One of the things that is really common nowadays
in skating is, it’s called like the off-ice harness.
Basically you stand on a bit of a platform,
it starts to rotate,
and it gets faster and faster and faster
and faster and faster.
You’ll jump and they’ll hold you up in the air.
And it’s almost a way of just like finding
that perfect rotating position and really finding your axis.
Hi, I’m Jason Brown, professional figure skater,
and I’ll be taking you through all my wellness practices
that help me perform the best on the ice.
I’m a two-time Olympian, Olympic bronze medalist,
and a US national champion.
Since the 2022 Olympics,
I’ve been performing for people around the world.
I fell in love with the sport of figure skating
because of the performance aspect.
There’s something so special
about expressing yourself to music
and having the opportunity
to connect with people through art.
But obviously, you have all these different restrictions
and all these different elements that you have to complete.
And then you take these shows
and it’s this opportunity for me to really shine.
You’re not performing to a group of judges that are like,
you know, strictly looking at every single move you make.
This is like celebration time.
[Woman] How are you loving tour life?
The best.
I love the fact that we get to go from city to city
performing in front of people.
And the fact that we get to do what we love
around the country is pretty insane.
It’s 9:45 in the morning.
Just waking up, ready to start my show day.
So first step, taking a bath.
The first thing that I do when I wake up in a new place,
making a bath.
It’s almost the way for me to reset
because we’re constantly on the go.
I kind of have the time to process, okay, where am I today?
What hotel room is this? Which city?
Like definitely helps me reset.
And then I actually put a metronome on
and I basically play around with
a bunch of different breathing techniques.
So I will breathe in for four, breathe out for four.
And I’ll play around with that all the way
till I get to about breathe in for 12, hold for 12.
And what I’ve noticed is that I can only get to that point
when I’m really, really calm.
So it’s almost like a really great way
to like force myself to really slow my heart rate down
and get into that rhythm of breathing.
Once my body’s kind of warm and loose,
I go right into almost a Pilates workout.
Four years ago,
I started working with this Pilates instructor Lisa Schklar.
She has changed my life.
She has helped me feel strong
and almost feel like I have this longevity
that I never felt like I had.
We do a lot of different balance exercises, a lot of core,
almost self-massage type exercises
to like loosen up some of my muscles.
It truly, truly is a game changer
and I’m so grateful for her.
One of the things that is really common nowadays
in skating is, it’s called like the off-ice harness.
Basically, you stand on a bit of a platform,
it starts to rotate,
and it gets faster and faster and faster
and faster and faster.
You’ll jump and they’ll hold you up in the air.
And it’s almost a way of just like finding
that perfect rotating position and really finding your axis.
And it’s a great way of like dealing
with the centripetal force as like,
you know, everything’s pulling you outwards.
You’re really staying strong and really staying centered.
It’s great to get your brain
and your body comfortable at rotating that fast.
Whenever we’re learning new jumps,
there’s this thing called the pole harness.
And so it’s like someone skates with us
and it almost like looks like a fishing pole.
And, you know, there’s the person on one end
and then you’re like in the harness
and you’re able to rotate in it
and they like follow you around.
And then like you take off for the jump,
they like pull a little bit, like lift you up,
and it adds like a split second of, you know, air time,
which is like a huge deal in skating
or like it also helps you with like your rotational axis.
If you’re a little off,
they’re able to almost like reset you a bit.
And that’s a really great way of learning new jumps.
While we’re on tour, we actually don’t train as much
just because the schedule is so rigorous.
And to do a full show,
you’re giving all of yourself to those performances
and it is taxing.
Typically, I’ll train about one hour a day in between.
And then on show days,
we’ll have group rehearsal for about 45 minutes,
I’ll practice my solo numbers for about 30 to 45 minutes.
And then it’s like rest, recover, rest, recover, rest,
recover, perform.
Then you change to the competition
where you’re like training for the Olympics.
It’s a 9-to-5 job.
You know, I wake up, I start my day with Pilates,
I warm up, and then skate for about an hour,
and then I have a bit of a lunch break,
and then I skate again for another hour,
and then I have cardio and strength training
and physical therapy,
find time to get massage, see the chiropractor.
I mean, it’s like a whole different ballgame.
In beautiful, sunny Arizona,
out in my morning walk just to get some fresh air,
move my legs, you know, after being in the bus all night.
And then also get my smoothie bowl, my daily smoothie bowl.
Can’t miss that one.
Surrounding in the environment
and kind of making sure to get out and immerse in it
is so huge for my mental health and for my performances.
There are lots of times where I can get stuck in a loop.
It’s rinse and repeat and rinse and repeat
and rinse and repeat.
And getting outside is like almost my way of breaking up
that pattern, to take it in, and be like,
Wait, look how cool this is. Look where we are today.
I’ve been in this sport for 22 years,
and my mentality and what goes through my head as I compete
has shifted drastically.
When I was younger and growing up in the sport,
I hated competition.
I was so terrified of being out in front of an audience.
So it was like almost like I would repeat this mantra
to myself and it would be, Preparation beats fear.
And I would say it over and over and over and over again
because it’s like I could control the preparation
and that helped a lot with just getting myself
to not overthink things.
From there I started, as you grow up,
you start to think a lot more,
and it’s very difficult to block things out.
It really became with working with a sports psychologist
to finding what tools worked in those situations.
For me, that was about almost doing like a checklist.
Now I’ve almost gotten to the point
where it’s like I go blank during competition.
I’ve trained and I’ve given it everything I have
and at this point in my career,
I’m almost trust my experience.
