Visualize Like Gymnastics World Champion Kristin Allen
Kristin Allen is a two-time World Champion in the sport of acrobatic gymnastics and a member of the USA Gymnastics Hall of Fame. After leaving competitive sport, Kristin performed with Pippin on Broadway, Cirque du Soleil, and the Kellogg’s Tour of Champions.
Today, Kristin is the founder and president of the Acrobatic Gymnastics Foundation, the Chairwoman of the National Gymnastics Foundation, and an active investor and advisor in early-stage companies.
In this conversation, Kristin and Chris dig into the mindset, training, and performance techniques necessary to reach the elite levels of a sport. Kristin shares lesser-known aspects of reaching the top—namely, what comes after World Champion? She shares insightful lessons on disentangling our identities from our profession and designing sustainable practices for mental health and athletic recovery.
See above for video, and below for transcript, audio, and resources mentioned.
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Links and resources we mentioned during our conversation:
Additional Forcing Function links:
Experiment Without Limits (peak performance workbook, free download)
Performance Assessment (quiz to reveal your greatest opportunity for growth)
Check out previous Forcing Function Hour episodes.
Topics:
(01:40) Acrobatic gymnastics
(04:21) Realizing your potential
(07:26) Facing adversity
(09:25) Staying focused on your goals and mission
(14:22) Mentally preparing for a big performance
(29:19) A typical day of training
(34:33) Performing as a pair
(38:56) What comes after World Champion
(48:22) Advice for parents of top performers
(57:12) The importance of positive mental health
(01:02:28) Kristin’s current mission
Conversation Transcript:
Note: transcript slightly edited for clarity.
Chris (00:05): Welcome to Forcing Function Hour, a conversation series exploring the boundaries of peak performance. Join me, Chris Sparks, as I interview elite performers to reveal principles, systems, and strategies for achieving a competitive edge in business. If you are an executive or investor ready to take yourself to the next level, download my workbook at experimentwithoutlimits.com. For all episodes and show note, go to forcingfunctionhour.com.
Hello from Berlin. Today I am so excited to be joined by Kristin Allen. Kristin Allen is a two-time world champion in the sport of acrobatic gymnastics, and a member of the USA Gymnastics Hall of Fame. After leaving competitive sport, Kristin performed on Broadway, performed with Cirque du Soleil, and the Kellogg's Tour of Champions. Today, Kristin is the founder and President of the Acrobatic Gymnastics Foundation, the chairwoman of the National Gymnastics Foundation, and an active investor and advisor in early-stage companies.
In this conversation, we are going to deconstruct peak performance. We'll dig into the mindset, training, and preparation necessary to reach the elite levels of a sport. We'll also discuss some lesser-known aspects of reaching the top. Namely, what comes next: untangling our identities from our chosen profession, and creating practices for positive mental health and recovery.
Thank you so much for joining me, Kristin. I've been really looking forward to this.
Kristin (01:34): Thank you, Chris. It's great to be here. I really appreciate you having me on.
Chris (01:40): So, talk to us about acrobatic gymnastics. What do you love so much about the sport?
Kristin (01:47): Acrobatic gymnastics, I think, combines a lot of unique aspects of sport. You get the dance aspect, you get the team aspect, as well as strength and flips and danger. So I think it really gives you a lot to work with, which makes it really fun. And I think probably the best way to describe the sport is it's really similar to pair figure skating. So I had a male partner. He would throw me, we'd do flips, handstands, all kinds of lifts, and it was choreographed to music. So I think that's the best comparison to make.
Chris (02:25): The intersection of performance and athleticism I think really makes acro unique. There's the strength, agility, flexibility element, but also you're dancing, you're choreographing your routine, there's almost some acting in there, right? It's very demonstrative. Talk to me about that intersection. Do you see yourself as a natural performer, or was it something that you had to learn along the way?
Kristin (02:50): Oh, gosh. Well, I definitely wasn't a natural athlete. I have some very funny videos of myself when I was first starting out looking incredibly awkward. So I definitely had to put a lot of hours in to get to where I was. But I always loved about the sport that it had that performance aspect of it, and I think that really led nicely to what I ended up doing post-my competitive career.
Chris (03:19): What do you think makes acrobatic gymnastics different from other areas of athletics, other sports? Was there something particular that really drew you to it?
Kristin (03:28): You know, when you start a sport when you're really young, I don't know if you necessarily know why you're doing what you're doing. Right? I started the sport when I was like—I first came across the sport when I was seven, and it took me two years to convince my parents to let me join a competitive team. They wanted me to kind of be more broad and do lots of different activities, and I was sort of hell-bent on doing the one thing. But I don't know, I think that I always loved to dance, so the fact that it had that dance element I think was really my favorite part of it for a long time. I spent more time practicing my dance moves than I did my handstands, much to my coach's dismay in the early years. But yeah, I think that's what I liked, it was the unique combination of things.
Chris (04:21): Was there a moment that you realized how much potential you had?
Kristin (04:26): You know, that's a great question. I don't know if there was a specific moment necessarily. I just know that I kind of had that fire in me to do well. And I remember being around eleven, probably, when I met the current world champions at the time, and I had the opportunity to talk to them, and I remember one of them telling me that he would sign his journal every day, "Future World Champion." And I think that's the first time I learned what kind of the best thing you could do in the sport was, and you know, I was a little kid, so I didn't really understand that until that moment, I think. And so I think all I really knew was, "Okay, this person that I look up to is doing this, and so that's probably what I should do." And so I started you know, writing in a journal the same thing, signing it, "Future World Champion" every day.
Chris (05:30): Seems like it worked out pretty well for you. This fire you describe at this young age, this drive to be a future world champion, where do you think that fire comes from?
