LEAVE YOUR MARK #8 A CREATIVE CAT ON BLADES WITH SCOTT MOIR // WRITE-UP
POSTED ON FRIDAY, MAY 25, 2018 AT 3:24 AM WITH 106 NOTES
PODCAST LINK
Hello this is Scott Livingston from Leave Your Mark and today I’m honored to be speaking to Scott Moir who is an amazing human being. The main reason I’ve asked him to come on Leave Your Mark is not because of his accomplishments but because of who he is as a person. He carries himself with humility, he is friendly and caring about everyone he meets and if he knows you, he always takes the time to make you feel his connection. He is a proud Canadian. He along with his partner Tessa, won all there is to win in Ice Dancing, most recently two gold medals at the Olympics in Korea. They’re considered by many to be the best of all time and yet when you meet him, you are nothing but impressed with the way he carries himself and how he treats you. I am honored to spend some time with him today. Welcome Scott.
Scott: Thank you Scotty I don’t know how to follow that up (laughs)
SL: I love when I do intros that hit the person
Scott: Now I’m hoping to do an interview that has no humility in it at all,  I’m changed since then, two months ago
SL: I don’t want to humiliate you more. So I know you love the Leafs (Scott: mhmm) but who’s your favorite Leaf of all time?
Scott: Leaf of all time? Wendal Clark. (SL: Why?) Uuuuhhh I just like the way he played cuz he’s kinda all-around. You didn’t know whether he was gonna score a hat trick or fight Bob Probert, he just played with that edge and um it’s also I think a lot to do with the time, uhhh that you kind of fall in love with the sport. For me, I was a young boy when Wendal Clark was the captain so, it was very natural that I kinda went towards liking Wendal Clark, Doug Gilmore, Dave Andreychuk that was kinda my era when I first started and you know it never gets better than that I don’t think. Even with Auston Matthews, I mean this kid is probably gonna be the best Leaf ever, just doesn’t have the same connection to me as Wendal Clark.
SL: As when you were a boy (Scott: yeah) but how do you feel about their doing…
Scott: Well they’re doing greeeat I mean (SL: special team right now) yeah they are a special team. They’re gonna be tough, they’re missing some big pieces though but you know we’re Leafs fans, Tessa and I both, and it’s just nice to be able to go down to the ACC and have them in it a little bit. You know its been a long hard road here in these last 10 years or so. So uhhh but we’re friends with, everyone knows kind of about our friendship with Mike Babcock, even with  Brendan Shanahan they’ve always been so great to us. So it’s been fun to kinda get into the rink a little bit more now when we’re, even in the last two months since we’ve been retired we’ve been there a couple of times. Look forward to seeing them do some things but they’re farther away probably than they wanna be at this point but at least they’re always in the game, it’s so explosive offensively.
SL: You know Mike relatively well, you’ve kinda bounced into him, what impresses you about him?
Scott: What I like about Mike is that there are no secrets for him. There’s no secret to success you know? He is, his big thing is living by the code. You wake up every day, you try hard umm you dedicate yourself, you care, you go home, you love your family and you know it’s a very simple formula for him. But he follows it relentlessly and if you give him my…what our discussions have been, obviously I’ve never played for Mike, I’ve never…we’ll never pretend to know him in the way that his players do but from what he says to me you know…you give him everything you have, he’s gonna take great care of you.
SL: What has been a powerful conversation you’ve had with him? do you remember something?
Scott: Yeah the biggest thing that I’ll always take with me for the rest of my life umm is when Mike said to me “The scariest thing about life is you can have everything you want.” And just to kinda go for that and not shy away and not to limit yourself. And you know even as a young adult, that moment loses after Sochi. We’d already won an Olympics. I was silver medalist in Sochi and even then I had found in parts of my life I was putting limits for no reason. So that kind of opened it back up and allowed me to kinda chase after a couple things that I hadn’t been.
SL: That’s awesome (Scott: yeah!) do you find, yeah what is for you easy to do or what is for you hard to do?
