Mark Bell's Power Project - The Hybrid Athlete Who DOUBLED David Goggins 4x4x48 - Fergus Crawley || MBPP Ep. 894

Episode Date: February 28, 2023

In this Podcast Episode, Fergus Crawley, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about Fergus' amazing feats as a true hybrid athlete such as The Double Brutal which consists of a 4.7 mile swim, cycling 232 miles, and a 52-mile run or simply put, a double Iron Man Triathlon, PLUS doubling David Goggins 4x4x48! Follow Fergus on IG:  https://www.instagram.com/ferguscrawley/ New Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the new Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://hostagetape.com/powerproject Free shipping and free bedside tin! ➢https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!! ➢Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM ➢https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject to save 15% off Vivo Barefoot shoes! ➢https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off site wide including Within You supplements! ➢https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order! ➢https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori! ➢https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep! ➢https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS at Marek Health! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en  Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #FergusCrawley  #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

We continue to produce these podcasts for free. And if this podcast has brought value to your life, it would mean a lot to us if you guys could give us a five-star review on Spotify or iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. Because that helps the podcast grow. Thank you and enjoy the episode. What are you doing over there, Andrew? You feeling better? Pushing buttons, making sure everything's going. Dude, you know what I...

Okay, I guess we can start here. But have you guys ever tried taking Afrin to open up your nasal passageways? I don't think I've ever tried it before, but it's like an expectorant or something, right? It's like a nasal dilator. I've heard many bad things, but it has eliminated 70% of all my symptoms just by being able to breathe. I know I still sound weird, but... Comment and let us know if you know what Afrin is, because I don't. Have you guys used it? And does still sound weird, but... Comment and let us know if you know what Afrin is, because I don't. Have you guys used it?

And does Andrew sound weird? Different. This isn't my normal, non-sick voice. A little clogged up still. It's a cloudier vibe to your voice. I dig it. I'm actually a little clogged up myself, so if you've got any going, I will stick around after. Your name is so Irish.

Are you Irish? No. what is it scottish uh fergus is scottish okay i believe but there's a way you can spell it in irish which is f e a g us yeah and then crawley is actually a quite rough town southwest of london yeah and i sound like a fucking boxer it sounds like a name out of like hogwarts legacy yeah it's like fergus crowley you know there's a very simple formula in life which is you put a british person in america and harry potter will come up well have you played hogwarts legacy it's a great game i haven't yet but i have seen a lot of hype a lot of hype game we're so basic we always do this hey my name's super fucking African. Well, and as Americans, we don't know anything about any other country.

We're so naive. It's pretty bad. Other countries. They don't exist. That's what I said. Yeah, I saw a Twitter thread the other day where somebody was incredibly confused because there was a European talking about somebody that was 19 years old in a bar ordering a drink and it was uh excuse me the legal drinking age in the united states of america is 21 and he was like my name is moritz something i'm clearly german

so yeah most other parts of the world what is it 18 18 we're 18 which well unofficially in scotland's about 12 years old. Yeah, they don't care, right? I mean, you're not going to get served in a pub at 12, but people in Scotland start drinking quite young. But they seem to be learning to stop drinking sooner and sooner these days because there's a habit in Scotland called Monroe bagging. So there's 282 Monroes, which is nothing to do with teabagging, which I think

is where both your minds went. We were hopeful. You can combine the two if you want, but it's not something I've ever personally done. So there's 282 Monroes, which are mountains over, so it's 3,000 feet, so 918 metres, which is small by the rest of the world's

standards, but it's what we've got. Bigger by the rest of the UK's standards, might I add. And there's loads of them in Scotland. They're all beautiful, quite remote, and people... There's a lot of jokes about people that were partying the hardest when they were younger and now the ones that are up the hills at the weekend telling people how great they feel to be up

at 5am going up Ben Ayer or whatever it's called. So Monroe bagging is what people that started drinking at 12 years old seem to be doing at 26 years old these days. And if anyone's listening that falls into that category, I'm pretty much the same. Wow.

What does bagging mean? So you bag a Monroe. So it's like you're collecting them. Oh. So if you meet somebody in Scotland that's done 282 Monroes, there's an immediate respect. Wow. Where do you find these things? What's a Monroe?

What the fuck are you talking about? The whole time he's like, I didn't understand a single thing you said. We need a translator. Already. Already at this point. Okay, okay. So I was just thinking if there was a mountain on that. that if we had an evian that would have been easy so there's 282 big mountains in scotland they are

categorized as monroes people like going up them if you have completed one you have bagged a monroe and this has become a hobby for people so it's like if you went to the rockies and there's a rocky point and rocky edge and they're the different summits. You've then done two of the Rockies, but the collective collection of mountains in Scotland are called Munro's. Just explain it in English.

Now we all get it. We're going to need like a key for this whole show. Sorry, everyone. Munro Mountain. Bagged climbed. Mountain climbing. Holy shit. It's so much better when you say it. sorry everyone Monroe Martin bagged climbed mountain climbing holy shit yeah that could

go down a free solo vibe and that's not what it is that's not what it is and this all started because we were

talking about how Scotland drinks from a young age oh god this is already I can tell this is going to be

a rabbit hole focus discussion so you were drinking at 12 though Oh, God. This is already, I can tell this is going to be a rabbit hole focus. I love it. It's going to be fun. It's so good. So you were drinking at 12, though? You want to talk about that? That's not what I said.

You've extrapolated a little bit. No, I'd say 14, 15 was a pretty standard age in Scotland to begin experimenting with the parents' alcohol cupboard. Nice. I don't know what it is about Scotland. We are an entertaining nation, and the drinking culture in the UK, parts of it very much need work,

parts of it are hilarious, but there's a whole load of heritage and things around alcohol in Scotland which really brings the storytelling to life. But that's not really relevant to 15-year-olds on park benches, to be fair. But there are genuinely, on the flip side, there are negative parts of the alcoholism within Scotland,

but the way that people socialize and interact within the UK and Scotland specifically is quite alcohol-focused. And the people that are the most fun to drink with that I know personally are the Scouts. Some of the exposure in the young age and stuff like that is probably sometimes a good thing, but probably also a bad thing, maybe because of the weather and the culture. And you could slip into just relying upon it,

I guess, too much. That's part of it. But I think, I mean, this started in it because we were discussing drinking ages. And I think 18, from my perspective, based on what I understand around how Americans understand alcohol, I think because we expose ourselves drinking ages and i think 18 from my perspective based on what i understand around how americans understand alcohol i think because we expose ourselves to the stupidity of it a bit younger

when we get to the age where you go to college and all you have access to is booze you have a healthy relationship with it because you've kind of made the mistakes earlier it's like you fall out your tree and you fall out the tree and break your leg when you're younger your parents will be upset you've broken your leg but they'll know you've learnt a hard lesson and then you won't fall out of a tree again unless you decide to become a tree surgeon or something specifically but I think the health associations with it

from what I've understood had I had somebody telling me between the ages of 18 and 21 that you can't drink I feel like my understanding of alcohol when i turned 21 would have been more of a alluring it would have drawn me in in a different way i think because it almost it almost adds fear to it that i don't think needs to be there that means people then become quite dogmatic about the way

they interact with it whereas it's such a normal part of our culture that people can decide, is it something I enjoy? Yes or no. And then they have a, a steadier relationship with it. For me now, for example, I've,

I don't drink very often. I really appreciate alcohol. I really appreciate the heritage and the storytelling. My dad owns a brewery, for example. Um, but you, you won't catch me just sitting there drinking hard seltzers on a Tuesday just for the buzz.

What does he make? He makes craft beer. So actually, last time I was in the States, I came over with him to shop around. I think it was a fancy way of traveling around, going to nice breweries and expensing it and putting it on there as a tax write-off. But we went to Stone Brewery up in just north of San Diego, I think it is, like Carlsbad Way. And I thought that was one of the most amazing places I've ever been. And that was the inspiration for what he's opened, which is a West Coast-inspired craft brewery and taproom and kitchen in Liverpool, of all places. They have food there too?

They do. What kind of food are we talking about? So it's actually transatlantic. So it's American food but British portions. That's so smart. That is, that is so smart. That's more of what we need to do here. Honestly. I, I, I had a breakfast after a hotel gym training session in LAX. So like El Segundo direction and two pancakes and it came by the side of tarts and eggs and things that was this is two meals yeah and i'd just kind of

forgotten and then it was a very rude awakening ah you are in america here here is a serving that will remind you that you are not having american food with british portions this is american food with american portions welcome yes what in the hell is a like a double iron man is that just like as brutal as it sounds as what is that so it is what it says on the tin essentially which is a double iron distance triathlon because it wasn't iron man affiliated so i think we should probably nip that in the bud as an iron distance triathlon conventionally is 2.4 miles swim 112 mile bike ride and then a marathon 26.2 miles or a 3.8k swim 100 180k bike and then 42.2k run marathon so what i did was double that but it wasn't back to back so it was essentially double swim double a bike double a run at once at once but in a very extreme setting

um yikes so it was in an environment like the Rockies. So it was in Snowdonia National Park, which is a very protected part of the UK and Wales. You can say Monroe, it's okay. It's not, no, Scottish, it's no, no, no. I thought I was using it right. I thought I was getting somewhere. Yeah, yeah.

This kind of makes me feel that my explanation wasn't good enough. But also, also. There are such things as bad bad students don't worry um no so in wales there are no monroes monroes are something that scottish people are very protective over as a concept but it's that same same sort of premise really protected beautiful area fantastic place to do a triathlon but with that comes a lot of elevation a lot of hills a lot of demand that you wouldn't get on a faster flat route like, I'm trying to think of what the faster flat, so Ironman Florida I think is pretty flat, for example.

So you can just sort of tuck in, stay in aero position, and just get your head down and go, and it becomes a game of power, a game of execution, whereas with extreme triathlons, you've got different things to consider, like you need to have waterproofs, you need to have trail bags, you need to have all your kit to be self-supported. You've got to support car rather than having aid stations, things like that. Also, quick question. Don't lose your train of thought, but how long does an Ironman take? Just one.

So I think the average finishing time last I saw on a survey was 12 hours and 51 minutes. I think that was the average finishing time. So you had two. Yes, but in an extreme setting so so for reference i did an extreme i did an extreme triathlon in scotland um which is called the kelpman in june last year and that took me 14 hours and 50 minutes but that was a 202 kilometer bike so it was about 195 miles no sorry um sorry. It was about 121 miles. So a little bit more than normal.

So that would, if you put me on a flatter course, I would have done about 1130 for reference. If you guys want to actually see some of this, Gymshark did a video with you talking like with the double mireman. If you look it up, it was extremely well produced. It was fantastic, wasn't it? The team that put that together were brilliant. There was a lot of work that went into that.

And there were moments when they were asking me to just have my hand holding there so they can catch another droplet of water hitting the water the night before the race. And I was thinking, guys, can I not just go to bed, please? But when I saw it in the video, I thought, oh, yeah, that looked pretty good. That looked pretty good. How do you prepare for something like that? I mean, you've been training your whole life for that kind of thing or what's going on with that no no so the process for that kind of i mean there's two ways we can look at this the actual the actual direct process for the race itself started in the end of june 2022 but what i did was effectively translate the previous race i'd done i'd translated the

fitness and the demand built up there into a more specific one for this and even your previous years of lifting exactly it's all kind of part of it exactly so so this is something that i think is really important to to set out the store with when it comes to hybrid training because it's not it's not something that you can pick up tomorrow and just sort of nail all at once as you wouldn't be able to do with any discipline but you're sort of stacking bricks on bricks on bricks year on year and what i find really exciting is how much you can improve your baseline across the board as you go so i know for example there is no day ever where i wouldn't be able to squat 180 kilos there's no day ever where i probably wouldn't be able to run a sub 24 minute 5k for example because my baseline has got higher and higher over the

years but it hasn't always been that high so when did training start for this essentially in 2018 when I became more of an endurance hybrid athlete rather than just a pure powerlifter but the specific training that translated directly to this probably began in March 2022 when I took my focus from essentially powerlifting, top end strength and ultra running. And then I translated the strength into training for the Dinny stones, which I lifted in April of 2022. And then I was training for the Keltman, which is the Scottish extreme triathlon,

which was a 3.4 K swim in five degrees celsius water uh so many jellyfish as well it was it was insane a 202 kilometer bike ride um which is about 121 miles with what was it it was about 2 200 meters of gain so that's about 5 000 feet of gain and then a marathon over two mountains so that was in june and then this was effectively double that but i think what's important to mention is that a lot of people would probably look at that objectively and think just double the training but that becomes massively impractical obviously it becomes counterintuitive because there's only so much you can recover from within the context of the week especially when I'm trying to maintain my strength as well and the mistake I made actually in the first month or so of prepping for this was

trying to pack too much into the week alongside running the businesses and sleeping enough and staying sane so the journey I went on prepping for this was the most I've learned about myself in the training prep for anything ever because it was the most I was forced to ask myself, what did I actually care about? What was important to me on a day-to-day basis? What training sessions were key? What ones could maybe be dropped? What elements of my business needed streamlined?

Where was I spending time that could be spent elsewhere? Because I was looking at a week on a Monday through to a Sunday. We were chatting about this before we started, and I could see no way that I was going to get everything that needed to be done done in the week, and it was all a priority. So it was a case of, right, how can I streamline here? And the changes that I made throughout the training process,

they're now still there. So effectively, the businesses are more streamlined. I've got a better understanding of myself. I've got a better understanding of how I construct my training, how I construct my days to how I can structure my days to be more effective as a human being and then when I got to the start line I knew that I'd done everything I could

within the context of the time that I had so whatever the outcome was going to be once I hit the start line it didn't matter because I'd given all I had to give within the time period that I had and I was better off for it and that's

where I think the real value is in things like this. It doesn't need to be a double-edged man, it just needs to be self-exploration of some sort, because you are forced to confront yourself in some way about the way you exist, which is a very profound way of saying it. But I spent so much time in my own headspace here that you've got no choice but to think deeper, more profound thoughts. Power Project family, your normal shoes are making you weak. This is why I partner with Vivo Barefoot Shoes because they have a wide toe box, they're flat, and they're flexible. So with every single step you're taking, if you're taking a 10-minute walk outside or when you're working out in the gym, your feet are able to do what they're supposed to do in this shoe.

