Track and field star Anna Hall is ready to give it her all at the 2024 Olympics, especially after she missed out on Tokyo 2020 due to a foot injury. Hall, 23, shared photos and reels of her current lifestyle and training regimen, including a very cute video of herself wearing green shorts and a white shirt, playing basketball in the sunshine. “Stacking weeks ❤️ ‘s just a matter of time ✍🏽,” she captioned the post. Here’s how Hall stays strong, positive, and focused.
Hall always drinks grape juice as a pre-competition ritual. “I feel like the way that I compete in a multi-event is a little bit unorthodox,” she told AP. “I’m bouncing around between every event and dancing. I’m trying to be loose and just trying to enjoy it.”
Hall learned to cook for herself after spending time at home with her mother during the pandemic lockdowns. “I’m actually very picky, so this year I’ve been working a lot on cooking more,” she told Georgia Dogs. “I cook foods that I like that are also good for recovery, like I eat a lot of salmon, just lots of protein, and I make sure I have some type of carb and some type of vegetable. My favorite meal is salmon, risotto, spinach and avocado. It’s easy, it’s good and it helps me recover a lot, so it’s something I have almost every week.”
Hall broke a bone in her foot right before Tokyo 2020, taking her out of the competition. “The injury was a really big inflection point in my career,” she told Olympics.com. “I honestly don’t think I would have done what I did last year had I not gotten injured. As much as it hurt and I was so upset and I cried for months and I felt so bad for myself, I really think, honestly, that was God’s way of showing me, ‘Okay, you need to change the way you’re looking at track.'”
Hall makes an effort to get enough sleep every night. “I have had to work on getting to bed early — I try to be in bed at 10:30 or 11 at the latest,” she told Georgia Dogs. “For some reason, at night I always think of the things I want to do the next day and I start trying to do them right then. But when my head hits the pillow I fall asleep so fast. I’m definitely exhausted at the end of most days but usually there’s something funny that happens to keep it light.”
Hall has faith in her future. “I think I’ve always had this weird internal belief in myself,” she told Olympics.com. “I don’t know where it came from because even when I was really little, I remember being like seven or eight and being like, ‘Yep, I’m going to the Olympics!’ Like, that’s just what I’m going to do. People asked about a Plan B, this and that. And I was like, ‘Nope! This is what I’m going to do.'”