Bruce Oldham Is Trying To Do It All

Malcolm Gladwell, a best-selling author, famously popularized the idea that it takes 10,000 hours of practice before an individual can reach "mastery" in one subject.

While humans average around 670,000 hours on Earth, few of us carve this time in such a hyper-focused manner. Netflix, work, friends, family, other distractions—without discipline, life dishes countless roadblocks. Some are beautiful and worth savoring. Others are a pain in the butt.

From afar, Canadian professional skier Bruce Oldham seems to have optimized this equation. He juggles an almost comical number of pursuits, including professional freeskiing, MMA, ultra running, stacking a social media audience to the tune of 100,000+ followers, and managing Slope Academy, his online ski coaching business.

For us more regular folk, each one of these endeavors would be a headlining event. Or, at the very least, a highly involved hobby. But Oldham isn't content staying in one lane.

To learn what makes Oldham tick and how he stays on top of everything, we gave him a call.

Bruce Oldham Q&A

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

It seems like you had a somewhat winding path to becoming a professional freeskier. What did that look like for you?

"As I grew up, I played hockey and other sports against all the really big kids. I was good but never good enough to take it to the next level. For some reason, out of all the friends that I skied with, I excelled at skiing a little bit faster.

I still wanted to keep skiing, but I ended up going to university, and I did two years. And in the meantime, during school, I was trying to ski and compete where I could, but I lived like four hours away from the mountain. And I was only able to go to one or two events a year. I was progressing pretty slowly.

I decided to put the university stuff on the back burner and just go head-first into park skiing again and try to see how far I could take it. And then over the next, like three, four years, I ended up, well, where I am now. I'm on the National Team, and I'm competing in the World Cups. I'm able to do it full-time, which is, you know, what I always dreamt of."

What's the endgame for you? Is it to go to the Olympics?

"I really enjoy skiing, but I also have a very competitive nature, and I really like to compete and perform under pressure. I think it's one of the most rewarding feelings. You ask anybody that competes in a freeskiing contest—any kind of contest, really—when the pressure's on and you know, you have to perform, and you actually perform, that feeling is really, really amazing.

I want to be at that top level and perform at that top level. Whether I'm the best skier ever, who knows? Whether I win the Olympics, who knows? Whether I just go to the Olympics? For me, I just want to see how far I can take it. And ideally, I'm ending up in those big events and performing on that international stage."

You also run an online coaching program. What's the deal there?

"When I left university and started skiing seriously, 100%, I was stuck doing construction every summer to make enough money to, like, barely, barely, barely squeak through the winter.

At this point, I had already gotten a pretty decent audience on Instagram and social media, and I was doing a lot of little tutorials and stuff on YouTube about how to do tricks on trampolines and stuff like that for skiing. I was getting like 50 to 60 questions a day about how to do tricks, and I was trying to answer all of them, and I physically could not answer everybody's questions in my DMs.

[Then] something just clicked… Why don't I work with a few people and really help them out, and really coach them, and also provide a little bit of income for myself during the winter?

When I started out skiing, and I learned all by myself, and I created a lot of bad habits with my tricks. I know it's freestyle skiing, but if you want to do a dub ten and hold your grab the whole way through, or you want to do a dub ten and work up to 14s, there are certain ways you want to set the trick to, you know, have it come around your feet cleaner.

So, providing access for people in those situations is really important to me. It's really nice to help out with that."

What inspired you to run 100 kilometers?

"I was looking for other things to do [in addition to skiing]. And, fitness-wise, I was always into that kind of stuff and pushing myself mentally and physically. The year before, I did a 50-kilometer run for Red Bull Wings for Life for spinal cord research. I was like, 'Okay, next year, I want to do something different. I want to do a 100k run.'

I've always found that when you're able to push through things like that and add that extra little bit of perseverance, it kind of adds to all aspects of your everyday life. And I think the only reason that I am where I am today is because I've stuck with it so long…"

And what about MMA?

"Obviously, my focus is still on skiing, but I really do love MMA. In the summers, it's really good for me to, like, switch things up.

[In university] I was kind of undisciplined. I wasn't super happy and stuff like that. And just kind of just going through the motions and doing whatever. I was watching a little bit of UFC back then. I was like, 'I feel like it would be cool to go check out the gym,'. For some reason, [when] I went there, it just clicked.

It brought back my motivation to take sports to the next level. I feel like it keeps me very, very grounded, on track, and disciplined. And then, obviously, I fell in love with it, and I just started training as much as possible."

Do you ever get burnt out from juggling all these things at the same time?

"If you want to build the biggest coaching program, you want to become the world's best freeskier, you want to have a really big social media audience—you cannot do all those things at once. I think I'm a little bit dumb because I mentally believe I can.

I'm also realistic enough to think, like, 'Okay, if I really, really wanted to be the best freeskier ever, I should be 100% focused on this.' But it's just not in my personality or in my nature. I think if I spent that much time on just one thing, I just wouldn't love it the same way I do.

I obviously get burnt out. I do have a really hard time trying to juggle and balance everything, but also, I'm at a point where I just don't know if I would have more fun if I just focused on one thing. I don't think I would. So I'm kind of just rolling with it and seeing where it takes me, picking up as many skills as I can. I'm learning a bunch of cool things and all the different aspects.

If I take more than two days off, which I don't normally do, I'm gonna be sitting on my couch twitching. I have way too much energy, I'm gonna need to put it somewhere."

Related: What's Next for Maggie Voisin?

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