Latest / The MindSets Podcast / Episode 45 - Mountain Highs and Mental Lows: Extreme Sport and Entrepreneurship with Toby Simmons

Transcript

Episode 45 - Mountain Highs and Mental Lows: Extreme Sport and Entrepreneurship with Toby Simmons · The MindSets Podcast

• 0:07
  Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Mindsets
• 0:10
  Podcast. I'm your host, Angus Cook, and
• 0:12
  we are here on episode 45. Now, we're not slowing down with
• 0:18
  cool and interesting guests. And I sort of know this person.
• 0:21
  If you'd asked me before today, before I thought about it too,
• 0:23
  DPI would have said, yeah, I know Toby, but I'm going to let
• 0:26
  him introduce himself and I'm going to kind of get into how I
• 0:28
  sort of know him take over. Yeah, So my name's Toby.
• 0:32
  I'm a hybrid athlete if you will, not one of the high rocks
• 0:35
  types, one of the proper ones. I have worked overseas for many,
• 0:39
  many years until COVID happened more recently, sort of a newly
• 0:43
  sworn in triathlete of my first half and four Iron Man's this
• 0:46
  year and now taking on random challenges.
• 0:49
  And I'm about to sink everything I've got into my absolute dream
• 0:52
  business, which I'm launching just a couple of days after we
• 0:55
  filmed this episode of a man who loves to do weird stuff and sort
• 0:59
  of challenge myself to things very impromptu.
• 1:01
  And sometimes I regret it, but a lot of the time it comes with a
• 1:03
  cool story, so. I love that and that, and that's
• 1:06
  why I think this is going to be a particularly interesting
• 1:07
  episode. Now, before we dive into all of
• 1:09
  that, which would be the normal thing to do on most podcasts, we
• 1:13
  actually don't bother with that. We're going to go in with show
• 1:15
  and tell. So for showing, show and tell is
• 1:17
  a section which most people won't recognize because it's
• 1:19
  something I did when I was younger in school, thought it
• 1:21
  was really cool. But you basically bring bring
• 1:23
  something in from home to talk about and tell all your friends
• 1:25
  about. And I like doing it on the
• 1:27
  podcast because I like seeing what weird and wacky things
• 1:29
  people bring and want to talk about.
• 1:30
  So what have you brought with you today?
• 1:32
  I think. You're going to like this one
• 1:33
  given how we met back in 2016, so.
• 1:36
  Looking forward to it. What I've brought with me is a
• 1:38
  picture. So when we worked for the same
• 1:41
  company back in 2016 in the Alps, I went and worked for that
• 1:44
  company again a couple of years ago now.
• 1:47
  I gained the nickname of Tony from one of my best friends when
• 1:52
  I was working for another company overseas because he knew
• 1:54
  that I got irate about the fact that people would then call me
• 1:56
  Tony for their entire holiday. I that just then developed into
• 2:02
  Shetland Tony because I'm not the tallest man in the world.
• 2:05
  So this is a picture from my team when I left the company we
• 2:08
  used to work for where they. So I guess this this is a
• 2:17
  podcast, so I will do an audio description if anyone that's
• 2:20
  watching on YouTube and you can find it at Mindsets under score
• 2:23
  podcast. I'm trying to hold up the photo
• 2:25
  where you can kind of see it, but in hold on this corner.
• 2:28
  So in the bottom left hand corner, we have what kind of
• 2:32
  looks like a Shet Lamboni off I think one of those ad.
• 2:34
  I can't remember the advert. It's off like a butter advert.
• 2:37
  Yeah, something like that. And it's got Toby's face on it.
• 2:40
  Yeah, they were at Brighton. I don't know if you were there.
• 2:43
  Yeah, we were based in Brighton, but I I got the nickname of
• 2:47
  Shetland Tony, which ran for a good few months.
• 2:49
  So in true for my my going away present was a picture of me as a
• 2:52
  Shetland pony with the whole team and a case of beer.
• 2:55
  I mean, it's not the nicest nickname if they've given you
• 2:59
  like a photo to take. It's lucky I've got a good sense
• 3:00
  of humour because I reckon, yeah, I'd be upset if I didn't
• 3:04
  have a good sense. I know there's a lot of people
• 3:05
  who couldn't take that joke, but yeah, I thought it was quite.
• 3:07
  Funny interestingly, and this will kind of join into where we
• 3:11
  met each other, give that back to you.
• 3:13
  When I finished working for that company myself, the other people
• 3:17
  that I was working with also gave me something where my face
• 3:20
  was photoshopped into it. I also fortunately have a a
• 3:22
  sense of humour, but it was a calendar of me with someone else
• 3:26
  through the months of the year and it was deeply embarrassing.
• 3:29
  And there was some specific dates that were put on there
• 3:31
  that I don't want to talk about or bring up.
• 3:33
  They were quite funny based on things that happen with that
• 3:36
  group of people. So let me give some more context
• 3:38
  in this rather than speaking like a weirdo for the rest of
• 3:40
  the episode. Essentially, when I was I think
• 3:45
  like 16, I decided I'm doing a ski season when I'm old enough
• 3:50
  to, so I went ahead and finished sixth form.
• 3:53
  Didn't make into the university I wanted to, so I had to take
• 3:56
  you out here. Anyway.
• 3:57
  Perfectly lined up for me to go and do a ski season.
• 3:59
  Found myself out in the French Alps and within the first week
• 4:03
  of being out there I was essentially a hotel bitch.
• 4:07
  I cleaned up around other people and looked after people that
• 4:11
  came out on their school holidays or whatever.
• 4:14
  And then I met Toby, who was the way that I I first met him was
• 4:18
  similar to now. Had a pretty cool set of shades
• 4:20
  on his head, walked in, clearly knew what he was doing when it
• 4:23
  came to skiing. He was the head ski tech if I'm
• 4:26
  not. Mistake you were?
• 4:26
  Yeah. Good.
• 4:27
  Yeah, good. Memory and immediately I was
• 4:29
  like OK cool, so I need to be a ski tech by the end of the
• 4:31
  season. Yes.
• 4:32
  And it didn't take me long to do the online course.
• 4:34
  That took about, I think, 20 minutes. 4 minutes and I gave
• 4:37
  the answer to everyone. Yeah, so I was really good at
• 4:39
  it. And then I became a ski tech and
• 4:41
  that's pretty much How I Met Toby.
• 4:43
  And then we ran into each other obviously a few more times
• 4:46
  throughout the season. And all I really remember is the
• 4:51
  times that you drop in and then I'd see all your stuff on social
• 4:53
  media of you doing some insane, like, freestyle tricks.
• 4:57
  And yeah, you had this also, like, Man of Mystery, but you
• 5:01
  were sick of skiing. A lot of people in a lot of the
• 5:04
  resorts wanted to be you and. Here we are.
• 5:07
  Here we are now I've managed to get you back onto the There's so
• 5:11
  much stuff has happened. We've gone full circle.
• 5:13
  So that is my side of knowing Toby.
• 5:16
  There's a lot that happened before that I imagine, and
• 5:19
  there's a lot that happened after that.
• 5:20
  So we're going to try and fill those gaps in and bring everyone
• 5:22
  else along with us along the way for sure.
• 5:24
  So you didn't start in the Alps, you started in the Uki can tell
• 5:28
  by your accent. So where did sport all sport all
• 5:31
  start for you? So I think like most people,
• 5:35
  it's football and rugby, you know, back in the day.
• 5:37
  But I got swiftly taken off a football pitch because all I, I
• 5:40
  got red carded every game like aged 9/10/11.
• 5:44
  And it got to the point where my football coach actually ended up
• 5:47
  giving my mum the number for the rugby coach because I was a
• 5:50
  goalkeeper who would avoid the ball and just sort of, you know,
• 5:53
  hurt. Kamikaze.
• 5:54
  Yeah, and I was small as well. Like I didn't belong in a goal.
• 5:56
  Like it was ridiculous. I couldn't touch the ball even
• 5:58
  if I jumped. So I was just this kamikaze kids
• 6:01
  with ADHD who just absolutely barrel for everyone.
• 6:04
  And that was that was what I was good for.
• 6:05
  So eventually, yeah, I moved on to rugby because I was just, you
• 6:08
  know, useless and anything just a bit of a liability to the
• 6:11
  football team. So I played rugby for a long
• 6:13
  time, that full back, and that's where my love for like, you
• 6:16
  know, getting in the gym, putting the weight on, that kind
• 6:18
  of thing. As a shorter guy, it was very
• 6:20
  important for me to, you know, put that weight on and make
• 6:23
  sure. And now that's where my
• 6:25
  obsession with a lot of that sort of thing came from, which
• 6:27
  is obviously coming to what I'm doing now really nicely.
• 6:31
  But yeah, I did all that and then I played rugby through
• 6:35
  through college and that kind of thing.
• 6:37
  And when a lot of the boys were just obsessed with the
• 6:40
  bodybuilding phase and that kind of thing, I never sort of
• 6:43
  visualizing myself ever doing that.
• 6:45
  So I very much stayed to performance based fitness and
• 6:47
  stuff, even 16 to 18. And in that time massively
• 6:52
  messed up college when I was there, mainly because of the
• 6:54
  amount of sport and everything else I was doing at the time.
• 6:57
  Very. Oh yeah.
• 6:58
  God, yeah. And then 18, I moved to the
• 7:00
  Alps. I mean, that was that was
• 7:02
  literally where it started. And then that's when I moved
• 7:04
  into skiing and became absolutely obsessed with
• 7:06
  freestyle. So had you skied growing up on
• 7:09
  my family holidays and. That twice.
• 7:10
  So I've been on one school trip and one family holiday.
• 7:14
  So what prompted you to go from not really having done it much
• 7:18
  before to all of a sudden moving out there and.
• 7:20
  I'll be honest with you, like, very much like what we said
• 7:22
  earlier, I'm a very, you know, essentially I went, yeah.
• 7:25
  And I went through every idea in my head of what I could possibly
• 7:27
  go and do. And my stepmom came to me and
• 7:30
  her friend worked in recruitment of the company we used to work
• 7:32
  for. And she went, look, if you don't
• 7:34
  know what you're going to do, what you just go away and see
• 7:36
  what's going on. And little did she know, she
• 7:37
  actually set me up to what what has been the most amazing way to
• 7:41
  spend my 20s I could have ever imagined.
• 7:43
  And I went away without. I was an all right skier like I
• 7:47
  was. I was OK, but I wasn't great.
• 7:49
  But the obsession for not even just skiing, but just that
• 7:53
  environment really, really started there.
• 7:55
  And you see, it's my passion and my love now, like it's the best
• 7:57
  thing in the world. One of the things that I've
• 7:59
  always found, but personally is that I am always willing to do
• 8:03
  pretty much any job, like as long as there's a good healthy
• 8:07
  balance between like it treating me well enough and like kind of
• 8:11
  enjoying it as well. Like I don't really care what it
• 8:13
  is. Like I said, I was working in a
• 8:15
  hotel. I was literally like cleaning
• 8:16
  toilets as a heads up, like kids don't understand what AB day is
• 8:21
  in France, right? So you will walk into a kids
• 8:23
  bedroom and there'll be a turd in the in the bidet, right?
