Modern Wisdom - #193 - Ollie Marchon - Every Day Is Mindset Day

Episode Date: July 6, 2020

Ollie Marchon is a coach and business owner. I wanted to find out the principles Ollie uses to negotiate his life as a dad, husband, athlete, coach, business owner and Nike Master Trainer. Expect to learn why having faith in your future self is crucial, how to balance a chaotic life, why honesty & integrity are a competitive advantage, Ollie's favourite approaches for training, his biggest insights into mindset and much more... Support Modern Wisdom: Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ Extra Stuff: Follow Ollie on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/olliemarchon/ Check out Marchon Online - https://www.marchon.co.uk/ Shop Eleiko’s full range at https://www.shop.eleiko.com (enter code MW15 for 15% off everything)   - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi friends, welcome back. My guest today is Oli Marchon, Knight, Master Trainer, Coach, Athlete, Business Owner, Father, Husband, and all-round great guy. I wanted to find out the principles as to how Oli rangles the chaos around such a multifaceted life. He is hugely popular online and for all the right reasons as far as I can see. So today, expect to learn why having faith in your future self is crucial, why honesty and integrity are a competitive advantage. All these favorite approaches for training, his biggest insights into mindset and much more.

There's so much to go through here. This is definitely an episode that you're going to want to go back and listen to multiple times. If you enjoy it, give all your shout out on Instagram. I'd love to hear what you think about it. Tons and tons of takeaways, and I'd adore this conversation. So watch out for a potential in-person sequel once lockdown fully releases, and me and Ollie can get ourselves in a room together. In other news, this episode of the podcast is brought to you by you. That's right. The only way that modern wisdom continues

to grow is through support from listeners like yourself. So go and hit the subscribe button. It would make me so happy and it will ensure that you are notified every time that a new episode drops, which is Monday, Thursday and Saturday right now. The unrelenting lockdown schedule does not stop. Also, if you haven't picked up a copy of my ultimate life hacks list yet, go and get one right now. ChrisWillX.com slash life hacks over 200 ways that you can upgrade your existence. This is every life hack we have ever covered on the show over the last two and a half years, nearly three million downloads, 200 ways

to upgrade your life, and it is free, not forever, but it's free right now. So go and get it, chriswerex.com slash life hacks. Just open whatever podcast app you're listening on, press the link to the life hacks ebook, and you can get your copy within five seconds and press the subscribe button while you are there. As I've said, it would make me so happy and you can do all of that before this intro music stops playing. But for now, it's time for the wise and wonderful Oli Marchon. Alley Motherfunkin Marchion in the Vildin. How are you doing, man?

Mate, great. It's about time. I'm doing very well. I'm very pleased to be here. How you doing, Chris? I'm good, man. This is such a long time coming. The internet is waiting for this. You feeling ready? Yeah, I'm I'm born ready. But I'll be literally looking for this all week. I've just had a cold shower just to wake myself up. Make sure I'm primed and ready at my best.

Let's get stuck into it. You're just making me look really pale because you're so tied. That's that's the main takeaway so far from this podcast. So first things first, you played rugby for England 7s, which was something that I only stumbled upon when you post like a throwback Thursday photo of a fresh faced Oli from a half a decade ago. And what's some of the ways

that playing high level sport at a young age shaped who you are today? It's a brilliant question. Firstly, I addressed that, but I guess anyone that followed me out of late to have the last two, three, four years will only see me as the fitness guy, but prior to that, my life was the bill and end all for me, was rugby. I had a couple of spells as a professional rugby player, but my most successful one and I guess at the highest level was within the sevens. And that environment itself is a very high-pressurised environment. It's elite sport, there's nowhere to hide.

The game itself is very demanding both mentally and physically. It's a bit like Formula 1 and it sounds like a world series, so you travel around the world from place to place. And you'll be away for two to three weeks at a time, and then you'll be back in the UK in training camp for six to eight weeks. And during that time, the way that the way in terms of set up is that we all lived, all the players that had to communicate with live in a hotel in Tellington in London. So that environment, you're alongside the other players in a nice hotel, but the players digs for some degree. You're in an environment where you just eat, sleep, and breathing, performance-based sport. You're using every waking moment to try and just get a little bit better, understand the game a little bit more. It's a full-time job, you're in the gym. One minute you're working

your skills the other you might be doing some conditioning other times. And then when you are away from home that's you know quite tough as well because there's a fair amount of travel to do, there's a climatising to the different time zones, there's then being able to lead up to the competition and the tournament over the weekend. So that's a new experience in itself. And then you play in two to three games across a weekend or two or three days. So there's a firm out of getting yourself up for a game, bringing yourself back down, having to recover, bring yourself back up, then you know, spent sleeping, getting back up for day day two. And anyone that's played

rugby will know there's a firm out of nox. And when you're playing sevens, which is at high speed, it's almost, you're taking the guys that are like, just the best athletes, you know, they're big, strong, quick, big engines, very robust, very resilient. And you're putting them on a field where there's acres of space and just sound right, like game on.

It's a matter of... I think rugby pitch is pretty big bit of turf. And then you only have seven people per side to fill that with. There's just bags and bags and bags of room. I think a lot of people that follow me now with fitness, the best thing I can liken it to is like a CrossFit Mekon. That's sort of four to six minutes.

I mean, because games are seven minutes or half, I think it think it's two or three minutes Half time maybe even less than that. So it's seven minutes of nowhere to hide Yeah, intensity there's there's there's spirit like acceleration deceleration a little bit of maybe catching your breath during you know During peak times as there's impact there's there's tackles there's rucks. There's having to catch this skill element So it's it's a bit like CrossFit, in a sense. You know, when you blend a technical lift, it requires you to link the whole kinetic chain. And then there's a bit where it's like on a salt bike where you need to rip it and then you need to get ready to do pull-ups.

And there's a strength element. It's a bit like that. It's very, very vitamin. It's also not far off three rounds of a UFC bout. Yeah. I mean, honestly, when people, I guess when people see some of the conditioning pieces or what I have done in the past, I'm not really like that so much anymore now, I've got a bit older and maybe a bit wise and other responsibilities. But when people see, do see some of the workouts and stuff that I've done, it's very much been influenced by my time during sevens. You know, and we talk about that environment, I went and did a training camp pre-weld cup in Rush, sevens, well cup in Russia,

in teens up in the Alps. So that was training altitude, sevens training altitude up in the mountains, is just a different beast. So yeah, it's an incredible sport, but yeah, at that level, and very, very highly elite athletes. Who is the biggest freak savage that you saw during your time in sevens on the

world circuit, or who do you think are some of the most impressive athletes that you saw during your time playing and why? I think it was for me, it was a realization that I've always been quite fast. So coming from athletics background and always been a sprinter, sort of, county level 100 meters, 200 meters, that sort of stuff. But when you get on a rugby field with, you know, sevens, and I'll use someone like Dan Norton, who's England's, England sevens legend, that guy. So I was a hybrid.

I was a winger and I, and I'll play hook up. So I was like this utility player. And I guess that's the story of my career in rugby throughout just this jack of all trades master of none, I guess it leads into my fitness career. But when you wanna put, you know, on the pitch with someone like that and Carla and I was these are top level sprinters. Like they could hold their own to some degree

with, you know, on a track. And they just run away from you. If you don't make, if you don't be in your position, right, making it, you know, making a tackle, it was a bat-times of fire training alongside Dan, like particularly if I was You know in training games. He's he's a starting winger. I'm marking him in defense. If I didn't get my tackle right on him I was used to coming from a 15s background or just playing the 7th circuit I could turn and chase the guy down and make a tackle from behind. If someone like Noughts got around you, you just eat dust, there's not plenty of chasing him.

That's just letting go. Yeah, you just learn how to defend guys with footwork, with speed. So that's someone that was in my position that I trained with day to day. Of course, like he's won the fastest guys in the circuit, there are others that are up there. And then I actually have my debut in Dubai and the two teams in our group with South Africa and

Samoa. And there's a 13th of our Portugal. But I was playing again hooker and wing. I remember coming onto the field and scrumming down at hooker. So there's three versus three and it's basically like it. It's a man test. The scrums aren't very long. It's just basically who can have that biggest initial impact, get the ball out and we crack on. And when you're packing down at five foot nine, I was about 86 kilos at the time against three big Samoans and South Africans. I wake up day two, mate. And my neck had never felt anything like it. Trying to just twist and turn my head, I'd never felt anything like it.

