An Olympian Brings The Cheese: A Life in Motion

As the 2024 Olympics Games begin, join host Susannah Steers for a fun conversation with Doug Martin, Olympian and owner of The Cheeseman, a boutique European-style cheese shop in North Vancouver, BC.

Learn about the life of a world class competitive swimmer in the 1970's, and what to expect from this year's Olympic swimmers. Doug explains how the things he learned as an Olympian helped him in business, and in his life since then - as a husband, Dad, Grandad and small business owner.  You'll hear about Doug's current passion too - CHEESE!

With his ever present charm, Dough shares some great stories, some wisdom, and a few laughs too.

The Cheeseman Cheese Shop

The Cheeseman on Facebook

The Cheeseman on Instagram

Heart of Motion Podcast host Susannah Steers is a Pilates & Integrated Movement Specialist and owner of Moving Spirit Pilates in North Vancouver, BC. She is passionate about movement, about connections and about life.

Through movement teaching, speaking, and facilitating workshops, she supports people in creating movement practices that promote fitness from the inside out. She loves building community, and participating in multi-disciplinary collaborations.

Along with her friend and colleague Gillian McCormick, Susannah also co-hosts The Small Conversations for a Better World podcast – an interview based podcast dedicated to promoting the kind of conversations about health that can spark positive change in individuals, families, communities and across the globe.

Social Media Links:
Moving Spirit Pilates Instagram
Moving Spirit Pilates Facebook

Susannah Steers Instagram

Transcript

Welcome to The Heart of Motion Podcast.

I'm Susannah Steers, and I'll be your host as we explore the heart, soul and science of movement as a pathway to more active, vibrant and connected living.

Nothing happens until something moves.

So let's get started.

Susannah Steers:  Hi everyone. My guest today is Doug Martin, Le Grand Fromage at The Cheeseman, a boutique specialty cheese shop in North Vancouver, BC.
This man knows more about cheese, the making of it, the tastes, the pairings, the history, all of it than anyone I've ever met.

Doug also happens to have been a world-class swimmer. He competed for Canada at the Pan Am Games, at the Worlds and at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal.

These days, he's an avid downhill skier, a golfer and a guitar player.
He's a dad, a granddad and a small business owner.
I've come to know Doug and his wife a little bit over the last few years.

And since the 2024 Olympic Games are just getting underway in Paris, France, I thought it would be fun to talk to him about his experiences as an athlete and in his life since then.And maybe,  (I did tell him about this part), get the inside track on some of the swimmers to watch during these Olympics.

Welcome to the podcast, Doug. Why don't we dive right in with the swimming, okay?

Doug Martin: Okay.

Susannah Steers: How did you go from being a kid who likes to swim to competing in the butterfly events, no less? I mean, that's got to be one of the hardest things to do. On the world stage, what was that progression like for you?

Doug Martin: Well, it was a failed attempt at becoming a hockey player because I couldn't stop. If there were no boards, I would have been, I'd be still skating.
But I had excess energy. My parents put me in the swim to burn energy.
Turns out I was not bad at it, but it took a long time to start to get good at it.

And then I'm going to tell you by 1972, my first Nationals, I was on the same floor as all the top swimmers in Canada in the hotel I was at, and kind of got a bird's eye view of them and realized they were no different than me.

And all I did, needed to do was train harder, surround myself with people of excellence, work on the coaching and was able to move forward from there.

Susannah Steers: It sounds like you kind of put yourself in a soup of excellence in the swimming category and that sort of took you to the next level.

Doug Martin: Yeah, basically that's what I had to do. So 73, I actually went and trained on my own in the only 50 meter pool that was close, which was three hours away. So I lived on my own, swam on my own at the ripe age of 16, 17.
And then I was able to get a scholarship at Simon Fraser University, came out to BC, swam with Canadian dolphins and surrounded myself with people who were performing at a high level to help me move to a high level.

Susannah Steers: Well, you spoke about it a little bit there, moving out on your own and traveling three hours to get to the pool you needed to be swimming in.
A lot of people don't see, well, a lot of people see the glory in elite sport, all the accolades and the travel and the fancy ceremonies and things, but they don't see the daily slog when you just have to get up and do the hard things every day.

What was a day in the life of Doug Martin like when you were training for those world competitions? Did you have any kind of life outside of sport or was it just, it's all about the pool?

