Multimedia journalist Grayson Schaffer talks training, habits, and the mindset of next-level adventurers.
Whether you’re an athlete by profession or a weekend warrior, certain training principles consistently hold true. Day by day, everyone is trying to get a little bit better and improve their overall health, all while working toward that next goal.
Sure, the consequences (and recognition, for that matter) may be greater for some — take a world-class alpinist attempting to scale the most dangerous peaks on the planet, for example. But when you step back and look at the bigger picture, you’ll find that high-performance athletes have perfected the basics and leaned into challenging themselves with pursuits that stir up equal parts excitement and fear.
Lifelong adventurer and award-winning multimedia journalist Grayson Schaffer has had the pleasure of covering and rubbing shoulders with some of the most impressive athletes in the world, including track star Lolo Jones, legendary alpinist Dean Potter, record-setting endurance swimmer Lewis Gordon Pugh, decorated ultrarunner Claire Gallagher, and Nirmal “Nims” Purja, a larger-than-life rockstar in the climbing space whom Schaffer recently profiled for GQ. By getting up close and personal with these individuals as they prepare and attempt mind-blowing feats, Schaffer has picked up on a few common themes.
Ahead, Schaffer shares his intimate experiences documenting elite athletes and insight into their training, habits, and overall mindset that you can implement in your own training.
Who is Grayson Schaffer?
Schaffer: I am actually a desk jockey who's not that good at sports. I was a whitewater kayaker growing up. While one of my friends was going and doing consulting and banking internships at Corona College, I was going off and doing whitewater kayaking trips and more or less making myself unemployable.
I spent 16 or 17 years at Outside magazine [as an editor and writer] and have been freelance since then. And [I] also do commercial directing, documentary filmmaking, and write stories for magazines, including GQ.
I have reported on, I think, six of seven continents. And I've done everything from living in a sea kayak in 2007 in southern Patagonia, to filming fishing movies in the Seychelles, to whitewater kayaking expeditions in Madagascar.
What’s it like covering these world-class athletes?
Schaffer: I get thrown in the deep end to try and keep up with people who are the best at what they do, whether it's [with] Lewis Gordon Pugh, the open water swimmer, swimming in ice water or trying to keep up with professional kayakers or professional skiers. And so I end up having to kind of go off the couch and by hook or by crook try not to die while writing about and keep up with all these people.
How does a high-performance athlete prepare for an upcoming challenge?
Schaffer: Some people listen to music. Some people like to go without headphones at all. Some people have meditations that they do. Some people just step up and go for it. And I think that, really, it's about finding a routine that works for you, finding a way of stepping from your ordinary life into your athletic life that feels good to you, and then just being consistent with that so that your body learns when it's time to switch on.
What does their diet look like?
Schaffer: The ones who take their diet seriously are mostly doing things that they're able to make a lifestyle out of. They wake up in the morning and it might be, like, going super light on breakfast — just having some kind of hot beverage — and then really not eating a lot until after that first workout, then focusing on things that are both healthy and enjoyable, like green smoothies with a lot of nuts, kale, spinach, bananas, mango, and that sort of thing. Then, focusing on root vegetables, beans, lentils, and high protein for dinner.
When people are out, like, on expeditions on the mountain, they're mostly just focused on getting enough calories in their bodies, period, to be able to wake up at two in the morning and put on icy boots or to do the things that are difficult. In the training cycles in between, focusing mostly on the stuff that feels sustainable, which means eating foods that you like to eat that also kind of pull double duty by having the right mixes of protein, carbs, and fats.
Why is functional fitness so important for a high-performance athlete?
Schaffer: There are a lot of smaller aspects of our bodies that you just can't train by doing your sport. And so a lot of [athletes] will have some kind of functional fitness gym routine that they will do in addition to their runs, or their paddling, or their climbing, or biking, or whatever else that is.
The things that I've learned from these people is to focus on the strength training that makes you a better athlete, not just the things that make you bulkier or able to lift more weight. Really focus on the parts that will help you be better at your sport.