Every emotion, every thought can come in when I’m done.
But until I’m done, I am putting this side
to just be selfish and to do what I’ve trained to do.
Out here for tonight’s show. Time to warm up.
Between 2:30 and 3:30 is when we’ll typically arrive
at the venue.
I typically will do then my full off-ice warmup.
I’ll run. I’ll do some dynamic stretching.
I’ll do quick feet. I’ll do my off-ice jumps.
It’s really, really important
to warm up your ankles and knees when skating.
We are landing on one leg.
Your knees do take a bit of a brunt of that weight.
And I think with ankles,
I think a lot of times people neglect to work them.
Because we’re in a boot, people that are like,
Oh, well you don’t have to work your ankles as much.
They don’t have to be as strong.
But the reality of it is like,
you need strong ankle stability.
We’re taking really sharp turns and cutting corners,
and it’s really important that your foot’s strong enough
instead of just relying on the boot to do the work.
I’m a rarity in the sport of figure skating
so I keep my skates for a year.
Every single year, Jackson makes my skates.
Even as like they progress
and they keep changing their models,
I’m like Uh-uh, same as last year.
I sharpen them a week before every single competition I do.
As I skate, I like to constantly feel like
I’m almost like kneading the boot.
Creating the patterns that I want
from the bend marks of where I break it in.
And every two weeks, I like go back to new laces
and they almost make me feel like
I can tie my skates up tighter and they’re more supportive.
And then the other stuff is about recovery.
So there’s a lot of physical therapy, dry needling, massage.
I’m terrified of needles,
but I’m like religious about dry needling
and the importance of it.
For whatever reason, I respond to them really, really well.
When we’re in competitions,
it is like we go full, full, full, full, full force
for like 40 minutes on practice,
and then that’s all we have for the rest of the day.
So sometimes the body like goes into shock mode
and things get really tight really fast.
You get that needle into that muscle
and it like instantly like twitches and then it relaxes,
and it is a game changer.
And then I’ll get on the ice and I’ll do my practice.
I always run the jumping passes
to make sure that the layout’s there.
I do some spins to get a feel for the arena
and make sure that I definitely am spatially aware.
You know, we do get very dizzy. It’s just part of our sport.
And so just making sure
that like you have almost certain benchmarks
or certain things that you can look at around the rink
to like center you and be like,
Okay, that’s down the ice. That’s up the ice.
And then I will have a dinner snack.
For us as athletes, it’s like our body is our instrument.
Anytime we can’t do something
or anytime we feel like we’re falling behind,
it’s very, very easy for us to blame ourselves
and to blame our bodies
and to blame like why can’t we keep up?
What’s wrong with me?
It’s very, very easy to go with food
because it’s something you can control.
So I really started working closely with a nutritionist.
That was such a key component of my success moving forward
in these last four years.
And the way I was able to kind of turn a corner
and make it back onto the Olympic stage.
I’ve never felt stronger.
Once you reach a certain level of success,
there’s a level of expectation that people have for you
and a level that you almost always,
or at least I always felt that I wasn’t reaching
and that I wasn’t achieving.
As I got older, I realized that as just a part of sport.
You’re always trying to be the best, you know, you can be
and so you’re always after more.
But I really let it impact self-worth
and I let it impact the way I valued myself
as an athlete and as a performer.
And I really found how, in the last four years especially,
how to kind of change that self-worth
and turn it into self-respect.
Anytime I had doubts or I felt like I wasn’t good enough,
I was like Whoa, whoa, whoa.
The self-respect is gonna outshine this doubt
because I’ve worked so hard.
Respect the work that you’ve done.
Respect the team that’s around you.
Good, bad, whatever is like finding the self-respect
within myself to know that it’s okay that happened.
I move on, I move forward,
but I’m not gonna let that knock me down the way it used to.
And then it’s showtime around 7:30.
Mid-show. Quick changes.
In and out from one costume to the next.
So I came out publicly a year ago.
And it was truly a way to give back
to everyone that came before me
and almost as my way of saying thank you to them.
Anytime you’re able to bring more of yourself
to performances, the more you can connect with the audience,
the more emotional you can be,
the more you can bring a crowd in.
And so I think a lot of my programs,
especially, you know, in the last year,
they take on another layer to them.
I don’t know. I’ve never ever questioned that decision.
I’ve never looked back.
I’m just so proud of the people that have come before me
and so grateful for them.
So the first thing that I do when the performance is over
is typically we go to meet and greets.
So we spend some time talking to the fans,
say thank you for coming to that show.
I really want them to know how much we appreciate it.
We wouldn’t be able to perform if it wasn’t for them.
And then I always, always, always after performance
have to do a cool down.
Typically, that’s like a light jog
followed by some passive stretching.
And then we get on a bus, a sleeper bus, so don’t feel bad.
It’s a a pretty nice bus.
And we drive to our next city.
And then I’ll like put my phone away, disconnect,
take out a book, and I’ll put on my NormaTec pants,
which is basically a form of compression.
They basically like get pumped up with air.
But they start in your foot
and they work their way up your leg.
So they help with recovery,
they help with kind of getting that lactic acid
out of your body.
And what I love about them as well
is like once you put them on, you can’t move.
So it’s a great way to unwind
and a great way to end the night.
And after that, I go to bed.
So we’ll arrive anywhere from 2:00 in the morning
till 5:45, 6:00 AM.
It is 2:55 in the morning,
and we just drove in
and arrived in Portland.
So I’m gonna head into the hotel and go back to bed.
Good night, guys.
[upbeat music]