S2. E7 | #TRIBEGOALS WITH 3 X TEAM USA SWIMMING GOLD MEDALIST RYAN MURPHY

On today's episode of #TRIBEGOALS, we had the honor of having 3 X Team USA Olympic Swimming Gold Medalist, Ryan Murphy as Athleisure Mag's 55th cover. Known as a decorated backstroke swimmer who also has a world record in the men's 100-meter backstroke, we talk with Ryan about how he got into the sport, transitioning his interest to going pro, his experiences at the 2016 Summer Games in Rio as well as being part of that riveting 4 x 100m medley. As Ryan looks forward to the Olympics in Tokyo that's slated for next year, we talk about how he trains and modifies his routines as we all navigate COVID-19, the importance of mental health and how he is approaching his goals. He also shares how he is focused on impacting the sport of swimming whether as a competitor or simply enjoying water activities. He also talks about how he gives back to others and how this changemaker has been inspired by others.

Read the latest issue of Athleisure Mag.

ALWAYS TOPPING WITH RYAN MURPHY

This month, we have the honor to have 3 X Team USA Olympic Swimming Gold Medalist, Ryan Murphy join us for the cover feature. Known as a decorated backstroke swimmer who also has a world record in the men's 100-meter backstroke, we talk with Ryan about how he got into the sport, transitioning from an activity to going pro, his experiences at the 2016 Summer Games in Rio as well as being a part of that riveting 4 x 100m medley. As he looks forward to the Olympics in Tokyo that's slated for next year, we talk about how he trains and modifies his routines as we all navigate COVID-19, the importance of mental health and how he is approaching his goals. He also shares how he is focused on impacting the sport of swimming whether as a competitor or simply enjoying water activities. He also talks about how he gives back to others and how this changemaker has been inspired by others.

ATHLEISURE MAG: We are so excited to have you as our 55th cover for the July issue as well as for an upcoming podcast episode of #TRIBEGOALS for our changemakers who are making an impact within and outside of their industry!

RYAN MURPHY: Thank you! I’m stoked to be a part of this awesome opportunity. Where are you guys at right now!

AM: We are based in NY.

RM: Oh wow so how has that been?

AM: Well, it’s funny. If someone said a few months ago that we would be indoors for a week – it would have been impossible! We had a number of plans that we were looking at regarding the Olympics and a number of activities that take place here across the industries that we cover and obviously some of those things are not happening this year. We did our cover shoot in mid March with Rachel Nichols host of ESPN’s The Jump. Literally, the NBA had just announced the day before that they were postponing the NBA season. We were still able to do our shoot which was great, and had a great afternoon with Rachel, and sheltered in place. Obviously, being in NY, it was just wow!

RM: Oh yeah, I mean it’s been going on for so long! I mean, I remember when we got our schedule in April, and it was like we were going to be out of the University of Caifornia, Berkeley pool through all of May. I got that schedule and I was like, what the heck and at the time, I was like “this seems pretty aggressive.” And here we are in July – still doing it!

AM: Exactly! It’s just amazing how things are being altered in so many ways so it’s very different. On the other side, the way we have been able to still enjoy, learn and connect with people such as yourself and still share your stories – but it’s strange times!

RM: Well it’s great that you guys are able to pivot – that’s a positive.

AM: Absolutely, it was about finding other ways to do it. But we thought that maybe this would be a couple of months or so honestly you just wake up and think, “this is like Groundhog Day, but there is no Bill Murray.”

RM: Haha exactly!

AM: I know that you grew up in an athletic family, how did you come to the sport of swimming? When did that transition from being an activity to one that you wanted to participate in in terms of competition?

RM: So I’m the youngest of 3. I’ve got an older brother, older sister and you nailed it. We were kind of just like that family in the neighborhood that was doing everything. So that’s how it started. We were all born in Chicago. We moved down to Florida literally when I was 6 months old and the summers in Florida are just so hot. We’d go down to our community pool and my older brother and sister were old enough to get onto the swim team and I was just that little kid running around the pool with floaties on.