Do you sense that these athletes feel fear when taking on an epic challenge?
Schaffer: I think that there's this kind of supposition that people who do really dangerous things don't get scared. And the fact is they get scared all the time, [but] they are able to rationalize certain fears and adhere and listen to other fears. There are the fears that are irrational, that your brain is kind of flashing worst-case scenarios in front of your mind. And there are the fears that are real — like avalanche hazards or certain weather conditions, whatever it is — where people through their training know that's the time to turn around or that's the time to live and fight another day.
Why should Equinox members, like these athletes, do things that scare them?
Schaffer: Literally everything important that you're going to do in life is scary, whether that's asking somebody out on a date, going to a job interview, writing a manuscript that you're going to send off, or entering a sporting event that may fail at. In order to be a successful person — and you can measure that in any way you want — you're going to have to do scary things, and learning to function when your body is in a state of fear or apprehension is one of the fundamental skills that every person needs to try to master.
What would you say to someone who views athletes, like the ones you work with, as superhuman?
Schaffer: If you were to actually look at it, there are very few sort of freaks of nature who are standard deviations better than the average population. But I think most of the people I come across, it seems like they're a little better than average and then are capable of just putting in the time. A lot of that means actually enjoying the process. I think if you can get yourself to enjoy the process, then the act of staying fit becomes easy.
When there is no winner or loser in a traditional sense, how is success versus failure viewed by these athletes?
Schaffer: I think the best athletes have a clear understanding that failure is the precursor to all success. And I don't think there's a single adventure athlete out there who hasn't gone and not achieved their goal at least a few times, and that really the uncertainty of whether you will succeed or not is the whole reason to do it. If it was a certainty, nobody would bother doing it and nobody would really be that impressed when people did.
The ones that are in the healthiest mental space really are out there for the experience and just happen to be really great athletes. But where I think it gets difficult and toxic is when people are attaching their self-worth to whether they're succeeding or failing, and that is the kind of thing that can lead to things like summit fever — people pushing on toward the summit when they should be turning around.
Can you touch on the relationship between physical ability and mental fortitude?
Schaffer: I think that mental fortitude is significantly more important than people understand, especially when the task at hand is sort of marathon-length or days-long, where you're going to go through entire cycles of psychological rumination and getting down on yourself and having to pick yourself back up.
I see this in the gym even day-to-day, where the people who have a sense of urgency and purpose are just working at a higher level versus people who are just kind of there going through the motions. And that is really a function of drive and a willingness to experience pain and push through it. But by “pain,” I mean exhaustion — feeling the pump of climbing, or feeling like you're getting to the edge of your aerobic ability and being willing to say, “No, I think I have a little more and I want to give that. I want to give that extra few percent.”
The people who are able to constantly dig a little deeper and experience that discomfort are the ones who tend to succeed rather than just decide that they've had enough. Because in a lot of these things, it's not like you're competing against someone else. You're mostly just competing against your body's own limits, and your body's limits are determined mostly on where your mind says, like, “Nope, that's enough. It's time to swim back to the surface. It's time to turn around. It's time to shut down. It's time to rest.” And whether you're able to overcome that with your conscious brain.
What role does community play in performance?
Schaffer: I think the rule for most people is having a climbing partner or an adventure partner who is able to laugh when things are bad, who's able to keep an upbeat movement, rather than to criticize the people around them or to get down on themselves. People who can lift you up are invaluable. There are solitary people who just want to be alone, and some people are fine like that. But by and large, I see great athletes cultivating strong communities that help lift them up and make it possible for them to be delivering their best performances.
Any final practical applications for our audience?
Drink a lot of water. And also be kind to yourself. You don't have to be constantly pushing through the pain barrier or whatever. Some days you just need to show up and you do need to just go through the motions. But the fact that you showed up, even if you felt a little bad or felt off, is great. Sometimes I tell myself, “Hey, look, it feels like you're having an off day, but you're here and that is enough.”