It's a complete test of speed, physicality, endurance, strength, power. And it's really shaped to my view on fitness. And why I've become this sort of like, generous in terms of fitness. And I guess why my start of training fits very well within the CrossFit Functional Fitness Space because it's a true chest across all different modes. Those these. How much has your Rugby 7's background influenced how quick

you can run after your toddler son? Yeah. Yeah. No, it's funny enough, my wife always beats me to run after you. I'm obviously just a mother's instinct. Yeah, I think my rugby sevens background has influenced a lot in my life. I think maybe not so much parenting, but definitely, but definitely, like I said, the way I've you fit, fitness and the way I just view day to day, putting myself in the firing line, very high-pressure environment, looking

for challenges and knowing that, yeah, put myself in an environment where you make one mistake and that could cost you the game. You miss a tackle on a sevens field and that guy is getting through and unless you sweep or inherently, your scrum half is going to make that tackle, it falls on you. So that is a lot of faith in your own ability. I think so. I like it, the environment right now as well with this COVID thing, and people saying how are you feeling about it? I've just got so much faith in my own ability, more so in my work ethic than my ability,

because I think a lot of the and again I might I made myself a disservice when I talk about this sort of stuff but I never had Uber amounts of talent you know as never the tallest the biggest the strongest the quickest I had a I developed a work ethic from a very young age instilled on me by my by my father I at times I took some of my talents for granted and that then led to some shortfalls when I got injured in my initial stint as a rugby player. So I got injured and I couldn't play for 12 to 18 months and that taught me a few life lessons as well about not taking things for granted. I've alluded to this in the past that growing up my all I wanted to be was a professional athlete.

And once I got that you sort of get to the top of the mountain you know, I was nowhere near the top of the mountain but I got that professional tagline. Or so I thought I then started taking things for granted, didn't do the work, didn't put in the extra hours, didn't go above and beyond all these things that now I do to the nth degree, got injured, realized that I wasn't invaluable and I could push me to the side and the next minute I was waking up in university halls as a fresher while I actually went travelling in time and then I'm a fresher and then my life was completely changed and turned upside down from being a fresher athlete.

That taught me a few life lessons. How much do you think the lessons that your dad taught you are to do with his heritage? Because your, is it subcontinental? Is it Indian? What is it? Massively, massively. I've actually been thinking more of this.

I'm gonna maybe go a little bit with the tangent with the whole Black Lives Matter thing, because I've done a lot of thinking about my own personal experiences growing up as a person of color. Now a lot of people, even today someone said to me, Jesus, you're 10, like where have you been? A lot of people now might just see me as a Caucasian, they've just got a pretty extreme 10. They keep a bit of color in him, yeah. But when I was young I was subject to racism and not massively, but again, it's a bit of a tangent, but I've

done a lot of thinking about my culture growing up and how my relationship was with my dad. And yeah, that's definitely shaped who I am today. I think there was a work ethic installed in my dad, was a surgeon. I think this was passed down to him from his father. The legend goes in my family, that my granddad, I never got to meet him. He actually decided what my uncles and aunties would go and study. So my dad, obviously went to medicine. My eldest uncle, he became a priest and coincidentally since then he became an alcoholic and he died past the way of being an alcoholic.

I don't know whether that's linked to upbringing and maybe the career in which he went into or certain other issues. But my dad's on the family very high achievers and I don't mean that just purely monetary. I mean that by, you know, they push their needle hard, very successful in business and my dad was very successful in medicine and I think being the eldest son there was a lot of pressure on my shoulders. I studied psychology, chemistry, biology at A level because I thought I had to become a doctor. I soon realized that wasn't for me when I got my grades back. That just that that really rubby seems a little bit safer option than this

this doctor in this doctor in shit sounds a bit hard. Yeah, but there was definitely there's definitely said, you know, and then that imposed on me. I think some families, like I said, I never had I didn't have a tough upbringing. I was very fortunate. My I never wanted for anything, but that my dad was very disciplinary and he was very authoritative. There was there was a, you know, there were times where myself and him were very much clashed,

particularly when I got into my teenage years. And I got a little bit bigger, a little bit more culture myself. We really did clash. And I think the communication between the two of us was poor for a number of years, because we just didn't see it all on things. But now I'm a bit older, a bit wiser,

and I can look back at what he did install in me. I'm incredibly grateful for. I took my first job at 14 years old, and then they were all things that, you know, I think we're installing me from my father. One of the things that you mentioned was about having faith in your future self. I got a buddy, a real character,

guy called Andrew Tate, who is a son of a chess grandmaster, world champion kickboxer, multi-millionaire, living in Romania, driving fat. He's like a real life genius James Bond meets Dan Bills' Aryan. He's got a brother, he's got a brother, right? Tristan, yeah. Yeah, that's all I know. And he put this thing up. Some of his stuff, he posts a rap lyrics. The rap lyrics are less so for me,

but some of the stuff that he puts up has absolute pulls of wisdom in. And he did this one about, I don't care about spending money. I don't care about deciding to buy this car or those shoes or this house or that dog or take this girl out and do any of that stuff. I have faith that future Andrew will make it work, that if I decide to spend my money now, the Andrew in the future will make it work, no matter what

happens. And that really stuck with me. This idea of having so much trust in your future self that you have expanded your domain of decision-making in the present to account for what you know is a capability in the future. And I think one of the problems that a lot of people have is that when they consistently make promises to themselves that they break, I'm going to stop drinking this year. I'm going to stop cheating on my boyfriend this year. I'm going to lose weight. Do this. Do that. Every time that you make one of those promises to yourself and you break it, your brain keeps no. Your mind knows that you said, imagine that your friends with someone and this friend keeps on turning up late or doesn't arrive at dinner. After a little while, you'll be like, I'm not inviting you out for dinner anymore because I don't trust that you're even going to show up. You have

to see yourself as that friend, right? You are a friend to yourself. In a very real way, we talk to ourselves, our inner monologue occurs as if we're talking to somebody else. What did you do that for? That was a stupid thing to do. You know? And I think that what you appear to have tried to cultivate here is over time expanding that domain of competence so that you have faith that you will be able to do those things in future, right? Future Ollie will get it sorted. Yeah, completely. I think it's having faith in whatever your talent is or whatever your passion is. It's really doubling down on that. And then if you can apply some work ethic with that and be confident in it. For me, I've been thinking about this a lot recently

as well. For me, I just want to, I work as hard as I can to try and get a seat at the table in whatever industry or whatever table that might be at. And I know it's a bit of an analogy there, but if I can get a seat at the table, then I've got a chance to eat. And I've got a chance to listen to the people that are at that table that know more than me and whatever particular field that may be. And I get a chance to network with those people

and communicate with them. And whether it's in physics, whether it's in business, whether it's in a listening to, the chance to come on this podcast, the guests that have come before me, you know, people, you know, I'm happy to say they do some incredible people that release books, you know, huge followings, but I managed what I've done, I've managed to get to see the table on the modern wisdom podcast. John, I mean, it's the same with, it's the same when I get an opportunity to sit and just

listen or take in information from guys that are in the financial world or understand a little bit more about business, understand a little bit more about marketing and understand more about fitness than me. So, if I can continue to show that people can trust in me, you mentioned that piece there about, you know, always, the people that are flaky, you know, you won't ever get that from me. I will always show up and you can always trust in me to be there and do what I say I'm going to do. And I think because of that people then buy into who I am and what I'm about. And like I said that gives

me a seat at the table. If I can get a seat at the table I get a chance I get a chance to eat and I get a chance to listen and I get a chance to network and I get a chance to grow. I get a chance to be a little bit uncomfortable with my with my company. And then you know I level up. to be a little bit uncomfortable with my company, and then, you know, I level up. You've got to catch up with them, right? It's interesting to hear from someone who purposefully puts themselves into situations where they're out of their depth.

And I think one of the real reasons why your audience resonates with you online, and I know that I do as well, is that authenticity. I hope that it's one of the reasons that the audience listening to this podcast enjoy this as well, that I try not to mince my words. I make a point of never, ever cutting an episode unless there's something libelous or a connection dropout. I don't ever fettle with it.

