Dr Lauren Burns is an Olympic Gold Medal winner in the sport of taekwondo at the Sydney 2000 Olympics. She was the first to win a gold in taekwondo for Australia, and on the sidelines coaching her, was Tiff's Dad Martin.
Today they reminisce about the moment Lauren won, what preparations she had to go through and how she impacted Tiff's life!
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CREDITS
Host: Tiff Hall
Guest: Lauren Burns
Executive Producer: Rachael Hart
Editor: Adrian Walton
Managing Producer: Ricardo Bardon
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Nova Entertainment acknowledges the traditional custodians of the land on which we produced this podcast, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We pay our respect to Elders past and present.
Hi, and welcome back to Bounce Forward with me, Tip Hall. I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which I'm recording this podcast, So we're rendering people of the Kola Nation. I pay my respects for elders past and present. Today on Bounce Forward, I have my friend, doctor Lauren Burns. Now Lauren has been in my life, my whole life. She is a taekwondo athlete who trained with my dad. He was one of her Olympic coaches in the two thousand Sydney Games. So I grew up watching Lauren train and achieve her dreams. Now, doctor Lauren Burns holds a PhD in Athlete Lifestyle and Mindset and collaborates with the Australian Institute of Sport regularly. She's been given the Order of Australian Medal and in twenty seventeen was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame Plus. At the Sydney two thousand Olympics, she took out the Olympic gold med in taekwondo for Australia, doing it for the girls.
Lauren.
Welcome to Bounce Forward. Lauren welcome to Bounce Forward. I'm so excited to have you on and to nerd out a little bit over taekwondo, because there's not many people you can talk about taekwondo with who really get it and love it and are obsessed with it like we are, and it's really in our blood. And I want to start with the year two thousand, of course, and the Sydney Olympic Games twenty four years ago. Now amazing, and this is kind of where we're connected through taekwondo, and you won a gold medal and Olympic gold medal, the first in our sport for our country in taekwondo. Just such a spectacular moment.
I was there.
Can you take us back to that moment and like, talk me through it? How are you feeling?
Oh, it was such an incredible time. And yeah, like I was just at the nationals on the weekend and like you said, twenty four years ago, I'm chatting to all these kids and you know, they weren't even born at the city and so like it, Miley has been a long time, but it was so it was such an amazing event. I mean really, for me, there was a really strong part of my preparation that was about doing the ordinary things in extraordinary circumstances. So that was something that I'd honed with my sports psychologist. But also, you know, it was at the State Sports Center, So although it had all this kind of Olympic branding that sort of came along and packaged it really nicely, it was still a stadium that I knew well, I'd competed in.
It was like I felt like it was my home turf.
I'd been there the year before and I'd stood in that same stadium and I'd kind of felt like I put my energy.
Into the corners of that room. You know, this enormous.
Stadium, and I stood there and I was like, I'm going to come back in a year and I'm going to win a gold medal, and I sort of really owned that space, you know. So when we were there at the games, it was you know, I probably didn't really understand the enormity of it until afterwards because we had this real focus, you know, obviously with my sports site, but also my whole support team.
It was about.
Creating that element of normality. Normality, you know, it was like this is what I do, this is what I know, this is what I've trained for all my you know, professional taekwondo life. I've traveled the world, I've competed against these girls, I've you know, had these international referees. I know my coaches in my corner, i know my support team. So it was all about bringing it back to the normal, because it's very easy to.
Get swept up in a big event like that, any event where.
It's world championship's World Cup, where you know, it's just and you and the nerves come in and you feel differently than you might at you know, another tournament. So there was this element of it of really kind of bringing the normal and the mundane and doing what you know and focus on, you know, on the basics and coming back to the simple things, doing the simple things with that excellence. And then even in the fights, it was around that creating, you know, like being present, being in the moment, scoring you know, points, holding points. So it's very much about being in that strategy, not thinking about standing on the days.
At the end.
And then when it happened, it felt very much in the moment that I actually won, it was like yes, you know, it was I was very cool, came and collected, ticked off that box. And then it wasn't until sort of later on when I went out to the to the back and the drug testing woman was reading my rights, I kind.
Of start it all dawned on me and I was like, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, I did it. You did do it.
Yeah, And it's one of the biggest moments I think in my life because you're a woman and you did it, and it showed me something about empowering women and that women can do hard things. And I was sixteen at the time, and I was loving my taekwondo and I love my fitness, and my parents were fitness instructors martial arts instructors. Sort of wanted to head into fitness but didn't really know what I wanted to do. And that just inspired me so much, Lauren. It just it just was a moment where I was like, I want to empower women through fitness through taekwondo. Don't really know what that'll be yet, but it was pivotal for me. Now we've got a link because my dad was on your coaching team, Martin.
Yes, and you know.
You've been coached a lot and had a huge focus on mindset and winning and throughout your whole life. Like, what do you think is the secret to having a high performance mindset like that that winning mindset for anyone out there who's looking to, you know, really succeed in their sport.
Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, your dad, Martin Hall was my so my club coach and then also my coach at the Olympics. I had two coaches, Jinte Joeng and Matt and and you know, we can go a little bit more into my relationship with him, and we were together for such a long time.
You know, it was a real, it was incredible journey.
But I think, you know, this element of a growth mindset, and you know, we hear about that a lot. It can be a bit of a throwaway term, but really kind of understanding that we we have the ability to always grow and evolve and our skills are not you know, stagnant as they are, We can always develop. So I think that you know, it's not about we all have hard times, we all have challenges, we all have things that we all have set back, So it's not that you're creating the perfect environment where everything goes right. But I think that mindset of being able to succeed and do the things that you want to in life, and succeeding can be all manner of different things, whatever it is to the individual, but it's about that that sort of flexibility of being able to go I can you know, I can work my way out of this, I can build back up.