Doug Martin: It's all about your training. It's like a job. It is a job. So you're up first thing in the morning. Swimmers are kind of unusual because you train twice a day.
So you're up in the morning, bright and early, you have a pre-workout breakfast, I'll call it. Then you go and you work out for a couple hours in the pool, plus maybe weights, flexibility, your yoga. Then you come back, you have something to eat again. Maybe if you're lucky, you get a nap. If not, maybe you go to school and you do your classes. And during the day, if you're lucky, I lived on campus.I was able to maybe get another nap. Then you eat again.

So it's a constant eating, sleeping, going to school, training, and basically making sure all your priorities are there.

And I did meet my wife at university. So if there was time left over, romantic interests kind of weaseled their way in there.

Susannah Steers: I love it. I know that in dance, it's really hard to separate who you are from what you do. Did you find that in swimming? Is that a similar situation?

Doug Martin: I would say yes. I think you do identify with who you are. And I don't know if this is the same in dance, but I was associating with people that are very at a high performance level. You start to assume, believe, behave like everybody's at that level.

So because you're grounded by excellence, it just becomes the norm that that's who you are and what you do. When you leave the sport, you have a major readjustment that in my day, you certainly weren't prepared for it because suddenly you're at the top of the heap. And now you become not to downplay it, but a normal human being. You're not performing at that level.

So if I wanted to play squash or I wanted to play golf or any other sport, suddenly I'm not the best in the world anymore, and that was a major readjustment. So I had to figure out and realize that, no, to get where I got to, I had to spend a lot of time training, doing drill work, all those kinds of things. And if I wanted to be good at something else, including work in my business life and my personal life, it was going to be work. It's not going to be what became to me to be easy by the end of my career.

Susannah Steers: Right. Well, you've talked a little bit about being self-motivated, and I want to dig into that a little bit more, because I think I would describe myself the same way. What does being a self-starter mean to you? Do you think it's something that you just are or aren't, or can people develop the skill?

Doug Martin: That's a good question. I don't know if it's a skill you developed or if you're born with it. I mean, I'm going to say it probably works its way into your system, I was not one that needed to be necessarily pushed, although my parents would say some mornings to get up and out of bed and go to the pool at five o'clock in the morning might have been an issue. But I was never an individual that had role models or people that I put above me because I didn't consider them to be above me. I considered them to be my equal. I just hadn't achieved what they had achieved yet. So I was always self-driven, always have been self-driven.
So I think if you start to focus on it, apply it, it will become natural like anything else. So maybe that's the answer. So yes, maybe it can be learned.
I learned mine at such a young age is just part of my DNA.

Susannah Steers: Well, do you think that it's a quality that's a prerequisite for elite performance in any sphere?

Doug Martin: I'm going to say 90% for sure. There's a percentage of athletes that are I'll say coach driven. So without a coach standing beside them, telling them what to do, when to do, how to do it, they may not achieve the level of excellence they did, but there are a high percentage that just it has to come from inside, and you have to know and be confident and be able to go about it and do it on your own. Someone standing beside you is not going to get you on the podium.

Susannah Steers: The other thing I'm always amazed about is the bonds that can form when people are working together toward a similar goal, especially when it's physically taxing and it demands so much of you. I still have dance friends with whom I don't share a lot now at this stage in my life, but we have strong bonds to this day. And I'm wondering if you have the same experience with your swimming colleagues.

Doug Martin: Well, most definitely, you know, and it's quite a few stoplights in the rear view mirror now for me of when I did compete with these guys and ladies.
And we get together and it's like we haven't been, you know, haven't been apart.
And a lot of us, the bonds that we have, they're very, very, very strong.
And some of us were together as little as a year, maybe two years, four years.
But when you're focused on a common goal, you're going through the same stuff.
I'll use that word. Day in, day out, you tend to build a really strong bond that together you...   I came from an era where to be successful, the team was very important, so the team is still important.

I just got back from the US Olympic swimming trials and met up with buddies from World's Pan Ams and Olympics. And I mean, we just had a ball down there.
It was an excuse for us to get back together. And one of the guys I hadn't seen in 50 years, that's how long it's been since I trained with them.

Susannah Steers: And does it feel like you saw them yesterday?

Doug Martin: Yes, always. It takes a few minutes to start to catch up and then we just fall right into our normal patterns and have a lot of fun together.

Susannah Steers: Having been at the Olympic trials, can you tell us what's happening? It sounds like there was some pretty impressive swimming down there. What can we expect coming into these games?

