Latest / White Fox Talking / E89: Climb Your Own Mountain with Jonny Pain – What Resilience Really Takes

Transcript

E89: Climb Your Own Mountain with Jonny Pain – What Resilience Really Takes · White Fox Talking

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_03: Hello and welcome to the White Fox Talking Podcast.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_03: I'm Matt Charlie Valentine and online is Seb.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_03: Good evening, Seb.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_03: Good evening, Charlie.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: That was stressful, wasn't it?
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_03: Oh mate, it's just you know it's no, it's fine, it's fine.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_03: You know, digging into my uh Zen breathing.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_03: Did you did you see my shoulders go up?
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, totally.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_03: So obviously the listeners are used to this now, it's just a series, isn't it?
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_03: Charlie's stress level is actually getting online.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_03: Why, you know, I just it's one of these things in the universe that every time we have something to do where we're we're recording live or we're recording something, then all of a sudden the programme needs updated and I've got to oh I've got to update something, unplug something, turn something off, turn it back on, and you're like, ah, I don't believe this.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_03: Next time, Charlie, let's prepare half an hour early.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_03: Well, time got time got away from me because I thought funnily enough, I've been in the been in the gym preparing for my next um feat of old man's physical exercise.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to tell us all about it?
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, can you hear about that?
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'm doing a I'm doing a 62 miles, 100k.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_03: It's what it's a walk, it's not a it's not a run.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_03: Um I'm gonna do it just straight off in one go.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's gonna be 24, 26.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it's gonna be over 24 hours, 26, 28 hours.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_03: And that's part of the fundraising events that we do for candlelighters, which is a children's cancer charity in Leeds.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um we do that in memory of Chris and Kev who were killed in Istanbul, and that's where I got my PTSD from.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_03: So it's you know, it all sort of ties in, and the White Folks Talking podcast, we're gonna be shirt sponsors, so that's cool.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_03: So we're gonna we've donated some money and we'll probably donate some more to stop the tax van getting it because we're a CIC.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_03: Good work.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, so that's my next thing in a couple of weeks.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, uh yeah, I'll I'll be alright.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_03: So I'll be alright.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: How are you, Seb?
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, I'm good, thank you.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh just busy as usual.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I've got my first two all machines growing.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: So they look fantastic.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I've got some uh my sunflowers have gone bonkers.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know what's happened to them.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_03: They've got about six or seven flowers on them, and they've taken from a seed of a sunflower that only had one head on it last year.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, it's good.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_03: But my my broccoli, now I don't want to bore everyone, but the my broccoli that is in this it's in an isolated unit with uh where we put all the waste food in, the worms eat the food and go that that is gigantic compared with it compared with the others, but I've got handed that over to the butterflies.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, it's one of them.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_03: Don't want to eat that one meal, or don't want to see all the butterflies.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_03: So it's so my broccoli is gone.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna have to have some of that sprayed shit from the from the supermarket.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, without further ado, and after quite a long time of chasing this young this young man, can we welcome Johnny Payne to the White Fox Talking Podcast?
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_03: The White Fox Talking Podcast is sponsored by Energy Impact.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_03: Hello, Johnny.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, and thank you for having me.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And like you say, I was just talking with Seb off air there.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think we've been chasing each other around uh for best part of a decade, Charlie.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's good to be.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_03: It must be something like that.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: We have a mutual friend in uh in our friend David, and and I think through him and through Facebook and all the things that that that are good about uh social media, we've had a few chats backwards and forward.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: The podcast has been something that we've chatted about a few times, but schedules don't meet, don't meet, don't meet, but here we are today.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: So that's uh I'm I'm really pleased to be here with you eventually.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_03: Hence hence my stress when they when I couldn't get online.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_03: So could you give us a brief introduction about yourself just for the listeners and then we'll move on to what we're going to talk about today?
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Always the hardest part of these kind of conversations actually is is how do you how do you describe yourself?
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: I always start with the the hardest part, which is father of four.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: I've got four kids, I run a business as a strength of additional coach predominantly, and uh a performance nutritionist that look after clients all over the world, and and I've had some excellent opportunities looking after elite clients at that truck for about twenty-five years I've been doing that.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: And also as uh sideline in stupidity, uh I've set some world records and uh uh and feats of extreme endurance, which always seems silly to say.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody asked me what's the best way to describe what I do outside of the the the day-to-day job, and the answer is adventurer, but as soon as you say that you feel like a bloody idiot for having said it.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: So there's there's a kind of a strange introduction.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody knows what I actually do, including me.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_03: Fair enough.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks for that.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_03: Um so we should say, yeah, thanks to David, David Stacker, a mutual friend of ours, who I think he was on about episode number or it was in the first ten, talking about the uh you know.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_03: It was definitely early.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_03: And that one went off, went off because it was about nutrition, but it went off on an angle and it was good, you know.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: So he's very knowledgeable on that on that front.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: He and I'm working with David on a few projects, and uh it's always been always been an enjoyable experience.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_03: He's a good man underneath it all.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_03: If he can off, yeah, yeah.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_03: So what I'd like to talk about is obviously you're you're working with uh um sort of special forces, elite athletes, then the own the the things you've done yourself, and the the the one that I you know I noticed first after David sort of introduced us uh or introduced me to you and sort of following you substalking you, was this the you know the vertical marathon.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_03: And what what my thoughts were on getting you on was people that are working at these elite levels, the motivation, their mindset, and how can the advice you give them, how can that work for people that lack that motivation and lack that mindset, which then can be damaging to themselves.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's an interesting one.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: So so for context and clarity, Project Vertical was what we attempted in uh 2020, which was at the time to be the world's first uh vertical marathon.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a an idea conceived by a colleague of mine at the time, and the idea being that if we could climb a mountain consecutive times over and over, the accumulated gain would make twenty-six point two miles of uh of gain.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Stupidly, we chose Nevis.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: So here in in in the UK, as we know, that's that's the that's the the tallest mountain at the very least.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's probably not the hardest to climb by any stretch, but certainly the tallest.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: And 32 point two times uh up that mountain would equate to uh 26.2 miles of uh of gain.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: So we tried it in 2020.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: I got uh 22 times 22 summits in a row, uh, and uh Fergus, who was doing it with at the time, he he managed 20 and had to pull out because of injury.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: And we learned a lot of lessons uh during that process.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: And and it was a it was a fundraising opportunity, and and really that the the hill and all the all the things around it, uh which actually speak to your question, were really about men's mental health uh and and about um taking one foot and one step in front of the other and and and continuing even in the face of adversity and and and all the things that are kind of wrapped up in that philosophy.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: So in failing it, we didn't really feel like we'd failed at all, because we tried and and and we really put our best effort in.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: We'd given ourselves a very strict timeline because we wanted to finish on uh on Veterans Day on the on the 11th of November.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and we we we didn't meet the mark.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: And we also only had so much resource set aside to allow us to continue.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: So we we stopped, uh, but we're very proud of what they've done.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: But me being me, that that had sat in my craw as we sat up here for the best part of four years, and and when 2024 came along, I I threatened to do it again and then then made good on the on the threat and and attempted it again.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: So that was uh again in November.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: The the original uh piece had been for Movember, so I I did it again in November, this time raising money for Re-org charity and uh and succeeded.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I made it uh and actually made it a little bit harder for myself, but and we can cover some of this off in actual fact because it speaks to the question you asked, uh, is I made it a little bit more genuine how I felt it was genuine.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: In the first instance, what we did was we had a kind of a a base camp set outside off the hill.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Once we'd finished for the day and done as much as we could, we went back to to camp, which was not salubrious but but comfortable, a rented property uh a few miles away from Nevis.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I felt that that that was actually not not as genuine as we could be to the idea of the project.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: That if you were to say you're gonna do London marathon, but you every mile you stopped and went and got a hotel for the night, you've not really done it, you've done 26 miles over 26 days.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas if you stayed on the course, went as far as you could, laid down, got back up again, and continued and never left the course, then we could argue that that is a marathon.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's what I did the second time round on the mountain was I I took uh tent, completely self-supported, went up, sat at the bottom of Nevis, and never came away from it at all and looked after myself the entire time, rather than having a project team behind it, which we did the first time.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: For for various reasons that actually made it better, easier.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: I felt I felt like I was more connected with the goal rather than scattered in amongst different different pieces and different things we were doing.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: And as I say, it was successful.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: But as uh a year and a half ago when I'm before we came on air, you asked how I felt about it, and and I still have these moments of, what the fuck did you do that for?