So I forget a word, I say the wrong thing. There's this episode of Daniel Schmacktemberger where there was 20 seconds of pure silence. And I was like, no, that's staying in because he meant it to be in there. I want the audience to have faith that what they get is what happened. And I think the same thing for you

with the people that you work with, it's like, if you want to put your faith in me, if you ask me to turn up as a husband, a father, a business owner, a coach, an athlete, an ambassador, whatever it might be, I'm going to do it. You want me to do a thing and I'm going to do it. And given kind of the last few years of the Instagram influencer world, and obviously I've contributed to this terribly with the go from zero to hero love island reality TV transformation that happens where people are chosen for

not their talent simply their presence. You can pick someone up like Tommy Fury. He was great on love island and became like this world or national star. And no one cared about how good he was that the thing he dedicated his life to. What does that teach us? It teaches us that fame doesn't actually need to be being famous for anything. Fame is about notoriety by any means. And I really think that there is a counterculture now that people are resonating with. And it's virtuous, integrity driven content that is meaningful and honest and truthful. And as you see Instagram testing out removing the light count from underneath posts and rolling that out across the world, that is going to further increase people's likelihood of

posting things which to the creator makes sense. To the creator feels like it resonates. They might care about how many comments they get that are meaningful as opposed to the light count that's underneath the post. And what this kind of all loops around to is that you are a living breathing example that if you focus on integrity first, you end up with a competitive advantage.

Going for the lowest common denominator and just trying to pick the easiest fruit that you can, works, but everyone can do that. The game that no one is playing right now is the honesty and integrity game. Yeah, because I think within time people see through all of that stuff, and if there's no substance beyond it, then that's where there's nothing, there's nothing then to follow. And I think with that whole thing, I don't need, I don't want or desire at all to have tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of millions of followers. What I really, what really gives me enjoyment

fulfillment is the connections. So I'd rather have a much smaller following that I can actually connect with. And going back to the analogy, like, if I can get a seat at the table with X, Y and Z and these people at a higher level, and I can take from it and then I can like give to my, my, my people and, and give them like that tangible connection to it because not everyone's going to get these sort of chances in life for one reason or the other. So if I can leverage my talent, my work ethic, my drive, my, you know, ability, maybe just to talk, you know, talk a good game until I get to, get to that table and then go and help. Yeah, and then yeah, exactly. And then go and help the the people that that have supported me on the way then I'm doing my job. It's like Yeah, for me it's just about connections and you soon see that people that follow my social media

Yeah, my stories in particular the way out the way I hit the way around my stories There's gonna be some value in there every now and again flooded in there's a bit of my son There's a bit of my wife There's a bit of just me resharing all the amazing community that we've built that engage in our fitness There's a lot of brownies. There's a bit of just me resharing, the amazing community that we've built that engage in our fitness. There's a lot of brownies, there's a lot of food. But then there's a lot of food, it's the same, it's the same shy everyday, right? And I've alluded to this in the past, it's definitely not an exciting thing to follow when I post a picture of a salad.

But it's the same people that will actually sharpen watch my picture of a salad that I actually care about following me. So I mean, because they're like, I'm holding myself accountable to things that I do every day by posting this salad. I know you find it fucking boring, but thanks for actually showing up and still following support. And like this is my journey, it's my accountability,

it's all when you're still following it, you still watch it. Yeah. And the thing is, well, when you decide to do that, if you decide to consistently give to the audience, they will give back to you. And this doesn't just happen for content creators.

It's all well in good mean you as two people that have to produce or choose to produce content every day. But this goes for everyone that's listening, your relationship with your mother or your children, your parents or your children, you want to have a reciprocal relationship, you want them to have faith that you're going to do the things that you say that you're going to do. And when it comes from a business entrepreneurial sense, I wish, I wish that I'd realized 10 years ago that going wide and shallow is nowhere near as effective as going narrow and deep. I would much sooner be the best podcaster in Europe within the wisdom space, then try to be fucking model DJ club promoter reality TV in full. You know, I mean, I don't, I don't need all that. I need

the thing that I love and I want to become great at it. And, you know, thankfully what you have at least it appears to, I'm going to get on to this now. As a lifestyle, kind of aligns in one way or another. But one of the things that I find most fascinating about yourself is that you are athlete, businessmen, coach, family guy as in dad and husband and brother and son and all of this stuff. You appear to have quite a hectic, like classic subcontinental family thing, like tons of extended family, there's always like every other week

someone's birthday or a barbecue or something like that. What are the things that you do to ensure that you keep all of this aligned? Everyone that watches your stuff, getting up with shark mentality for 30 in the morning, like how do you piece this routine together? Good question. And then sometimes I don't really,

sometimes I don't really know. Sometimes I feel as though I fall short on some of those elements. If we look at who I identify as now and you've listed off a fair amount there, I liken it again to playing spinning plates or turning the dimmisfreech up at certain times. There are certain times the day in which I need to, I really need to turn the dimmer switch

up on being a coach because I'm in front of people and I'm coaching. It's my time to train so that's what I just need to block out my time and just get my, you know, get the work done that I need to get done. When I'm back home, I do find it very difficult to try and switch off and be present around my family. That's something I really need to still develop. And, you know, just because I am a father, a businessman, an athlete, and all these things, it doesn't mean I'm very good at all of them.

Don't get me wrong, there's times in which I really do get it wrong. And then I have good people around me that will tell me, and that we have an honest conversation. I'm pretty good, I'm pretty self-aware as well. So I'll do a lot of self-reflection on how I think I performed a certain day or a certain week on certain tasks, and then I'm able to maybe adjust and remodel myself for the week to come. But I think you mentioned about Shark Monday's and that sort of thing. For me, those little bits are just the narrative.

I think when we link this to mindset, when I was a rugby player or just a personal trainer, there was never any anxieties about what I was doing day to day, When I was a rugby player or just a personal trainer, there was never any anxieties about what I was doing day to day because I was just so, I just enjoyed every moment of waking up and being a professional athlete. And so, of course, I decided that I was going to walk away from that. Same with personal training, I've never really viewed it as work. I was just in a gym which I'd created my first gym and just coaching people. It was really sort of flow state. When I'm on the gym floor, I find it really easy. When I transitioned to business owner

and the other bits and pieces which you have to sort of learn about, like being a husband and being a father and those sort of things, then anxieties and stresses and more way on you. So on the burn there, didn't you? Yeah, so for me, I'd never on a Sunday night, like most people used to get that, ah, it's Monday morning tomorrow when it, when I was playing rugby.

It's like, oh, I cannot wait for it to be, to be, to be Monday. I never used to get that, that hump day thing on a Wednesday because I just didn't have that slump and you get these people that are employees that work on onto five and they're just living for the weekend. That was never me. But when it moved into being more, own, operator, a gym, business and all these other things that I then had to try and teach myself or learn about, I started to get these feelings of like, oh shit, I've got to get back up. I've got to do, you know, I've got to answer emails. I've got these

things that didn't really come very naturally to me. I didn't really enjoy. So just to change the narrative in my head, like if you wake up and the first thing you think to yourself is I'm gonna be a fucking shark today. Whenever a negative thought creeps into your head, it's like hang on, nah, nah, nah, like sharks don't think like that. You know, I know it's a child, it may be a childish way to put a spin on things.

And mindset day, like Wednesday, when the whole world's talking about hump day, I'm like it's fucking mindset day. And there's only a positive mindset today. So whatever that's going to be, whether it's when I'm just tacking the barbell and the gym, whether it's whether I'm going to attack my emails, whether it's how, you know, if I'm feeling a bit a bit low, just do your best today because you need a positive mindset. And then I find myself getting through the week and I'm like, ask the weekend. To. Yeah, I'm mate. Yeah, look what I've achieved.

So I put out the other day, you know, we live out the narrative each day that we sort of tell ourselves. And if we're waking up Monday morning, feeling sorry for ourselves that we've got to go to work, like, what the fuck are we doing? You know, change the story or just change, like change, tip your life upside down and leave your job because that's no way to exist. And I think particularly people have found during COVID because there's done a lot of self-reflectionally so should of is that people are just existing and enduring life and letting life, letting life employ them. They're employed by their employer and they're

employed by life and they live nothing on their terms. So mindset days, shark Monday, that's my way. You know, you're a big man on morning routines and I'm sure yours is fairly, a lot more polished than mine. But it's my way of setting my intention for the day. This is how I'm going about it. I'm on the front foot. I, you know, we talk about, you know,

win the morning, win the day. I'm winning my first thought. And on Sunday night when I'm preparing myself to go to bed, I'm like, it's fucking shark Monday. Let's get it. Yeah, exactly. There's two equivalents that people listening to this podcast, maybe familiar with. James Altature, past modern wisdom guests has a fantastic blog post called Not Useful. And Not Useful is an ongoing mental tool he uses the same as your shark Mondays. So whenever a thought creeps into his mind

that he doesn't want in there something negative, negative self talk or concern and anxiety, a fear, he labels it, realizes that he's thinking this thing, labels it as not useful. Is it useful? Not useful. And then useful? Not useful. And then allows it to go.

