mbg Beauty Director
mbg Beauty Director
Alexandra Engler is the Beauty Director at mindbodygreen and host of the beauty podcast Clean Beauty School. She has previously held beauty roles at Harper’s Bazaar, Marie Claire, SELF and Cosmopolitan, and has had bylines in Esquire, Sports Illustrated and Allure.com.
Image courtesy of mbg Creative / Source
August 11, 2024
We celebrate women at the top of their game, and in our new series, Game On, we interview top athletes about their health habits and discuss everything from nourishing themselves to feeling strong to finding joy in moments like these.
The 6-foot-2 middle blocker will play for the U.S. volleyball team at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Chiaka Ogbogu She just won a silver medal with the U.S. National Team and was also part of the 2020 team that won gold at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics.
A native of Texas, she led her high school team to two consecutive state championships and played volleyball in college. University of Texas at AustinShe now plays internationally, most recently for Turkey, and, of course, she also plays for the US team.
“Young girls [women’s sports coverage in the media] “That’s really important because I didn’t know that growing up,” she told me recently. “It’s great to have come this far, but What would my life have been like if I had watched women’s volleyball as a kid? “For little girls to be able to watch these games is something really special for a lot of us and for future generations.”
Below, we share our conversation about how she takes care of herself when she’s not playing, how she approaches nutrition and what she’ll be trying to tackle during the upcoming offseason.
mindbodygreen: What does it mean to be a strong woman?
Chiaka Ogbogu: It’s about recognizing your strengths and weaknesses and loving yourself resolutely in spite of them. I’ve found the most strength within myself when I’ve been able to acknowledge the days when I’m not at my best, and still find a way to support and love myself through those days.
mbg: I want to ask you about how you stay strong, and let’s start with nutrition. What foods make you feel the strongest?
Ogbogu: I’ve had a really interesting relationship with nutrition and learning about the foods that will best benefit my performance on the court, the foods I feel I need to eat throughout the day, and the foods that are best for me.
But for me, I feel like I’m used to finding color when it comes to food. I like to have a lot of color on my plate, so that it’s visually appealing and edible. I’ve worked with a lot of nutritionists and dieticians throughout my career, and I’ve learned that the mere presence of color not only energizes the body, but it also has a positive effect on the mind. And we know that when the mind is in the right state, we perform at our best.
My diet is Mediterranean style. I eat a lot of salads and grain bowls with brussels sprouts, pickled onions, grains, anything that fits into the Mediterranean diet.
mbg: Well, the Mediterranean diet is said to be one of the healthiest diets…
Ogbogu: I play professionally in Turkey and I was fascinated by the way they eat, so I’m trying to bring that here too.
mbg: what is your recovery routine?
Ogbogu: It depends on where I am in the season and how my body feels. I’m getting older and my body is telling me I need to recover really well.
I don’t have a special routine, but I do have one thing I rely on: I try to get a good night’s sleep. After games and practice, Normatec Recovery Boots.
And then supplements have really made a difference for me, especially when I’m traveling. I take sleep aids and supplements like magnesium and calcium to help my body recover.
I’m always open to new recovery ideas and it’s fun to see what athletes in other sports are doing and see if there’s something I can learn from them.
mbg: What’s the craziest thing you’ve done to optimize performance?
Ogbogu: I don’t know if there’s anything super crazy that I’ve done. I’ve seen athletes who use oxygen chambers or prefer sleep chambers.
I’ve had cryotherapy, which was extreme for me because I hate being cold.
Going into the off-season, one of my goals is to try all the crazy techniques that other athletes are doing to see if it makes a difference.
mbg: What is your non-sport related workout?
Ogbogu: I started Pilates with some of my teammates and have seen great results, especially in my recovery before returning to volleyball.
But this will be my first fall off-season, so I’m excited to get on the pickleball bandwagon as well. It looks fun and easy to get into! With the extra time I have, I want to make a point of getting more active in training other styles this fall.
mbg: How do you mentally prepare for a big match?