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Type two.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: It was type two fun.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if there is a type three or a type four, but it went deep, deep somewhere.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: It was uh it was pretty hairy at times.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think I was lucky to come away alive on on on a few uh scary occasions.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um because, you know, I I'm unsupported, I'm on the mountain, and I'm tired.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: I've been up there for the best part of uh I did it in 15 days, just about two weeks, uh just over two weeks, and tireder and tireder each day, so so more and more dangerous for me.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but here I am, I did it, we succeeded, we raised a a good bit of money for the charity and uh and and full circle, again, I have a tendency to ramble, sorry, sorry, Charlie, sorry.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: But the uh the full circle to your question is one of the things I wanted to do again was raise awareness around this idea of um who can we be once we step outside the the uh constraints that w that we might have set ourselves.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: One of the questions asked, or the way questions are often framed about that project to me is can you help us understand what a normal person could do in that environment?
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: And the easy answer to that is, well, I I did by doing it because I I d there's nothing special about me, in fact, below average in most things, you know.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: But it was just a mindset thing and an ability to say I'm going to do it, and then taking, you know, step by step each each time.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I think anybody could do these things, but it's it's kind of a certain belief and a certain mindset that you have to foster.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_03: So that was that was doing that, what, twice a day?
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh sometimes three, yeah.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, which is so it's uh uh because of the the the accumulated fatigue as well.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh at the beginning I was getting fast times up and down, a good bit of recovery time, getting my admin sorted, but it by the end uh I was uh uh at about twenty-two hours movement and maybe two hours sleep over the course of the last four or five days.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: So it became really, really uh uh uh an act of pure attrition.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was really, really hard.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: I knew that would happen because the tire I got, the slower I would get.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: The descents were horrendous because my knees were were just in tatters.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell Did you manage to get more sleep then?
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: At the beginning uh I I was maybe on the hill for about twelve, thirteen hours and it took a good space of time.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd I'd do one summit, come back time, take a nice bit of time, make sure my feet were okay, get my get my uh uh food sorted for the next one, chat to people who'd come to visit or who looking at me, wondering what the hell I was doing and stuff.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then as it got closer to the to the end of it by you know a sense, I don't know, 32, I was up and down, no time to stop if I wanted to complete it and I had to just keep moving.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: And and it that was really quite horrible.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: But actually the more publicity it got, the more people would come and visit me on the hill.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: So the more I was able to distract myself with with their journeys and the conversations I was having on with them.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: So it kind of swings in around about it.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think there's a lot to be said, isn't there, when uh people come and support you, rather that that bit that little bit where it's uh on projects where you're just by yourself and you're just with your own thoughts.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_03: And that's the that's the time when you're thinking, Maybe I could just stop here.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_03: I know I've done it on marathons and you're thinking, well, maybe I maybe I'll just stop here for a little bit.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_03: And it's getting going again.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_03: But when you hear the noise of crowds and also that guilt of thinking, oh, I need to run it.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: So that's an interesting thing that that that happened on the hill.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: I learned some really beautiful lessons I think that you'll like one of which was when I got there to start the the the successful project, there was also the breakdown of a business relationship that was in a long long-standing one, uh, and the breakdown of that friendship, and I was I was quite bitter about things.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: So it almost derailed it for me.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe a little bit of pure um bullishness, you know, I said, fuck it, I'm gonna do it, you know.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: So the first five or six days, I was marching up and down that hill with anger as the fuel, you know, with with a real negativity.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: Which is actually, as as we know, and and you know, you and I both, Charlie, have a similar path where you you know how powerful uh anger can be, and and and it was a decent fuel, but it burns real, real fast.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: It reminds me or the idea that I've got in my head now, is about when you see these uh Fast and Furious films and they put the nitrous oxide in and the whole thing goes hell for leather for about thirty seconds, and then it's like, well, now what do you fucking do?
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: I kind of marched on on that anger for quite a while.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then a very good friend of mine, unbeknownst to me, had come to visit all the way from Pooh.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um he'd driven up uh a long way with his with his wife, and he appeared on the hill, called me, said, Can you see that hedge torch, Shawnee?
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it and it's like, yeah, fucking hell, are you here?
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, Yeah, and I'm waiting for you coming down, I've got a sandwich I've made for you and stuff.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I came down and saw Sammy and and was overwhelmed with what he'd done, that big journey.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: And he's a very, very close friend as well.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I was I was excited to see him.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: And the interaction I had with him switched the mindset completely to because I was I was ready to give up only about five or six days in.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Doing well physically, all the metrics were good.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: I was moving fast, it's just like, why am I here?
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: What am I doing?
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so pissed off.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that switch uh to to be um embraced with his love kind of turned it around for me a little bit.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, why why don't I march on that field?
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and and from there on in, as hard as it got, I was able to lean back into all the different uh support and and people around me, and people well-wishing and strangers and and and close what close uh loved ones uh alike.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it was really interesting to to switch that around.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_03: Do you think it's sometimes a little bit what's the word, spooky, that you know, when you you're on that verge of giving up and something I find that there's these whether it's the ways of the without getting so hippie, the ways of the universe that something usually does pop up like that.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: Or whether you're yeah, yeah, I like to believe that.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I don't get uh too deeply entrenched in uh in the religious quality of that, but I think that there's something to be said for for Sammy's timing.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: I I'd I'd made the decision on the way down.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'd summited that that particular summit and I was on the way down, I said, ah fuck it, you know, it's this this is stupid.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: That was the mindset I was in.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and then Charlie's light, literally the the light came on from the distance.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I I had seen it before he called.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like, who's that this time?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: It was like two in the morning.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: What other idiot is up here at two more two in the morning?
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: And lo and behold, it was a real close friend of mine, you know.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: And a long journey for him to take, and you know, n yeah, no other reason but to meet me on the hill and say, How are you doing?
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: Brilliant.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_03: How many days had you been?
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_03: How many days had you had on the other thing?
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_03: Five or five or six, I think, before for uh, ten or twelve or cents, maybe more.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think I think fourteen or so by that point I'd done a couple of uh three days.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh no, no, it would have been No, you're right, about ten or twelve.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't I didn't do the three days until until later into the project.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, no, it would have been about that.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_03: So we're I mean we are talking, you know, I highest hill in um in the UK for people that haven't done Ben Nevis.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's it's a walk, innit?
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_03: It's a stretch of the legs.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_03: But also that I suppose also for that, then there's also the there's there's this preparation, and that's part of the project as well, isn't it?
