In May 2020, while the world was in various stages of lockdown, I had a conversation on zoom with Dave Durante, former USA gymnast, passionate educator and co-owner of PowerMonkeyFitness. We talked about his gymnastics career, his mental preparation before competitions, his family, the evolution of Power Monkey Camp, some of his travelling adventures, and the things he does for fun. Dave has had an incredibly rich life and he’s super fun to talk to.

I hope you enjoy this as much as I did!

Part 1: The beginning

SK: Why don't we start from the beginning! Where were you born and raised?

DD: Sure, I was born in New Jersey about 10 miles away from New York City. I grew up on the East Coast, very close to the city. Most of my family was from Italy. My dad grew up in Rome, my mom's family is all from the same village that my dad's family is from, in a tiny, tiny town in Italy. A lot of them emigrated to the States, all lived within 5 miles of each other in New Jersey. So, I have like a couple of hundred relatives, all within a stone’s throw from each other.

We grew up in a really loving area where an extended family was a part of our life. So, Jersey is very, very close to who I am. I love everything about New Jersey, even though it gets mocked quite a bit. I don't know what the equivalent would be in the UK, but New Jersey is considered the armpit of America, but I'll take being the armpit any day, I love Jersey!

SK: Are there a lot of Italians in New Jersey?

DD: Yeah, and growing up we would have once a month a family get together and it would be two-three hundred of us, and we would do a party and a big dinner and things like that. We're also very close, family to Italians is the most important thing in the world. So, it was nice to have that support system growing up. 

SK: Do you remember your first handstand?

DD: I remember being inverted for the first time in a headstand. It was one of the things I actually teach, that we learn headstands before we learn handstands. I remember learning a headstand for the first time and I was so excited that I would go and do headstands on the school playground during lunchtime, all the time on concrete, on asphalt… I would do headstands and my head would be on the asphalt and I would stay up there for a minute at a time. People would ask me, 'why are you doing that, doesn't it hurt your head?' I was just so excited that I could stay upside-down, it was like this trick that nobody else could do. I didn't care that I hurt my head or I was on asphalt, it was just like, I can do this cool trick, I was superman!

I was probably 8 or 9 years old when I have a vivid memory of being inverted for an audience. I started gymnastics when I was 6, but I remember vividly around 8, like okay, being upside down is my happy place, and it started on those playgrounds.

SK: Do you remember how you ever got into that position, did someone put you there?

DD: I don't remember my first time doing it with a coach, but I vividly remember walking to the gym with my mom for the first time, and I was just like 'oh my god' what is possible in here?' This is a whole new world that I didn't even know, and really it was 3 blocks away from where I grew up, right down the road. So, I was just fortunate enough that, not only was there a gymnastics gym within walking distance, but it just so happened to be one of the best boys’ gymnastics programs in the whole U.S. It was right there, and so I fell into a really great situation, just a structure in place to help me grow as a gymnast. I just felt very lucky that I had that network, that close to my house.

SK: Did your Mum know anything about gymnastics, or did she just think you had all that energy?

DD: You'll a lot of gymnasts describe this as how they got started. Jumping on furniture, jumping on my couches, jumping on the beds, and mom being like, 'I don't want you breaking my stuff. You're going to go to the gym and break somebody else’s stuff.' It was a home preservation thing, more than anything else at first!

No-one in my family ever did gymnastics. We are not a gymnastics family, we are had been a soccer family, soccer, football, European style was everything that we ever followed. My Father played soccer, my brother, all of my cousins in Italy. Gymnastics was definitely foreign and, I was the only one that ever really pursued that as a sport. 

SK: Thank God for your mum! 

DD: Absolutely!

Part 2: The art, the teamwork, the work ethic and the mindset in Gymnastics

SK: Apart from American and Italian, you also have a strong Japanese influence.

DD: Japanese gymnastics to me, is the epitome of gymnastics. I think they do gymnastics the was that gymnastics should be done, as artistic gymnastics. It's an art form, I don't look it as just a sport, I think you're performing, I think your need to make the impossible look effortless. It needs to look like someone who's a novice or, someone watching the Olympics, can say 'I could probably do that, that looks feasible'. For Simone Biles to do what she does, and people say 'wow, that's really amazing' and really understand how incredibly difficult some of those things are, is a testament to her ability to make the impossible look doable. I love that, I always found the Japanese to do that better than anyone else.

So, when I went to college, I was fortunate enough to go to Stanford and the head coach at Stanford was a Japanese gymnast, Sadao Hamada. He had moved to the States early on in his life, and in the US circles at that time, coaching circles, he was very well known. He had been coaching high-level gymnasts for over 30 years, he retired in my senior year, so he was my coach for 4 years. Our assistant coach was a Japanese-American gymnast, Kyle Asano, who competed for the U.S., National teams and things like that. My coach and assistant coach both had a very strong Japanese background in terms of their approach to the sport, and on top of that, they would bring in a different coach every year from Japan to come and train with us or, to coach with us for 2 years internships.

So, some of who are now considered to be some of the top coaches in the world in the Japanese community, were my coaches at Stanford as well. Koichi Endo, Koichi Mizushima, Yoshiaki Hatakeda who had won the Olympics. He was one of the top Japanese gymnasts when he competed in the 1996 Olympics winning a bronze medal but then also, has been the coach to Kohei Uchimura for the last decade or so and Kohei is widely considered to be the best gymnast of all time. Still competing right now, trying to compete for the last Olympic games.

I was surrounded by Japanese coaches for the majority of my formative years during college. It just played such a critical role in my development. Every stage in my gymnastics career had some impact into the type of gymnast I became. I always attributed something to the coaches I had along my way.

My coaches in New Jersey taught me what it was to be part of a team and they taught that gymnastics, while it's considered an individual sport, it's more about being part of a team than it is about what you do as an individual. I love that concept, I hated competing for myself. That's why I wanted to go and compete in college because I loved competing for this shared experience. 

SK: How did the coaches in New Jersey make that happen?