Kristin (05:41): Yeah, so I guess this is where I start to get a little controversial, because I think that when you look at the top performers in the world, a lot of them tend to have really difficult childhoods. They tend to have some kind of traumatic experience, or just maybe a sense of feeling less-than or unworthy in some way. And I think that that is really where that fire comes from. And I know that's not necessarily what is exciting to hear. I think a lot of us wanna say, "Oh, it's just innate, it's intrinsic, it's grit, it's resilience." But I think those things really come from adverse experiences, unfortunately, and I think for me it was really a desire to prove myself and kind of have something that no one could take away from me. And we'll touch on motivation later in the conversation, but I think as I've kind of unpacked this later on in life, that's sort of the conclusion I've come to. And I've actually had the opportunity to participate in some research studies around top performers, and there's one study in particular that USC is running that I'm excited for the results. But I think in looking for commonalities to top performers, I think that the results are looking fairly similar to what I've just said. So.
Chris (07:04): Talk to me about the study. What do you expect to come out of it?
Kristin (07:07): Well, you know, obviously it's still in process, so I'm not sure what the actual results will be, but I think that what will come out of it is that commonality, that most of the world's top performers tend to have had some early childhood trauma.
Chris (07:26): So, this commonality of being resilient to adversity, as you're rising through the levels in gymnastics, what types of adversity did you have to face?
Kristin (07:40): Well, I think that with elite sport in general it's sort of—We've normalized a lot of adversity that you face. For example, I think especially in a sport like gymnastics and other sports where you peak really young, you are exposed to some pretty difficult things really young. And it can be psychological abuse, physical abuse, it could be sexual abuse. But the things that are kind of more normalized are the psychological and physical abuse pieces, which are, you know, you're a young child and you're being forcefully stretched until you cry or until your hip pops out of the socket and you get injured. I mean, or you're just yelled at and you're criticized about your body, about your level of training, compared constantly to other people that you're training with. And sometimes it's not even being yelled at, it's just a subtle demeaning that occurs in the gym from the adults in your life. So I think that there are more and more people speaking out about this and understanding, "Okay, does it have to be this way? Do we have to train athletes to be this level and do it in such a damaging way?" And I don't know the answer to that, but I know that there are a lot of people doing great work to try to solve these problems, which is really encouraging to me, so that other athletes don't end up in the same situations that I was in.
But yeah, I think it can be a very difficult environment to grow up in.
Chris (09:25): As the world expands through the internet, through the world stage, the world becoming flatter, it's so easy to fall into this relativistic trap of comparison. It's so easy to see everyone else who seems to be so much further along for us, and it can be really tough to not compare where we are to where others are, and to feel a sense of being an impostor. That, you know, everyone else has it all together, they have it all figured out. You mentioned this—This is really, you know, reinforced in athletics, is that you are especially at the highest levels just exposed to so much intensity, and the temptation to compare with everyone around you. Did you have success with thinking of just like staying in your own lane and doing your own thing, having your own performance without, you know, worrying what everyone else is doing? You mentioned your journaling practice. Was there anything that seemed to work for you to, you know, stay focused on your own goals and your own mission for doing this?
Kristin (10:42): Yeah, I think so, as far as my journaling practice in particular, I would say. One thing that I did every night was just write down all of my goals. I had a tiny little notebook, and every night I would write, "I will do" whatever the goal was. So, "I will pass my math test," "I will do this new trick tomorrow," and at the top it was always, "I will be a world champion." So that kept me focused on the things that I wanted to accomplish every day. And I did that every night for years.
So that was one thing. Another thing is that one thing my dad used to always tell me is that it's important to pass from the competitive mind into the creative mind. And what that sort of meant was instead of thinking about how you're doing in comparison to others, it should just be about, "How can I be the best for myself, and what do I want to put out on the world stage," I guess. So if I'm competing at Worlds, I wanna know that that was the best performance of my life for me, and not because it was better than someone else's. And I think especially in a sport like mine where there's a large creative aspect and a performance aspect that's subjectively judged, it was incredibly important to think that, because people like different types of art. And so one judge might prefer my style of dance, and another judge might prefer someone else's. So when it's subjective that way, you really just have to think about, okay, what do I love? And make sure that that's what I'm putting out into the world.
Chris (12:17): That's a really interesting dimension that I think a lot of people don't encounter in sport, is that you're judged by someone else. And it's, even that word. It's a judgment, that this is good, this is the right way of doing it. And I imagine with this subjective judging, there's a temptation to try to do something that you think the judges want to see. But I imagine that that leads to a road of doing something that is derivative, that isn't all that innovative. And I like what you're saying about, "This is the best performance for me." That what I have under control is I can do things my own way, the way that I like to do them. Did you find that this worked better for you than trying to create a routine that the judges would like? How do you think about striking this balance?
Kristin (13:13): I think it's exactly what you said. It's a balance, right? And I think that that's something that continues on into the rest of my life, too. It's a balance of, "Okay, how can I optimize for the situation and the environment that I'm in"—which would be what the judges want or what the requirements of the sport are—But then, also, "how can I bring my own flair to it and do what feels right to me?" And so I think in a lot of ways what that comes down to is preparation. So I know that if I've done my best to prepare, then whatever that high-pressure situation or environment is, I know I did my best. And so I can always learn more and do better next time, but in that context I did my best, so I don't have to have any regrets about it, or worry about how someone else felt about. That's great feedback. That's interesting. I can decide to take that or leave that for next time. But I know that I put in preparation that I needed to to feel good about what I did that day.
Chris (14:22): I can tell you've really thought about this, and there's a lot of wisdom from the years. That what other people think is just feedback, it's useful but not necessarily something to take to heart. And this is something that I return to often, that all we have in our control is the effort that we put in. So if we give our best effort, if we try our best, we have no regrets, no matter what the result. That can, you know, protect us from a lot of inevitable setbacks, subjective and otherwise, that things do happen, but as long as we put in our best effort we can always feel good about it.
