Biohacker

THE LANDING WAS worse than it looked, and it looked pretty bad. 

“This is the dive I’m best known for,” Jordan Greenberg said, searching for a video on his phone.

At a summer diving camp, 13-year-old Greenberg leaped off the three-meter springboard with the intention of completing a front 3 ½. He only got to 3 ¼ before crash-landing with a glorious belly flop.

“It can’t get much worse than that,” Greenberg said. 

The carnage: Two black eyes, bruises over the front of his body, and a numb face. A funny thing about that dive … it didn’t deter him. Rather, he was invigorated.

“It was fantastic,” he said. 

Greenberg practiced the dive over and over until he built enough confidence to make it a personal trademark.  

“Dives with a high degree of difficulty were always the ones I loved doing,” he said. “If I had to decide between doing an easier dive with a lower degree of difficulty and nailing it, versus doing a really hard one and not doing it as well … I always would go for the challenge.”

Greenberg follows a similar approach today, emerging as a leader on the Stanford swim team and conference scorer in the 50-yard freestyle, and a would-be Stanford teacher. 

This uncertain time delayed Greenberg from being the rare undergraduate to teach a class at Stanford. The spring quarter was to mark his debut as a Stanford instructor. Now, the plan is to do so in the spring of 2021, during his senior year. 

Stanford offers the option for student initiated courses, where students can create their own classes. Few take the school up on it, but Greenberg saw a need and worked to make it happen.  

First, about Greenberg: Health is his No. 1 priority. Not academics, not swimming, not social life. That doesn’t mean those things are unimportant, but Greenberg reasons that all those secondary priorities will fall into place if he takes care of the first. His proof is a 3.48 GPA as a product design major with an interest in computer science and artificial intelligence, and continued improvement in the pool.

It’s clear few of his classmates feel the same way about their priorities. Greenberg sees bad habits that compromise health, like staying awake into the morning hours to finish homework. The pressure to do the same rubs off on others. It becomes almost boastful, like a rite of passage.

“When you spend a lot of time with people like that, you become one of those people,” Greenberg said. “I started staying up later than usual until I decided, There’s no way I’m doing this. No sir. Now, I see going to bed at 9:30 as a different kind of bragging. Look at me, I can just sleep.”

Greenberg wants to present the tools and knowledge to change patterns and improve health and well-being. The result is MED 17SI: Biohacking.

BLISSFULLY UNAWARE OF the kickboard scandal, Dan Schemmel and Neil Caskey were on the staff at Wisconsin when they began recruiting Greenberg, putting trust in Lundsten’s recommendation and judgment.

“We knew he was a great athlete,” Schemmel said. And he’s right. Greenberg is something of a physical specimen – heavily muscled with washboard-plus abs, a byproduct of the core work he first developed in his gymnastics days. And only 5.5 percent body fat. 

“It’s nothing more than just making good decisions -- eating healthy and getting enough sleep,” Greenberg said. “If you can do the basic stuff really well, everything else will take care of itself. I’ve always been conscious about my health, and over the years I’ve noticed that the biggest changes are from those boring, simple decisions that many overlook.”

As for Schemmel’s interest, “To get Kate’s blessing meant a lot to us,” he said. “She has great perspective not only on someone’s general character, but the leadership qualities they’re going to bring to a team, and who they’re going to be as a teammate. 

“That was a big movement we were trying to make at Wisconsin, trying to recruit guys who were not only talented, but were going to add to the overall culture and bring in high character. That’s why we were going after Jordan as much as we were.”

Greenberg didn’t choose Wisconsin. But after two years at Stanford under coach Ted Knapp, Greenberg finally was united when Schemmel was hired as the Cardinal’s Goldman Family Director of Men’s Swimming in May 2019, and brought Caskey as an assistant coach.

Greenberg won junior national championships on Aquajets relay teams, but at Stanford, he wasn’t used to the heavy aerobic work. He was so fatigued from the swimming volume and weight training that he rarely had enough left to truly push himself as a sprinter.  