DD: Again, it's actually a fortunate situation because there are not very many boys' gymnastics teams in the country and most of them are one-offs. Typically there is a really big girls’ program and then one or two boys doing gymnastics. Our Gym Surgent's Elite was known for the boys' program. Really, there's maybe three in the whole country that are known for their boy’s programs.

There was a really big boys’ team at Surgent's and it had gone on for years and it had been around since the early 70s. They were really well known, they had produced a lot of National Team collegiate gymnasts and they had also produced a previous Olympian, a two-time Olympian. I knew that if I was going to become good at any location, it was here. I was just fortunate that it was very close to my house and they fostered a family within their gym. I'm not going to lie, it was a really tough situation to be in, meaning we were all like brothers and we picked on each other, fought each other and did things you would in a family.

It taught me to love those guys, to love a team and to feel like I’m not on the competition floor by myself. It's almost like a safety net too, a safety blanket, to know that you're not there by yourself, you have a team behind you, guiding you, pushing you, cheering you on, just like a family would. I love that, so, while I'm in an individual sport, I always wanted to pursue the highest level of team competition and that always was my priority. I'm fairly sure that any Olympian, any high-level gymnast that you talk to, who has gone through a collegiate system, will tell you that competing on the college team, was the peak of their experience of being an athlete. That's where they became their best self, that's where they learned the most about who they are, it's where they have the best experience and the best relationships, because you live and die with those guys and they become part of your family.

For me going to college and competing on a team was because of what I learned with my club coaches. They taught me the importance of a team.

So, my college coaches taught me perfection, they taught me technique, they taught me understanding the nuance of movement and, how breaking down skills to it's really finer components allow you to establish how to make details work for you, and how to really understand that what your fingers are doing matters, where you're looking matters, where your chin is matters. Every part of your body needs to work in synch. This is about breaking things down little by little and the Japanese approach allowed me to do it. So, I always attribute my gravitating making my gymnastics look beautiful and making it artistic to my Japanese coaches.

My next coach, Thom Glielmi who's still the current head coach at Stanford, taught me work ethic. He taught me how to put in the work, this is something that was missing, I never was able to hit well in high-level competitions and it was because I didn't do the same thing in training, I could do things beautifully once-off, here and there but, Thom told me, you do these numbers, you pound them into your body so that your body knows nothing else other than the repetition that you put in and that repetition will allow you to perform when called upon. Your body automatically goes into that mode. The work ethic and the repetition, the importance of just hammering things over and over and over again was given to me by my second college coach who was after I had graduated.

Then, my last coach, my Olympic training centre coach, taught me the mental side, the importance of basically backing away from pounding the body, especially as I got older, and understanding that when you come into the gym, you have an objective, you minimise the wear and tear on your body by being mentally prepared for what the agenda is for that day. You can get in, get your stuff done and go home. Really just not overly tax the body unnecessarily. It's one of the things I wish I would have learned a little bit earlier in my career but, I feel like I succeeded in the way that I did because I took something away from each of those coaches and, each of them played such a critical role on my career.

I know this is a long-winded answer to a portion of the question but, I think it's really important to understand each of those components playing such an important role to creating a whole athlete, the team, the fine detail components, the mental aspect of really hard work and putting in the numbers. All of those came together to allow me to maximise my potential. 

Part 3: Mental preparation and visualisation for competition

SK: We're doing your handstand course at the moment, through Zoom. One evening before the class I was going over the handstand movement in my head. I have started doing this because I’ve been scared of being upside down in the past and I learnt to visualise to make sure I get it right. I close my eyes and just almost squeeze the same muscles but stop before fully squeezing! I read a book by Todd Hargrove where he wrote that visualising a movement is almost as effective as doing the movement. That trick of visualising the handstand the night before the class helped me to get into a better position in the class. It almost felt like I was going into the movement having already done 10 reps. I want to hear from you on this, because you've put in hours and hours and hours of physical and mental preparation.

DD: I love this topic because it was critical for my gymnastics development and it played a dual-edged sword, I mentioned it a little bit in the email I sent over. My entire career, I have a tendency to overthink, I over analyse, I think things way too much, I care about what other people think way too much. We did a podcast the other day and I was talking about how I didn't want to let other people down so, in my mind failure was always 'oh man if I do this wrong then I'll let my parents down or, I'm going to let my coaches down, people that think that I can achieve these great things'.

The mental side would always just suffocate me and, you know, early on I would go to some sports psychologist and talk about the issues, or during college, you meet with the sport psychologist and you talk through and they give you some tools to be able to work on overcoming those things, but none of it really ever worked for me. Then, I started to implement more visualisation. Visualisation was the most important component, it was the most beneficial and the one that had the biggest impact on my ability, especially as I got older, and I'll mention why.

Initially, I was really turned off by visualisation because it worked in the opposite direction, I thought it hurt me, I didn't think it helped. I think you'll find this to be the case with a lot of people who don't know how to use visualisation or find it to be more frustrating than beneficial. 

What I would do is say 'okay, close your eyes and visualise yourself doing the movement and seeing how it's supposed to be done.' Especially on movements that were difficult or frustrating for me, I would visualise myself doing them poorly and I would always see myself falling and I would always visualise the mistake that I was trying to work through. I found it to be repeating the same mistake so, while I was doing it real-time and falling. While I was in training I would go home and work on visualisation and it would compound the issue, it wasn't helping. I was getting inundated from both sides, falling in practice it was making things worse. I was getting really frustrated, I was like visualisation sucks, it's not helping me, it's making things worse, I was going to practise even more frustrated than the previous day. I had a really hard time of getting visualisation to be a strength.

Then one of the things that helped it click was, slowing things down, something we tell people in every session that we do, even when we're talking about movement. I slowed down my visualisation. Slowing it down completely changed my world. Essentially, I would imagine that I had a remote control in my head and I would go through the routine of my skill as slow as I needed to, to be able to see it perfectly. I wouldn't do it in real-time, I would say 'okay, here we go, here's the skill we're going to be working on, handstand push-up' and I'll see myself kicking up and oh, my hand collapsed and we rewind, I'll go back a tiny bit and I'll slow it down, as slow as I need to to be able to feel the muscle fibre firing, to feel my body going through that particular movement pattern. Where is the head going? What are the elbows doing? What muscles are firing? And, I would slow it down, even if it's at the slowest increment, to almost pixel-by-pixel change until I was able to see that movement done properly.