You mention preparation. I'm very interested in this, obviously, given the title of our show here. Talk to me about, you know, the days, the hours, the minutes before a really big performance. What did you do mentally in particular to prepare for this big moment of a big stage?
Kristin (15:28): Yeah, so I think mental preparation, in general, is obviously incredibly important. And I think we can think about it in a couple of ways. One is how you talk to yourself, and then the other is the sort of mental practice that you can do. And that's usually in the form of visualization.
So, positive self-talk—which is ideally how you talk to yourself—is basically the idea that it's just, first of all, being aware of what you're saying to yourself throughout the day or throughout your practice that you're working on, and then within that there are a couple of things you can think about. So one is just obviously, are you being encouraging to yourself? Are you saying things like, "That sucked," or are you saying things like, "Good job, you'll get it better the next time." You know, something—Kind of being that supportive parent to yourself, when you talk to yourself.
So that's one part of it. And the other part of it is really putting things in the context of positive action. And so the best sort of example of this is let's say there's a ledge, and people are walking past it, and the person standing there says, "Hey, don't trip over the ledge." You're gonna be thinking about the ledge, and you're going to be thinking about the words "don't" and "trip." So, "trip" is the main action that's now in your mind, and you now have all of these different possible scenarios that might happen, where you are more likely to trip on that ledge. Where if you thought about it in the context of "step over the ledge" and gave your body the exact thing that you want it to do, you drastically minimize what your body might do. Right? Now instead of having fifty different possibilities of what I could do—I could jump, I could fall, I could slide—I now have one option, which is to step over the ledge.
And so in the context of sport or doing something well, it's important to think about, "Okay, am I saying to myself don't do a certain thing, or am I really telling myself the exact action that I want to have?" So with my sport it was things like instead of saying "don't shake in a handstand," or "don't fall," really giving myself that, "Okay, well what is the positive action that I want to have happen here? Maybe that's really pushing down through my arm, breathing steadily, things like that."
So that's the self-talk piece. And the other piece is visualization. So that's—We've heard this a million times. It's, you know, imagining this scenario that you want to have happen. And obviously adding as much detail to that as possible is really helpful. You know, who's going to be there, what it might sound like. So I would always try to look at the venue ahead of time, pictures online, see what it might look like. And then once I got there I would make sure I really looked at the venue. Where are all the lights that might be distracting, where are the judges gonna be, what eye level are they at, and I would incorporate all of those things into my visualization leading up to the event.
And one piece of visualization that's important to recognize is if you are in first-person or in third-person. So, first-person visualization would be seeing it through my own eyes. I'm in my body, I'm looking out, and what am I seeing, what am I feeling? Third-person visualization would be you're an outside audience member, and you're watching yourself. So I'm gonna be, you know, be watching myself perform this trick, watching myself on the stage. Neither one is necessarily bad, but what I found in my own practice was that if I switched between third-person and first-person on a trick, usually it would happen in the middle of a trick, usually the scariest part, that would be sort of a clue for me that I have a bit of a mental block there, something that I really need to work on. So I would really focus on making sure that I could visualize fully in first-person the entire trick, for the entire routine, and then also in third-person. And I felt like that really kind of strengthened the practice for me.
So that's one thing. That's something I still use today. Probably not to the same extreme, but I do like to kind of envision how I might feel. And I think one thing that really helps me is thinking about how I might feel after I do something, because a lot of times with these pursuits of things that are difficult, the steps along the way aren't that fun. And so if you can think about how you're going to feel after doing something, and kind of—It's gonna feel so good, I'm gonna feel that endorphin release or that dopamine release, it helps give you the motivation to actually do the less-fun parts of whatever you need to do.
So that's kind of an overview of visualization. And then one thing that I think I did that maybe was a little bit different is that I like to combine the two. So when I would visualize my performances, I would also use the positive self-talk within that. So every time I would visualize a certain trick, I had certain words and actions that were associated with that. So I knew from the second I stepped on the floor 'til the second I got off exactly what I was gonna be saying to myself through the entire performance, because I had visualized it ahead of time, and through that visualization I also talked to myself and said exactly, "Okay, I want all of these specific things said so that I remember to do them when I'm actually in that really high-pressure situation."
You hear all the time of people freezing up or forgetting to do something when they got up there, and I think that was how I kinda anchored myself through, where I knew I wasn't gonna freak out in the middle of a routine and be like, "Oh my gosh, Kristin, what are you doing?" I had specific things to tell myself. And I even took it as far as before my bigger competitions, like world championships, I would actually write myself a letter a few weeks before, and it would be all of the kind of encouraging things that I would wanna hear in those moments of self-doubt, which tend to happen right before you step out into the major event. So it could be public speaking, whatever it is for you. That self-doubt—You're feeling good, you're prepared, whatever, and then it's like right before is when that doubt starts creeping in and you're like, "Oh my gosh, what if I trip? What if I mess up? What if all these, you know, all these negative stereotypes happen?"
And so for me to solve for that, I would write myself this letter, and whenever throughout the week I would keep it in my pocket at my Team USA warm-ups, and whenever I would feel that self-doubt I would just take it out and I would read it. And so by the end of our training weeks, I would have—You're in like the green room, which is kinda like a holding area before you go out, and there's not a lot of space to kind of move around, so that's tended to be for me where the nerves would creep in. And so I would really just repeat that letter to myself over and over in my head, and it basically just helped me stay exactly in that mindset that I wanted to be feeling encouraged, feeling like, "Okay, I've done everything that I needed to do, I'm as prepared as I can be, I'm gonna go out there, I'm gonna have fun." You know, just whatever I wanted to say.