out in the gym, your feet are able to do what they're supposed to do in this shoe. They have tons of options for hiking, running, training in the gym, chilling and relaxing, casual shoes. If you're out on a date, you need to check them out. And Andrew, how can they get it? Yes, that's over at vivo barefoot.com slash power project. And you guys will receive 15% off your order automatically. Again, vivo barefoot.com slash power project links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes is the main thing just to build uh an aerobic base because if you build a strong aerobic base then you can most likely keep going essentially essentially so the focus really was taking taking the power and sort of more sub-threshold capacity that i built training for the kelpman because you do need to shift at certain points the hills are really demanding so your heart rate will be higher

there's a middle point cut off on the Celtman for there's like a transition 2 and then a transition 2a where you need to shift quite hard to get there on time to make the cut off and essentially then extrapolating that out so it was really just becoming ruthlessly

efficient in zone 2 but also training your GI tract and your gut to be able to tolerate the the amount of food that you need to get through and how much you can deal with the practicality and then the psychological element was making sure that you're exposed to the misery that comes with something like this ahead of time so it doesn't surprise you when it appears on race day or race days as it ended up being how does your body feel during something like this because i know you know um i've done some like boxing and some different things and i know like you know you spar with somebody they hit in the stomach and hitting the head and you get a couple shots in and what have you and you wrestle around a little bit and you

kind of end up with these uh uh, you end up being really sore later on. But the most I ever really, uh, sparred with somebody is maybe like about five rounds. And what you'll notice is maybe about a half an hour later, you'll be really fucked up. Two hours later, you'll be like, you'll be massively fucked up all that. Like whatever you had, if you got like a little shiner or something like that, that thing's now filling with blood and even just bending down to pick something up that thing will like like feel like it's fucking throbbing so when you do something like this where you're on your feet for god knows how long like what the fuck does your body feel like when you you know when you're transitioning from swimming to this

or you're just on your feet for so goddamn long so if i was to break it down the it was surprisingly i say it in the video several times and i did a longer format version of this that was more chronological on my own channel as well so this is a 14 minute really well put together sort of documentary storytelling piece from jim shark which is fantastic but then the sort of chronological breakdown in real time of how things happened is on my own channel and the swim i felt really solid and completely at peace because there was no time pressure just get through the swim move at a pace that's manageable and until about 7.2k out of the 7.6k i felt great and then i started to feel my traps go a little bit but i only had 400 meters to go so i was like okay no problem but if my traps are going on the swim spending 16 to 20

hours in that position or that position is going to catch up with you so progressively on the bike things got from from a from an execution point of view i felt like there was a point where i went from fatigued to adapted which is crazy to say because it's such a short period of time but there was a moment where i did just feel like i could go i could go forever there was no when i got to the hills there was no sort of spike in lactate in my in my legs there was no real i just got used to the sensation of outputting the energy required to keep moving forward because it was at a lower intensity it was all sort of zone two other than the odd hill and the thing that really started to get me was was traps and actually triceps a little bit because i was in that position for so long andrew he was always feeling everything in his triceps everything lat pull down squats i just feel it always in my triceps do you have exceptional triceps no

that's a harsh trade-off isn't it I know tell me I would have eternal pain for no reward so yeah my try we can empathize here

so it probably feels like you do on a daily basis yeah we're like twins yeah exactly exactly and my essentially things got worse and worse

you'll see just clips where you see me sort of shaking off make it tough to breathe because sometimes that area feels like that's where you're sometimes breathing into so that's a big part of as well because there were moments where on a triathlon bike you can essentially sit in that position and what it does is it just shifts your body into a into a more

horizontal way of being on the bike which means that when you're eating you're obviously gi tracks at a different angle you're processing things in a different position. Your back's in a different position. Yeah, so this is the Celtman, for example, which is up in Scotland, home turf, but very, very brutal part of the country in terms of territory and terrain. But physically, the degradation wasn't actually terrible. And I don't know whether – it can't be an adrenaline because adrenaline's too short-term a a thing yeah really for the 40 hours so i think it's effectively i hit i hit a point in my

training where aerobically i could go could go all day and that's something i've experienced in the past with training for ultras where you could ask me at any one time could you run 100 100k tomorrow and the answer would be yes or the answer would be yes but it would really really tear me apart because i just i kind of know in my training when i cross the threshold into being aerobically efficient enough to just keep going as long as i'm well fueled or you don't actually have the capacity in your current conditioning to be able to do that so sunday morning after the bike ride so the swim i had a bit of trap issue the bike obviously my uh gooch was in pieces and that goes without saying yeah there's not enough chamois cream in the world and then getting onto the run i was i had slept for 12 minutes at this point so we just closed your eyes or you

actually fell asleep so actually period so we started at 7 a.m on the saturday morning yeah and about three about five five in the morning on the Sunday, I actually fell asleep on the bike going downhill. I sort of nodded off and veered off to the right a little bit. And as I sort of woke up, I thought, right, okay. That's actually probably pretty normal. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, it happened to the Iron Cowboy on his 50-50-50 because he had to make the travel work, but he actually hit the deck and slid out. And obviously the cumulative fatigue he'd experienced was so severe but i just hit a point where i just just like that just sort of went so at that point just quick question did you get off the bike and just take 12 minutes or yeah yeah so at that point about two hours beforehand the support car had been behind me and they'd seen me sort of like swaying a bit because i kind of been nodding off that look you know when you're in a hot lecture theater at college or you just you're watching you're watching a video and you're

a bit dehydrated oh yeah that was kind of the feeling i had so i didn't nod off but i just had those moments and they pulled me aside and said are you okay i said yeah look i am okay so i had my first dosage of caffeine when that happened and that got me through it and then the one at five in the morning really caught me off guard so i thought right just close your eyes in a hundred miler i've done in the past i know how much better i felt after a seven minute sleep yeah so i thought right close your eyes close your eyes 15 minutes they reckon i was asleep after three and then i got 12 minutes of sleep so i got a shake on my shoulder off you go i wasn't asleep you were show me the time and time. And they're like, oh, I was. And off I went. Got some food down me.

And then what was fantastic about the sleep was as I closed my eyes, it was dark. As I opened my eyes, there was just a little glimmer of light coming through. So I almost tricked my body into a sleep cycle of 12 minutes as I went to sleep in the darkness and then the light came up. And when I came in to transition to off the bike i had no no concept whatsoever how i was going to run up a mountain um so i had 900 so about 3 000 feet to get up and then down again and then off that i had another

75 kilometers to run so it was about 50 50 miles yeah for reference yeah so it was um it was daunting psychologically but as i started moving up the hill physically honestly i felt i felt really good i felt really really good and i think that the buzz that i got from daylight and then quite a nice morning in terms of weather really carried me forward there probably was a bit of adrenaline there because the bike was over yeah and then i was with johnny my business partner and sort of best friend as well and that was the first time we'd really been able to be together walking up the mountain because you need a support runner obviously he wasn't on side by side with me on the bike because he was driving the support car so there was a there's a lot going into that it

isn't just physiological and i think that's what's really important to mention as well because the variables in a race like that, in an event like that, in ultra-endurance stuff, so much can go wrong, but there's also so many things you can tap into to make it go right, down to what do you eat when you're absolutely exhausted? Are you going to get a real good morale boost

from having a cookie? That white chocolate and raspberry cookie that reminds you of your childhood, is that what's going to bring you back from the dead a little bit and sometimes it is sometimes it isn't, sometimes you're beyond help but at this point I got up up Snowdon which was the mountain

got down and then the last little bit before you get down into the village is a really steep concrete, like really steep walking down it is nailing your quads and as I was walking down it all the fatigue just quads. And as I was walking down it, all the fatigue just started to creep up and I could just feel it coming down. And I was walking into the village,

going to get some food to me. And I just thought, Oh no, everything hurts now. And then the run, the way it, the way it worked was race HQ. And then it was,

it was eight, 8.8 K and you could run the first four K, which I did. So that was my, my rule was run the first 4k which I did so that was my rule was run the first 4k and then you got to one mile exactly that was up steep and you'd have to be

some sort of animal to be running up it at that stage I think there was one guy that won it that actually ran up the hill a couple of times so you 4k run one mile walk up

so you had that time to reset get some fluids on board at the top of the hill there was an aid station so you knew that you just had to get through that bit you reset, get some fluids on board. At the top of the hill, there was an aid station. So you knew that you just had to get through that bit. You get some food, some water on board. And then you had some sort of undulating trails to come back to this point here,

which is race HQ before you repeat that. So psychologically, it was an hour and 10 minutes to an hour and a half worst case scenario that you could break it up into smaller portions. But that also meant that physically, I knew when my rest was coming, I knew how the segments were put together, and I knew that the only really difficult bit of that physically was the 4K.

I was wanting to hold 6 minute per K, 10 minute miles. And then I did that pretty confidently the whole way through. And pain-wise, nothing got worse in my body. It just kind of got more and more mentally draining and then every time i got to that hill johnny could just i mean there's not much video of it because johnny didn't get the camera out much for for this bit but every time i got to the bottom of that one mile uphill that's where the tiredness i just got so pissed off because it was just slow walking uphill was nailing my glutes my hamstrings that's where i could start to feel my traps i could feel everything sort of settled it's like when you take a deload and you're like

oh god everything's i'm broken thank god i've got this deload yeah that's how i felt on that hill and then once you're focusing on the motor pattern of running through trails running through the technicality of the sort of more difficult sections you're almost distracted from the pain that you're feeling at the time but then when you give yourself the chance to think about it that's where it comes back or at the very least that's what my experience was like so coming out the back end the irony is i hadn't slept for a weekend and obviously was very very much looking forward to going to bed but once i'd finished all the pain hit me and you can't sleep because you're in so much pain that you're tossing and

turning overnight because the blood's pooling in your legs and all of that's going on. So it becomes quite frustrating. So that's the sort of more technical bit there. So there's bits that you've got to walk. There's bits that you can run. But you can't really focus on the pain that you're feeling when you're focusing on not tripping over a tree root, for example. So again, it's an adventure.

It's an athletic adventure is the way I like to look at it because this is a bit of a blur even watching this now for me it's kind of weird to think about because it seems so surreal that i actually had to be presented with the problems that came along the way and find a way through them with the help of the support crew and that's johnny there and we did it as a team we got through it i had two hours of bike mechanical issues that were completely unpredictable and really messed me up psychologically, but managed to get through it. And yeah, I mean, I'm pretty downtrodden at this point here. How many hours did this event take you? So 40 hours and 15 minutes, I think it was.

But two and a bit hours of that I spent static because my electrical gearing on my bikes, both of them somehow, both different companies different group sets both failed um the first one i was static for about an hour and a half because i was in an area where we didn't have any signal um so effectively i was moving for 38 hours in a very harsh environment do some people not sleep um so yeah but i don't i don't think this before yeah no no no this is a this is a this is an event that happens every september oh okay yeah yeah yeah so it's um it's it's it's a strange corner of the endurance world this event but it is it's one that exists i think the guy that won

it i don't know if the guy that won it slept actually everyone's so delirious i didn't think to ask at the end. But I know that there were a few people that had planned in like a couple of hours sleep in the tent at one point and taken bigger gaps. But I don't like, once I've like rested, I don't like getting the engine started again. When your bike was messed up, were you able to rest then or you were trying to figure out your bike? So I was just leaning. So everything everything i could i did everything i could to figure it out so there was it was shimano di2s for anyone listening that knows there's like an override code you can do with a couple of taps that didn't work there were people that drove past me that were really kind enough to help that sort of knew a bit more

than i did that didn't work and i was just stood on a wall with a field of sheep behind me, drinking, eating, letting my emotions fluctuate, but ultimately doing all I could to practice what I preach, which is try and remain objective about the situation. Right now, my bike is not working. Somebody is on the way to bring me a solution. Until then, there is nothing that I can do aside from walk up this hill in my bike cleats, which is probably going to do more harm than good so just stay here stay on top of hydration and nutrition think about what you've got to come and I didn't actually fold psychologically because I think the magnitude of the event all it meant was that I was going to have less time to try and get some sleep if I needed it or I was going to finish later. It wasn't like I was going for a sub-10 hour Ironman

and if your bike breaks for an hour, that's gone. So then your whole race falls apart. But has your whole race fallen apart because you've done a whole lot of work, you're doing an Ironman, you're still going to finish in a very respectable time. So there's an argument to make that the only reason it's fallen apart

is because of your goal and the way that you framed it is making you deem it something that's fallen short of the goal but for me the goal here was to finish i didn't set a time because there's so many variables that it would have been silly of me to say i'm doing it in this time or i'll be disappointed because then i'm just setting myself up for potential disappointment rather than being proud of all the hard work i did to get to the start line and then navigate the obstacles that were thrown at me along the way and that's what that's what I get from these things is the value of being presented with a version of yourself that sort of looks you in the eye and goes what you're going to do about

this and rather than doing the human thing that we all do which is catastrophize and think oh what a mess I can't believe I've caught this up what a failure everybody's going to judge me if you can put yourself in that situation be objective about what is the task i'm trying to overcome what can i do to overcome it is there nothing i can do then okay let's let's bring in some help or okay how can i take control of the situation and move things forward and for me it was just a case of waiting yeah in that situation when the bike went the second time i did lose my cool a little bit and that's all caught on camera some very uh scottish sentences were rotted and but it was only momentary because again there was i had another bike i could use so it was okay but it was just the disbelief that of all of all these infinite variables that can go wrong two such catastrophic big ones had

gone in the same day but it was was so ridiculous, it was almost funny. Yeah. After my little moment of sweariness. What else? Because you mentioned that you learned a lot about yourself. So obviously, being patient in this situation taught you a lot about yourself there. But from this race, what else did you get from that

that's helped you up until this point? So I've already mentioned that the actual process of getting here was so demanding from a personal life point of view. It really made me reflect on things like my social life, like the time I swam with my fiance, the time I swam with my dogs, how I spend my Sundays, how I operate the businesses. There was all that stuff that came from it, which is a lot of self-development.

But from an athletic point of view, it taught me how little volume I could get away with from a strength point of view it taught me it taught me how little volume i could get away with from a strength point of view to maintain the the strength that i have which is interesting because i think that's that's that's what puts a lot of people off doing things like this because the amount of volume to maintain versus the amount to build there's a huge disparity there i think there was a study where it was about 40 of the volume is to maintain versus 100 to build strength and size you can even get away with less. I think so.

I think so. So a good example, I basically stripped my lower body training back to front squatting and unilateral work. I was still focusing on bench a little bit more. We do need to sneak this in. You've squatted 600 pounds. I have. And you can still today squat close to 500 at the moment i'd probably be good for yeah 2 215 kilos which is about 480 right now but with about

six weeks of focus prep i could probably get to 500 500 is about as much as i can knock on in this state uh yeah that was 220 there but yeah squatting for the so training for the double i basically stripped my lower body training right back but kept my benching up so i think i benched 325 during my prep as well but then straight afterwards so a week after the double i deadlifted 500 and squatted 210 which i think is 470 pounds. But it just goes to show just the minimal volume and just keeping the movements grooved. They felt like they were terrible reps in terms of how they felt,

but they did move. But then I noticed the following week, I essentially used up all my squat and deadlift capacity because I went to do it again and 90% felt like it wasn't going to move. So what I've learned over the years is actually how little volume I can get away with to maintain the strength I've built. And I think this is where it's really important to mention that from a hybrid athlete point of view, the bias that I have coming from a strength background sets me up to be able to do these in the same day

things, be able to have the strength background there already, which has given me the opportunity to build the aerobic base in the background. And all i'm doing is turning up the dials or turning down the dials and certain things throughout the year which means that i know roughly what my bottom end strength capacity is versus my top end strength capacity is and i know what my bottom end mile pace versus my top end mile pace will be depending on how much i've turned up certain dials and turned up certain turned down certain dials and i think that sacrifice and that almost cyclical nature of looking at your strength and endurance capacity in conjunction is where is what puts people off hybrid training because people are protective of what they've built they're scared of losing all their strength or their muscle or yeah by doing any of this stuff yeah yeah but it's it's that momentary sacrifice it's not you're not throwing it away you're just

giving yourself the opportunity to to sort of if you let's if we take percentages hypothetically 100 strength work like i was for about four years and then you you sort of dial that back to 80 that gives you 20 of room to focus on zone two stuff and you're a great example of once you start implementing zone two stuff it doesn't take much from you in the way of fatigue unless you do too much of it too soon or you're not actually in zone two but if you're doing 100% of a strength training program and then you add in five days a week of zone two you're probably going to be spilling to the point where you're going to go into sessions unpredictably because you're carrying so much fatigue so for me it's if you look at if you look at the way that

all my events have unfolded since 2020 i've never gone from i've never gone from doing a triathlon focused event straight into 100 mile ultra because the specificity of the triathlon isn't there for the ultra it's almost if i'm getting up here on the strength bias then on the way back down with the strength bias what can i do and that's exactly what I did with the dinny stones for example so I took away all of my top end squat work all my top end bench work and sort of translated it into the dinny stones as I was ramping up my endurance capacity for the kelpman and the double but the dinny stones was incredibly rewarding for me and it was the biggest buzz I felt since the first couple of powerlifting competitions I've done because it was like eight people around a park bench in rural Scotland

lifting these 332 kilos, 730 pounds wedges of granite in history. And I was in a kilt. There were four of us there ready to do it. Somebody had traveled up for 12 hours in the car. And there's just so much storytelling behind the Dinny Stones. And I loved it. And that was great for me because that's the first strength goal i've done in a while it's felt like it's broken

away from the norm it gave me that buzz that i got from powerlifting originally and then to be able to go into a an extreme over iron distance triathlon on my home turf a few months later yeah is it is a great feeling yeah but i think the important thing to to really flag there is that you can track the sort of fluctuations in my focuses and biases between strength and endurance demands as things have gone over the years. And from a programming point of view,

I think that's important to mention for people as well, because if you've got lots of different goals, you're not going to train for an ultra. And then because you used to do BJJ, turn up to the American Championships the following week because you used to do bjj turn up to the the american championships the following week because you've you've dialed all the way down and need to work your way back up yeah so it's it's choose it's setting your year up effectively around where are the peaks where are the troughs of certain demands and how can you get your goals in line with those rather

than setting goals that are unrealistic whilst you've got other elements of your training dialed up or dialed down if that if that'll make sense but as long as you're not like massively out of shape most people listening to this that already lift that already have built some strength could probably take uh what you're suggesting eight to twelve weeks turn around and go do a 10k 5k maybe maybe a half marathon pretty easily and have a new experience and maybe that experience would be something that they where they keep some of that running or whatever the choices that they made maybe it's a open water swim or something maybe that's a new discipline that they keep keep around for the rest of their life that's exactly it and they might hate it it might give

them nothing and that's that's fine that's okay. I don't think there's one way to train that's better than any other way. I've gained a huge amount of self-development and value from strength training. I've gained a huge amount of both those things from endurance training. But what works for me is doing them both because I enjoy doing lots of different things

in different places. And that's what works for me, but it's not something that I think other people need to do. But what I think people should do is explore and try new things. Yeah. This is a curiosity I have for both of you, Mark and Fergus, because, you know, the idea of like hating running, right? I feel that like any strength athlete,

even when I started running again, even though I played soccer all my life as a kid, right? I started running again after a while. I was like, I fucking hate it. There's going to be a point where like you're going to hate it for a while because you just plainly suck. But once you get to the point where you can run a mile without like feeling beat up or beat, then it becomes something that you kind of like to do, right? And then it opens up this like capacity where it's like I don't always have to train in the gym i can go run i think for some people a really good goal and this is what uh chris henshaw aerobic capacity this is what he told me when he was here he was like just get yourself to be able

to run for 20 minutes straight he's like that's like that's a really good start and a really good base and also he said within those 20 minutes like when you you finish the next day, you're not all beat. Like it wasn't like the hardest thing you ever did. And so he was just like, take your time getting there. And I was like, that's some really good advice. So I took it. And at the time when he said it, I was like, I don't think I can run for 20 minutes straight. I don't know what you're talking about.

