say our relationship now is probably more normal than it was in the past, because I don't think many people see their siblings as grown ups every single day, whereas now I think we have probably a
bit more of a normal relationship. We used to see each other every day, and we used to live together like when I was what nineteen until I was twenty two, so we saw a lot of each other at one point, which was probably not what your average sibling would do.
Are you saying you're a grown up now? Is that what you're saying?
For the record, yes I am a grown up officially. Yes, officially, yes I'm a grown up. But we'll see how that actually pans out. I can't ever seem to get on top of my washing, Like that's like the still the one growing up activity that Like why are there always more Washington do? Like either always dirty in the machine all there's like stuff to be folded, like it never ever ends, like when does it finish?
Yeah, you're definitely not a domestic goddess him How last question, what have you got to do to get to Paris. What's going to happen between now and then, So this next bit.
Of competitions are really important for me, in my first real long course competition since I've come back, so a really good time to take stock of where I'm at, and then just a bunch more training to actually qualify for the Olympics is in June next year Olympic Trials. It's the one off competition, so realistically, it doesn't really matter what I do and the lead into that, it's
just that one competition. You have to finish first or second in your event and swim the top eight time in the world, which in my events you have to swim the top three time in the world in order to come first or seconds. And then for the relay events, for the hundred, there's a relay spot which is normally from like first to fifth or sixth place, and that's it. It's just cut and dry, very very easy to evaluate
where you are on the day. But it's just down to that one race, whether you go to the Olympics or not.
That's such a crazy, crazy level of pressure.
Yeah, it's not nice. Actually, Trials, trials, Trials is not nice. But to be fair, it's a very cutthroat way of like picking someone for a team. But the Olympics is also like that, so you really want people that can perform under pressure, like sort of what you're alluding to before. If you can make it through the trials and make
it through this environment. The Olympics was once every four years, and you also only get one shot at that, so it does sort of you sort of learn how to deal with those high pressure situations by doing things like trials or by doing the things that qualify you for it. So you sort of like love up every time you're going through the process.
Are you heading out now for a bacon and egg roll?
No? I already had a bacon negro. Yeah, I need to go to that.
You see that face, Melissa that you know I already had it. I already had it.
Now I got to go to the gym, so I'll work off the bacon egg roll. I love bacon egg rolls.
Yeah, you go and get massive. Bro. Hey Bronti, you're a treasure and congratulations on everything that you've done. Super not that it means anything from me, but's super proud of you. It's awesome. Thank you for representing our country as well as you have. And thanks for being like so accessible and so lovely to talk to. It's rare, so we appreciate you.
Oh, that's very kind to say. Thank you. Thanks so much showing me and well, it's been a pleasure.
Yeah, unless you didn't do much lifting game, will you.
Thank you so much. That was awesome.
Stay there, we'll say goodbye fair but for the moment, Bronti, thanks so much.