Like why are you thinking a thing if it's not useful to you? It genuinely isn't. Do you want to be worrying about whether or not that tax bill that's due in a month and a half's time is actually gonna get done? Are you going to worry about whether or not your boss is going to be not useful?

If it happens, you'll deal with it when it happens. There's this quote that I tweeted yesterday from Shane Parish as well, Guy behind Phanam Street, it's not who you think you are or who you want to be. You are what you do consistently. It's not enough to say the right words or even think the right things. You have to act on them. Yeah, it's brilliant. I mean, everything you just said, I think when it comes to these things, I've been an early adopter of all of these things, not unknowingly. The things with the mindset, the things with fitness orientated stuff, I'm going back sort of 10 years, behavioral science stuff as now. I'm not saying it's caught up, I'm not saying I was ahead of a bird. You are a tre- Oli Marchon is a trendsign.

I guess what I'm saying is by default, I've, because I've got an awareness of these things or how I wanted to try and thrive in my life and the things I needed to do to try and get there. I started to implement and I started to put things in place. And then they naturally, I guess, then get led to a bit more success. Some things didn't work. There's been times where I've really burnt myself out and got it completely wrong because I just didn't know what I was doing. And then as things become more and more evident, more research and more work gets put into the way people behave and how they should behave, then I'm like, ah, shit, like that's something I've kind of been doing. I've not been doing it quite right, but I've done my version of it.

Yeah, one of the things, one of the things you mentioned was that you iterate on self-reflection. And what you can presume is, it doesn't really matter whether you're a bookworm or not, whether you're consuming hours of podcasts every week and all, audible subscription maxed out and all this stuff,

AirPods never leave you, or is all this shit. It doesn't really matter about that, because you've identified that over the last decade, you've allowed an evolution of ideas and a survival of the fittest in terms of mindset approaches, ways of dealing with business. Small failures haven't knocked you off.

You've allowed them to be what they are, okay? That's a lesson, I'll try not to repeat it. And the good things that you've done, you've allowed to stay with you. And what that's allowed you to do over time is to iterate this evolution of Ollie's mind, which now has inevitably come upon some of the stuff that research says,

because if what you had found disagreed with the research, there's more research to be done because you're apparently some well of unique information insight. Of course, that's going to be the case. If you exist in the world for long enough, you would be able to stumble across pretty much all of the insights of science. You would just need to look at things with sufficient dexterity so that you would actually end up real out. Well, this is how motivation works. Oh, this is why you've got a ego depletion and willpower is actually finite. But perhaps if I have a nap, willpower could come back. Like, you don't need to run tons and tons of focus groups. You just need

enough time and enough attention to actually work out what's going on. And that's why, as you say over time, you've allowed yourself as a coach businessman dad all this sort of stuff to these emergent realizations have occurred and now I think you've started to layer on top some more consumption of books of podcasts of audio books of coaching the podcasts of audio books, of coaching the coaches association, you're a part of Nike, Master Trainer, all these people you're exposing yourself to, and that's when you're going to really start to level up, right?

Yeah, I think, just on the research thing, research is always there just to fit someone's bias, and also it only becomes relevant when there's like a problem they need to fix. I didn't want to be, I never wanted to be a part of that cohort of the problem they need to fix, so I wanted to try to get, I guess I,'t want to be, I never wanted to be part of that cohort of the problem they need to fix. I wanted to try to get, I guess, I, by trying to be ahead of it and trying to adopt all these principles and things that was whispering, this might work, but it might be a complete waste of time, there might be no science and stuff behind it.

Well, let's just give it a go. Why not? I'm my own experiment. I've got nothing to lose other than just a bit of learning. And the learning thing, I I think is really important here Most people struggle with the notion of putting in more effort to things whether it's their fitness whether it's their relationships Whether it's the the way they view their nutrition what they do with their nighttime routine or going to bed or all those kind of things Like effort is where people actually lack But effort is where the body just learns

Same with the people that you're trying to teach a press up to three years after they do their first press up. Like, why can't you just accept the fact that just think a little bit more about what we're trying to do here when we're trying to connect the full body to move is one big like one piece. They'd rather just bang out the reps as fast as they can and think that moving through something faster is going to be better. Surely that's that's going to be better for me. No, take your time, slow down, think about what you're trying to achieve and your body will learn. And therefore, you can move on to that.

You get the prerequisites to move your press up onto the next thing. I mean, I'm using press up as an example here. Very basic, of course, but the point being, through more effort becomes more learning, and that's where then you get to a level where the learning might need to change. It might not be, I can't just keep experimenting on myself. I then need to start read, read, put this into context, read the latest literature. That's the advantage of you having a brother, right?

That you can just start experimenting on him. See if this works. Just mate, can you grow a mustache for me please? See if you lift, go up, put this cap on backwards. See if your lift got slightly shorter, short, slightly longer socks. Exactly that mate. That's exactly what Charlie, he exists for.

He's my little lab rat. Sorry, Chad. Yeah, I love that, man. And pushing yourself into those areas of discomfort is something that for some people, if you're more type B, is going to be a challenge, whereas relinquishing that, if your type A is going to be a challenge. So let's talk about, if your Taipei is going to be a challenge. So let's talk about some of the times

where you've perhaps either pushed yourself too hard or how you've learned over time when you are pushing too hard and some of the mindset approaches that you're using to give yourself that breathing room to say, okay, Ollie, like 60 hours of work this week is enough or this many miles, this many calories, you know, how have you allowed yourself to let go of that tether? Yeah, so let's address the, I guess the sort of learnings I've had along the way. Like I said, when I was in the rugby environment,

when things, a lot of things were done for you, like your output was monitored, you'd wear GPS trackers, your program was prescribed for you, your nutrition was looked after. It's a very safe environment, you can't really get things wrong unless there's an injury or something that is just a free accident. When I moved into being a personal trainer and running my own business, I've never been employed by anyone in the fitness industry, so I worked myself in the get-go. There's not really teaching you about how many hours of good delivery you can do, how that then fits into your own training,

how that fits into your sleep at the time when I first started. I used to drink, I used to party and go out a weekend or that kind of stuff. So you get it wrong, right? And you drop the ball somewhere. And then when I did finish playing rugby and I moved into owning my own gym, I put all

of my work ethic, that drive, that passion, that tenacity into trying to run a business. And yeah, I burnt myself out. I just got it completely wrong. I got it spiraled out into a stage where if I wasn't actively sat down working on my business quote unquote, my only other outlet that I knew about was training of some sort of physical pursuit or endeavor. So I found myself going on ridiculously long runs, swimming, doing endurance stuff because I could

feel time that meant I didn't need to sit down because if I sat down, I had to be doing work of some sort. Were you with your misses at this point? Yeah, and so I was with my misses, my misses, yeah, with Loss, she was working as a air hostess at the time for BA, which again, is a horrific job, I feel for anyone that works as an air hostess.

She'd done it because she wanted to see the world. She went to some amazing places, but of course, when you've got a boyfriend or someone back home, you never get the chance to switch off yourself or a lot of those guys that thrive in that environment or girls or guys and girls that thrive in that environment will then come back to the UK and just sleep and wait for the next shift. Whereas Loss was coming back trying to spend time with me, I was overworked, overstressed, and we almost split up, mate, we got to a stage where our relationship was really, really bad.

We decided to move in together. It was a great decision, a few months later, she felt pregnant. But anyway, I've digressed slightly. So that was a time in which I soon learned that if I carry on this way, I need to all grasp my life a little bit better so I don't burn myself out. What I began to put in place since then

is just a greater level of self awareness than self care, a greater level of ability to try and build up the other side of my arch. And this happens, this happened through a mentor of mine at the time who was saying, being a type A person, a person, always looking for that challenge. Like my whole day is about challenges,

because what I read, you know what, you're being an athlete, it's about winning, right? what the you know what the challenge is whether it's game day You know what you know how you need to win in terms of the metrics and the scores So I'd look for that challenge tick that one off. It's like yes, don't mean hit like I'm a beast Netwears the next challenge who wants it next type thing But that again that that will only take you down You know one one one one path and eventually that path path is going to be a dead end and you need to reverse. So, there's something that I said to me is about just trying to find a bit more flow.