He wasn't here that long ago. And you've since ran for four hours straight. Right. Which is insane. I mean, the thing that puts people off giving new things a go is how far in the future it seems like they'll be good enough to feel like they're not embarrassed about saying that they're doing it. Whereas in the short space of time,

you've gone from not being able to run 20 minutes in one go to running four hours in one go. And that's phenomenal. And that's so, for want of a better phrase, empowering to people to hear because it means that they can do the things that they enjoy, but they can also stack on other things. Yeah. And if you were to map it out from a progression standpoint, it's like, well, how else can I make progress in the current other areas of my life that I'm already doing? So like

in business, can I have a percentage increase? That's the same as what I did with running. Not with the same stuff that I'm currently doing, probably. I don't want to put a limit on there, but it would be difficult because I'm already doing pretty well in some of those areas. Same thing with lifting. If I was trying to increase incrementally or percentage-wise the way that I increased with running, so it could be the same thing for me going into something like swimming. I have close to zero proficiency when it comes to swimming and so if it was something i messed around with if i

can just go back and forth uh i don't know like six times that would be x amount of percentage better than i am now because it might be difficult for me to even make one lap but the thread of dna that runs through all those things is having the confidence and the commitment to take one step forwards and that in my mind is is almost letting go of your own ego a little bit which used to be a real weight on my shoulders and stop me from doing things the example i always give is peak powerlifting when i wasn't even that good but it was my identity i wouldn't play golf on a weekend even though i like playing golf. I say this all the time. You're not that good anyway.

Yeah, that's it. Go enjoy some golf, bro. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. Not even my parents care. Oh, power thing. Yeah, cool, man. Why are the red plates thinner?

And it's a case of, I wouldn't play golf on a Saturday because I didn't want the 18 holes on my feet for my heavy squats on a Monday. For a sport that I was losing love with, wasn't particularly good at, I was not spending time with my friends doing a sport I did enjoy, and arguably I'm just as good at golf as I was at powerlifting, because my identity was a powerlifter and I didn't want to compromise the Monday.

So quality of life then comes into question, and you start asking yourself, why are you doing the things that you're doing? And that's what the hybrid athleticism that i've since pursued has taught me the most about because it means that i'm not afraid to try anything because i'm already over the hurdle of having let go of that previous identity of i am a strength athlete yeah but if i ever decided i just want to go pure powerlifting be as strong as i can again i can but the baseline is already much higher than it would be had I started from zero

because I've got all the years under my belt as a strength athlete and it's just that turning up of the dial, turning down of the dial. I always know that generally with myself, with Johnny, my coach, with the way that we look after our athletes, the ideal position we want people to be in

is they're from a GPP point of view, from a general competency across energy systems point of view, three months away, as long as it's not ridiculous, like kayaking the Amazon or something three months away from specializing their training into something that scares them. And that's what's exciting. So great example.

I went from the Celtman to double the Celtman in three months by just turning down the dialer strength work and increasing the dial of the endurance work. And that's a great position to be in because it means that I can go in whatever direction I choose when previously I was in one direction that I didn't even really enjoy that much anymore. So the question at the core of all this is why do we do the things that we do and then how do you adjust over time to make sure that you're the one controlling the plan rather than letting the plan that a previous version of you set control you? Yeah.

I'm curious about this, man, because you mentioned it in the Gymshark video. But you mentioned that like six years ago you didn't want to be here. What did you mean when you said that? What happened? Yeah, so the context in that video probably doesn't bring it to life as much as it is probably worth doing. But for context, I was an all right rugby player. I played rugby all my life and I then had three concussions in four weeks when I was 18. And that very quickly stopped any rugby playing at all. I was told in no uncertain terms,

there's no more contact sports. If you get hit in the head again, it could be a big problem. And was rugby something you wanted to take far? It was at one point, but to make sure that I hold myself accountable to where my ability was, I hit puberty very soon, very quickly,

which meant that in a certain age group of rugby, my weight meant that physics made me a good rugby player and then when everybody caught up it started to dawn on me that perhaps i wasn't as good a rugby player as i thought i might have been okay so i i was if i'd maybe put all my eggs in the basket it could have gone somewhere but it wasn't it wasn't something i'd had my heart set on for years it wasn't like a career i lost but you still loved it i loved it it was a huge part of my life here just for a second because i think this is important i think a lot of i think this happens to a lot of people i think they end up you know being pretty good at something when

they're young they end up being pretty proficient because they're bigger or their brother played or whatever the circumstances are but they're like do you think at that time you weren't doing maybe enough stuff outside of rugby or were you like all in on rugby? No. So I actually think one of the things that I'm most grateful to my parents for is if we, me and my brother, said we want to try a sport, whatever it was, they jumped through hoops to let us do it. We skateboarded. We snowboarded. We tennis lessons one holiday, I remember.

My dad was a cricketer so he was um he was a pro cricketer and then actually went to the Commonwealth Games with Scotland um when he was when was that that was about 1994 he went there and that was a huge part of his his upbringing well his his entire career is based on the fact that he was a good cricketer. Because on paper, his qualifications aren't very impressive. He won't mind me saying that, but he said he was part of the old tradition of selling beer in the winter and playing cricket in the summer. And he was part of an industry in a trade where he's worked his ass off from that position to be able to climb up the ladder within the alcohol trade,

within the beer trade. So I've always, he's always seen the value and my mom's always seen the value in sport as a catalyst for better things and scotland gives you a fantastic opportunity to try everything because whilst it's cold you can wakeboard you can surf you can climb mountains and rows you can you can go ice climbing you can you can do everything yeah if you are given the access to so that's something i'm very thankful for but i did hone in on rugby in my school years but i also play cricket i played golf um i used to play golf my dad most sundays which is fantastic but the the the variety has always been drilled into me which actually reflected upon it now now that you've asked i haven't thought about this is is maybe why i started to become a bit discontented with powerlifting

because i went too all in on powerlifting and there was a part of me the child in me wanted to be out there doing more and now that that's what i'm doing i think that much happier with bodybuilding and powerlifting right like it wasn't like enough for you right yeah absolutely when i when i was forced to focus on it because my i was taken out of soccer because i had foot injury um when i started focusing purely on bodybuilding and powerlifting after a certain point it was just for me too much of the same i had to move more it was primarily a thing of i wasn't able to use my body as much as i wanted to with those lifts that's why i found jiu-jitsu but yeah no it makes perfect sense. Makes perfect sense. So yeah,

to circle back to where we were, it was, once, once I had that last concussion, rugby was a huge part of my life. So my sense of community, my Tuesday, Tuesday,

Thursday, Friday, Saturday group effort was taken away from me. My 5 a.m. sessions, Monday, Wednesday, Friday,

S&C with the rugby team, taken away. My sense of purpose and drive out with schoolwork was taken away. And it was kind of fight or flight. And that's actually where I found self-driven health and fitness. I went from being about 100 kilos,

quite a chubbier back row in the rugby play, as a rugby player, all the way down to 76 by getting into- The back row means you're fat. No, it just means you're heavier. It says the front rows where you don't front rows no i'm in dangerous territory here no go for it so who's the chunkier on the team who's got the thicker thighs for those for those uh for those unaware with rugby front row are the are the big boys there you go they are the big boys they serve a very specific purpose on the pitch at their core. But the beauty of rugby is everybody has a very, very specific

contributive role, and then they also play their role within the wider ecosystem of the team, which I think is great. My uncle is a football coach, American football, and he's a high school coach, and he used to always say, fat guys win championships. But he can't say it anymore. Everyone gets all sad. But he used to kind of, he meant it in a,

in a way of like the bigger guys are going to get us to the, you know, to our goal. Yeah. I'm trying to think if, if there's an example we can pull up of, I can't remember his name. There's a Fijian or Tongan.

There was a Tongan front rower who I think at peak was 161 kilos. I think it's like Tulipa Tau or something, which is going to be impossible to spell. Oh yeah. Who are some of these fucking animal rugby guys that we've seen clips of running people over left and right

it's insane so and how big they are it's insane it's insane as a sport it is I think

for character building for exposure to difficult things for exposure to teamwork imagine going up in a smash so that good luck

that's a front rower. No thanks. That boy on the ground behind him. Who is not a front rower. So you've got forwards and you've got backs. Backs are more dynamic. Forwards, but I mean, backs now, there are people playing in the backs

that are what big forwards look like 10 years ago. So the back row where i used to play is kind of like the the slightly more dynamic bigger guys but you've got people that are meant that are in open play fast open play that now look like back rows did 10 years ago and they're getting bigger and bigger and leaner and it's just it's insane i do think some of the explosive strength that you need for that sport combined with some of the some of what you did for power lifting i think may have been something that led you to feel better during your during your run and your your double triathlon and

all that stuff uh because your um strength to weight ratio is probably pretty good so you might feel exponentially a little bit better because you're not a small guy. And a lot of times these endurance guys are smaller athletes, but you're able to make up for it with your strength, I think. I think it carries you a long way. And yeah, for reference, I sit about 91 to 94 kilos, which is about 200 to 210 pounds most of the year.

I don't really drop below 90 i my body doesn't like being lean very much either um i've been lean before and i just feel like shit well you are lean we should point that out yeah yeah they're like i know i know what you're saying yeah yeah you're in great shape it's a we're in a fucked up yeah yeah in the echo chamber in the echo chamber but it's um yeah i think the lowest i've been in the past five years was when i did my last hundred miler i was 88 um and i've asked hundred miles just that phrase in and of itself is so wild for someone that your size too i think it's that's something that's super impressive because like you're a large dude and you're out here doing these like

really cool endurance and strength feats but you're a large dude and you're out here doing these like really cool endurance and strength feats, but you're a big guy. People wouldn't expect that from someone like you. No. And I think that's the, that's the, um, that's the expectation I'm trying to subvert in some ways, because again, it is the, the way I look at things is, is entry points. I've gained so much value from all the sports that I've taken part in. Like I said, I think it probably all goes back to the exposure i had to sports when i was younger for my parents and the entry point for triathlon is very high it's expensive it's middle class it's quite white it's very cliquey in certain corners and those are the things that can put people off wanting to give it a go yeah and the more that we can do to bring that down,

the more fitter, committed individuals we have in society, and that can only be a good thing. In the same way, we were laughing about it before, that people don't come to the super training gym because they're just waiting to get a little bit stronger before they do, whereas they're already strong enough to be here and they'll gain so much value

from just taking that one step into the arena. And that's what I want to subvert with the bigger guys, the guys coming from a rugby background, the CrossFitters, that strength bias. Sign up for a marathon and build the wings as you fly because it's a case of you're not going to be the fastest finisher, but you'll probably be the most jacked when you run alongside the people crossing the finish line.

And you'll be the person that's in and out of a CrossFit gym and you've ticked off the bucket list item of doing a marathon. You might hate it and that's fine, but you've had an experience that you wouldn't have done had you not taken that one step forwards. And I think that sort of mentality for me comes back to sort of the question you had before around the six years ago thing, which is important context because once I discovered health and fitness self-driven,

I also started working very hard with my exams. I discovered the equity of graft and hard work and I saw in my exam results that if I worked harder I got better exam results if I trained harder in the gym I got leaner I got stronger I got faster and I did become quite obsessed with that I then went to university and I was dealt a bit of a bad hand in terms of a few variables it was was just unlucky. So my halls of residence were exclusively Chinese postgraduate students. So it was almost as if I was the last number

on an Excel spreadsheet and they chucked me in there. They were lovely people, but they were very much in their own community that I wasn't a part of. The second element was my course, which I actually chose to study to improve my chances of going to Oxford, not because it's what I wanted to study.

So I studied theology and religion at university. Fun fact. We'll come back to that. And the people there were average scripture unionists. I'm not religious in the way that they were. So they had their community. I didn't really fit into that. And then powerlifting was my sport at the time

as I'd committed to that after the sort of initial self-driven health and fitness drive. I met a good friend of mine who sort of got me into it and there were no facilities at university for powerlifting at all so you could only access the performance gym at the university if you were in one of the main sports teams there was one squat rack for the rest of the university population on the whole and the whole university which is which is insane to think about so essentially criminal yeah criminal and then i come over here and you see you see the standards it's like oh man yeah you on the whole university, which is insane to think about. Criminal. Yeah, criminal.

And then I come over here and you see the standards and it's like, oh, three monos. Three monos, yeah. But you get monos in high school gyms. It's insane. It's insane. So I got knocked really quite hard back from being the sociable young man

who was in the rugby community, was always happy to talk to people, to immediately feeling like I was on the back foot university i became a bit bitter that my friends that hadn't worked as hard as i had and gone to on paper lesser universities were having a great time because i'd essentially worked hard to put myself in a bad position yeah and then without without boring you with the details essentially over the progressively over the next 18 months i became more and more isolated psychologically became progressively what's been retrospectively diagnosed as more and more depressed from a clinical point of view because i became very insular and self-contained because i

didn't want to expose myself as not being not moving in the right direction yeah i felt alone i felt isolated i felt hard done by. Looking back at that situation real quick, do you feel that, I mean, I know the people around you were somewhat different, but do you think you could have gone out of your way to try to find community? A hundred percent. A hundred percent. So my sense of masculinity and self and my sense of success was what led me to remain silent about the way that I was feeling. Because if I was to say to somebody outwardly, I'm not feeling 100%, that is me admitting that I am weaker than I thought I was.

I am letting down your expectations of me. I'm not the man that I thought I was. I'm meant to be the person that does X, Y, and Z. I'm meant to be reliable, stoic, resilient, all these things. And then throughout that, I had powerlifting. So I was traveling outside of my university town to a gym to get my training in. And that was a big crutch for me. But ultimately, things got to the point where I've been very brief with that.

I mean, the details along the way are things got worse and worse. I became more and more isolated because I was so afraid of telling people how bad I was feeling. And then a full week went by Sunday to Sunday where I realized I hadn't had a human interaction other than with a cashier at a supermarket or a barista or something yeah and from that moment on was it's all a bit blurry but essentially the sense of failure I had in that moment sent me into a bit of a spiral where on May, early May 2016, I actually attempted suicide. And as I came around from the suicide attempt, what's most terrifying about my state of mind at the time is I was so intoxicated from the method of suicide attempt that as I opened my eyes and

came around, the first emotion was anger. That the one initiative I'd taken to improve my situation hadn't come off. It hadn't gone in the way. It hadn't worked. Yeah. And I couldn't move, but I could open my eyes and I could think. How long were you in that state? About three, four hours, I think. I managed to crawl myself into bed and then sort of settle. But what's really scary is the people that I could hear the footsteps of outside of my door didn't know that I was feeling the way that I was in the first place, let alone in the situation that I was behind that closed door. And that all came from a pretty unhealthy relationship with self-improvement and a pretty unhealthy relationship with my notion of

success and who I was as a man and I think it's it's a dangerous word to use in a podcast setting at the moment because masculinity is the buzzword that's all over the place what does it mean to different people I think different nations and things but my definition of success was very conventional it was best universe best grades possible to get to the best university to get the best job to get the best house car promotion all that stuff no sense of fulfillment no sense of purpose no sense of understanding what actually makes you tick along the way and i became so obsessive and rigid and actually good at working within that system that i lost total sight of who i was as a person and what actually was beneficial for me so coming out of the back of that, I then sort of took,

I took 18 months to be happy being happy because I did actually manage to turn it around. Well, I got one of my dogs at the time, the French Bulldog I showed you before. I got him and he essentially became my catalyst back into society because people talk to you when you've got a dog. And were you able to talk to anybody after this situation happened?

So I didn't tell my parents about this until December that year. So about six months afterwards. And that was only because my mom had never wanted a dog because she knew that she'd be the one that ended up walking it. I was at my parents' house for Christmas. There was a dog in the house that I'd got. And the elephant or French bulldog in the room came up.