So that sort of was my approach to the mental side of sport.
Chris (23:25): Mind-blowing. That's so profound. I want to just take a moment to unpack some of what you said, because I think it's so well formed and so transferrable. You know, first, thinking about things like a habit, the question is, "how are you going to feel afterwards?" I think this applies to any decision. Something as simple as, "All right, I'm going to the gym." Rather than thinking about how it's going to be when I'm, you know, lifting the weight, doing the thing that I'd rather not, versus that feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction after, when you're walking out. And that generally helps us to make much better decisions, if we imagine how we'll feel about this decision, this action after the fact.
I love this concept of the mental anchor. That's the common thing, is we do this preparation and we show up for the game and it doesn't transfer. We freeze up. So having these anchors that can bring us back into that moment, remind us of why we're there. And how you put it is so apt, that it all starts with awareness. So an awareness of the way that we're talking to ourselves, that through our language this affects our thought, which obviously affects our action. So what are you reinforcing? If you're re-encouraging good behavior, that behavior will repeat. And I think of this dichotomy of approach/avoid. A lot of psychology tells us, it's like pain and pleasure. Approach/avoid. And when you're thinking about negative scenarios, it automatically activates this avoidance mindset. We see this a lot in poker, there's a lot of elements that are outside of our control. So the—We're playing to the river card, and there's cards that are really bad for our hand, and a tendency, myself included, I've been there, is like rooting against that card. Like, "Please no ace, please no ace, please no ace." And the ace comes, and this narrative automatically begins of like, "Oh, another ace. It always happens to me. Like, one of these times everything's gonna line up and they're gonna see who the best player is."
And the way that I like to think about it is every card, every street, every act is the opportunity to make the perfect decision. That there's no good or bad things that could happen, these are all opportunities to make the right decision off of that.
So you talk about this visualization, incorporating all of the elements into the venue to reduce surprise, because every surprise is a decision point, and some of those decision points might take you down the path of, "Oh, well, I could have done well, but that light was in my eyes." Right? Exerting these excuses for, "I'm not going to do everything," versus this mindset of, "Okay, I've done everything I can, I can everything in this to the arena, now it's just up to the judges." And so there's so much that you said there, I think, that's like very subtle in terms of mindset but that has such a big impact on a day-to-day basis in reinforcing the things that we want to do and showing up ready to perform. So, yeah, thank you, that was one of the best illustrations I've heard.
Kristin (26:46): Oh, thank you. Well, one thing that I love of what you said, it was talking about—You know, when you get something that you don't want. Like you get that ace card. And I think one of my kind of hacks for that was to tell myself that I was really good in those situations. And it's exactly what you said about reinforcement. So our brains are wired to put patterns together. So it's like you said, if you get the ace card and you're like, "Ugh, this always happens to me," whatever, you've created this narrative and this pattern. Your mind has picked up, "Okay, I always get these ace cards, and this always happens to me specifically." And if you took that and turn it around and said, "I do my best when I get dealt this negative hand, this is my time to shine, this is my time to think creatively," your brain starts creating a new narrative of like, "I am great in these challenging situations."
And so my example of this is I would always have a coach that would say, "Do one more. One more of these. One more rep, form, or whatever." And if you messed up on the one more, you would have to do another one. You have to do another one more. And it's always a scary trick, right? It's like something you don't want to do more times, because it's terrifying. So I would always tell myself, "Okay." Like, every time he would say "one more," I would be like, "I am the best at one-mores. Like, I rarely mess up one-mores. I am great at this." And actually, I wouldn't say that I rarely mess up, because I would have said the words "mess up," right? Which was not something I would do. So I would just say, "I am great at one-mores." And I would do the one-more, and it would go well, and I wouldn't have to do another one.
Or I would mess up, but I would be like, "Well, that was an anomaly. Like, I am actually great at one-mores, and this one-more I am gonna show myself why I'm great at them." And I would do it, and it would reinforce the pattern.
So really like, I think one thing—We have so much control in those situations over our mind and our narrative, and it's really so much of it is just in how you frame it and choosing the pattern that you want to create. And that's one thing I use to this day is like, you know, I'll just say to myself, like, "I am great under pressure." And anything that happens that is not great is just, "Well, that was a learning experience, and that's gonna make me great the next time." And I see those things as anomalies, rather than the norm. So yeah, I love what you said there.
Chris (29:19): Yeah, the brain is really good at completing the pattern. So the narrative that we create almost becomes the self-fulfilling prophecy, in a way. So I think that the dual power of what you said around "I am really good at this" is that, one, you bring yourself up to it—it's like, "Hey, this is what I have been training for, this is the moment." But also it flips an adverse circumstance into a relative advantage. "Because I have trained for this, because I am ready for it, we're all on the same playing field, this is another source of opportunity for me to differentiate myself. So it's not an adverse condition, it can be a positive, because I know how to deal with this, I know how to make the most of it." And that these subtle differences in framing have a huge difference.
It's something that I like to say a lot, is that there's no such thing as failures, but only lessons. And I think that that is another powerful aspect of what you talk about in terms of, you know, creating a positive narrative, reinforcing, encouraging yourself, is that you create a circumstance in that you can stick with something for long enough to become really good at it. I imagine that a challenge with a training schedule that I imagine is just—It can be really grueling at times, is just the fortitude to stick with it, and to frame these actions in a narrative that everything I'm doing is towards a higher purpose.
What was your training regimen like? What's, like, a typical day when you were like gearing up for a big event?