And that doesn't come very easy to me. For me, it was about trying to find a hobby that was outside of fitness. Even things like puzzles and chess as stupid as this sounds. Those things never quite clicked with me, but I guess spending a little bit more time in my son, that allowed me to find flow, going on, you know, reading books and listening to podcasts and going on walks and being in nature and just doing things that weren't formal forms of exercise, which is all I knew about,

or sitting behind a laptop and trying to push business ideas. I also will add to that, I seem to have a large capacity for work, and the boys that are very close to me at the gym, you know, Alex, I had coach, he's always telling me that, he's like, your brain just works on this level of capacity that he can't keep up, and sometimes I'll, and we have our meetings, I'll be like,

this is this is this, he's like, where's this will come from? And I guess, and we have our meetings, I'll be like, this is this is this is like, what is this will come from? And I guess it's just my a bit of a reactive nature, a bit of a, it's wanting to just keep everything moving. I guess it's ingrained now in the culture of March on. It's like just just keep going, keep moving. Yeah, it's an appropriate saying, right? People around me, you know, people around me rain me in when I need to, when I need to be. Having that support system, it must be a big change. And as someone who independently has a similar mindset to yourself, always never, never had a job for anyone

that wasn't me, 18 years old, started running my own business, very quickly attached my sense of self identity and self worth to the success of the business, found it challenging to detach that. Then went another step further. This second order effect is really panicious and there may be some entrepreneurs who haven't heard me talk about this before that are listening. If you begin to attach your sense of success to the amount of suffering associated with the process of doing work, to the amount of suffering associated with the process of doing work you have gone too far. So I used to have a successful club night, 1500 people, really amazing door take, account suck fantastic, great reviews, no problems. But if it come easy to me, I'd feel guilty,

and I'd go home feeling unfulfilled because there was some part of me that felt like suffering was innate in success, and that I needed to suffer and it's a Puritan work ethic. You can imagine these priests doing, doing the gardens and self-flaggulation in service to God, right? It's a Puritan work ethic and that's what I had. I was sacrificing myself in service to this desire to be something but the problem was I had completely missed the bit that mattered. I wasn't even chasing success anymore. And success should be in service to happiness.

So I'd bypass both success and happiness and was just looking at further pain and for the suffering. And what it sounds like you've done is begin to build some structures in place forcing functions that mean that you have to do the walk, the family time, the hike, the support structure, the second cousin's birthday, whatever it might be. And when you then reintegrate that with flow, there's this great quote from Kyle Eschenroder, was the podcast I did the other day that I know that you've listened to. And he talks about Confucius, ancient philosopher, eastern philosopher, talking about how you first

have to use the type 2 thinking, the slow, and then it integrates into the fast. In the early stages of training, an aspiring Confucian gentleman needs to memorize entire shelves of archaic texts, learn the precise angle at which to bow and how the lengths of steps are that he is to enter a room with. His sitting mat must also almost be perfectly straight. All of this rigor and restraint, however, is ultimately aimed at producing a cultivated, but nonetheless genuine form of spontaneity. Indeed, the process of training is not considered complete until the individual has passed completely beyond the need for thought or effort. And that's what every training plan is trying to achieve.

You're trying to instantiate habits, which you could have naturally come upon. We mentioned this before. You've happened upon some good mindset tricks, some good mindset approaches that have then been reflected in literature down the line. And this is the same thing again, there will be someone out there, maybe someone who's listening, who happened upon the perfect cadence of work rest, family, relax, entertainment. Perhaps myself and you and a lot of the other people, almost everyone who's listening, hasn't.

Therefore, we've got to work at it. But after you've done the work, you can actually then allow yourself to be more free flowing with it. You understand your limits more intuitively rather than kind of academically. Does that make sense? Complete, complete sense. Yeah, I think you have to, you have to live through it to understand where, I get, understand where in all of those things you're trying to identify as, like where the priorities actually lie, live through it and then come up with the best version

of the best iteration of it for you. And that then might change because priorities may change, Other things might come in. It goes back to that A and B testing we sort of alluded to earlier. The things that serve your life and that are working, you keep them in, the things that aren't, you change them. If you're dropping the ball somewhere and be willing to have those difficult conversations with the people that mean the most to you, because that constructive criticism from your wife, your best mate, your business partner, your employees, that actually helps you be better at the thing in which you're trying to get better at.

If you're just left your own devices, you know, me and you're quite similar in personalities, if you're left your own devices, you just, yeah, you're probably going to get it wrong. You have to be willing, like, willing to take on the criticism and implement it and have those difficult conversations. That's the place that you get the growth as well. So some of the things that I've noticed recently, I was on Michaela Peterson, John Peterson's daughter's podcast last week, and her YouTube channel has a significant reach, which meant that there was a lot of comments of people who were hearing me for the first time. And I was questioning myself, I was like,

do I, do I read these? Do I read them? Yeah, I'm gonna, and sure enough, went through and tons of people have picked upon things that I've never realized. A bunch of vocal ticks that I've got, some imprecisions in my speech, some pauses where there shouldn't be

little bits and pieces. Now, most of these are trolls online who are not doing this from a virtuous standpoint and it was painful for me to read some of that stuff. But I've not realized some of these lessons in 200 episodes, two and a half years of doing this podcast, probably 300, 400 hours of recording content and yet I had to have this uncomfortable experience in order for me to be able to deal with it. Another podcaster did with Jason Calacanis,

Jay Cal, who's this huge Silicon Valley investor. He made it quite uncomfortable. He has got a very, very big following and made the podcast a little bit, not confrontational, but it was at least adversarial. And I learned more in that one episode than I've learned in 20 or 30 of the ones where it's just easy and free-flowing. Yeah, they're great, but I don't actually expand my competence there. And again, this is why leaning into discomfort as we spoke about earlier on, almost actively seeking

that discomfort, even in the areas you don't want to feel it. So in an area of having a difficult conversation, yeah, it's difficult. Why is it difficult? Because it is outside of your domain of competence. But once you do it, that is now that box is ticked. I have that capacity. I know that if I need to approach my coach because he keeps on turning up late. And I know that it's because he's got a young daughter or son or whatever and it's going to be real hard and it's all multifaceted and this is whatever there's always a reason why my situation is different when I have to have

an awkward conversation with someone that works for me or a friend or whatever it might be. It's like no, it's not, it's just maybe a little bit more nuanced. Go and do the work. Go and speak to the person. Have the difficult conversation because it will make you grow. I think let's give you peace of mind as personally, like, and what you said about the reading those comments and stuff, and anyone that's sort of going to read negativity or want to take on criticism, which is a good thing to do. So long as you can sleep ease it nights, so long as everything you do comes from one to place of good intention and two, like there's no lack of effort.

There is definitely an incredible amount of deliberate practice and the utmost of effort into everything that you do. And I think most people there is. So you can read those comments and it's right, I can read them and take on the criticism and have an air of vulnerability. If you're not willing to be vulnerable to people that are going to give you constructive criticism or challenge your belief system, challenge the way you do things, then. You're not really...

In that way, criticism's a gift. If you have a true growth mindset, free of ego, any criticism, a valid criticism, obviously, like if it's just your hair's shit, it's like, I don't like that mustache, and it's like, no, this mustache is great. If it's a legitimate criticism, your response should be thank you, because that is identifying a hole in your game that you didn't know existed, and you've got it from this person for free. Yeah, maybe their intentions were them trying to bitch you, but like fuck them, don't matter.