• 8:26
  That's, that's become my responsibility in that
• 8:29
  environment. It's very easy to laugh that
• 8:30
  off. If I was in central London, that
• 8:32
  was my job. Not so funny, but one of the
• 8:35
  biggest memories I have and I have it saved on my phone is in
• 8:38
  the resort I was working in we have to do a bin run and the
• 8:42
  bins in French ski resorts there isn't like a huge wheelie bin
• 8:47
  out front that you put everything in.
• 8:48
  You have to walk it down to the huge bin in the central resort
• 8:51
  that then the the bin men come and take the.
• 8:53
  Big deep ones, Sort of. Huge.
• 8:55
  Huge. You don't realize how big they
• 8:56
  are around, but I remember I used to do a lot of the runs
• 9:00
  because I actively loved doing it.
• 9:02
  Because as I walked down towards the bin, the view was like no
• 9:05
  other view I'll ever work but. Montanez's view was it was
• 9:08
  second to none. I've worked at some cool places,
• 9:10
  but for like a little town in the outs where no one really
• 9:13
  knew about it, That was the beauty of that place where it
• 9:15
  was actually quite quiet. But that view down the valley,
• 9:17
  down towards like Social Valley and, you know, down, it's just
• 9:20
  unreal. And so like.
• 9:22
  I completely understand and to a degree also was hooked by that.
• 9:26
  So I see why you stayed. But the thing that's so crazy to
• 9:29
  me is that you went head first into that and you also went head
• 9:33
  first into one of the most complex forms of skiing that
• 9:35
  there is, which is freestyle. Because I mean, if we're
• 9:38
  thinking about this from people that haven't been a season, Air,
• 9:40
  for example, if you're working out there, your job is to work
• 9:45
  down there. If you want to go and get
• 9:47
  injured out there, that doesn't work very well with the work
• 9:50
  side of living. So actively going out there, not
• 9:53
  having done much of it before, going into probably the most
• 9:56
  dangerous form and risking your time working out there.
• 10:00
  Talk me through the process, but I mean the.
• 10:02
  First year it was just, I think it was really wholesome the way
• 10:04
  we did it. So there was like three of us
• 10:06
  and we would just go and hike boxes after the lifts are
• 10:09
  closed. So in out of the words where I
• 10:11
  did my first two seasons, the park was out the back of the
• 10:13
  hotel. Like I looked out my window of
• 10:15
  my accommodation and the park was there.
• 10:17
  So we would get the last lift up and we got we got friends with
• 10:20
  the lifties and stuff and they let us stay up there and that's
• 10:23
  the sun was going down. There's this really cool video
• 10:25
  and picture of me and my friend Campbell, still a very good
• 10:26
  friend of mine to this day. And the sun's going down and
• 10:30
  it's on my first season. I remember that being one of
• 10:32
  those moments where I just slid the box for the first time in my
• 10:34
  life and the sun went down behind the mountains and no word
• 10:38
  of light. It's one of those sort of
• 10:39
  moments you go, oh, I love this shit.
• 10:40
  This is like, this is, this is me now.
• 10:42
  I love this. And we would do that and we'd do
• 10:44
  that once every twice a week. We'd go through the park
• 10:46
  sometimes during the day, but for the best part, we would just
• 10:49
  hike features and become obsessed with it.
• 10:52
  And then the second season was when I really started just being
• 10:55
  a bit of an idiot, like just being a twat with it.
• 10:57
  And that's when I really progressed.
• 10:58
  And did you ever have? Were you just learning off other
• 11:01
  people? Were you?
• 11:02
  No, just were you watching YouTube videos?
• 11:04
  No, no, how can hope fully? Oh, really?
• 11:06
  Oh yeah, hard. We're watching YouTube videos.
• 11:08
  Like, I mean, I still watch them to this day.
• 11:09
  Like there's one that came round called Slush like SLVSH where
• 11:13
  they play like a game of horse against each other.
• 11:15
  And it is just the best. And watching us still to this
• 11:18
  day having not not being in the scene anymore is it sparks like
• 11:21
  memories and me. It's really nice.
• 11:23
  But you'd watch all these pros and stuff and I would you would
• 11:27
  get ideas for tricks. We did first try Fridays.
• 11:29
  They were hilarious. Some would always get hurt like
• 11:31
  always where you just yeah. And you pick tricks for each
• 11:34
  other. And it was that like boisterous
• 11:36
  like of it. And it was just the coolest
• 11:38
  thing. But that was how we just slowly
• 11:40
  progressed. And then, yeah, I think after
• 11:43
  the second, third season is when it really started getting out of
• 11:45
  hand. And that's when I went, Oh my,
• 11:46
  give this a crack. And it was, yeah.
• 11:48
  Because one of the things that I have seen and there's a video
• 11:50
  that I think you've really shared recently, yeah, is, and I
• 11:53
  don't know when quite when this was in, in your sort of skiing
• 11:56
  journey. But there are for, again, for
• 12:00
  people that don't necessarily understand, understand skiing
• 12:02
  too well in different areas of the world, they do it
• 12:04
  differently. So in America it's different,
• 12:06
  but in Europe they have the different colored runs for
• 12:09
  different colored slopes, green being the easiest, black being
• 12:12
  the hardest in that you consider off piece and then that's
• 12:15
  operated. But it's similar in in the jump
• 12:18
  setting. So you have black jumps.
• 12:21
  I mean I can only really describe as they are literally
• 12:23
  the size of a house. Yeah, so the black jumps in like
• 12:26
  vase. So I think the video you're
• 12:28
  referring to the black jumps in vase, they were two Storey
• 12:31
  buildings. So essentially you'd have it was
• 12:33
  a 2 Storey building high in the big black, the pro park and then
• 12:37
  the blacks are about 1 1/2. But the gaps, the gaps on the
• 12:40
  Proline were 65 foot. Yeah, because, yeah, the other
• 12:44
  thing, which I'll also weigh into because I've also had my
• 12:47
  fair share of eating snow from these things, is the take off
• 12:52
  isn't really the scariest bit for me anyway.
• 12:54
  It's the it's the landing. Because these jumps are so big,
• 12:57
  they build the landing because where you're going to be coming
• 12:59
  down at the trajectory, if you land flat, you'll break your
• 13:01
  ankles. So they have to build a landing.
• 13:03
  The problem is if you don't full sand into the jump, you will.
• 13:07
  Well, if you don't send into the jump at the right speed, you
• 13:11
  will probably fall short of the landing and hit what's called
• 13:14
  the knuckle and you'll crunch and everything will come off and
• 13:16
  it'll be a bit of a yard sale with all your stuff going
• 13:18
  everywhere. The other thing is if you do
• 13:20
  actually fall, send too hard, you can miss the landing and
• 13:22
  then land flat and then like I said, you are at risk of
• 13:25
  breaking something else. Oh yeah, yeah.
• 13:27
  So did you build up to them or did it?
• 13:30
  Was it one of these like Boisterous?
• 13:32
  I definitely built up. I mean the black jumps in out
• 13:34
  the West were Reds in Beauvars is a pro park.
• 13:39
  I mean that place is nuts. That's where I met a lot of the
• 13:42
  like the French and the Swedish guys.
• 13:43
  I end up learning a lot of my bigger tricks and stuff off of
• 13:47
  out of the West was a good introduction to what jumps
• 13:50
  shouldn't be like. So therefore when we rode jumps
• 13:53
  which were really lovely, like well shaped and that kind of
• 13:55
  thing, I fell at home like immediately and a lot of the
• 13:58
  guys never progressed to the black jumps.
• 14:00
  But I don't know what it is. I was just a bit tapped like I
• 14:02
  had until I had my big injury. I was actually that was probably
• 14:06
  worse after, I'm not going to lie to you, but I didn't really
• 14:08
  have this appreciation for my body and how how badly it could
• 14:14
  go. And I think once I had the worst
• 14:16
  thing happened to me when I was in New Zealand and broke my neck
• 14:19
  and back whilst training with a few of the GB guys when I was
• 14:21
  out there in Queenstown. After that, when I heeled off
• 14:25
  that and I could ski again, couldn't feel the right side of
• 14:27
  my body mind, even when I was like still competing this winter
• 14:30
  after my mum hated me around this time and she still swears
• 14:33
  me to this day. For this, I almost went, well,
• 14:36
  I'm invincible then. And for that 2, two years, you
• 14:39
  know what I mean? I would push the envelope to
• 14:42
  like I'd, I'd, I'd fully slam and not even think about it.
• 14:46
  But eventually it got to the point where my body was so
• 14:49
  mashed up where it would hurt when I got out of bed and I was
• 14:52
  26. Do you know what I mean?
• 14:53
  And yeah, I mean. As well let's I can only start.
• 14:57
  Well, just go back to the start of that.
• 14:59
  How How did you break your neck and your back in New Zealand?
• 15:05
  So this is, and it's such a ridiculous story.
• 15:07
  So that was 2014 and I was learning double rodeo nines.
• 15:13
  In normal people's speech. Which is 2 inverted backflips
• 15:18
  and 2 1/2 spins. As you're doing them.
• 15:22
  On the jump, yeah. So I was learning how to see
• 15:24
  those. I got the Rodeo 5 and it sounds
• 15:28
  ridiculous, but I stood there with, you've heard of James
• 15:31
  Woodsy, the GB athlete. And I stood there with him and
• 15:33
  this guy called Tyler. And he, Tyler was like young at
• 15:36
  the time. I think he was like 1314.
• 15:37
  But this kid is he's, he's an absolute machine.
• 15:39
  I think he's essentially taken Woodsy's space now.
• 15:42
  But I was stood at the top with them and his girlfriend Anna,
• 15:45
  who's a Kiwi girl, and they said the next progression off that
• 15:49
  rodeo five and seven that I'd learnt is to Chuck another flip
• 15:52
  in and it will give me the extra twist.
• 15:54
  And I was like, that sounds like big Dick stuff.
• 15:56
  I I would love to be able to do a double right out.
• 15:58
  Finally. I'd already done double fronts
• 16:00
  and stuff and backs by that point.
• 16:02
  And I did it into an airbag and it of all, all things that
• 16:06
  happened, I did it into an airbag and the kids had kids
• 16:10
  setting had was still on the bag.
• 16:13
  So I left this kicker, I was about 35 foot in the air and as
• 16:18
  I came down I opened up off the second flip because obviously I
• 16:21
  panicked and never done it before.
• 16:22
  On the second flip I opened up and I went through the bag
• 16:26
  upside down and I hit the concrete plate underneath.
• 16:28
  So I broke my C1C3 and there was something in my lower back which
• 16:32
  I can't remember what it was called but I was paralysed for
• 16:36
  two days, had to ring my mum with my girlfriend as I'm
• 16:40
  holding the phone to my ear. So my mum picks up the phone at
• 16:42
  3:00 in the morning to me like, oh, I'm holding the phone, I'm
• 16:45
  paralysed, we're going to see what's going to happen.
• 16:48
  And it turns out I had, yeah, broken my neck and back, ripped
• 16:52
  my right PEC in half, ripped my entire right shoulder off the
• 16:56
  bone essentially, and essentially end up with me not
• 17:00
  having any feeling in the whole right side of my body for the
• 17:02
  best part of two years and teaching myself how to go about
• 17:06
  day-to-day life. I went on season again.
