Pal Interviews Brodie Summers

Interview Transcript

• Question 1: Could you describe the moment you realised you were able to compete in sport at a high level?
• Question 2: What did you like most about your sport?
• Question 3: How do you remain diligent in your training and overcome the lack of motivation?
• Question 4: What is life like as a professional athlete?
• Question 5: How do you build your mindset to be strong and overcome significant setbacks?
• Question 6: What were some of the biggest challenges you have had to overcome to get to where you are now?
• Question 7: How do you stop negative self-talk from causing you to lose confidence?
• Question 8: What advice would you give to the Year 7 version of yourself?
• Question 9: How has competing at the highest level changed you as a person?
• Question 10: What do you want to do after you finish competing?
• Question 11: What was the process for reaching the Olympics?
• Question 12: How often do you train per week?

Question 1: Could you describe the moment you realised you were able to compete in sport at a high level?

I don’t think there was a particular moment per say where I had a moment of realisation.

While I was growing up, my parents instilled the belief in me that if I really wanted something then I could go out there and do the work to achieve it.

That applies to all areas of my life whether that’s in sport or education or work. It is the philosophy I have operated under my whole life.

I don’t think there was a moment I thought "I can make it at the top level at this sport" as much as there was this underlying belief that if I really wanted to achieve it, then I could do what I had to to make it happen.

Question 2: What did you like most about your sport?

The sport has a phenomenal sense of community. Even though I am competing against people from other countries all over the world, week in week out, I am actually really good friends with everyone I am competing against.

I really enjoy the community aspect of the sport – the fact we all build each other up as opposed to trying to find ways to bring other people down.

The other thing I really enjoy about sport is that it is immensely challenging - even for someone like me who has been doing it for as long as I have.

I started in 2006 as a junior and I am still trying to figure stuff out all the time. It is a really technical sport and it requires a lot of technical ability as well as mental ability because it is high pressure.

A lot of the time you only get one run to make it count, and that is less than 30 seconds, and there is a lot that can go wrong between the start gate and the finish line.

That constant sense of challenge, and that constant feeling of trying to overcome all those challenges as they are presented in front of you, is a really satisfying feeling when you actually do overcome those hurdles and challenges.

Those are the things I appreciate about the sport the most.

Question 3: How do you remain diligent in your training and overcome the lack of motivation?

I am a very goal-oriented person, and I think most successful athletes are. When I think about what it is I want to achieve in the sport, and that is to be the absolute best I can be, it has often reflected in very good result at major event and also in the quality of the performance that I can do as an athlete.

When setting goals, there is a point where I want to be at (the goal) and there is a point where I am currently. I think about what are the necessary steps in between my goal and where I am now, and I map those out mentally and with my coaches and trainers.

Those can be physical goals in the gym, they can be technical goals when I am training on snow, it can be a whole range of things ... but I know there are certain things I must achieve in order to get to reach my goals.

So if ever I feel like I am lacking motivation, I always think about the bigger goal I am working towards. And that helps me understand that I would be doing myself a disservice if I don’t put in the necessary work in order to achieve that goal.

A helpful thought I always go through in my mind is – for example, the Olympics is the pinnacle of our sport, so I want to imagine myself at the starting gates of the Olympic games, and I want to have a feeling that I have done everything I could have in order to give myself the best possible chance to perform at my best at that major event.

In other words, I try to think about the future, and what is the feeling I want to have when I am up there (at the Olympics) and I have all that pressure around me – you have got tv cameras, you have got huge crowds, it is once every 4 years - I want to feel like I have put in all of the work so I can stand there and feel like no matter what happens, I have done everything that I needed to to get myself here and do my best.

Question 4: What is life like as a professional athlete?

I really enjoy my life as a professional athlete. Generally, it is very different to the standard life path for a lot of people.

In winter sports especially, it involves a lot of travel. For example, throughout the whole year I get 2 months at home, and the rest of the time I am away with the Australian team on training camp.

It is a lot of the time away from home but I am always surrounded by like-minded people who are also very driven to achieve their personal goals and objectives.

I really enjoy the fact that I am in a high-performance environment all the time – whether that is my teammates, or my coaches, or my trainers or my nutritionist – everyone that I work with on a daily basis to optimise my performance. I love the environment I get to be in because it is geared towards achieving the absolute best we can achieve as athletes.

