Finding Your Summit Podcast

060: Setting Your Own Rules And Rising Above The Competition with Gabby Reece

There are never new ideas, just new applications of old ideas. What started out as simple pool exercises and turned into a creative expression and a full pool training workout. American professional volleyball player, sports announcer, fashion model, and actress Gabby Reece says the pool offers a no gravity environment that lets you train hard in a way that you’re not impacting your joints and completely pounding yourself in every workout. It is also a great place to learn how to master some elements of being a human and an opportunity for you as a person to go inside yourself because the rules are always the same for everyone. Gabby reveals how she got started in volleyball, her book called My Foot Is Too Big for the Glass Slipper, her relationship with Laird Hamilton, and developing the pool training workout. She also talks about hitting adversities, navigating failures, and working through them.

I was fortunate to be invited up to Laird Hamilton’s and Gabby Reece’s, his wife, house in Malibu, California. We went through a whole hour of amazing conversation. This girl has done so much in her life. She was a full-ride scholarship player to Florida State. While she was there, she was also modeling in New York paying the bills. She co-hosted on ESPN. She did something called the Gravity Games. She’s been in some movies. She’s written three books. She’s a full-time mom, a full-time supporter of Laird, and she’s definitely a standalone person on her own. A fantastic person. The whole magic before any of this started is I drove up there with my best buddy, Jim Mora. We were invited to go into the pool and train. Not just train, but train with weights. They had a bunch of people that were there. Essentially if you can imagine jumping into a pool with weights ranging from twenty pounds to 35 to 45 pounds, going up and down, taking these breaths and going back down. The weights are dragging you back to the bottom. They’ve got a variety of these different hybrid-type water exercises, low stress in the body and focuses in on your breath and on your strength. We did this for an hour. We were all over the pool, back and forth and we never were in the pool without a weight. Some pretty dynamic people that were there, some actors. Bottom line, cool people.

Going back to the pod, it was enlightening. One of my more favorite ones I’ve done. It focuses a lot on relationships, what I went through, what she’s gone through. She’s had a successful run with Laird for the last 21 years, but they had a few bumps and we talked about it. Brave soul for doing that, I appreciated it and it made the pod that much richer. On that note, as always, I’m hopefully back from Denali. I’m returning and hopefully I can say I successfully made that journey back and forth safely. If you want to find out anything else, what’s going on, public speaking, I signed up for a TED Talk in Sun Valley. You can find me at www.MarkPattisonNFL.com. This broadcast is brought to you by VioletsAreBlueSkincare.com. Organic, awesome products to put on your face and your skin, non-toxic. Check that out. Let’s go talk to Gabby.