Doug Martin: Well, I've been out of swimming for a long time, but it was nice to get back and watch and see what's going on. But the women, US women, Canadian women and Australian women, are going to be doing some pretty good battle. Depending on which press outlet you listen to, the USA, their women are the best, the Canadians say that theirs are the best and the Australians say that they are. So someone is. So it's going to be really interesting to see which ones come at the top. But we've got some really good women coming on the scene.

Summer Macintosh is probably the one you'll hear the most about. And Kate Ledecky is the US one that is going to give a, Summer is going to give a run for her money.

Susannah Steers: Pretty exciting stuff. I can't wait to see. I'm going to have to check in to when exactly the swimming events are happening.

Doug Martin: Actually, it's actually a long session that you have to go through.
So these people I'm talking about are swimming over eight days, and they have to have peaked so that they can compete at a high performance level over those eight days.

Susannah Steers: That's always the thing that blows me away about events like that is you spend all this time training and all the...You know, you have to be at a certain point to do your best at each of those events. And as you say, sort of peaking at this moment so that your mental training, your physical training, hopefully you've organized your life so that there's no distractions in your world.
So you can show up and just be fully, completely there and do your absolute best.

Doug Martin: Yeah, you have to be there. You know, there are semi-finals, quarterfinals in some events, some events not. So you're either on or you're not.

Susannah Steers: Okay, I want to ask you one more swimming question because I see a difference, differences now in how athletes are trained in some ways than they used to be. And I'm wondering for you, when you were in the thick of all of the high performance pressure, was there ever a time when you thought that the cost to you, to your mental health, to your physical health, to your social life, I don't know, any of those things, was there a time when you thought the cost was higher than your body or mind wanted to pay to take your shot at the podium?

Doug Martin: There's always times where you wish you could do something else.
Like I didn't take up downhill skiing till I retired from swimming. I didn't take up skiing because if I had broken my leg skiing, my coach or my father or parents or mother would have broken my other leg in retaliation for the fact that they've gone through all this and then I'd screwed it up. You deal with it on a day-to-day basis.
It's what you do. You have to have your priorities. So you know you're going to have to get your sleep. You know you have to eat. You know you have to study.
You have to do all these things and you have to spend the time and prioritize, and it becomes part of your routine. Yeah, you give up a lot, but having said that, even the little goals that you achieve on the way, because it's a lot of little goals that go into building the big goal.

They reinforce your behaviors and your commitment, and you learn to do things like, as a dancer you would have done, you are injured, and you have to deal with a chronic injury while you are competing, and you have to deal with that level of pain while you are competing, because nobody goes, oh, isn't that too bad? We're gonna just let you walk up onto the podium because we know you should be there. That's not how it works.nSo you have to work through, and you are injured during a season at some point in time, at least once. And if it's chronic, you are dealing with an injury the whole time.

Susannah Steers: Well, it sounds like those are the kind of skills that translate into your life after your competitive career. And did you find that that was true?

Doug Martin: Yeah, the skills that you learn in sport definitely are transferable.
You know, your dedication, your focus, the amount of time you spend practicing or problem solving, because sport is problem solving. Something didn't work. How do I fix it?

So I am a very good fix it guy in my personal and business life and all those kinds of things, because they're just skills that you need and the dedication. And I'll reinforce focus, because there's a lot of things that can distract you from your goals. And the trick is, it's not that you can't spend some time on those things, but you've got to pull yourself back and be back on track very quickly.

You can't go off on a walkabout for a long period of time and hope that you're going to be able to come back and be at whatever goal it is you're trying to achieve, whether it be sport, personal or business.

Susannah Steers: Yeah, consistency of focus, I think, is really, really important.
So let's transition a little bit from your Olympic swimming. You know, what was the next step for you? After swimming, you leave, I'm sure there was some kind of dislocation from that kind of life to, as you said earlier, sort of being an ordinary guy in the world. What was next?

Doug Martin: I was probably luckier than some, because some people don't have their next goal set. I was already moving towards Plan B, so I had met my lovely wife at that point in time, and we were moving down that road. And it wasn't long after my Olympics that, we ended up getting married, but I also had my university career to complete, entering into the business world. So I've done a lot in the business world where you achieve a goal, you move on, you achieve a goal, move on. Because I was a problem solver in business.

So I worked for a while at a particular project. When it was fixed, I was bored.
It was time for the next project. So I moved from project to project to project and multiple jobs and things like that.

Susannah Steers: So the challenge is kind of exciting for you.

Doug Martin: I enjoy the challenge. The day-to-day maintaining is not as exciting as the build is.