I would just keep going, mistake, rewind, mistake, rewind, mistake rewind, mistake rewind until I was able to get everything in place, smooth. Then, over time, that mental barrier was able to dissipate and I was able to get this consistent rhythm of movement. Even though it was slowed down and it wasn't real-time, I was able to get it all in one place. Then there was a click, if I can do it for that skill, I probably could do it for this other one that's scary or this other one that's giving me an issue or, this whole routine. It snowballed into visualisation becoming a hugely impactful tool.

Then from there, I took visualisation to another level, visualising in 3 different ways.

Visualisation 1 would be slow-mo. I would always do visualisation in slow motion just like we talked about and, if there was a mistake I would rewind and then come back forward again.

Then, I would visualise the movement in real time from my perspective, as if I was doing the routine. I would close my eyes, I would raise my hand, imagine the crowd, imagine the judges, images the smell of the gym, the sweat, the chalk, imagine all of the senses that come along with being in that setting and try to replay that exact moment that you're going to be in contact with.

Then the third visualisation, I would do it from the judge’s perspective, or from the audience. What are they seeing? What performance are they seeing? And I would go through the same visualisation from the same perspective.

This became my tool, as I got into the later stages of my career and specifically when I went to the Olympic training centre. I was the old guy on the team, I was pretty beat up and I couldn't do those same numbers and that same load that I was doing when I was at Stanford. Now it was about training smarter, I would decrease the number, decrease the time on the actual apparatus and increase the amount of time I would spend visualising. I would visualise before every training and I would 100% wouldn't leave the gym until I did a visualisation of every routine on every apparatus. I would walk up to the apparatus, I would situate my feet exactly how I would in a routine. I would get there, get ready, turn my head to where the judges would be, salute, fall into my visualisation, I would visualise 1,2,3, then move on to the next. This pattern became stronger and stronger and my mental game became one of my strengths. It became something that combined with my numbers and, the time on the apparatus, allowed me to actually say, 'okay, I'm mentally strong and, I'm physically strong, and together this is a really powerful piece.' The visualisation can become such a huge tool for you, if you know how to use it correctly and, for me, that's how I turned visualisation into a strength. 

SK: That's fascinating. I'm thankful that you've shared this, it helps me and I think it will help a lot of other people to understand mental preparation. You said there were other things as well that you learnt, other than visualising. Do you want to talk about them?

DD: Sure, I'll mention a few. One, I briefly touched on, I always called it routine for a routine. I would create the same build-up to what I was going to do on the apparatus prior. It was always the same, so no matter what setting I was in, if I was in a gym in Brazil, if I was in China, if I was Europe, if I was in my own home gym in Colorado. whatever I did in preparation to getting on the piece of equipment was always the same, how I chalked up was the same, what I would do, how I would wipe my sweat, what I would eat, the routine to the routine was exactly the same. I would create a pattern so, okay step 1,2,3,4,5, I can control all these things, it gives me the ability to feel like I'm in my own gym setting, my own home setting and no matter where I'm at, I'm in control up to the routine. So, routine for a routine. I would always create this 3-5 step process that I could control so, that I would prep me for whatever setting I was in. 

Along with that, I would say encouragement phrases that I would say out loud, right before I would go, and they were different depending on the event, so I'm just equating this through a gymnastics routine where on the men's side we have 6 events. I had 6 different phrases that I would use, and every event was different depending on what that focal point would be. So, on pommel horse I would always say 'swing big, speed' and I would say that really loud, like audibly and parallel bars I would say 'first time, you get one shot at this' if you watch some of the old videos of me competing, right before I'm going up you'll see me mouth these words, you'll see me say 'first time, one shot, go big, go fast' and it would always be something I had to focus on with regards to a problem area or something that my coach would basically be in my head telling me. So, those words of encouragement are words of reinforcing focus points, were incredibly important.

Another one was music, using music as a tool to put you in the right state of mind so, music in training, music in competition, music outside of the gym, all of them put you in a different state of being, and you need to find what music allows you to maximise what you're trying to do for that day. For me, music played such a huge role in me preparing, this going to sound weird and odd, if I've mentioned this in some other interviews before, what I listened to when I was in competition was the same from when I was 10 years old until I was 30 years old, from when I retire. I only listened to the Rocky IV soundtrack in every competition my entire life. It's the only thing I would ever put on, so if you ever see me with headphones on, I thought I was Rocky, and that Rocky mindset, head down, go! was what put me in the mode to compete and so, music played such an important factor in me switching on a setting that allowed me to feel like I could achieve my optimal goal in that setting. Those are just some of the pieces that I would use in conjunction with visualisation, as a mental tool. 

SK: Thank you so much for sharing. In the past 15 years maybe, our knowledge of the mind has expanded a lot, so these things are more broadly discussed, but unlocking how the mind and the body work together is, for me the whole trick, because it's not easy so, thank you so much for sharing.

DD: I agree, it's not easy, and I don't want to make it seem like it was easy and, in fact, it was harder than anything physical I’ve ever done. It was harder than any skill I've ever learner in the gymnastics world, harder than handstand I've ever done. The mental side is what separates a lot of good from great athletes and, I will tell you right now that I did not master it, not even close. I think I was able to harness it, and to somewhat make it work for me.

We were talking about this a little bit too after watching The Last dance, I don't know if you watched any of it, or if it was a big deal in the UK, but the Last Dance was the 10-part documentary that just came out recently on Michael Jordan and the Bulls team during the 90s, and I was just an enormous Bulls fan and Jordan fan growing up. He had the ability to mentally be at 100 when it mattered the most, and you can't really teach that. You can guide people to that, but Jordan had something mentally, along with his physical abilities and talent plus the timings with his other teammates and coaches, to create an anomaly within time, this special specimen from a physical standpoint.

