Deep squats work so many muscles in your body. Once a week, I do three sets of six, or eight of the free-bar ones, which can help out your balance and work more muscles than doing them on the machine.

I've always known that sporting people frequently suffer from joint problems because of the repeated strain they put on their bodies to get to the top. But somehow I never thought it would happen to me.

I think there's going to be pressure on all the British athletes. It's a home Olympics at the end of the day. I like adrenaline, that's something I feed off. I'm just going to go out there and do my best.

I struggled to stay on the pace there in the back half. But, at the end of the day I wanted to win this race. The Millrose is a prestigious event and it's definitely something I wanted to do in my career.

It's quite funny in that I once won Rear of the Year at my school! I was about 17 in the sixth form and we used to have an end of year celebration and give out different awards. I even got a little trophy!

I'm proud of the way I've dealt with setbacks. It's hard when you feel down and you think, 'Why is the world doing this to me?' But you have to pick yourself up again. That's what makes you a better athlete.

We all lose sight sometimes, but when we find our way again we are not only 2x stronger but we can see where we need to be, where we should be, and most importantly we understand why we are not there already.

I wasn't the kind of kid who would get A's without even trying. I had to work to get good grades, but I was very organised about it because I always wanted to do well at everything I did. I'm very competitive.

I was around 15 when I first wanted to compete in an Olympics. I even remember the first time I got to wear a GB kit as a junior. I've even kept it. It's in my mum's loft somewhere, probably gone mouldy by now.

People who aren't perhaps that into sport are going to be following me and wanting to be part of the Olympics. That definitely does bring added pressure but as an athlete the Olympics are the ultimate competition.

When I'm standing in a stadium packed with 80,000 screaming fans, I can't just whip out my Bible before I run. That's when I start praying! It's so loud that I can't even hear what I'm saying, but it always helps.

I had no idea what was in store for me this season. This is the first time I've been a part of a true team sport, and there's someone else counting on you. You can't let that person down, and that's what drives me.

I feel like my name completely does not belong on that list [of great athlets], but I'm completely grateful for everything that they [Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Florence Griffith-Joyner and even Wilma Rudolph] have done.

People have a moral standard about what they will do and will not do. At the end of the day someone who cheats has a lower moral standard than someone who does not. And they will cheat in other areas of life as well.

The Olympics is a special event and winning is very important. For me as a world record holder and world champion, the only thing I am missing is the Olympic gold medal and that is what I want to achieve in my career.

Training is full-on. Some days I really don't want to get out of bed and hit that track again. Sunday and Monday morning sessions are always horrible. But who really looks forward to going to work on a Monday morning?

If my dreams can happen to me, your dreams can happen to you. Champions are not made on the track or field; champions are made by the things you accomplish and the way you use your abilities in everyday life situations.

When I grew up Carl Lewis was still running, Maurice Greene was running - he was that figure I see, like Michael Johnson. I really wanted to look up to the fast guys - so those two guys were some of the guys I looked up to.

Amateurism is the strongest form of discrimination in sports. Because it discriminates against the underprivileged, it discriminates against the poor. If we want sports to go back to the wealthy, let's make it amateur again.

You were born to run. Maybe not that fast, maybe not that far, maybe not as efficiently as others. But to get up and move, to fire up that entire energy-producing, oxygen-delivering, bone-strengthening process we call running.

Things have changed so much, with Facebook and Twitter. Everyone is so much more accessible these days: no British athlete has ever experienced what we are experiencing now. It's such a unique situation with the home Olympics.

When I am training, I don't want any disturbances. I have to be focused, not losing sight of my targets. I cannot evade the fact that I am now well known and I have made already some money, but you can learn how to deal with it.

It's hard to pass up a pole vault opportunity here in Des Moines. The crowd was so great when I was at the mall and I was pumped up and I thought technically I was on and I figured where else to open up my outdoor season than here.

I think I was around 10 or 11 years of age when I got my first guitar, but I can remember being as young as 3 or 4 watching my father jam on acoustic to his favorite rush and Jimmy Hendrix albums so I have always been around music.

Things are better now that the attention has subsided a bit, and I'm happier. Now I can concentrate on what I'm supposed to do, that is, training and running. Despite everything that's happened, I feel like I'm still the same person.

I've found that there's a lot to invigorate in any country or destination - it's all about how you look at it. I've never really had any difficulties anywhere I've been. As an athlete, I used to enjoy being on the road and meeting people.