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's that was interesting for me as well, because the first time round, because this had never been done before.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean there's plenty of things that have been done that are similar.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: That there's there's a uh who's about to break the uh the world record.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was something like thirty-eight days for the fastest woman, thirty-five for the fastest man.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: She looks like she's coming in at 30 days for completing uh all the Alps in a row.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: Which isn't a dissimilar uh uh setup and a dissimilar um thing.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: But but this particular uh concept hadn't been done before, and the timelines that we're doing it in hadn't been done before.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: So therefore we didn't really know how to prep for it.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: And the first time around, I think we prepped too hard.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: We went up there, we did uh triple ascents, uh double ascents, we stayed over, we did it again, and we uh sickened ourselves to the mountain a little bit, but but almost like overdid it.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: You'll have been there before, perhaps training for for ultras and things that you do.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you think you need to just put all these miles in, all these miles in, and you realise that actually you're burning the candle at the other end and fatiguing yourself so much that uh that that when you get there you you're empty before you go.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we did that a little bit first time round.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: So the second time round, the successful time a year and a half ago, the prep was much, much less.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I I wanted to feel physically fit and capable, uh, but not so physically fit that I was kind of at the peak of a a preparation phase.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: Just just I wanted to feel kind of ready in life.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and that made a huge difference because I didn't feel like I got there having already You know, when people do marathons and and ultramarathons, uh one of the things I say to them when I'm managing their coaching is that we don't need to do marathons and ultramarathons in prep.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: We need to get your body ready for that effort.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: If we if we've already done it six times in the lead up, then kind of what's the point in the end of it?
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: So we need to just get you physically robust and prepared.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: And and that's what I did better the second time, yeah.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think was it uh Eddie Izzard that did, were it 14, 40 or 13 marathons in a month or something like that?
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_03: And I think he'd said they got easier after the first ten.
• 16:41
  unknown: Yeah.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: That prep, sorry it cut across you then.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, sorry.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's something I bring up quite a lot.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: Eddie Izzard was a great example of that.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: He was preparing for that where he was going to do the very first time he did it, it was it was I'm sure it was larger than fourteen, something like back-to-back marathons anyway, day after day, wasn't it?
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: And he was doing so much prep that he suddenly had the the the brain wave.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, Why am I prepping?
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm now doing X amount of miles a day, X amount of pre- I'd be as well just fucking start the thing instead of giving it away now, I'll just give it away on the course.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of the same concept.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: It was like, listen, you know, we we've given so many by the time we started Project Vertical, we'd already summited already summited the mountain in the in the previous two months, maybe about ten times.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and that's a lot of times to go up and down a mountain for anybody within it within a matter of a month, you know.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't normally do that.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was just way too much.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: So the second time round, I didn't go to any mountains in preparation.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: I was here in the uh in just outside Edinburgh, there's uh there's still mountains, but they're not Munroes, the the Pentland Hills.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I prepped in the Pentland Hills just by moving faster, different carrying different loads, uh just just slightly different protocols and making sure I was strong in the gym.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: But most of the aerobic work I did was just around this little park here that's outside my house and kept it minimal and and kept it simple and it proved to be proved to be useful.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: It certainly worked.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I'd have to do it two or three times over to figure out what is the best route, but that's that's the one that I'm sticking with.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um I'm just sort of wondering there with with what you experienced on that and the thought of giving up, if you're if you're then coaching other people, coach coaching um special forces personnel, stuff like that.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_03: Because these people are top of the game already.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_03: And they're c and then they're coming to you to increase their performance.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_03: So what sort of advice do you give them guys and ladies?
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's very similar.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: What I deal with more uh are aspirants, people, people looking to to to move from their unit to become special forces.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I do you you're right to say that I do have uh a clutch of uh special forces operators that that work under my banner, if you like.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Usually they're already in a state of fitness where whereby what we're doing is directing them a little bit to manage that fatigue in actual fact.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: So it's more with guys like that that you're putting the reins on a little bit and and and applying the brakes for them or encouraging them to do so.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: And or um, because of the nature of deployment in in in those areas, it's not always something that that they're they're briefed about in in huge advance with with a lot of noise.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: So we want to keep them very similar to the way that I train myself, is keep people prepared for everything really.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: So so have them overall prepared, but but not carrying a huge amount of fatigue because we don't want somebody to go, okay, right, you need to be here within the next 48 hours and they're fucked from sessions that I've been giving them that have, you know, got a recover recovery uh implication of 52 hours or whatever it might be.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: So usually those guys will keep them taking over.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: The aspirants, it's a case of making sure very again, very similar, but making sure that they arrive at selection prepared but not super fatigued.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess short answer to that question is actually fatigue management, an actual specification across the board for somebody like a special forces soldier is to actually I posted about this just yesterday on on Instagram, in fact, is is that specification is is is sometimes a problem.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: If we tr if we try and go down the route of making somebody stronger, stronger, stronger, then we might lose lose the uh opportunity to maintain or improve their endurance.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: If it's just about endurance, then we might lose strength.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: If it's just about those two things, we might lose explosiveness.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: So we have to look at the everything and see if we can't fit that into a full routine and allow those people to work all those different facets of fitness at once.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's the hardest part.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_03: I suppose if we're looking at the not the I keep saying normal, but we I want to get away from that really, because it's just looking at other people that aren't going towards the elite, elite forces.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_03: And we've mentioned before with sleep and from my own lived experience, the amount of poor decisions you can make and um I suppose how much toll that the body can take, fatigue has upon the body, and that's just from from in a in a stressful, stressful scenario, such as a mental health issue or just life uh just stress of life.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, do you find have you any sort of thoughts on that, how people can manage that, or just take that on board?
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_03: Because I think we live in a society where people do what need to do more, more, more.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you get some you get space in your day, it's uh you do something else.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_03: Seb, let's bring you in with this, because this is what you do.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_03: Although I don't know about your sleep.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_03: I don't I have heard some of your uh tips on sleep management.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_03: We can't tell the uh listeners in case there's traffic police listening.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_03: We'll tell Johnny off air that one.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_03: We will.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, I don't think I I honestly don't think that these days people realise how much difference fatigue can make and tiredness can make to their performance during the day.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah roles.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: I firmly agree.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: A concept that we've we've talked about, when I say we, I'm talking about people that I've worked with, uh had the pleasure to work with like David, and certainly a long-standing uh friend and and and colleague of mine, Alex Fiada, wrote a book, uh wrote two books called The High Both The Hybrid Athlete, the ultimate hybrid athlete.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: The key theme within them and within my programming and the methodology and the and and the way in which I work is to consider um I mentioned a minute ago about strength being one facet of fitness or endurance being another, explosiveness, mobility, etc., etc.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: These different things.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you put them in a training program, they're all stress.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: In one way or another, it's stress upon the body.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the body itself is isn't actually stopping and separating these things out and saying, oh, this one's endurance, oh this this this is uh strength, this is bad.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: bicep curls or whatever it's, it just considers that you're stressing the body in in in one way or another.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: And it will adapt to that stress in the best manner possible.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: If we feed it right, if we recover right, etc, etc.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: So rather than looking at um when I program, and I am trying to answer your question, it's just going I'm going a long way around it.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: Rather than looking at when I program considering um these different elements, what I'm considering is overall stress on the body.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: And to your question, external stress is really, really important to recognise as well.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: So it could be that we have the best program written out for the most, you know, a real fit guy or girl comes to me, they're ready, they they they've got all these numbers and these metrics that we look at, but they've also got a very involved job.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: They're also going through a difficult time with their spouse.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: The fucking dog's just escaped and come back with a fucking broken tail.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: You add, add, add, add.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now that program is now completely redundant because all these different external stresses are are adding up to actually put pressure on and it's more stress on the body, more stress in the system.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: So without overstepping my scope with people, I do want to know if they have external stress so that we can say okay, then we can reduce the stress that we're adding within a training program and manage that along with the the stress that we're applying in in these different gym and training scenarios.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: So then we kind of stumble upon the the concept of allostatic load which is something people are getting a little bit more aware of which is the same concept exactly but just in a little bit more of a scientific format which is what are the what is the cortisol response?
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: What were the overall hormonal response to the stress?
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: If we don't manage it this way, how does it build up?
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: What's the effect of that on the body, et cetera, et cetera?
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: So if we can look at this big and it sounds complex, but actually we're just looking at okay what's going on with Charlie?