Susannah Steers: Well, after all the intense training and all the activities and the stresses and the things in between, what does it feel like living in your body now, today?

Doug Martin: Well, I've probably paid the price of a lot of the things that I've done.
I've talked earlier about training injured. You know, my body now, the good thing is you become very attuned to your body.

So as you know, when I come and talk to you about my individual program, I say, here's what I want to work on, or here's what I think I need to work on, or here's what's bothering me and where.

I'm very attuned to my body now, and I work very hard on making sure that I can continue to do things that I wanna do. And I know that I have to do certain things.

So I guess that goes back to my training that says, if I wanna golf, if I wanna ski, if I wanna be active, my work environment at the cheese shop, I'm lifting, moving, cutting cheese, which sounds easy, but when it's a 70 block pound of cheese, it's maybe not that easy. So physically, I have to be in good shape, just like I was when I was swimming.

So I would say what I spend a lot of time now on is repairing past history, maintaining current strength, and focusing on building so that I can continue to do all the things that I really want to do for as long as I can.
Because I want to be active. Even my grandkids are showing up.
They'll already be here by the time this podcast airs, but I've got two young grandchildren that are going to have me running around in circles, I'm sure.
So I've got to be ready and prepared and in good condition for something that sounds as simple as that.

Susannah Steers: Well, are there particular stresses for you right now? Are there things that, like what are some of the biggest challenges that you face in your body and your movement these days?

Doug Martin: Well, a lot of, I mean, I do a lot of these things because they're a great reliever of stress. Like my music, for example, is a good reliever of stress.
So stress is something that's a constant. I don't care what it is you do, what you don't do.

So in my case right now, business-wise, thanks to COVID, people have changed their shopping habits. So that causes stress. How do you get them to start coming back and patronizing the small business owners like myself?

How do you get them to come back and keep coming back and get business back to usual? So that's a pressure that I deal with now and thanks to COVID on an ongoing basis.

So things that put me in a good mental state like Pilates, like music, the various sports I do are all great stress relievers. But again, back to Pilates and a few of the other things that I do because I do go to fitness trainers as well. To be able to handle and do all these things, you have to focus on your body.

Susannah Steers: Full disclosure, we met in the Pilates studio and in my experience, athletes and former athletes often come to Pilates when something has gone south for them physically or something's just not working and the things that they've always done to address them aren't working in quite the same way.
Is that what happened for you or did you embrace the idea right off the bat?

Doug Martin: I was dragged kicking and screaming by my wife into Pilates telling me how wonderful it was for her and how much I would enjoy it. And I finally relented and agreed to go. So you would have known that too when I walked in, it's like, oh, what are you gonna do for me, Susannah? Is this really? So I was just waiting to see how it worked. But so no, I wasn't someone that came running into you to say, geez, you need to work on this with me.

But through the initial assessment and as I started to work on things, then I started to work on all the things that my body's telling me needs to be worked on. So as you know, swimmers have terrible posture.We've really worked a lot on posture. Now, why is that? That doesn't sound like a big deal, but having said that, posture affects everything else. It affects your neck, your back, your arms, your shoulders, your hips. You know, it's all tied in.

Susannah Steers: You are speaking my language, my friend.

Doug Martin: I came to the realization very quickly that this would be a good thing. And hopefully, my wife doesn't watch this podcast and know that I'm saying that she did the right thing by saying it.

Susannah Steers: Well, it's funny because when I'm working with athletes, even ones who are currently competing, that's often what they realize. You know, I can't make a swimmer a swimmer. You have to swim to do that. That's a whole separate thing.

But what a really good Pilates and integrated movement program can do is help you be a better athlete by connecting all those dots and creating balances and working through barriers.

Even just something as simple as helping you survive the demands of your sport so that you can really start to know your body well enough to know when you can really push and blow the doors off, understand when the signals are telling you, oh, there's something I need to do something about and you need to pay attention. So I'm glad you found us because I just think Pilates is great for everybody.

Now, I want to know more about the cheese! I'm quite serious about what I said at the beginning. You know more about cheese than anyone I know, and somehow you make it really, really cool. What brought you into the world of cheese?

Doug Martin: Well, it was pretty simple from the standpoint - I was a customer for 10 years before I bought the cheese business. I liked the environment. I liked what the gentleman did with his customers because it's a very, I call it the cheers of cheese. You come in, everybody knows your name. I don't necessarily know your name, but I know your cheese. You certainly know about me. You know more about my family than anybody else needs to really know. I always had a love for cheese, but I was looking for a business that was fun, and this is a really fun business. And so when you're doing something that's fun and you love, then you just immerse yourself. And I guess that's my background from athletics as well.

