Stay in the Water: Gabby Reece & Laird Hamilton Will Show You The Way

You know the quiet that shows up when the season ends. The practice block disappears. Nobody is keeping a stat sheet. The body still wants a job.

Gabby Reece and Laird Hamilton never treated that quiet as an ending. They treated it as a new beginning.

Gabby was the face of beach volleyball when the sport still had to argue for a seat. Six-three. Florida International. Four-time MVP of the four-woman Beach Volleyball League. Cover of Vogue. A career built on jumping, landing, and making the court look smaller than it was. Laird grew up on Kauai in a house without an indoor bathroom, grabbed rocks off the reef, ran the ocean floor on one breath, and spent a life taking waves most people only watch on a screen. Tow-in surfing. Water that does not care about your résumé.

They married in 1997. They raised daughters. They built a pool in Malibu that became a gym, a laboratory, and a gathering place for people who still wanted to be hard to quit on. Out of that pool came XPT — first Extreme Pool Training, then Extreme Performance Training — a system with three blunt words at the center.

Breathe. Move. Recover.

Two Careers That Kept Moving

Gabby has said her knees were her teachers. Injuries made her change the work instead of abandoning it. Volleyball tightens you. Age asks you to keep the power without collecting the whole bill. She still trains like someone who expects to jump. She just stopped pretending gravity was optional.

Laird has said this is not a career. It is a lifestyle. How you eat. How you sleep. How you meet discomfort on purpose so the ocean does not get the first vote. He is in his sixties and still treats the water as his arena.

They do not train the same way on land. Gabby has been clear about that. She is minutes and structure. He will go until the tank is empty. She has said she would be broken if she tried to live inside his land sessions. The pool is the overlap. No gravity. Real work. A joke they both use: the pool is big, and they are underwater.

That split is part of how they last. Respect the other person’s work. Share the water. Stay out of each other’s lane.

A Partnership Built on Strength, Not Sameness

They have three daughters in the picture — Izabella, Reece, and Brody Jo. They live between Malibu and Kauai. They run companies. They host athletes and civilians in the backyard and walk them from breathwork to ice.

The line they use on happiness is almost rude in its clarity.

“You go make yourself happy. I’ll go make myself happy. Then we can come together and work from there.”

Gabby has said nobody is coming on a white horse. Health is a one-person job. Then you show up for the other person on purpose: admire them, appreciate them, keep the desire in the room. Laird’s version of filling the tank is still a store called the ocean. Ride it far. Ride it big. Ride it fast. Her version is her own outlet — training, writing, a podcast that tries to take sharp science and leave people with one or two things they can actually do.

They play to their strengths. He does not pick the textures. She does not try to captain his wave. Land training is mostly separate. Ideas get shared after. The pool is shared because the water is what always has connected them.

That is useful for anyone who used to compete and have teammates. You do not have to grind in the same room any more. But, you have to respect the work the other person is doing. The arenas may have changed, but the connection does not.

The Company Built in the Deep End

XPT started as Laird’s offseason problem. He did not like lap swimming. He needed to rehearse being held down. A dream about rhythmic jumping in water, the way he had done as a kid, turned into weighted work on the bottom of the pool. Gabby was partner, editor, and the first person to tell him when a drill made sense for a body that still had to function tomorrow. Friends came. Rick Rubin became a regular. Moves got named. A one-handed squat press is a Reece, after a daughter who liked fetching weights off the floor at four. A Gabby is an underwater stretch with a single jump. A Rubin is a submerged jumping jack with a weight in each hand.

The system grew. Breath. Movement. Heat and ice. Then Fuel and Connect. They talk about the whole person — physical, emotional, relational, mental, spiritual. The claim is not that everyone should be an elite athlete, but that they can support their bodies like one. Adaptation is the job, and comfort is a lousy coach.

They took it on the road. Multi-day Experiences in Malibu, Kauai, Costa Rica. Pool, gym, trail, paddle, lectures on sleep and stress, then the barrel sauna and the ice. USA Volleyball’s men’s national team has done a day of it. So have operators, fighters, and people who simply wanted to see what they were made of when the air ran short.

Gabby also built HIGHX: land circuits with a group of women at 8:30 in the morning, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Weight, balance, cardio. She writes new sessions. Pros train next to 70-year-olds. Accountability is the product. You show up because someone is standing there waiting for you.

Laird Superfood came from a cup of coffee. He needed fat that would last on a long paddle. Coconut. MCTs. A creamer that did not taste like a science project. The company launched in 2015. Gabby is in the product from the first pass. They have said they only ship what they will drink. She has kept pushing clean labels and functional foods while the brand grew into greens, mushrooms, and a morning that is supposed to work as hard as the person holding the mug.

The businesses are not a souvenir of fame. They are the pool with a shipping label. Two athletes taking what kept them in the game and putting it where other people can reach it.

Breathe. Then Move. Then Recover.

XPT is not a random hard day. The order matters.

Breathe.

Performance breathing before the work. Down-regulate after. Gabby does 15 to 20 minutes of breathing after land sessions to start recovery on purpose. She wants nose breathing in the car and at the desk, not only on a mat. In the pool the lesson gets louder. You cannot fake calm at the bottom with a dumbbell. Soft jaw. Soft eyes. Seal the mouth. Move without turning the whole body into a fist. She has described the switch she likes in a deep-end jump: explode, then be gentle. The nervous system has to change gears that fast.