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so the stress that you had coming on the on the show here when when we were getting the microphone to work and all the rest of it.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you were encountering that kind of stress without solution over and over on the way to this call if we if we now quickly picked up your metrics, your heart rate would be up, your HRV would be be dropping over time, etc, etc.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: And we said, okay, today's squat day we expect you to hit X number.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: You're not fucking hitting that number it's just not going to happen.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then you're going to get frustrated because you didn't hit that number and the whole thing compounds and what we could have done was say right how are you feeling today mate?
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: What have you had on?
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me about your day.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's been fucking awful Johnny okay we were going to do squats what we're going to do now is we're going to settle back into maybe 80% of that maybe maybe half the volume and we're going to do a little bit of zone two work because I think you need that kind of flush and we need to manage you better.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of what we're doing with athletes which it's not incredibly complex and none of it's like newly written stuff.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: This is just common sense is actually speaking to them more.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: The feedback that you get if you have open honest conversations provides me with the fuel or sorry the opportunity to then program a hell of a lot better.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: So then right back to the idea that we had earlier on if you've got a special forces aspirant who needs to get ready for selection and we're saying right another 30 miles in the hill with 40 kilos on your back go on beast it that's what today's for I might break his ankles literally that day when he could have just been better to take a a 20 minute light swim, a sauna and and and go and sit and watch a sunset with his partner or his dog or whatever, you know that that could be the best thing possible for that individual so that the next session is is useful.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: So by choosing the right kind of training sessions because of external factors, are you building mental toughness throughout it?
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because you're not teaching them how to suppress the emotions but you're training them to build on the mental toughness.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: If that makes sense you don't want them to suppress their emotions because you don't want them to fail at the training.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: No well I mean there's there's probably a fine line there to be written as well because the idea that we would have about um if we're going to settle into SF or or or even you know any any kind of role where you're required to to be quote unquote hard and ready and all these kind of things that we see about these people, the reality isn't that you know these are these are thinking soldiers, these are men who quite probably should be in touch with their emotions, not to the point at which they're letting their emotions drive them, you know, because you've got to be able to switch on, switch off to these situations.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: But a lot of that's training.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think the best thing to have is conversations where individuals are aware of who they are, how they are reacting in the moment and what those reactions mean to them.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: So if the first time they're exposed to any kind of mental stress is in the midst of selection, the likelihood is that they'll they'll suffer so a and and maybe not succeed.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: So we need to introduce them to that.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: The idea of resilience is is a very very much talked about thing so on social media at the moment.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: And really it's a very basic principle and it's no different to the callous hand of a man who who who works as a as a woodworker for years and years.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't become calloused overnight.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: They became callous because of years and years of doing the same thing, repeating repeating within just enough to actually create a callous hand that does the job right.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: If we suddenly threw all the woodwork in the world at this individual the hands are going to rip up they can't they can't go back to the woodwork the next day.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I I play the guitar and I use the guitar as a good example.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I I haven't played it for a while I pick it up I play it and my fingers hurt for fucking days because then I've got indentations where the strings have been and well no wonder I haven't been playing it.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: There's no resilience there anymore.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I if if I want that pain to go away, I want to play the guitar a bit, I'm going to have to practice regularly but if I put a two hour session in I'm going to fuck myself and I won't be able to play it for a week and that will repeat.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I can show on a bike as well.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah exactly but an even better example.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: I did that the other week there for the first time in ages and regretted my own advice.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: I should have done a 10-minute session and not a 90-minute one.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: But it's the same principle over and over so the same the same matters with with mental health or or with any kind of mental resilience is that you need to expose yourself to what it is that you're actually trying to become resilient about.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: Learn that a great friend of mine Gaz Banfort who runs a company called Duratus Mind XSF and XSF Sergeant Major he has a very simple phrase he uses which is experience is experienced is experience times 10,000.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: So and and it applies the same to resilience.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: Resilience is some kind of pressure applied over and over and over until your body creates calluses or or an experiential way of managing it.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: So again Johnny Pay rambling again but back to your question Seb which was are we kind of moving away if I kind of manage them away from things that are stressful all the time do I reduce their ability to manage stress I guess was was was the question.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: And only if I'm wrapping them in cottonwood and keeping them away from stress.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: We want them to be positively stressed and we want them to be stressed enough to adapt.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: And some of that will be mental he mental stress where we put them into the you know different scenarios that require them to think hard and to work hard.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: And we want them to feel certainly those guys want them to feel a certain amount of pain and figure out whether they can actually work through that.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: But that has to be built into as well.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah I suppose on a a personal from personal experience and lived experience and as we've just seen there.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm looking forward to this you know I've got this 62 mile 100k walk that I'm going to do.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_03: No sleep get round it and I'm I'm looking forward to that and I know it's going to be you know it's it's going to test me because I'm not sleeping and I'm walking quite a long way but I'm quite looking forward to that.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_03: Now things like turning my computer off when things go wrong that stress level just flies up.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_03: So there is there is good stress and there is bad stress.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah yeah yeah for sure.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_03: And like you're saying before referring it to cortisol so so my understanding is you know we we have all these hormones in our body for a reason.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_03: They are released for a reason and it's just when they're too much or too you know just switched on and we are you know we are you know if we're already full of stress then a little bit more stress can you know tip people over the edge.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah yeah and and as you say to yeah to stretch that if you're if you're not particularly stressed and then we stress you you get a you stress it's called the the this this positive stress we can fast track adaptation.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's the wrong way to put it to fast track something but we can certainly we we we can provide the optimal space for adaptation if we manage all those other things.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: And you you can't manage things.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like the the the the daft scenario created earlier on like falling out of your wife and then the dog escapes and breaks it.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's life.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's just sometimes that shit comes at you as we all know real, real fast.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then think sort of bullheadedly it's saying I'm going to fucking do that squat session, goddammit.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes that might be useful.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: It might be a cathartic thing for that individual but sometimes it's worth saying nah fuck that off today.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: And usually people who are really really driven will refuse to do that unless they have somebody that they have given that certain amount of authority to and it in that in that scenario perhaps me to say that's the wrong decision today.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that's okay because they they offered that accountability in that scenario but there needs to be an opportunity to learn there as well and think.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because we've we've all done it.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: You were talking about sleep earlier on uh and I guarantee or I'd be very surprised if you tell me I'm wrong your awareness of the importance of sleep and your awareness of the importance of good nutrition and the awareness of the importance of taking time you guys were talking about the the the vegetable plots and things that you got taking time to kind of meditate on that a little bit will have come to you those realizations come as you've gotten older and you've you know you've gone into later life and and matured a little bit and realized the power of these things.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: Usually a younger guy's gonna get through on fucking piss and vinegar and and get away with it for a little while.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: But if we could catch them early and say okay listen you you have got that much you've got you you made of fucking rubber bands at the moment kid but let's not take the piss.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: Let's let's stretch that only as far as it needs to be stretched and then do the rest with common sense then you're gonna get a better soldier or or you know if the outcome is desired outcome is it's gonna be better.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah I think that's um well that's basically the purpose of the podcast is to give this information that you know you can survive for so long but if there's that information out there of self-care um and the importance of it.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_03: And because there's you know there are there there are places there are places that big on self care there's uh but there's a lot of misinformation isn't there going around about what's productive and what's not productive and referring to the mountain world and especially with this sort of TikTok stuff where people just trying to fly up a mountain and then and then struggle, you know, because they're not built resilience and there's accidents going on and things like this.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think knowing when to stop is a form of strength?