Why is there a dog in the house? And I had to explain. There was no use in me lying because I wanted them to understand why he was so important to me. But it also, not necessarily by choice, presented me with the opportunity to be honest with them. And that moment was when I actually

almost unlocked the next stage of my life. I moved up a level where I kind of managed to express how I felt to other people for the first time. And that, that gave me the confidence that all of these thoughts about how people would judge me or how people would view me as less of a man or how people would see me as weak. None of that was reality. It was all, it was all my own expectation of what I was meant to be or how I was meant to be or what I was meant to be doing when in reality I was just another human being who wasn't necessarily on the right path yeah how did your dad react when you told him he was shocked he was shocked and then quickly

afterwards started to actually work backwards and you could see a bit of worrying in his head and think well actually yeah you didn't really see myself at that date this didn't really look like that and that conversation then was probably this and we knew you weren't happy at university but we were just encouraging you to sort of see it through term by term

and trying to chop it up so they weren't they weren't in any way not supportive and I was never I was only ever afraid of telling them how I felt

yeah your dad sounds like he's a rock star yeah yeah he is and it's that's what's terrifying to me and why I'm so passionate about this stuff

is because I had a support network around me. I had people that could have helped me, but I chose not to access that help because of my sense of hard work, drive, masculinity, purpose. I think a lot of guys feel that way, though. Oh, 100%. 100%. I feel we're going back in a different direction, actually.

I feel like whether it's a... Oh, so cute. You also may have needed to do that. Like you may have needed to go on your own journey. So that, that, that's a big part of it as well, because I don't think my son,

you know, my son's like 19. I don't think he's going to come to me with everything. Yeah. He needs to go through his own things, right? Yeah. Yeah,

he does. He does. And I think it's a huge part of who I am. And it's something I'm, I'm happy telling, telling anyone now when there was a previous version of me that was not be able to even acknowledge it to myself. That's amazing that you have such good parents though and parents that have been so understanding and so supportive that in the end you did go to them. Yeah. Yeah. You

know, it could have been too late in your circumstance, but luckily it wasn't. That's what's really scary. And the thing that gets me emotional thinking about it now is I'm very happy now. I have a fiance I'm very happy now i have a fiancee i love very much i have two dogs that i love very much i get to do things that i enjoy doing and i'm very very grateful for that i get to meet fantastic people having conversations like this one and then all of the things since that date that have made me smile that i've enjoyed that i look back on fondly almost just like that gone ceased to exist because of a decision that i almost made and there was a documentary i was in in came out in 2021 that was with a a sort of it was essentially a celebrity

in the uk's exploration of radio presenter great guy called roman kemp and he was exploring the circumstances and trying to understand why his best friend had died by suicide because it was something he was really his best friend he was he was just out of the stage of anger and he chose to follow this documentary because he wanted to really expose in men specifically why we are so bad at trying to tackle this head-on and why we're so bad at not being honest with those around us and he came to me as a survivor of a suicide attempt, hoping I would have the answer as to why his friend Joe had died by suicide. Well, what could he have done differently? And the answer I gave was essentially potentially nothing

because the fear that I had that led me to attempting suicide, it wasn't a desire to die. It was a want for peace. So I was so stressed internally that I effectively managed to block out what the consequences of the decision would be for a short-term desire for a break from my own head. And that's really scary because it allowed me to reframe my own existence and ignore the fantastic parents that i have ignore the people around me ignore the fact that there were things like you asked there were things i could do to

improve my situation but chose not to out of a paralysis by paralysis by expectation expectation yeah yeah essentially and that all came from a sense of self that was ultimately a negative relationship with this black and white metric focused way of life that i was in which was i think stemmed from focusing on exams and the hard work equals success existence so much without without the gray area because the gray area is where life is lived essentially saying makes so much sense i mean just even like on a much smaller degree of trying to ask your parents for something, you want to ask if your friend can come over and you go over to your mom and you see like, oh, she ain't in a good mood.

And you're like, I ain't saying nothing. I'm not going to, I'm not going to ask for any favors right now. And so you hold it in, you know, and you, and you wait. And I think, you know, in your case on a much larger scale, you're like, my mom doesn't need this. She's got a lot on her plate. Like she's always done so much for me. You know, my dad, you're probably putting your dad up on this pedestal. He was this great cricket player and he, you know, has a lot of his own things going on. It sounds like he's a little bit of a celebrity in like the area almost. And there was probably some fear and and like you know uh some sort of rejection of some sort maybe from

him or both of them it was the sad thing it was so it was all completely contrived with my own head though right and that that's what's concerning is that's what you were trying to kill ultimately not necessarily yourself you're trying to correct correct the thoughts that weren't um they weren't even i guess it's weird to say they're thoughts that weren't um they weren't even i guess it's weird to say they're not legitimate they weren't they weren't representative who i truly am there we go and now i am who i truly am i believe and i'll hold my hands up and say that i'm still i'm i'm an intense person i will always have peaks and troughs i will always come in and out of it off the back of the double bruce i had a pretty big slump i've had a few injuries the past

couple of months i haven't i haven't double bristle, I had a pretty big slump. I've had a few injuries the past couple of months. I haven't really had a significant injury for a few years. I've had a niggle in my back. Let's go! Jesus, you scared me. I love that word, man.

Whenever it's brought up on the podcast, it always makes me tickle, you know? Back. I like, huh? Back. Oh, niggle.

Niggle, niggle, yeah. Okay. It always makes me go like this. You almost made me do my back again there that was close that was close but um yeah sorry for everyone who's listening just shocked you my bad he does hurt the other side of his back glute med now what have you done what have you done r.i.p headphone users but yeah it was um i am i'm aware that my personality type and the way that exists will put me at a higher risk of essentially physically healthy mentally healthy there's a sliding

spectrum some people spend most of their life physically healthy and mentally healthy and don't go volatile in one direction or the other i am probably more volatile to being physically healthy or unhealthy due to potential for injury due to potential for illness off the back of spending two days doing a double Ironman, for example. But the majority of the time I'm probably in the green because I exist with zone two work. I eat healthily. I sleep properly, all these things. I wonder how many people just in fitness, I know in endurance,

it's big where there's a lot of people with addictions and there's a lot of people, mental health issues. But I even just wonder with people that have pushed you know I wonder it's like is it like 70 percent or 80 percent of the people that have done things you know physically that have probably also had you know some monkeys on their back emotionally mentally it's an important question because it's I I'm always very conscious and trying to be self-aware that I don't want to replace one negative behavior pattern and disguise it with something that can be dressed up as positive but the way you interact with it is actually negative and this is where the gym is my therapy running is my therapy the

iron is my therapy some of the David Goggins thoughts and yeah yeah so that is something that I actively push against because I think everything that Goggin says when it comes to hard work when it comes to discipline when it comes to commitment when it comes to taking accountability for yourself and being responsible entirely valid but the lens in which it is presented to the person receiving the information is through his experience and his experience is a unique one and it's a demanding one it's a traumatic one and that is not the lens that the person receiving the information is experiencing yeah so he's beating the shit out of himself and and the way it comes across to me is he's essentially replacing replacing one form of traumatic existence with another one and

it's how much of it's for marketing or not i don't know but it's things like when he says i'm not proud of many achievements in my life, but I'm proud of this newest book. And for somebody who's achieved so much and has done so many things. And has helped so many people. Exactly. For him to say he's not proud of that, whether it's for marketing purposes or not, I don't know.

For people that are proud of things in their life, that might make them feel like they haven't done enough. And I think all of the things that Goggins says in terms of the forward motion, the sort of healthier habits, the discipline, the hard work that we'll all buy into, I think the thread of DNA that's missing is the emotional awareness

that allows you to understand when to take your foot off the gas a little bit so that you can put it down harder the next time. I think also something where I'm maybe not paying attention to is just his incredible skill set. Like he had to obviously work for that skill set. I'm not saying that he just had it.

But that's something that's really important for people that are trying to push, that are trying to push themselves. Maybe your skill set is just not there yet. And that's totally fine. Yeah. Yeah. It's earned over time, isn't it? But his career is unbelievable. That's what I mean. It's how can Billy, the computer programmer that lives in Nashville,

that trains five days a week, try and put himself in the lens of David Goggins' experience and expect him to live his life like that? Because we so desperately as human beings want to put ourselves in boxes or tie ourselves into certain ideologies or attach certain labels to things because it makes us feel comfortable and like we belong yeah but the lens of experience that Goggins prevent presents his information through is

through the lens of his own experience which is one that's very traumatic and it does come across as if it's one negative behavior being replaced with a outwardly healthy behavior because he's running but i don't think that running through bleeding goochers and shitting yourself around 100 miler is is actually something that the average person should be aspiring to emulate i think doing the preparation if the prep if the context of your life allows you to better prepare i don't think people should suffer for the sake of suffering people should suffer on their own terms i think that could possibly be what people love so much about him is he's like he's not trying to explain himself any further he's not trying to say like i don't i haven't heard all of his messages but i think like he's just he's just that extreme you know he's he's

on that extreme level much like when we were younger and we saw the pictures in the bodybuilding magazines. The pictures in the bodybuilding magazines weren't of amateur bodybuilders and it wasn't of natural bodybuilders. It was a very specific type of bodybuilders. They were the best in the world. They were, you know, if you weren't top five, top ten, you weren't in these magazines. And so we saw that that's what he aspired to be. And maybe that wasn't great. Maybe,

uh, you know, maybe that led some, some people to do steroids and maybe that led to other things. Phil, he's diet plan. Here's Phil, Phil,

he's training. And then you get the person that's three weeks into bench pressing for the first time going and doing that training program. I think Goggins is just like being himself and just going out there and just fucking crushing it and sharing some of it. And then it gets interpreted all these different ways. That's, that's the point. We hold them way too high. And then it gets interpreted all these different ways. That's the point that I think is really important, yeah.

We hold them way too high. We hold anybody, you know, me, anyone else. We hold a lot of people to too high of a standard. We shouldn't be grasping on. But I understand what you're saying is we want to associate ourselves. Like, I'm an endurance guy, so I'm with David Goggins. Or I'm a carnivore guy, so I'm with all these these thoughts and i can't have any other free thoughts of my own i'm just i'm a fan of dr sean baker and like i just i'm all in on everything that he does you know i think it's um

like to circle back to what you said is i've got an enormous amount of respect for the man the skill set's phenomenal it's it's the interpretation that's the problem because you can take you're allowed to take it's like political ideology yeah yeah the fact that we it's very difficult to take certain elements of what a political party says one day and have an open discourse with somebody about why that element's good but maybe that element isn't but if somebody hears that you take one element of what this side says they will put you in that side tie you with a certain brush and then the discourse can't happen in the same way that i will openly say i enormously respect goggins i take a lot of what he says as very valuable information for all which is discipline hard work commitment accountability responsibility and

embracing adversity but then doing that without an emotional awareness of why you feel the way that you do why you're doing the things that you do or knowing when to scale back to be able to scale forwards and knowing how these things fit within the broader ecosystem of your life not within the lens of Goggins's that that's the thing because he is on a pedestal and people interpret it in a way that it's a this is a way of living where I must be suffering. Otherwise I'm not working hard enough. And that nearly killed me. And that's why I'm so passionate about this, because I live like that. That was my, that was my mentality. That was my methodology for life. And I woke up in a puddle of my own vomit with footsteps outside my door, wishing that I had seen a puddle of your own vomit. That's how people die, right? Yeah. Yeah. The aspirate, I think it's called, right? Yeah. Yeah. The aspirate, I think it's called, right?

Yeah. So I think what happened is essentially I got rid of the method of trying to end my own life. But I was so intoxicated that things were moving at different paces. So my brain was moving quicker than my body was. And that moment is something I'll carry with me forever. But it's why I'm so passionate about taking the good elements of the way that I used to exist, which have moved me forwards, but knowing that they're only valuable if they're underpinned by a foundation of insight and self-awareness.

Because you've got multiple businesses, you've got children, you've got loads of things going on. If you didn't have the emotional awareness to know when you need to adjust things or when you need to change course and navigation or when you need to spend more time with your kids and more time on this, more time on that, you'd work yourself into a halt. And I think the way that some people, if people are desperate for a savior,

Goggins can provide that and it gives them the outlet of, if I just keep working and working and working, that will disguise the reason that I need a savior in the first place. Whereas what the person should actually be doing is unpacking the reason why they feel that way in their day-to-day life anyway, which might require the help of a professional, it might require speaking to your parents, it might require speaking to friends around you. Who was your savior? The French bulldog to start with, Odie, the pig dog, because he snores so much.

But the important thing there is that the catalyst for me was we were walking through like a nice little rural part of where i was staying at the time he was 14 weeks old so he wouldn't he would i hired him off the lead and he wouldn't go anywhere because he was so scared to be far from me very practical he's not like that now and i said we're gonna be going to be okay. Aren't we pig? And as I said it, I was like, put the words back down my throat, panic, looked around like, did anyone hear that? Cause I felt exposed to the world for the first time. Cause that was the first time that I'd said, even internally that I wasn't okay. And in saying it, I immediately felt better because it made me feel like, oh right. Things aren't in a good place. So this

was post suicide attempt. The fact that I still managed to dress up in my head that everything was okay and it was just a blip is scary. But as I said that, I thought, okay, that means there's work to be done. And then over the next couple of days, I was walking him in more public places, and it was, oh, my hairdresser's got one of those. They snore and fart a lot, don't they?

Ha-ha, yes, they do. I'm learning that very quickly. It wasn't psychoanalysis it was just human conversation and having that human conversation got me to the point where essentially the savior could be myself i'm a huge fan of being your own hero rather than looking elsewhere for heroes because i think we in the modern world anyway especially with social media we view heroes as these people that are so unattainable but there's so much opportunity in the modern world for us to become

the people that we previously thought unattainable if we take one step forwards towards the things that we believe our heroes to be then in a short space of time like you said with the running like with the progress you can make in a short amount of time we can become the person that we aspired to once be and that's that's who i am now to the version of me that previously wanted to be dead did your dog help you wake up in the morning and help you routine get your shit together like take a shower because i know with people that get real depressed sometimes their hygiene is a problem and sometimes not eating and things like that 100 one of the biggest things day one it was almost one it was a distraction because it gave me moments of not having to think the thoughts in my head but i was responsible for the life of another thing which gave my life more

value in my own head so night one his cage hadn't arrived so i actually had taken out like a like like a bigger version of these penis pump a penis pump specifically yeah yeah that's exactly so i put him just put him in the box put him in the penis pump box um but no i took out like a like an ikea like a drawer like a drawer yeah and just put him in there and then he was licking the inside of it overnight and then he threw up and obviously he'd like licked he'd lick some of the paint off but this is dog owner 101 don't put them in a box from ikea i guess maybe but like he'd licked some of the paint off and he'd thrown up so i then took him outside to throw up some more but there wasn't a part of me that was was upset or annoyed because it was it was a it wasn't an

option and it got me out the door. It got me straight out of bed. Yeah. You wouldn't be mad at your kid for hurting themselves by sticking their finger in the light socket. You'd be frustrated that you didn't put a block there. Correct. Correct. And then that, that was,

that just compounded over time. I just started to feel better and better and better. And then I could lead you to people. Yeah. Yeah. And then people allowed me to be more me and more me allowed me to go to dog parks maybe and walk the dog and that's it that's it doesn't hurt that dogs are pussy magnets he was uh yeah they know how to sniff it out too ferguson i am curious about this um because you had an idea of masculinity before

so how has your idea of masculinity um but also emotional expression as a man, how has that changed for you? So as this will be a big one, I'm going to go to the toilet quickly before I answer. Oh, yeah. If that's okay. Yeah. That'll give me 15 seconds to make sure I don't get canceled by saying something too masculine. Power Project family, if you're trying to increase your muscle mass, if you're trying to lose body fat,

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And the main reason is the technology behind the Pod Pro. Now, the Pod Pro is like the Tesla of beds. It will change its temperature based off of how you're sleeping during the night. And if you have a partner that's sleeping on the other side, they can have their own temperature settings. We all sleep hot here. And I used to wake up in a puddle of my own sweat. That doesn't happen anymore because of the Eight Sleep mattress. And I've been getting the best sleep of my life. Now, if you don't want to replace your mattress, you can just get the Pod Pro cover and you can put that over your current mattress to get all the benefits of Eight Sleep. But if you also need to replace your old nasty mattress, you can get the Pod Pro cover and

the Eight Sleep mattress. Andrew, how can they get it? Yes, you guys got to head over to eightsleep.com slash power project and you guys will automatically receive $150 off of your order. Again, 8sleep.com slash powerproject. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. So masculinity to me is not a blanket term. There is not a definition that I would attach to it because I think it means different things to different people. But what I don't want to get into the trap of is attaching certain traits or

overly stereotyping what it should involve because i think that's the trap that the previous traditional definition of masculinity led me to feeling the way that i did but with that in mind i do think like we've said with conversation on goggins i do think the notions of hard work not dominance but confidence and self-development yes moving yourself forwards let's call it I think there's a lot of traits of traditional masculinity that in and of themselves aren't a bad thing but it's how it's manifested in the individual and I think what helps the person do that is is actually having the openness and honesty to confront how they feel about things in general terms being open and honest with those around them about how they feel about certain things how they respond to certain things

because there's so many people that suffer through a job they hate on a day-to-day basis and whilst that's been normalized it's something that's going to impact your mental health which might then be why you hide those feelings in the gym and one of the people that says the iron is my therapy or something like that because it's your crotch it's your escape but it's not the root cause of the problem and i think masculinity in the modern world is a real real turning point at the moment because it's something that i've seen to be more topical than ever and I think that's probably partly down to Andrew Tate's presence on TikTok reels just everywhere to be honest and I won't comment on that much because it's not something I understand all that much

because I've not really deep dived on all of the messaging but what Andrew Tate has done is reveal that there is a gap with young men across the world that needs filled. I don't think he's the person to fill it, but they need a role model. Men need a role model. Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan, those are guys that also filled the gap too. Yeah, and it's the case of the desperation that's being felt for attaching themselves to this idol. That, that comes from somewhere.