Kristin (31:01): Sure, yeah, I'll definitely walk you through that. But I want to touch on—One part of this I think is also really important to recognize, is yes. We can always change our thoughts, and we can reframe experiences into being something more positive. But I think a trap that we can get into, and especially high performers can get into, is reframing an experience as a positive that probably shouldn't be reframed as positive. And the lesson should be, "You know, I'm not gonna do that again," rather than, "Well, that was okay, I survived it, and I could do that again, I could suffer through that again." And I think that that can create a cycle where we don't necessarily recognize situations that we shouldn't be in, and we end up putting ourselves in more discomfort than we should be. Whether that's pain, whether that's psychological abuse, whatever. And I think that can translate into relationships and situations in the future that a lot elite-level performers end up in, because they're so used to such a high level of discomfort, and being able to sort of make that a positive. So I think there is definitely something to watch out for there. And, you know, I don't subscribe to the idea that we should always compartmentalize and always sort of shove down the true feeling of something in order to perform well.
And when we talk about emotional regulation, which is so key in high performance, it really needs to be about fully processing an emotion that comes up, fully feeling whatever that thing is, and processing it properly rather than just shutting those things off and saying, "Well, I can find the positive in this." You know, that's not always helpful in the long-term. Sorry, I just wanna make sure I put that out there.
Chris (32:51): Yeah, I think that's a really important point, is the separation between the performance and what happens after the performance. I think of it as like a, you're fully confident, doing everything you can to be present when you're there, but there needs to be time to process and even to grieve afterwards, to take things into account. It can't be just, "Oh, everything was great, everything was awesome, we made it through," that sort of thing. There actually are times that that can go too far. So there's a double-edged sword to all of this. It's like, the people who are the highest performers can tend to have an all-or-nothing mindset which is great when things are going well, but definitely can backfire and turn in on itself when things are not going so well. There's always another side.
Kristin (33:40): Exactly. Exactly. And I think that's something that I'm so grateful is coming into more of the public conversation with Simone Biles pulling out of the Olympics, Naomi Osaka not competing. With "The Weight of Gold," the documentary that came out on HBO, which I highly recommend watching, if you haven't yet, which has Michael Phelps, Ryan Lochte, Bernie Miller, all talking about their mental health experiences in sport. And so I think it's something that really does need to be top of mind, that performing no matter what is not the mindset that we should have. That we are human and we have a full spectrum of emotion and experience, and those things need to be processed and honored, and not just at the expense of success. It's not worth sacrificing everything, including your health and mental health, to achieve performance.
Chris (34:33): I wanna ask about the team dynamic, actually. So you performed as a mixed pair. I know when you were world champions with Michael Rodriguez—How does performing as a pair differ from preparing as a solo, as a single performer? How do you guys stay in sync? What does that look like?
Kristin (34:55): Yeah. So, a mixed pair is basically like a pair figure skating duo, where, I mean, male and female performing together. And actually, I would say that's one of the most interesting things about my sport, and probably the best part of my experience, is that everything that I achieved was also what someone else achieved. Our successes and failures were always shared. And I think that a lot of what I learned in that scenario is what I continue to take into my work today, which is that, first of all, making sure that you're relying on someone who's reliable. Right? I think sometimes we expect a lot of people and are frustrated by when they can't live up to that standard that they couldn't have to begin with. And so I was really fortunate in my partnership where I had an incredible partner who fully rose to the challenge, and we both had really implicit trust in each other to do our separate jobs. So we both had very different responsibilities, but we both had complete trust in each other to accomplish that responsibility to the best of our ability every time.
And I think that that's something that we were not able to find in other partnerships, and is incredibly powerful, because it means that all of the mental capacity is going towards my own job and the things that I need to do, and none of it is going towards, "Gosh, I hope that they do their job. Gosh, I hope they don't, you know, they do this or that." It's—I didn't ever have to worry about any of that. I was able to fully just focus on what I needed to do. Which was a huge blessing. And if you can find that in a partnership in business or in life, I think that that could be incredibly powerful.
Chris (36:44): So you and Michael are world champions. How does that feel? After you guys performed, was that a surprise after the scoring, or did you feel it, that this was a championship performance?
Kristin (36:58): Oh gosh. I mean, it's always a surprise, because it's a subjectively judged sport, but I definitely felt like we were as prepared as we could have been, and we knew that we had done as much as we possibly could've done to be there and also in that moment.
The crazy thing about accomplishing your childhood dream is that it is very bittersweet, and I think that this is true of accomplishing any major goal. And I've heard this over and over again from other people who have accomplished their childhood dreams, which is—There are songs written about it, actually. Like, it's a long, long way to the top, and then when you get there you're like, "Wait, what? I've now done this, but now what do I do next?" Because really, you were waking up every day for this goal that seemed so far away, and once you've done that it's sort of like, "Well, what do I wake up for now?" And in our case, we were very young, and so you know, I was eighteen when I won the world championship. So it's like, "Well, is my greatest accomplishment now behind me?" And I think that this comes from anybody who's had some kind of breakout success. It's like, "Well, what do I do next? How do I motivate myself now? I've only ever wanted one thing, and now I have it." And is it everything that I hoped it would be? Usually, it's not, you know. It provides some perks, and it's wonderful to have actually accomplished something, but it's never everything that you wanted it to be.
And I think we spend a lot of time thinking, "Okay, I will be happy when I accomplish X, Y, or Z," but the happiness is fleeting there. So it's really more about, you know, I guess that's why they say it's always about the journey.
Chris (38:56): How did you find that your motivation changed after achieving this childhood dream? You had driven yourself so hard to get to this place that you thought maybe this is it. What was next for you?
Kristin (39:13): Yeah, gosh. Well, I totally spent a few weeks riding high off of the accomplishment and enjoying that, but then it really sunk in. And I think there can be a lot of depression after accomplishing something major, where you just really don't know what to do with yourself. I was fortunate that within a couple of weeks I had a job offer, I moved to Vegas to perform with Cirque du Soleil, and I ended up not really having to make a major transition at that point. It, you know—the transition of competing, to moving to a new place and performing, which was difficult in its own way. But it wasn't, you know, leaving my sport behind. So I didn't have to think too hard about it then. I think my major transition really came when I got injured several years later and had to fully leave that part of my life behind and do something completely different.
