Lessons in teamwork and resilience beyond the finish line

Peter Jackson (00:02):

When was the last time you woke up at 3:00 AM. and thought, what on earth am I going to do about this? I’m Peter Jackson and as the former CEO of International Law firm, Hill Dickinson, I’ve been there too. 3:00 AM Conversations is a podcast that examines those moments in the cold light of day. And I think that’s useful because once you realise that we all go through this, it helps you get closer to your solutions.

(00:33):

You hear from high achievers who can tell you about their 3:00 AM conversations, and so you can apply their insights to your own life. In this episode, you’re going to meet Andy Triggs Hodge. Now, Andy made history in British rowing and a world record to his name to boot. He’s also an OBE, a proud Yorkshireman, a charity campaigner, and someone who’s as passionate about cleaning up the Thames as he is about inspiring the next generation to pick up some oars and get rowing. But that doesn’t mean he hasn’t had a fair few 3:00 AM conversations of his own in his own life.

Andy Triggs Hodge (01:10):

You have to be a bit of a masochist to be an elite sportsman, so you’ve got to have a desire to hurt yourself.

Peter Jackson (01:17):

That’s all coming up. But first, let me introduce you to my co-host for this episode, Ian Teare. Now, Ian’s a partner in Hill Dickinson’s shipping team where he specialises in the investigation of all types of marine claims. Ian, welcome to 3:00 AM Conversations.

Ian Teare (01:33):

Thanks, Peter. Good to be here.

Peter Jackson (01:35):

Good to see you. Now, tell me about your role.

Ian Teare (01:38):

Yeah. As you’ve just touched upon, Pete, I’m very much practising Fiona and marine casualties. And when I say casualties, what I’m talking about here is not people usually, it’s ships bumping into each other, catching fire, running aground, and that sort of thing. So in that scenario, I would be going to the ship, interviewing witnesses and so on. But generally, handling all the litigation that arises from those sort of incidents.

(02:03):

So that’s my day job, if you like. And then I also have responsibility for running the UK firm’s UK shipping litigation team. That’s a team of about 50 people.

Peter Jackson (02:14):

Excellent. How did you get into this in the first place?

Ian Teare (02:18):

By accident, really. I’m an accidental lawyer. I studied naval architecture at university, designing oil tankers and the like. After that, I went straight into the Royal Air Force, into their officer training programme. Spent a brief period training a navigator before deciding that I needed to come back to all things marine.

(02:36):

And having left the Air Force, I was introduced to the casualty litigation department of a well-known London law firm, shipping law firm, for a role investigating marine casualties. So I took that role, got legally qualified. And 34 years later, here I am still basically doing the same type of work. And look, I consider myself to be really lucky that I stumbled upon a job, a role that still excites me to this day.

Peter Jackson (03:04):

Well, it’s very good to have you here today, Ian. And thanks for that. Now, Andy Triggs Hodge is a hugely accomplished sportsman and campaigner. What are you most looking forward to hearing about from him?

Ian Teare (03:16):

I think the transferability, Pete, of skills and experience and knowledge from elite sportsmen is something that has been interesting to me for a number of years. I would say over the last 10 years or so, I’ve been lucky enough to come into contact with a number of people that have been operating at that type of level. For example, Pete Goss, the International Solo Yachtsman. I used to spend a lot of time with the Harlequins rugby squad and management team before I joined Hill Dicks.

(03:45):

And all of those experiences have really shown me that there’s a lot of skill and knowledge and approach that you can take from elite professional sport and transfer that into life and particularly into business. And so, I’m really looking forward to hearing from Andy on that. I think rowing because it’s a collection of individuals then put into the one boat, perhaps has even more relevance than a lot of other sports to what we do day-to-day. So that’s going to be really interesting.

Peter Jackson (04:17):

Thanks, Ian. Okay, so let’s get to the interview. Andy, welcome to 3:00 AM Conversations. Thank you very much for coming in.

Andy Triggs Hodge (04:30):

My pleasure. Good to see you.

Peter Jackson (04:31):

You are our first Olympic gold medalist. We’ve had a silver medalist before, Steve Parry, but you are our first gold. And of course, three golds, not just one. And four world championships I think to boots.

Andy Triggs Hodge (04:42):

Yeah.

Peter Jackson (04:43):

And I counted 31 medals at major competitions. I may have got that wrong, but it was about 31.

Andy Triggs Hodge (04:47):

I think you’d know better than me I think.

Peter Jackson (04:49):

Right. Well, yeah, good. You gave us three great conversations that we’re going to get to soon. But before we do that, just a little bit about you and background. Reading stuff about you, I think you were self-confessedly an awful sportsman until you discovered rowing. I think it was a failed second row forward you described yourself as at one point. So tell me a bit about that and how you fell into rowing.

Andy Triggs Hodge (05:13):

Yeah. So I came through secondary school, back three of the cross country, last to be picked for any team games, like football, running around. And sport, back then and where I grew up in the Yorkshire Dales wasn’t really a thing, unless you were a veld runner or a rugby player. So I migrated to rugby. I was definitely not the stature for a hill runner. And a second row forward, which as I discovered, is the breeding ground for rowers. Big guys who can push hard, can’t necessarily throw a ball very well. Never scored a try in my life, but I enjoyed it. I definitely enjoyed the rugby side, the teamwork, the camaraderie. The skill bits, seeing the plays, seeing the tactics was all really interesting stuff. It just was happening with other people. I was just watching.