I can find a way to make that happen.
And you know, even when things completely change and you may not you know, there's a lot of athletes that have life changing injuries and they can't go back to that sport. So it's like, how do you then adapt and change and sort of being kind to yourself and then but also looking at you know, I love the work of There's a researcher at Stanford, Alie Crumb, so she has this work around the stress is enhancing mindset. So even looking at stressful situations or doing hard things and having that that outlook where oh this is going to help me and how can I do to you know, what can I use this experience to be able to enhance my life in some way?
And you know that often comes in with injuries.
I think it can be a time of our biggest growth and where we kind of have to really dig in and adapt so yeah, I think being kind and being really flexible is probably some of the most important elements.
That's really good advice.
I mean, when I was an athlete, it was much more like winning was everything. So everything I did winning in taekwondo, so not I was never really competitive in other areas of my life but winning, and so it was like what do I need to do to be the best athlete?
So that I mean, I was ruthless.
I often felt like I had a samurai saw it, and especially close to the games, I just cut out all the crap, all the shit that I you know, it was like channel focus, be really clear.
Yeah, and so but that was very time dependent.
You know, a competition is very much like you have to perform on that day or that's it. Whereas performing in other areas of my life or you know, being a good parent or being a good partner or getting a degree or whatever, then that's a little bit of a You've got a bigger window to allow for those.
Sorts of things. So yeah, that's just a little bit bit kind.
Of talking about cutting out all like the crap, Like you had to diet so hard to get under forty nine kilos wasn't it, like, and you're a vegetarian, so was.
That really challenging for you?
What was that a grueling process making weight for the game?
Yes, it was, but it was also part because I always had to cut for a weight division.
It was part of my preparation, and.
So it was sort of like a as I went into that phase, into that mode, it was a lot. It was generally a'b be three months, I'd sort of start to really streamline what I was, you know, getting that weight down safely, and so that kind of cut out a lot of you know, it was like, wasn't socializing as much going out for you as doing anything like that, So it was kind of a mental refinement as well. But yeah, so for your listeners, there's normally eight weight divisions in taekwondo, and for the Olympics they only had four. So the normal weight division i'd drop into was fifty one. So I just dropped a couple of kilos, you know, and I'd sort of sit at a training weight of fifty three, but around fifty five natural weight drop in always challenging. It was at the lower end of my weight, but it was pretty safe for the Olympics. They only had four weight division and ten kilo increments between them, so either had to go under forty nine or under fifty seven. So the fifty seven girls are like sixty something.
And they're dropping in. They're really tall. It's like a completely different game.
So, you know, I had Dexa scans, I went to the BIS or the Dietitians. You know, I had my natural path coaches. We all decided decided forty nine was going to be the best weight division. So they actually said it's unsafe to ever really sit at forty nine, so just to drop down slowly and hit it on the day.
So I did weigh in at forty eight point nine to eight wow, twenty kilos.
But that was very you know, I'd practiced, I'd done it poorly before. I did a tournament overseas where I fought at the Belgium Open and I beat this girl by about I was like eleven points or something.
I just absolutely it was. It was a really good win.
Then then two weeks later I fought her at the same girl in Italy and I had to drop down to forty nine and I just couldn't get it off and I ended up saunering it off, which I hate doing. Yes, and I lost to her by light three points, so you know, it can make such a huge difference if you do it, if you know, sweat it off, because you don't have you become you're dehydrated. You just can't recover that, and that's really you know, it's so important with taekwondo to have that decision making time and you know, the critical analysis, especially if you're down and it's in a final and you've had four fights that day or eight fights that day, you just can't compromise that.
So I used to do it really well. It was really adamant not to sauner it run it off.
You know, also you have often a beautiful taper, you know, you have this periodization that you set with your strength coach, and then if you're overweight and you're running it off or skipping it off in a car park, then you're just undoing all of that beautiful work for explosiveness.
So I did it really carefully.
And yeah, I was vegetarian, so everyone at that point used to tell me I couldn't be a vegetarian athlete, so I had dietitian At the VIIs had a natch path a nutritionist, so I had a lot of different and then I would kind of, you know, curate my own plan a little bit as well.
So I was very organized. I used to have my main meal.
In the middle of the day with lots of protein, lots of different colors, eating the rainbow because I wanted to have you know, it was all about eating for power and strength and reaction time, and so yeah, it was I always looked at that positive as well, because you know, otherwise it just feels like there's that deprivation and I can't have this, and I.
Yeah, yeah, that's really important.
That.
So even though I was forty nine kilos and what and like at the lightest that my body should ever be or shouldn't be, I felt six feet tall. I felt like this huge warrior woman. I just felt so strong and so powerful. And then I look back at the photos and I'm like, oh my god, you were so tiny.
Yeah, but you felt that. It's awesome.
Yeah, I did, and all the strength work, you know, like my legs were just so strong. I cut a lot from my upper body, so it was very strategic, you know, I didn't do it. I wasn't just left to my own devices, No, it was. You know, we're really in collaboration with my team.
I'm going to leave that chat right there and come back with part two very soon. Thanks so much for listening to Bounce Forward. I love having your company, So please DM me on Instagram at tip Hall Underscore and let me know what questions you'd love me to cover. Don't forget to rate and review me on your podcast app Speak soon.
Happy days,