Chris (40:06): So first moving to Vegas, eventually to Broadway, performing in Viva Elvis, I mean, with the incredible team at Cirque du Soleil—Take us backstage. What was it like to work with all of these talented performers? I imagine this was a bit of the familiar, but also quite different from your experiences before.
Kristin (40:29): Yeah. The wonderful thing about performing is that—My favorite part about my sport was always competing. I loved kind of the rush and getting to perform, and so for me, it was like I got to do that every single day, but without the judging. So being on stage for me was such a joy. I found so much motivation in thinking about for every single member of the audience, it was their first time having this experience, and you want to make it as memorable as possible for them. And so it just brings that fresh energy every single night. And so performing was really just an incredibly fun experience for me.
Backstage is incredible. Cirque du Soleil is just an amazing company. They take incredible care of their athletes and their performers, and the stagehands and everybody who works behind the scenes—there are three times as many people work offstage than onstage, and they work like clockwork. It is incredible. The preparation, the synergy that's happening behind the scenes. I think sometimes it's more exciting to watch a show from backstage than it is to watch what's actually happening onstage, because you have these incredible ninety-ton set pieces that are moving in and out, hydraulic lifts, costume changes, all kinds of things happening, and everyone is so incredibly coordinated, and there are contingency plans for everything. So the response I was able to witness of someone getting injured onstage, and they're able to get them safely out within two minutes of that happening, and it's like the audience almost never even knew.
It's just, yeah, it was an incredible company to work for, and it's just incredible, the coordination.
Chris (42:25): So talk about the show backstage. So only having the benefit of seeing it from the audience seats, what's something that you saw in these shows that someone in the audience would never guess?
Kristin (42:41): Oh gosh. Well, we used to play games sometimes, where there would be sort of like tag that would happen, where you try to—You could only tag people on stage, so, like, games like that that we would play. People would make faces when their backs are to the audience at each other, leave little things around backstage for people to find, play pranks, all of, you know, you try to see how late you could leave your dressing room and still make it on stage in time. So you get these like mad dashes to the stage.
Yeah, I don't know. I think there are a lot of things that performers do to keep themselves entertained. Oh, I guess one thing that I think is really interesting is that everyone performing in Cirque du Soleil is really only performing at about seventy-five percent of their actual capacity. So the amazing thing about being backstage and in the training rooms is that you'll see these people do things that are way crazier than what you would see actually on stage, because that is actually the top of what they're capable of, because at Cirque we perform ten shows a week. In Broadway, it's eight shows a week. So you have to do things that you know you can do safely every single night without fail, very—And Cirque shows are incredibly consistent. You rarely ever see any mistakes. So in order to perform at that level of consistency, you have to do things that are really, you can do in your sleep. So to think that every incredible thing that you see that happens on stage is something that that person can pretty much do in their sleep, I think is amazing. And so the stuff that I got to witness backstage, of just—It was just these incredible feats of athleticism I will never forget.
Chris (44:28): And something that I'm really interested in is I know you do some teaching of gymnastics. You work with students, young and old. You work with many celebrities, with stunt people. How do you teach something like gymnastics? Like, where do you start?
Kristin (44:47): Oh, gosh. Well, I think for me teaching is really about a deep empathy for whoever that person is and what their goals are, what they wanna learn, and then facilitating that for them to discover it however they want to. And that's a big lesson I've learned from my parents. Both of my parents are teachers. My mom's an art teacher, my dad taught skiing and windsurfing. And so they, especially my dad, would talk about this idea of guided discovery, and that's sort of where you lead the person to discover the skill and kind of have that "a-ha" moment themself, rather than saying like, "Oh, you need to do X, Y, and Z, now go do it." It's like, "Well, okay, that one was off in these ways. What do you think might fix it?" And allowing them to come to that conclusion themself. And then they get that little rush of dopamine of like, "Oh, I figured it out. And now I get to go do it." And that makes it stick so much deeper for that person.
And I think what I've loved about working with all different types of people, from professional gamers who have no athletic experience at all, to you know, athletes with a lot of experience, is that it's great to just see someone for exactly where they're at, and help them with just whatever that little next step is for what they want to learn, and see them have that "a-ha" moment themself. And that's really rewarding.
Chris (46:24): So let's say for example someone's name was Chris, and he was a former professional gamer, and he was coming to you for his first-ever gymnastics lesson. Where would you start with him?
Kristin (46:38): I would probably refer you to someone who is a better teacher than I am for that stage. You know, I've done a lot of teaching over the years, but there are incredible coaches out there, and I would not say that coaching is the thing that I am best at. I love teaching adults, especially who just maybe wanna learn how to do a handstand, or you know, they have a specific goal, they wanna become more flexible or something like that. But I think, yeah, honestly I would probably refer you to somewhere else, so someone else. Unless you said, "Okay, I have this really specific goal. I wanna, you know, learn how to do the splits, or learn how to do a cartwheel," then I could probably start you off with something.
Chris (47:20): Yeah. I think that's a commonality as far as learning any new skill, is to have a learning objective, something specifically you can do that you can't do already, and that way being able to work backwards from that and then track progress, versus like, "I'd like to be good at gymnastics." Well, what does good mean for you? What type of situations are you thinking about practicing?
Kristin (47:43): Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And that brings up another great point. Goal-setting is obviously incredibly important, and I think one way you can really always kinda keep your head in the game is setting those tiny—we call them "micro-goals." So, just like, what's like a tiny little thing that you can set your mark on and accomplish today? Even if that's just doing one extra rep that you haven't been able to do before in the gym, or you know, shaving half a second off of your mile time, or whatever it is that you feel like you can accomplish that fit within your medium goals and then your sort of macro goals. So, yeah, I love that you brought that up.
