Missy Franklin's Winning Story and What’s Next!
Five-Time Gold Medalist Turns her Focus to Family, Her New Podcast, and Creating a Wellness Oasis with Endless™ Pools.
With a new home, a three-year-old daughter, and a promising career as a podcaster, Missy Franklin Johnson is tackling her next chapter on her own terms.
When we learned she was looking for a family pool, we were happy to help. We worked with Missy and her husband, Hayes Johnson, to design a pool to enhance their home and give the couple access to a private space where they could train, exercise, and enjoy the water with their daughter.*
Since retiring from competitive swimming in 2018, Missy has channeled her energies into new areas as a wife, mother, and philanthropist. Earlier this year, she launched a new podcast, “Unfiltered Waters,” with fellow swimming champion, Katie Hoff.
We had the chance to chat with Missy about her competitive career, the wellness oasis she’s creating at home, and how her podcast is shedding new light on what it takes to be a champion.
THE ROAD TO THE PODIUM
EP: Missy, thank you so much for being here. We followed your journey and cheered you on as you won gold for the USA, and we‘d love to hear the whole story from you. Would you start by sharing your athletic history in your own words?
MJ: I started swimming when I was, oh my gosh, when I could barely walk. My mom did not learn to swim until a little bit later in her life, and it was something that she had a fear of, and it was a fear she did not want to pass on to me. She put us in a Mommy and Me class at our local YMCA when I was six months old, and from there things just blossomed.
EP: Did you play any other sports?
MJ: Yes, I did every other sport imaginable growing up, but swimming was what I felt the most passion for, so it was a very natural progression for me to drop all other sports and lean fully into swimming.
My story is a little different and unique because my career started very early. I qualified for my first Olympic trials when I was just 12 and competed there when I was 13, in 2008. I left that experience just being so in awe! I knew from that moment I wanted to come back in four years and make the team.
EP: You’d made up your mind! Then what happened?
MJ: I did everything I could for those four years to give myself the best chance possible to make the Olympic team in 2012. At 17 I made my first Olympic team and qualified for seven events. I went on to have the most incredible experience ever in London and walked away with four gold medals, a bronze, and two world records.
It was just such an incredible experience for anyone, let alone for a 17-year-old! After that, I went on to swim in college.
EP: Tell us about college.
MJ: I swam at University of California, Berkeley for two years and won a Team NCUA title while I was there and seven individual titles. 2015 was my last season.
EP: What happened next?
MJ: I qualified for my second Olympic team in Rio in 2016. It was a lot harder the second time around, I was facing way more pressures, expectations, and just dealing with a lot of mental adversity that I had never dealt with before and some physical adversity with an injury. Still, I qualified for three events. I came home with another gold medal. My total medal count is 5 gold and one bronze, so six and all, and eventually tried to overcome that injury to the best of my ability but just could not make it happen.
I retired in 2018 and as hard as it is to leave a sport not on your own terms, it's definitely given me the time and perspective to figure out how I want to continue making an impact, and the different ways that I can do so.
BACK IN THE POOL – ON HER OWN TERMS
EP: It sounds like you're doing that with your new podcast. We want to hear more about that, but first, can you tell us what inspired you to get back in the water again?
MJ: A really cool thing about swimming is something my first coach, Todd Schmitz, always said, “It's the one sport that can save your life and it's the one sport that you can do for the rest of your life.”
When I retired, it was due to injury, it wasn't on my own terms. It was very painful both physically and emotionally, and I just was not in the space to continue swimming at that time. I needed a break. I needed to step away. I needed to try new things and have the freedom to move my body. But it was really fun to have that break and put zero pressure on myself in terms of a timeline. I think I did a very good job of giving myself grace.
EP: What made you decide that now was the time to get a pool of your own?
MJ: It feels like all the stars are aligned with how perfect the timing is. My husband, Hayes, has been training for triathlons, swimming a lot, and that has stoked the embers for me. Seeing him go to morning practice has brought back good memories about how swimming made me feel and helped me get back to the root of why I loved it.
Oh, and it also helps having an almost 3-year-old daughter who we can’t get out of the pool! It's so fun to experience it from her eyes and her perspective and just see how much joy it brings her.
ENDLESS POOLS PROVIDES FREEDOM, FLEXIBILITY, AND FUN
EP: What do you like most about Endless Pools?
MJ: The freedom that I’m fully in control of when I swim and how I swim and what my swimming looks like. The Endless Pool is just there for us anytime we need it. It truly just feels like the perfect solution for both of us to be back in the water again.