In terms of life outside of the sport, I definitely find activities for the free time I do get. The big one for me when I am in Melbourne (home) is playing golf with my family. Golf is a family activity we do, and that is probably the thing that consumes the majority of my attention outside of skiing. Cycling is another one.

Whilst being an athlete, I have also completed a degree in finance at Monash University. That is a genuine major interest of mine and is an area I hope to get into once I do retire from the sport in the coming years.

I think it is definitely good as an athlete to have passions and pursuits outside of your sport because it gives you some balance mentally. If you just focus on your sport all the time it is easy to burn out, and I have seen it happen before. So I think having something to shift your attention on to when you do finish a long day of training is a really good thing and something that can improve your performance.

Question 5: How do you build your mindset to be strong and overcome significant setbacks?

Unfortunately, I have had a bit of a bumpy injury history in the sport. I have had 2 major injuries in my career, one was my lower back at the Sochi Olympics in 2014 and the other was my ACL at the 2018 Olympics.

As an athlete that is one of the most difficult things you will have to deal with and overcome - major setbacks like that … especially when they are at peak moments such as the Olympics.

But I think the way I approach it is the same as what I was describing before in terms of motivation and using goal setting in order to make sure that you get the most out of yourself. It ensures you put in the necessary work to achieve your best in what you are doing.

For me, I will use the example of the ACL. I injured it 5 ½ months out from the 2018 Olympics, and in order to have surgery and do all the necessary rehab to get myself back to elite status, it typically takes 12 months on average for most athletes.

But I decided to do it in the 5 ½ month window that I had. Therefore, I had to work really closely with my trainers, my physio and my support team in order to map out exactly what are the goals I had to achieve, and when they have to be achieved by, in order for me to be considered "able to compete" and represent Australia at those Olympics.

I think working with someone to help you establish goals, someone that knows and understands what the necessary requirements are, is a really big asset to have. And if you can have a constant dialogue with that person, they can help keep you on track.

There were days, especially when I first had the surgery, where I had to relearn how to walk again. When you have been walking your whole life, and someone is teaching you how to walk again, it can be pretty frustrating and can be very mundane. But just having someone there to bounce off of, and to always keep you on track and working towards the necessary things you have to achieve, is a great asset and a great way to make sure you stay on track to achieving what you need to.

Question 6: What were some of the biggest challenges you have had to overcome to get to where you are now?

I would say my major injuries definitely stand out in my mind as some of the more significant challenges I have had to overcome.

Other than that, to be honest I can't really complain about the road I have had to get to where I am now. I have had a lot of opportunities and when those opportunities have presented themselves I have tried to do my absolute best to seize that.

Before doing that you first have to recognise that those opportunities are there. I believe I have done a decent job of that.

And when I have hit bumps in the road, I have leveraged my network around me and I have used them to help me get back to where I need to be … and that can be anyone from your family through to your team around you.

I think I have genuinely enjoyed the process of what I have been working towards my whole career as an athlete, and I think focusing on the process and trying to derive as much enjoyment as you can is a great piece of advice for anyone in just about any pursuit.

But I think especially for athletes, because what we do as athletes can be very repetitive a lot of the time, sometimes motivation can lack a little bit when you are doing the same thing day in and day out.

Some of those training sessions can be hard to motivate yourself for - but just trying to find the enjoyment in it, whether that is in the gym or on the hill, can really help you stay on track.

Question 7: How do you stop negative self-talk from causing you to lose confidence?

Firstly, don’t beat yourself up for having those thoughts because I think it is very common for most people, especially when you are younger and you are trying to figure out who you are and how you naturally want to approach things.

What I would say is one of the biggest things that helps me when I am in those situations where I am susceptible to negative self-talk would be to shift the focus back to the variables that I can control.

If there is a player on the other team that is much bigger than you are … that is not something you can control, so why would you worry about something that is out of you control and you have no hope of actually being able to change?

What you can change is how you interpret it and how you adjust your approach based off of the given information.

In my sport, it is a judge sport, so I could focus on what the judges are thinking, but what is that really going to get me versus focusing on the actual execution of the specific parts of the run that I need to do in order to get a good score.