You don't see that, that often, there are certain athletes that get into that setting, that stressful setting and they punch it up another level, they have it in them and, I did not have that, so the mental side was always a big struggle for me so, I used these tools to try to work on that. For some people it's innate, some people just have that naturally, I did not, not even close so, these tools helped me build a better repertoire in terms of how to deal with the mental side when things became scary.

Part 4: Sadie

SK: I'm going to switch gears a little bit and, I would love you to tell us the story of how you met Sadie. 

DD: Sadie, the love of my life! For those of you who don't know Sadie, Sadie is my wife for, it's funny actually, Facebook put up a thing saying that I proposed to her 7 years ago yesterday. We're coming up on knowing each other 10 years. We met in New York, Sadie was a dancer and performer in New York City. She was part of the Alvin Ailey dance program, which is one is one of the most highly sought dance programs in the entire world. She moved on from dancing into the aerial world, she was an aerialist and she was doing a lot of silks work. 

SK: What was it like to dance at Alvin Ailey?

DD: A little Portland girl, never been to the big city before, moving to New York City and being thrown into a program that was top-notch in the entire world, she killed it! She’s a super impressive person in a lot of ways. The way we met was just interesting, we had a mutual friend, her name is Olga Karmanski, she was on the rhythmic US team when I was on the artistic team. She was a rhythmic gymnast, the best rhythmic gymnast in the US and me and her had known each other for years, and after she had finished her competitive career, she moved to New York City as well and became an aerialist and her and Sadie met.

So, they became really close friends, and I had been living in Italy at the time when I moved back to the US, I was asked to co-ordinate the American entry to the Venice Biennale which is a contemporary art festival that they hold in Venice, Italy every couple of years. They hold it every year but, the art portion and the art festival is held every two years, on the odd year. This was 2011, actually, 2010 when it all started but, I was asked to co-ordinate for the American entry because the artists that were selected wanted to incorporate gymnasts into their exhibit.

The museum that won that year was the Indianapolis Museum of Art in Indiana and Indianapolis is also the home of USA gymnastics. So, because the artists Allora & Calzadilla, who are pretty prominent in the art world, wanted to use gymnasts, the art museum said 'hey, USA gymnastics is in our home, let's go ask them if they have any recommendations for people that might be a good fit'. So, USA gymnastics contacted me because the knew that I had some interests and had done some things in the art world and, also had been living in Italy so, I had connections in Italy and could speak the language fairly well. So, they contacted me and it was really great timing, I'd just moved back to New York and so, I had to start hiring performers to interview to be part of their exhibit. Sadie, I asked Olga when I came back because Olga had been living in New York and knew the New York performance scene really well. I said 'can you make a list of performers that I can interview for this project?' And she sent me over a bunch of bios and CVs from people and Sadie was the first one that showed up for an interview.

We went to Chelsea Piers in New York and that was where I was doing all my interviews. Sadie showed up that first day and she came in very flustered, she had just come from the grocery store and was just excited about the potential opportunity and came in with grocery bags, fruits and vegetables. I was like, you're hired! So, I met her, and she went through what she was capable of doing, Olga obviously put in a good word for her but, she was the first person I hired for this project and me and her became an integral part of the actual performance portion. Then we moved to Venice together, shortly after and lived in Venice, Italy for close to a year, performing on these sculptures in Venice, which was an amazing part of our relationship.

While it was the best pick up line of my life, 'hey you want to go move to Venice with me and perform?' It worked in the sense that actually she was interested in going out with me, but then getting her to leave Venice was difficult, she wanted to live there forever! She was 'this is amazing, let's never move back to the US'! I was like 'this is not real life, we're just hanging out here', we had 2 days of performances every week and the rest of the week we had off so, we would just go and tour around Venice, tour around Europe.

My family has an apartment in Rome, we'd go to Rome every week, we'd go to Paris, it was a fake life, it didn't exist so, when the year was over, Said was like 'I don't want to go back, I want gelato and our amazing apartment in Venice' and I was like 'let's enjoy the memory that we had during this time.' That's basically how we started; it was all downhill from there!

SK: At what point did you start dating? Was it the day after the interview?

DD: It wasn't right away, it was very Black Swan though, I hired her then, started dating her, fairly soon in to. We exchanged services, meaning I told her I would teach her handstands and then she was going to teach me silks because at the time, I was trying to get into the performance world as well. She was working at this place called Hiro Ballroom at the Maritime Hotel and the time, which Maritime is still there but Hiro Ballroom is not there anymore, it's a restaurant now, Tao.

It was beautiful, it was this incredible grungy space in New York in this basement, where some of the best bands and music scenes would come and perform, really small venue and she had access to it all day, every day. She had the key and we would just go and train there so, they had this amazing bar, stage, silks and handstand space and we had the whole place to ourselves. We would just go and train there and it was my way of slowly trying to see if she was interested. 'I'll teach you handstands if you teach me silks' so, we did a lot of sessions together and, eventually, we started dating. 

Part 5: Travelling

SK: You have had several other memorable events during your travels. Did you want to share any others?

DD: My god, so I've been fortunate enough to travel quite a bit. I lived in Rome a year, I lived in New York city for 10 years, I lived in San Francisco, in the bay area for 7 years, Colorado for 4 years, Venice for a year. I've travelled a lot, I've really close connections to certain places around the world. When I first moved to Rome, I loved it. I was living out there, really connecting with that side of my family, I was intending to shift completely away the gymnastics world. I was done with gymnastics, I had coached Stanford to a National Championship, as was of the assistant coaches, I was so proud of getting my NCAA ring, I had checked that box off and completed that part of my career and said 'okay I'm going to go and move to Italy and start something new'. Really, I wanted to get into the wine business. The goal was to...

SK: Like Gary Vee?

DD: Yeah, Gary Vee grew up 2 towns over from me, very close, right down the block! But yeah, I really wanted to get into the wine industry and I still love wine and I'm very interested in learning more about it. I was trying to get some internships at some of the wineries in Italy and while I was lining those up, I was also visiting friends all around Europe and gymnastics buddies that were in different countries that I had competed with over the years, going to stay with them for periods of time, just to see how other people lived. I went to Austria and I was in Innsbruck Austria with one of my buddies, Fabian who was one of the top gymnasts on the Austrian team. Really great guy, he was a skier and Innsbruck is one of the most incredible ski towns in the world, hosted 2 winter Olympics games, it's just incredibly beautiful. His parents were both ski instructors so, he comes from a really big ski background, and he was 'okay, I'm going to take you skiing' And I had never been skiing before.