(06:05):

Went to university. The rugby team there didn’t quite have the ideas around fitness maybe. It was first year of uni, there was maybe other things on their mind. And I just wanted to get a bit fitter and just improve my health, should I say. And in my second year, a friend of mine, Rebecca Wolfendale, I was chatting with her about what else I could do because I wanted to try something different. And she said, “Oh, you should try rowing. It’s good social sport. You can have some fun, you’ll get fit. We go out, we have some fun.” And that was the conversation that started it all.

(06:41):

So I went down to Freshers’ Fair and met this lunatic called Ed Green, who was the captain, the coach, the treasurer, the secretary, everything. The one-man boat club band. But discovered something in me, which I hadn’t found up until that point. And yeah, changed my life.

Peter Jackson (07:03):

Indeed. And from that moment, and you starting out to realising you were quite good at it and actually started to win things, didn’t take very long, did it? You had a bit of a meteoric rise in that sense.

Andy Triggs Hodge (07:16):

Yeah. Yeah. So I was two years at uni, Staffordshire University, which it had a very, very small rowing programme. So we messed around, we did what we could, took ourselves way too seriously, but we were never going to do anything serious. We had a very part-time coach. But at the end of that two years, the coach, we were sort of saying are parting ways after the last event of the year. And she says, “Oh, well look, if you ever decided to give us a go, you might be right one day.” So I was like, “Oh, okay.” And that coincided with the same point when I was applying for jobs in the environmental sector and getting absolutely nowhere as most graduates I’m sure will understand and know.

(08:00):

So I thought, “Well look, hell, you can only give this a go once.” And I really loved the sport. I love what it gave. I love, again, the camaraderie. I love the idea of building something up as a team. So decided to move to Southwest London and give rowing a go. So I ended up just getting a job as a graphic design supporter, and then I could row in the mornings and evenings. And then a year and a half later, managed to get selected for the team. So it was like three and a half years before I first represented GB [inaudible 00:08:38].

Peter Jackson (08:38):

Because when you say team, that’s team GB, isn’t it?

Andy Triggs Hodge (08:38):

Well, it was the under 23 team.

Peter Jackson (08:39):

Right, okay.

Andy Triggs Hodge (08:40):

It was the next year when I got the call up for the seniors.

Peter Jackson (08:44):

And then four Olympic games, three Olympic medals. And I’ve heard you on other podcasts described as a member of the rowing royal family. And I’m an Olympics geek, so I probably watched all of your races at the time, but I’ve also heard you say that people walk past you in the street. You have no fame out of this at all, do you?

Andy Triggs Hodge (09:03):

Yeah. No. I guess it’s relative to my kids really. I don’t want them to grow up with this Olympic gold medalist. I want them to grow up with a dad. But when you get introduced to people, “Oh, hey Andy. Oh, hey, nice to meet you Andy. Oh, he’s an Olympic gold medalist.” Everything changes. And I really didn’t want that for my boys. They starting to understand it now. The eldest is, he’s 11, nearly 12. And I sat down and gave him the talk the other day, which was actually really cool.

(09:37):

So I was saying that actually this is what I’ve done and this is where… You could see pennies dropping. But for the younger two, they know about the Olympics and what I’ve done, but they haven’t quite twigged yet. So thankfully, and hopefully I’ll stay this way. I’m just this annoying dad who keeps telling them off. And that’s the side of life that I prefer. I don’t really want to hang my life on a couple of gold medals.

Peter Jackson (10:04):

No, I get that. I get that.

Andy Triggs Hodge (10:05):

There’s much more to life than…

Peter Jackson (10:07):

Yeah. Well, let’s move on to your three conversations then.

Andy Triggs Hodge (10:09):

All right.

Peter Jackson (10:10):

And the first one is all about the concept of individual performance against team success and team performance. And I’ll use your words that you sent to us when we were discussing this. “We’re graded and selected individually, but success is measured by the achievements of the team. No one teaches us how to perform in a team and transferring the mindset is a big journey.” So thinking of this as a 3:00 AM conversation, why was that troubling to you at the time? Why did that cause you to give it such thought?

Andy Triggs Hodge (10:44):

So when you’re on that sharp end of sport and it is parallel across all of life, but when success or failure is binary, you win or you lose, you make the grade or you don’t, you just get selected for the boat or you, you really look into why. And there’s been definitely times when I was younger, it’s like, “Well look, if I failed here, then I’ve just got to go harder.” So you just go harder. And then you start to see stuff going backwards. And you’re like, “Why is this not translating directly into success?” And that realisation that actually what you do individually is only part of what the team wants or needs. So when you see your skill set, your everything or the things you hold dear to yourself or the things you’ve tried really hard at and you feel are the best things, when you see it from that team perspective, if you really see it from the team perspective, that whole priority list changes.