• 17:09
  Do you know what I mean? To try and distress myself.
• 17:11
  Yeah. How long did it take you to kind
• 17:14
  of turn yourself around from being paralysed to?
• 17:17
  So that was Akonski's and. Well, so I I got feeling back
• 17:21
  feeling but started to come back after two days that two days.
• 17:24
  I cannot explain how scary that is.
• 17:27
  It is. I wouldn't wish it my worst
• 17:29
  enemy because it's the scariest thing in the world and I was
• 17:32
  paralysed from chest down South. I had some feeling in my left
• 17:36
  arm. That kind of sucks because if
• 17:38
  you feel your chest stripped in half on one of the pairs.
• 17:40
  Oh, it's painful as hell. So you unfortunately you're
• 17:42
  feeling one of the biggest. Pains.
• 17:44
  Oh yeah and the rest of it mate, it was unreal and there's this
• 17:46
  divot still in my chest where it doesn't work anymore and I don't
• 17:49
  have a medial tricep in my right arm anymore, which is great for
• 17:52
  the gym as you'd imagine but yeah so it was 2 days of that
• 17:56
  and then it was I went straight on season.
• 17:59
  I still regretted to this day because I might actually have a
• 18:00
  right medial tricep if I just been sensible.
• 18:03
  Taken six months off, done the rehab, but I didn't do the
• 18:06
  rehab. I went straight back out in the
• 18:08
  season, started competing when on the SFR tour, all this kind
• 18:11
  of stuff, which was great, but I was landing tricks on these
• 18:14
  massive jumps and rails. I couldn't feel my right foot.
• 18:17
  So I was like fully guessing. And eventually I got used to how
• 18:21
  it should feel. And it was, yeah, it was a weird
• 18:24
  time, man. And I, I was very irresponsible.
• 18:26
  But also those were two of the best ski years of my life.
• 18:29
  So it's really hard to be like, yeah, I don't have to explain it
• 18:32
  it. Doesn't really sound like it was
• 18:33
  actually a regret because of the the things you experience.
• 18:36
  But at the same time, I think looking back now as AI suppose
• 18:39
  wiser person, which now he's doing different things because
• 18:43
  at the time, like you said, you will, you kind of have this
• 18:48
  epiphany on that sunset where you're like, this is me, this is
• 18:50
  like what I want to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 18:51
  But then unfortunately not everything lasts forever.
• 18:54
  So now that you're not doing that, it's quite logical to be
• 18:57
  like, I kind of wish I didn't do that.
• 18:58
  But at the time a. 100% I was living the life like I was fully
• 19:02
  living the life. I mean, like you said, it was
• 19:04
  when I was I was even 26. Sorry, no, I was.
• 19:06
  I was 2324. Even though they were younger
• 19:08
  than that, but I was turning up to resorts and people were
• 19:13
  genuinely like really wanting to go skiing with me.
• 19:15
  And as like a young 20 something year old lad that that that
• 19:17
  feeling is like, oh fuck, I want it.
• 19:19
  It's like people want to train with me and that's cool.
• 19:21
  You would. I remember messaging you and
• 19:23
  being like when are you next in resort?
• 19:24
  I want to go skiing and the thing just kind of sucked from
• 19:27
  my end. But it was probably quite lucky
• 19:28
  from your side I guess. Was Montaniev used to have a
• 19:31
  decent like decent park? But the season that I was there,
• 19:35
  they didn't. They didn't build.
• 19:36
  It because it was enough. Snow wasn't.
• 19:38
  It so we never really got to do anything there, but I remember
• 19:41
  still messaging you like when are you coming down?
• 19:42
  Because I was like, he probably knows the secret like parks that
• 19:45
  are in the trees that locals have built that kind of thing
• 19:48
  those. But yeah, if I guess you were
• 19:51
  still in that recovery point from your injury in that year.
• 19:54
  I was, but I was also more reckless than ever, which was
• 19:56
  stupid. Like, I mean, it would it, it
• 19:57
  always got to the point where I'd get to resorts and people
• 19:59
  would want to go skiing with me and it and it was.
• 20:02
  At the time, I, I, I thought it was the coolest thing ever.
• 20:04
  I'd turn up and just people were taking the day off to go skiing
• 20:07
  me because I was doing all these international competitions and
• 20:09
  stuff. And that, I mean, it just felt
• 20:11
  so good. So then when it came to when it
• 20:15
  came to respecting my injury, I, I ignored it if anything.
• 20:18
  And that was like I said, look, right now I'm like, Oh, that was
• 20:21
  stupid. But actually at the time I was
• 20:23
  like, I would have done half the stuff that I did if I had taken
• 20:26
  it on. I know it's weird.
• 20:27
  It's weird, but I'm fine now. So I mean.
• 20:29
  You ended up through this, you ended up going off and you made
• 20:33
  it to LAX, is that right? Yes, I went to LAX for the
• 20:35
  British Champs, Yeah, which was, I mean, I emptied my bank
• 20:39
  account to go like it was stupid.
• 20:40
  I rang my dad. I couldn't afford the petrol
• 20:42
  back from LAX to social value. And I rang my dad and I was
• 20:46
  like, I've done all right. Like I did good.
• 20:48
  I mean, like we didn't even get the competition to go ahead
• 20:50
  because the weather was so bad. But I met loads of guys there
• 20:54
  and did one of the most outrageous double front blips I
• 20:57
  think I've ever done in my life off one of the black booters,
• 20:59
  which was an 80 foot kicker. I was.
• 21:00
  Going to say the videos that I've seen of LAX, like if you
• 21:03
  look at jump parks in most resorts, like they're clearly
• 21:06
  jumped, some of them are quite well shaped, well built in LAX.
• 21:09
  So that's a competition. It's like it's almost been like
• 21:13
  it, like it's been sculpted out of clay for the event, like it's
• 21:16
  then been the mountain was put there.
• 21:18
  Made the guys, the guys are artists like they are so proud
• 21:22
  of what they build. And the jumps is this picture
• 21:24
  that I've got where I'm stood next to it and it's 2 1/2 of me
• 21:27
  tall, so about 3 foot. But it's but it's it's it's it's
• 21:33
  2 1/2 of me high. And I remember sending my mum
• 21:36
  the picture and this was a year and a half after my accident and
• 21:39
  I was like, oh, here's this is the first jump.
• 21:41
  This is a small one. And she just rang me immediately
• 21:44
  was like, you're not, you're not doing that.
• 21:45
  And she was like, looks like the weather's bad.
• 21:46
  I was like, yeah, it's gusting 45.
• 21:49
  It's bad. And she went, OK, have fun.
• 21:51
  Great. I'll speak to you later.
• 21:52
  And then I, like I said, we did arrive and we we just messed
• 21:55
  around for two days, three days. And then I had to ring my dad.
• 21:58
  And I was like, I can't afford the fuel home.
• 21:59
  Like I was giving everything to giving this a proper crack.
• 22:02
  And if only I'd respected the fact that there is no money in
• 22:05
  skiing, that there just isn't, there's no money in skiing and
• 22:07
  you get all the pro guys who are hitting the X Games and stuff
• 22:09
  and even they were skim. Do you know what I mean?
• 22:11
  So God knows what I was aiming for.
• 22:14
  But again, I think it comes down to that thing where it felt like
• 22:16
  in your 20s when you're doing that kind of thing.
• 22:18
  I mean, I've got that story to tell.
• 22:20
  You know, I stand by the whole thing where I love, I like to
• 22:22
  live life so that I've got stuff to tell my grandkids from a
• 22:25
  chair. And that's one where I'm like,
• 22:27
  yeah, I was hurting, but also it's the coolest thing to be
• 22:29
  able to sit there and go, here's a picture.
• 22:30
  And I did this when I was 20, You know what I mean?
• 22:32
  And. And like you said, it
• 22:34
  essentially set up a really cool 20s for you.
• 22:38
  So like, you didn't just do winter seasons.
• 22:41
  No, you did summer seasons as well.
• 22:42
  You kind of flipped from season to season, which I really wanted
• 22:46
  to do. Mum managed to get her foot in
• 22:48
  the door and stop me doing that and made me go to university.
• 22:52
  But I was very, very close to cancelling and going university.
• 22:54
  Like in, in terms of mental decision.
• 22:56
  I'd made the mental decision, but I was the fact that my place
• 23:00
  was still there And I went and had a look at the university
• 23:02
  again and I kind of got prompted that that was definitely what I
• 23:05
  was doing because I wanted to be part of the family the next time
• 23:07
  I, I returned home. Not quite that bad, but it was
• 23:10
  very, it was very much like it wasn't even.
• 23:12
  I wouldn't even allow the discussion.
• 23:15
  I wanted what you were doing because, and I look at it now
• 23:19
  with the kind of career decisions I've made, do I regret
• 23:22
  it? Maybe.
• 23:23
  But going off to the summer season because I knew how to
• 23:26
  sail and that sort of thing, it would have been quite cool,
• 23:28
  Yeah. Which did you end up prefer,
• 23:31
  summer or winter? As I got older, it was
• 23:34
  definitely summer. I think the winters were great
• 23:36
  when I was peeking in my freestyle scheme because I was,
• 23:40
  you know, at the hotels. I was that guy and that was a
• 23:43
  nice feeling more anything else I loved.
• 23:45
  We kept first try Fridays going for about 6 years and every
• 23:49
  Friday was just eight of us would go and just get super
• 23:52
  loose and then just go to out pray and have the best that you
• 23:54
  know out pray is like it's class.
• 23:56
  Especially when you're a season, it's like a year or a pint
• 23:58
  season. It's not even that much of an
• 24:00
  impact on your. Back now you buy 10 and go and
• 24:01
  put it on the table and help yourself if you can hack 10
• 24:04
  fantastic for you well done. But and that was great for a bit
• 24:06
  and then I did one summer and that was bike guarding.
• 24:10
  So I worked for a active travel company where I was running a
• 24:14
  bike centre in Greece and I, I got hooked on summer there.
• 24:18
  And then I think I accepted my ski thing was done and I was
• 24:21
  sort of over it. So when it came to the bike
• 24:24
  stuff, I mean the, the scenes that I was seeing and the places
• 24:26
  I was going to just out of resort and it, it was so
• 24:30
  stunning, like it was unreal. So I'd guide a bike, a bike ride
• 24:33
  in the morning, I'd wake board before lunch, go and grab some
• 24:36
  lunch. The afternoon we'd just be
• 24:37
  fixing bikes in the sun all day. I was tanned, fantastic.
• 24:40
  I was in great shape, but brilliant, which I wasn't used
• 24:43
  to considering all I did was get pissed for about 6 years
• 24:45
  beforehand. So it was definitely a switch.
