As a professional athlete a lot is going to be said about you - but I just try to move forward and try to achieve my goals.
Every action has a consequence. It may be good for strengthening. And I have no doubt that lifting a lot of weights can get you stronger. I just don't know if lifting stronger weights can keep you healthy, or it can keep you doing your job better, especially for a pro athlete.
You need to think outside the box. You need to think differently if you want to sustain what, for me, is my peak performance: the very best that I can achieve as an athlete every day.
Down South, there was the old 'ladies-don't-do-such-things' way of thinking. You couldn't be a lady and a good athlete at the same time.
You get older, and you want to be a professional athlete; you want to win on the biggest stage.
Coos Bay is a sports-minded town. You had to be an athlete to be somebody.
I mean, as an athlete, as a competitor, you have to have that belief in yourself.
I've always approached my career and my life, you know, one day at a time, as if this was the last day that I'm going, because you never know as an athlete and as a dancer. You never know what can happen today, tomorrow.
I'm an athlete and I'm black, and a lot of black athletes go broke. I do not want to become a statistic, so maybe I overcompensate. But I'm paranoid. Oprah told me a long time ago, 'You sign every check. Never let anyone sign any checks.'
You're a person a lot longer before and after you're a professional athlete. People always say to me, 'Your image is this, your image is that.' Your image isn't your character. Character is what you are as a person. That's what I worry about.
Obviously, you're known for what you do. But you still want to be known as a good person. You're a person a lot longer before and after you're a professional athlete.
When you invest your time, you make a goal and a decision of something that you want to accomplish. Whether it's make good grades in school, be a good athlete, be a good person, go down and do some community service and help somebody who's in need, whatever it is you choose to do, you're investing your time in that.
Fatigue makes fools of us all. It robs you of your skills and your judgment, and it blinds you to creative solutions. It's the best-conditioned athlete, not the most talented, who generally wins when the going gets tough.
You want me to own a team and deal with these rich, spoiled stubborn athletes, and try to get them to perform? No thank you.
As a coach, one thing that used to frustrate me was one player would make a bad decision, and that's all you would read about in the papers all over the country. We have so many athletes do so many wonderful things for other people, and you never read about it.
I try to encourage all my teammates, and I sure hope that some day all athletes - my kids, high school kids - get the same level of care I get. Because you can play for a long period of time without having knee replacements, without having all the major head trauma that people are dealing with.
I would love to encourage all my teammates to eat the best way they possibly can. High school athletes. Now, that's not the way our food system in America is set up. It's very different. They have a food pyramid, and I disagree with that. I disagree with a lot of things that people tell you to do.
I loved the world of roller derby because I thought it was such an empowering metaphor, that you get out there and do it. It's such a rocker, athletic, capable, cool exhibitionist sport; it's about this great sort of camaraderie.
Every sport evolves. Every sport gets bigger and more athletic, and you have to keep up.
Starting a business is similar to an athletic endeavor, like serving a tennis ball. Telling you how to do it is useless. You actually get better through a combination of practice, coaching, and repetitions with money on the line.