(11:42):

And I think the crazy thing is that we have very little influence over what then really goes into that team bit. So being able to have a strong enough ego to push yourself and to have the eye factor, what am I going to do? How am I going to break down these barriers? How am I going to get 100% out of me physically? And sort of resting on the results of that, being responsible for that. You wear it on your sleeve, this is what I lift, this is what I can row on the ergos, this is the technique. All those things that you put on pedestals, it’s almost the belief structure you build up to be able to perform at the highest level and to get the absolute most out of yourself, to then get in a team where effectively it could be, well, this is not important anymore.

(12:39):

And then you have to kind of have that trust. And the journey is really going on to understand, well, which bits are useful and which bits aren’t? And there’ll be a point at which you’re putting something into a team, into a crew. And you think, yeah, this is how I got into the team, so this is what I’ll bring. But it makes the boat feel shit. The rhythm will break down, you’ll start working against others, and it will just start getting heavy and slow. And there’ll be a conversation at which point a coach or maybe a teammate be like, “You got to stop doing that because it’s making the boat go bad.” You kind of have a question. It’s like, “Well actually you guys should do it because I’m doing it really well.” Or you say, “Okay, I’ll stop doing that.”

(13:32):

And the journey is being able to be vulnerable enough to admit that okay, this might be a real good strength over here, but in this boat which is going to define the next week, month, year, it doesn’t belong. And being able to step back from that and say, “Okay, well look, let’s put that to bed,” is really important because the crews have to be able to gel and you have to be able to leave stuff behind, and you have to be able to listen and hear from others about what you do. And I think this is what separates rowing from a lot of other team sports and admittedly not being a great rugby player, maybe there’s some learnings here for myself. But as an individual within a team sport on the field, you do learn to be the best person you can be.

(14:26):

You think about Johnny Wilkinson and how he used to just for hours on end be doing those spot kicks, just so he was absolutely perfect. In rowing, it’s different. We all had to be either really good at spot kicks or you devalue it. We’re much more monochromatic in that respect. We’ve all got to be able to meet in the middle. You’ve got to work to your strengths, but you can’t work it to the extent where you leave people behind. You got to be able to all work together in a very uniform way. So it’s like saying to Johnny Wilkinson, say, “Right, you’re great at kicking. Well done, but actually, you need to do a bit less now because you need to look at Martin Johnson and see what he’s doing and be a bit more Martin Johnson.”

(15:11):

And Martin Johnson will be like, “You’ve got to be a bit more Johnny Wilkinson,” rather than pulling apart and being the best versions of themselves. That’s where I think for rowing, that team dynamic is almost unique. It is an emotional journey and it’s a very hard thing to do. But once you understand it and appreciate it, then you’ll unlock a feeling in a boat which is like no other. The real sense that you’re rowing together, you’re in tune together. And it’s more than a technical thing, it is a psychology, it’s a mentality, it’s being open.

(15:49):

And when it happens, the boat just transforms from this big heavy lump into something very fluid.

Ian Teare (16:00):

So Andy, we’re talking here, we talked a lot about an individual performance and how the individual might adjust themselves and to get better, to get into the boat. But just turning it around for a second and looking at it from the coaches or the selectors perspective and their eye view on what gets somebody in the boat. When you’re looking at that distinction between individual performance as opposed to performance in the boat with all the others, what’s that individual doing to get themselves in the boat as it were?

Andy Triggs Hodge (16:33):

A great question and it’s actually one that I would really struggle to answer because I think the jump between being an athlete and the coach is enormous. Being the best rower, you’ve got to have that athlete mindset. If you take an athlete mindset to being a coach, I think it’s another big journey. I’ve seen a few athletes turn into coaches and done it very well. It takes a long time. If I was to guess, and this is purely guesswork, I think the best coaches for rowing are excellent psychologists first. Then they’ll be very good technically and obviously they’ll have a good mindset on physiology.

(17:15):

But understanding how a crew sits together and can work together will define if that crew’s a success or a failure. And rowing is sort of tricky. So we’ve got numbers. We use rowing machine data. We can pick times off crews and you can mix up crews and seat swap and get numbers from there. But then there’s a sort of magic source kind of figure as well that you can see some crews, which on paper should be amazingly fast, but just go dog slow. And you’ll get some crews who are nobodies and suddenly win. You see it at the Olympics and you see it all the way through club rowing.

(17:57):

And it’s being able to pick up the best of both worlds. You want your strongest athletes and you want to know how to make them click.

Peter Jackson (18:13):

Should we move on to conversation two? And it flows really because it’s about team ethos again, and you’ve sort of alluded to it. And it’s about that energy and management and effort management and what you have to leave behind. But you put it in a way I really love. And you said, “For me, the defining factor for a successful rowing team is to give 95%. No more. People who want to get ahead, give 110%, but by doing so stop others giving their contribution, which may produce a better result.” So talk about this 95% because I love that in terms of what you put into something.