My husband, is using it more for training, and I’m using it more for enjoyment and therapeutic reasons.
That's the best thing about the Endless Pool. It can do both! You can use it for more training and technique purposes, or simply just get in and clear your mind for 30 minutes and swim easy and relax.
I can leave the current off and hop in there with my daughter at the end of the day and just play around. My husband and I both feel that it is the perfect fit for our family.
EP: Did you consider other products besides Endless Pools?
MJ: We didn't really consider any other products. For us, Endless Pools is the gold standard. We knew that if we were going to invest in something like this, we wanted the best of the best, and we know many people that have Endless Pools that have nothing but rave reviews about them.
And it's not the most important thing, but one of the great bonuses is that they're beautiful. We wanted something that really added to the value of our home, and we think that this is really a pool that's going to do that.
EP: So, it was an easy decision for you!
MJ: Yes, we love that we get the freedom to make it the way we want and how we want and incorporate it into what we've already done around our house and our backyard.
We never really thought about anything else. I think for us, Endless Pools has always been the one that has come the most highly recommended that we've heard the best things about. To us it was just a total no-brainer that this was the way we wanted to go as well.
EP: We’d love to hear more about your installation. Can you share what you and Hayes have planned for that space?
MJ: We're so excited. We're going for a little bit of a wellness retreat in our house. We have a cold plunge and a wood barrel sauna -- those have just been amazing.
We wanted to put the Endless Pool out by the sauna in the backyard. We have a little bit of land and lots of foliage, so we just felt like swimming outside in that environment would add to the atmosphere and that therapeutic feeling of being outside, being in the fresh air and just enjoying the amazing views and the peace and quiet.
I think the part that we're really excited about is that it's truly going to look like it's meant to be a part of our home because we were allowed to design it and make it our own.
We’re excited to have a backyard oasis essentially where we can swim, we can sauna, and we can cold plunge. We can just move and recover our bodies in ways that just feel really, really, good to us.
AN ACTIVITY THE WHOLE FAMILY CAN ENJOY ALL YEAR ROUND
EP: Do you plan to use the pool year-round?
MJ: Yes, yes. We're definitely planning on using it year-round and that's another thing we're excited about. Having something during the winter months that can get us outside. I'm a firm, firm, believer that seasonal depression is a real thing.
I think, especially with a young child, having a heated pool in the backyard during the fall and winter gives us another activity we can do. We can all be outside again.
We can try and get that sun when it's out, even if it's a little bit cold outside, because the water will be heated. It's going to be so nice getting that all year long and not feeling like we're only limited to using it during three months of the summer.
EP: So now you've brought your daughter into the pool. What does that mean to you? Swimming was your sport. What’s it like to see your daughter so lit up by it? Can you talk about that?
MJ: Yeah, of course. It means so much to me! What’s been special for me, and my husband, is how we’ve introduced our daughter to the sport.
Most importantly for her safety, but also because she loves it! As she gets older and decides what she wants to do and what's going to bring her joy we will encourage her to pursue that no matter what it is. But for the time being, she does find a lot of joy with being in the water, and that, of course, is so fun for Hayes and me because we still love it too.
EP: It must be great being in the pool together.
MJ: Yes and to get to see it from her eyes as well.
The sport can change so much depending on where you are in your life and where you are in your career. So, to go from the utmost of high intensity pressure situations in the sport to now - playing mermaids with my daughter and trying to find the rings and blowing bubbles and stuff like that - it brings me back to that little girl who started swimming and loved it! She reminds me of that every day, which is so beautiful.
EP: That is beautiful. Thank you for sharing your story with us!
MORE TO COME FROM MISSY
EP: We’re looking forward to hearing all about how Missy and her family are enjoying their new Endless Pool, but first, we’ll be turning our focus to the swim events during the upcoming Summer Games! Missy will be there commentating for Yahoo Sports alongside some other legends, as well as taking her Instagram followers behind the scenes to all of the action! To follow along with Missy, you can find her on Instagram at @missyfranklin88!
If you haven't already, tune into the Unfiltered Waters Podcast that Missy launched earlier this year with fellow champion, Katie Hoff. In a series of inspiring interviews with elite athletes, the hosts dive below the surface to reveal the unfiltered truth about the challenges, triumphs, and setbacks it takes to be a champion. Endless Pools is proud to be a sponsor, and you can check out new episodes every Wednesday.