Chris (48:22): It's definitely a commonality that we have seen here, is that people who go on to accomplish many things, you know, put out an award-winning album, become world champions, sell their company, it's a long series of small, iterative steps, and that that's what a lot of what makes life satisfying and gives us a sense of purpose, is that the small things we're doing on a day-to-day basis, that we can see the small, accumulating input towards our reason for being on this earth, our purpose for being here. So thinking about what's that next tiniest action that we can take today to keep moving the long-term goals forward? It's probably not going to be in our email.
You brought up something that I don't think I've asked about before on this show. So I know that your brother was an acrobatic gymnast as well. You've mentioned a couple times some of the words of wisdom your father has shared with you. Seems like a really good mentor, that both of your parents were teachers. You know, art, skiing, surfing. What advice would you have for a parent of a child who, let's say, is seven or maybe going on eleven and wants to be a top performer in their sport? How can a parent bring out the best in their child without pushing them too hard?
Kristin (49:52): That's a great question. Well, yes, my brother did start out in acrobatic gymnastics. He went on to become an incredible dancer, and is now an actor, and actually has been in many popular shows, so he's doing great. And I always love to give him a little shout-out. Go Kyle.
You know, I think parents can obviously get hyper-involved and have their own goals for their children, and I think it's important that parents don't put their goals onto their children, and let their children explore what they want to explore. I was lucky that my parents didn't push me to do anything that I didn't want to do, although I actually wish that—I think we were all sort of complicit in the trauma and abuse that occurs in elite-level training, and we all sort of thought of it as something that you just have to do. Right? It's like we were all, like, "Well, you need Russian coaches, and—" Not that they were always Russian, but Eastern Bloc training has its own stereotypical things that happen that I was definitely subject to. But I think we all kinda—You know, even in the books that I read, I read a lot of biographies of other athletes, and saw that, "Okay, well, this is the type of training that they're in as well, so it must be okay." And so we all sort of subscribed to this idea that, okay, I'm coming home crying every day, but that's okay. It's part of the process, you know?
And I don't fault my parents at all for that, but I think it's important for parents to also recognize—And there's so much more information out there now. It's important to kind of strike that balance between not being too involved, that you're pushing your kid to accomplish something that they don't necessarily want, but also being involved enough to know what's really happening, and whether maybe there are things that are inappropriate going on, and maybe a level of training that isn't actually psychologically healthy.
You know, people ask me all the time, would I put my kid into gymnastics, are they gonna be a world champion athlete as well? And it's like, I'd really rather they didn't. I'd rather they explore things and really focus on having great relationships and building friendships and building those soft skills that are really gonna bring them true success and happiness over just accomplishing something that looks good on paper.
Chris (52:23): I think that's a good transition to your second transition in this larger mission of finding lasting health and happiness. So you were performing in Pippin on Broadway, and during your performance, you injured your back. And at first, you weren't quite sure how serious it was, but through a series of I think ten surgeries to try to repair the damage—I can only imagine that pain and just the unknown of what was going on at that moment—You decided that this might be the end for your performing career, that you might never step foot on stage again. Talk to us about that. What was going through your mind, you know, walking away from the thing that you'd identified as and that you'd defined yourself as, and thinking that perhaps you'd have to walk away from that?
Kristin (53:24): Yeah. I got injured in 2014. It was a big fall, basically, and basically a high-impact injury. But yeah, we didn't really know. I thought it was, you know, I dislocated some ribs, I had whiplash, that I'd recover and be back on stage, you know, in six weeks. But that's not what ended up happening. So it took a while to unpack that it wasn't a common injury. I ended up with really severe chronic pain that I had for the last seven years, and I actually ended up forming a bone spur in my spinal cord, so it caused a lot of nerve damage, nerve pain that I just recently actually had surgery for, am in the process of recovery from now, so I'm really hopeful that I will have lasting relief from that.
But yeah, it was a major transition to sort of come to terms with, okay, what I've been doing and how I've been, you know, supporting myself for as long as I can remember is now gone, and I don't have that option anymore. And so now I was twenty-three, and it's kind of like I have to figure out what I do next. What do I care about, what do I want? And then on top of that for me, I didn't have the outlet of being able to be active, and I was also constantly dealing with a pretty high level of pain day to day, so it really affected what I was able to do activity-wise, so I ended up going back to school, and I was really fortunate that a wonderful family helped me through the process of getting back on my feet and figuring out, you know, what college looked like and how to navigate that whole process and what classes to take, what the requirements were, and all of that.
So I'm really grateful that I had that support, 'cause it can be a time when, you know, when someone's achieved a certain level of success in one thing, people assume that it's going to be fairly easy for them to transition into the next thing, when they have a certain level of mental fortitude, whatever. But the reality is that it's incredibly difficult, and a lot of that mental fortitude is sort of wrapped up in identifying really strongly with this one thing that gave you success and confidence, and when you don't have that you also don't have your confidence, because it was tied into that first thing.
So, figuring out, "Okay, well if I don't have that, who am I? What am I good at? And, you know, will people accept me or like me if I'm doing something totally different?" And then also the pressure of, "Okay, I'm the best in the world at this one thing, I have that title of world champion." And so everyone expects you to be the best at whatever you do next. And really quickly. It's like, you should be great at everything you do. And it's like, well, that may not be the case. And you may not even want to. Right? You may not even feel like that level of passion for something else, or you know, you might just want to have the space to be a beginner and explore. You might wanna be kind of like a normal person for a while. You know, whatever that is.