One of the reasons was because my knees were so terrible, I had blown out my knees twice, up to that point, I had ACL, MCL, meniscus injuries and I was always very protective of about not wanting to hurt my knees while I was training. I was like my competition career is over, let's go try new things and skiing things was one of those bucket list things that I was going to go and do and, what better place than Innsbruck, Austria to try and ski for the first time.

So, I get to the top of the mountain and it is where they hosted the Olympic games so, this is not like a little buddy slope, this is a legitimate, ‘what the hell are you doing for the first time at the top of this mountain’ and he had a snowboard and skis and he was like 'why don't you take the skis first and then we'll switch throughout the day' so, I was like fine. So we get to the top of the mountain and I have zero idea what I'm doing, but I'm like 'I'm here and we're going to go' and so I go off the ledge and I'm shitting my pants, 'oh my god, I can't believe this is happening' and I go down and I'm trying to create the triangle or pizza shape with my skis and I go maybe like 50 feet and I fall and my knee snaps and I tear my ACL in the first 50 feet.

I can laugh about it now but I was laying there and he gracefully glides over on his snowboard, he's like 'get up let’s go' and I was like I lift my leg and my knee is sideways and I'm like 'I'm not going anywhere man' and he's like 'oh my god' and the ski patrol wouldn't come and get me so, I had to walk back up to the ski lift, come back down and I tore my ACL again, I tore my ACL, MCL and meniscus on the other knee and had to have surgery in Rome and surgery totally reconstructed, had to do therapy , and it threw everything out of whack, all of those plans to go in to the wine industry got shifted.

I started doing therapy, started doing some training at a local gymnastics gym in Rome and that local gymnastics training turned in to local gymnastics coaching. I started coaching some more kids and coaching some adults and t snowballed into me actually liking the coaching side of things. So, the injury pulled me back into the coaching world when I had intended to move away from it. I ended up here because I fell at that ski slope!

SK: What a friend!

DD: I don't know how much he knows about all the pieces that went in to play since then. I haven't been skiing since. I think he just thought, hey he's a high-level athlete, he's probably figured it out. I'm just stupid enough to go ahead and do it. I love going to ski towns though, don't get me wrong, I will absolutely go to a ski town and drink wine in the clubhouse, or eat and hang out, but right now skiing is definitely not on the agenda. 

SK: I can definitely join you for the ski towns. Even though this was not what you wanted at the time, it meant that you found out that your coaching side is not so bad! 

DD: I never thought of myself as a coach, in fact I adamantly tried to shy away from coaching because I saw, especially my final coach, I saw what a good coach was capable of and I never thought I had that in me. He could read minds, he could read my mind, before I even verbalised it, and it was just special, a high-level coach can do something very special and I was just 'I don't have that in me'. I think I had the mentality of an athlete and when you're an athlete, you have to be very self-centred, you have to be very much about yourself. I couldn't really view it from someone else's perspective, so when I was training, I was like 'I have to be about me right now, to capitalise on this moment that I have as an athlete, and it's not about anybody else.' You have to be a little selfish and, I didn't realise until later on that maybe I can be a little bit more about other people, once that part of my career had phased out. 

SK: Yeah, you didn't become an Olympian overnight and so coaching takes time, I guess to develop, so the more you do it the more...

DD: Absolutely, couldn't agree more.

SK: I also haven't had much coaching time with you but I'm so enjoying it. Like I said to you, you being on Zoom, it's like you're in the same room. I think coaching via Zoom is probably one of the hardest ways to coach because you can't see people's bodies really. I honestly don't know how you do it, but you do it so well, I'm so impressed.

DD: Well, I appreciate that, one of the things, you have to really care, I think that's, being a good coach is really giving a shit about the person you're working with. I think that's really, really imperative to not only look at the movement but also read what's going on with the person and see what they're doing in between turns. See what they're doing in preparation to the turn, all of those things matter, so when I'm watching you, I'm not just watching when you're doing the movement, I'm watching when you're not doing the movement and, watching what's going on between those turns. It's caring, it's paying attention, it's asking questions, knowing that each person is an individual in terms of how much you can push them, there's not a one size fits all model. You can just spin out the same cues to everyone and expect them to work. It's really about caring and that's one of the things I'm proud about Power Monkey in general. I think our coaches really do care about the people that they work with, it's one of the things I've learned a bit about coaching, it is just being there for someone. 

SK: You've had such great coaches and now is probably the time when you remember all that coaching.

DD: Sure, you absorb and if you let it really sink in, it can become an incredibly valuable tool. I don't think it only applies to teaching people a handstand. I think it applies to interactions with people in general, you know. I would be lying to say that my coaches were always 100% right, perfect at what they did. Man I could tell you some stories that would be horrific in some cases in terms of what we did. But that's natural, it's not always perfect, and I don't want to make it seem that it is that way, that everybody is a genius or on point with the way they coach 100% of the time, that's not the case.

What I did was, I took the best of each of the coaches and tried to implement what I had learned from each of the coaches, what really resonated.

Part 6: Power Monkey

SK: You mentioned Power Monkey, who is Power Monkey? Do you want to say a bit about how the name came about?

DD: Yeah, sure, sure so, Power Monkey was actually an existing company, it was a mom and pop shop. This husband and wife couple down in St. Petersburg, Florida had started this brand, and basically, they made rigs and equipment for the South East. They had another company that made maritime canvas stuff, like sails for boats so they had a pretty big shop where they could acquire equipment for steel and things like that. They would just make rigs for Florida, Georgia and the South East, that was their area, making rigs. This was right around 2009 / 2010 and then my business partner Shane Geraghty and me met through the Victoria’s Secret show back in 2010. Shane was ….

SK: I thought that was the story you were going to tell earlier!