• 24:48
  So beforehand, definitely my winters when the skiing was
• 24:51
  going on, but when that was sort of, you know, falling off, the
• 24:55
  summers really took over for me. And I, I, I got fully hooked on
• 24:58
  that life. One thing that I want to
• 25:00
  underline here is because from the perspective of what you just
• 25:04
  said, like the quality of life and what you do on the
• 25:07
  day-to-day is incredible. And there'll be a lot of people
• 25:10
  who listen to that being like, you know what, I just wish I
• 25:12
  could do that. It's like, yeah, it is great,
• 25:15
  but there's no savings. And when you come home, you
• 25:20
  don't really have a home anymore because you, I mean, you're
• 25:23
  constantly away, but then nowhere when you are away is
• 25:26
  really ever home either. And so you just completely lose
• 25:28
  a sense of grounding. And after a few years, I mean,
• 25:34
  we, we are flashing forward a few years, you came back and
• 25:37
  we're in that limbo point before you were supposed to go back out
• 25:40
  again and COVID happened, which basically shut the whole world
• 25:43
  down and essentially shut life down for people like yourself.
• 25:46
  So what sort of happened then? God, I fell off a Cliff.
• 25:49
  Honestly, I, I had my entire life dragged out for underneath
• 25:54
  and like a lot of people did, but I didn't know what else to
• 25:57
  do with myself. I mean, like fully when Boris
• 26:00
  stood up and made that announcement, my car was packed
• 26:02
  and I was meant to go to a ferry to Greece, a ferry to Italy and
• 26:05
  then to Greece the next morning. Italy.
• 26:07
  No, Calais driving down Italy. Greece.
• 26:09
  Yeah. And they made that announcement
• 26:12
  and obviously weren't going anywhere.
• 26:13
  And I was on the people had to tell all the staff and stuff.
• 26:16
  They didn't have jobs anymore. And, you know, that was very
• 26:18
  difficult. But my thing was, and you're
• 26:20
  very right about the whole savings and money and that kind
• 26:23
  of thing. Like I, I, I constantly for that
• 26:26
  period anyway, not so much now, but for that period I really
• 26:29
  felt like I was behind because all of a sudden I had nothing.
• 26:32
  I was in my overdraft, you know what I mean?
• 26:34
  I had debt, you know, and it was because I was living that life
• 26:36
  and I was doing all these really, really cool things that
• 26:39
  you want to do in your 20s. But all of a sudden all I had
• 26:43
  was named 2 numbers of a bank account and nowhere to go and
• 26:47
  nothing to run with and no income.
• 26:49
  And I was in a really, really horrible spot.
• 26:52
  Like it was, it was, it was unreal.
• 26:54
  It was really, and I wasn't particularly great at that point
• 26:57
  anyway. I was on the back of sort of a
• 26:59
  really, really depressing part of my life.
• 27:01
  So, oh, sorry, let myself get into quite a depressive state.
• 27:04
  So it was a really difficult time that.
• 27:06
  But you know, that's what sort of spurred on the next sort of
• 27:10
  stage and what came for me in like 2020, which was setting up,
• 27:14
  setting up a business. But well, my.
• 27:16
  This is a question that I've got before.
• 27:17
  We we talk about that. Where did your love of yoga
• 27:21
  start? I started doing it as sort of in
• 27:25
  2018. So I worked in Sardinia and
• 27:28
  straight up still one of my favorite places in the world,
• 27:30
  hands down. It is just very cool.
• 27:32
  Food's good, love Italian food, coffee's good, beautiful place,
• 27:35
  stunning and really like undiscovered a lot of the a lot
• 27:39
  of the bits it's really lovely. But I started doing yoga there
• 27:42
  because I was getting all the pains and stuff from my injury
• 27:45
  cropping up again from cycling. So I was getting like, my
• 27:48
  shoulder would raise up. I had trapped nerves in my neck,
• 27:52
  my chest would randomly cramp and stuff.
• 27:54
  So I started doing yoga every single morning before work in
• 27:58
  order to, you know, relieve that a little bit and relieve the
• 28:02
  pain. And it worked.
• 28:05
  And don't get me wrong, I never anticipated where that was going
• 28:07
  to take me, but it was, it's quite good.
• 28:10
  It was a good bit of experience to have in the industry before
• 28:12
  I, you know, jump straight into it.
• 28:14
  And then you basically build a business around yoga in COVID.
• 28:18
  Yep, Yep. So it's funny, the announcement
• 28:22
  happened on, was it like 31st of March or whatever it was.
• 28:26
  So it was just 1st of April and by the 12th of April, I had a
• 28:30
  fully functioning yoga business with products on the way, Live
• 28:35
  classes going on four times a day with eight different
• 28:38
  teachers. And I, I guess, I mean, my mum
• 28:43
  couldn't quite believe what she was, You know, it took me about
• 28:45
  6-7 days where I just went, I'm going to do this.
• 28:48
  And this is where this like impulsiveness comes from me
• 28:50
  where I'm like, I've got nothing else, what am I going to lose?
• 28:53
  So I got a credit card, bashed everything on it and I ended up
• 28:57
  paying all my debts off of it. I mean, it was one of the best
• 28:59
  things I've ever done. I've won the well, one of the
• 29:01
  great starters of, you know, everything else.
• 29:04
  It was a great way to sort of realise actually what I was
• 29:06
  capable of outside of just being a reckless twat in the mountains
• 29:10
  or in like on the beach or whatever it was.
• 29:13
  But yeah, so I mean, I, I, I made eco yoga mats, equipment
• 29:16
  and clothing, built off a really, really cool community
• 29:20
  quite quickly. I think we, I think we've got to
• 29:23
  about 1000 followers in, in about a week where I was hosting
• 29:26
  stuff online. We're doing four Class A day for
• 29:28
  free. People were donating to the
• 29:30
  girls and guys who were doing classes.
• 29:32
  So I didn't have any expenditure, but the guys were
• 29:34
  appreciative. They had these classes to go to.
• 29:36
  The girls were appreciative because they had, you know, a
• 29:38
  bit of money coming in and it was great.
• 29:41
  And it was like this community feel and I really needed it at
• 29:43
  the time. And I became absolutely obsessed
• 29:46
  with it. So I learned to code.
• 29:48
  I learned how to, you know, fulfill products and get all the
• 29:52
  products over from like Taiwan, China, wherever it was, clothing
• 29:55
  from Portugal. I learned about all that, that
• 29:57
  industry and how that worked, everything in the background of
• 30:01
  what goes into a business. And that was like, I like to
• 30:03
  call it my practice run. And it went very, very well for
• 30:07
  a bit. Now, I sort of fell out of love
• 30:09
  with it after a couple of years on the scene.
• 30:10
  It was, yeah, I don't know what it was about it, but I sort of
• 30:14
  started to fall out of love with it.
• 30:15
  I think I've heard about mercury in the microwave enough.
• 30:17
  And I was sort of like, this isn't me, Like, you know what I
• 30:20
  mean? You know what I'm like.
• 30:21
  I'm a bit sarcastic sometimes a bit, you know, untoward in what
• 30:24
  I say. I think that's very evident from
• 30:26
  like my Instagram and stuff where I don't really think
• 30:28
  before I talk. That doesn't go down well in the
• 30:30
  Wellness world really a lot of the time.
• 30:33
  But you know, it was one of the best things I've ever done.
• 30:35
  I learnt so much and you know, I came out green in the end.
• 30:38
  I didn't lose money. I actually set myself up quite
• 30:40
  nicely to sort of go into the next part of my life, which is
• 30:43
  really cool. So, yeah, so with the next part
• 30:45
  of your life then I assume now that you've, I mean, clearly
• 30:49
  taking your eyes away from the sort of freestyle sport in.
• 30:52
  But now you've been doing something that's a little bit
• 30:54
  more tame like yoga, but then you've started to dabble in some
• 30:59
  slightly different things both fitness wise.
• 31:03
  And then obviously we've got some quite large changes, as you
• 31:05
  mentioned what you've done in the last year and a half or so.
• 31:08
  So where do you go from? I guess we don't necessarily
• 31:12
  need to stick into the professional life, but where do
• 31:14
  you go from having this business which you are obsessed about
• 31:16
  kind of going off it a little bit, selling it, coming out on
• 31:19
  top? What's next?
• 31:21
  So I mean, my my obsession for the whole fitness thing, it
• 31:24
  sport it never it never stopped. But in that period actually, I
• 31:27
  mean, I was running every now and then, wasn't doing it
• 31:29
  obsessively, obviously couldn't get in the gym.
• 31:31
  So my thing then was essentially trying to stay mentally healthy.
• 31:34
  I didn't care how I looked. I didn't really care what I was
• 31:37
  lifting. It was more a matter of this is
• 31:39
  my obsession and I don't want to keep myself in a position where
• 31:42
  I am still obsessive it and don't you know, veer off again
• 31:45
  like I had done a couple of years previous.
• 31:48
  And then I when everything opened again, I started running
• 31:50
  a country pub. So I opened a 200 seat country
• 31:55
  pub on the 1st, like when the first lockdown finished, which
• 32:00
  was, as you can imagine, carnage.
• 32:03
  Carriage building is probably what we described as a time.
• 32:06
  It was essentially everyone's turning up and drinking as much
• 32:09
  as humanly possible in two hours and trying to control that when,
• 32:13
  you know, we'd all been locked inside for God knows how long,
• 32:16
  mate, It was unbelievable. It was unreal.
• 32:20
  But yeah, I mean that around that time, my stats when I
• 32:22
  started running again, properly running again, like I love my
• 32:26
  ultra running, like running for me is one of the only sports
• 32:28
  where I can put my headphones in and I can just forget anyone
• 32:31
  exists. I run past my friends in the sea
• 32:32
  front and don't even realise that they're there.
• 32:34
  Do you know what I mean? It's like that kind of thing.
• 32:35
  And started obsessing over that again.
• 32:38
  And did the Beach Air Marathon was sort of leading up to that
• 32:42
  by initially I was like sort of really inspired by the whole
• 32:45
  hybrid movement, the original hybrid movement, not the Hyrox
• 32:48
  one. We'll go into that, Sorry, I
• 32:50
  know you bastards. But essentially the whole
• 32:55
  putting on and holding onto size and strength and that sort of
• 32:58
  the powerlifting sort of side of things, but also being able to
• 33:01
  be quite useful in the whole endurance space.
• 33:03
  I became absolutely obsessed with that idea.
• 33:05
  So I went from 71 kilos to 98 kilos in seven months.
• 33:09
  Jesus Christ. I I was naturally, yeah, yeah.
• 33:15
  I bought Sainsbury's out of all of its beef for seven months.
• 33:18
  But I mean, I was spending so much money on food like it.
• 33:20
  I was doing 6000 calories a day for about, well, mixing between
• 33:24
  different levels. But for the Best Buy, I buy five
• 33:26
  and a half, 6000 calories a day for seven months.
• 33:28
  I've got a big like really high metabolism as well.
• 33:30
  So I was just having to eat, eat, eat.
• 33:33
  So when I was in 98 kilos, didn't really run in that time
• 33:36
  and then went on an all out sort of cut to get myself ready for
• 33:41
  Beachhead Marathon, which is the one in my town, sort of 1200
• 33:44
  meters of climbing super exposed.
• 33:46
  I'm doing it again this year and I went from 98 to 82 kilos and
• 33:51
  essentially I'd put on 11 kilos of lean muscle in that time.
• 33:55
  And the, the difference in how I looked was like mad.
• 33:58
  And I've managed to sort of hold onto and improve on where I was
• 34:01
  then in quite a big way, which is lovely.