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: 100% yeah yeah yeah and there's a fine line there mate as well you know knowing when to stop uh and knowing when that's uh when that's a false you know a a a a prop yeah so start that again Nevis is a good example you could have looked in on that anybody could have looked in on that certainly in the latter stages of it and said to me you need to stop now this is this is fucking stupid you know you've made your point you've made the you've done the the charity bit you hang it to bits you've had a couple of near near you know really bad scares there's nothing to prove here but I had made a commitment to myself and I wanted to continue and I f I I I knew where that fine line was so externally you can look in and give advice internally if the person knows themselves well enough they might have a slightly different opinion and there's there's always going to be a a bit of play there.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: I I can only as a coach offer so much to a certain point and then just say I'll back it but it's on you now.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: You may make that decision.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: So if I nobody was coaching me but and that's it but I did have friends, good friends who were saying why don't you fuck it off now Johnny and I'm like well I've got five days left and and I think I can and so the the right response there was right we'll support you as much as we can but we have fucking said.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: I've I've given you the advice to do what you like now.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah um I think you said earlier actually that I picked up on was this you know this thing this willingness to try and accept that you might fail but failure's not not the be all and end of.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah yeah and taking something from actually the trying is a success for you know and I and as someone who's you you know basically did did very little for seven years apart from drinking bloody party and ignore what was going on in my life, you know, to try and combat the PTSD then I was a afraid to try things.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_03: And because I I believed I'd failed in other aspects.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_03: But then when you do try things and you find it's actually it's not as hard as I thought.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's fundamental I think to everything mate and it's a great example that you've got yourself because if you if you continue down that path and not try and not taking that first step into into what no doubt looking back on it uh you would describe as being really scary.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if I if I do this I'm gonna have to face that stuff.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know that that stuff's gonna have to be going to have to walk into it.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: In which case it's easier just to fucking dive back into you know the drink or the party and and and hide from it.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's a brave step to take but y you know you've said yourself pretty much straight there is that once you took that first step and made that conscious decision, now I'm gonna fucking do something about it, a lot of that fear will have kind of melted away, won't it?
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: And you think and then once you take that first step you think okay I can take another step.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that's all it boils down to is making those initial decisions to take one step and you know Project Vertical whatever something that you've done which is more powerfully important to you in real life it still requires you to take that first step which back to what you said also requires you to face up to the fact that it might all go tits and you you might fail but without doing it or without stepping into the unknown and this is something I feel very passionate about without facing the fear that that whatever that fear might be you're likely to spin and spin and spin and get nowhere and perhaps go backwards.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to walk into it.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_03: Well yeah I mean quite literally walking into it you know I think the the fear for for myself was of actually being alone with my own thoughts you know and face it and the facing then thoughts sober.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_03: You know and they the the cycle of working and drinking and working in nightclubs and drinking and then on a weekend on the on the on the day off going out and drinking and then taking that decision to go out walking and then it would all the all the little bits that that uh you get from being outside.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um and I've mentioned this lots of times about you know making a making a plan to go a World Cup Scarfell or something like that.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_03: Then well you're sleeping the night before you're looking after your nutrition you're getting exercise you're out in nature and then yeah the just being outside gives you all these other benefits.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah I mean quite literally that and it's moved to where we are now taking on 100k walks over 28 hours.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah which is that's another thing isn't it it's like you know that's a vast achievement or a vast you know route to set yourself literally vast route to set out on and then it's easy to sit and look at that and think okay that's a hundred K I'm gonna have to do how the fuck am I going to do that?
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's a big thing to chew off and then get involved in that kind of negative cycle.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: But then you've just said yourself you arrive at the start line and you've been through a certain amount of prep for that and all the rest of it.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: But your prep's actually been all those years since that moment where you first said right fuck it I'm gonna do something about the this torture that I'm putting myself through I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna face it I'm gonna walk into it I'm gonna meet it and s see see what that reality is like.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then everything after that leads you to where you are now so you've got all this ammunition behind you, all this power, all these kind of really powerful steps that you've taken up to that point, which actually means that the 100k isn't it it is it's just a a a a a a destination for now but it's what we're trying to say it it's it's more of a I've lost my I've lost there's a word I'm looking for but it it becomes a reflection of all those things is what I'm trying to say.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just oh here we are now doing this mad big thing.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is the lead up to this point is taking all these years.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: So when somebody looks on and goes how can you do these fucking mad things you can look back and say well it's all it's all down to taking one step.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever it is that you think you want to do it's gonna be it's gonna start with one step and it might not be the step you think it will be.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: It might be something that just paves the way for the steps you need to take later.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: But you've got to fucking take that step.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah I do feel that um it's it's having things in that each so for anyone listening it's having your individual perspective on things rather than looking at s and saying to someone you know we're we're talking to you Johnny who who who coach people to be in the special forces.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_03: And you know I work outdoors as a you know international mountain leader and stuff.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_03: So y it's not having having to do then things is it but like you say it's taking that one step and getting it possibly you know that and that might be the big step to actually being in a place that you don't want to be but yeah also finding comfort in that place or scared of leaving that place.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah yeah fear's fear's a a a a a powerful thing isn't it yeah this is this is what we've talked about the royal we what I've talked about now for for a long long time is is the power of fear.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh this idea of I can't do it is really quite compelling to me.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't believe it makes me special or or anything I still think as as I said earlier on very normal very average not making a lot of money not to you know but I I'm capable of doing as are you as is Seb as has anybody listened to this capable of doing almost anything that you want but you've got to where does it start?
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well it starts right now.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so people quite often look on and they look at this guy, whoever it is this girl on on the pedestal thinking I couldn't do what she couldn't.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's like why the fuck couldn't you?
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: The only thing stopping you is is certain decision factors.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now there might be very rarely there might be something that has allowed them that extra step forward.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe somebody at the peak of their athletic career started off, got an opportunity when they're young and then that was made easier for them by certain things in their life and all the rest of it but it doesn't mean that you can't achieve the thing you want to achieve.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: People will make excuses for themselves and I don't necessarily mean that in a negative way either that that's just fear talk and they'll say well I can't I can't I can't it's like well you probably can.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_03: You probably can if you try yes these um limiting limiting beliefs isn't it yeah and stepping taking what was it taking being comfortable but taking comfort from discomfort yeah being comfort comfortable in uncomfortable situations and this goes back to the and then that ties in with the resilience as in if you're not just testing yourself a little bit more and it's then little I think it's them little steps isn't it that are important rather than taking a big leap which may which may put you off.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well we when we did the first project vertical a a real good hashtag that Fergus had uh that I loved at the time uh was to go along with this what we didn't want to be saying to anybody and never do is right in order for you to be like we are aspirationally which is never any you know certainly not my my wish is that you you you know you then have to pick something fast and mad and fucking insane to do and people are looking at it going, oh I couldn't do that and that wasn't the point.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: So the the hashtag was climb your own mountain and we we talked about it daily which was to say your mountain could be just having a conversation with your missus.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know that in your case having that conversation with yourself and kind of s saying even if you don't do it in the moment saying I I I make you know commit to myself to start facing these demons head on.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that they right there and then you've climbed your own mountain because that that's that's what it represented.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: Or it could be you know somebody who says I j I really just want to get fit but they make their own excuses and they never go and do that park run.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well go and fucking do the park run climb that mountain and then come away and tell me what you did you know when when we were in the midst of this fundraising campaign.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: And you know that's just the same thing.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know we might be doing this fucking mad 32 times in a row but we've allowed ourselves the opportunity we have the opportunity with the business is set up to give us to etc etc and all it was was a representation of this same moment that everybody's got which is to take that step so it's all tiny steps mate.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: There's a great book years and years ago forgive me because I can't remember the author it was a a woman Sharon something and it was called the name of the book stuck with me as much as the content which was great and it was feel feel the fear and do it anyway and that's a great a great philosophy to have it's just you know you've got to feel the fear and do it anyway take that step.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know you might get punched in the mouth but then you at least you know at least you knew what was on the other side of that step.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah I think um just going back to a limiting belief a one that one that I'd read about was in the book The Miracle Pill which is about walking and movement and in there the guy I forget the author the guy you know this thing about 10,000 steps and people wanting to I need to do 10,000 steps and it's like well I don't want to do 10,000 I can't do too I can't do 10,000.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_03: But the only reason 10,000 steps come up came into force was because the guy that came up with this he only he had a pedometer that only went to 9,999.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas it's not commonly known or it's not commonly thought of I think the NHS is trying to express this that 4,000 steps a day would be I think the mortality mortality rate is significantly improved and worked against for uh around about 6,000 to 7000 steps.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: And as you say, you know significantly improved around 4,000.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a really good way to frame it, mate I I like it because it's um 10,000 is arbitrary.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's it doesn't mean anything.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: And if you set that 10,000 they can't meet you oh I didn't do it so fuck it.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: I won't do any I won't do I won't do one thousand.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, well now you do one.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: I just had this conversation with my my beautiful little sister yesterday and today on on our group chat same thing she was saying I've got to do 10,000 steps I'm a bit pissed off because I've only made 8,000.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like well how many did you make the day before and and for the last three months and something must have made you ask to tell yourself you wanted to do 10 oh I haven't been doing it you know I don't think I've gotten over 500.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: So you're telling me you've got over 500, average 500 and then you've done 8,000 today and you're considering that a failure.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's fucking mental isn't it when you when you just look at it straight in on that lens.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: And she hadn't she'd only been looking at it really close like a a fly on a TV screen could only see that one pixel, you know so she she zoomed back and looked at it and went, oh can hell yeah I've done really, really good.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, yeah I have done good.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: What you don't want to do is then make her go, well I probably only want to do about 501, don't I?