Andy Triggs Hodge (18:51):

Yeah. So I think when I first started in the sport, I was fueled by a sort of inner fire. I just wanted to prove myself. So it was about giving 110% in everything. And it was less about the subtleties of the sport and it was more about just running through walls. Just the harder you can hit it, the more likely it’s going to go down. And I was young enough and stupid enough, and thankfully the opportunity was there, the space was in the team where that worked. And after Beijing, the perspective changed a bit. And I started to think, “Okay, well look, this sport has to be valued for different reasons. I can’t just keep going like this because I’ll just burn out.”

(19:39):

So my journey and my outlook on the sport started to change and I started to mix with, I was no longer the young guy looking up. I was starting to become, I guess one of the older guys looking down. And not in the condescending way, but looking at the people coming up and thinking who do I want to be in the boat with? But I was still young enough and sort of, I guess arrogant enough to think, “Okay, if I can see them and if I can work with them and think about these things, then we could be a great team.” And it’s weird saying this now, but it’s probably true, but it’s like, I can turn them into a good athlete.

(20:31):

But then for the last Olympiad, I was out for a year with glandular fever and my last Olympic games was Rio. But having been out for a year, I was no longer this sort of double-Olympic champion rower. I was a fraction of what I was. And I came into an eight. And it was as big a journey as my first Olympics, as my second, as my third. It was an incredible perspective to see or to be within this body that was, I’ve done some stuff, but was no longer that person. And I looked at the crew around me thinking, “Right, how do I fit in?” We went through a few iterations of crew makeup and who sat where.

(21:24):

And I remember doing a few things, thinking, “Okay, well look, the coaches asked us to do this, so let’s just do it.” And it just was terrible. And I realised that I could no longer be the athlete I was, so stop trying. And that’s when it really clicked, that idea that if I bring 100%, this boat’s going to go badly. But actually, if I leave a few of these things behind… Now, I’m not talking about 95% effort obviously. Come the Olympic final-

Peter Jackson (21:57):

I was going to say neck and neck with the Australians and…

Andy Triggs Hodge (22:00):

We weren’t neck and neck for long in fact. But it’s that idea of, okay, what do I positively need to leave behind? And I think if I were to be coaching a crew now, being able to communicate that in a way which enables a young athlete to think, I’m here for a reason. I’ve earned my seat. I’m absolutely bulletproof and invincible, but I choose to leave this bit behind because I know it’s going to make the boat go better.

(22:31):

Then that narrative feels like it may have made some of my earlier rowing better. Undoubtedly it would’ve made some of my earlier rowing better. It would’ve made some of the conversations easier. Maybe it would’ve produced an all-around better atmosphere. I definitely probably feel like I got away with it. I definitely feel like there were people around me who were helping me to get the best out of that boat, probably more than I help them. I’m saying these words. I’m like, Jesus, I haven’t really thought about it aloud before, but it’s true. Maybe that’s just the journey we all have to be in.

Peter Jackson (23:12):

Journey that you’ve experienced maybe.

Andy Triggs Hodge (23:15):

Yeah. But looking back on it now, yeah, that idea of work out the 5% you can leave behind. And again, going back to the way you build crews. When you first get a crew together, you in the honeymoon period. You usually get a week where there’s no real instruction, there’s no real crew identity, there’s no key sort of things that you hook together. It’s just let’s go rowing. And like, “Whoa, this feels good.” Everyone’s quite relaxed and the boat’s running and the speeds are good. It’s like, “Whoa, we’re going to win.”

(23:49):

And then a week later you all start doing stuff. I’m going to try and do this, I’m going to do that. I’m going to really just try and put lever off the first inch. And all these little things times 100, times 8 for each row. And then the boat starts to go really slowly and it just feels horrible and rubbish and it’s like you’re rowing through treacle. You just can’t get this thing to run. Sometimes you never get it back. Sometimes it comes back, but it just takes a while. As I think people work out what they can do well and more importantly actually, what is it they’re doing that’s making it go slowly.

(24:26):

And once you work that out, then suddenly the boat picks up again and everyone’s mood lifts, “Oh, yeah, we can do this.” And then you work on those bits to make it better.

Ian Teare (24:35):

And just picking up on that, Andy. So you went through three Olympic cycles with those sorts of things in mind. How do you maintain that level? And you and I have spoken in the past about the sheer volume of training to be an elite rower. How do you maintain that over such a long period of time?

Andy Triggs Hodge (24:55):

Well, you have to be a bit of a masochist to be an elite sportsman. So you’ve got to have a desire to hurt yourself. And that’s just the base level. And when you’re young, it’s about getting better and better. When you get to about 30, it’s about maintaining. But the secret to maintaining it is finding the fun and the enjoyment. When the boat’s going well, it’s fantastic. When it’s not going well, it’s great to take on that challenge and look at which bits you leave behind for that crew. You know it will change for the next crew. So constantly readdressing that. I always imagined it like a ball of putty. There’s no such thing as perfectly round putty. It’s always going to have little dents and biases and bulges, and that’s like the rowing stroke.