Like... It's something, it's something I've definitely had to learn. Like I said, I'm not someone who's got it all figured out, and that ticks all the boxes in everything that I'm trying to be. You know, if I'm a coach, right, I'm a coach, I'm a business owner, I coach people, and I also try to some degree coach my employees, or the people that work for the business

or at least I need to communicate them on a level. But the way in which I communicate to my wife or my child is very different the way in which I need to communicate to the people that come into my gym when I'm coaching. It's very different the way I need to communicate to my brother and sister who work alongside me. And sometimes they'll be like, look, the way you speak into me or the way you've communicated that or the way you've gone about it, that's just not right. And when it's my brother and sister, I'm like, oh, hold on a minute and we get to go. Yesterday you didn't put the cups in the dishwasher and then the day before there was this dirt over the far side. But they're right. If I'm trying to be all of those things and communication is, we just pick on that as a skill set, and that's one of those skill sets I need, I need to take into consideration

that if I've quote unquote employed my sister, or she's an employee of the company, I need to be able to separate the ability to communicate with her as someone that is looking after her job, but then also separate that from someone who's then having to communicate with her as my sister someone I've you know who's older than me who's who's looked after me as a kid and all these things so there is It's just constant learning it's constantly. It's constantly willing to to want to learn there's levels to this game man and Talking to the older sister who you also work with is probably up there with like the hardest it's Sarah right. Yes, Sarah Sarah, Sarah, shout out Sarah. We're going to go into training for ages man, but I've been loving this mindset stuff and I've got more mindset stuff I want to talk about so I'm going to blast through a little bit of training, let's say that we are back in the world of Jim

and that someone or that someone has access to full kit. What are some of the workouts, couple of workouts that you've written recently that you've really enjoyed that you think some people could go away and do tomorrow? So my training, so just in terms of my philosophy or style of training now, so people have seen this sort of like train everything ready for anything type thing and again it's brought out of strength conditioning based principles and what I used to do in the weight room that would transfer onto rugby field to allow me to in particular sevens to allow me to be fast, powerful, strong, adaptable, all those sort of things.

Now for me being a bit older and having to wear those multiple hats that we've alluded to, it's training for me has to have high bang for my buck, needs to leave me feeling fulfilled, it needs to be enjoyed, I need to enjoy it, it needs to be sustainable, needs to be repeatable, I need to be able to train and then go and wear one of those hats that isn't the training hat, whether it's the coach, the husband, the businessman, etc. So, my training is very much different now to how it has been over the past. I'll give you two workouts that one strength-based and one that might be more aerobic, conditioning type things. So, for me, when we talk about our strength work, of course, we warm up bodies up appropriately based on

any sort of conversations we've had in the past injuries, that sort of stuff. So I'll leave you guys, you know, to your own devices with that We then put together like a potentialial movement prep type block Which will which will mirror some of the exercises and which we're going to go into in the in the key in the main strength area It might also have some of the exercises in which we're going to miss out because in that session we just can't throw everything into it. So this session X that we're about to go into so the key, the KPI for us, the key performance indicates will be a squat. Okay, so we always build off these movement patterns. So within our movement prep, we will do a variation of the squat. So it might be a goblet squat, a high bang for a buck, going to start, it's going to train the squat pattern, get our body aligned with what's coming up.

We're going to get some good, some good amount of core bracing, anterior core is working nice and hard, so we're going to prime the body for what's to come through there. We then might put in a bit more of a core dominant exercise. So again, a hollow rock or a side plank clamshell, so again, bang for a buck, getting some lateral core strength stability there and also going to get some work through our glutes. And we might just put an upper body exercise because it's a lower body bias session. So let's look at something like a press up, keep it nice and simple. Okay, so we've got 10 press ups, 10, 10 gobblet squats, 10 side plank clamshells each side. We would then go into our squat, that's our main KPI, and whatever

we're building through, if we're going through a training phase, we'll build to a heavy set of something. So I quite like now this notion of sort of auto regulation for my training. A lot of people, you know, this is similar to like an RPE scale, given that unless you are an athlete, like I was when I was playing rugby, and everything was constructed so that I should be able to hit a certain percentage on a certain day unless I'd had a tough on-pitch session or I had a bad night's sleep. Life is so dynamic that you almost need to take physiology on a 24-hour clock. How are you feeling on that day? If you're supposed to hit a certain number but you've slept really bad, you've

had an argument with your husband or wife, you've not eaten, whatever, you know, the emails are blown up in your face, someone wants to punch you, you know, that sort of stuff, just auto-regulate based on how you're feeling. So if today's, it's five reps, we build to a heavy five. Alright, we'll do that over five sets. Again, depending on time, we might not pair that with an accessory exercise, something complimentary. If you've got issues around, you know, correctives, you could pair it with a corrective exercise. So let's just say we're finding we've got issues around correctives, you could pair it with a corrective exercise. So let's just say we're finding we've got really tight hips. Let's pair our back squat with a like a couch stretch or just a static stretch.

If we look a bit further down our training journey, we're intermediate, advanced type, type, lift that we might pair something with a complimentary pairing. So it might be an upper body exercise. We could go into dumbbell floor press as we prime with the press up. It might be that we're trying to really make that a bias on a lower body session. So we might squat, build to the heavy five, and we just pair that with a kettlebell swing. So 12, 10 to 12 swings, we're getting some power into systems as well. So that'll be our five sets, that's our KPI. Again, we move into our accessory work. If we're taking this session as a lower body session, we then look at a unilateral pattern, so maybe

a split squat, a lungege step up, something like that. You always tend to have a bilateral with the unilateral in there, so if you were... So for someone like me who we're training volume is quite high throughout the week, and I'm able to train five, six days a week, I can go through like a lower body session and upper body horizontal push pull, upper body vertical push pull, then a more hinged dominant session. So I have the ability to stretch my session out of the week and get my volume in that way. For most people when we're looking at bang for bark, if we're going to pair the squat with the kettlebell swing, we can afford to go unilateral push pull in our accessory work. So we're always putting a fair amount of unilateral and bilateral work. So we might go, like I said,

split squat into a weighted pushup into a three point dumbbell row, four sets of tenon nose. And we always finish with either some some pump work, so some metabolic like stress pump work, because again, that leaves us feeling good. We're very much aligned with trying to be, obviously become stronger, become fitter, but aesthetics is a big driver for us. It's a big driver for all humans no matter what they try to say, even people in the CrossFit world are still believe their performance driven, they still want to look good. So long as we get the balance right with that, so we might finish with some upper body pump

work or we might finish with a, we might try and build it into a conditioning piece. So some farmers carries with a ski with some, with some pull ups and do five rounds of that. Hopefully that gives you enough to sort of go within in terms of how we structure a strength session. Again, we take into each individual's training volume throughout the week. And then when it comes to just capacity work, fairly simple, if it's monostructural, I've just done one today, which was 60 seconds on the Salt Bike 30 seconds rest,

60 seconds on a ski-er, 30 seconds rest for 10 rounds. So it's a 30 minute piece, 20 minutes of work, there's 10 minutes of rest, cumulative. I gave myself some targets. So on the Salt Bike I was aiming for 22, sorry, on the ski, I was aiming for 22 calories around. I was hitting around average, probably 21. So I was trying to set the bar a little bit higher

just to make sure I pushed my intensity a little bit. And then the assault bike I was aiming for 20 calories, I think I hit 19 on average. Again, I don't try to push too much intensity when it comes to my conditioning pieces these days. I'll probably push intensity once a week. But mostly it's just aerobic. A bit of head space. I like to work up a sweat. Everyone wants more workout, feel good. Villazzo, you've got some work done. Villazzo, it's quite high output.

Villazzo, you've worked up a sweat and then allows me to go on with the rest of my day, coming on a podcast, having to speak, still got a coach later on this evening. So it fits in that way. Hopefully that, is that giving you enough? I love it, man. Absolutely great. I like the idea of using the RPE scale.

There's a number of different physios and world class coaches that have been on the show talking about the importance of using the equivalent of a 24 hour window. As you said there, if you're, if you've had a terrible night's sleep and an argument with your boss and you just got into a punch up outside in the car park and all the rest of it, your today's 70% is tomorrow's 50%. You know, you're just not going to be working at your best, but tomorrow you might be.

So go in, see how you feel. But again, what did we talk about with that Confucian gentleman thing? You need to go in and have very structured sessions. This is the sort of progression you are looking at, and then as you get towards that more intermediate, more advanced, there is a sense, there is insight into your training,

into how you feel. Oh, actually, I can piece all of these different things together because previously I wasn't considering about whether I'd eaten enough over the last few days or whether or not I'm feeling stressed at work over the last few days. I like that. It seems having had Ryan Fisher on this podcast,

the American Oli Marchon, he has a lot of similar insights into training as you do, take some of the functional fitness, potentations and patterns, but repurposes them into quite fun and different new ways. I think that's the main thing. I think Mixed Medallic and Fitness

just allow you to explore movement and different patterns and energy systems and the way that, and it is so exciting and it keeps, it keeps things chat challenged and varied in a more structured way. I think for most people sort of entry into it now when we look at the Ryan fish as a world and the Marcus Phillies and those sort of people,

to find enough, I did a bit of research a couple of years ago into when functional bodybuilding started and when I launched functional physics and functional physics came before functional bodybuilding. Because again, like I started as a bodybuilder, like if I started as a bodybuilder because I started lifting weights at 14. We talked about these earlier adopters, like this is going back almost 16, 17 years. There were no 14, 15 year olds in the gym at this time. That's when I started lifting weights.