I dove into, apologize for the pun, but into the world of cheese to learn as much as I could, traveled the world, visited cheesemongers, makers, multiple countries, and that's allowed me to be able to share those experiences.

I also like to cook. I like wine, all the things that go with cheese, so I can help people with recipes, I can help them with pairings, if they're doing parties, I can help them with that. And there's a lot of cheese out there, and not everybody is going to like every cheese, so a lot of my job is helping you figure out what's going to work for you.

Susannah Steers: On that, all my life, I thought I hated blue cheese. And then you introduced me to, I guess, kind of a starter version of a blue cheese that I actually really enjoyed, and it surprised the heck out of me, because I disliked blue cheese rather a lot, and now not so much.

Doug Martin: Well, a lot of it, your taste buds do change, but a lot of it is trying things, and that's another thing we do. As long as there isn't a line up out the door, if there's an opportunity to give someone a taste of something so that they can see how they like it, or at least explain what they don't or do like about it, then that allows me to kind of transition them into the next steps for them.

I'd like to take people outside of their normal little sandbox that they play in, but I don't want to push them out so far that they go, what were you thinking? I like to ease them into adjusting their taste habits. So, I mean, you'll be quite easy to move to much more aggressive blues over time, because once you get hooked on a blue, you'll just want more and more and different. So, and that's true with any cheese.

Doug Martin: So you have your storefront in North Vancouver. It sounds like you're doing some events outside of that as well, is that true? We're doing, we're trying out a number of things. I'm looking at, I've worked with people who have taken my cheeses and I've packaged them for them and they've marketed them on my behalf. I will do events.

I help people with their own events, but I recently just did a Friday ladies morning golf group and we did a wine and cheese pairing slash education evening with them.

Susannah Steers: Well, that's fun.

Doug Martin: You can get that across the counter, but we can also do some things where we go out. I recently did as well a Parmesan cracking.

Susannah Steers: Tell me more about that.

Doug Martin: That's you take a 70 pound or more piece of Parmesan and you have to crack it open like a block of wood. Now, what I did at this particular event, I know how to do this and I've done it multiple times. So I had the participants at the event, basically we're part of the cracking process. And when a piece of Parmesan opens up, and this one was over four years old, the aroma that fills the room, and then we opened it up. And as soon as it was opened, we were scraping out and giving people pieces to take and taste and pair with some wines that we had on hand.

Susannah Steers: That sounds really fun.

Doug Martin: Well, cheese is fun. It's a fun business. People that come into my shop are, generally speaking, always happy because you're picking up cheese because you're going to go to do something, whether it's a date night, a party, a wedding. I've done cheese wedding cakes.

Susannah Steers: Really?

Doug Martin: Cakes totally made from rounds of cheese stacked up. My daughter's was quite epic because of course she was the daughter of The Cheeseman. But I've done small ones, large ones, and that's a very European type of tradition, but you're starting to see it more in North America.

Susannah Steers: Where can we find you? I mean, your store is near the Capilano Mall in North Van.

Doug Martin: It's just south of the mall. I am on 991 West 3rd Street, and I look to the backside of the mall. It's definitely a destination shop, and it's a very small European style. Come in, get to know your Cheeseman, get to know the people you're standing in the shop with.

Susannah Steers: I really do recommend that you go and check out Doug's store. He'll greet you like an old friend and set you up with whatever you need.

As we close today, I'm thinking about a conversation I had a number of years ago with Peggy Baker, a Canadian modern dance icon. And I wondered how she kept going as a performer long after most of her contemporaries had moved on to other pursuits. She spoke about the various transitions that we go through in our lives, and how we really have to live each stage to the absolute fullest before moving on. Doug, I feel like you could have said those very same words in your own way. You've been in motion from the very beginning, and it doesn't look like you're slowing down any time soon.

Doug Martin: That's the plan.

Susannah Steers: Well, thanks so much for spending the time with me today. And I'll see you in the cheese shop or the Pilates studio.

Doug Martin: Let's plan on both.

Susannah Steers: Thanks so much, Doug. Bye-bye.

Doug Martin: Bye for now.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode.
Subscribe, and if you love what you heard, leave a five-star review, and tell people what you enjoyed most. Join me here again in a couple of weeks. For now, let's get moving.