So when I turned 4, I went on the Summer League team just following in their steps and it really progressed naturally. At first, I hated going to practice, I came up with an excuse every single day just to get out of practice! Until, we were at the end of summer and a week out from the big championship meet and they were like, “alright Ryan, we’re picking our 4 x 25 Free Relay and we’ve got 3 guys chosen and it’s down to you or Billy for the 4th spot. So, we’re going to do a 25 yard pre-swim off right now. If you want to be a part of it, you’re going to need to swim this right now!” So I get up out of my mom’s lap and walk up to the side of the pool, win the swim off and from there, I feel like I was just into it. That swim off taught me the love of competing and from that point on, I was into it.

So when I turned 7, I started swimming year around, when I was 12, I gave up other sports and really when I gave up other sports, that’s when it started to become a little bit more serious for me.

AM: Wow. Did you always dream of being an Olympian and at that time, what did that look like or mean to you?

RM: Yeah of course! I always dreamed of being an Olympian. I mean, I also dreamed of being an NFL player or an NBA player so I kind of dreamed of reaching the top in every sport. It just turned out that swimming and the Olympics was probably the most realistic of those goals. I do think that every swimmer grows up wanting to be an Olympian and I can remember watching the Sydney 2000 Olympics. I had just turned 5 when the 2000 Olympics were on and I have some memories of that that I can go back to right now. I remember watching the Womens 400 Free Relay and that was just the coolest thing ever. It continued to kind of grow from there. In Athens 2004, I remember watching Michael Phelps and him just absolutely crushing it! In Beijing 2008, I was 13 at that point so I was really enjoying the sport and I remember most of the races from 2008. For London 2012, I got 4th in 200 Backstroke for the 2012 Olympic Trials and 6th in 100 Backstroke and I was watching guys that I had interactions with them at that point. So that was really cool and so every Olympics was cool just to see how my perspective on the sport changed as I grew older.

AM: What is it about the backstroke that you enjoy and did you just naturally go to that part of swimming that you wanted to do?

RM: Yeah, I think inherently, you enjoy the things that you are good at. That’s probably why I enjoy backstroke more than breaststroke. Breaststroke is just not my natural stoke. I do train all of the strokes and I think that that is really good to keep it fresh. Backstroke is just different, it’s always been a little different. I remember growing up that my coaches would try to give me technique tips in every stroke and they would try to give me technique tips on backstroke and I’d be like, “mmm like you know the way I’m feeling it right now, this is better.” That was me as a 10 year old. As a 10 year old, I knew that the things that I was feeling were potentially a little different then the way that the coaches had taught technique in the past. It’s kind of weird looking back, because I have always been a very obedient and respectful kid. In my mind, I was like, ok I’ll act like I am taking this advice, but I wasn’t actually taking their advice for backstroke technique. I guess that now that you asked me that question, I never really thought about that before. But the backstroke has always felt natural and I have always felt that I have a really good feel for the stroke.

AM: Especially when you talk about a sport like that where there are different kinds of strokes, you can tell when you see someone that is hitting it and that they’re just on autopilot. It’s not about the 1, 2, 3, 4 – it’s just the natural and that’s why we wanted to know because we can tell that you really like that backstroke!

RM: It’s the same thing like when you watch a marathon. Those guys and those women that are winning the marathon, like Eliud Kipchoge is holding in like the 4 minute range for a marathon and it doesn’t even look like he’s trying! It’s like holy crap! That’s some serious talent right there.

AM: What was it like for you to be at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games from the opening/ closing ceremonies, competing, getting 3 gold medals and setting a new world record to boot for the 100m backstroke. What was that like for you especially since it was your first Summer Games that you went to?