Laird’s version is blunter. Holding your breath on a couch is not the same as holding it with a wave on your head. The pool is the rehearsal. He has said thermoregulation is a muscle. Heat and ice train it. You get better in both directions.

Move.

Land for Gabby: Monday, Wednesday, Friday. HIGHX-style circuits. Change the menu so the body does not get a chance to adapt. Dumbbells, cables, push-ups, jumping, cleans. Three rounds. Short rest. She has used 10 to 12 exercises in an hour and a half when the week allows. Heavier foundational work on other days if the joints agree.

Pool for both: Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday in the ideal week. Weighted squats in the shallows. Dumbbell swims. Crawls across the bottom. Sink with a bell, push off, steal a breath, switch arms. Ballistic jumping without pounding the knees. Gabby has said she can get hundreds of jumps in the pool and her joints feel great. Compression. Lymphatics. Cardio without the sidewalk.

Do not freelance deep-end breath holds if you cannot swim well or you are alone. XPT built this with spotters and coaches for a reason. The land version of the same idea still counts: hard work, less wreckage.

Recover.

Sauna long enough to make you honest — workshops have used sessions around 15 minutes in serious heat — then ice for about three minutes. Repeat. Early write-ups described aggressive temperatures. You do not need those exact numbers to steal the principle. Heat. Cold. Breath you can control. Get out before pride creates an issue.

Laird sits in the ice like it is a meeting. Gabby has been filmed getting a hand into the tub. The point is not who looks tougher on a phone. The point is finishing the cycle.

Fuel.

Water with lemon and minerals before coffee. High-water foods. Protein and plants. The Superfood cup is their morning ritual made commercial. Gabby has said food is not the enemy. The enemy is the story that discipline only counts if it hurts.

A Week You Can Run Without Their Pool

This is not a copy of a four-hour Experience. It is the skeleton, cut for a former athlete with a job.

Monday / Wednesday / Friday — land, 45–60 minutes

* 5 minutes easy: walk, skip, shoulder circles.

* Circuit, 3 rounds, 40–50 seconds on / 20 off, or 8–12 reps:

* Goblet squat or sit-to-stand

* Push-up or elevated push-up

* Row (dumbbell, band, or table)

* Hip hinge: Romanian deadlift or good morning

* Carry or farmer hold, 20–40 seconds

* A jump you can own: squat jump to a low box, or a fast stand from a chair

* 10–15 minutes nose breathing on the floor. Slow exhale longer than the inhale.

Tuesday / Thursday — pool if you swim, or land substitute

Pool, with a partner, shallow end first:

* 8–10 weighted squat jumps, light bells

* Walk or jog widths

* Optional: sink-and-press in chest-deep water only

Land substitute:

* Bike or row 8 x 45 seconds hard / 75 easy

* Then 2 rounds of walking lunges and dead bugs

Saturday can be the same or a long walk plus easy swim.

After the hard days — heat and cold you actually have

* Hot shower or sauna, 8–15 minutes

* Cold plunge, cold shower, or outdoor water, 1–3 minutes

* Breathe through the first 30 seconds instead of bargaining

Daily

* Water before the first caffeine

* Protein at the first two meals

* One thing that is not training: a walk, a paddle, time with your people

One or two days can be truly hard. The rest should leave you able to live. Gabby has said it is not about killing yourself six days a week. Diverse work. Intelligent load. Train on the day you feel dangerous, even if the calendar says rest.

The Standard

Gabby and Laird could have become a photograph on a Malibu deck. Instead they kept putting weights on the bottom of a pool and inviting the next athlete in.

That is the job after the whistle. Not the old stat line. The willingness to adapt in public, and to turn a private practice into something the rest of us can use.

Your game never ended. It just moved into deeper water. Maybe it's your time to bring someone else along with you?

Five Lines Worth Keeping

1. “You go make yourself happy. I’ll go make myself happy. Then we can come together.” — Gabby Reece

2. “Nobody can make you happy. It’s still always a one-man job.” — Gabby Reece

3. “This isn’t a career, this is a lifestyle.” — Laird Hamilton

4. “My knees are my teachers.” — Gabby Reece

5. “Thermoregulation is the most energy-consuming process that you do. It’s a muscle.” — Laird Hamilton

Your Playbook

1. Keep a practice after the sport.

The pool, the circuit, the walk. Identity needs a calendar.

2. Separate the rooms that need separating.

Train together if it helps. Train apart if it keeps you sharp.

3. Make yourself usable, then show up.

Fill your own tank. Then be decent in the shared one.

4. Breathe on purpose.

Nose. Long exhale. Soft face when the work gets loud.

5. Choose work that does not wreck tomorrow.

Water, bikes, and honest weights beat heroic damage.

6. Recover like it is part of the session.

Heat. Cold. Sleep. The hour after is still training.

7. Change the circuit before the body gets bored.

Gabby rewrites the work. Copy that habit.

8. Do hard things with other people watching.

HIGHX works because someone is there at 8:30. Find that.

9. Eat for the day you have.

Fuel the paddle. Do not punish the kitchen.

10. Ask permission of the next chapter.

Prepare. Then participate. Hand what you learn to the next person in the water.