• 34:05
  It just. But yeah, it levelled me out.
• 34:07
  It made me sing it again. Do you know what I mean?
• 34:08
  It made me feel good again. Well, this is.
• 34:10
  This is. Something that I wanted to talk
• 34:11
  to you about is because while we've been talking about all of
• 34:13
  this and you've kind of alluded to the fact that sometimes
• 34:16
  things were a bit like not ideal.
• 34:18
  And I think is a fairway of putting it, But as much as
• 34:21
  there's been a bit of a physical journey between different
• 34:23
  sports, the mental journey hasn't been so up and like,
• 34:30
  well, it's been up and down, but it's not been quite so up and
• 34:32
  down in like a positive sense of discovering new things.
• 34:34
  You've discovered some pretty bad things.
• 34:38
  We don't have to go too far into it, but what's the, what's the
• 34:41
  sort of progression? Like what happened and what was
• 34:44
  it for you that kind of helped you get to, you know, being
• 34:46
  where we are today, we are a bit more happy about things.
• 34:48
  Yeah. Well, I mean, if we go from the
• 34:50
  top, I mean, I think like we're talking about that lifestyle and
• 34:53
  actually how it sounds amazing and beautiful, but actually a
• 34:55
  lot of it is pretty dark. And you know, you're overworked,
• 34:59
  you're sleeping 4-5 hours a night.
• 35:01
  The drinking culture you're back up is, is grey at the time.
• 35:04
  But in reality, it's horrific. The, the only way that I can put
• 35:07
  it for, for someone who's been to university and has done
• 35:09
  freshers week, freshers week is a slightly lightened example of
• 35:14
  what your entire life is like six months.
• 35:16
  Because as much as you're not necessarily going out every
• 35:19
  single night, I mean, for some portions of months you are, but
• 35:23
  you go very much from being around people you don't know to
• 35:26
  at university, you make friends with these people and you have
• 35:30
  your different social groups. So you go out every once in a
• 35:33
  while with some of those, and you have a different night each
• 35:34
  time. When you're in the season, you
• 35:36
  very quickly become this weird hybrid of family and friends and
• 35:41
  you go out with them every single night.
• 35:44
  And it gets way and way more out of hand the more and more you
• 35:48
  comfort, more and more comfortable you get with each
• 35:50
  other and with the resort and with everyone else in the
• 35:53
  resort. And so it is just relentless.
• 35:56
  It's, it is absolutely relentless and at the time
• 35:59
  you're like, I'm living. But I mean, like, actually it
• 36:03
  was, it was, it was relentless. And no wonder my mental health
• 36:05
  took a steer because I did that from 2012 until 2019.
• 36:10
  And don't get me wrong, when I moved into the summer stuff, I
• 36:12
  got way more obsessed with my fitness and becoming a very good
• 36:14
  cyclist and run it. So it dipped off a bit and I was
• 36:17
  like, oh, I'm not drinking that much.
• 36:18
  I'm still going out four nights a week, you know what I mean?
• 36:20
  And what if some, if my mate was doing that in the UK, you'd be
• 36:23
  putting them aside for an intervention?
• 36:24
  You'd be like, this is probably not too great mate.
• 36:27
  And I mean the ski years were debaucherous.
• 36:30
  I mean that was just carnage. That was ridiculous.
• 36:33
  That was the lead up. And then it got to the sort of
• 36:36
  summer season stuff where I was running.
• 36:38
  Well, I had 56 people who reported to me directly from
• 36:40
  different places in Europe. So I was stressed as hell with
• 36:43
  all that stuff whilst running a centre at the same time.
• 36:46
  And we'd drink most nights and I'd help with entertainment.
• 36:49
  And, you know, it was just, and I was sleeping 345 hours a
• 36:51
  night. You do that for long enough,
• 36:53
  you're going to come up in a pretty bad way.
• 36:55
  I mean, in, in 2018 was when that really got a hold of me.
• 36:59
  Yeah, 2018 was sort of like the penultimate point for me where,
• 37:03
  you know, I mean, it was horrific.
• 37:06
  I mean, so I so I tried to take my own life for the first time
• 37:09
  when I was in Sardinia. And it was, no word of a lie,
• 37:13
  the most beautiful place I've been in my life at the time.
• 37:15
  I've been to New Zealand and stuff.
• 37:16
  And it was lovely. But Sardinia was that place to
• 37:18
  me and it was stunning. But all I wanted to do was it
• 37:21
  was for it to end for a long time.
• 37:23
  So I'd be locking myself in my room, all sorts of stuff.
• 37:25
  And I, I, I put it down. Eventually when I got on the
• 37:27
  right side of it, down to the amount we were drinking, the
• 37:30
  amount we were working and just that lifestyle was not
• 37:32
  sustainable for anyone. You wonder why you see guys and
• 37:35
  you would have experienced this, the guys who were in their late
• 37:38
  30s forties, still living that life and you wonder why they are
• 37:42
  reclusive. Just a bit weird.
• 37:44
  It's because that lifestyle will ruin you and mess you up and
• 37:47
  you've got to approach it in a certain way.
• 37:49
  But yeah, so 2018, I, I, I sort of met my, met my point and I
• 37:53
  got, I got to enough. And yeah, I tried to do it for
• 37:56
  the first time and no one knew until three days after.
• 37:59
  And that's a scary concept. And I can't explain that concept
• 38:02
  to anyone because you go home, get back in bed.
• 38:05
  And then, well, essentially I got talked down off a, there's
• 38:09
  this beautiful castle called Basada.
• 38:12
  And it was huge on the top of this big mound.
• 38:15
  And it was just a sheer drop. And I took myself up on top of
• 38:18
  it and this this Italian lady walked out and started talking
• 38:21
  to me in English. I think she noticed she started
• 38:23
  talking to me in English and I was looking through a pitch on
• 38:26
  my phone Anyway, at the time when I was stood up there and
• 38:30
  she she took me down. She gave me a little coffee in
• 38:34
  her in her house. And then I got back in my car
• 38:36
  and I drove home, got into bed and then went back to work next
• 38:39
  morning and no one knew anything.
• 38:40
  And three days later I sat with my mates down and told them.
• 38:43
  And from that point they were on me.
• 38:45
  You know what I mean? They were with me.
• 38:47
  I had my mates staying in my room on certain nights, you
• 38:49
  know, making sure I was OK. And they stopped me from
• 38:51
  drinking and that kind of thing, which was great.
• 38:53
  I was, I would wholeheartedly admit at the time I needed to be
• 38:58
  drinking to feel normal. And they were there to me to
• 39:00
  make sure I moved out of that. And that was where the start of
• 39:03
  my sort of improvement came. And I tried to do it again
• 39:06
  towards the end of season. And my mates knew that night
• 39:09
  because they found me. And the two days later, I was on
• 39:13
  a ferry back home because I knew I just needed to be at home with
• 39:17
  my family and sort of back to normality again and try to work
• 39:20
  myself out of it, which is essentially what I started
• 39:22
  doing. Yeah, started working out to it.
• 39:25
  And COVID was the best thing ever happened to me, straight
• 39:28
  up. And it sounds really selfish to
• 39:29
  say because everyone lost so much, but it was the best thing
• 39:32
  that ever happened to me because it maybe it stopped me living
• 39:34
  that life and made me realise actually how fucking unhinged
• 39:38
  and stupid that lifestyle is, despite it giving me some of the
• 39:41
  best experiences I've ever had in my life.
• 39:43
  I wouldn't exchange, I wouldn't change for the world.
• 39:46
  I would change how I approached it and how it was delivered back
• 39:49
  then because the drinking culture was so normalised and it
• 39:52
  shouldn't be like it was. It was just incredible what was
• 39:56
  acceptable. And yeah, COVID, COVID saved my
• 40:00
  life straight up. I think there's actually a lot
• 40:02
  of people, especially people that I have spoken to actually
• 40:05
  on this podcast, which actually think the same way.
• 40:08
  And you're right, it's a really horrible thing to look back on
• 40:10
  because so many people lost so much, whether that is in terms
• 40:14
  of their job and their career or if it's like family members and
• 40:17
  especially for athletes that are missed out on opportunities to
• 40:19
  go to, I don't know, the Olympics or something like that.
• 40:22
  Horrible, horrible situations. But on the flip side of it, a
• 40:24
  lot of people actually needed it to readjust the way that they
• 40:27
  were taking their career, the way they were taking their
• 40:29
  training. But then for people like you on
• 40:32
  the mental side of things, yes, for a lot of people that were
• 40:36
  had very, very good routine, it messed up their routine.
• 40:41
  Then there's other people who aren't so strict in the way that
• 40:44
  they think and the way that they live their life.
• 40:46
  And it was actually the opportunity to ground themselves
• 40:48
  because everything had been taken away from them.
• 40:50
  And all of a sudden you're forced to confront your problem
• 40:53
  and that's what you do. And I think one of the, the
• 40:54
  beautiful things about that for you is that you were forced into
• 40:58
  this situation and very, very quickly got a taste of what you
• 41:02
  were capable of by applying yourself in a right in the right
• 41:05
  direction with the business you set up.
• 41:08
  So pretty, pretty deep. And like I said, we would touch
• 41:11
  on it and, and come out of it because I think one of the other
• 41:13
  things that's massive is from when you were younger, you
• 41:16
  always had this interest in sport.
• 41:18
  And I do personally feel that some of the people who can do
• 41:22
  endurance events to the level that they do them is you have to
• 41:26
  be able to go to a place and be relatively comfortable knowing
• 41:28
  that you've been. 100%, yeah. So yeah, for those that don't
• 41:33
  know. And there have been some videos
• 41:36
  and I imagine I will probably end up using some of these
• 41:37
  videos in the trailer. But Toby is a strong dude,
• 41:40
  right? You aren't, You aren't just the
• 41:42
  quote UN quote hybrid because you're a shit runner and a shit
• 41:44
  lifter. You are a good lifter and you
• 41:47
  have become a good runner, and so there's not many people that
• 41:51
  can actually say the numbers that you can lift and the times
• 41:55
  that you can run. But why did you decide to stick
• 41:59
  to both rather than kind of just choosing 1 and keeping at it?
• 42:04
  So I find bodybuilding boring and I think it's way too vain.
• 42:09
  I I the idea of getting on a stage for me is like dystopian
• 42:13
  hell. Like I can't imagine that
• 42:14
  lifestyle. I love endurance, I love
• 42:17
  cycling, I love running, hate swimming, swimming can fuck off.
• 42:21
  But I've learned to love it slowly but surely.
• 42:25
  But I wanted to do both. I think maybe I need to.
• 42:28
  I wanted to prove a point. Like I came over the line at BTM
• 42:31
  marathon which is one of EU KS hardest open edge marathon.
• 42:35
  It is unreal and and I came over the line just over 4 hours.
• 42:40
  It was 50 mile an hour winds all day and I came over in 72nd
• 42:44
  place out of 1100 people and the other guys ahead of me and I saw
• 42:50
  a lot of guys afterwards eating and stuff.
• 42:52
  Everyone was a runners shape but I was coming over that line and
• 42:55
  I definitely had something to me.