So I think the question to ask is where does that come from? I don't have the answer, but I think, I think why are young men feeling the way that they are? Is it, is it a lack of direction? Is it not knowing who they want to be? Is it the education system?

Isn't in America? Absent dads. Okay. Okay. In America, it's a big problem. See, I haven't experienced many examples of that.

I know two people over in the UK where that's a, that's a big part of their upbringing. No, you know, three. Seriously. Okay. Okay.

Well, there we go. If that's, that's, that's something I haven't really considered. And then he has an incredible mother. So like, you know three seriously okay okay well there we go if that's that's that's something that's something i haven't really considered and then he has an incredible mother so like you know that it's kind of yeah very helpful do you do you think do you think your mother effectively replicated the traits that a father would have done or do you feel that essentially no no do you think one person can effectively fill the gap by replicating the traits and giving you the lessons or do you think there will always be a void from that person being

missing replicated not necessarily she did a great job of putting me in scenarios and situations where there was more men present for example i played sports as a kid. I had great male coaches, which were great role models. And she just did a really good job of putting me around people that would be positive male role models, which was extremely helpful. 19, 20, when I, as I got older, I found that I was just like, I felt incomplete, even though I had a lot of those real male role models, because I was just like, God, there must be something I'm missing. So I always felt that there was something I was missing as a young man and as a man, because my dad really wasn't there for a lot of it. But I think just having that exposure was huge and it was helpful. Was she able to fill that though herself? No, but she did a great job.

So the flip side is, how has your relationship with the notion of masculinity and your sense of self been without a dad? Because the other end of the spectrum could be if you have a hyper masculine dad that's very emotionally unaware that's making you feel like you should exist in a certain way that could be just as damaging to a young man's sense of self as it could be him not being there in the first place so as a young man teen late teens early 20s that sort of thing that sort of age where you really ask yourself these questions yeah do you think you were better off having had a more feminine emotional

in an emotional sense again I don't want to attach too much to the gender focused terms because again it's falling into stereotyping but generally women are better at speaking about their feelings openly and coming to solutions and talking about it and moving on do you feel in your younger years you were more able to do that

than those male role models and the males around you because of the upbringing that you have from your mother? You know, it's interesting. I grew up with three women in the house, my mom, my sister, and my grandma. Those are the people who raised me. But I also came from an African household. So it's not generally – Different culture.

The culture, even the woman in the culture, um, aren't, I would say as, uh, emotionally expressive in the way that you would think is normal. They're fiercely, fiercely practical,

aren't they though? Extremely practical. I think that's, that's the thing. Extremely practical. So it's like, I didn't, when I was a kid,

I didn't express the way I felt about many things primarily because I didn't necessarily feel comfortable doing that for some reason. It was partially because my mom had a lot of stressful work. She was taking care of two kids. So I didn't feel it necessary to – we didn't talk about feelings. One thing I noticed as I got into adulthood and I was in relationships with women, I didn't talk about my feelings. I was extremely practical. So a woman comes to her with a problem. So it's like, here's the solution. You know, I didn't talk to my girl, my ex-girlfriends about like my feelings about things. And because of that, let's go play sports. No, you're like, huh? Yeah. So that's, that's one thing that I had to get better at as an adult, as a man.

I think your mom did a great job keeping you busy. She did. As a young man, so many people are full of anger or energy or whatever it is, sexual energy, anger, lots of things. Yeah. And it sounds like she did a great job keeping you just busy because you were doing piano lessons and a bunch of different sports and all kinds of stuff, right? Oh, absolutely. Like that's one of the things like, you know, what happened to you with, um, I mean your isolation and some of those things. When I was 13, I had something called Osgood Slaughter. So I couldn't run and I played soccer with both knees so I couldn't run anymore.

Um, and that was the first time like I had actual depressive episodes and she was confused cause like I wasn't talking anymore. Like I literally wasn't talking to anybody. Go to school, come home. She'd ask me what's up. I'm good. I'd go do homework, go to sleep. Like that was it.

That's the first for me. But she got me a gym membership. Started working out. Fucking total 180. So it made a big difference. But by total 180, do you mean that's how many pounds you benched on day one judging by the size of your muscles? Oh, absolutely. No, no, no.

That was a skull crusher. But it made a big difference for me, man. It made a big difference. But the thing is, is like when I got older, I had to get better at expressing the way I felt to the partners in my life because that just wasn't something that I was personally comfortable doing. I didn't see that as a very masculine thing. thing that I was personally comfortable doing. I didn't see that as a very masculine thing. So that's one thing that as I learned more about how I can express the way I feel about things, there's a way of doing it, but I can't express that. First off, I felt better expressing that in a healthy way rather than just getting angry and then using the iron as my therapy. Because

whenever I'd get angry or whenever I'd get, I'd feel something bad about something. It was just like, go exert yourself. And that helps to an extent. But keeping that in didn't help me much. There's a boiling point that will come eventually. There's a boiling point. Kind of open question to anybody is if you have emotions and you have feelings, what do you do with them?

Do you make people aware of them right away? Or do you pause for a little while? what do you do with them do you make people aware of them like right away or do you pause for a little while what do you think so prevention not cure is the way that i approach this and i'll be interested to hear your take on this because i since 2018 saturdays for me are zone two days and it's got to the point where my friends will ask do you want to go for a couple of drinks on friday and i'll be like what do you mean forgetting that they don't know or don't also do i'm gonna be running for like four or five hours yeah fucking crazy what do you mean what do you mean oh yeah no sorry it's just me but i use that as moving meditation time we'll call it where i think that the sweet spot was

known to from a physiological point of view is probably well reported you've had chris hinshaw on i'm sure you've covered all the benefits there but i think the fact that your motor pattern is so minimally demanding but demanding enough to require something from your brain that you actually prevent yourself from spiraling and thoughts as you would if you were just sitting on a plane or sitting on a train or something like that and you got positive just for a second there's like literal uh like research there's data that shows that when you're going faster than like 3.8 miles an hour that for whatever reason the creative uh parts of your brain or your hormones or whatever it is that helps you to be more creative kick in when you're going like a certain speed so you're 100 correct and and also you know you're getting hit with a

runner's high and these different things after you're running for x amount of minutes so well there you go there you go it's um the thoughts i have i have a running list of business related thoughts in my notes i don't i don't run with phone. So I've got into the habit of leaving my phone by the door when I leave. And the first thing I'll do is often pick up my phone, sort of wander through, sip, and then just sort of typing as I go. I'll sit down, type out most of the thoughts that I can remember. It's almost like a dream. Like I sometimes come in and I think, what was that? What was that? Oh no. And then it comes to me later and I write it down. I've got all these thoughts that I can then compile later on

and make sense of. But I notice if I ever don't have... So this is why I really struggle with recovery from big events because you need to take the time to not train. You need to take the time to eat like a child sometimes. It might be the psychological thing to do. And I often...

Holidays are a good example if i take my foot off the gas and break myself too aggressively away from the routines that keep me grounded if i if i go a week without having zone two time or time in the outdoors where i get to be reflective i feel worn down and that's a constant that means that i'm kind of always trying to be a little bit ahead of how i'm feeling in general terms from an emotional point of view so that when the spike in emotion comes I can almost keep it at bay or immediately be honest with those around me but in a business setting or if I get an email that pisses me off or something I feel that spike of anger or rage I will if it's if it's bad I'll get up go to walk that's a response that I have just to essentially break point from the situation

because you can just sit in your own emotions but if I feel like my general my general existence is becoming a little bit more depressive I'll just say to Erin you know what I don't feel 100% today or I'll just say to a friend you know what I've actually the past couple of days have been pretty rough I just wish I could

I just wish I could sort this out oh you know what just very very simple back and forth sentences and i immediately feel better for just vocalizing it and once i've done that i can start to make a plan so wait pause you feel better by vocalizing things yes yes but even better by having a foundation of knowing how of calibrating with myself on a regular base time blocking creating the time, taking the action to give yourself the opportunity to reflect on how you're feeling before the feeling

spiral out of control. You might just record this on your phone? Yeah. I've tried journaling. I know people love it. I just find typing scribbles in my notes works better for me because it's more reactive. I'm probably too fast paced to You want to be moving.

Yeah, so it's harder to write and move at the same time. That's it. But journaling for some people, not something I want to discourage in any way. It's a great calibration point. That's what it is. For example, ice baths, very popular. If you're making that part of your routine,

whatever the physiological benefits completely aside, if you are making yourself do something hard when you don't want to do it first thing in the morning and forcing yourself to think in a certain way that will quickly become something that you rely on or gain from regularly in your routine that can become something you take lessons from that apply to the rest of your life because i think we too often look at things in isolation that the feeling that we get if you've done a squat pr an eight by 400 meters and you get through the last one by the skin of your teeth and you've done a squat PR or an 8x400m and you get through the last one by the skin of your teeth

and you've got that sort of metallic anaerobic taste in your mouth and you're sort of walking back to the car, whatever it can be and you've got that moment of pride but then it's a case of well, if you manage to get your head down when there was a decision to be made on do I do this next rep or do I call it a day and you took the decision to move forwards next time your Stripe account locks you out for suspected fraud on do I do this next rep or do I call it a day, and you took the decision to move forwards,

next time your Stripe account locks you out for suspected fraud and all of a sudden you can't hit payroll or whatever it might be because of something you can't control, you can look at things in a way that's right. What are the options? What are the decisions to be made? What decisions do I make? Let's move forwards. Rather than letting that emotion bubble and spike and then spill over and we go into a tailspin. Because tailspins are where the most damage is done yeah so i think that's where that's where training

self-awareness ice baths conversations like this one the more that those can be worked in before they need to be worked in the better a foundation you can lay for yourself to be more in control when the car starts spinning this is. I think routine is just critical. So military, like why do they drill and why do they train so much and why do they do the things that they do so often? It's so that when their hand is on the trigger, they can go focus in on what they're exactly supposed to do regardless of what's happening. They still say they feel fear.

That's the thing as well. None of them are hubristic enough to pretend that they don't feel fear. Maybe they still are trembling a bit, but maybe it's less than because of their training. And I think for most people, I think the reactionary things that are going on in our society are from people's reaction to social media. It's not actually social media. It's your interpretation and reaction to social media. It's not actually social media. It's your interpretation and reaction to social media. And it's not actually text messages. It's your reaction and your interpretation

to those text messages. So that's a choice. That's a choice that you get to make. And I do understand you could be in a rough spot in your life. Maybe you don't have the money you want. Maybe you don't have the job you want. Like there's a million different reasons on why you could not be feeling great and interpret all these things. You could even be doing great

and still interpreting these things as, as negative. I think that is the most important time to take a moment and to kind of start to, if you can, which is very difficult to do, have the self-awareness to start to ask yourself some questions. Why am I even looking at the comments? What am I fishing for? You're probably fishing for something that you can't even really eat, something you can't even really consume, something that's not even going to be nutritious to you. You're probably fishing for something that is going to kind of poison you or sour you. I don't know why, but it's like we feed off negativity. We're looking for little fights or we're looking to not even necessarily fight. We're looking to explain ourselves.

So somebody says something that refutes something that you posted and you said, hey, I'd like for you to try this. And someone says, fuck you. You don't know anything about running or whatever. And you're just like, I didn't say I know everything about running, you know, and there you are trying to explain yourself. Do you need to be getting tied up in that? Is that productive? Has anything great really happened in the comment section of anything? Furthermore, just in relationship, especially a new relationship, if you're, I've just seen it happen with many, many people and I've had to just tell them flat out like, hey, like I haven't been in relationship in modern times with texting and social media and stuff. So I don't understand exactly what

you're going through, but if there's so much misinterpretation with text messaging, say, I need you to pick up the phone and let's have a conversation. Or I'm on my way to this coffee shop or I'm on my way home. Let's discuss this more in person. And you can do that even with – I found that to be really valuable with employees, to be really valuable. Because sometimes you may ask for something and they're like, oh, it's the weekend. And then you're like, well, I told you it was an unconventional job. It's like you can just get in a really bad spot really fast instead of – Which will cause more friction as well.

That's the thing. Frictionlessness is something that in business you should try and aspire to find because it makes your processes easier and more reliable and causes you less drama in the same way that life is reducing friction at a base level in many ways. Money reduces the friction that is created to pay bills and all these things. So I'm massively with you on, I think people have negative relationships with the devices,

not just social media. I think it's a case of the reluctance people have to have a conversation is massive. And there's some emails I'll receive that if they get me in the wrong mood and they're written quite staccato,

blunt, they can just send me into a spiral. I think, who's this person being all rude? And then you speak to them on the phone and they're written quite staccato blunt they can just send me into a spiral i think who's this person being all rude and then you speak to them on the phone they're absolutely lovely very pleasant you know so that massive spike in emotion and 10 minute conversation i've just had with the person in the room was probably a waste of time and i'm a bit sweaty and you're like well it's all could have been a bit easier if you just took a breath looked at what the reality was and i think again relationships wise i think how much of it's uh dramatized on social media for the sake of engagement i don't know but

it does just seem that everything is so sensationalist in terms of how things are communicated when human beings conversing with one another seems to be the thing missing in the virtual conversing of human beings yeah what you got andrew we've been sticking you out over there no it's okay um it's a pretty deep conversation but um for me personally i call them dark clouds when dark clouds come um i'm not i'm not suicidal but like um i don't know you get pretty excited when you order a cup of coffee when those dark clouds around i don't give a fuck about that coffee. I'm going to drink it because it's part of the routine. But again, if it's a good coffee, it's a bad coffee. It doesn't matter. Like it's just

nothing can get me fired up for the day. It's, it's a weird feeling. I've tried two different methods. I've tried keeping it all in, which is good and bad. And it's good because it doesn't put any trouble on my wife or my family. It's just like I'll work through it. I've worked through it before. I'm not going to drag them down, burden them. And they don't need to hear my negativity. Yeah, right.

Like if somebody else is having a good day, if they're loving the coffee, and I'm like, fuck this coffee, they're like, whoa, what's wrong? So that's weird. But then you're kind of on an island on your own. And if something is said that gets to you and you react to that, then it's like, whoa, dude, what's your problem? It's like, oh, these fucking clouds. But then when I have explained to my wife, like, hey, babe, the clouds are here today. I'll figure it out.

But I'm just letting you know I'm going to be a little bit more quiet. That's also backfired because it's like, whoa, what's wrong? Don't worry. I'll get through it. It's okay. It has has nothing to do with you nothing to do with the family like it's hard to describe right your head's in a knot right i i can't even exactly i can't explain like hey it just today's just a little bit different like we're fine i'm still gonna do everything i can for the family but like it's just i can't like uh like shift it out of first gear you know like frustrated that you're frustrated and not knowing why you're frustrated and not knowing why today is different

than yesterday and all the pressure that I'm putting on myself which is like I think I could somewhat relate to you it's like you know my parents never truly said anything that that like made me feel less or anything it's like all this stuff I'm creating for myself and then like I'll stop and like why am I doing this like we're doing pretty good right now. Like, why are you doing this? And then it's like, oh, you're a piece of shit anyways. Like, like why are you trying to take the easy route out? And so it's, it's like, it is super confusing. And it's like, um, since the birth of my son, I haven't had to really deal with any of this because my mind's been, you know, elsewhere on someone else. So that has helped a ton.

But it just it is weird. Like I can't I wish I could figure out what it is. Like why? You know, it's like it was actually my wife just texted me saying that it's snowing at our house right now, which is very strange for Sacramento. Good question, though. What's up? Do you feel better when you express that? Hey, this is how I am feeling right now.