Bodybuilding was the thing. Most people that start lifting weights back then, you follow the magazines, you follow these people. When did you get your fitness menopause? When did you let go of the tether from bodybuilding post rugby and go into functional fitness? So I went into functional fitness. Like I said, I started with Saracens in the academy system from 15 years old. Weight started coming in at like 16, 17, like then 18 and playing full time rugby. So I was the guy that because I was doing on pitch conditioning games in the gym, lifting heavy weights, my physique and the way I looked looked like the bodybuilder

wanted to look, but only when he was ready to compete on stage. Yeah. And my nutrition was always because again, early adopter, I was into nutrition, I looked at the back then if it took to macros and following the people, the the the the the Norton's of this world and all that stuff that was first coming out and just being willing to just listen to all this all the research. So, you know, they'd see meals and stuff that I'd eat and be like, how'd you eat that and look like that? And just I just I just wanted to understand it. So I've dug a little bit with that. But my my training, I soon realized

that by trying to stay as strong as I could, one thing when I was playing 15s, you know, they take our skin folds, so trying to maintain as much lean muscle mass as possible. And the ways in which you do that, that became quite important to me from a young age. Again, athletics background has been a lot of time down the track and doing sprint-based conditioning. That's very conducive with building a nice lean, powerful physique. So all these things sort of started fitting together and I started painting this picture for myself. Okay, this is how I do it.

Don't get me wrong, there's some sessions where I was standing in front of a mirror and just, you know, do bicep curls. But I needed to be, I needed to be a good mover for the rugby field. You had a very early fitness menopause, man. That's one of the earliest menopause I've heard of. I think I really did. I really did. I remember going to the first couple of body powers and that sort of stuff, and people used to say to me, like, geez, when are you competing or when are you on stage? I'm not doing it, I've never competed. I don't compete. Not my bag. Well, it's the same sort of funny argument

about a lot of CrossFit. The intensity appears to be one of the key drivers of condition and the challenge that bodybuilders have is keeping that intensity high. It's not a natural environment. When you're steeping in your own neuroses with your air pods in in looking at yourself in the mirror. It doesn't gas you up. You can

be listening to the heaviest death metal or the brand new H track or whatever it might be, but it doesn't gas you up. The same way as a room of 10 other people all throwing down at the same time as you. I actually think that if there was a group bodybuilding class, like not the Ryan Fisher march on Marcus Philly stuff,

I mean like fucking Monday is chest and just chest. But if you were to create bodybuilding classes, I reckon you'd make some savage physics out of that. If you were able to have the community aspect, the outsourced motivation aspect that you get with CrossFit and with functional training and classes and stuff like that, but it was just straight up eight to 14 reps, contraction focused, the entire room's mirror, even the ceiling, the floors mirrored, it's like a porn set. And I reckon you get

some absolutely beastly physics out of that. I think just too far here, again, using the examples you've used, the Ryan's, the Moxville is this world. One that I've gone back to that 14 years starting then, what will you have is a considerable amount of general physical preparedness, right? We've done the bodybuilding bit, we've done multiple muscle contractions, we've tried everything there is to do, we spent done multiple muscle contractions, we've tried everything there is to do, we spent days, hours in the gym. So it's very hard for people to, I guess,

under, they need to appreciate that first and foremost when they're entering into fitness. If you've only been in a two or three or four or five years, spend some time building your physique and doing the hard yards first and potentially specializing in trying to gain some muscle for a period of time. Before you start worrying about, shit, I need to do the Metcon or the conditioning piece or go on a run, like just build some muscle first and foremost, learn to move well first. So you know your technique, drill your technique, stick to the basics, progressive overload in everything in life is the way to go forward. And that would be how you sort of address that. And then I think, yeah, when

it comes to then further down that training journey, you can be it, you can afford to be a little bit more generalized because you've done the hard work and you've got those muscle contractions and then training just needs to be whatever you fucking enjoy doing, whatever you can enjoy and repeat repeatedly do day and day out because if you just trash yourself and just push intensity, you're going to spend the rest of the day probably with your feet up on the sofa or you're not going to be able to train the next day and you're going to burn yourself out. The last point you've alluded to with the bodybuilding thing or people are training and just not getting in shape, it's because you train with no intensity and by that we don't mean

You know chase your anaerobic threshold every you know every every every every every session leave yourself dying on the floor But it's like train with a bit of intensity that's not just standing there isolating certain muscle groups doing body parts splits each day Because if you're doing that sort of thing and you're a desk worker and you sit behind a desk and you're going to be spending a long time, that's why bodybuilders bless them have to spend hours on a elliptical or cross trainer to cut weight because they train with no intensity and their lifestyle outside the gym isn't conducive with just like moving and trying to stay fit and healthy. Yeah, you're right, man. You're right It's It's gonna be interesting to see where the sport of fitness is goes over the next few years

Obviously, we've had a very recent change in CrossFit's direction over the last year and a half the CrossFit HQ pivoted a lot more toward health than toward performance. I think that triggered an awful lot of people in the CrossFit community. Is it rightly so? I don't know. CrossFit is a business, a training methodology and a sport and trying to marry all of those things at the same time is incredibly difficult. Say what you want about Greg Glassman and Dave Castro. They had challenging jobs trying to get crossfit to be

all things to all people. You're telling me that you want a training methodology that can get 60-year-old, 70-year-old Doris off the couch and moving with no pain in their hips and their knees, but you also want to create the fitness athlete on the planet. Oh, and actually it has to be a profitable business model as well. Anyone that thinks that they can do that easily is an idiot. I agree with you, but also what I will say on that is, it's where I think they fell short on it, and this isn't a bash at CrossFit,

just like our previous conversation was not a bash of bodybuilders, because to a large extent, I still am one and have been, and there are some great ones. But CrossFit then didn't apply or didn't, there were some great CrossFit coaches as well, some great boxes, I'm friends with them as well, you know, been some great places. They didn't, the model itself was a bit plug and play, no coaches really gained the knowledge in which when CrossFit became about the games and the Matt Fraser's, you just saw these CrossFit boxes trying to program like the games and the Matt Frazes, you just saw these CrossFit boxes trying to program like the games and what Matt Frazes did, rather than actually go back to what CrossFit was designed to do,

which was just meet the person where they're currently at, and their narrative, all the way in which they they depicted this 18 months ago, and they started going down the health route was just it was such it was too far one way. Like again, if I liken this just to our gym, our youngest member is 14, our eldest member is 72. We have multiple, we have a number of people who are in their 60s, who will squat, who will do sled, like sled work, who will do, you know, med ball ground

to over shoulder or variations of because there is a regressions and progressions matrix to every movement pattern there is. So long as you understand it and you know when to apply it and that is the art of coaching and programming which I think is where some of the CrossFit stuff just got a little bit muddled because the sexy Instagram stuff is the map phrases and the topic CrossFit athletes that are doing some narny shit. But people ask me, you know, what we do is just a watered down version of what we coach is a watered down version of what we do. It's still some

of the same movement patterns, same exercise, the same bits of equipment, but it's meeting that person where it's at. What, what, what, when I see Fraser do a workout, I'll just do a very, very, very, very diluted like a honey bit diluted version of it, because there's no point trying to aspire to be like that, because he's at the very top of his game. You mentioned it earlier as well. Why would you choose to do a workout which you don't enjoy? Everybody that is listening, that is not a professional athlete, does not have to train, you get to train.