• 42:56
  My stepdad said it was funny watching me come down and people
• 42:59
  like, what the hell, because I was carrying quite a bit of
• 43:01
  weight at the time and I wanted to prove I could.
• 43:04
  And I think I wanted to prove that I wanted sub 4, but also
• 43:07
  I'm going sub four this year. 100%.
• 43:09
  We'll go through that in a bit. But I'm going sub four this
• 43:11
  year. But I wanted to prove that I
• 43:15
  could hold these ridiculous lifting numbers for someone
• 43:17
  that's my weight and do the endurance stuff.
• 43:20
  And you don't have to pick a park.
• 43:22
  I'm not going to be professional in any of it, but I can be
• 43:25
  really fucking good at all of it if I want to be.
• 43:26
  Do you know what I mean? And it is my life and it is my
• 43:28
  lifestyle. I build my life around it as
• 43:31
  opposed to making time for it. And I think that's the nicest
• 43:34
  change that I made. I think in quite a big way, like
• 43:36
  I said, inspired by a lot of guys.
• 43:37
  And a few of these guys that I was inspired by, I'm now in
• 43:40
  contact with, which is also a weird full circle moment.
• 43:43
  So it's, yeah, it's it's very cool, man.
• 43:45
  I love it. I absolutely love it.
• 43:47
  I think definitely and again, we will touch on it.
• 43:50
  I'll close it off at the end of the at the end of the podcast.
• 43:52
  You don't get much to say on it and you can't shoot your shot at
• 43:54
  me too many times. But having like started to
• 43:58
  dabble in more endurance based stuff, I used to think that the
• 44:02
  gym would give me. Well I used to.
• 44:04
  I used to think that gym gave me clarity because I used to push
• 44:06
  myself relatively hard in the gym.
• 44:08
  But it is totally different from when your body part in a gym is
• 44:12
  trying to fail on you in comparison to when your whole
• 44:15
  body is trying to fail on you and pushing through it.
• 44:18
  And there have been some incredible conversations which I
• 44:20
  can't even think about now because they were so intense and
• 44:24
  so deep at the time of needing to quit and not.
• 44:27
  And it's that sort of battle for me that when I can have that, I
• 44:32
  learned something about myself each time.
• 44:34
  And you get a little bit more confidence of who you are, where
• 44:38
  that comes from. And I haven't done half the
• 44:42
  amount of insurance that you've done or the length of because
• 44:45
  you've done like half Iron Man's, Iron Man's, which for me,
• 44:48
  I'm still not entirely sure if I want to do the sick.
• 44:51
  The sick part of me is like, yeah, do it.
• 44:52
  The part of me that realises how much training you have to do,
• 44:55
  you don't have enough time. What's the Well, actually, do
• 45:01
  you know what? I was about to ask a question,
• 45:03
  but someone else is going to ask the question on my behalf.
• 45:06
  OK, so we're going to go into the listener question phase.
• 45:09
  Cool. OK, so for those that are
• 45:11
  unaware, the listener question phase, before I do a podcast
• 45:16
  with any of the guests that come on, I like to share that I'm
• 45:19
  doing listen to questions, which gives you guys a chance to
• 45:22
  directly ask a question to the guests.
• 45:23
  So you just have a little popular little question on the
• 45:26
  Instagram story and if it's good enough and it's not weird, then
• 45:30
  I will ask questions. You'd be, well, you wouldn't be
• 45:32
  surprised the number of weird questions.
• 45:35
  So guys, keep it, you know, within reason and interesting
• 45:38
  and it'll probably get asked. So I'll start with that
• 45:42
  question. So this question comes from
• 45:46
  James. James wants to know the toughest
• 45:50
  and physical, the toughest physical and mental challenge in
• 45:53
  competition that you've had, Paul and what competition was
• 45:57
  it? In competition I've I've got to
• 46:00
  say it was challenge Roth 100%. So first full lineman distance
• 46:05
  race and that was why I went to a zone 3, which was amazing.
• 46:08
  So a bit of background. So I planned on doing my first
• 46:10
  full distance around now to December.
• 46:13
  I did in July and essentially doing it 5-6 months ahead of
• 46:17
  time. I didn't think I was going to be
• 46:19
  ready and I wanted sub 12. I would, if I went over 12
• 46:22
  hours, I think I would have slapped myself up because as as
• 46:25
  much as even completing it, no matter what time you do it in,
• 46:27
  it is unbelievably impressive. My little demon in the back of
• 46:31
  my head is just like, you're not good enough.
• 46:33
  And I'm like, well, OK, we're going to aim for that.
• 46:35
  But it was the run because essentially on the bike, I
• 46:39
  pulled my whole front mech off the bike, had the cable tie on,
• 46:43
  bolt it back on and then had to change gears with my hand for
• 46:46
  most of the bike ride. So I went into the run knowing
• 46:50
  that I had some really, really I had a whole arse in.
• 46:54
  What if I was going to do get what I wanted?
• 46:57
  So essentially I said a second. I came through transition, I
• 47:00
  went on going sub 4, I'm going sub four in the marathon.
• 47:03
  I don't care what happens, I'm just going to grip, get it, No
• 47:05
  walking. I went to some dark, dark places
• 47:09
  on that run. I didn't stop running Aussie and
• 47:11
  ibuprofen like they were sweets. And essentially I got to the
• 47:16
  half marathon point was good. I saw my brother and my best
• 47:18
  mate occasionally on the way round, but I hit 30 K and my
• 47:23
  knees mate like it's like daggers.
• 47:25
  It's like every time I took a step, someone was putting a
• 47:27
  knife in the top of my knee and I was in agony and I still had
• 47:31
  another what, 12 K to go. And I was looking at my watch
• 47:35
  and essentially, Long story short, I came in in the
• 47:37
  marathon, the 355, if I'd walked at any point and had to speed
• 47:42
  back up again, I wouldn't have come so before.
• 47:44
  So I knew that I had to literally grit into every sort
• 47:49
  of Oz of being I had in order to get over that line and play it
• 47:53
  so carefully and make sure I just kept moving.
• 47:55
  But 30K in, I was like, I could, I could kick it right now.
• 47:58
  I could stop. And I saw my brother and he was
• 48:00
  like, I was like, I'm in the trenches, man.
• 48:02
  I'm in the trenches. He was like, go on, go on.
• 48:04
  You've got this like slapping on the back and stuff.
• 48:06
  And yeah, I mean, you go to, I went to that place to make sure
• 48:10
  I hit that subfold. And I think that was, that's
• 48:13
  probably the dark. That's probably the darkest
• 48:14
  place I've gone to in a competition for sure.
• 48:16
  Yeah. Just just out of interest,
• 48:18
  purely from where you have been before, is it ever revisiting
• 48:22
  previous places you've been to or is it an entirely new place?
• 48:24
  It's an entirely new place, but it's definitely driven by that.
• 48:27
  I know how how I know how mentally resent I am nowadays.
• 48:31
  I can put myself through some horrific shit and I'll be
• 48:34
  absolutely fine. Like, like I said, I've got
• 48:38
  Beachhead Marathon next weekend and I'm doing it as a triathlon.
• 48:43
  I'm going to be in the war at quarter five in the dark and and
• 48:47
  no one else is doing it with me. And I know I'll be fine because
• 48:50
  I once I I lock in, I get going, I can take myself to that place.
• 48:53
  And that's why I had to do it Roth, where I just had to almost
• 48:56
  you horse blinky yourself almost let your eyes go a little bit
• 48:59
  foggy and you just follow the flags.
• 49:01
  And that was that was how it worked for me.
• 49:02
  Yeah, it's. It's always interesting.
• 49:04
  Obviously I would never, I will never, ever encourage someone to
• 49:08
  be in that initial place. Yeah, I do find it fascinating
• 49:11
  the levels that you can find within yourself from different
• 49:14
  experiences. And by all means, some of the
• 49:16
  best endurance athletes I've met haven't obviously gone to that
• 49:19
  extent, but they they have very specific memories that they draw
• 49:23
  on. And it kind of comes down to
• 49:24
  like that what is your why situation?
• 49:26
  But people can go to very, very different depths.
• 49:28
  So I always find it interesting to see where people draw on
• 49:30
  within their life. So yeah, now the what was going
• 49:34
  to be the first question comes from Matt and he asked what
• 49:37
  comps did you do when you were skiing?
• 49:39
  We've kind of covered a few of them and I think he knows that
• 49:42
  we probably were going to. So there's a bonus question or
• 49:44
  two questions there, which was the best trick you've ever done
• 49:48
  and the best trick you could put off right now.
• 49:51
  OK, best trick I've ever done and landed was it's got to be
• 49:57
  the double front. Like I, I got the nickname 1
• 50:00
  trick pony because I could front flip anything like it was it was
• 50:03
  side hits off paced. It was I remember distinctly
• 50:06
  doing 1 where there was a little where you come off the chair
• 50:09
  lift and all the snow gets pushed to the bottom.
• 50:10
  There's this little dip and I rolled off a chair lift and just
• 50:12
  did a front flip at the top. And that was in Sir Chevalier.
• 50:16
  And I think one of the guys was like, no, we might always
• 50:18
  fucking give up then. But double front flip on, on the
• 50:21
  LAX jumps because it wasn't fast.
• 50:24
  It was laid out and I was in the air for about 4 1/2 seconds.
• 50:28
  And that I, you know, when you land and I was like almost
• 50:30
  instantly erect. It was, it was like unreal.
• 50:34
  And then also, I think the big one was the season after my big
• 50:39
  injury, I landed a Rodeo 5, which is, you know, 1 flip and 1
• 50:45
  1/2 spins at a night time big air show in front of all my
• 50:49
  mates. And it was the first time I'd
• 50:51
  gone upside down since I broke my neck.
• 50:53
  And I chucked it twice. Failed on the third one.
• 50:57
  I got pulled up by the Skidoo again.
• 50:59
  Something that would just make you feel like a God.
• 51:01
  And it is the best thing. Coolest thing in the world.
• 51:03
  Again. Dragged into the dark for the
• 51:05
  running. Yeah.
• 51:06
  Landed this Rodeo 5 in front of the group that I was looking
• 51:08
  after for the week. All my mates, I, I, I took my
• 51:12
  skis off, racked them up and went yeah, I went, I went and
• 51:14
  had a shoulder key like a media there.
• 51:16
  I was like brilliant round. My mum told her I'd done it.
• 51:18
  She shouted at me, hung the phone up.
• 51:19
  So yeah, those those two are like big stand outs for me, but.
• 51:22
  What would you do right now? Right now, if you.
• 51:24
  Had to pull 1 trick off. You're on the slope right now.
• 51:26
  Would it be? Probably still be the Radio 5.
• 51:27
  You reckon you could stomp it, Ryan I?
• 51:29
  Could do Radio Five. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 51:31
  That's quite cool. Yeah.
• 51:31
  I could still do one now, yeah. So the hold on, was he the last
• 51:39
  question? I didn't finish writing the last
• 51:42
  question down. So I'm going to I'm trying to
• 51:45
  remember. I know, I know this is from a an
• 51:48
  Instagram username. It was H under score Perry and I
• 51:52
  I don't I can't I can't say who that is.
• 51:54
  I'm going to go with Perry, but the question starts with what is
• 52:00
  the biggest and seven stops 7 inches.