RM: I mean, yeah it was an absolute whirlwind. I think that one of the things that I did a nice job of going into it as we talked about before was that it was always my dream. It was my dream to go to the Olympics and when you’re living your dream and when you are actually in that moment, that could be a very pressure packed situation. What I did well was to downplay the significance of the moment, a lot. That helped me a ton at the Olympics. In terms of the experience itself, it’s just absolutely unreal. When you’re there, it’s a swim meet and I have been to hundreds of swim meets in my life. So you don’t really realize it when you’re going to the ready room, you’re getting behind the blocks and you do your race. You only realize it when you get out of the pool and you’re kind of chauffeured immediately to NBC and you can literally, if you want to, talk to over 100 different outlets right after your race. That’s something that I have never had to experience and navigating that was very interesting. I think that and it's so cliché, but the thing that I appreciate most is the friendships and the memory of it. It’s really cool to think back to the conversations that you had with a guy like Phelps or Ryan Lochte – people that have been doing it for so long and are absolutely iconic in our sport and to be able to develop relationships with those guys that are lasting is really cool.

AM: We remember, watching and cheering the 4 x 100m with you guys – you, Michael Phelps, Cody Miller, Nathan Adrian – how do you from a training perspective prepare for this particular event since there are a number of people with you doing that? Is that difficult for you?

RM: I think that relays are the easiest part of the sport. I absolutely love the relays. It’s so fun to go behind the blocks with 3 other guys. You never feel more patriotic. I’m going behind the blocks and I’m wearing the USA cap. And Cody and Michael and Nathan are all wearing the same. They’re all super fired up. It’s the end of the meet, we’re super excited that we had all had great meets at that point and we’re all excited about that. We’re excited about the race and I think that the coolest part about that is that obviously you’re swimming with the most iconic Olympian of all time.

I think what’s really awesome to see is that you go and walk anywhere with Michael Phelps at the Olympics – it could be the warm up pool, the ready room, behind the blocks – every single person whether it’s a swimmer, coach, official, volunteer worker, wants to look at Michael Phelps. Everyone, for at least a split second is off their game because they’re observing Phelps. That just gave me so much confidence. It was like, “wow this guy is so iconic that everyone has to stop what they are doing and he’s on my team.” That was just a huge confidence boost behind the blocks and it totally added to the adrenaline of the moment. I was thinking, 1. I have to nail my leg, but 2. I really can’t screw this up for Michael. He’s won 23 gold medals – if he goes out on a silver medal, that’s just weird. We’ve gotta get him a gold here.

AM: We remember when we watched it live and booked our entire night around seeing that event to watch it in real time. In preparing for talking to you, we watched it again and that moment still gives you goosebumps watching it because all 4 of you are just killing it and it is one of the most iconic moments in Olympic history in our opinion. What lessons did you take away from those Summer Games in Rio?

RM: Ooo that’s a good one, I really like this question. I think that every swim meet is a really good learning opportunity. The biggest lesson that I probably learned from Rio is that when you’re in a situation like that where there is so much pressure and every emotion is going to be heightened, the highs are going to be really high and the excitement levels are going to be through the roof, but then the feelings following a bad performance are going to be really really low. I think the biggest thing is just recognizing that the entire scope of emotion is going to be felt by both yourself and your teammates and you have to be aware of that. I think that’s the biggest thing and then learning how to get in and get out. When I’m at the pool, be intense and when I’m not at the pool – let’s chill. Let’s enjoy this moment and enjoy the Olympics. You’ve gotta even during that 8 day meet, you still have to have balance. You can’t just be eyes wide open, super intense for 8 days and still be firing pretty well on day 8.

AM: Well, what’s an average training day like for you when it comes to gym time and pool time?

RM: So right now it’s a little different. When we’re in our “typical schedule,” we go 3 practices on Mon., Wed. and Fri. and then 1 practice on Tues., Thurs. and Sat. On Mon., Wed., Fri. we go from 6–7:45am in the morning, 1-2pm in the weight room and then 2:15–3:30pm in the pool. On Tues., Thurs., Sat. we just go from 8-11am in the morning as an absolute burner of a pool workout.

AM: How have you adjusted your workout because of COVID-19. We saw on Instagram that you were pushing an SUV up a hill in neutral!