It's indifferent, dude. It's indifferent for you? It's indifferent because there's times where I have to, I guess we can go back to the masculine side of things, is like as the man of the house to admit like, hey, I'm feeling lesser today. Like I might need help or I might need to just back off and like not ask me to do the manly shit around the house today. Just because like, again, I feel lesser today. At least in that moment, I feel like, like, fuck, I'm supposed to do the manly shit around the house today just because like again i feel lesser today at least in that moment i feel like like fuck i'm supposed to be the man maybe that comes from like how my dad was where like you know he if he ever did get sick he wouldn't tell anybody and he'd still go to work every day and never complain and so like when i'm here sitting

saying like i'm i am complaining it doesn't make me feel good. It's sort of like, you know, that spiral starts to come down even faster. Feel bad that you put that on them and now they're concerned and worried about you. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's tough. But then again, when I keep it to myself and try to work through it myself, I'm by myself and isolating even more, you know, which I feel like it can help me sometimes. But then when I'm around you guys or, you know, we talk about it, it absolutely does help. Even if I don't want to talk about it, if somebody pulls it out of me like you guys are doing right now, it does help a lot. This is something that I think is kind of really cool and something just to think about is having having the ability not to you know if you're

feeling like say you you read a bad email or you see an annoying instagram comment and it makes you fucking angry in that moment that shit will pass in like 10 minutes if you just you know it's it's an emotion okay stop looking at it exactly but if it's something like that where and we've all had situations where for some reason there's a prolonged feeling of like and you can feel it and you're like no fuck dude fuck you not today like it's not it's not gonna happen but then you still you just cannot shake it the tendency the tendency the thing that i i would usually do is just be like i'm good i'm good if if i was with my girls ask me if something's wrong because something's definitely wrong i'm good i'm good if if i was with my girls asking me something's wrong because something's definitely wrong i'm good don't worry about it i'm good i would tell myself continuously

i'm i'm good even though i know i'm not fucking good it would just be this constant kicking away of the way you actually feel in that moment rather than being like okay something's up i might actually not know what's up but something's up right now as someone who's fiercely practical it must be really frustrating to be in that situation where you don't know why you're not good so therefore if you can't attach a reason as to why you're not good then logic says that you therefore must be good but then you're like well i know i'm not good but everything on paper due to my fierce practicality says that i am good so what the the fuck's going on? And then the spiral circles, and it sounds like you can find yourself in something similar.

But do you have kids? I don't have kids. You don't have kids. Just fur babies. So, yeah, I'm the same. Respect. So for the two of you in the room with kids, and going back to something you said, do you think that showing a lesser version of yourself openly to the household

sets a better example for the future versions of your children that will be in that situation themselves later in life or do you still cling to the idea that you should always be stoic and steadfast in the household for the sake of the masculinity that upholds it if that makes sense because by the sounds of things you feel you need to act a certain way because of the way your dad acted around the house but doesn't that give you the opportunity to be the person that's open and honest about you how you're feeling and if you work through those dark clouds as a family that might cultivate a healthier relationship with those dark clouds in your kids when they might find themselves at a similar crossroads later in life yeah i just

i wish that because right so my dad whenever he needed to he he worked right like whenever he whenever something happened he took care of it um i wish that he could have been able to like tell me like hey it's still okay to kind of feel like shit from time to time you know um what did he say he said the uh he said that he's starting to get the lazy man's disease i'm like what the fuck is that he's like yeah i'm starting to feel depressed and i'm like what the fuck does that even mean he's like well you know if you're lazing you have too much time on your hands that's when you're gonna find depression do you say this recently yeah okay yeah i mean he's he just i going to find depression. Did he say this recently?

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I mean, he's, I think he just turned 70. So he's getting up there in age, but, you know, because he had retired for a little bit and he's like, I'm bored. I got nothing to do. Now I'm finding depression.

That does actually sound like he has experienced some form of depression, but he has found that distracting himself from means that he avoids it. So it actually sounds like, it sounds like he's got a practical way of avoiding it in himself rather than necessarily calling people that depressed lazy as a nuance there yeah so but what i was getting at is like he never showed that he ever like basically felt anything less than i don't know at least baseline and so what i would have liked is like yeah when it's when the time calls, you step up and you take

care of business, but that doesn't mean that you can never feel, you know, like these dark clouds or whatever. So for my son, I'm going to let them know kind of the same thing. What I just explained, like, Hey, yeah, sometimes you're going to have to step up when you don't want to. Sometimes you're going to have to step up, you know, when people need you and you're kind of like, like shit. Okay. I guess it's up to me now. I'm like, but that doesn't mean that you can't all, you can't show and express other emotions, you know, like you are human and it's okay. Because the first time I started filling this stuff, uh, nobody in my family had ever talked about being depressed or sad or anything. And then when I started looking more into it, I'm like, Hey, this actually might be like a

hereditary thing. I'm like, if, uh, if you guys were sad about something and you never took care of it, that can actually be passed down to us. And my family laughed at me and I'm like, Oh fuck. Okay. This is weird. So now it's been like part of my mission to try to like, all right, let's, let's take care of this. Cause I didn't want to pass it down to my son, whether or not that that's true, but whatever the case is, I'm going to try to, you know, I'm going to nip that in the bud now. So that way, when my son, you know, starts coming of age, he can start being more aware and also not have to deal with some of this stuff. And if he does, it won't be as bad. I think, you know, looking at things as like a dark

cloud is pretty reasonable, you know, like their weather is different each day. And if it's pouring rain out, it might be harder to get the things done on that particular day that you wanted to get done maybe you needed to go to the post office maybe you needed to go to the grocery store uh maybe you wanted to go on a walk or run you could still do that because you could put on a raincoat you can put on an umbrella like it's it's you still have choices you know you still have choices where you can make this shitty situation maybe a little better and maybe you still don't feel good about it. Maybe you'd use the umbrella and maybe it fucking barely works because it's windy out too.

It's windy and rainy and you're getting pelted. But I think you're not. I think it's it's uncommon for people just to feel good all the time. Like there's a reason why there's a good and bad. We have these bad we have these we have these ups and these downs and when you're training and when you're lifting and things like that uh sometimes you get through a training session everything felt great the training session went amazing other times you go through a training session and you're like oh man i i think

i hurt something in my shoulder today that's man what is that? My last pec tear was, I've had minor injuries in the past three, four years. I had a pec tear in March, basically a year ago. And it was, I've got it on film. I'm just benching 140 for one. And it's just like a little, right at the bar. Weird.

Didn't get much better for a week. Went to the physio and he was talking about it and he was like there was it's just happened like the video there's nothing nothing twinges nothing goes in the wrong direction everything's kind of smooth it just pinged and he says the only other person that i've had in as a physio that's been in the same situation was a swimmer who was teenager swimming for hours and hours a week and then one week the pack just pinged a little bit. But it wasn't a, oh, ah, in the water. It was a, huh, that's a bit weird.

Carried on, oh, that's a bit sore. And he said sometimes these things are a little bit unexplainable from a physical point of view as well. And they'll happen, it's a game of numbers. But you want this to be more, you want to take control of, in the grey area, where you have the opportunity to make it a good day or a bad day. That's where the self-awareness comes in

because you have the power to control what happens next. Whereas there are going to be some black and white, there will be a bad day, there will be a good day. You figure a way to salvage the day and just make it not shitty. Yeah. Like, I don't have to turn this day around and make it miraculous or great, or I don't need to get news that this and this exponentially jumped up by X percentage. But I can just let me just get through this day and let me let me do some of the things I enjoy and see if I get out of this funk.

You know, I mentioned this all the time, but like something like a shower. Take a shower. I mean, there's, again, you know, it's interesting how, like, years later, you'll see a lot of research in some of these fields where people are like, well, cold therapy. And if you splash water on your face, there's receptors on your face. I mean, there's sensations on your face that feel the cooling and feel the water. You put cold water on your face. I'm not saying cold water is going to cure your depression, but look what it's done for someone like Wim Hof. Like some of these little practices, when you don't feel great, take a shower. When you, when you, I don't know, when you feel like eating something sweet, like brush your teeth, like try to find something different, something else that will at least offset that. Cause now your teeth are brushed

and you're like, I don't want that chocolate ice cream it's gonna taste weird now at this point so i think there's always a way that you can kind of try to offset things you're not always going to win but it's worth a shot i think yeah because humans have a difficult time um kind of ending a chapter uh what i mean is like uh say you're whatever something happens and you're kind of feeling shitty but you wash your face that now ends that chapter whatever the fuck just happened you're kind of feeling shitty, but you wash your face, that now ends that chapter of whatever the fuck just happened. You restart a new one. I think it was, uh, Valisa Renich was explaining this, but like a horse or a dog will like shake their face and like make that funny sound. That's them basically resetting and starting over new. And humans, we don't do that. We just fucking, we keep dwelling on the same thing forever.

And if we wash our face or we jump in the cold plunge or take a hot shower, we can kind of be like, all right, that's the end of that page. Let's start a new page. As simple as that sounds, but that can work. You can go to one of these AI things nowadays and you can say, what are three ways for me to be happier? You can go on YouTube and say top five ways to be happy. Top five happiest songs top i mean it might sound a little hokey but give it a try or just nostalgia i always say like find

an old song find something that uh reminds you of maybe your parents or find something that reminds you of somebody in the family or your favorite movie or whatever it might be you'll be surprised you start listening to that music and maybe you listen to like a whole soundtrack and now your brain is thinking about that movie and you're no longer even watching old movie that you like it will take you back in in time and it will probably suspend whatever it is that you have going on and maybe when you come back around to it because there was a pause maybe it'll be easier to work out again it's common practice in the military i believe i think it's a break point called, which is effectively a state change,

where example I've always heard is you're about to go into a room that could be enemies in, and you're going to chuck a flashbang in or chuck a grenade in. You know you're about to breach a door. It's commonplace to just take a second. Don't just charge up to the door, go straight through it and go in, because you haven't given yourself the opportunity

to get control of the state you're in. So it's a moment of breath. I don't know what the exact practice is. There'll be people who have actually experienced it that can give you more clarity on this. But essentially, you are putting yourself in a different state of mind to change the reality of the situation that you're in. And that's where the value is.

And I think that's why the iron is my therapy yeah it's such an effective commonplace way of doing this because it's i feel like shit i'll go lift some 10 you know but the thing is is like even though we're mentioning the iron is my therapy is as somewhat is not the greatest thing there is a massive benefit to having the tool you guys now have to yeah that that's that's the key right isn't it yeah it's a tool because you have you guys both have the tool of running you you have all these tools so for example if you got injured if you you couldn't do something with lifting but something happened you know how you feel and now you have another tool of like okay i can go run and do this you know you have a tool that you can utilize to help yourself feel

better like i had a like a few years ago a close relative passed away and I found out about it on that day. And I knew that later on, I had to go to that family and kind of just help them out. But that hit me. So I'm like, I went to jujitsu immediately, immediately after that session, I felt so good. I was like, now I can go help the people out that need the help. But it's, I felt so good. I was like, now I can go help the people out that need the help. But it's because I had that tool. So the few things happened. I recognized the way I felt. I was okay with the way I felt because I understood it, right? I had a tool of physicality that my mom bred into me that I knew would help me feel better. I used that tool. I felt better than I can go help other people building these tools is super helpful but still

kind of not brushing away the feeling and saying i'm good right not understanding the way i'm feeling was also a helpful tool it was also helpful too it puts you in a better position to be able to confront the way that you're feeling that's it because you can't you can't build a house on poor foundations. So what do you do first? You build a foundation. And if that foundation is utilizing one of the tools that you have available to you

to then be able to confront the thing, that's where I think the iron is my therapy, running is my therapy becomes more relevant because it allows you to cope to the point that allows you to better understand why you have a reason to cope in the first place. So there's so much that runs through all this. And I think a good example there is my first Ironman came out of duty to better understand why you have a reason to cope in the first place yeah so there's there's so much that runs through all this and i think a good example there is my first iron man came out of injury and looking at right how do i actually piece together what i can do so i i was

doing a charity event where i tried to squat half a million half a million kilos in 24 hours to represent the half a million deaths by suicide in men every single year. I'm sure we'll cover that in part two. But I was 128,000 kilos deep. I was ahead of schedule, effectively doing a set of 10 at 60 kilos, 135 pounds, every minute on the minute for 25 minutes, five minutes rest. And I've been doing that for four and a half hours.

And then after my first half an hour break, my MCL left the building at the bottom of the squat. Hardly surprising. Very good way to fast track your knee to the hospital. But I didn't need surgery, thankfully. Good. That was the main thing because that was a big concern. And then the elation that came from knowing I didn't need surgery gave me a lot of power and control.

And I think desperation gave me clarity because I knew if I couldn't make something work I'd really be in a bad place so I thought okay this was January and I've been told in March I'll be able to get back on no in in February I'll be able to get back on a stationary bike in March I might be able to start running again what can you do in the meantime? Swimming. Okay. But you're not just going to swim. So if we can work to the February and March timeline, then you need to set a goal. You know you work well with goals.

So I signed up to Ironman at the end of April, having never done a triathlon before because I needed something to hold me accountable. But I can swim, and then I can ride the bike, and then I can run. And that roadmap gave me confidence to deal with the injury where I was in the pool, and then month later I was on a stationary bike and then a month later I was out running and I then ended up hurting my foot so I didn't do much running at all but

it was the opportunity to just sit and wallow in my state of injury was there but through looking at things practically and getting some skin in the game for an event gave me the accountability to be able to make a plan and move forwards and essentially use address the root cause the root the root cause of the problem would have been not having a sense of fulfillment so i made sure to give myself a sense of fulfillment so that the injury didn't override the thing that was important to me and i I think that's where, that's where looking at things more objectively is really useful because it's, uh, it's so easy when things change in our lives to just lose control. Get around good people. I mean, you look at the strategies that have been utilized by, uh, a lot of women over the years, like women,

sometimes like if they get into a argument with a spouse or a boyfriend or whatever it might be a lot of times they just get around some other women so imagine how much more effective your conversation would be uh with your employee or employer or spouse find out spouse is cheating on you or a girlfriend's cheating on you imagine if you i don't even know how the fuck you would do this but if you could pause for a moment and say fuck that really sucks i didn't i fucking you blindside me i had no idea what's going to happen you can say a couple things probably but if you get yourself out of that situation i'm gonna hang out with the boys i'm gonna go hang out with my homies for a little bit and think about what a disgusting person no but imagine like you know having conversation uh you know with your friend and they might say man i went through the same thing

and here's what you know here's what happened with me and here's what i did and i read a book on this and this really helped and now you're now you have strategies but you being really mad and flipping a desk over or something like that. I mean, just you yelling and screaming. I don't know. I just don't think it's – it's not really helpful. It doesn't solve anything, does it? It's not really helpful. Maybe it was the reaction that you had, but it's probably not great.

No, no. I'm too caffeinated, I'm afraid. I'm going to nip to the bathroom again quickly. Hey, now. I like it. Quick pause. Hey, Pavarocic family, shut your f***ing mouth. No, not really, but kind of. You should keep your mouth shut when you're asleep.

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your face, if you're a bearded man, which is one of the big problems with mouth tape, if you want to get some of this to help you sleep better and it also stays on your face if you're a bearded man, which is one of the big problems with mount tape, head to hostage tape dot com slash power project. And there you can actually get the power project annual deal, which will give you a year supply of hostage tape. Fifty five cents a day for tape pretty much. And you'll be able to save one hundred and fifty dollars along with getting two tins, a year supply of tape, and a blindfold. That is going to be something that you want to get your hands on. Links in the description along with the podcast show notes. Shut your f***ing mouth. Do you remember where we were?

Friends. Yes, yes, yes, yes. The boys, the boys, the boys. Yeah, we were just talking about getting around some friends and stuff. Do you have training partners when you're going out and doing these long-ass things? Because I can't find anybody. I call up everybody. I don't.

No one's around. Yeah. Nobody's coming, man. How many times have you seen that? That would be like if Encima started calling people, hey, man, I want to go. Do you? Yeah, 100%. I'd be like, yeah.