• 52:05
  Fantastic. Oh, there we go.
• 52:08
  No, the the question was, Oh yeah, what it was going to be.
• 52:13
  What's the biggest challenge you've got coming up?
• 52:15
  Oh, Oh well, yeah, next weekend straight up so.
• 52:19
  The, the, the triathlon is, I mean, is it triathlon distance
• 52:23
  that you're doing in the water and on a bike?
• 52:24
  It's because you're doing a marathon.
• 52:26
  Yeah, so it's Iron Man 70.3 distance swimming bike.
• 52:30
  With a marathon. With a marathon at the end, but
• 52:31
  the marathon's got 1200 meters of Asian off roads.
• 52:34
  Oh it's it's disgusting your. Intention is to do sub 4 sub. 4
• 52:38
  sub four top 100 here Yeah, I'm I'm having it as well.
• 52:42
  Like I'm pretty confident it's the swim in the bike.
• 52:44
  I'm not rushing at all. I want to get it done.
• 52:47
  I'm going to take more time with transition.
• 52:48
  Just not give myself myself like hypothermia.
• 52:51
  Huge one, but the run is like the big bit we're on to get over
• 52:55
  the get to the start line, say hello to any to who I need to
• 52:58
  and then get moving. But I'm doing it for like a
• 53:00
  men's mental health charity support group.
• 53:02
  So it's it's a big thing for me. We love.
• 53:04
  That we're a big support. Yes.
• 53:05
  Yeah. And H under score Perry, I can
• 53:07
  only apologize. Your question was good.
• 53:09
  It was good enough for me to start writing.
• 53:10
  And I feel you got distracted. I was told to tell you before
• 53:12
  the episode. Now into the next section, we do
• 53:16
  three pieces of advice for a younger version of yourself.
• 53:18
  So imagine I'm no longer with you on the podcast.
• 53:21
  You're now talking to either 3 versions of a younger you or one
• 53:25
  version of you that needs three pieces of advice.
• 53:27
  What would you tell younger version of Toby?
• 53:30
  I think I'll take I'm going to take three different ages.
• 53:32
  I think was one nice way to do it.
• 53:34
  I think 1818 year old Toby where he was hesitant about going away
• 53:41
  and almost didn't almost joined the police would have been silly
• 53:44
  of me, but it it was it would it would be just go for it.
• 53:49
  It's going to be the best time of your life.
• 53:51
  And I almost didn't go again. Very happy I did.
• 53:55
  But I spent a good couple of months sort of playing with the
• 53:57
  idea and whatever else and I wish I would have just gone a
• 53:59
  bit earlier. You know what I mean?
• 54:00
  Got started a bit earlier and yeah, so there and then.
• 54:04
  I think the next one is going to be after my neck and back break,
• 54:09
  which would be do the fucking therapy because you will be 30
• 54:15
  and you'll make dad noises all the time because your body's so
• 54:18
  fucked. Do the therapy.
• 54:21
  Don't ignore the doctors. It doesn't matter how cool you
• 54:23
  are. But I think it's a big one.
• 54:25
  I definitely gave up part of my body to just be the cool kid for
• 54:28
  three years. Do you know what I mean?
• 54:29
  Which hindsight was worth it? Wasn't really worth it.
• 54:33
  And then the other one is, yeah, it's got to be, it's got to be
• 54:38
  Toby, 2018 Toby absolutely has to be where it would be fully,
• 54:43
  fully. Just like this isn't permanent.
• 54:45
  It won't be forever. And that was incredibly hard for
• 54:48
  me to for anyone to say to me at the time, which I did hear from
• 54:50
  people. But if I could go back and just
• 54:52
  be a family on the wall in that room and pass anything to that
• 54:56
  kid where he spent months and months just just in the worst
• 55:00
  place you can possibly imagine, not feeling wanted but was very
• 55:04
  wantable with his friends and stuff.
• 55:05
  It will be. Get outside some more, put the
• 55:08
  bottle down and go and have a lovely time because it'll make
• 55:10
  you so much better, make you so much healthier.
• 55:12
  Yeah, awesome. Yeah, really good advice.
• 55:15
  Interesting question, actually. Not that there is a good or a
• 55:18
  bad view on alcohol. I mean, it's a very normal
• 55:21
  thing. Do you drink now?
• 55:23
  Yeah, yeah. So you've just got a much
• 55:24
  healthier relationship. With I've got a really good
• 55:26
  relationship with alcohol, really, really good.
• 55:28
  And it's a you know, it's a weird sentence to say is really
• 55:30
  good relationship with alcohol because it makes you sound like
• 55:32
  a fucking boozer. You know what I mean?
• 55:34
  And don't get me wrong, I I love nothing more than pub garden
• 55:38
  sun, like my best mates and my brother and stuff.
• 55:41
  And we're just shooting the shit, having a hilarious time.
• 55:43
  I love that having a few too many beers and it's good fun
• 55:45
  because it that I truly relax and forget about work and you
• 55:49
  know, it's just lovely. But I've got to the point now.
• 55:52
  I mean, back in the day we drank every single day.
• 55:54
  But now I know that I can have going, have going have one or
• 55:57
  two. My mum wouldn't have having
• 55:58
  lunch and I'll go back and I'm quite happy to do some work and
• 56:00
  I'm not going to have another one afterwards.
• 56:02
  Whereas back in the day when I was really mentally bad, it
• 56:05
  would be weird for me not to open one more when I got home.
• 56:07
  And that was a bad relationship with alcohol.
• 56:09
  My relationship with alcohol, alcohol now is I'm not being
• 56:12
  funny. I'm, I'm, I'm incredibly fit and
• 56:15
  strong at the moment. I gave up for a little bit to
• 56:18
  fix my relationship with it. And now I'm in a very good place
• 56:21
  where I understand how to deal with it myself.
• 56:23
  And I, yeah, I'm very happy with my sort of relationship with.
• 56:26
  It now from my side season and uni to a degree ruined my my not
• 56:33
  my relationship with alcohol because I don't really have one
• 56:36
  anymore. I haven't come out and said that
• 56:38
  I don't drink because I do, but it's so wet.
• 56:43
  And the reason being is because some of the best memories and
• 56:47
  those that actually stayed as memories that I have from when I
• 56:51
  was with friends on the season or with those same people in a
• 56:54
  different setting. Because after the season, we all
• 56:56
  met up in Cornwall, had a great time.
• 56:58
  And then I went to university and had loads of good times with
• 57:01
  friends at university. When I came out of university
• 57:04
  and everything kind of became a bit more serious about life.
• 57:06
  And the thing that kind of took forefront was training again.
• 57:10
  It didn't really have its place anymore.
• 57:12
  And any time that I did drink didn't match up to those same
• 57:15
  memories. So kind of became this expense
• 57:17
  chasing something that I wasn't getting anymore for sure, which
• 57:19
  was what happens. But then it gets to Christmas or
• 57:22
  it gets to like seeing family and that's where it's still
• 57:24
  there. So there might be some people
• 57:26
  that know me personally and thought that I didn't drink.
• 57:28
  It's not that I don't drink, it's just that I don't
• 57:31
  necessarily see the point unless you know, it's going to be
• 57:33
  extremely casual and it's not going to cost me a fortune
• 57:35
  because I live in London. Well, mate, I mean if you drink
• 57:37
  anywhere, my God, I mean it was I was at.
• 57:39
  I went to a new pub in my hometown the other day and I
• 57:42
  ordered. It was like a craft beer and I
• 57:43
  should have known because there was like just some weird cartoon
• 57:46
  on the front and I was like, shit, this is going to cost me a
• 57:48
  fortune. 8 lbs sixty. And the woman didn't warn me.
• 57:51
  She just, you know, just slide the car machine out and you just
• 57:53
  tap the top. Oh, that's my Monzo popped up
• 57:55
  and I was I literally back to the bar and I was like, you need
• 57:57
  to tell me having. Been a vast and you know what
• 58:00
  you're doing and you don't want to help you because you feel bad
• 58:01
  a. 100% yeah, yeah. But then you also, you run the
• 58:04
  ray for them coming back and just slapping you up.
• 58:06
  You know, 860 I was livid. But yeah, I mean, yeah, I'll go
• 58:09
  for me. Like I said, I, like a lot of
• 58:11
  people do now, I took time off to fix my relationship with it
• 58:16
  and get myself to what I can only describe is where I am now,
• 58:19
  which is the best mental headspace I've been in in my
• 58:22
  adult life as I can remember. And I still drink at the moment.
• 58:25
  I've got a nice, I've got a place for it.
• 58:26
  I train twice a day. Yeah.
• 58:29
  I mean, yeah, I think I've just sorted myself out with it and I
• 58:32
  think it's good, but it's a nice place to be awesome.
• 58:34
  Now, it's good that to, it's good to hear that you are saying
• 58:37
  that, but unfortunately the next thing that I've got to ask you
• 58:39
  is the previous guest question. And the previous guest question
• 58:41
  is going to look at the negative side of someone's going close.
• 58:43
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the previous guest was Tom
• 58:46
  Murray, who actually he didn't directly make the trip from
• 58:50
  Malaysia to come back just for the podcast, but he happened to
• 58:52
  be coming through and I managed to grab it.
• 58:55
  His background is almost as varied as yours, not quite in
• 58:59
  the sort of sports sense, but very much doing a lot of
• 59:02
  different things and kind of only recently figuring out where
• 59:05
  you want us to. His question, based on going all
• 59:09
  in on new things, is what's one thing you should be doing right
• 59:13
  now that you're not doing? Drinking, not changing.
• 59:19
  I think I should say right now that I'm not doing.
• 59:25
  Oh, The thing is like adult, Toby says.
• 59:28
  Settling down, getting myself sorted, getting myself together.
• 59:31
  But I'm also just, I'm also in the process of going all in on
• 59:34
  something and you know, selling my car, get rid of my flat,
• 59:36
  doing everything so I can make something work.
• 59:39
  So I think, I think it's going to be training more because I
• 59:47
  have taken, it's really bad to admit, but I've taken this bit
• 59:49
  of approach to, I'm doing a lot of ultra endurance stuff at the
• 59:51
  moment, but I trained well for Roth, but not as well as I
• 59:55
  should do. So now it's put in my head, I'm
• 59:58
  like, I understand you need to do the 20 hours a week.
• 1:00:00
  So I'll do like 8. And I'm about to take on one of
• 1:00:03
  the hardest trathlons I've done in my life and I've not trained
• 1:00:06
  enough and I restrain the, I'm just doing a lot more of the
• 1:00:08
  wrong things. So I think it's going to have to
• 1:00:10
  be training more for purpose because I just don't do at the
• 1:00:14
  moment. And I'm quite embarrassed to
• 1:00:16
  admit that I'm honest with you. Fair enough.
• 1:00:18
  But I I do think it is. Well, at the same time as we've
• 1:00:20
  spoken about, when you're in endurance events, you draw on
• 1:00:24
  places you've been before. And if you've done Roth and
• 1:00:27
  you're going to get into a position where your knees are
• 1:00:29
  stabbing with pain, you've been there before.
• 1:00:31
  And that's something that you can't train.