RM: Yeah and I think that that particular video was in the lag time where I was training in Colorado at the Olympic and Paralympic Training Center as the Corona Virus situation was really ramping up. The Olympic Training Center closed down and so we had to fly back to Cal and there was a 6 day period between the Olympic Training Center shutting down and the Olympics being postponed. We come back to Cal, we didn’t have access to the pool or weight room. I didn’t really have any weights at our house so, we’re trying to work out, we’re trying to figure out that if the Olympics are still on, we have to be prepared, we have to be safe, we have to support our communities and we have to prepare for our dreams essentially. We did a workout in the garage and we were like, alright we feel that we have hit arms pretty well. We didn’t feel like we had hit legs super well and I’m looking around to see how I can workout my legs without any weight. I’m looking around and I see my car and Josh Prenot, who is one of my roommates he’s still swimming and he won the silver medal at the 2016 Summer Olympics for Team USA for the 200m breaststroke. I said, “ok Josh, let’s try and push my car up a hill.” We live on the top of a big hill in Berkeley. I didn’t know if we could get it very far, but it could be a solid workout. We pushed the car and the street we live on is a little more steep then what we were hoping. We didn’t get it super far, but it was cool. It was cool to get creative in this time. I think that it's so easy as an athlete to fall into a routine and stop thinking of creative ways to get better, so that is something that I have really enjoyed at this time. Getting creative, finding new ways to improve and really just pushing the envelope on performance.

AM: We know that when you’re coming into an Olympic year, there are things that you typically do in one month versus another month. How do you mentally make the change over now knowing that it has been pushed back for an entire year, how does that work for you in terms of training, your goals and just being in that mindset that it is pushed back a little bit further?

RM: I think that from the mindset, when that Olympic decision came down, there were a couple of different ways that people approached it. The way that I approached it is, “ok, that’s the end of my season.” I took a couple of weeks off, I went home and stayed with my parents for a little bit which was great. I hadn’t been able to be home in about a year. So it was cool to be able to go back to Florida, hang out with them for a little bit and then when we started to get back into it, it was like the progress that we had made in the past year that progress was made. Just because we didn’t get to see a time on a scoreboard at the end of a year, doesn’t mean that we didn’t improve. So, I was able to accept that pretty easily and going into this season, it was like, “ok we’re going to start off slow, build the intensity both physically and mentally and then we’re circling June and July of 2021 and everything is going to build towards that. It’s a bummer that the plan changed and knock on wood, the Olympics are happening next summer. We shifted and we’re prepping for that and we’re hoping to put on a really really good performance there.

AM: What are your goals that you have going into the next Olympics? Do you have certain things that you want to tick off and to achieve there beyond what you did for the last Olympics?

RM: You always want to be topping yourself and everyone else. My goals going in, I’d love to be able to defend my titles in all 3 of those events 100m back, 200m back and the 4x100m relay. They added a new event this time around. It’s the 400m mixed medley relay where you take 2 guys and 2 females and you can put them on any strokes. I’m hoping to get on that relay and I’m hoping to get on that relay and I'm hoping that the US wins the inaugural 400m mixed medley relay as well! I’m someone that totally thrives on the competition. That’s a daily motivator for me and I think that the thing that I have to be super careful of is just making sure that throughout the season that I’m still just focused on self-improvement. The competition can be a motivator for those days when I really don’t want to get up at 5:20am and get in the water. The competition is going to push me to want to do that. It’s going to push me to wake up, to get out of bed, go to practice and work my butt off. At the end of the day, I’ve got to get up and push myself as far as possible and that’s my goal throughout the year and then the hope is that that culminates and being good enough to win at the biggest stage.

AM: You have amazing brands that you have partnered with from Bridgestone and Speedo as sponsors. How do you determine the brands that you align with based on your synergy and do you kind of have a bucket list of other people or brands that you want to partner with just to expand your portfolio?

RM: I think first and foremost, I want to be with world class brands. That was a motto of ours at Cal. We wanted our aquatics program at Cal to be world class and that’s something that really stuck with me. I want to be associated with people that do things the right way and that they do it really really well. That’s what I look for and Speedo, Bridgestone and Goldfish Swim School all have that in common. They all do things super well, first class – I think that they’re all very very competitive and they want to be the best. But they also do it with class.

