589. How Athletes Keep Their Spark

Austin looks at how Jack Johnson divides his creative life into inhale and exhale: the writing and performing is output, and the surfing and family time is what refills the tank that output draws from. He argues athletics works the same way, using Georges St-Pierre as the example, who kept learning a new skill separate from preparing for an opponent because when preparation swallowed everything he lost his passion for the art. Most athletes, he says, leave almost no space for the inhale. He shares that he just bought a guitar and a piano to give himself somewhere to inhale, on the logic that his athletes get the best version of him only when his own tank is full. The episode closes on a question for the listener: exhale is easy, so what are you actually doing to inhale?