To put it simply, my focus is much more productive when it is on things that I can actually control and manipulate myself versus things that I have no hope of actually being able to change.

I think always keeping the focus on things you can control is a great way for dealing with that negative self-talk that can creep in.

Question 8: What advice would you give to the Year 7 version of yourself?

"Make sure you remember to always enjoy it" would be the first thought that comes to my mind.

I think there was a moment there where I probably got a little bit too concentrated on outcomes and I forgot to enjoy the process of working towards making myself a better skier everyday … and I think a lot of people are susceptible to falling into that trap.

One of the biggest things I found when I hurt my knee leading up to the last Olympics was that because I couldn’t ski for a long time, it made me really miss it.

I almost took it for granted after a while because I always got to ski, but then when it got taken away from me, I realised how much I missed it.

So after coming back from that, even if the weather or condition is challenging whatever it is, I have made sure to remind myself that this is what I love doing.

That is what I would tell my year 7 self, "enjoy the process and make sure you maximise every opportunity you get."

Question 9: How has competing at the highest level changed you as a person?

I think because I have been doing it for so long it has completely shaped the way I am and who I am as a person.

I think being an elite athlete, you are fortunate enough to be surrounded by other like-minded people who are all equally as focused on high performance as you are.

So I think being around the best of the best can only make you better because I truly believe you are the product of the environment in which you spend the bulk of your time, and I have been fortunate enough to be surrounded by high performance most of my life as an athlete.

Hopefully that is something that has rubbed off on me in some way or form. And I think it is true for myself and all of my teammates and competitors ... we all make each other better than we would be if we didn’t have each other.

Humans do really pick up on what is going on around them and what people are doing around them - even if you are not consciously processing it. Your subconscious picks up a lot of these things.

So surrounding myself with peak performers have shaped me into a better person, a better athlete, and a high performance individual.

Question 10: What do you want to do after you finish competing?

I have a degree in finance, and I absolutely love following financial markets. I am a huge fan of investing with my own money and I hope to turn that into a career someday when I am older.

Retirement is probably not too far away now as I am getting old for a mogul skier at 27 years of age. I think it will be on the next year or two … see how I feel after this next Olympics.

I think I would love to establish a career in the funds management space and work towards achieving my goals in that area once I am finished with skiing.

I think if you are a competitive person you will always crave some level of competition, so I think I will have to look for other areas of my life where i can still get my fix of competitive environment - maybe that will be golf in the future. 

Question 11: What was the process for reaching the Olympics?

In Australia, we are really lucky in winter sports to have very established pathways.

For me, I started with interschool skiing competition, and then from there I developed a passion and was able to convince my parent to sign me up for one of the club programs at Mt Buller.

I worked there for a couple of years and turned my passion into a bit of an obsession, then after a couple of years there I qualified to get on the National Development team. I was contracted by the NSW Institute of Sport and I had to move up to Perisher in NSW to start training up there for the winter.

A few years after that, I achieved the necessary results to get on the full Senior Australian team and have been there ever since.

In terms of actually qualifying for the Olympics, there are specific criteria you have to meet by competing at certain levels of competition. For us it is World Cup skiing competitions, and I have to be in the Olympic-adjusted top 30 in the world.

It sounds a bit technical and daunting, but maybe because I have been doing it for a while I don’t think it is that hard to get to the Olympics. But then again, I have done a lot of work over the course of my life and that is the position I have found myself in.

Question 12: How often do you train per week?

I train every day.

When I am on a training camp away from home, and I am doing technical training on snow or jumping on a water ramp, I generally do 4-day cycles where I get 1 day off for every 3 days of training.

We don’t really have weekends of anything like that. We just work on week-all training camp mode - days of the week don’t really mean much.

When I am home in Melbourne, Monday to Friday I would usually have 2 training sessions per day. Some of them will be lifting, some of them will be conditioning, some of them will be speed and plyometrics. I always train once on Saturday, and I would usually give myself Sunday to play golf with my family.

It is actually one of the most important things that we do. We have to protect our body. The sport can be quite high impact and can be dangerous if you are not physically ready to meet the demands of it. We have to spend a lot of time in the gym to train to make sure our bodies are physical able to stand up to the demands of the sport.