Olympic Water Polo Star Johnny Hooper Talks Zoom Workouts, Staying Positive, and Eating 10,000 Calories a Day

Under normal circumstances, Johnny Hooper would be in a pool training with his teammates on the U.S. Olympic Water Polo team for upwards of six hours a day. But these aren’t normal circumstances. The Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo have been postponed until 2021 and most pools and gyms are closed for the foreseeable future.

Instead of consuming nearly 10,000 calories a day to fuel his Olympic training regimen, Johnny has had to recalibrate pretty much every aspect of his life — all while staying sharp for the Olympics next year, which can feel a bit like treading water.

We caught up with the 23-year-old water polo standout to talk about what a new day in the life looks like and how the team is keeping Zoom workouts fresh.

How did you take the Tokyo 2020 news at first?
It was weird. Our team was pretty much training the entire time up until the Olympics were officially postponed. Our coach is Serbian, so he’s lived through some emergencies in his lifetime and wasn’t too crazy about us stopping training until it became mandatory. As an Olympic hopeful, you’re just waiting for this date to come, and when you’re getting close it gets taken away. We had to quickly change our mindset. New date, same goal: to win a gold medal in the Olympics.

What does training look like on a normal day?
I’ll walk you through a day when we were in full-time training. I wake up around 5:30 a.m., have coffee, roll out of bed, have a Ladder pre-workout shake, drive to the gym, and get there around 6:30 a.m. I stretch out, drink my shake, then weight lift until 8:30 or 9. Then we get in the pool until noon. After that, we have lunch at the pool and work with our massage therapists for an hour and a half. We also watch film. Then get back in the pool from two to five for more practice.

Well that explains why you’re an Olympian! How have you had to modify since training facilities aren’t open right now?
We do virtual Zoom workouts four to five times a week, which have been pretty weird. We have to find new ways to stay productive and ahead of the competition, and that means watching film, having meetings, working out. Right now, our weight trainer is writing personalized programs for us on a platform for digital workouts. They dropped off equipment to each of our houses to make a little home gym depending on what we already had and what kind of player we are. So we complete that personal workout together in the mornings and end with a team challenge. That can be anything from holding a squat for as long as we can or picking a really hard ab exercise.

Are you eating differently than you were a few months ago?
That’s probably my biggest change right now. I’m eating as healthy as I possibly can to stay in shape because I’m not burning the same 9,000 to 10,000 calories a day that I was when I was in training. How hard I work out here doesn’t correlate to how many calories I burn in the pool. So I’ve been eating a lot of plant-based things, curtailing my portions, but keeping everything high in protein. I eat a pretty light breakfast, a light lunch, and then the most for dinner. I eat between 10 a.m. and stop at 6 p.m.

What did you used to eat to fuel a 10,000-calorie day in comparison?
When I used to burn 10,000 calories a day, I’d eat in the morning; I’d have my shake and coffee. I’m not one of those people who likes to eat a lot before I work out. Either I eat two to three hours before or wait until after. I don’t like feeling any sort of full when I’m playing. Lunch was always catered — usually something Mediterranean like chicken, greens, grilled veggies, rice. That kind of thing. I’d stay hydrated through the day and then dinner would be something like another chicken dish with a carb and a salad.

Are you in charge of groceries?
Yeah, I go every week. I make sure to go really early so that I can get in and out. I always get things like chicken, vegetables, snacks, fruit (a lot of fruit — mango, pineapple, bananas), Greek yogurt, hummus, salad greens, bread, coffee, probiotics, almond milk, prosciutto, turkey, ham, salami, sausage, bacon. I have been having tofu three to four times a week for dinner, so a lot of that. There’s this tofu veggie salad I really love from this Japanese Market near our house.

Now that you’re home most of the time, have you been cooking more?
I make my own breakfast, shake, and lunch when I’m at home, and I have dinner with my mom almost every single day. I leave dinner to my mom — she goes hard on the dinner.

How do you stay positive?
We have a team psych guy and mental trainer who we have one-on-one meetings with. It’s definitely been tough. But I’m battling through it with my teammates. I gave myself a day to take it all in, but I knew it would do nothing but negative things for the mental part of the game. I had to quickly turn it around and look at the situation from a macro perspective. I’m not as angry anymore. There are so many worse things in life than the Olympics being postponed.

Thanks for sharing with us, Johnny!

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