The executive team at Bridgestone is incredibly impressive and they flip that switch by saying that they want to be the best tire company in the world. At the same time, they are the nicest people ever. Same thing with Goldfish, same thing with Speedo.

So, that’s the biggest thing that I do look for. It also has to make sense in my daily life. On a daily basis, I drive my car everyday and I drive my car on Bridgestone tires. I live at the top of a hill so if my tires weren’t good, I wouldn’t be able to get up the hill. I wear a Speedo everyday, so that makes sense and then Goldfish Swim School, they do a ton to teach kids the sport of swimming which is something that I am super passionate about. Both from a life saving perspective because if you get swim lessons, and I don’t want to mess up this stat, you are 90% less likely to drown if you had formalized swim lessons. That is incredibly powerful.

I want to grow the sport of swimming and I also think that even if you don’t choose swimming as your sport, water activities are incredibly fun. So many of my favorite memories have come in the water both in competition and in the ocean and the river. I love the water and I want everyone to experience the gifts of the water. All 3 of those brands have made a lot of sense for me.

In terms of bucket list brands, it’s just something that’s got to be a part of my daily life. I have things that I really enjoy whether it’s going golfing or following the stock market. I’m a little bit of a nerd and I love following the stock market! I will say that I don’t splurge on a ton – I think that I'm pretty frugal, one thing that I'm willing to splurge on is watches. I absolutely love watches as an accessory piece. Any of those things that fall within my interest would make sense for me.

AM: In terms of working out as we’re always looking to add to our fitness routines, what are 3 of your go to workouts that you tend to do in a session that we should consider putting into ours?

RM: I think that first and foremost in a sport like swimming, the most important thing is abs and your stabilization muscles. So abs and back, I hammer those on a daily basis. Exercises for that I do the pretty typical crunch, side crunch, V-ups, plank and side planks. Stuff like that, it’s all pretty simple. I also really like the Olympic lifts and I love doing clean. I guess if I’m talking to someone who is less of professional athlete, I’d say that an alternative to clean would be front squats. I’m not a huge fan of back squats, it’s easy to hurt the back and I’m much more of a bigger proponent of front squats where you really have to brace the abs and hold your body upright. You can’t do as much weight, but it’s really a whole body exercise.

For an upper body one, I love pullups. You can do so many different variations of over hand and just really isolate the lats. You can do under hand and get a little bit of biceps in there. You can go wide grip and get a little bit of chest so there’s just so many different kinds of variations of pull ups. I think that that’s really a great full upper body.

AM: From a dietary standpoint, what kinds of foods do you incorporate to your regimen that fuels your workout and optimizes the goals that you’re trying to do?

RM: I try to keep the diet pretty simple. At the simplest level, most of my meals I’m looking to try to get a really healthy grain/carb, a really solid vegetable, a pretty lean protein and then like anyone else, I love avocado – throw some sriracha on top – I’m all about the sauces. At its core, I keep it pretty simple.

I like oatmeal, then I make an omelet for breakfast. For lunch, a lot of time I will make a smoothie which is essentially a vegetable smoothie to kind of throw in potentially any kind of veggie that’s in my fridge. I’ll just throw it in there and throw in some cinnamon to kind of make it taste better! I’ll drink that down and for dinner, I’ll go to your quinoa or rice, potatoes, a pretty lean protein – salmon, turkey, chicken and a healthy veggie. I mix up the veggie a lot in that one as well.

AM: When you are splurging, what are your splurge foods that you treat yourself with?

RM: Well I mean, there’s a lot! I also mix up the splurge foods. I absolutely love steak. If I’m splurging, I’ll have a big fat piece of ribeye – that’s just fantastic! Or I’ll have a pizza, a burger – I love ice creams. I mean God, you’re making me hungry when you’re asking me this question!

AM: How important is mental health? In times like this as well as when you’re training, how do you check in with yourself to ensure that you’re in the right place to be the best you?