(25:43):

You’ve got all the people in the crew pushing it around and you just want to keep nurturing that and keep moving it in a way that helps everyone to get the best out of themselves. And I think also being a older athlete, seeing some of the younger guys coming through, having your chance to be part of their journey was a real gift. There’s some amazing athletes who I had a chance to work with when they were much younger. And listening to their perspectives, listening to their concerns, listening to what made them trigger. And then challenging them as well to think in different ways and to explore different aspects and do things where you think they might not have had that experience before, in terms of how the boat was feeling. And being part of that was really cool.

(26:39):

So by the time I finished, I was 16 years into high-performance rowing. And my body was pretty much broken and my lifestyle, I got a young kid at that point, were pregnant with the second. It was definitely time to call it. I eked out every ounce I could get from the sport, that’s for sure. But once I stopped being angry after Beijing, I could get on and enjoy the sport. So I had eight really lovely years.

Peter Jackson (27:10):

Right. Should we move on to conversation three? And it’s a bit of a change of tack. And really it’s about, I suppose it’s decision-making under pressure.

Andy Triggs Hodge (27:25):

Yeah.

Peter Jackson (27:26):

I’ve heard a story of you involved in a race, I think it was in 2022, and you hit a difficult patch of water outside, was it the fourth? And weather conditions were coming and there was a decision to make. Do you want to talk us through that a bit?

Andy Triggs Hodge (27:41):

Yeah. Okay. And this was the most different sort of rowing that I ever dared dream about. So this was when we rode around the UK. Whereas Olympics, you’re in fine boats. You can sit in them and that’s it, very, very hard. This boat was a three-seater boat for a crew of six. And we were rowing for two hours, sleeping for two hours and swapping over every two hours. And the idea was we would go around the UK. So we started at London Bridge, went down the Thames. Turned right, Dover, Land’s End, all the way up the Irish Sea, across the top of Scotland.

(28:21):

There’s a big spectrum of experience in the boat. But I think what this event did that obviously no other rowing event could have done, was put yourself in a very precarious position. So at several points, we were rounding Scotland with storms coming on. And your decision-making is no longer about how do we make this boat go as fast as we can? It’s, are we going to get ourselves into some serious trouble and need to either be rescued or be in serious trouble, like life-threatening stuff? It’s fair to say that there was quite a bit of pressure on us because we’d already taken a long time. We hoped it would take us about three weeks.

(29:07):

We were, I think just over three weeks at that point. So we still had at least a third of the country, of the coastline to go. There was obviously friends and family back home. We’re out having a jolly, and it was time to come home sort of stuff. So performance now wasn’t a, are we going to win gold or not? It’s like, how much can I ask of my family to do this? Anyway, so we got to this point. We just rowed across this firth, and then again, it was just building westerly. And so, the water was terrible. It was dusk, so the night was drawing in.

(29:49):

And also, there was an area just around the corner of overfalls, so where the water turned really rough. And if you get into a set of overfalls against the tide with wind and waves, the risk suddenly becomes very high, especially for a little small boat like us. We radioed in to some of the fishermen and find, what’s the state of play here? And some of them were like, “Yeah, it’s fine for a fishing boat.” Anyway, the upshot was, there was a narrowing window and there was a chance that we could pile on and go, and just put your heads down and make it work. We’d actually already been rescued once in the Irish Sea where that didn’t work out.

(30:39):

So we got to the stage where we had a decision to make. If we carry on, we have a good chance of making it, but we also might get into trouble. Or we go into Fraserburgh and we wake the storm out and we probably lose two days port, sitting there twiddling your thumbs knowing that that’s going to cause some serious issues. So we had the discussion in the boat and it wasn’t easy. It was a tense moment. It made me readdress, okay, what’s risk really about? And that’s where that moment in that boat, as much as you could argue, we’ll be fine, we’ll make it. There’s a bit of you that says, no, but you might not. And that’s the point at which I was like, “Okay, no, I’ve done my risk in my life and this is not the right moment for risk.”

(31:43):

So we went into shore. The tide was changing, so we had to row pretty hard to make it even there. But that assessment of risk and actually where you’re able to exist is a decision-making that I learnt to push to the boundaries, and then realise actually, no, you can’t live like this. So I had to pull it back. And again, maybe that’s part of that 95%.

Peter Jackson (32:12):

You can’t avoid. You just have experienced this.

Andy Triggs Hodge (32:14):

Yeah. Got to leave that. I’ve got 1% where I’ll risk things that other people won’t, which will give me the advantage. This is at the moment. So let’s leave that one behind.

Peter Jackson (32:24):

You said it was difficult. I’m not going to put you on the spot. Well, I am actually. Was the decision unanimous?

Andy Triggs Hodge (32:30):

It was in the end.

Peter Jackson (32:30):

In the end. Okay.

Andy Triggs Hodge (32:33):

But we explored it extensively and heatedly.

Peter Jackson (32:37):

We’ll leave it at that.

Andy Triggs Hodge (32:38):

Yeah.

Ian Teare (32:41):

And Andy, that Round Britain race also, we talk about resilience a lot, 30-odd days and a lot of different conditions, and so on. Just in a resilience context, how do you keep going? Two hours on, two hours off is a gruelling…

Andy Triggs Hodge (32:55):

That was actually the easy bit. Once you got into the rhythm, it takes a couple of days for your body to adjust to having a sleep cycle and waking, rowing for two hours, then getting back down. And you start off very tired, so you end up dropping off very quickly. That’s fine. I think once you resign yourself to that, it’s actually quite nice.