DD: Oh so, that's the one you want to hear. So, this story, he lets me tell it one time a year!

The Victoria Secret show was how I met Shane. He was and still is, a stunt performer and coordinator in New York City, he was a great gymnast himself. In 2010 when I had just moved back from Italy, the first time, this was kind of right when the Biennale was being offered to me. The Victoria’s Secret show wanted to have gymnasts as part of the show. So, Shane was in charge of the coordination of the hiring of the gymnasts and I was living in New York at the time and so, he hired me along with 8 other former Olympian National team members to be on stage with the models while they were walking up and down the runway.

It was incredible, it was like one of those surreal weeks of training and AKON was one of the performers, Katie Perry, just these crazy performers and the models and all of the parties and after parties that go along with it. We were living the dream and it was like 'Shane this is how every week for you?' I had just met him so I didn't know that he was in this magical world. While maybe it's not every week like that for Shane, Shane definitely lives that kind of life. His story and his interview would be very interesting as well!

I got a lot of airtime during the Victoria’s Secret show, it was awesome. We were the only two living in New York and the other gymnasts were all scattered all over the place and still competing, so me and him hit it off and we started talking more about the fitness craze that was going on at the time. CrossFit was just building during that early part of 2010 and we had the idea for a ring training device, like a ring thing, like a dream machine in the gymnastics world and to make one that could be utilised by CrossFitters to help them do movements like muscle-ups. We came up with this really crude, shitty prototype that we sent to a bunch of different equipment manufacturers around the country. We sent it to Rogue and a bunch of others, and Power Monkey was very interested, they were the only manufacturer that was interested.

SK: No interest from Rogue?

DD: No Rogue said no, Rogue wanted an actual product already made, they didn't want to facilitate the making of the product. They wanted you to have a built product ready to go and ready to sell. So, Power Monkey showed interest in wanting to develop the product for us and with us and so they did that, they built it from scratch. They built a bunch of prototypes and went off the drawings that I'd made up for it.

They started making them and I started being a travelling salesman, I would travel around gyms around the country with two ring things on my back and I would go and say 'hey I think this would help your gym'. So we were selling two here and two there and so 'oh my God we sold a Ring Thing, I can't believe it' turned in to a pretty consistent steady stream of selling them and people actually knowing who we were. Going to the CrossFit games, doing some videos with CrossFit headquarters and helping them with the gymnastics piece.

Shane and I became business partners a couple of years later. Then, in 2014 we bought them out and completely changed the direction of the company. We moved away from the equipment side actually, we don't do anything anymore, we moved more to what Power Monkey is today, events through our camps, our clinics and retreats, education through our online portal, through our Monkey Method app, our online training and now our teachable piece through our live classes.

The Ring Thing is still a showpiece in terms of equipment. We have a certification program now that goes along and a class that goes along with the Ring Thing. We've partnered with Crunch Fitness in the States and now there’s a Ring Thing class in New York, LA, San Francisco, Miami, 4 cities at Crunch studios. There's a Ring Thing class where we've taught our curriculum to Crunch instructors to be able to teach people gymnastics. That's basically our main goal, to make people fall in love with gymnastics and bodyweight movement.

Gymnastics was the start and it's expanded into weightlifting and endurance training, kettlebells, rowing and we've slowly collected a group of elite coaches who are all former elite athletes which really makes our team fairly unique. This combination of elite coach and athlete then gives you a unique perspective on the challenges that come along with being an athlete. We bring them all together a couple of times a year at our Power Monkey camp which is what most people know us for, and how we met you for the first time. It's really where we bring everybody together, we're like the Avengers of fitness. 

SK: That is a great, great analogy. So what was the first Power Monkey camp like?

DD:  Oh my God, oh my God, I'm embarrassed to even say. The first Power Monkey camp was…there was no telling if it was going to work. The idea was sound, I thought, the facility was amazing and I thought if we have enough really high level coaches, it's going to be an incredible educational week. People will come in, they'll learn a tonne and they'll go home and they'll be happy that they spent a week with us learning. To me it was just about education, the more high-level coaches I could get there, the more information we could impart in a really intimate setting. That first time, I had 30 staff, a lot of coaches, a lot of people helping, 10 stations and we had 30 participants so, it was, we lost a lot of money but it was a one-to-one ratio essentially for the people attending, in terms of the interaction they were having with their coaches.

SK: It must have been amazing.

DD: It was amazing. The people who attended didn't want to tell other people about it because they didn't want to ruin it. ‘We don't want there to be 100 people here because then there's less attention for us'. So, we had a little bit of an issue in terms of, it being too good for them to not want to spread the word.

The thing that changed it for me, in terms of the viability was the last day. I think I've mentioned this a few times when I do campfire stories. The last day when everyone was getting on the bus to go back to the airport, most people were crying and they were legitimately sad to be leaving the week. I didn't know what to do, I was like 'this is very strange to me.' I didn't expect it, I thought people were going to have a great week of training, get on the bus and go home and, just be pumped and amped about training. What really happened is that relationships were formed and bonds were created and people who were training with that same group or living in that same cabin or eating together with that same 1 or 2 people throughout an entire week, they became really close and I didn't think that could happen within a weeks’ time.

Especially for adults, because I went to gymnastics camp my entire childhood and I loved my week there and you know, you really become close with the people that you're living and training with during that week. But for adults, I feel like you have so many things going on in your life that a week can feel like a fleeting moment. When you're a kid those camps were like the best thing in the world.

I found out that the camp for adults is just as great, it's just as important in your life. When I saw people's reaction that last day getting on the bus and leaving and, being so emotional about it, I said 'this is going to be something special' if we can promote it right and if we can continue to get people to buy in, to show up, it's going to be worth their time. We're on to camp 14 now so, it slowly started to work. 

SK: So, throughout all these camps, what were the biggest changes, if I could just fast forward through them really fast?

DD: A couple of things, one I'd say, obviously just the sheer number of people that are there now and the co-ordination of the events, how the plan of the day has been refined to the point where every minute is accounted for throughout the entire day, it's pretty dialled in at this point.