Ogbogu: I think things are different now than they were in college. I feel like I had such a need to be excited in college, which is really weird. I was drinking so much coffee and energy drinks. It was all about being as focused as possible, and then later on, I couldn’t sustain that.
And every level you go up there’s new pressures, so when you’re playing at the highest level, of course the anxiety is greater, so now it’s about getting to the most calm state, and that’s the fun part.
I think part of this journey is just maturing, understanding that you think most rationally when you’re at your calmest, whereas when you’re young you have to be a calm mind, it’s not so much about technique or IQ, it’s just physical.
Compared to now, everyone is stronger physically and everyone has been playing at a high level for a long time, so it’s about which team has the IQ to win.
I’ve tried several different techniques to calm myself, from meditation to sound frequencies. I read Kobe Bryant’s book. Mamba Mentality: How I PlayIt talks about sound frequencies, so I decided to look into it. Calming Frequencies1 It’s said to balance the nervous system, so I’m doing that now and also trying other techniques.
mbg: Resilience is a very interesting topic and I often talk about it with other athletes. We’ve found that part of it is innate, maybe you’re born with it, but other parts can be developed through training. How can you develop resilience?
Ogbogu: I do believe that great athletes are born with a penchant for pursuing mastery, so that’s part of it, but I also think that a lot of us, especially on national teams and myself on an individual level, are working with sports psychologists to develop tools to help us get through those sticky situations like losses or stressful games.
It helps you acknowledge your emotions, compartmentalize things if necessary, and move on from there. It’s important not to dwell on what happened, good or bad. How do we develop the tools to acknowledge, compartmentalize, and move on from there?
I’m a big diary-keeper. After I lose a game, I like to write it all down. Getting it on paper helps me get it out of my head. I can physically turn the page and mentally focus on the next thing.
But the great thing about our sport is that a lot of our matches are played in a tournament format, so you don’t have a lot of time to think about what happened because you’re likely to be playing again the next day. Thankfully, I don’t play a sport where there’s an event every few weeks or months, so in that case you have a lot of time to think. Our sport moves so quickly that you don’t have a lot of time to dwell on a bad match.
Image courtesy of mbg creative / Source provided
mbg: What does it mean to be a good teammate?
Ogbogu: I am grateful for the experiences I had with teammates as a child because it taught me how to work well together, especially with people from different backgrounds.
I think being a good teammate starts with acknowledging that not everyone grew up the same way you did or thinks the same way you do, and understanding that on a fundamental level makes you more empathetic.
And another key ingredient is empathy. My teammates had the most empathy and respect for everyone around them. Even if I disagreed with someone, I always knew they were important enough to contribute something to the team.
That’s the way I’ve strived for my team, is to lead with empathy. It helps you work really well with your teammates and also creates a more stimulating and challenging environment. People are more likely to come to you and want to be around you if they know they can trust you and that they’re safe with you.
mbg: What advice would you give to young girls playing volleyball?
Ogbogu: Honestly, my advice would be to try as many sports as you can and join as many groups as you can.
I think it helped me grow because I learned a lot. I played basketball. I played taekwondo. I learned something from each sport because I think each sport attracts different types of people and has different challenges.
Then stick with it for at least a year and see what you get out of it. This is a common thing when you’re a kid. I didn’t like it today. I’ll move on to the next thing. But I’m really grateful to my parents for not pushing me to quit too early, and I think there’s a lesson to be learned from that: it’s important to work at things until you can make a decision officially. Ok, I’m not interested in this at all.
mbg: It’s an incredible time right now with women’s sports getting more attention than ever before. What’s it like experiencing that first-hand?
Ogbogu: Many of us athletes Finally! Where has everyone been? It’s exciting to see volleyball on the rise in the U.S. It’s exciting for us because we don’t have a professional league yet, but we’re starting next year, and all the hype and media coverage about women’s basketball is exciting.
I think it’s really important for young girls to see that because I didn’t see that as a kid. It’s great that we’ve come this far, but I think, “Oh, wow, I’m not a racist.” What would my life have been like if I had watched women’s volleyball as a kid? The very idea that little girls can watch these games is really special for many of us and future generations.
https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/game-on-chiaka-ogbogu