(33:18):

There’s a solitude, there’s a camaraderie. You’re there with five really great people. You’re learning, you’re almost meditating most of the time just in the rowing pattern, just taking stroke after stroke. Now, the resilience bit is when the adversity arrives. When the waves come and the wind comes and you get challenged. I think the resilience is knowing your limits, and then either looking for help or taking action to make sure you don’t fall down into crisis.

Ian Teare (33:49):

Related to that then, from a resilience perspective, how did you cope when you were diagnosed with glandular fever? It must have been obvious at that point that it was going to be a long time before you got back in the boat. That must have tested your resilience quite a lot.

Andy Triggs Hodge (34:03):

Yeah. Well, my solution was to can it. I stopped training in October. So we came back to training in sort of late September, early October. And then it was probably a month or so, so maybe probably more November. And things weren’t right, we had some tests, et cetera. So we thought, “Okay, well, let’s just stop training and see how I react.” So it started off a day-by-day, then it became week and week, and then it was a month. And then when it was a month, I started to miss the first trials, a few significant milestones, but it was like maybe by Christmas I’ll be back.

(34:38):

And then Christmas came and went, and then there still wasn’t the green light, so I missed all the trials in the next bit. And I was like, “Right, okay. So now I’m going to really struggle to make final trials.” And that’s when the penny was dropping that, okay, I’m not going to make the team this year. And I definitely had some moments of anger and frustration. I’ll apologise to my wife for being an absolute dick. There was a moment when it was just starting to get to me. And of course, it meant a lot to me. It’s what I did. And the way I dealt with it was to say, “Okay, let’s stop.”

(35:18):

So the next day, I started emailing people about getting jobs and started to build up a CV and all the things about, okay, well, I’m not a rower anymore. Let’s reinvent myself because I don’t have anything in rowing anymore. So I went about trying to build up a new Andy Hodge. And that instantly made me feel much better. I was taking on a new challenge, I was starting to speak to people, and I was improving. And it’s same metrics, same mechanics. Pick something what you think you can make some gains and just go at it. Again, I then started feeling good about myself and good about what was happening. I had the support of people around me.

(36:04):

And then about six months, July, I’d always had in the back of my head this idea, okay, well look, if there was an opportunity then there’s got to be a day when I just give it a go or not. So I did all this work, spoke to a load of people. Managed to find a company, a really great company who said, “Okay, look, we’d love to work with you.” So I was like, “Wow, got a job. Amazing.” But they said, “Look, if you’ve got a chance to row, you should do it.” So I was like, “Okay.” So basically, the job was on hold. And then I went out for a bike ride, it was like 20 minutes long. See how I feel at the end of the day. I don’t feel too bad. So the next day, I went for 25 minutes. And then the next day, 30 minutes. And then a week later, I was on two times 20 minutes and just started building up slowly.

(37:00):

And this was July, so the team were doing their final World Cup series before the World Championships in, would’ve been September. So I was seeing all the guys going out and winning and doing some amazing stuff. And thinking, okay, it’s going to be a long journey. But I just kept it short term. I kept it bite-sized chunks, never tried to become that Olympic champion in the next day. And to be honest, my success measure or my decision-making moment was if my body was going to break on that session. So if I made it to the end of the day and it hadn’t broke. It’s like, “Oh, great. I’ll go on for another day, and then it’ll break.”

(37:45):

But it didn’t break, it kept going. So because I’d built myself up a safety net with a job, if it broke at any moment, it’s like fine, it’s good. I’ve tried. I wasn’t hanging anything on the win. Each day was a joy just to be rowing. So by the time we got to Rio, I was probably the happiest I’ve been as an athlete of my whole career.

Ian Teare (38:10):

And in terms of that decision to can it as you say, to say, “I’m not a rower anymore,” and that was obviously you controlling the narrative, controlling your destiny. Was that how you saw it at the time? Was that a deliberate thing? If you control the direction, was that a conscious thing, do you think looking back?

Andy Triggs Hodge (38:26):

I think it’s part instinctive and I think part I was like, this is the right way to go about it. And I think it’s instinctive because I grew up being crap at everything. Just to be in something where I was like, “Hang on, I’m going for an Olympic seat here. That is amazing.’ So I’ve always had this idea I’m worth nothing until I can prove something. And if I am on a journey where their journey’s getting the best out of me and I’m going to do all right at it, then that’s amazing.

(39:06):

So it’s certainly where the fire in the early days came from. I had to be good at something in this bloody life. I hadn’t done anything really to sort of be seen. Was crap at my GCSEs, I didn’t do A levels, I scraped a degree. But everyone was scraping degrees, so there was nothing about Andy Hodge at all. Yeah, turning the fire of that… being chased by that idea into just the joy of doing something you love with people who are amazing and you admire and inspire you and get the best out of you, that’s phenomenal.

Peter Jackson (39:48):

But you did get back.

Andy Triggs Hodge (39:50):

Yeah.