Scott: That’s a good question and its changed as I’ve kinda gone on. Early on as a MALE, in my sport, I struggled a little bit with self-confidence. And I don’t think that will read in the way that many people would think. It’s more about how when I start a new project, with choreography or with movement, I was never trained to dance. I was never trained to move in a specific way. I’m more of a feeling person. So as I was young I was always really insecure about the first thing that was gonna come out of my body and I knew that it was gonna be compared to Tessa. Because she was already pretty dance savvy and most of the time nailing it right away. Actually more like all of the time now right away but that kind of changed as I got older. And now mostly, the thing that I’m not so good at would be controlling my emotions. Making sure that I’m using it in the right way, it’s also what I think makes me a very powerful athlete, very powerful performer but it can be my worst enemy if I let it get in the way. But my strengths are, I HOPE, that my strengths are personal connections. I love people, you know I love…like right now we’re on tour, I like making connections with the crew, the person who does wardrobe, the person who’s doing the lights. I like creating that family and that kind of, I guess for lack of a better word, CULTURE and pushing that kind of being the team captain. That really motives me, I rather do that than, I’ll do…I’ll help other people before I kinda help myself I guess.
SL: Is that an “energy in” for you?
Scott: Yes. Absolutely.
SL: What’s an “energy out” for you?
Scott: Energy out for me is hahahumm…huge is when people don’t respect each other’s time. A huge energy out is when we’re just kinda going through the motions, I can’t, I can’t do that and most of the time I will kinda snap but I don’t have too many energy outs. I just need to make sure I check in, like I have a lot of energy to give but I have to make sure I take care of myself. I spend time with my family, I spend time at home or else I do run out of gas.
SL: So who in your family is a grounding point for you? Mom, dad, is it…
Scott: Uhh well I’m super, I’m really really fortunate. I think the grounding point for me uhh has always been my brothers. I’m the youngest of three and I’m very very proud of my brothers. They’re both firefighters. They were kind of in the sport, well not kind of they were in the sport, but never really to the level that I pursued. Yet they never, not that they didn’t care about how I was doing in skating because they did and they were so supportive but I really needed to rely on them for just being my brothers and they were always there for that. I always felt like they had my back no matter what and how important is that in life when you can walk out the front door of your own house and know that no matter what these guys have your back.
SL: One of your brothers competed fairly significantly in ice dance, was that an influence in you (Scott: absolutely) was he the..
Scott: Yeah I think when that kind of click for me that, whoa I could do this and travel the world. For him that was a big part of it, he was in the Junior circuit and a little bit on the Senior circuit but he talked a lot about the connections that he made, the friendships, how neat it was to travel to Europe, meet people from America, from Asia, from Poland and have a great time. And you know that’s kinda think what kinda drew me into the sport. I thought okay if I’m successful a little bit then I will get to go to Austria and I’ll get to go to Croatia and Japan, that was kinda the first thing that hooked me and once I got to these competitions it didn’t take long before I just wanted to win them.
SL: hahaha I wanna broach one topic with you that’s probably a little bit difficult to a degree but it’s you know, ice dancing is not something that you know most guys when they’re kids kinda look at and say “that’s what I wanna accomplish or do”. The reason I wanna bring this is up is so for young people who are listening and stuff, how you kind of managed what is the perception that versus your character, you as a man etc. And now I think in some sense, is you being successful and that’s a really powerful thing for some younger person who wants to do that so how did you manage THAT growing up in a sense?