• 1:00:33
  Oh, yeah. So at least there is that you'll
• 1:00:35
  be able to use that. But at the end of the day,
• 1:00:38
  either way, you've got to do the work and how it's going to be
• 1:00:40
  done. So I guess, yeah, you can train
• 1:00:42
  some, but you've got yourself in a decent position.
• 1:00:45
  You've got myself. That's a good question.
• 1:00:46
  It's quite a hard question that. Yeah, especially, and this is
• 1:00:49
  something we were going to, I wanted to throw in to this point
• 1:00:52
  because you mentioned that you're going all in.
• 1:00:54
  And for those in this broadcast that don't understand, when Toby
• 1:00:57
  says he's going all in on something, he goes all in.
• 1:00:59
  So you're not going to say what it is.
• 1:01:03
  I mean, this podcast won't actually be out until after the
• 1:01:05
  announcement, but you're about to go all in on a new business
• 1:01:10
  idea that is very well aligned with what you have done in your
• 1:01:12
  life. Absolutely.
• 1:01:13
  Yeah. Yeah, which is very exciting,
• 1:01:15
  yes. But in order to make it work,
• 1:01:18
  when most people say they're going all in, that may mean they
• 1:01:22
  give up a few evenings a week around work.
• 1:01:26
  It may even mean that they quit their job for you.
• 1:01:31
  It's quite a little bit more than that.
• 1:01:33
  It's quite literally, yeah. So I'm getting rid of my flat,
• 1:01:36
  selling my car, selling pretty much everything I have, and I'm
• 1:01:39
  moving to Asia so I can live on the cheap while I get the
• 1:01:42
  business moving. And I'm investing everything I
• 1:01:46
  have into this to make sure it works.
• 1:01:48
  And like you said, it's something that I am grossly
• 1:01:50
  confident in success because it's so well aligned me.
• 1:01:53
  I literally, I couldn't be starting something that is more
• 1:01:55
  aligned with my background and what I do.
• 1:01:57
  And I am genuinely so passionate about it.
• 1:01:59
  And like I said earlier, we launched on Saturday and I've
• 1:02:02
  already got the clients and stuff in place pre launched that
• 1:02:05
  give me the confidence that next year it isn't going to be an
• 1:02:08
  absolute shitstorm. Like it's going to be good and
• 1:02:12
  all rely. I'm incredibly proud of what
• 1:02:14
  I've built and what I've created.
• 1:02:15
  It's taken me a long time to get it together.
• 1:02:17
  And yeah, I'm literally uphauling my entire life.
• 1:02:20
  I'm moving away. My sister's just had a baby and
• 1:02:22
  all I want to do is be around my nieces and nephews all the time.
• 1:02:25
  And you know, it'd be lovely to get a girlfriend, get a place
• 1:02:28
  and that kind of thing, which is something that has been
• 1:02:30
  incredibly inconsistent in my life.
• 1:02:32
  But yeah, I'm moving away from my family for a big old amount
• 1:02:36
  of time so I can live somewhere cheaper.
• 1:02:39
  Don't get me wrong. Lovely, right?
• 1:02:40
  It's going to be great. But I'm also 30, so probably on
• 1:02:44
  the back end of going to that kind of thing.
• 1:02:47
  Yeah, selling everything, get rid of my flap, starting again
• 1:02:51
  and hopefully in 6-7 months time or looking down a line, looks to
• 1:02:54
  me, I'll have a life that is unrecognisable in terms of what
• 1:02:58
  I'm doing day-to-day and that kind of thing, which is
• 1:03:01
  unbelievably exciting to me. I'm worth every inch of what I'm
• 1:03:04
  going to miss over the next 6-7 months so.
• 1:03:06
  Incredibly scary, but that also organised.
• 1:03:08
  How exciting. It's terrifying, man.
• 1:03:11
  Yeah, I'm panicking. Like, I mean, I'm doing it on
• 1:03:13
  Saturday and you know, when you've put so much time, work,
• 1:03:16
  money and effort into something where I've been building this
• 1:03:19
  whilst I had a full time job training for Iron Man, I mean,
• 1:03:22
  there was this period where I just didn't fucking sleep.
• 1:03:24
  Do you know what I mean? And it was, it's been tough.
• 1:03:27
  It's been tough to get down. I mean, we're licensed in 36
• 1:03:31
  countries and getting that done alone is a job in itself.
• 1:03:35
  And you know, it's, it's so tough, but it's worth every
• 1:03:39
  penny. And I'm, I'm, I'm so, so excited
• 1:03:42
  about where this is going to take me.
• 1:03:44
  And also the big thing for me is like the opportunities that I'll
• 1:03:46
  be able to give to old friends, colleagues and people that I
• 1:03:49
  care about who again, are genuinely interested in this
• 1:03:53
  industry and stuff that I'm going into, but they've never
• 1:03:55
  found a way back in or a healthy way back in.
• 1:03:58
  And that makes me excited because I'm already having those
• 1:04:00
  conversations with people that I want back in my life in a
• 1:04:03
  professional sense, but we've never been able to.
• 1:04:06
  So yeah, when I say all in, I mean like I'm selling my bed.
• 1:04:08
  Do you know what I mean? Like it's proper.
• 1:04:10
  It's. Which is all said.
• 1:04:12
  Now I will ask you what your question is going to be for the
• 1:04:16
  next guest. But I am actually going to throw
• 1:04:18
  one more question in there because Tom, before he asked the
• 1:04:22
  slightly deeper question, did come out with another question,
• 1:04:27
  which I also want to ask you because I think it's a great
• 1:04:29
  question. What is the biggest animal you
• 1:04:33
  think you could win against in a fight in its natural
• 1:04:37
  environment? Yeah, see, that's the bit that
• 1:04:39
  throws me off massively. Do you know what I mean?
• 1:04:43
  Like I've been playing in this. Could I put a camel in a
• 1:04:45
  headlock and knock it off balance a little bit?
• 1:04:47
  I don't know. Would it get up and kick the
• 1:04:49
  shit out of me in an accent? Maybe, But I think it's going to
• 1:04:54
  be like, I think it's a bit I think like AI reckon like 1/2
• 1:04:58
  grown deer. Do you know like a, I don't
• 1:05:00
  know, are we talking kill it or fight it?
• 1:05:02
  I think, I think it's a fight to the death.
• 1:05:03
  I mean, sorry if there's any vegans listening.
• 1:05:06
  It's not. It's a Disney film.
• 1:05:07
  You know, they just go to sleep and absolutely as well in the
• 1:05:09
  morning. Absolutely.
• 1:05:10
  Someone's singing in the background.
• 1:05:11
  They'll float off of it. Exactly.
• 1:05:12
  Yeah. Onto my plate.
• 1:05:13
  I I think. I told, I told, I told Tom that
• 1:05:17
  I was going to have a thing and I have had a thing.
• 1:05:20
  And my answer is actually quite boring.
• 1:05:21
  But for sure stand by. I think I could take a cow.
• 1:05:23
  A cow, I think a cow. If you had a cow running before.
• 1:05:27
  Well, that's the thing. Who said he's running me?
• 1:05:29
  True legless cow could be a knack clip.
• 1:05:34
  Oh, I was in Scotland not too long ago and I was staying on a
• 1:05:36
  farm and I'm not being funny. Those things are.
• 1:05:39
  Oh, they're huge. Terrifying.
• 1:05:40
  If. It's coming out of me.
• 1:05:42
  I'm losing, yeah, but. If you sneak up.
• 1:05:44
  They're this this sneakily agile as well, you know?
• 1:05:46
  Oh yeah, they are, mate. They're rapid, mate.
• 1:05:48
  But I'm just, I'm just thinking, you know, if a cow's got no
• 1:05:50
  reason to worry about me and he doesn't know about this whole
• 1:05:52
  conversation, he hasn't picked a human on it's.
• 1:05:54
  I know what the first move is, I'm just intrigued where you go
• 1:05:56
  after you get it to the floor. Again, just in case there's
• 1:05:58
  anybody who's listening, I'm going to hold up on that, but
• 1:06:02
  I'm going cat. What is your?
• 1:06:04
  I'm going deer. You're going deer.
• 1:06:05
  I'm going deer. He's quite strong with you get.
• 1:06:07
  Around those no horns, though, not the not the horns.
• 1:06:09
  Female deer specific time of year.
• 1:06:11
  Yeah for the female yeah, catch it at the right time exactly.
• 1:06:14
  Yeah, catch. I think a deer.
• 1:06:15
  I think I'd get it in the right place, so that gives.
• 1:06:17
  You a bit of an example for those listening and to Utopia,
• 1:06:20
  the kind of variety of question you can get between listener
• 1:06:23
  questions and also previous guest questions.
• 1:06:24
  So yeah, what would you like to ask the next guest?
• 1:06:27
  Not having a clue who they are, what they do, or what they
• 1:06:30
  discipline. It do I'm sensible or not
• 1:06:32
  sensible completely, I'd say I'm going to I'm going to go like
• 1:06:34
  adventurous and cool. OK, If money was no object,
• 1:06:38
  where would you spend the next four months?
• 1:06:42
  That's a great question, and I'm not going to allude to anything
• 1:06:47
  you're up to, but once they've got their answer, they should
• 1:06:49
  probably reach out and contact you.
• 1:06:51
  Where? They should.
• 1:06:52
  Absolutely should. Yeah, they should contact me at
• 1:06:56
  activeexplore.co.uk. Activeexplore.co.uk Great.
• 1:06:59
  So guys, this kind of rounds off our episode with Toby.
• 1:07:04
  It's been awesome seeing you again, but also having you on.
• 1:07:06
  Thank you to catch you and opening up about your story.
• 1:07:08
  Really interesting for me to listen to.
• 1:07:10
  Hopefully equally for those that are listening to this now.
• 1:07:14
  Now, we've obviously mentioned what where to find your next
• 1:07:17
  adventure, but where can people also find yourself?
• 1:07:21
  So Instagram at Toby Simmons UK and I might as well say what I'm
• 1:07:25
  launching on Saturday morning it will be out for.
• 1:07:27
  It it's going to be out. Active explore travel, sports
• 1:07:30
  and Wellness retreats, camps. Hit me up.
• 1:07:33
  I'm your expert and it is going to be unreal and amazing
• 1:07:36
  worldwide stuff. Working with people all over the
• 1:07:38
  place and it's incredibly exciting.
• 1:07:40
  But Toby Simmons, UK for all of the debaucherous triathlon
• 1:07:43
  content. Amazing.
• 1:07:45
  Now for those of you that are new to the podcast, well done
• 1:07:48
  you found it. But at mindsets under score
• 1:07:51
  podcast is where you can find us on all forms of social media
• 1:07:53
  that will also work on YouTube if you fancy watching this,
• 1:07:55
  seeing some of those show and tells first hand rather than
• 1:07:57
  rely on me for terrible audio description.
• 1:08:00
  But any support, whether that is leaving a review, leaving a like
• 1:08:04
  sharing or actually just following along on one of the
• 1:08:07
  forms of social media is greatly, greatly appreciated.
• 1:08:09
  So with that being said, thank you very much again, Toby.
• 1:08:13
  Pleasure man, good to catch up. And I look forward to seeing you
• 1:08:16
  guys listening in the next episode.