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: But you know is it's having that capacity to see that you know doing something is all that's really required.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: Make make it happen.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: Make something happen and don't don't worry too hard about going too hard.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_01: My watch automatically send it to 1000 it's an interesting thing.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: I call this uh uh zombie coaching I put up a post the other day about um 180 uh steps uh per minute being so so runners have been advised by uh by coaches for years and years now when they're running that it would be more efficient if they ran to a 180 steps per minute cadence.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um but why the fuck would Seb, Charlie and Johnny be running at the same cadence?
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: My legs might be like compared to my torso I might have really long legs you might have little short legs you know I I might be 120 kilos and you might be 65.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: It makes no sense to say that we should all run at the same cadence you should be running at the cadence that provides your body with the most efficient outcome.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: And as that's zombie coaching if somebody's heard some kind of thing.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that that came from studies by legendary running coach Jack Daniels who was actually looking at elite marathon runners and found that they averaged around 180.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well no wonder these fuckers are doing six minute miles for or five minute you know and just little guys going running really really fast.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_00: And you know that's not for you and me getting fit it makes no sense whatsoever to but that became a number because a book said you know Malcolm Gladwell wrote the 10,000 hours book you probably remember that is that to master anything you have to do 10,000 hours.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_00: And he wasn't saying you know you're not a master at 9,999.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_00: He was just saying you know you need to put in a body of work to achieve an outcome.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_00: So the same with the steps thing it became a number that was attached to an idea that then became quite a an an easy easy to remember number to hit and then it became Became a number that was that that became kind of arbitrarily thrown out there and then it became part of the zeitgeist and then it became just fucking thro i it's something that everybody quote unquote knows.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then you push back against that and they're like, oh the fuck do you think you are?
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody knows it's 10,000, Johnny, you're full of shit.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: Fuck.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: So now I have to dig out all these papers.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, there's no real reason to push hard against it.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's a good number to try and get to, but what you want to do is manage people's expectation of what that number really means.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: So so there you go.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_03: And I suppose it e with that, each individual has their own it would be different anyway, you know, where they start to make gains.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_03: And I suppose we're interested in this from the mental well-being side.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_03: So what I'm gonna put I'm gonna put you on spot and ask you, what how much influence do you think physical performance has on mental well-being?
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's huge.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's uh fundamental.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think if we remove I'm glad you said that.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_00: If we remove the word performance, we we wanna we wanna consider physical movement as as being fundamental to mental health.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: I've actually petitioned an another good friend of mine is is trying to build a business off the back of the idea that that um if if we were to encourage physical movement uh and physical capability and and physical fitness as as being an absolute must-have, if that's the right way to put it, or a fundamental uh human need, as much as we might do nutrition or sleep or the other things, then what we could have in doctors' surgeries would be, okay, Gladys, you're not feeling well, you you're not sleeping very well, this, that, and the next thing, all these different things that that that Gladys has gone into the doctors to say.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the first questions she'd be asking is, what what is your physical activity like?
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: What do you do day to day?
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that's not to be shitty to Gladys.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_00: It might be very little, might not do anything, might not have any idea about training and all the rest of it.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_00: So then what they say is, Well, we'll give you a Zempic, or we'll give you this, or we'll give you that.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_00: Hold on.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: Have we thought about introducing you to a physical health professional, to some kind of personal trainer, to some kind of group?
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_00: I I know these things do happen, but it's not the uh there's no prescription route for it.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that that if we were to prescribe movement and resell the idea of movement, something you mentioned earlier on, you were alluding to the fact that we've got such busy lives, and here the three of us talking from three different locations over over the internet feed and all the rest of it.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: And and chances are I'll come off this folk phone and check uh how well the post is doing that I put up about the supplement, and then I have a phone call.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_00: And all this kind of stuff spills out to have I moved, have I been outside, have I sucked in some fresh air?
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: I know how much you you you fully appreciate both of you the the the outdoors and and and the the power of the outdoors people don't.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: So a big long answer to a short question, mate, but I think it's fundamental.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think if people were fitter, stronger, more capable, in all the ways that I would describe uh from a coaching perspective, the improvement on their mental health would be marked to the point at which you you could measure it.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_00: You see, you know, it would be significant.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then from there, that doesn't mean we throw the baby out of the bathwater.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: There are still mental health interventions that are important.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: People do need need uh interventions such as drugs and things, but it shouldn't be the first protocol.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's like anything else.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's like have we looked at all these things that are available just as uh fundamental human principles first before we start handing out SSREs and all that kind of stuff.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_00: You've obviously you've owned a can of worms there with me.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: It pisses me off when it's not Yeah.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_01: First time Charlie's not gone on the rant.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I'm gonna join the rant.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but I think, you know, we've spoken about the importance of sleep and so sleep and self-care and nutrition and you can't and physical exercise and you can't perform well if you're lacking in any of these really.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_03: You know, and this is where problems and this this idea of and I I did get this where, you know, I was drinking heavily and not sleeping because I didn't want to face my demons, and I was drinking to suppress the demons, and I went in and they give you they give you I mean, this was a long time ago, back in 2000, I just prescribe you sleeping tablets and antidepressants.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_03: You know, there was no question well Yeah, how much are you drinking?
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_03: A bit, you know, how much are you sleeping?
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_03: Not a lot, because I need they used to make me sleep, you know, and it's not uh you know, rather than are you exercising, are you doing these, are you doing this, are you doing this, this and this.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_03: And I think it could be an easy fix, but there's no money in easy fixes, is there?
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there you there you've hit the nail on the head, mate.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: I do think it's I do think for the most part it it is that it's like, well, if we if we you know, I I'm not I don't really subscribe to the big pharma thing.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_00: It exists, but not in the same way that I'm not I'm not wearing a tin foy hat with it.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: But the fact of the matter is, usually reaching into the drawer and pulling out a prescription pad, and you know, he's doing that now, I suppose, isn't it?
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_00: The modern day equivalent of pulling out a prescription pad and saying, How don't you take these today, you know, right?
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: Next, somebody gets paid, somebody gets sell some pills, somebody blah blah blah.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, have you thought about climbing uh a small hill?
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_00: When's the last time you saw sunrise?
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when when's when's the last time you went?