Scott: Well that took a long time for me to I think fully understand and its only been probably in the last four years that I have truly started to be more comfortable with it but at the beginning it wasn’t typical like people would think. I played hockey and I skated and I never got bullied in school umm I mean there was teasing amongst friends. But all of my buddies and my good friends have always been really supportive of me being a figure skater. And I look at some of the teasing and the bullying that happens at school and it breaks my heart but I can honestly say I never really had to go through that to that extent because my friends did it for me. I had really great friends and they were allowed to tease me and I teased them about you know stuff but if somebody who wasn’t one of our friends said something then there was a real problem. And I always respected that, the other thing I had going for me is that I did play hockey with these guys. So they could make fun of me for being a figure skater all they wanted but they knew that Id be playing on first line (SL: a good dang first line) yeah I’d be playing on the first line against them or with them that night and they’d be sitting on the bench watching me go so they kind of understood that skill. And I was never that great of a hockey player but I could always get to where I needed to be and was a good play maker and a competitor. And that’s kinda the very beginning of it but mostly with my image kinda as I came up. I always wanted to be known as this hockey player who figure skated and I thought that my goal in life, if that, because I went to figure skating, I’d kinda given up on my dream to win the Stanley Cup. When I was a young boy I wanted to win the Stanley Cup and be Joe Sakic, like that was pretty much it and it took me a while to realize that, that actually wasn’t my passion, that wasn’t what excited me. When I look back now I see the way I feel when I perform with Tessa, or the way I feel when I’m doing new choreography, doing a dance, doesn’t add up and isn’t as fulfilling to me as playing hockey or winning hockey and I know that I never did it at that level, but even at a young age so it took me a while to kinda break the mold of what I thought was socially acceptable or what I thought was supposed to be “normal.” And uh that was very interesting for me because now when I look back and I loved to dance, I loved to move with Tessa, I loved to be out there umm these last two years of performing have been very fulfilling for me because I’ve really connected with the material and we’re kind taking that into touring but it took me a while to admit that kinda to myself. So that was an interesting journey and now because I’ve done that I think its made me a more powerful performer but…
SL: What would you say to uh the young person that is maybe dealing with some resistance inside themselves about reaching that because of some of those social things what would you say to them in terms of maybe helping them past that…
Scott: Well, I would say that, I would push most young people to be interesting and to not fit into the mold. Umm I know that it’s tough, especially tough when you’re in the school system, when you’re in this little world where that kind of peer pressure can become overwhelming. But it’s a huge world and push yourself to be interesting and follow your passions because there are tons of people who are into the same things as you. And it’s really about what makes you happy. So it’s really really tough but you know those interesting people are the ones who rule the world in the end and I believe that.
SL: That’s awesome, I love that. You were kind of I guess forced in a way because of what you were doing to leave home kind of earlier than most kids would. How was that hard and how was that easy for you in some ways?
Scott: Well it was easy for me because I knew it was necessary in order to accomplish my goals. Even as a 15 year old, because Tessa and I first left home when she was 13, I was 15, we got 3rd at the Novice Nationals and I didn’t want to be 3rd at the Novice Nationals and we wanted to move into Junior and we knew that we had to train 5 days a week and we couldn’t live at home anymore. So it was an easy decision umm I mean, I think I DID realize but I didn’t care that it was gonna gonna be costing my normal high school life and I wasn’t gonna do prom, I wasn’t gonna be able to go out Friday, Saturday, you know be a normal high school kid. And that didn’t, I didn’t care about that, there’s a lot of things I don’t but once I did move away and in the tough days, I always had a very supportive family, and it was tough to be away from THAT, to not be there you know when my brothers are getting engaged, married, having kids that was the tough part about being away from home. But I’ve always got that great support and I really just made sure to take advantage of the time that I get when I am at home. But, its been worth it, I mean I don’t know what it is about me. I think I would’ve left home early no matter what.
SL: How did you keep connected cuz you talk about your good buddies (Scott: yeah) How did you foster good relationships that you still carry today?
Scott: Well what’s interesting about me is I went to my high school, that I still consider my high school, only in 9th grade. Medway High School which is at home and all my good friends, all of my “best friends” from that part of my life I still have friendships with today. We’ve got a really tight group of guys and girls for that matter. I don’t know, just people that I kinda connected with and I was lucky because it was only an hour away so  I would come home on the weekends and whenever I wasn’t competing and I’d try and work on those friendships but I actually think I owe that to my friends. Like, they understood that I was trying to do something, they always supported me and they always understood. I can’t remember getting backlash once because I couldn’t make something or…they understood and I’ve missed best friends’ weddings and you know their kids getting born now and they just seem to understand which is something I don’t wanna make a habit of but I really appreciate. (laughing)
SL: I think it’s acceptable for what you’re doing (Scott: I guess) I’m gonna read you something, there’s a book I fell in love with a number of year ago called “The Day You Were Born” and it basically combines numerology with astrology and I fell in love with it because it connected me to my purpose and so in that it talks about the day you were born and basically give you a purpose statement. So I want to read it to you “To use your acute sensitivity, feelings of difference and fears of abandonment to gain insight into yourself become creative and bond with others.” Pretty cool (Scott: That’s crazy!) and there’s usually a tagline that goes with this “The spiritual self must never lose its sense of utter dependence on the invisible.” Karl Young who is a famous psychologist wrote it (Scott: I love that) and you know who your certain sign aligns with other people’s signs. You align with Michael Jackson (Scott: really?!) yeah (Scott: that’s hilarious we’re doing a Michael Jackson thing in this tour) that’s pretty cool.