“My teammates would literally swim circles around me,” Greenberg said. “The training was so much different from what I was used to, and it was overwhelming to be a small fish in a big pond. But, fortunately, that’s a position that offers the most growth. 

“To be on a team with so many high-profile athletes, it’s made me see my role as one driven by character and attitude as opposed to how many points I can score. Every day I wake up, go to the pool, get kicked in the face, and go to bed knowing that I have to wake up and do it all over again the next day. 

“That’s shaped me as a person, and now I look forward to the pain and adversity that comes from striving to improve in such a grueling sport.”

Adversity included a torn labrum and rotator cuff among other shoulder issues. Reviewing Greenberg's collegiate career, Schemmel vows he will dial back Greenberg’s training and concentrate more on speed. 

Greenberg is eager for the change. Even so, he never has questioned his training or his effort. 

“He did just about everything that he could have for us this year,” Schemmel said. “We really couldn’t have asked for anything more.”

STANFORD’S TOP FREESTYLE sprinter left at midseason to return to his home country in an effort to make the Olympics. Schemmel gathered his remaining sprinters and challenged them: We need someone to step up. Will it be you?

Tuesdays hurt. That’s the day of kick sets – brutal repeats of 300-meters or 200s or 100s with a hip-driven stroke. As the pace grows faster, the rest is shorter, to the point where only a handful of seconds separate one excruciating interval from the next. 

“You’re going to the point of failure,” Greenberg said. “Some of those Tuesday afternoons were the worst pain I’ve ever experienced.”

The madness of one mid-November Tuesday was seven 100s, followed by five more, and then three – dropping the time five seconds for each set. As Greenberg clawed furiously to the wall on the final set, Schemmel and Caskey crouched over his lane. 

“You got this! Two more!”

“I’d just push off and try again,” Greenberg said. “Giving it my all, with them screaming in my face … just getting all this energy from them. I was barely able to make it, but I made it. On the last couple of hundreds, I felt like I was about to vomit or pass out. Or both. Or sink.

“I’m not the best kicker, and my times were not nearly the fastest on the team. But to see them smiling and wide-eyed when it was done … it makes all the pain very much worth it, for sure.”

Schemmel expected a breakthrough from Greenberg and got it at the Pac-12 Championships. Not only did Greenberg swim on ‘A’ level relay teams for the first time in the conference meet -- placing fourth in the 200-yard free relay -- but he clocked a huge personal record of 19.73 in the 50 free for 12th overall.

“Definitely one of our breakout swims of the meet,” Schemmel said. “Everyone knew it was a long time coming, seeing how hard he worked and seeing how much he had put into making himself better.”

As Schemmel envisioned years before, Greenberg became a role model to his teammates. 

“In just a few years, Jordan transitioned from being a bottom dog into a vital part of our relays and he’s going to be a massive component next year,” senior Grant Shoults said. “If it weren’t for Jordan’s desire and mental toughness to get better, and his endless attempts to gather new information to get better, Jordan would not be the swimmer he is today.

“Jordan is simply a very good guy. You can talk to him about anything for hours and forget about time. His consistent moral compass is ideal in terms of what swimmers aspire to be and what it takes to lead in the pool and in life.”

Shoults endured a difficult 2018-19 season, suffering a shoulder injury that kept him out of the water and undergoing a personal crisis that turned his world upside down. Shoults had his doubts whether he’d ever swim again, and that was the least of his worries. 

But on March 5, 2020, Shoults won the 500 freestyle at the Pac-12 Championships by 0.32 of a second.

At the conclusion of the medal ceremony in Federal Way, Washington, Shoults descended from the podium and walked toward his team. The first person to greet him was Greenberg. Shoults broke down.

Having been by Shoults’ side through the worst of it, Greenberg told him, “That was a tough turnaround, but you’re the toughest man I know.”

Shoults still cherishes that moment. 

“I was doing my best not to make a scene on the pool deck,” Shoults said. “However it was only fitting that Jordan was the first face I saw and probably the guy that was most familiar with my struggles. I know that he was genuinely so happy for what I had just accomplished and in that moment I was just so grateful for him being by my side the entire time.”