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_00: Great advice I got from my mate, probably about year 2000, when I was doing similar things to you, which is why David wants us to go, is uh the uh a good friend of mine said, Johnny, have you have you thought about fucking going outside and just looking at and smelling some flowers for a bit?
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and I told him to go fuck himself, it's the stupidest thing I'd heard for ages.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_00: And now I can still hear it now, and like I wish I'd I mean, eventually I did listen, but the best advice I'd ever had, go outside and just and I was bought brought up doing things like that.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'd just come away from it, and then I want to return to it and and and kind of realize, you know what, there's there's magic here.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_00: I talk about going into the mountains as the that being my church, you know, not not to get deep or spiritual about it, but it it there is something happening there.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not sure I'm describing it as being spiritual.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure it is, I think it's just reconnection.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think my body just goes and there's a regulation sets in and and there's there's an interaction with the elements that is very, very human.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_00: We're just primitive animal animals, really.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that that decompression, that that, you know, what what do they call it now?
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_00: Digital detox and all this kind of stuff, and just getting away from things.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's so beautiful, so powerful that my newfound joy and almost evangelical process now is to get my boys out.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_00: I've got three boys and and and the eldest uh is a girl, uh, and she's super physical.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_00: The three boys need them courage because they want to sit in their arches and play switches and Xboxes and stuff.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm uh before I came on the call and after going the call, I'm putting all the tent and stuff together and uh they'll be made to go in the still have a little bit of nature.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_00: You will enjoy yourself.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I d you know, I I mean I don't think it is just a perimeter that if you know I don't think it's any coincidence that as physical education and outdoor education has been cut in our schools and nutritional content of school dinners, etc., as is pretty poor, then we're looking at young people that are suffering with mental health issues and unwilling to go outdoors and unwilling to try things and to try things new, just sit in the bedroom by itself in isolation, but sort of talking through a screen which is not great for anyone, is it?
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's not me.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it takes it's an interesting one as well.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_00: And there's there's nothing that you've said that I pushed back against.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_00: But what goes hand in hand with that is this sounds like ego and it really isn't, it's just observation.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_00: If I go down to the school gates and put my boys in, uh, two of them are primary school uh age still, and I put them in there, I can look around at the other dads and they're all fucked.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_00: Th there's guys there that are twenty years my junior who look twenty years my senior.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and you know that if you if you ask them to run to the other side of the football pitch, they're gonna stop halfway for a for a grab of their knees and maybe maybe a puff on a on a vape or something like that.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know I'm being cruel, but to make a point really is is that what if we if we spend time educating the kids, oh you need to get outside, you need to do this, you need to do that, and then they go home and they see dad sat in his fucking hours watching the tell, vaping, complaining, sitting on his phone, you know, what are we gonna get?
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_00: Those kids aren't gonna go, do you know what?
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I see that you're doing nothing, Dad, but I'm gonna go and forge a new life.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_00: No, they fuck, they're eight years old.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna do what they it's monkey see monkey do, isn't it?
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's on us, you, me, Seb, David, whoever, you know, is out there to be the example.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a I keep keep funny enough talking against it, uh, but I keep returning to the social media little handles that I've got at the moment.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_00: Hashtag that I keep using because I firmly believe in it.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_00: There's a picture over my desk here with the words be your own hero written on it.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I and what I mean by that is is that if I want to if I want to manifest anything in my life, if I want things to be positive, if I want to be healthy, I want to be strong, I want my kids to be healthy strong, I have to be that thing.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_00: I I have to I have to go out there and do it.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_00: My kids aren't going to grow up uh uh you know excited about the hills and all the rest of it if they're not living a life watching somebody be excited about it.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_00: They see adventure as being part of me.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so for them it's second nature to think about it.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_00: But I know that other people don't have that.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_00: But then they've got the capacity to have it, you know.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing that I'm doing, it's all there for everybody.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I suppose in other aspects with the the things that I'm doing at the moment, um and it I it has got out of hand.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_03: I don't expect to be planning running marathons next year and doing the 100k thing.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_03: But it do you know what?
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_03: It does keep me from going off the rails.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that's something that uh in fact I had one night out about six weeks ago and McGarmin told me that I'd lost six years of uh six years of fitness.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_03: Not I'm not fitness training, it's like McGarmin's telling me that I'm a I've got fitness of a 20-year-old, and then a week later I've got fitness of a 26-year-old.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_03: I'm only being out one night.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_00: We we had that exact same thing last week, went to a barbecue, came back the next day, and my rest and heart rate had jumped by 15% and my fucking HRV was through the floor, and I'm like, Well, there's been no difference apart from booze, there's a fucking lesson to be learned, isn't there?
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_00: You can do it once in a while.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_00: I am not.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_00: It would be the the biggest lie I'd told ever to say that I'm anti-boozer, and I like a drink, you know, and I enjoy meeting friends and and you know, and uh very old school and that's it.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_00: I love again this and and all this kind of stuff.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not anti-that.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's just you and I are very good examples, Charlie, of having lived that so dangerously and and sat inside that to hide from things and spun around in that that it's almost you you you felt the polar opposite when you've gone out and done the things that you do now.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that that you can see how far that can pull you back if if you're to so having that knowledge is very useful because then you can teach from a place of experience.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_00: But it's sometimes we we have to push hard with people to make them understand that they don't need to become desperate and and alcohol and and and I for talking from my own experience and an addict, you know, and and you don't have to be there to to make those decisions beforehand, you know.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_00: You could just you could just listen to somebody like you and me and think, fuck, I don't want to be in that place.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, exactly.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'll go inside instead.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_03: Can I ask you about Riorg?
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Riorg's.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um so that Sam Sheriff is uh an ex-Royal Marine who fell in love with jujitsu and saw the power of it, and and he created a a charity called Riorg, uh it's uh a military term, just it's just to group together and reorganise.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_00: And it is it's a jiu-jitsu-based charity.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_00: So what they do is is the money that they raise, I I don't know that the numbers here, Charlie, forgive me, but the money that they raise each X amount gives an individual uh who may have left uh armed forces and and finds themselves struggling with direction or struggling with um uh reintribution into into civilian life.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_00: It gives them an opportunity to join a jiu-jitsu club at at the charity's expense uh and to be taken through a process where they're reintroduced to community, introduced to some of the things we've discussed today, which is like uh uh resilience and hardship, because jujitsu is hard, you know, but but it's hard in a controlled environment and and reintroduce them to the sense of uh that their own self-achievement.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_00: In doing that, what they're doing is they're taking people who may have been lost after having left uh that that uh m very institutionalized process and and kind of left out on their on their own, because there's not a lot of uh ramping out process with the armed forces and and giving them back a little bit of structure and a little bit of opportunity to kind of achieve.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's very, very successful and something I believe in very, very much.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_00: I I love jujitsu.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_00: Anybody who knows me would uh who heard this would be laughing their heads off because I've been I've been missing from jiu-jitsu for quite some time.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_00: But I still love it.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm still I'm still uh very very passionate about the power of it, and it's it's a great charity that uh allows people to interact with that where where they may not have had the opportunity.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I suppose that's a big thing, isn't it, with forces, with uh forces personnel when they come out of that structured environment, finding somewhere where they can fit in and you know be part of the community.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_03: That community is one of the five pillars of mental well-being that we bang on about on the podcast.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_03: And you have coached with elite athletes, uh elite combat athletes as well?