RM: Mental health is huge. I think the biggest part of athletics and really life is being able to maintain your levels of motivation and being honest with yourself. The same way that I talked about that super scope of wide emotions at the Olympics, I feel that at a time like this, the scope of emotions has widened for a lot of people. The way I check in with myself, is that I feel that I am incredibly fortunate to have an incredible inner circle. I talk to my family all of the time, I talk to both of my parents, my brother and my sister, my inner circle of friends. We all stay in touch very frequently so, that’s what I really do. I do consider myself very fortunate and I don’t want to make myself sound like an expert on mental health. I honestly never struggled in that area, but I do consider myself very fortunate in that aspect. But I do think think that everyone could benefit having very open conversations with their inner circle which has helped me. I've never felt like very very low, but obviously, everyone has bad days and so on those days, I totally lean on my inner circle to help me out.

AM: When you’re not training, what can we find you doing when you’re just hanging out and taking time for yourself?

RM: In this time, it’s been a little tough. I’m a massive sport fan. I like watching football, basketball. I would literally set reminders on my phone when the Michael Jordan documentary came out because I was feening for sports so bad! I totally miss that aspect, but I have been into golf for a little while now, so I’m lucky that I live 5 mins away from a golf course in Berkeley. I go up there all the time and I’ve been playing probably at least 1 round a week, I go to the range probably 2 times a week. So that’s been so great.

I love following the stock market. As I mentioned earlier, I am a bit of a nerd and when I turned professional in swimming, the biggest thing I was nervous about was feeling like I was losing my mental sharpness. I wanted to make sure that I had something that was engaging my mind and the stock market is that. I find it absolutely fascinating in just looking at how everything mixes based on people’s investment horizon – how long they wanted to be in the market, whether they were looking purely at the financial statements or if they are going off of the news cycle. I absolutely love that and in this time, there has been so much volatility in the market that I think that there has been some really good opportunities to make money in these past couple of months.

I’ve been dabbling in that a lot and I know that was a little long winded but essentially, my hobbies are watching/ participating in sports with golf, hanging out with the guys and the stock market.

AM: Five of our covers at Athleisure Mag have been awesome CNBC hosts, we've spent some great times with them, so finance and lifestyle for us has been a pretty big pillar for us. Just like you said, it’s a measure of what’s going on in a given environment and what people are leaning towards and away from. We love the financial mix.

Earlier you were talking about how you help children how to swim. Are there ways that you give back to the community at large or even specifically in the swim community with kids coming up that want to be just like Ryan Murphy?

RM: I try to spread out my time pretty well in terms of the swimming community. Totally at the earliest stage at the grassroots level, I want to grow participation in the sport and that’s why I partnered with Goldfish Swim School and that’s why I am involved with USA Swimming Foundation. USA Swimming Foundation does a lot of really really good work to increase the reach of the sport. It’s no secret that minority participation in swimming is lower than white participation. So USA Swimming Foundation for the past couple of years has done a lot of work in that area to try to increase minority participation in the sport and minority ability to swim. So that is something that I am really really passionate about. As people move up in the sport, there’s a guy named Carson Foster. He’s going into his freshman year of college. He’s been someone who’s reached out and said, “hey, I’d love to pick your brain on some stuff.” I absolutely love doing that. It’s cool that now at the age of 25, I’m a veteran and that’s crazy but it’s also cool that people want to hear from my experiences and what has made a difference in my career. I’m always willing to pay that forward to the younger athletes.

Then completely outside of swimming, I have done some work with the Tom Coughlin Jay Fund. So getting back to being an avid sports fan, Tom Coughlin was the head coach of my hometown's football team. So he was the head of the Jacksonville Jaguars (he was also the head coach for the New York Giants) and an icon in Jacksonville. He has an incredible foundation that works with kids and the family of kids who have cancer. In this time, I have done a couple of Zoom calls with a couple of those kids because they’re going through cancer treatments and the visiting hours in hospitals are limited due to COVID-19. They’re really just looking for interaction and its absolutely incredible with these kids. Every single one of them is so optimistic, so fun, so outgoing, so mature while they are in the fight of their lives. Those conversations are incredibly powerful and they definitely impacted me more than I have impacted them. That’s been really cool to be involved with them for the Tom Coughlin Jay Fund as well.