Scott: I mean, I think I really underestimated what that feeling of performance and creativity means to me and to have that outlet. And it is, I mean we are so lucky to have had the support our whole career but it’s a different type of fun. It’s not like the fun you have when you’re relaxing and out with your friends. But I have no other rush that is like the rush in my life when I either stand in my opening position or stand in the tunnel right before I go out and that’s what I live for. And I know what to do when I get into the position but I love that excitement so it’s kind of interesting.
SL: You exude a certain level of creativity which is very cool and I remember watching the documentary on you guys before the Olympics on Roxanne. I could see you know what it meant to BOTH of you but to you especially as well. Tell me about the creative process for you, how do you come up with something, does it sort of just ping you in the head one day? what is the process?
Scott: I’m more of a…I think I need to be inspired a little bit before I can really find my stride. But I plant seeds and now I’ve learned kind of that, there’s not a bad idea you know? You throw kind of ideas onto the table and the best idea wins type thing and when I start to create or…Because a lot of the stuff that Tessa and I do, we do as a team, we can collaborate so in some ways we rely on each other. I feel like I’m kinda just picking through the ideas and highlighting the best ones. And for me, I love, I love Tess, I love watching her move and I love how sh.. like she’s a magician. So, its very easy to watch her do something and pick, it’s very natural. But when I’m creating or getting into the head space of a character…I like it to be real. I do, a lot of the programs that we’ve done have been kinda based on my own experiences. Not in the way of method acting or pretending but more so in putting myself in that position. If I wanna be jealous, remembering what it’s like to be jealous and really understanding why and that’s a big part of me coming to terms with my character. But other than that, I think I’ve been a little bit blessed with…the fact that I’m emotional. I’ve always loved to tell a story and act and I bring as much energy as I can and I’ve always been the guy that when I I give 100% and kinda go over what I think would be seen as over the top is when Tess goes “Yes that’s it, I love that. Give us that.”
SL: What’s the difficult side of being emotionally connected to what you do?
Scott: The difficult side is understanding, the ying and the yang, I think cuz that takes energy and there will be a time when you come down………..and also…collaborating is huge and that’s pretty much. I don’t create alone, I don’t wish to create alone. I love when Tessa and I do things together and WE love when we work with a professional that can bring something different and you know pull little strands of hopefully brilliance out of us. But (sigh) it’s a good question.
SL: Oh I know that working with, is Marina right that you worked (Scott: mhmm) there was some difficult times in that. What did you learn from her that was positive about yourselves and yourself?
Scott: Well there was a lot of difficult times and when we look back at it I think NOW it was her trying to help us mature, help us grow up in 20…well 2010 but also 08 and 09 like it was there for us. She just almost told us exactly what we were gonna do and helped us create as well but she choreographed most of the programs. When we started to mature and have more input, that worked but then I think in the last year we expected a lot more input, we expected to be very similar to 2014. But because we didn’t get that input we had to be independent and we had to go kind of down that path of maybe having some material that we didn’t like? But we wouldn’t have had our 2018 material if we didn’t have the 2014 experience. And we were very very proud of the performances we had, maybe not so much of the program, in particular the free dance, the short dance we really liked in 2014 but we needed that. And we created it all and we’re very very proud of that.
SL: Is this Olympics the two performances, the most empowering performances of you career? or were th…
Scott: I think so. And not for the reasons I don’t think people would guess…like I’m not so sure that they were, well yeah they were our best performances. But, what we’re most proud of in I talked a little bit about this with Tessa, not that long ago is the fact that we were able to capitalize when we were completely trained. In 2010 we were trained well and we were in great skating shape, but Tessa was very much still injured. We were in Canada and there was some sort of energy that lifted us up. You know got us past through her legs being sore, Tessa kinda just willed her way to the finish line. In 2014 we had a bit more down to a science what we thought was mechanically moving well, didn’t quite have the programs, performed well, we had trained well, but they just weren’t up to the level. This year umm we were sooo ready. And I don’t know, it’s very neat as an athlete to look back and wonder what we could’ve done differently and actually not have an answer. We left no stone un-turned, we really were trained, we committed to absolutely every part of it. And that was exhausting at times, but standing in that opening position, the only thing we felt was pressure, to not perform like we had the thousands of times before and I mean that was really cool. And we did execute and that’s what we’re proud of more so, that training before.
