Speed Skater Jutta Leerdam had lots of fun on vacation with her sister

Dutch speed skater Jutta Leerdam is showing off some highlights from a vacation she shared with sister Merel Leerdam last year. Leerdam, 24, shared pictures of herself in crystal-clear waters, posing in a black one-piece swimsuit. "Some of my favorite pictures I didn't share of our sister trip last year ?," Jake Paul's girlfriend captioned a social media post.

Leerdam grew up playing sports, and treats it as a lifestyle. "I did a lot of different sports as a child," she says. "I played field hockey for eight years and did gymnastics. I had so much energy. My parents were like, 'just do your sports, we can't handle all your energy, then come home and be a little quieter!' I started speed skating because my dad really liked the sport. He wanted his children to be able to skate so we could all skate together in the winter. I really liked to see myself get better every time I went. That was the fun part for me. I enjoyed seeing my dad happy and proud of me, too."

Leerdam fuels her body with nutritious food, focusing on building her strength. "I have to be strong," she says. "I need to work on conditioning, flexibility and strength to be fast and explosive on the ice. This sport is a combination of every aspect of physical fitness. Flexibility, endurance, power. If all of those things are in balance, I feel fit. I used to struggle with being skinny. I wanted to LOOK fit. I was a perfectionist. I saw fat on me and I didn't want it. I didn't eat much and everything was super healthy. Now, I'm eating way more to perform. I use food to improve myself as an athlete, not just for looks."

Leerdam enjoys hitting the gym to build muscle. "I like weight training in the gym," she says. "I like lifting and seeing the progression every week. My least favorite training is inline skating. It is not comparable to long track ice skating. I don't like it, but I still do it. Everything I dislike makes me better as well… I played hockey for eight years. I enjoyed it, but I have never been a team player. I regularly had to sit on the reserve bench. The individual aspect of skating appeals to me."

Leerdam thrives under pressure, and uses it to push herself to the limit. "I always put a lot of pressure on myself, because I know that I perform very well through pressure," she says. "I'm used to it. For me, pressure or tension is not negative. Of course, I'm going for gold. I'm well on my way. It's going very well, and the upward trend is there."

Leerdam's mental approach to racing is that she is competing against herself, not others. "Every race I want to be the best," she says. "It doesn't matter who my competitors are. I'm always focused on getting better, improving my technique and getting stronger. That's the key thing. I don't focus on my competitor. I just focus on skating fast for myself. I end up in first place. That's just how it works. If I focused on other people, I wouldn't have come this far."

Link to story: https://bikininewsdaily.com/bnd/SpeedSkaterJuttaLeerdamh-4091