Also, the usage of the camp, the first camp, we didn't go beyond the first couple of cabins. We used the cafeteria but we didn't use the lake, we didn't use the woods, we didn't use the canteen, we didn't use anything beyond just the first few cabins. It was just gym, cabins, and the cafeteria a little bit. So, what we've done is, we've expanded much more, it's a 150-acre campus so, it's pretty large. We didn't use the ropes course, we didn't use the lake, we didn't use anything other than the gym space. Now, definitely I think if someone who didn’t come, who came to camp 1 comes to camp 14 it would be a pretty different experience in terms of what they have available. Coaching would still be top quality but they'd be like 'woah this has completely changed in terms of what is available outside of the gym.' We've definitely expanded that kind of stuff. 

SK: Thanks to CrossFit, really for including gymnastics in the GPP program. I realise it's very difficult to teach gymnastics to adults. As someone who really wanted to learn gymnastics as an adult beginner, I have had a lot of challenges. What are your thoughts on this?

DD: Yeah, I think it's a good question. I think first, you're absolutely right, a huge, endless thank you needs to go to CrossFit and coach Glassman and what he did to expose people to gymnastics and to weightlifting and a lot of the modalities that are niche sports. Fortunately, coach Glassman was a gymnast himself, he loved it growing up and, he saw the value of bodyweight mastery in terms of gaining the ability to live a healthier lifestyle.

Exposure was so important for us, in the gymnastics world, we've always seen gymnastics being a really cool and interesting transferable sport, but it was always difficult for us to be able to translate that two-week period where everyone's in love with it during the Olympics, into increased numbers and increased interest outside of every 4 years.

CrossFit has done that; we were always trying to figure how to do it and CrossFit did it for us. CrossFit created an environment to make gymnastics cool and I'm eternally grateful for the platform that it's given former and current gymnasts to be able to say 'hey your sport is actually pretty cool'. Gymnastics when you're growing up, especially men's gymnastics, you get ridiculed quite a bit for doing a sport that they consider to be a female-only sport. When you're doing men's gymnastics, you get picked on a lot, you're short, high school can be a rough time being a male gymnast growing up, essentially. CrossFit has made it cool, and I sometimes say, I've got high school friends who used to pick on me, now calling me 'I'm sorry, teach me how to do a muscle-up.' and I'll be like 'no, get out of here.'

It's made gymnastics, cool, it's made it interesting, it's given a whole new avenue to pursue a career that wasn't there before. Prior to this you could go coach in a club, coach gymnastics, coach kids, you could go to the stunt world and be a stunt performer, you could go to the circus and that's your avenues to stay within the gymnastics world. CrossFit gave us another avenue.

You're exactly right in the second part of your question, coaching adults is challenging. You're absolutely right, it's very different to coaching kids. Coaching kids has its own strengths and weaknesses with what you're doing. Coaching adults, adults have a lot of things set in their ways. So, you're breaking down a lot more of some of the challenges and barriers that are there with kids who are a little bit more like a ball of clay that you can mould a little bit more easily.

Coaching adults, firstly you need a particular methodology, you know a particular path, I wouldn't even say it's the same tools and skills and drills that you would teach a kid. So, what we've been trying to do and, I think there are resources out there with our clinics and different programs, a lot of other people are doing good ones, Gymnasticsbodies is a really good one, and there's GMB and a few different ones on the gymnastics side that are working on teaching adults, I think a lot of them are doing things well.

What we try to do and, what we're trying to do is, create a curriculum, a curriculum to not only teach athletes, but to train coaches. We want more people to become proficient and confident in teaching an adult who's safe, who's comfortable, who has gymnastics tools in their toolbelts, they can do it for longevity and for a better quality of the life for the next 10, 20, 30+ years. Not so interested in teaching someone one skill for one time for one open workout, that really doesn't have very much value in my mind. What we're really trying to do within the Power Monkey world is create a network of more and more coaches who know our techniques, so that they can bring coaching to more and more people around the world. Good coaching, quality coaching, safe coaching. That’s really where I see the next steps going, building a bigger network of not only good athletes but good coaches. 

SK: There's a shortage of good coaching and that the best way to invest in gymnastics is to invest in coaches and I'm so grateful that you do that. 

DD: I appreciate you saying that and I couldn't agree more that good coaching will trump good equipment any day, you know what I mean? Because good coaches can improvise and they can figure out things to do. Like right now, us sheltering in place and not having a beautiful gym set-up, we're still progressing, because we have the tools to be able to work with what's available.

To me, a good coach will trump good equipment, any day of the week. It was one of the things we took as a point of pride when I was growing up in Jersey because our gym was not the best facility in the world. It was an old bowling arena... it wasn't really set up for gymnastics. Everything was cramped, things were on top of each other, you would hit walls, you would hit beams.

We always took it as a point of pride, when we went to a gym that had good equipment, we were like 'we've done it in a shit situation, we sure as hell can do it here.' We always said that if the equipment is not perfect it's okay because we prepared in something that's less than an ideal and now, we're ready for whatever's coming at us. I think the coaching is absolutely critical, like you said.

SK: That's amazing, I didn't know that. Well, all the more reason for people to, in this current situation like you say, to make the most of what they have. How are you finding Zoom classes?

DD: I was sceptical at first, I had no idea how the interaction was going to be or, how people would react and I'm pleasantly surprised. I'm really enjoying, I feel like it has a much more personal feel than it would. I'm able to use the gallery view, so I always have two cameras, sometimes three for some of the classes, where I have the ability to see what the speaker view plus the gallery so, I can see everyone in the class, going through the actions at the same time. I can give cues, I can make sure people are understanding what I want to see in real time. I've found it to be incredibly useful.

The goal is to expand on this, I do think this is going to become a bigger part of where fitness is going. I do think that the fitness landscape is going to change after this. A lot of people will go back to their gyms, for sure, but there's going to be people that don't want to go back to their gyms, that want to just train at home, that now have home gyms, that are a little bit scared about being in a high-risk category. Maybe they have a family member at home that has asthma, diabetes, or is overweight or is in a high-risk category and they don't want to catch anything, even if they are asymptomatic or less likely to catch anything. You’re going to see a lot of people probably shy away from going into the same gym settings as you would have in the past. Gym classes sizes are probably going to be smaller, more people are going to want to do things online and if this becomes a viable resource to be able to get good information and good technique out to people, then I want to be leading that charge and continuing to, not only use it as a resource, but see if we can expand upon it and make it even better. 

