In 2012, sprinter Carlin Isles, a track and football standout in college, was hoping to nab a spot on the U.S. Olympic track and field relay team. Just a couple weeks out from the qualifying trials, he was studying sprinting techniques online when he stumbled across some videos of a different sport: rugby. Since he knew that he’d probably never be the world’s fastest sprinter, he had an idea. What if he used his speed—what he calls both his “gift” and his “baby”—to become the world’s fastest rugby player instead? Bold, even for someone who once ran 100 meters in 10.13.

Now, almost a decade later, Isles has done exactly that. Better yet, he’s used his speed to score 202 tries (the rugby equivalent of a touchdown), the most all-time in 7v7 rugby. Now, he heads into this Summer Olympics in Tokyo as one of the star players on the U.S. men’s rugby team. (I highly recommend watching him run circles around exasperated opponents, as commentators laugh with disbelief.)

I recently spoke to him for the first episode of Smarter Better Faster Stronger, a new GQ Sports podcast about Olympians and their mental and physical preparation leading up to the Games. What most struck me about Isles might surprise you. Because though it’s easy to look at his jump from track to rugby and see uncommon confidence, what really fueled his success is something much more common: self-doubt.

In this week’s episode, Isles (who, in addition to being an Olympian, is a Red Bull athlete) talks about how he learned to channel his inner-critic to success in a new sport, and Tokyo in 2020. Here are a few of the tips he used to go from track hopeful to world’s fastest rugby player. Because hearing how he found his confidence just might help you find your own.

Trust the process

Isles still remembers losing his first track meet, when he was in seventh grade. 

“I cried,” he says. “I was like, Man, I thought I was fast. And I remember, I was like, I’ll never let these people beat me again.”

So he got on the internet and started reading articles about biomechanics and studying film of great sprinters like Maurice Green, Carl Lewis, and Justin Gatlin. If he came across terms he didn’t know—like “dorsiflexion”—he’d run down a track coach and ask. It began a lifetime of dedication to hard work and relentless self-betterment. “He’s always looking for that 1% edge,” says the U.S. men’s rugby strength and conditioning coach, John Hood.

Isles says that it’s this process that gives him his confidence, because it buoys him against the never ending internal chorus of self-doubt.

“You always got that little voice in your head, telling you, Are you good enough? Are you fast enough? Are you ready?” he says. “You gotta know how to channel those little voices and try to direct them and not let them direct you. For me, everything that I'm doing on a day-to-day basis is for me to shut that little voice up.”

If he doesn’t stick to his process, Isles says he’s going to hear it from those voices.

“They will hunt me, every freaking day,” he says. “That's why the process is very important. That's how I shut it up. Because when it's time to get on the line, I know that I've done everything I can.”

Ignore the “issue” 

Trusting the process requires sticking to it even on days when you don’t want to. Isles calls this keeping “the objective over the issue,” where the objective is a goal and the issue is any feeling, thought, or doubt that gets in the way.

“You work hard regardless of how you feel,” he says. “If you don't keep the objective over the issue, the issue will always derail you, and then you never get to your destination… So you do regardless of how you feel. If you can do that, and understand that, the outcome will always be in your favor.”

This doesn’t just apply on a micro scale, to pushing through uncomfortable training sessions. It applies on a macro scale. For instance, Isles always wanted to go to the Olympics—he just always assumed he’d get there through track. Did he ever imagine he’d do it through rugby? “Hell no, never, never, never,” he says.

But when he stumbled across videos of rugby in 2012, he saw another way to achieve his same objective.

“Everything that I envisioned and wanted came true, plus more,” he says. “I still wanted to go to the Olympics—and I was still able to get to the Olympics! That was my main thing, but I was just doing it in a different sport.”

Relax to move fast

We don’t often think of sprinters as being particularly relaxed. After all, they’re straining to go as fast as they can. But Isles says that a big part of hitting your top-end speed involves not tensing up.

“A fast muscle’s a relaxed muscle,” says Isles. “Most people try to do more and push harder. You’re slowing yourself down… Let your body do what it naturally can and just relax and let it just take you.”

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Hood, Isles’s coach, likens this to running away from a bear.

“You're not thinking about how you're running and you're probably not even thinking about the bear,” says Hood. “You're just trying to think about getting from A to B as quickly as possible, getting up a tree… so the best way to do it is just to let it all go, shut it down in terms of thinking about the process of doing it and just flow. Just let it be.”

Isles says that in life and in running fast—on the track or on the field—sometimes you just need to get out of your own way.

“Sometimes you gotta sit back and just relax,” said Isles. “When you try to force stuff, you will restrict yourself from a lot of things. And sometimes you just gotta let it be. And then stuff will unfold.”

Obviously, Isles didn’t relax his way into rugby success. But he did have to leave himself open to a different path—and not try to force his track dreams—in order to make himself into the world’s fastest rugby player. It took incredible talent and speed, but it also took the mental strength to try something new and to keep his self-doubt from slowing him.

“You gotta know how to juggle [the mind],” he says. “You gotta know what it needs and to shut it off and be like, You know what? You prepared enough. You're good.”

Listen to Smarter Better Faster Stronger……on Apple …on Spotify…on Stitcher…or wherever you listen to podcasts.Read MoreWe're Launching a Podcast About How Athletes Become Winners

Hear how Olympians develop gold-medal mindsets—and come away with advice you can use.

By Clay Skipper

Clay Skipper is a Staff Writer at GQ.XInstagramRelated Stories for GQOlympicsSmarter Better Faster StrongerPodcastsRugby