This story is part two of Men's Health's "Road to the Olympics" series, where six athletes share their training journeys as they prepare to compete at the 2024 Paris Olympics in July. Read all of the athletes' entries here.
When he was 11 months old, Steve Serio underwent surgery to remove a tumor in his spinal cord, leaving him paralyzed. At the age of 14, he took up wheelchair basketball and went on to play for the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign then later professionally in Germany for several years.
Now, at 36, he's been co-captain of the USA Men's National Wheelchair Basketball team for the past two Paralympic summers. He helped lead the team to its gold medal in Rio 2016 and then again in Tokyo 2020 He's now heading into his fifth Paralympics in search of his third consecutive gold—a feat never done (yet!) by a wheelchair basketball team. Last time we talked to him, he was headed for Colorado Springs for Training Camp. We caught up with him again in early June to see how he's getting into the groove with his new teammates and what he's looking forward to as the games approach.
TRAINING IS GOING fantastic right now. We've had the first couple of training camps in Colorado. They're filled with the growing pains of a new team, which is pretty common when you get a different group together. Usually we wake up and train first thing in the morning, which allows us to get our minds right and get us focused on why we're there. We're on the court for about two to three hours, then we'll have a big break in the middle of the day for lunch, recovery, hitting the weight room, etc. After that, we get back together around 2 p.m., where we have another three-hour session. We'll break for dinner, and then have some kind of team meeting afterwards. Specialists will come in during that time, like sports psychologists or nutritionists.
It's cool because even after doing this for so many years, you still learn something different from the coaches and specialists every single time. There are always hints or different techniques to take away from each person that you work with. My psychologist has helped me deal with things in my everyday life, as well as in sport. When you're an athlete, you're living in a world that is filled with uncertainty. You're going into a hostile environment. You're in a high-pressure situation, and you're expected to perform in that moment and you only have one chance to do it. The mental health work that we do as Team USA athletes is all geared around getting us ready for that environment. It's getting us ready to deal with uncertainty, and on focusing on the things that we can control.
It's also taught me how to communicate, which carries into all aspects of my life. So yeah, I'm always learning something new from the specialists we see. That being said, I'm pretty certain that I could give the anti-doping presentation at this point, I know the PowerPoint so well.
We're headed to Charlotte for our first friendly competition of the summer against Team Australia tomorrow. So we'll play the Aussies about four times in the next couple of days, and it's going to be the first real step forward for us as a group. Hopefully that helps us come together as a team. We have people in different parts of their career—we have people who have never played together and then we have a group of athletes that have played together for the last decade. We're asking rookies to understand high levels of the game, and we're asking veterans to slow down. We have to get all 12 athletes on the same page.
Whenever you put a a new team together, they're gonna need time on the field of play to just gel. Part of the coach's responsibility is to put us in positions where we're not always so comfortable, so that we do fail and learn from them. That's what the first camps are kind of always about: understanding where you fit in with the team, and understanding where others fit into the team. Being on the team for several years, I have a little bit more perspective to not get so frustrated if if things aren't going so well and I don't get so high if things are going well.
For my personal training, I'm finally back to normal after my shoulder injury a few months ago. I'm basically back to 100 percent. The challenge now is getting over that mental hurdle of understanding that it is 100 percent, and that I don't need to protect it anymore. It's a bit of a mental juggling act.
As a veteran, I'm just making sure that I'm the best example of what "success" means for some of the younger guys. It's kind of a balancing act to try to be a resource for them, but also make sure I'm focusing enough on my personal training and ensuring I'm at 100 percent, too.
Going into these friendly competitions, the main priority we always have is to build a winning culture. We don't go into any of these practice games expecting to lose. We don't care if it's going against one of the best teams in the world. We are expecting to win. The second priority is to use this an an opportunity to run through every single lineup, every single combination of five players that we have. That way we gather information on what's working and what's not, and we have teachable opportunities for these athletes.
Want to follow more Olympians' journeys? Click below to read about their training methods, wellness routines, and more.