AM: What is the legacy that you are looking to build whether it’s in the sport or outside of it that you want people to recognize you for?

RM: I think that the biggest thing is that it’s not about the accolades or the accomplishments. Records are going to be broken, there is always going to be someone younger – probably more talented at some point who is going to out do everything that you did at the pool. My biggest goal in terms of my legacy is that I want people to recognize that I have done and will continue to do everything in my power to reach my potential and to grow the sport of swimming. Those are my biggest goals. I want to be the absolute best athlete that I can be, but I also want to raise the profile of this sport. I view swimming as an incredible sport and I want people to be involved. Those are 2 goals of mine and I hope that people do recognize that I am doing absolutely everything in my power to reach both of those goals.

AM: As a changemaker, being someone who a lot of people look up to, who have been 3 people for you that have influenced your career or the way that you look at life?

RM: I’d say that number 1 would be my grandpa. My grandpa is an absolutely an incredible human and kind of a wizard! He has his PhD in math and so he has made his career off of writing math books. He has written over 100 math textbooks in his life and it’s absolutely insane. He’s so smart and probably one of the smartest people that I have ever met. He's an incredible mentor to me – he just has such a down to earth view on life. He has had an incredibly successful life. He didn’t come from much and he really valued his education and has now made a really solid living off of that. He is just someone that I respect so much and he has always been someone that I lean on for advice. Honestly that includes my parents as well so number 1 include my grandpa/my parents.

I guess #2 I will go more athletic. It would be Aaron Peirsol. As we have talked about it, I have always been a backstroker. When I was growing up, Aaron Peirsol absolutely dominated. He dominated from 2000 – 2010 in the backstroke events. He had a huge impact on my career. I would always be glued to my TV when he was swimming. Not because of how he swam, but his personality. He was so chill that he would be the guy that would walk out to his races with his cap and goggles in his hand. Everyone else would have their cap and goggles on and a lot of time, they were over their eyes already. He was just so chill that he would walk out as if he was going on a Sun. swim for a country club. Then he would go and dominate everyone and win gold records. I thought that that was just the coolest thing ever.

The 3rd one that I would go with is a coach. My current coach, Dave Durden, the head coach of Cal since 2007 and the head Olympic coach for the next Olympics. He’s 43, super young in the coaching world and he has such a quiet confidence about him that is just contagious. He's so calm and so measured. I've been swimming with him for 7 years and have only seen him lose his cool probably 1 time in the 7 years that I have swam with him. He’s dealing with 30+ college aged guys. We’re an all guys program and there is a lot of horseplay and personality going around and he just keeps his cool at all times. He’s another guy that I’m so impressed by his demeanor, his ability to plan and his ability to adjust. In this time through COVID-19, he has been an absolute maniac. He’s been jumping through hoops to figure out how we can train safely and just getting all of us on board for his plan. He’s an absolute incredible coach and incredible mentor. David is someone that is going to be a friend for life for me and I am super appreciative of the impact that he has had over my life and my current livelihood!

IG @Ryan_F_Murphy

PHOTOGRAPHY CREDITS | Front Cover, PG 16/17, 28, 32, 33, 34/35, Back Cover: Speedo USA/Photographer Richard Phibbs | PG18, 21, 31, 40-41: Photographer Jack Spitser | PG 24-25: Speedo International | PG 26-27: Speedo USA/Photographer Aaron Okayama | PG 42 -45: Xinhua/Imago/Icon Sportswire | PG 46: Photographer Sean Juo | Front Cover, 16-17, 22-25, 28, 32-35, Back Cover: Editorial Design by Athleisure Mag | PG 52- 53: Photos courtesy of Goldfish Swim School |

Read the July Issue #55 of Athleisure Mag and see Always Topping with Ryan Murphy in mag.

Hear 3 X Team USA Swimming Gold Medalist, Ryan Murphy on our show, #TRIBEGOALS - which is a part of Athleisure Studio, our multi-media podcast network! Make sure to subscribe to find out when the episode drops. You can hear it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and wherever you enjoy listening to your favorite podcast.