So it can be incredibly challenging to go through that. And I'm also grateful that a lot of organizations are starting to recognize that that transition is really difficult, and because there's not that normal kind of progression from high school to college to being out on your own, that path looks different and requires more support. So, yeah, I'm glad that other organizations are starting to take that more seriously.
Chris (57:12): That resonates so much. I mean, I've definitely experienced my version of that. So, in the poker world when we had Black Friday, so you know, no longer able to play poker from the US, that felt like a forced retirement at the top of my career, where I felt recognized as being one of the top players, and this question of, "Oh, well, if I don't have poker, what do I have? Who am I, really?" And this desire to be normal and just to do things for their own sake—it was very difficult to explain to others. After I stopped playing poker, I started traveling, and I went from kinda living the high life of you know, being on TV and doing all the mansion and travel to staying in hostel dorms and telling everyone, you know, some days that I'm a student, or some days that I'm working marketing at a company, and just wanting to fade into the background, because I was so uncertain with who I was, and it seemed silly to talk about the thing that I once did.
And friends would be there, and they'd say like, "Oh, shut up, he's like one of these great poker players. Why don't you tell them about it?" Well like, maybe I don't want to be that person today. So it was just really—It's just a—The transition is always longer, and it's never quite a straight line. So I agree, I think it's really important to have the support of friends, family, organizations to find who you want to be, and to have a sense of self that is disconnected from what we do. I think a lot of this is societally enforced, of wanting to put someone in a box by their profession, when we are all so much more than that. And it really starts with the way that we see ourselves. And as you put earlier so apt, what behavior we encourage and reward.
So you know, something that's been a thread through this conversation is the challenges that even high performers can have with mental health, where the challenge of having such a high standard is that you fall short of that standard so often. What have you learned over the years, both through your performance and your time post-athlete, post-performer about positive mental health?
Kristin (59:52): Well, I guess one is kind of a cliché that we've all heard, which is the sooner you can get professional help, the better. And I think that we as high performers—We were also considered people who have a lot of mental strength and mental control, and that we can, to resolve all of our problems ourself. And so I definitely fell into that trap. It took me a really long time to want to seek help, because I thought that, "Well, I can read about it, I can learn from other people, I don't need, you know, to actually pay someone to sit and work through my mind with me." But I think that everyone, no matter what place they're at in life, can benefit from that. I know that's really being a broken record, 'cause we hear that all over the place, and I would have probably rolled my eyes at somebody saying that a few years ago, but here I am in this seat saying that today.
So yeah, I think getting the help to just sort of work through what were my motivations and what were the things that happened to me, how do I process emotion in this new way, how have my past experiences affected how I see the world now. All of those things are really helpful to work through with someone else, and it's not having—A mistake that I made is that I didn't want anyone else telling me what I should think or do. But that's not really what it is. It's really someone kind of acting as a mirror and just giving you the space to explore that yourself. Which is really helpful.
So yeah, I definitely think that getting help is really important for positive mental health. Really putting your relationships first, which I think in our culture we tend to put work first, we tend to put career accomplishments first, and those are the things that get sacrificed. Or relationships are the things that get sacrificed along the way. And then when you lose your career, your sport, or something happens to you, like a major injury or a health issue, you realize, like, "Wow, I didn't nurture those relationships probably in the way I needed to to have the support system that I need now." So I think for me really putting that first and like, "Okay, how do I relate to people now in the same capacity?" What things are important has been really positive for me. And then also connecting with the things that I loved as a child. Exploring new interests. All of those things I think are really helpful.
Chris (01:02:28): So talk to us about your mission, your work today. You mention you're a founder of The Acrobatic Gymnastics Foundation. What are you working towards these days?
Kristin (01:02:38): Yeah, so I have the wonderful small foundation which is my way of staying connected with the sport. And we provide grants to athletes who have financial need, to help them compete. Because it's an expensive sport. And then I'm also a chair of the National Gymnastics Foundation, which exists to support the athletes in the broader sport of gymnastics. And I'm currently—I worked as a startup investor for the last year, which I was really passionate about bringing more funding to female and minority founders. A crazy statistic is that only two percent of all Venture Capital funding goes to companies with female founders. Which is incredibly small. So—And then minority founders, even less than that.
So that's something I have been really, really passionate about. And then this year, I have moved towards being on the building side. So I'm working with a startup that's basically in compliance tech, and we are working to increase transparency in the food system. So I really enjoyed working with companies getting started. I think there are a lot of parallels between entrepreneurs and athletes, and so I feel like I can kind of bring a level of empathy and compassion to founders. And so that's been really rewarding for me.
Chris (01:04:06): Thank you so much, Kristin. This has been a really powerful and enlightening conversation. I really honor and respect not only the dedication that you've had to your practice, but your dedication to your mission for athletes, for founders, and now for food. If there's someone out there who this conversation resonated, you know, perhaps an athlete who could be interested in applying for a grant, someone who was working to help underrepresented founders get behind funding, someone who holds that key to adding transparency to the food industry, how would you recommend they get in touch?
Kristin (01:04:46): Well, I have a website. It's kristinallen.co. And there's a contact form on there. It's not very up-to-date, but it is a way of connecting with me. And then LinkedIn is another great way to connect with me, and I'm always happy to answer questions and just hear about other people's experiences. So, definitely happy to talk to anyone who would like to talk.
Chris (01:05:11): Thank you so much for joining us today, Kristin. See you all again soon.
Kristin (01:05:14): Thank you so much for having me.
Tasha (01:05:17): Thank you for listening to the Forcing Function Hour. At Forcing Function, we teach performance architecture. We work with a select group of twelve executives and investors to teach them how to multiply their output, perform at their peak, and design a life of freedom and purpose. Make sure to subscribe to Forcing Function Hour for more great episodes, or go to forcingfunctionhour.com to sign up for our newsletter so you can join us live.