SL: I asked this question to Mik (Mik Kingsbury) and I’m curious how you feel as well is…In society you have “hey that’s the best pizza” “that’s the best restaurant” but you know that’s always somebody’s opinion right? But you compete in sport and there is a “best” there is a moment of “best”. What does that feel like in the sense that you know that you are the “best” at something in the world, what’s the weight of that? and what is the exuberance of that?
Scott: Well we had felt…we felt both, I mean…I think that at an early age we felt the weight of it as pressure to repeat or pressure to prove that it wasn’t just lighting in a bottle. After 2010, the most pressure we felt was at a summer competition the next year. We felt that we had to prove to everybody that the Olympic Champions were in the building and that they brought a special, something different and we were gonna be untouchable forever. That’s just such an unrealistic energy and not where we were skating, even at the Olympics the year before. We never stayed with that energy so to try and figure that out, it was really difficult but Marnie McBean is one of our greatest mentors and we’ve leaned on her a lot in our life. Her point was that “You’ve won the Olympics” they can never take that away from you and now that we’re older, I mean…we were so happy about winning these games but we know there will be someone that comes along and it’s a personal journey, I really believe that. Like I, it was nice to win the Olympics but it’s kinda just a measuring stick, if we’ve had those performances and come second, it’s not quite the story that you wanna read in the papers, it doesn’t help in Canada’s medal count and we always wanna bring that medal home for Canada. But our journey would’ve been the same and that journey would have been for US as athletes and people just as beautiful. So, (SL: I think that’s a really important piece to pick up from actually) yeah we just kinda…now that we’ve won and people say “Oh yeah you just don’t seem to uh, you just seem so down to earth” well it hasn’t changed us. Like I would REALLY hope it hasn’t changed us.
SL: That’s awesome because, I was gonna play off of that because one of the things in my learnings most recently is a concept that was talked to me is called “object reference vs self reference” and object reference essentially is this concept of being focused on just on a goal and achieving something and not necessarily connecting to the process of getting there. So a lot of times in society today we’re “I want that car” “I want that medal” “I want that job” and so people go after that and two things happen 1)  is you don’t get it and there’s this kinda loss of sense of self, you’re despondent because you didn’t get it or you’re kinda side bencher or 2) you get there and there’s kind of a hollowness in it (Scott: right) and it’s that connection to process, that self referral connection to the process of doing it that’s really powerful. And what I just listened to you say for those listening is, the whole thing that resonated with you in these last Olympics was your connection to process so it didn’t really matter what happened in the end. It was wonderful that it all worked out but you were connected to that process deeply so you can reflect back on it and say “that was really powerful.”
Scott: And that’s absolutely right and I think when you’ll chat with Tessa umm she will have a very interesting insight on that hollowness of when you accomplish your goals and I think she felt the weight of that many times in our career in particularly the 2012 World title. It just wasn’t at all what she had envisioned it being like and we’re very lucky to have had these 3 cycles because we’ve learned very very different lessons at each of them umm but when we came back and you were a part of our team, and JF Menard our mental coach as well. When we came back our first message was we’re doing it for the process. We’re not done, we wanna feel the rush of competing but also we wanna see what we can do to push ourselves to train differently and be the best that we can be but in training, not to win titles. And our team constantly reminded us that in 2 year and then at the Olympics a really interesting thing happened when we went to compete, we took it in a very similar fashion, cuz a lot of people “know” the pressure that comes with such a huge event it’s the natural human instinct, is you want to just get through it, you just want to be done. You just want to be on the finish line but for us a big part of these games were to try to push that aside and really be present and we kept saying to each other in the moments before we skated that this is exactly what we wanted. We came back for these moments, lets not wish them away, lets take advantage of them and kinda be present in THAT process, I think was what was different between us and our competitors.