Peter Jackson (39:51):

You won another one.

Andy Triggs Hodge (39:53):

Won another one, yeah,

Peter Jackson (39:54):

Won another one. Yeah.

Andy Triggs Hodge (39:54):

Thanks team.

Peter Jackson (39:56):

Yeah. But also, and you touched on it a minute ago there, Andy, you realised that this was it. And I’ve heard you speak about this. The decision to retire wasn’t a 3:00 AM conversation. You knew and that’s why you could break your body and go for it in Rio.

Andy Triggs Hodge (40:13):

Yeah.

Peter Jackson (40:14):

Moving up a bit then. So what happened next? Where you’re up to now?

Andy Triggs Hodge (40:19):

So reinvention. I wanted to leave rowing behind. Yeah, I couldn’t be a coach because A, I had no idea if I was good enough, but B, the lifestyle I was in. So my wife’s a doctor. She’s incredibly talented doctor and just saves lives all the time. So I’m not going to stand in the way of that at all. Although there was a few years I definitely pushed the envelope in trying to chase my own fantasy of what I could do. So I started working, I did at university environmental science and water science policy management. So I’ve always had a very keen interest in water and water quality and how it’s used.

(41:07):

And I managed to find a company that was building the super sewer, which it’s 26 kilometre long tunnel in the Thames, taking all the sewage that would flow out into the Thames from sewer overflows into a big tunnel, into a sewage works. Amazing project in its own right, but also the organisation and the structure led by Andy Mitchell who’s an absolute… the model they built to build Tideway is now being touted as the way to build Hinkley Point. And it is what HS should have been, et cetera. The four years at Tideway were phenomenal. And as my first foray out of a performance environment, so being useless to being an Olympic athlete, to then being in this incredibly driven and impactful project like Tideway.

(42:03):

And then learning the bits I needed to leave at home because am elite athlete’s mentality doesn’t belong in an office place. Working out the bits to leave at home and which bits to bring. Listening to other people and working out actually, okay, well, what do I need to do to do my job? How do I talk to people? Just complete reinvention and starting from afresh. And then I started working with a youth sport charity called London Youth Rowing, which again, has completely turned around my perspective of the value of rowing as a sport. We’re talking earlier about if you row, you row. You purely do this thing that’s performance orientated, and you go for it.

(42:49):

But the value of the sport is so far from that aspect, it’s just enormous to do it. And LYR has worked out a very effective model where we take rowing into schools of underprivileged kids. So we assess schools based on their poverty profile, how many kids are on free school meals. And then we take probably one of the most elitist sports and drop it right into the middle of the school. We leave all the stuff that makes it hard to access, all the cultural barriers don’t come with us. And we give them a very pure framework of what the sport is. And the measure of success for this organisation is the life skills that kids will learn from the sport.

(43:31):

Rowing’s just the tool. We aren’t going to produce Olympians from it. We might do, but we don’t care. We’re not going to produce any performances. No one’s going to go on and win stuff. But if one of those kids we work with loves the sport and thinks, “Actually, I’m all right at this.” Oh, and by the way, you’re a bloody good team builder. You can see how you bring this team together. Oh, yeah. And they actually have a passion in, I don’t know, maybe they really do like math secretly or they’re in a band, or they’re doing something else in any other walk of life and maybe that mentality transfers.

(44:12):

And they think, “Yeah, if I can be a good team player over there and maybe that might be my thing in life.” That’s where I worked out that rowing is incredibly valuable as a sport in its place amongst all the other sports, but it’s so much more than the Olympics, the boat race, the world championships. That’s great. Well, it’s not great. It’s a boring sport to watch. It’s a great sport to do. But the value for society and communities is that it fits a group of people who funny enough, can’t kick a ball or are crap at running.

(44:49):

You sit on the sidelines at PE thinking, “I’m crap at sport. I’m not an athlete. So they’ll never give it a go.” Until some crazy people wearing blue T-shirts with a YR turn up and say, “Have a go at this sport. You might be all right.”

Peter Jackson (45:04):

Thank you so much for joining us today. That’s been absolutely fascinating and I wish you every success with what you’re doing now. It sounds superb.

Andy Triggs Hodge (45:18):

No, thank you. It’s been a joy to…

Peter Jackson (45:19):

And you’ve been very honest and open and it’s been great to have you.

Andy Triggs Hodge (45:27):

No, nice to meet you. And thank you.

Peter Jackson (45:27):

Thank you. So Ian, we’ve just finished with Andy. What a conversation. What were your original thoughts and takeaways?

Ian Teare (45:33):

Well look, I’ve spoken a lot with Andy over the last few years on the water and off the water, and so, I came to it with an impression of Andy already. But he’s obviously been on a long and very successful journey in elite sport. But it’s very much been a journey for him, hasn’t it? The ups and downs. It hasn’t all been gold medals and champagne by any stretch of the imagination.

(45:57):

So he’s dealt with adversity with glandular fever. And he’s clearly transformed, he says quite clearly of how his view of the sport and how he approached it, and how he assessed his own contribution to it at various stages in his career, changed over time. And I think that’s, A, fascinating, inspiring, but also very transferable to pretty much anything in life. I think he said as much, it’s lessons for life. So yeah, just fantastic hour and really insightful I think.

