Sunday Routine with Coach Richard James

A Former Olympian Makes His Transition Into Coaching

VIA POLY PREP COMMUNICATIONS

A Former Olympian Makes His Transition Into Coaching

10 questions with Coach James about his typical Sunday routine:

What time do you wake up?

“On Sunday mornings, I normally wake up right around 5:30.”

What do you usually eat for breakfast?

“My breakfast can be anywhere between just pure fruits and greens — like spinach — or we can do a Caribbean breakfast and a Caribbean breakfast would be something like plantains, saltfish, orcas, fried dumplings.

What do you eat for lunch?

“My lunch is normally non-existent because I drink sea moss. Sea moss is an aquatic vegetable. It has 94 minerals out of the one hundred and four that we need for our body, and it’s something that I’ve been drinking since I was a kid. It’s one of the foods that actually helps balance my body.”

What are some things you have to do every Sunday?
“Every Sunday, I wake up at 5:30 in the morning; I lay down with my wife for about half an hour and we talk. During the winter, we try to get out to see the sun before it rises and as we get closer to the spring, because the sun is rising a bit earlier in the morning, we often just hop in the car and drive to Floyd Bennett Field to watch the sunrise. So every Sunday morning, it’s my routine to watch the sun rise out in Floyd Bennett Field. After we watch the sunrise, we take a drive to the market and we purchase food that we need for the week and my weekly food list would be fish, beef, chicken, plantains, Jamaican yams, greens — spinach, green onions, avocado — apples, mangos, ginger, turmeric, spirulina, and sea moss.”

Who do you spend time with on Sundays?
“On Sundays, I spend time with my family: my wife, my daughter Lauren, my son Jordan. We just basically get on each other’s nerves for the entire Sunday.”

What do you eat for dinner?
“Dinner is always a traditional meal, so it’s red beans with rice cooked in coconut milk, and it’s either fish, chicken, beef, or some type of green-leafed vegetable as a Jamaican dinner. Our drink is usually lemonade, ginger beer, or coconut water.”

What do you like about Sundays?
“Sundays are the beginning of the week and it just gets my mind right because it is the day that I spend the most time with my family and the day that I get to prep for the week.”

What’s one thing you like to do every night before you go to bed?
“The thing that I absolutely have to do every night before I go to bed is my breathing routine. My breathing routine is just basically a four-second inhalation breath. I hold for four seconds, and I exhale for four seconds. This breathing routine helps to reduce my stress level and puts me straight to bed. In America, we often times don’t pay attention to the present and breathing forces you to pay attention to the present, it forces you to listen to your heart rate, listen to your heartbeat, listen to the air coming into your lungs and listen to the air coming out — it forces you to feel your diaphragm, feel your stomach, as it raises and comes back down and if you do it the right way, you can actually feel your body wind down into happiness.”

What time do you go to bed?
“I go to bed at 10:30 p.m.”