SL: What have you learned the most about yourself between gold medal 1 and gold medal 2.
Scott: Ha ha haaa oh my gosh how do I narrow that down? (SL: we got a little bit of time) ha ha hahahaha I don’t think you have enough time for THAT I’m just trying to think of all the…there were such, I look back at those games
SL: I’ll frame it differently for you, if you went back to that guy in 2010 and you’re facing him right now, what would you say to him?
Scott: I don’t even know if we could have a conversation. I do love that guy and when I look back at kids that remind me of 2010 Scott it just makes me laugh. I just think “you have no clue” and you think you do. And that’s the joys of being 22 and a lot of the coaches or judges even will say like “Oh here’s this kid coming up y'all, he’s cocky, you gotta go and tell him. You gotta tell him and advice him and get him away from that” and I just think no no that’t not part of it, he’s gotta kinda walk his own course. I think that’s a lot of the magic of it but the difference between 2010 and 2018, for me, cuz I was probably more confident out on the ice than I’ve ever been but it was more sincere. And it was confidence from preparation and confidence because, we really believed in our material and confidence because we wanted to share what we love to do with the world. And I think there’s a sincerity to that and we’ve gotten some great feedback from Canadians across country, from ice skating fans around the world. People really connect to that and you can’t really fake that and I think that in 2010 we were really playing characters and we were so young and innocent still loved to skate and I mean we were in our home country, so how could it not be magical? But there was a sincerity I think that this 2018 experience has that’s very different.
SL: That’s awesome. How do you transcend that now going forward in your life to what you wanna do, this whole process, this whole growth experience, this whole being you know, achieving something that you really wanted to achieve. What do you take from that and how do you leap forward?
Scott: Well this is a very actually interesting time in my life, the couple of months after the Olympics, what I’ve reflected on and the big reason why I came back was how poorly I transitioned after 2014. I wanted away from the sport. I went and, a lot of people don’t know, I went, well tried to, we’re still in the process of renovating a house with my brother. It’s not the most fulfilling work in my world but then I was also running from sport, from my life, from figure skating and I didn’t transition well. I was doing things that didn’t make me happy. I was you know, I lived my 18 year old life at 26. I was drinking a lot. It took me a long time to realize that, that wasn’t what made me happy. So this part of my life, this kind of 6 months or 2 years after the 2018 Olympics were actually the time that I had circled for most improvement. You know when I’m in as athlete, I’m always all in. I really enjoy that process but it’s the transition part and it is about kind of, not making the most of that but also bringing my best self, everything I’ve learned in sport to the next chapter of my life. And the next chapter of my life for the short term will be show skating. We really are excited about the show that we’re doing right now with Stars On Ice that’s going across Canada. We really would like to create something that goes into smaller cities, not just the 12 major markets in Canada. But something that is art and we wanna pour work into that and Tessa and I what we have found about ourselves in the kinda our chats, in that next steps is that we love to work. And we love to be involved in projects where we can be all in. Doing kinda skating show where we just walk out, do our 2 minutes and leave, it wasn’t enough for us. So, we’re trying to create a platform where we CAN be all in, create an experience for the fans and that will be kinda the short term and then I’m looking into kinda to give back what we’ve learned and when working with you know B2Ten and professionals that most people don’t have the access to. And creating kinda the system that takes care of younger athletes of it better, in the way that they come up and talent identification as well as making sure that our elite athletes aren’t just getting by because they’re successful. You know I wanna help them push themselves to the next level because this is the biggest thing I learned in 2017 2018, is I THOUGHT I knew what I was doing in 2010, I thought I knew what it took to be a champion and I was a champion and we did win the Olympics but I wasn’t a professional in my preparation. And the same thing with 2014 and we were much more into our mechanics, we started to see a psychologist but that pales in comparison with the preparation, the types of professionals that we worked with in 2018 and I think that the skating world and even most of the athletic world has to remember to keep pushing themselves and I wanna kinda give that back. So that will be kinda my long term goals and for me, how do I parley it? that’s a good question but I like to work so I have to keep myself going or else I will just kinda hang out on the couch.