Peter Jackson (46:29):

Indeed. I think there were two things that really struck me. First of all was as you put, the journey he’s been through in terms of self-awareness. And how he very honestly would describe himself as just going 110% in the early stages of his career because that’s what he needed to do to get into the boat in the first place and prove it to himself. But as he got more experienced, as he got older, as he’d suffered some of the adversity, he realised that actually, he could give more by not going 100%. By being the older head, the wiser head. I thought that was really lovely to hear actually.

(47:08):

But then secondly, and we’ve had this with one or two other guests as well from the sporting arena, how they can recognise that even though it is the most individual of sports where he has to be absolutely elite in everything he does, whether it’s 110 or 95%, at the end of the day in a boat of people, it’s a team game. And how he became aware of that as he got more experienced. And how he realised that not only could he add value in different ways than he might’ve done originally, but he became able to see where the younger, less experienced guys could benefit from his experience and how he could do that.

(47:51):

How he can say he wouldn’t be a coach is a bit odd listening to him because he has the makings of that recognition of strengths and weaknesses, doesn’t he?

Ian Teare (48:02):

Very much so. And I could share a story with you. I have been coached by him in a boa., not at elite level, it has to be said, very far from it. I rode in the LYR Awesome Challenge up the Thames the summer before. And the last 26-kilometre row, the last 6.8 is a race over the Oxford Cambridge Boat Race course.

(48:22):

And Andy was coxing. I was in the stroke pair. And one of my memories of that, apart from my heart and lungs wanting to explode, was him directing instructions to different individuals in the boat, different ages, different abilities, different positions in the boat. And it was very clearly different instructions for different people to make the boat not go slower.

Peter Jackson (48:45):

Not make the boat go slower. I particularly like that because we’ve all heard it in business, haven’t we? There’s that old saying, only do things that make the boat go faster. Ad if it isn’t going to make the boat go faster, don’t do it.

(48:59):

But actually, you can see the supreme relevance of it the other way around, certainly in an elite situation, but actually in any business situation where you’ve got to have people working together. He’s not saying support the weakest link. He’s not saying you’re judging yourself by the weakest link. He’s saying recognise the things you do however good you might think they are, actually just aren’t going to add value and stop doing them.

Ian Teare (49:24):

Yeah. And I think with rowing, I’ve always thought that there’s so much that you can take from sport, especially elite sport in terms of lessons learned in the business context. But rowing out of all of the sports probably is the most run because you’ve got that tension maybe, for lack of a better word, between the individuals have got to all perform well individually, but they’ve got to do it in the context of the boat. And so, I think rowing, if you’re looking for analogies and business guidance, rowing is one of the best places to look, I think in actual fact.

Peter Jackson (49:56):

And I think also, although he didn’t say it, if you think then how that translates into business, it’s actually a cultural point because if you’ve got a business where that recognition of the necessity for teamwork and that each individual whilst they have to be elite in something to be in the boat, will add different things. If you haven’t got that as your culture, then you’re not going to have teamwork. And you’re going to have great individuals and you may do very, very well, but it’s a society, a group, a team, a business, call it what you like, that is simply going to be driven by the individual. It won’t win any team games.

(50:40):

Whereas if you’ve got that more humble culture, that more inclusive culture that he’s talking about, your boat is going to go faster because you’re all working together and you’re adding your bit into the totality.

Ian Teare (50:54):

So Peter, coming back to, Andy was talking about the 110% and you can’t bring or you shouldn’t bring 110% to the game all the time because that has the capacity to, if you like, starve other people have the opportunity to contribute in a way that’s not going to make the boat go slower. How does that translated in views? I have you seen examples of that when you think to your business life and how have you dealt with that?

Peter Jackson (51:20):

Yeah. I think it manifests itself in two ways from what I’ve seen. First of all, it can come about as a result of a lack of understanding on the part of the more senior lawyer, if you like, as to what their role is in the business. And then secondly, it can sometimes be a case of ego and a belief that only I can do that and the client won’t want anybody else than me. I think in the case of the first example, the misunderstanding, that is about coaching somebody about their role. Particularly a more senior lawyer, where their role is simply not just to turn out work product for a client, it’s to manage a team, it’s to develop new work for the benefits of the business as a whole. It’s perhaps to add value to the business as a whole by taking on particular jobs within a partnership or a company, whatever it may be.

(52:15):

The ego is more difficult to deal with, but you do see it, surprise, surprise, in law firms from time-to-time. And there, it’s about weaning away the individual from the concept that only they can do certain things, or in fact in some cases, only they can do everything, and that is more difficult to do. That is an inner psychological issue. There are ways you can get around it.

(52:44):

Thanks very much, Ian then, for being here today. And thanks again, to you for listening to this episodes of 3:00 AM Conversations. You’ll hear from us again in a month’s time, but please rate, review, and follow the podcast. And that way, you’ll be able to spread the word. And if you’d like to find out more about how Hill Dickinson might be able to help you, then head to hilldickinson.com. See you soon.