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that that was uh a long time that was the main focus of what I did.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_00: That that's that's where David and I um became close.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, we were both kind of espousing our our apparent knowledge on Facebook and doing the usual this guy doesn't know a fucking thing, neither does that guy But both agreed that we David knows a few things.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_00: He's a good guy, and he he he seemed to think I did too.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_00: So David, as you know, and your listeners can can jump back to I think you said episode six and have a have a listen to David.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_00: He's been involved, elite boxers, for for a long part of his career.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_00: At the time, he was working with Kel Brook.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_00: We had a few conversations backward and forward, and he introduced me to a few folk.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_00: Long story short, for the Deontay Wilder fight, I looked after the strength and conditioning, although consulted in to to depth uh camp for uh Tyson Fury, and then Dave and I worked closely together in person for for Billy Joe Saunders and and I've worked with many MMA fighters and jiu-jitsu players at the highest level as well.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_00: So it's uh it's an area of sport that that I absolutely adore and and there's so much that it can give people, hence Ryorg being being a a chariot that you know I I'm always proud to support whenever I can.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I suppose there's a great example of Brazilian Cynthia when um Tyson Fiore got off the got off the the ring floor fagging Dante Wilder.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_03: If anyone wants to take that.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_03: So it's not like we're we're we we're getting guests on that we're just trying to talk opinions, there's facts.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_00: Oh for sure.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_00: We were talking uh uh David and I just just today about uh both of us having uh absolutely zero uh skill uh in marketing and sales.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_00: Both of the both of us having it worked at the elite level of sport and all the rest of it, and nobody nobody knows we've done it.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_00: And he was saying, why don't you tell people that Tyson Fury wouldn't have got the f off the floor if it wasn't if it wasn't for you?
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, wow, I'd I wasn't getting punched in the face.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_00: But the camp that we had to the the camp that we had to put him through uh to get him to that stage, actually a story for for for a different day, uh it's a long one, really.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_00: They were all over the shop uh and I had to help kind of bring things in.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I think if I hadn't done what I'd done for that can and I mean this without ego, but uh you know, looking at it from a practical sense many years later, uh I don't think uh he'd have got through the first three or four, because they were they were going in a completely wrong direction.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_00: But I managed to rein him in, condition him, get him to get him to move and and perform well.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_00: The the interesting part about that is I don't think Tyson would know it was me.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_00: Right. 'Cause I was phoning in to Ben Davidson, who was the coach uh and I would have daily phone calls with him and describe it.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_00: I I read all his data, I had to wear a heart rate monitor, uh, and had them film things and then they would feedback that data to me and I would then prescribe the next thing and and obviously talk about camp itself.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_00: But it was all through Ben, who then managed to teen Taylor in to implement that.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_00: And and I don't think he told them.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think he I think he took credit himself.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_00: I've got these wonderful ideas, you know.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_00: So so there you go.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_03: But I think was that the fight where he'd had to lose ten drop ten stone or something like that?
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_00: He had to lose a lot of weight.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_00: The the biggest issue that they had was they took him to altitude at Big Bear to to train.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_00: And what was happening was when when you take somebody to altitude, they they lose, you know, physical capacity and capability.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_00: So he was he was training badly, so he's practicing to move badly.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_00: Was he should not be at altitude.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_00: So they had to go through a process of maintaining altitude because Tyson was keen to have that well he he didn't want to be told he was wrong because it was his idea.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_00: So that none of them wanted to cross him.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_00: So what we did was, unbeknownst to him, was built altitude, built built sea level up there, sealed him into rooms and all kinds of things, put oxygen tanks under the under the ring and recreated sea level uh altitude.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_00: Fucking mental the things you have to do.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_00: It would have been just easier to say, why don't you just go down to to Las Vegas and train there?
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_00: But superstars are superstars, so you've got to find find routes through.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well I think at that point in his career, if you'd have gone to Vegas, then it might have got it might he might have gone off the rails.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, maybe Vegas would have been a bad idea.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_00: Seeing sea level at the very least.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_03: But there's a there's another success story with mental well-being, isn't there, for Tyson Fiore.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, it's it's a good story, mate.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_03: Fascinated.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_03: I know we could sit and could sit and talk for hours, but it's I suppose it that's just us talking rather than thinking about the listener that's wanting to get something out of this.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_03: Have you anything to add, Johnny?
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_00: No, uh apologies for that listener.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_03: No, I know.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_03: I mean if you have you would would you have any any little nuggets of information that um you know Joe Blanc or Josephine Blancks could take when they're in a maybe in a lacky motivation.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well something that encompasses a lot of what we've been saying.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_00: Two two things which I think are really key for people to hear, especially when they when they have limiting self-beliefs, as as you if we've been discussing, as you've been saying, it is really important that people see the power in fear.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that if I was to pass any message on to anybody, it's like if something's frightening you, and it could be the the things that we discussed with with with yourself, it was frightening you to to face these demons.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_00: The chances are if you recognise there's fear there and recognise what what the what the fear is about, chances are there's a huge amount of power there.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_00: There's something to be discovered in that fear.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_00: So you're gonna lean into it.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm very, very much an advocate of of seeing the fear for what it is and moving towards it, which sounds counterintuitive, but there's likely to be a huge amount of growth there.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_00: And the second part of that, which is uh is very similar, is that and this is advice for you, Charlie, that that you'll you'll uh fully be on board with and will have experienced before.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_00: But during your 100 kilometre walk, there are going to be many moments where you think, fuck this, I can't do it, I don't want to do it, all that kind of stuff.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_00: You'll meet those negative thoughts.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_00: The very good advice given to me years ago, which I always offer out, is no one, no one feeling will last forever.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_00: So if you remember just that simple fact that when you're in the depths of that, oh fuck this, I can't be bothered, I'm hurting, I can't do it, why did I set out, and all these negative thoughts that will come and meet you at some point, is remember that's momentary.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's transient, it'll move on.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_00: Twenty minutes later, two hours later, you might feel completely up in the air again and didn't and really high and really thankful that you didn't listen to the negative thoughts.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, if somebody's going through something, that that one thought, that one negative moment isn't gonna isn't gonna be there forever.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_00: There's always another side to these things.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's always peaks and troughs.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_00: So uh i if you if you're down, you'll come up.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think um I think the changing point for me when I I did it, I did a I don't know if it's a a strange thing or what, but I decided that the PTS demons, I made them my friends.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_03: And I put made a post actually about taking the that I'll be taking them PTS demons uh for the for on this walk and they'll be and they'll be complaining, they'll be moaning.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I like it.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_00: I like that a lot, mate.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_00: I like that a lot.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_00: I often say when people talk about things like uh Project Verticals, what is it that you're personally trying to achieve?
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_00: They ask me.
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and I'll always say, it's very similar to what you've just said, actually.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'll always say, well, I know that there's gonna be questions asked of me, but those questions will be mine.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_00: At some point I'm gonna meet a version of myself that I don't understand.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't I don't know what the way through that is, I don't know, I don't know what to expect, and it might be horrible and scary, but out there somewhere is a version of me, a shadow version of me that I'd like to meet and face and then and then bring with me, you know, and then have that conversation and bring it with me.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_00: So there'll be some long night of the soul in amongst your hundredk.
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_00: There was on my on and all the other things that I've done crossing the Arctic, this thing, that thing, where where I've kind of met myself and met this really kind of horrible, fuck you, Johnny Bain, you can't do anything.
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and I'm kind of keen to meet that guy over and over and have that this why do you keep telling me these things and then have a conversation and then he comes with me?
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's something new to to to learn.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I really like the concept of you taking your demons with you, take them for a walk and fucking uh make them suffer.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, bury them, bury them somewhere.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this is as far as you go, mate.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_03: Brilliant.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks for joining us eventually, Johnny.
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um it's you know, it's great that we've uh managed to get the timetables.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, which was why it was so stressful that I couldn't get the computer at work for a change.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm glad you did, mate.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's been it's been a great conversation.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for having me.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh thank you very much.
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_00: A real pleasure and an honour.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_03: Don't disappear.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks for joining us.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_03: Take care.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, mate.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Sad.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_02: And if you would like to support us and help us keep the podcast going, then you can go to buy us a coffee or you can click that on our website, whitefoxtalking.com, and look for the little cup.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.