SL: What do you source or who do you source for, call it feedback or the opportunity to sort of bounce where you wanna go or what you’re struggling with in your life?
Scott: Uh there’s a lot of people now but I will, think it’s been pretty crazy with this tour, but I will continue to work with my mental coach. We got a really great personal connection and I think that the work that we’ve done and the goals that he set, he will be great to help me moving forward. Having a mental coach or a psychologist is an interesting thing for many people and not many athletes, a lot of the top athletes do it but people think it’s too expensive, for me it’s the most, it’s worth it. Like its, its a thing that it’s like a mattress, you can’t cheap out on that because you’re gonna spend so much of your life. And like half an hour with my mental coach JF, I mean it changes my whole perspective on the next month of my life. So I will continue to work with him but I also use people like, I’m lucky to have Tessa, I can bounce ideas off Tessa and I will continue to use my team, like some really great friends, some mentors that I really respect. One being my coach Patrice Lauzon, I still bounce things off him and I just try to create a network of people that I can pick up the phone and call at any time and I hope they feel that they can do the same with me.
SL: That’s awesome. You mention your mental coach for those listening JF Menard is a very talented mental performance guy that I met numerous years ago and we got more and more involved in common projects. What do you feel like, you probably bounced into sport psych before in your career at different points, what was it about JF that really resonated in you and helped you see the light that you just expressed about the value of it?
Scott: Well, that’s a great question and I was pretty fortunate in my career to work with professionals but most of the time was all about managing Tessa and I’s relationship. And we don’t have, most people know this, but we don’t have an off ice romantic relationship. But we do work together many hours a day and we have an EXTREMELY intense personal relationship that can’t be compared to any other relationship because it’s so intense and because of the nature of what we do on the ice and we love to skate together. So a lot of the love that people see on the ice, is real to a certain extent. So we spend a lot of time doing marriage counseling, doing kinda management of that just because of the pure hours that we put in communicating, understanding, I think we’re some of the best in the world of ice dancers for communicating. But it’s still something that we have to work on and we communicate, it’s not just because work on communication that it’s gonna be good forever. We communicate better at different times. So we’re trying to constantly work on that in order to be successful in what we’re trying to do. But then we started to work with JF and not only were we managing that a little bit, we started to work on performance and how to perform not just at a competition but how to perform every day. How to be as efficient as possible. We talked a lot about reminding people in our life that are doing a good job and a lot of it comes down to communication but not leaving the chance and taking advantage of every moment of every day was a huge thing that JF did with us and then when we did kinda get to competing, we had a formula and we perfected it every time we went out, we tweaked it, we communicated afterwards and by the time we got to the Olympics, we just knew what the steps were and as a performer to not have to think and just find the comfort in that routine I think was one of our strongest assets of the Pyeongchang games.
SL: What are a couple of tools that you learned that when you look at performance in general not just you know, sport performance but life performance, to the listeners out there that you think are really valuable skills to know?
Scott: The biggest one that comes back to me right away is cuing so I have a crazy mind and everyone thats ever worked with me, like I’m super emotional, I’m super passionate. But I also can go off in 18 different directions and what we started to work on with JF was making sure that we’re cueing uh with simple cues. With what we’re supposed to be thinking of so a lot of times in a skater’s performance they’ll think about having a 4 minute program clean and first of all perfections doesn’t really…doesn’t exist and it’s probably not gonna win you an Olympic medal, it hasn’t in the history but you can be really excellent and the way you get to be really excellent is having these moments of simple cues along the way and I would have moments in a program when I would think about the twizzles that were coming up maybe in 30 seconds and think “oh perfect there’s my cue” to remember what my actual cue is supposed to be right now whether that’s bending my knees, whether that’s looking at Tessa or kinda breathing through it or exploding and that cueing probably was the most important thing cuz I used to think in programs “Oh sh* oh crap I’m not thinking about the right thing right now” and then I’d kinda start to freak out  and snowball instead I would use that as a simple cue and bring us back and off we go. And the other thing that that we talked about was just believing in our performance, believing in our training and one of our sayings at the Games was “just get to the opening position.” Because once we get to the opening position we’ll know what to do. And that kinda took a lot of the anxiety away, I mean not all of it, we were still, we had the butterflies, we were terrified but in a controlled way. Those are probably the biggest ones.
