Olympic Gold Medalist Missy Franklin On Caring For Her Body In Retirement

Five-time Olympic gold medalist and world champion swimmer Missy Franklin may be retired, but she's still holding court at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris—this time as a correspondent. Joining a roster of Olympic superstars like Allyson Felix, Kerri Walsh Jennings, Shawn Johnson East, and Katie Hoff, Franklin is serving as Yahoo Sports' swimming correspondent during The Games.

This is a very welcome return. 

After retiring from the sport in 2018, Franklin kept busy with a variety of projects—both personal and professional, in the spotlight and not. Through her podcast Unfiltered Waters with fellow swimmer Hoff, she talks with fellow elite athletes about their journeys and untold stories. She became a mom in 2021 to a now 3-year-old daughter. She also became an advocate for kidney health and autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD), a genetic disease that runs in her family. 

"My grandfather had it. My dad is one of four, and three of his siblings had it. All of them have undergone kidney transplants," she told me. "Clearly, it affected our family."

Missy Franklin: On a personal level, watching my dad go through it was challenging. Watching his health and quality of life decline affected me. We got to a point back in 2021 where we needed to reach out for a living donor transplant. He was on the organ transplant list—but for the kidney and liver in the U.S., that could be four years or more to get those organs. So we knew it was either dialysis or finding a living donor. 

We had been pretty private about it up until that point—out of respect for my dad—but we were desperate. My mom put a post on Facebook, shared what we had been going through and what my dad needed. 

And we had several people—by the grace of God and through the kindness of their hearts—go through the process to see if they were a match. But they weren't a match for this or that reason. And then we got the call in early 2022 that we had a match!

We found out a few days before the surgery that match was actually a fellow Olympic gold medalist in swimming, Crissy Perham. We had never met her before; she just heard our story, and out of the goodness of her heart, she felt called to do it. She ended up being a perfect match for my dad. The first time they met was when they were getting rolled back for surgery. 

Franklin: It's also been very eye opening to the world of genetic disease, as well as the importance of living organ donation. 

A lot of the work that I'm doing with Otsuka America Pharmaceutical Inc. now is just trying to bring awareness to ADPKD but also genetic and hereditary diseases in general. I want to highlight the importance of health history conversations. 

We know it can be really hard to have those conversations with family—it's really not the most fun thing to talk about—but we know how important it is for early detection and putting a good plan in place with your health care providers. 

Franklin: It starts with just creating a safe place. So, having the conversation somewhere where you know that everyone is going to feel very comfortable. And then it's just about approaching it with so much love and grace for yourself and for the people that are around you.

Franklin: Just always making sure that you're staying in open communication with your health care provider: looking out for signs and being aware of what's going on in your body. 

I think the big thing for me is that we live in a culture where we're expected to tough it out a lot of the time. So something might be happening in your body that doesn't feel right, and yet, you just have that mindset of like, oh, I'll be fine. That's something I really hope that we can move away from. 

The number one thing we should be considering with the most amount of seriousness is our health, right? So if there's something that feels wrong, try not to push it aside—but instead seek the help you need. 

Franklin: I started a podcast with my fellow Olympic teammate Katie Hoff called Unfiltered Waters, and we've been doing a ton of work, having amazing conversations with incredible athletes and a lot of Olympians. That just put us on the radar.

We got reached out to by Yahoo Sports that asked if we'd be interested in being correspondents for pre-Olympic trials, Olympic trials, and Paris this summer. So Katie and I are both absolutely overjoyed. The list of women that are there with us as correspondents is absolutely ridiculous: Allyson Felix, Kerri Walsh Jennings, Shawn Johnson East. So to be included in that group is just such an honor.

Franklin: I think a lot of people have really recognized the importance of protein. I love protein. It just makes me feel so strong. And I'm really focused on strength training right now. So, to support all the hard work I'm doing in the weight room, I need protein. It's not one size fits all, but I've found that what works really well for me is high protein and high fat. I also make sure that I'm getting the carbohydrates I need to stay energized and refueled as well. 

I also love veggies more than anything. So I also eat tons of veggies. My favorites are just like raw veggie salads, like a Greek salad with peppers, tomatoes, onion, cucumber, and my homemade dressings.

Franklin: Sleep is critical. I also think it's interesting that our understanding of sleep needs is evolving. For example, we're now realizing that all the past sleep studies have told us that eight hours is optimal—but they've all been done on men. Now, we realize that women need more1—it's actually more like nine to 10. I think it's great that we're now realizing we probably need more sleep than we are getting.

The second thing I'd say is to use sleep aid tools. If you're coming up on something big, you may have some anxiety and a hard time sleeping. But don't be afraid to use tools to help you.

I absolutely love this company called Dream Recovery. They have an amazing sleep mask and mouth tape. Mouth taping not only helps me sleep, but it gives me a better quality of sleep—the difference in my sleep score when I'm mouth taping versus when I'm not is significant. 

Franklin: I recently discovered a franchise called Burn Boot Camp. I'm obsessed.

Every day it's a different protocol, but it's a mix between strength training and conditioning days. It's one of the best communities I've ever been a part of. And that's what's made it so special for me. Ever since I retired, I've just so missed that feeling of teamwork and camaraderie. And I found it here. 

Franklin: I think there's a lot of good qualities that go into a teammate, but I think one of the biggest ones is recognizing that attitudes are contagious. So, which attitude are you spreading? What attitude do you want to be known for spreading?

This is, by no means, to imply that you need to walk on, in my case, the pool deck every day being happy and positive and bubbly—because the truth is we're humans, and that's not how we're going to feel every day. But it just means even on the days where you don't feel like that, that you are still showing up as a good teammate to the people that are around you. You're still being encouraging and motivating.

It's about accepting people for exactly how they are that day and accepting yourself for how you are that day but knowing that you still have a responsibility as a teammate to uplift. 

Franklin: It's just such a fun time to be a woman in sports, right? It's such an amazing time to be raising a daughter and to see all the incredible role models that she's going to have growing up.