Maybe try Andrew. This week or next week. I was there, man. I didn't see you there. I'm already done for the day. I was on the mats on the other side. I probably didn't see me over there. Different gym probably. Yeah, no, it's a, it's, I would not roll with with in SEMA right now. I think that's fair. Even if I really needed the human interaction, I think I'd take my chances but um i actually don't have training partners really and it's something i've been reflecting on a lot since the double the double was actually quite a big turning point for me and we had this conversation before we started recording where there's nothing right now from a

training point of view that's getting me all that excited because I've kind of, from a performance point of view, I'm not really in the business of, yeah, there's things that I've sort of dressed up online from a performance point of view. I'm very proud of my achievements, but I do these things because they give me value. And I'm not competing in the league. I'm not going to events to see how I place

because if I go to a triathlon and expect to place well, then my fallback will be, well, I squat more than that guy. to events to see how I place because if I go to a triathlon and expect to place well then my fallback will be well squat more than that guy but it's it's a case of I do these things because of the value they give me and I've got a gym at the house which means I do a lot of my training there which allows me to work harder from the home office or just not worry about commuting time and that sort of thing but I have got too used to doing things on my own when i need to do things on my own that's become the norm and i have now just got so used to that i'm actually not taking the opportunities to meet up with a friend and have a bro session or go for an easy run on a

saturday for an hour or go on a long bike ride with a friend that does ride a bike because it's just i've just got to got used to doing things on my own. Will they slow you down? No, not really. I've only got a handful of friends that do actually ride bikes or run for a long period of time. I've got more friends I can lift with, but if you've got two people on a training program and you go and lift at the same time, it gets a bit messy, doesn't it?

And it doesn't become very productive. But then again, there's the question of how much value am I getting from a slightly compromised training session versus the social interaction? And I think there's been phases over the past couple of years where I definitely get a lot more from the social interaction than I do the slightly adjusted upper body session, for example. So I am going to make a conscious effort

to train more with people and do more community-based stuff with the athletes that we have over in the UK with Omnia and make sure to get more time with Johnny. Because Johnny and I, Johnny's my business partner and my coach of five years, who's actually, as we speak on, will be sleeping ahead of going into day four of a 230-kilometer ultra in the Arctic. So it was minus 40 degrees yesterday for him.

If you go onto Omnia Performances Instagram, there'll be some photos of him with a frozen beard from yesterday, which is very cool. CrossFit, no? No, no. So he's... No, do you like any CrossFit? Oh, no.

Well... Because it has a communal aspect to it, kind of? So the community side of things comes at a cost in general terms, which is randomization. And I'm not into randomized training. Constantly varied, from what i heard i think that's how it's how it started but not necessarily how it finished so i actually had a fascinating conversation with james newberry technically yesterday because i've kind of time

jumped but it was about 48 hours ago in australia um who's four times crossfit Games athlete. And he... Said CrossFit's bullshit, didn't he? For clickbait purposes, yes. CrossFit is bullshit. That's exactly what he said. But it was more nuanced than that because I think he's the only CrossFit Games competitor that's done Ironmans, that I know of anyway, that he knows of as well.

There's obviously CrossFitters that do them, but he's a top-tier guy that's done them. I understand. And he has a very varied sporting background and he likes lots of things outside of the gym box and that's what doesn't draw me to crossfit is the fact that i like single discipline i like covering a to b i like doing disciplines in and of themselves whereas crossfit you're running as part of something else you're blending so i so i i view hybrid training as the pursuit of individual disciplines from a performance perspective i view crossfit as blending them

together yeah you're not trying to do like a long jump after you ran two miles yeah necessarily exactly so the premise i think is fantastic i think what it's done for fitness in general terms in terms of bringing people into the gym and making classes fun, rather than spin classes being something you have to suffer through before you go to the job that you don't like in the city that you don't like. But there's a part of me that's always wanted to give it a go, but I like what I do. I've done a lot of work to do what I do, so I want to keep sort of maintaining that.

And I like the outdoors. I like the exploration, which is a lot of what the value of being on my own gets me. But there are some training for the double or some sessions where I would wake up at a certain time. I'd wake up at five. I'd plan to set off at six and it'd be seven and I hadn't set off

because I just didn't want to be alone. I'd spent so much of the week in the office, head down, not even spending time with my fiance because I just had to get the work done. I had to get the training done. And then it came to the Saturday seven hour long ride and I just didn't want to leave because I didn't want to be on my own. And that was where I started having those more deeper reflections on myself. But I think the value of training partners is enormous, but there is also value in going out

on a long run without headphones on your own. So it's knowing when to pull your punches. But whenever I go, whenever i do find myself syncing up and having a long run with people time flies by it's just good fun you just get such a good buzz off it i was on the gold coast in australia last week and ran with a bunch of strangers it's just so cool hearing what people do why they're in the place that they are why they enjoy the things that they do and before i knew it we'd been running for an hour and a half average heart rate 141 conversational fantastic yeah and it's it's uniquely valuable from a community point of view but it's it's also I've gained so much from the time spent alone but at times I felt like I'm falling back into the trap of just putting myself in a silo and getting the work done

when in reality I do definitely benefit from social interaction. Maybe you can inspire some people and see if you can have people meet up with you and occasionally go on and run fans. So we did during Movember, which is the charity month, is it a thing in America? I know they've got an office in LA, but Movember, it's the month of November, grow a mustache.

Oh, yeah, no shave November. The month of November, a Moustache oh yeah no shame November the month of November Grow a Moustache yeah they are the world's biggest men's health charity and so the charity focus for me over the years has been for them so I've grown a moustache every November for

many years now I've raised just over £100,000 for them with the campaigns over the years which is great met some fantastic people on the way. And then this November, we did a run club where every Wednesday at 7, we ran 5K around a local loop. And that was great because I just got to meet new people, do new things, interact with new people.

But it's the fluidity of my day-to-day makes it very difficult to sort of... I don't want to put anything out where I can be unreliable. Yeah. Is the problem. And again again when training becomes specific i don't want i don't want to have to compromise it so if i'm saying well i've got a three-hour ride at 200 watts i don't want to do it at 180 watts because i've got somebody with me but maybe that's the right thing to do because if that means i get out the door and do it rather than putting it off for three hours then that's a better use of my time than putting things there's a finer balance here

and I think when we discuss things from a more performance point of view I'm very holistic in the way that I view fatigue performance outputs because yeah you've got the numbers on the page you've got what's expected of you but there's a human being behind those numbers and that needs to be accounted for as well and the stress of work and life in general is stress. It is fatigue. It's cumulative. It will add to the stress bucket of training and otherwise. So it's all important to consider.

What are some things you do if you're not feeling great? Like if you kind of feel down or depressed? Walk the dogs is a big one because I just just i find them hilarious to be honest i just every once in a while i stop and think it's just so ridiculous that there's two little creatures that just kick about human houses don't pay any rent cost you money occasionally shit in the house and you just look after just that's it that's what they do my brother died uh the reason part of the reason why i left my house was because like i actually just needed to cry a lot. And I have no problem crying in front of my kids. But like I couldn't really look at my kids and cry at the same time because they make me happy.

So I kind of looked at both of them. I'm like, I need to fucking go. And I drove to a friend of mine's house and that was really helpful. That's interesting. Yeah, just especially they were like, I think Quinn was like, or I forget what their ages were. But they were like i think quinn was like or uh i forget what their ages were but uh they were just super young so i was like when you have this cute a kid around it's hard to cry yeah very good dogstagram yeah yeah that was that actually that actually broke more than even for a while so his insurance his food and all of his accessories in terms of he had some jazzy collars

for a while they're all they're all paid for it was like people at people at my university took the piss being like oh you should start an instagram account for your dog and i was like yeah yeah yeah yeah and then i put one post up it went pretty big and i was like huh maybe this is the thing does he know the rock he does yeah he does yeah oh cool yeah oh he's doing the people's eyebrows you know an interesting thing though um like you mentioned you you changed your setting and you said he went to a friend's house was it so you know we chris williamson was on the podcast too and he mentioned kind of a similar thing where it's like as guys generally we want to see we want to handle things on our own we want to handle your own shit

usually that's i know what you're going to say here as well handle things on our own we want to handle your own shit usually that's i know what you're going to say here as well i think because i think we've had the same podcast guest adam lane smith and vassar pressin oh i actually wasn't going there but what were you about to cut you off so essentially i learned this recently from a guest i had in the podcast who i think chris has had on as well um called adam lane smith who essentially shed some light on why well first of all how we should treat men that feel depressed yeah because first of all we we the way we treat women that are depressed and the way that we treat men who are depressed should be different based on the sort of neurochemistry of why we feel that way

and how we respond to certain things so women respond to care love affection shows of shows of support shows of help making their life be made easier. Men actually respond better to having somebody almost metaphorically hold their hand and solving a problem together because it's a contribution to something that they're doing with somebody. So it's kind of a social interaction as well as an achievement. And that's vasopressin. It was sort of neurochemical. It was relevant there.

And that means that as a society we tend to try and treat men and women equally in terms of when they're depressed it's oh support what can I do for you do you need all this

do you need all that and that's a bit of what I sort of felt I would have if I opened up when I was experiencing that and that made me feel cringe

that made me feel exposed and weak and terrible and I didn't want that whereas if somebody had said look Fergus come on let's pick up your golf club you'd fucking come with me and playing around the golf now but oh no i just want to do this no come on we're going yeah then it'd be we're doing something together we're moving we're getting something done it's contributing to something and i know i know now that that would have been beneficial for me to the point where when i sit and have a business meeting with johnny and we out to the side and feel, even if we just, you just

sometimes have conversations that you don't actually achieve anything. You've had a lot of conceptual thinking and you come out to the side and you just, you're just full of energy. You feel really, really elated by it. And that can then carry into a fantastic gym session into you cook something fantastic and then you sleep really sleep really well and and primarily for that that's the reason why it's better to like women are great at finding communities and it's funny that you mentioned that because it's like you know we've all been in the situation where like your girl has a problem and you try to figure out the solution because that's our way of doing things yeah but if you have some friends that are guys we're not going to usually talk to them and be

like man are you feeling this way what do you need hon talk to them and be like, man, are you feeling this way? What do you need, hon? Like, no, we'll be like, well, what can you do? And that feels good, but you need a group of guys that you can actually have that conversation with. So you've got to put the effort out to find that. And that can be uncomfortable. That can be somewhat difficult, but that'll be extremely fruitful rather than trying to do everything on your own. I cut you off there. You were going to say something about, um, conversation you had previously and I guessed it wrong. So that's primarily what I was going to say was like, cause you were mentioning how you need to put more effort into maybe finding more, like you have those friends, right? Yeah. I'll hold my hat at the moment. Actually, my life is not particularly well set up for the things that I preach, to be honest,

because we live about half an hour away from the city where most of my friends are, which isn't far away at all, but they're all close-knit. I train like an idiot and will always fill time with work because I enjoy it. I enjoy the sort of commercial and business side

of the things that we've got going on. So I'm always very busy and I deprioritize things i know are important to me but if i don't see intrinsic value in them in terms of the it's sometimes easy to view things in a metric focused way how much is this going to increase the percentage growth how much is this going to lead to x and y and bullshit with my friends is not going to help my bench press exactly exactly and i'm generally that way too where like i do have i do have friends but i do know that i should be putting more effort into those friendships i understand that and sometimes

i don't but in the times where i've needed i've just needed that help and they've been i'm like god i need to put more effort why we like that though why we like that because every time we experience it like wow this is great i should do this more and then we just default back to oh it's yeah i think some degree of pure bullshit is really important you know like i'll get off the phone with my friend jesse burdick and my wife will be like oh how's jesse doing like how are his kids and i'm like i don't know she's like what do you guys talk about i'm like i'm not really sure i think he's doing great i mean we laughed a lot you know? And then I'm like, oh, yeah,

and it's like random shit that we talked about. It's never actually, we're not like solving the world's problems or anything by any means. So this is actually where the endurance events have become so cool because it's me and it's a support team. And we've got a really good support team. Johnny's always the one in the car.

And then we've got a few camera guys that come together for certain events. And then my fiance occasionally sits in the car and sort of manages certain elements and then we've got other people that occasionally drop in and out and i'm just out doing my thing and then every time i stop they've just lost their heads a little bit more and a little bit more and i turn up and i hear i hear scott in the background saying something that he'd go straight to prison for if anyone actually had if he'd had his if he'd left his camera on for it it just makes me laugh and then the double was remarkable because none of them had slept none of them had slept at all and it was just it was just sheer lunacy like I was I was I the man with a bleeding gooch salty sweat all over

my shoulders spooning horrible pasta into my mouth at four in the morning whilst basically crying at the same time, was judging these people. But they were having so much fun because they were just working through a simple task as a group, as a unit, towards a common goal. They got delirious. They did, yeah, they did.

And they had a great time doing it. But that's exactly what the same mechanism as you on the phone with your friend is. It's just bullshit. But bullshit's valuable and rejuvenating and then i think that the comedown effect from events like that is that you escape the hustle and bustle of day-to-day life have this weekend where you can act like a child and just embrace the bullshit and then it's over all the work's done it's it's come to a head and then the sort of psychological return to society is pretty harsh so that's what that's one of the things i get so much out of these events obviously that's

not the same for everyone because not everybody has a youtube channel they bring its life on they don't have they're not fortunate enough to have the support crew that i have in johnny because we've got we've got each other's backs for these sort of things obviously i'm not in the arctic helping him right now but it's practically just as cold in sacramento today so it's uh it's it's it's just funny how when i heard that from adam lane smith it just made so much sense because i think about all the times i feel most productive most elated most involved is when i have worked through something or towards something with someone yeah i still find myself defaulting to fuck it i'll do it myself in silo and i know when i do more of that that's when i start to slip away a little bit so my fiance's

been away since december i've just got back from australia to sort of see her midway through her trip and she's back at the end of april and i've been in the house with the two dogs training in the gym at the house on my own doing most of my training at my front door. And there was so much stress getting everything ready to go out to Australia for the two weeks and then being here on the way back home, getting everything ready, keeping the workflow going, managing the household, remembering that the dogs needed to go into kennels if I was up and down to London for the day, and just things that I haven't had to think about for a while.

And I really started to feel myself going downhill because i was so in silo and then past couple of days in australia just with a bunch of people that are similar to myself james newberry crossfit athlete all his friends it's just like oh god this is so valuable yeah just just work it in fergus you dickhead just make it happen just book it in time it in and actually if you need to put yourself out there to maybe find some people that could be training partners or or do some things that can be more consistent rather than as and when you can because you've proven to yourself that there is no as and when you can you've created a structure in your life where you you haven't given yourself the room for

spontaneity so don't rely on spontaneity essentially address the structures it's like a corporate restructure i need to schedule it yeah yeah that's it that's it and uh and actually plan ahead doug my friend what are you doing in three weeks from now at this time on this day okay cool we'll go for dinner okay do you want to go on a short run okay do you want to buy a dog between now and then and walk it with my two whatever it might be but it's it's i i'm not i'm not as good at it as i should be even though it's something that i because i often find myself kind of like doing it working in yeah great bit of consistency and then i scale back to my usual slaps quo which is training hard working hard on my own yeah but staying in contact with people but the actual human interaction stuff i i

the intensity of who i am as a person means that i will always, always go after opportunities in front of me. And that is at the expense of my own time. And time is a currency that is very precious. I'm one that I sometimes potentially don't give the value that it deserves. What does the team say to you if you're in a bad way? Like if you're not, you're not positive, you're getting a little negative, you're, or, or you're just showing signs that you're just kind of getting tired. So practical solutions tend to be the first thing so they can isolate generally what might be making me feel a certain way. Johnny's phenomenal at that.

I mean, we've been through, I'm trying to think, he supported me on dozens of events at this point where he's managed to look me in the eye and know what's behind the eyes so he's very good at being able to just tell Erin, my fiance, can tell and she's, to be honest her just saying hello and just being near me just makes me feel a lot better and she knows that so easy job, to be fair Lemon are great and they don't smell bad

She's like, oh, this doesn't smell like shit over here After 48 hours in the car with three blokes in wales and uh no sleep i might contest that statement but no no it was uh he called you smelling what you gonna do now i am uh yeah she's staying in australia it seems um no but it was uh it's can they see have they been monitoring my food, my water? Can they tell by my face? Humor is a coping mechanism for me.

You'll see it in videos. Like the more nihilistically humorous I'm being, the more just stoical I'm trying to be. Yeah. And that works. It's strange. It's very British of me. You're like, this is going great and you're bleeding. Yeah, exactly.

It's not even that. It's like, like this is fucking shit i'm having a terrible time as i'm bleeding and everyone's like and then that's just it it's not like i'm gonna pull over and stop it's just yeah no no you're right you're right let's keep going so it's um it's again johnny johnny right now i bet johnny will be missing the fact that he doesn't have somebody he can truly be himself with on day three in the Arctic. Because it's just, we actually did a charity project in November of 2020 called Project Vertical, which was continually ascending and descending

the highest mountain in Scotland for November. And we were aiming to accumulate the vertical gain of a marathon in 11 days that was all we could budget for and have volunteers for so we were trying to cover 42,200 meters of vertical gain by going up and down the same hill over and over again so we had a house of camera guys support crew myself and Johnny and good lord it was like kindergarten we were just just lost it just lost it like day three waking up in the morning was just a madhouse. And then some of the things me and Johnny, like me and Johnny could just look at each other

and we had this system that Doug, the sports psychology PhD friend who was project managing the event, he said, look, if you ever just feel like you need a bit of moral support, use the ABC system where you just say, A, is I'm feeling fantastic. B, I'm at baseline. I'm just moving in this direction. C, is I'm having a terrible time.