I was ready in 2008 for the Olympic Games but unfortunately I missed the Kenyan trials with a thigh injury. I watched those Olympics but it was tough to watch. But it was good in the end because a Kenyan, Wilfred Bungei, was the champion.

Competing at the Olympics is the pinnacle of your career. Everything is amplified, and you feel so proud to represent your country. You're there with athletes from all over the world. Everyone is coming together, putting differences aside.

Sometimes when you've reached a peak experience, you look for other peak experiences... I'd always been interested in art. I was looking for other experiences outside of sports. Art was a form of expression I had always liked a great deal.

I missed the final of the World Championships in 2009, but I told the coach I would break the world record in 2010. Which I did. Then in 2011 I won the World Championships and now in 2012 it is the Olympics. That is how I have been working.

I definitely would say, by sixth grade, I was a professional shoplifter - and not because I wanted to. I'm not going out to shoplift earrings or clothes or shoes like the average teenager. I was shoplifting frozen dinners at a grocery store.

People want to think that staying in shape costs a lot of money. They couldn't be more wrong. It doesn't cost anything to walk. And it's probably a lot cheaper to go to the corner store and buy vegetables than take a family out for fast food.

We were one of the first states to move most of our email into the cloud. That's gone really, really well; I think it's exceeded expectations. When we think about doing major information technology projects in this state, the default is cloud.

I played football in high school, I played baseball when I was younger, things like that, but I think it was the passion I had for track where you want to do an individual sport and be the best, I think - there's nothing that can replace that.

I was always doing something physical. My brothers and I used to have handstand contests. We'd walk around the projects on our hands and see who could get the farthest. I was always playing football with them, basketball or racing in the street.

I was still young when I missed Beijing. I was favourite to win a medal but I knew I had time. My coach advised me to stay at school and finish my exams. Even if I had gone and won the Olympics, I might not have handled the pressure. So I moved on.

To do justice to a lifelong dream of being a writer, I must give it the intense concentration and focus I gave to track. To do both with excellence is not possible. It is with a sense of sadness and joyous anticipation that I leave track and move on.

It's not good to focus on one person or two persons about being your rivals. The important thing is just to train hard and be ready for the competition and to prepare for the races so that in case of anything that comes out, you are able to handle it.

The most important lesson that I have learned is to trust God in every circumstance. Lots of times we go through different trials and following God's plan seems like it doesn't make any sense at all. God is always in control and he will never leave us.

I always look back at when I didn't have a dream, when I didn't have a spirit. I didn't know what the Olympics was all about. I was just hanging out on the street. I was not humble. I was not a nice person, doing things that were socially unacceptable.

There was a massive poster of me down my road, right outside the chip shop. I was about to go in, but then I saw it and changed my mind. Me coming out with a bag of chips, while I'm up there doing crunches on the poster... well, it would not look good.

It was not until the end of my freshman year in high school that I thought I could really have a future in track and field. I definitely did not think I could make it to the Olympics back then, though; I was just focused on making it to the state finals!

I can say when it comes to championships it's a tactical race and normally you don't have a pacesetter who can set a pace for fast times. That is why you see that obviously we fall around 1:43 because that is the most favorable one can run from the front.

I am training at such a high level that I actually could eat anything and get by. But as my coach always says, your body is like a car, and food is like your fuel. I am a race car, so I can't just put unleaded fuel in my car. I need that good premium fuel.

My participation in the Art of the Olympians is a natural extension of my athletic career. I find creating a piece of art in many respects mirrors my long jumping efforts illustrating that hard work and inspiration will always be the foundation for success.

I'm Chief Executive Officer at Art of the Olympians Museum in Fort Myers, Florida, which was founded by my Mexico City teammate Al Oerter and his wife Cathy in 2005. It shows that Olympians can have another life; we have got art from more than 100 Olympians.

I love gaming, I'm actually more of a nerd than a metal head and if you see me at shows chances are I'm by our merch table playing league of legends on my laptop or playing super Nintendo or Playstation through an emulator. My Nintendo pretty much raised me.

We always spend more time on the throwing events and a little bit more on the long jump. They're my weaker events - they don't come as naturally to me as running and jumping. I like the hurdles and the high-jump, I'm a springy, speedy athlete so those suit me.

If you go by other people's opinions or predictions, you'll just end up talking yourself out of something. If you're running down the track of life thinking that it's impossible to break life's records, those thoughts have a funny way of sinking into your feet.

I recognize that by saying that I'm deeply sorry, it might not be enough and sufficient to address the pain and the hurt that I have caused you. Therefore, I want to ask for your forgiveness for my actions, and I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.

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