SK: Amazing, very exciting. So, if someone wants to do something for the gymnastics or, weightlifting, or their CrossFit skills in general, right away they should get on your media, now and follow you online. 

DD: I would say so, and you know I'm not just being biased here in terms of our content. I really do believe our content is some of the highest quality content out there and that comes from the quality coaches that we have behind the scenes putting it together. Our social media scene is pretty strong, our Power Monkey Fitness Instagram, even our Facebook page. We have a few different Facebook channels. One is for our Monkey Method users, Monkey method is our programming portion, we have an app called Monkey Method which is for skill development, that we're expanding quite a bit on. 

SK: Is that something that people can do right after they read this?

DD: I would highly recommend what we have on our app. We have a lot of core plans and handstand plans, even barbell work and other things that might need a little bit of equipment, some ring and muscle-up and bar work too.

So, if you have access to those things, you're going to have a lot of at-home plans that you can do from start to finish from very beginner to very advanced. There's a lot of plans that don't require any equipment at all so, it's a really good starting point. So, if you're stuck, you can be working on things and the app creates structure for you.

One of the things you can really take advantage of right now is not to continue to do 100 burpees every day, but to create structure around skill development and say 'let me really see if I can get my core stronger'. 'Let me really see if I can get my handstand to be better, or my handstand push-up.' There are lot's of things you can be working on, to tackle your weaknesses. We've created plans to really key in on those weaknesses.

I always look at challenges as opportunities, and I've tried to look at this sheltering in place as an opportunity to let people focus on certain skills that they would have neglected otherwise. Then also, to figure out new ways to share the information that wasn't there prior. That's why I'm really looking forward to using Zoom as a jumping-off point. Seeing where we can go and take this next step of virtual interaction. 

SK: Yes, who knew we could do this? It would have never have crossed my mind before but now it's part of daily life. 

DD: Right, exactly, I agree. I don't think that's going to change very much. I'm sure a lot of things are going to be going back to normal but I think people are going to shy away from the risk, I even think that corporations are going to be much more likely to say, if you can work from home, there's no need for you to come into the office. They'll have the critical people there but if they can dwindle the numbers down to a more reasonable number of people within a small tight confined space then, they’re going to do it. I think the same thing is going to be said for fitness. 

Part 7: Fun

SK: One last change of topic; I would love to hear what you do to relax.

DD: Okay, a few things, where I'm sitting right now is one of those things. I always liked art, I always liked drawing and it was actually my way of settling my mind when I was at the Olympic training centre. I would always draw a ton, I auctioned off a bunch of my pieces of art for charity leading up to the Olympics and it gave me something to do outside of training.

What I'm doing now, I've picked up calligraphy. I love the precision, I love the detail, I love trying to make things perfect, it's an impossible task but I've been fortunate that one of the best calligraphers for this particular type of calligraphy, just happens to live here in Portland. I had reached out to him about his online classes, and he said 'I'm full, I don't have any other spaces.' I was amazed that he responded to me. I told him that I was a gymnast and he did gymnastics too, he coached one of the local gyms here and it was just very crazy, he has rings hanging in his garage and he invited me over recently. We've struck a really good friendship and he's been helping me out with my calligraphy lessons.

The calligraphy is definitely helped me settle myself and the craziness of being at home. In a lot of ways, and I'm sure you feel this, days have been even more hectic than before because you're trying to figure out Zoom and doing more online programming and you're doing things that weren't in your regular schedule and you're trying to become really good at things that are completely new to you.

I'm feeling even more overwhelmed in terms of the amount of time spent these days. It's like 'just shelter in place, stay on your couch and watch Netflix'. I definitely watch some Netflix, I'm not going to lie, I like to watch some shows. I love movies, I am a huge movie fan. I'm not going to go to the movies that often anymore but, I love going to the movies and watching movies and, Sadie and I like to do that as well.

The calligraphy, doing some art, drinking some wine…I love drinking wine, maybe making some cocktails, having an Old Fashioned, here and there and lastly, chilling with my family. I'm normally on the road an endless amount, about 30+ weeks out of the year.

SK: Not anymore!

DD: Not anymore! My second daughter was born 3 weeks ago tomorrow. I was supposed to be away a week prior to her birth, I was supposed to be at WOD on The Waves, on a cruise ship teaching people fitness, which I don't think is going to be in the cards moving forward. Then I was supposed to be home for a week, the baby was supposed to be born and, then I was supposed to be at Power Monkey Camp. There was this window when the baby was supposed to be born and she was actually born the first day that camp was supposed to start, on May 3rd. So, I wouldn't have been at Camp for the opening.

I'm actually grateful that I get to be here and looking at a really terrible situation and trying to again look at the positives like we talked about. One of the main positives is that I've been here for not only just the birth but the few first weeks and first few months of her being here with us and I know Sadie is grateful that I'm here and I'm grateful as well. I'm grateful that I get to spend time with my family, it's really important to me, trying to take every day and absorb it as much as I can. 

SK: I hear you're a very good chef as well.

DD: I love cooking, I cook every meal here. The thing that always tells me that I've done a good job is both my 3-year-old and Sadie will comment that they love me. They'll throw out that they love me every once in a while, but if I cook a good meal, my daughter says 'I love you daddy'. I know I did something right if I randomly get an ‘I love you’ thrown at me, then that was a good meal. I did something right on that one. It keeps me in their good graces.

SK: I think we need to ask Katie to step out of the kitchen one night at Power Monkey camp and let you cook.

DD: I cook for 3 people; I don't think I could cook for 150 people! But I can promise that I'll help Katie out.

SK: Thank you so much, there's definitely so many stories we can talk about, so maybe this is episode 1.

DD: Sure, definitely.