And the amount of times Johnny and I would look at each other and be like, yeah, B, B. And then there'd be a few times where it'd be, you were C as well. Yeah, fuck. And then there'd be moments where we'd be like, at the top, high-fiving, this is fantastic.

Look at this weather, magnificent. And then 10 minutes later, our knees on the downhills, we'd be like at the top high five in this is fantastic look at this weather magnificent and then 10 minutes later our knees on the downhills be like oh see see with with maybe other words beginning with c being shouted about as well but it was just little simple things like that where just knowing that the guy next to you is also having a shit time makes you have much less of a shit time yeah and um yeah that's him there with the cookie cookie duster mustache he was actually missing a tooth at this point as well from bjj which you can uh you can just just about see there but it was uh it's things like that where the boys we've circled back to the boys where the more time you spend with the same group and the more things you expose yourselves to as a group and the more things you work through as a group the more aware without words you are about the other person and i think

that's a very magical thing because it just, yeah, look how fucked I am there. It's just, I don't even know what day that was, but we, uh, we started in day one was meant to be,

we were meant to do four in a day. So it was meant to be a 24 hour shift. And, um, yeah, that was day one, which was a storm where the top was minus, minus 19 degrees and up to 90 mile an hour winds at certain corners. So we only managed two on day one.

And as we were walking down the stairs. It's way too cold. It was. It was. And it was pretty unexpected as well. We were walking down the stairs on day two. Johnny was on the middle floor. I was on the top floor.

And we sort of met in the middle. we're both kind of hobbling having done three in training and felt fine the following day we both sort of looked at each other and just went you too and he's like yeah and but it was just what we realized afterwards was it was probably the wind being so intense that whenever we took a stride there was kind of that wobble to stay stabilized which meant that going down the stairs the following day, our stabilizers were just shot. But immediately knowing that, ah, you're in the same boat as I am. Everything's not so bad.

And that's all that these conversations between men are, really. It's familiarity. It's sticking your neck out that little bit more. It's why when athletes come out and speak about their mental health, people embrace it so much because they are role models and people see them as infallible, invincible individuals. if they're humanized somebody can relate to them and then all of a sudden their problems don't seem so unmanageable and i think that's um that's where there's a lot of value in more and more people especially men speaking about this stuff because as an athlete you need to keep

your mental health in check otherwise you're not gonna be able to perform it's as much tied into your ability on the pitch as it is off the pitch and it's it's moving fast but i think there's a corner of social media where it's moving fast in the wrong direction as well yeah an interesting thing though it's like we were talking about the difference between men and women right like i've seen women comment on some of these conversations when men are talking about it and comment negatively. So I've seen a lot of this in America, but not in Britain, interestingly. So I haven't really seen, I haven't really seen any of the sort of round the table discussions in a podcast setting with that specifically from UK podcasters, but I've seen a lot of it from Americans, which I don't

know why that's relevant, but it's just something I wanted to flag from a narrative point of view. So you don't see many UK podcasters talking about stuff like that? No, but I don't see any objective reason as to why not. So let's see where we go with this. Well, okay. So isn't, because we've had quite a few people from the UK on the pod

and they all say the same thing where it's like, y'all just kind of darker, not darker, but more so it's just like there's a there's a stoicism to it like to people in the uk where it's just it's not really you know i tell you our shit weather makes you pretty pretty stoical man i would assume that these events have a higher percentage of people from the uk than america i think there's a i actually think there's a comment on the Gymshark video. There's a comment on the first Gymshark video

from the Celtman in 2021 where it's like, of course Scottish people are good at this because they're so dour and miserable that this is no different from the normal. Just life. I was like, how dare you speak such truth? It's the keep calm and carry on attitude which is i don't even know really where that comes from it's not even a bad attitude no it's not but it can manifest

itself negatively because it makes people think that just being miserable or suffering through things is what your life has to be rather than you have the power to change that yeah and yeah things like well you don't have to be suffering yeah like it doesn't have to be suffering you could be like inoculated to stuff you could train for stuff you like you train a certain amount for some of these things and i realize you get into like uh weird predicaments here and there but for the most part you're trained up for it you have a skill set yeah it's it's it's stacked i think that's the thing that go that's that's important but

so many people in the uk i fear don't ever build a brick on top of the brick they're already sitting on effect effectively some of what you've done probably maybe even only a handful of times and maybe even never feels like suffering i don't know what's your uh there's the there's two two things and this is quite telling and i'm quite proud of this but the two things where i've felt like i've suffered most and it hasn't been valuable have been when it's purely been done for social media sake which makes me quite proud because it makes me know that i i am i'm not just convincing myself i do these things because they're valuable for me internally but that i'm not just doing it for social media purposes because that's not really how I want to do things so the 600 kilo powerlifting total straight into the sub six

hours 60k the last 15k of that I was just I just wasn't that excited about it because I knew it was just for a video and I didn't have a team around me I had my camera guy who'd been on the bike and he went up ahead to get drone shots I was just on my own in the dark beating up and I just didn't care that much forcing yourself to do something that you really didn't want to do yeah you kind of want kind of wanted to do it you got into it and you're like fuck it was it was it was that moment between if i stopped if i just started walking now i wouldn't make it on time do i really give a fuck or do you keep feeling this pain for a little longer and get it banked and that's what i did obviously because that's just sort of what i've trained myself to do

but there were no there was there was a noticeable difference between this is hard work let's keep at it and this is hard work what's the fucking point it was a difference in like it wasn't a rhetorical question this time it was like what actually is the point here and then recently doing the the david goggins 4x4x48 but doing 4x4x96 and doing it for four days obviously being sleep deprived and getting up at three in the morning to four in the morning to run four miles is gonna be shit but it was again we'd sort of rented an apartment locked herself in it to just send it from there so that it was convenient and easy and there was a point i was like this is such a big period of my life that i finished that the day before i flew to los angeles as well so my stress was sky high yeah and i was just kind of reflecting on the fact that this is an awful lot of effort for what is essentially some fun on social media is it giving me that much

internally to balance out the logistical difficulty and demand and expense of this youtube video whereas things like the double it's a youtube video with a wonderful experience that i shared with friends as well whereas when it's just for youtube i don't really enjoy it as much yeah which is good because it means i'm confident i'll never uh i'll never just as well. Whereas when it's just for YouTube, I don't really enjoy it as much. Yeah, that's a good thing to do. Yeah, which is good because it means I'm confident I'll never just clout chase. Yeah.

My internal workings won't allow me to do so. Yeah. Which is good because that's where I think it can become quite obsessive and the sort of content creation burnout could easily come quite quickly because you're just always thinking,

right, how can I be more creative? How can I get ahead of that? How i do this how can i be old first mover and new on this one but i just like doing things because i like doing them really and i like i like bringing the storytelling to life of it and that all came ultimately from how i got into this in the first place which was the storytelling of the charity campaigns that were based around physical activities um so it all really stems back to the experience with my own mental health where i'm fortunate enough to have had a second chance at life and i'm not gonna i'm not gonna piss it away but also i know how much

i've gained from doing things differently and if i can bring that story to life so that other people can experience the same thing without having to go all the way down to the bottom like i did bring that story to life so that other people can experience the same thing without having to go all the way down to the bottom like I did then I'll feel like I've uh I've had a positive impact and I'll sleep better at night um what is it that you mentioned that you were doing where you have people like speaking in different areas to youth yeah so there's essentially there's three commercial elements to what I do which is omnia performance which is mine and johnny's hybrid coaching business so we've got one-to-one athletes we've got monthly training programs then we've got training plans this year we've got some seminars

and we're working on some educational stuff in the background as well so we we're up there on the planet for hybrid coaching which is which is very exciting we've got over a thousand athletes active at the moment all over the world two in sacramento i pulled up the map before i got here uh which is exciting um and i actually had shit loads in northern queensland so i got to townsville in australia and had a 14 people message me like do you want to meet up for a meet up for a lifting session and they were all omnia athletes which was very very cool very exciting but that's what's great about the internet we've dwelled on some of the negatives, but that's what I love about it. I then have my own social media, which is predominantly Instagram and YouTube.

And that's obviously working with brands and sort of bringing that stuff to life. But that's kind of not a business in and of itself outwardly. That's just for tax purposes it is, but it's not an outward facing one. And then I've got the Modern modern mind which is first and foremost a mental health resilience and mindset focused consultancy business and it's also the podcast so the podcast that I do is is effectively interested focusing on the minds that inspire modern society so that can be anyone from athletes to entrepreneurs everyone in between but the consultancy side of things is essentially I will go in and share my story and the lessons learned

from my experience. So more detail than I have done today, paint the picture a little bit more in depth and then work it through in a seminar format to corporations and schools. And where I think the real USP there is in the UK anyway is there's no shortage of people with very, very high-level qualifications explaining to people the mechanisms

as to why they're upset, miserable, or why they're feeling a certain way, but what's really lacking to bring that stuff to life is the relatability to another human being. So I'll go into schools and corporates to share my story, and some people in the room might take something from that, feel like they can relate, and then if it lands well, we'll then try and work in a calendar of events with that corporate or that school with a range of people

that i have access to that cover different topics have different stories to tell in the hope that within the context of a year everybody in the room everybody in the school feels like somebody has spoken to them that they can identify with so that they have the familiarity to take the information that's been given to them take the tools that's been given to them, take the tools that's been given to them to better implement them into their own lives. And it's very rewarding, but it's very sharing my story in that format and then working with people that have their own stories to tell.

It's very demanding psychologically and it always catches me by surprise, even though I know it's the case. So last thing I did. So yeah, before I flew to Los Angeles, it was Wednesday. I was up and down to london to speak at an all boys school thursday i started running four miles every 40

four miles every four hours for four days yeah uh which took me through to monday and then on tuesday i was on a flight to london to get on a flight to los angeles that afternoon so that was probably the most ridiculous week and a half of my entire life but the feeling of going to bed after that full day of speaking to a school in london all boys very similar school to the one i went to so there was a lot of a lot of relatability to be had it won it won hammers home how how much work there is to do across the board in terms of empathizing and having an impact with these young men and people in general. Everybody's got something going on.

But it's particularly like the great thing is you're going to have an extra effect on young boys and young men. I hope so. I do hope so. And it's something that I feel, I do feel is a merit as well to the younger generation at the moment that I don't come to them in a suit word from a law firm or as a doctor or something and actually i can make money online i can share stuff online and i can speak to them candidly because there's so much information being fed to them that fuck college e-commerce facebook drop shipping amazon drop shipping all this stuff is the way to go and that must be very

confusing for them because it wasn't long ago where you went to school you became a doctor a lawyer or you worked in the blue collar industry and that was kind of all that they really had equipped to be able to inform you on whereas now you've got teachers saying one thing you've got parents having lived one thing and then you've got the internet telling you that you can live in miami with all these all these women and drive lamborghinis if you get into this and it must for a young man it must be very confusing buy some crypto bro that's it that's it that's it no no no buy entry into my discord group which will tell you which crypto to buy that's the way to do it isn't it and it's it's

it must be there's so much information it must be very difficult to know what to do but i went to a great school was fortunate enough to have great people around me. I had supportive family. I had supportive friends. And I still found myself in the situation that I did. And looking back, I didn't feel like I had a male role model that I could relate to in front of me. So the opportunity to be able to try and be that person to these younger men is one I take very seriously

when I'm there in front of them in terms of how the information is delivered. I take very seriously when I'm there in front of them in terms of how the information is delivered. But it's also, it's just, it's very existentially reflective when I'm done because you have these conversations with these people and they're human beings and you often leave, you often leave wondering how much more you can do to help.

But that's where you need to be realistic and practical about what can you actually do. Because I think this is where people are really passionate about the climate or veganism might just drive themselves insane because in their world view there's this impossible task to be

completed that they want to be a foot soldier for and they'll always feel like they're bashing their head against a brick wall because they're moving against the grain in the same way that there'll be hundreds thousands of men that don't feel like they're in the place or point in their lives that they want to be and they don't know what direction to turn to next and only a percentage of them might be happy to share that some of them might not be happy to

share it at all and that's where i think going back to the athletes thing go back to conversations like this one we where setting that example, being the parent that's happy to cry in front of your kids and not have to maintain that facade of, I'm the household man, therefore I will be infallible. I think that's the value that really sits beneath it all. But it's a difficult world to navigate these days, isn't it? It really is. It really is tough. But no, the value in it, as far as I can tell, is there.

I enjoy doing it. I especially enjoy doing it with schools. Unfortunately, in the UK, it's much, much easier to access the private sector than it is the public sector because there's so many hoops to jump through. But working with corporates in different industries is fascinating as well

because you get so many different personalities. I've spoken to investment banks where you've got very high earning very high testosterone very very self-driven men that aren't interested in you and till you give them a hook to make them listen to you and that's a different one to navigate to a room full of hr representatives from a car dealership for example a predominantly female very very different so from a human perspective, I really enjoy learning about the behaviors

that these different people exhibit and therefore trying to form as balanced and unbiased an opinion on what the current state of play is with people's mental health and minds in general in the modern world because everything's changed so fast. I've had a negative experience. I feel there's some

universal truths that i can share off the back of that but there's a lot of lessons that only the individual that's experiencing the sort of lesson to be learned can take away from it so i think again people can fall into the trap of saying this is the way that we cure x this is the way that we solve y rather than just encouraging people to i think it's build a bigger toolbox or have a better tool belt around their waist at all times. So if they start to feel a bit rough, it's a twiddle it around your finger and you're ready to go. That's proper dad around the house mode, that, isn't it? Always with the tool belt.

But yeah, metaphorically speaking, I think it's what we should all aspire to do is build out that toolbox. And actually Dr. Julie Smith on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, she blew up like crazy. She's been on the podcast on The Modern Mind. She is the best person I have found to communicate this information in very simple terms.

And her book is the best delivery of the science and simplicity from a human point of view of the reality of how to better deal with our own and that of others' mental health. Dr. Julie Smith. Yeah, she's just done a great job of visualizing and contextualizing a lot of the questions that people have without making it seem too far away from being accessible to men.

I think a big factor and all that is uh recognizing that for people that do offer help or people that can offer help to understand that you're just trying to support and suggest and you're not trying to change people because a lot of times like maybe the person does need to change um but that is for them to figure out yeah yeah i think it's it goes back to the uh working through things as a unit thing it's if you can nudge somebody in the right direction i mean dr julia self said as a therapist her job is to help you to help you navigate the solution yourself she's not there to give you the solution to your problem it's to help you understand

what work needs done and then to help you understand how to do the work and that's why i always come back to the sort of prevention not cure habits and structures in your own day-to-day life like training like spending time with people you care about like walking at 7 a.m every morning with your dogs whatever it might be because those give you the constants that allow you to calibrate and check in with yourself rather than allowing things to take you by surprise. Because surprise can, whether it's good or bad, that surge and spike in just emotion that goes with it can send you in one direction or the other. I've had really positive emails or phone calls come to me

where the only outcomes can be positive come to me at a time where I've been high stress. And it's been a moment of oh wow this is brilliant into panic or overwhelm because I'm already at capacity and yet I've got this another great opportunity in front of me how the fuck do I deal with this so it's uh it's just always being aware of how you respond to things and why you respond to them so for example that example just there if I'm feeling overwhelmed when a good opportunity presents itself to me then I probably practically have too much on my plate or some of the good opportunities that i'm

currently working on might not be as good as the one that's presented to me in the first place so how do i restructure what i'm doing on a day-to-day basis but if i just say oh god overwhelm british as we were let's keep going then that's not going to help anyone because i'm just going to keep getting hit with those punches and I'm not going to move forwards. Andrew, take us on out of here, buddy. Sure thing. All right, that was quite a journey we just took you guys on.

So please drop those comments down below. Let us know what you guys think about today's conversation. And make sure you guys like today's episode on the way out and subscribe if you guys are not subscribed. For everything podcast related, just head over to powerproject.live and follow the podcast at mbpowerproject all over the place. My at i am andrew z and sema where you at discord's down below and sema in yang on instagram and youtube and sema yin yang on tiktok and twitter fergus where can

people find you and omnia i am at fergus crawley i am at omnia performance and then the podcast is the modern mind uk and youtube will give you everything for those as well. YouTube's awesome, by the way. Thank you. We're going to get into a lot more training with Fergus in another podcast. I'm looking forward to that because we can get into the nitty-gritty of how it is you're doing all these amazing feats. I'm Matt Marks, Smelly Bell. Strength is never a weakness.

Weakness is never a strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.