By Audrey Fong
Growing up, I was obsessed with the Olympics and even now, I always tune in for the two-week long competition. It is the only time I am ever interested in sports. My all-time favorite Olympian and athlete is Apolo Ohno, a speed skater and the most decorated U.S. winter Olympian. Ohno stood out to me as a child because he was one of the few cool Asian Americans on TV and in magazines. I was struck by his motivation, friendliness, and extremely close relationship with his dad, Yuki.
In 2010, Ohno stopped speed skating competitively at the age of 27. In the years since, he has gone on to become a successful entrepreneur, sports broadcaster, New York Times bestselling author, and “Dancing with the Stars” winner. His third book, Hard Pivot: Embrace Change. Find Purpose. Show Up Fully., is a practical guide to changing your life’s track and staying motivated in the long term.
The book opens with a brief explanation of Ohno’s successes as an Olympian to foreground the major conceit of this book – the hard pivot. “An aggressive, high-speed turn executed at the corner of the rink,” the hard pivot was a move that as a speed skater, Ohno practiced countless times. And after choosing to end his speed skating career, he faced the hardest pivot of his life: What should he do now that he has “walked away from [his dream], from the only life [he] had known for the previous fourteen years”?
After having gone through this hard pivot in his own life, he wants to share how he navigated it, explaining that Hard Pivot “is a guide for anyone seeking to adapt and reinvent themselves in our rapidly changing, chaotic world.” Through the book, he hopes to help readers with “goal setting, motivation, maintaining perspective, accountability, belief, and purpose.”
Hard Pivot succeeds in its practical and easy to follow instructions for pinpointing where you are in life and for discovering ways in which you want to improve, or pivot, in life. Each chapter provides real life examples from Ohno’s own experiences, easy to follow exercises, and neat summaries of the chapter bullet pointed at the end. Many of the examples are as simple as writing out lists and committing your ideas to paper, and all of them are ones that Ohno does himself.
While Ohno’s guide is pragmatic in its approach, it does not mean reading the guide and doing the practices alone will change your life. Ohno acknowledges this and admits that the hardest part of any of his advice is staying committed to the change and the practices for long periods of time. I appreciate that Ohno’s advice is realistic and broken down into easily digestible steps and that it is aware of how challenging committing to a huge change in life can be. His acknowledgements of the difficulties that come with shifting your life feel supportive and affirming that all of us can change.
If you are a fan of Ohno, this book is a must-read. Even though it largely figures into the self-help genre, it does include personal anecdotes from his athletic career and personal life. I especially enjoy when he shares what he immediately did after changing career paths (he sprinted “as far away from the United States as [he] could, mostly to Asia” to learn more about other cultures) and when he provides insight into his famously tight relationship with his dad. If you’ve watched any interview with Ohno, he almost always mentions his dad and how much of his success is because of him. In Hard Pivot, he shares how grateful he is “for the innumerable sacrifices” his dad has made on behalf of him – from immigrating to the U.S. from Japan at age 17 to raising Ohno as a single dad and pushing his training forward. Even now, his dad continues to impact his life every day with sagely texts sent regularly to his phone and their three weekly talks. Background stories like these provide fans with a feeling for how their relationship has profoundly affected Ohno.
Whether you’re feeling lost, searching for the next big move in your life, or are an Ohno fan, Hard Pivot is a quick-paced read with plenty of actionable tips for improving your life both professionally and personally. The book provides insight from an extraordinarily successful individual in a friendly, optimistic, and pragmatic tone that never feels preachy or condescending. For Ohno fans, it also brings you a step closer to Ohno as a person and his work ethic.
Hard Pivot is available from Barnes and Noble, Bookshop, Indie Bound, The Last Bookstore, and Powell’s City of Books.
Audrey Fong is a writer, interested in food, coming of age stories, and Asian American narratives. She earned her B.A. in English from UC Irvine and is currently pursuing an M.F.A. in creative writing from Chapman University. She is the co-founder and co-editor of Soapberry Review.