SL: I like the cueing piece because (Scott: we stole that from Mik btw) hahahaha
Scott: We stole a lot from studying Mik, it was pretty neat to cuz I mean Mik worked with you and Mik worked with JF and we would study him and I mean this kid who performs more consistently and more often, he competes all the time and he’s consistent more than anyone else in the world and when he won in Pyeongchang, that was a huge confidence boost to me. All I could sit there and think was “that’s my team” like I know who works with that kid and they work with me and there’s now way the other kids are gonna beat me.
SL: One of the reasons why I’m interviewing you and other great performance athletes that I’ve worked with is, is this is kinda where the rubber meets the road on this conversation to me. It’s a lot of people don’t recognize that they spend a lot of time in their life doing things that have absolutely no connection to what it is that they really purposely wanna achieve. And you know it’s fine to sort of figure away time from time to time but a lot of people will say “I’m busy” “I don’t have time” “ I don’t have energy” da da da da They don’t recognize where they spend a lot of their time, energy, effort on things that are really not taking them where they wanna go. What you just talked about is essentially focusing and understanding what it is you wanna do and becoming very dialed into “is this contributing to that? or is it not?” and if it’s not then well you really gotta think about why you’re doing it. You know, that’s high value.
Scott: And that was a lot about even when we built our off ice program I mean we were doing. We talked about we built a lot in April and May but we were doing a lot of things that I would say “well what about this?” and you would just say “does that make you a better ice dancer?” and it’s like okay that makes a lot of sense. Now it doesn’t make sense for me to bench press when I don’t have to bench press.
SL: I didn’t wanna talk a lot about the two of you to– and that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to speak to you alone. But I am curious what you feel Tessa balances in your character. What are your counterbalances for one another?
Scott: Well I don’t..it’s.. I can tell what I see in Tessa. I’m not so sure, I don’t have a very uhhh I don’t know…I don’t have a great view of myself, like I don’t think my perspective is as good but ON HER. What I need from her and what she brings umm I’ve never met anyone like Tessa in my life, like I have this, she’s such an unbelievable woman and she’s so, I’ve never met someone so consistent, umm I can’t remember more than like, she can get grumpy but that’s about it. That’ll never get past the grumpy stage. Umm the problem with us is that we’re very very sensitive so when she’s grumpy I always think it’s my fault and when I’m a little, I get to the angry stage so she thinks it’s her fault but what she does is she’s so consistent but passionate. I don’t quite understand how that works because my passion and emotion is always kind of a roller coaster ride but she brings this level of consistence and clear  headed thinking and decision making but as well as that passion in movement and I really needed that consistency because I would go up and down and she would kinda bring me back and be like okay “maybe that’s a little bit much” or kinda that balance point and we’re we hahaha we’re very different styles, I mean Tessa brings the sophistication that I don’t have, Tessa brings the dance knowledge, the umm kinda that base, the principles of dance that I just don’t possess and there’s just so much that technically we rely on her for but I think that her biggest quirk is how emotionally stable she is.
SL: That’s awesome. Well I’m gonna wrap this puppy up with one final question and that is when you look forward to all of us are gonna perish from this lovely planet at some point. What would you like to be remembered for?
Scott: Yeah that’s a great question. The biggest thing that I always think about uhhh like I had a really good friend that passed away last year and I did a lot of thinking about that. You know we, this, what is the whole purpose of this, how far along does it go and yeah what is my legacy and for me I think, I always say I wanna be remembered as a good person. Tessa will probably say the same thing because that’s what we always say in interviews but I think what I wanna be remembered for is my passion and not being afraid to go after something. I think, failure is something that I know that everyone says “fear of failure don’t be scared to fail and you have to go after it” but few people actually do that. You know and I wanna be one of those people who maybe loses their shirt or goes after something that its a little crazy, goes lives in that rush and kinda lives with that excitement. That’s what I wanna be remembered for.
SL: Scott thank you for taking so much time with me.
Scott: Thank you Scotty
SL: Thank you very much, hope I wasn’t too long with your time.
Scott: No, never man. I would do that for 2 hours.
SL: Awesome, appreciate it have a good one buddy.
Both: Cheers