The best training plan that you can do is the one that you do every day. The best diet that you can do is the one that you're compliant with and that you stick to. That means you need to find the sport, the physical training methodology, which is right for you. And sadly for you, it might not be CrossFit, it might not be Functional Fitness, it might be Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, it might be Trampolining, it might be Ultramarathons, it might be Thai Boxing,

it could be any one of every sport that exists on the planet. And all that you need to do is do something that you enjoy. Yes, if you choose to do a sport which happens to have some loading in it and some progressive overload and some intensity You may be able to get some more socialized benefits in condition in the way that you look and stuff like that Then you might be able to do if you get into a French you go to the top flight of French bulls or something like that But the point is that your compliance is the key indicate the key driver of your results

So just do the thing that you enjoy. If you've spent all day grafting away in the office, doing all this stuff, and then you get into the gym to do a workout that you hate, no one has a bottomless pit of willpower to dig into, and then you go to go home, you're gonna get the kids sorted, all this sort of stuff. Nah, allow your time in the gym

to be something that you indulge in. And I think the variety that you guys, yourself, Ryan, Marcus are bringing across. I saw Ryan today doing a land mine overhead single arm lunge. So you can imagine that you've got the barbell pivoted in the floor in front of you far too much weight on it. And he's doing a thing. And I looked at that movement, I've never seen anyone do it in the gym before, but God, I wanna do it. I look at, I'm like, that looks fucking sick. I bet that a single abs and glutes at the same time,

I bet a single arm, land my lunge is awesome. I'm like, that's fucking cool. That is a cool new movement. Yeah, and I think with all these moves, I mean, some that come out are a bit novel, but I guess the purpose here is with with functional fitness and whatever that term means to people, the more you can try and look globally and engage full kinetic chain and get everything kind of working together. Again, this bang for your butt type thing.

So long as there is rationale and justification behind why you're doing it, I think these exercises are brilliant because you're going to get like you're going to get there's so much learning for the body. There's stability, there's balance, there's strength, there's coordination, there's we're looking at contralateral loading patterns and the body, the body is having to learn with different things and it's just building a more robust structure. Just going backtracking a little bit though, what we said about people buying into whatever works for them, there are obviously some principles that people need to adhere to and people are always going to fall short if and mainly that fall short, it always would lead back to strength. So there needs to be some

sort of underlying building of strength and whatever that may look like for you. But once we understand the principles of nutrition and training and progressive overload, then whatever method you choose is just something that you're going to enjoy. And for most people, that's going to be one of the lowest barrier, lowest hanging fruit to begin with, both financially, time, commitment and effort to begin with. And that's absolutely fine because you need to start slow. And then as your training journey improves and you want to put more skin in the game and invest more into it, both time, finances, finances, etc. Then you take the next step and that is the beauty. That's why I'm so... It's why I don't even look back at my rugby

career, I wish I still played rugby, because training is so pure. Like there is always an opportunity to get better and learn and that exercise, for example, is Orion. I've done variations of, but not that. There's an exercise that you can go and actually try and try something and see where how you fare with it. You can then progress that exercise. Maybe then you can move from the landmine press to the dumbbell press. Then you can look at some other no, no, no, piece of equipment with it. It's such an amazing thing to be a part of. It's cool, man, preparing the human body

and the savages that you've got in your gym and all the gym owners that are listening as well. What lesson do you wish Oli from five years ago knew? What lesson that you know now, or what lessons that you know now? If you could send a couple of notes back. Is there anything that comes to mind? Okay, so I think one of my biggest struggles I've had of recent times is

trying to keep everyone happy. And I think as a coach and as someone that does try and help their neighbor a lot, like I would give the person next to me on my t-shirt and not because I just wanna be top of the style time, but I would generally do that. It's, you know, in recent times, you just can't keep everyone happy.

And ultimately, if you try and keep everyone happy, the person that's not gonna be happy is yourself., I know that's, that might be quite deep. But how did that, how did that manifest? With the COVID thing, mate, with the COVID thing, what, what, what I realize is, and you know, a few people that are further down the track, farther down the track, me far bigger businesses and good mentors of mine, and I'm very fortunate to have a lot of good people around me that have helped me along the way, right? I just stumbled across any of this stuff. When the gym needs to be close, I mean, something like our gym, we're very lucky that our gym is, we've got to that stage in business. I listened to one of your podcasts I forget who it was, and they were talking about

the business hierarchy, right? And when, you know, the first thing is sales, profit, order, and then we get to stage where it's almost like this, this, this, this long, this bigger impact, more impactful. Yeah. Well, I think legacy was the last, was the last stage, stage five, but whatever this stage four was, it's about like more than that time in which they spend within your gym. So my gym, you know, particularly personal trainers as well, this isn't just exclusive to my business, but you'll hear a lot about that gym change my life or that person changed my life because it might be a drastic weight loss It might be that they suddenly get found more attractive by their partner or their sex life is improved or their confidence is improved or their their mental clarity and

Just energy to be able to play with their kids is improved and it's changed their life, right? So when something like that happens for these people and They've also got a financial commitment with it with a gym and the gym, we've also got a friendship circle within the gym and the gym provides this route, it's part of their routine and this community and there's all those things and then it suddenly closes. It's like what it was for me, like your whole life just gets turned upside down and then you've got all these people that, not all of them say that for the same reasons are upset about something, not only because there's a, you know, a killer virus on the loose and that the job security's gone and that they're in lockdown and they're, you know, and they're now homeschooling, but the gym's also closed and that was the X1Z to them.

And I just found myself like having to feel all these conversations and trying to keep, trying to appease everyone. And I think the bigger your circle gets and the people that you serve over the harder it becomes to trust, try and keep everyone happy. And it's not for like lack of trying. And I would always try, but it just gets a stage where I was like, I'd go to bed at night, my stress and anxiety and depressive thoughts begin to creep in. So I think that answers your question in terms of like, what I teach myself is that when you're trying to grow a business, particularly in the service industry

or where you have customers, you cannot keep, even with the best customer service and the best intentions, you can't keep everyone happy. And the other thing I would say is just have better conversations. So if things are weighing on your mind or if it's a member of staff or one of your members or a family member this just have a conversation. Because again a lot of the things I've experienced over the last three, four, five years when it's come to my relationship with my wife, my relationship with my brother who's also my business partner, my relationship with some of the members, just get on the phone and just talk it out.

Because no one's trying to come eat, no one's coming each other from the wrong place, it's probably just a lack of communication or a misinterpretation, or just trying to find out where that person's at, because it might be that they're just taking something out on you that it's really nothing to do with you. I love the idea of having a conversation as quickly as possible. It's a concept from David Allen's getting things done called the next action. And his solution to any to-do list item is,

there's something appears in consciousness, I think, what is the next physical action that I can do? So to response, there's an equivalent in stoicism, the dichotomy of control. When something happens, is this within my control, is it without my control? Is an equivalent here that you could almost apply where when you have an interpersonal challenge with someone that your response is to bring it up as soon as possible, that

is appropriate. One of the main reasons for this that I've been ruminating about recently is there's an opportunity cost to not doing it. Every minute that you spend thinking about that situation is a minute that you could have saved by just having it, have the conversation, get it out of the way, yeah, it's bad, but it's no less bad in four weeks time. You've just wasted four weeks of your life thinking about it. 100%. In everything though, in action is a killer. Like in action is a killer and what happens is things just manifest themselves and we talk about to do this

and productivity and trying to get things done. This, you're just adding more and more shite to this to do list, which at some stage you need to address the problem, just like inbox, it just get it done. Like have the, have the difficult conversation. Hopefully someone that's listening might be inspired by that, if you are thinking, I've got this thing,

I've been putting off the rages. I need to speak to my dad about the way he spoke to me last week. I need to speak to my boyfriend about why he keeps on doing that. Just have the conversation with them. Sit down. Be truthful. Be honest. Don't be passive aggressive.

Don't be overly aggressive. Show your vulnerability. Be truthful with it. And so look, this is how it made me feel. What can we do? How can we work together to get past this? You know, that is the root to raising up everyone around you. Man, just that last bit on that,

when you said working with people, I think that collaborative effect, like collaboration with people is so powerful. If you can collaborate, and like I said, meet people where they're at, and be willing to listen and also then guide that collaborative thing in any walk of life is power. Effort is one of the few things that doesn't divide when you share it, it multiplies.

What area of self-development do you want to improve on most over the coming year? Parenting. coming year. Oh, parenting. I've got another child on the way coming in September, and my wife is honestly anyone that knows Lauren, she is like one in a trillion. I guess because she's been with me for so long, she's been through the highs and the lows and just understands me when I talk to some of my best mates and friends who have amazing girlfriends and fiances and partners and stuff, Loss just, she just gets it, she doesn't give me any stress. World class wife, man. She's tough. She's a life wife.

She really is, but what I do understand is that we're coming out of COVID, hopefully sometime soon. We need to build back a vast chunk of our business that's been lost. It's impacted as everyone else, and I have another child coming along that's going to be around the same time. So those hats in which I wear and those people that I identify as, I'm going to need to do some work on those, and she's so good with our son Leo, but of course she's going to be you know her her abilities are going to be stretched so that's something I really need to work on Leo is getting set to age now where he's

actually beginning to to warm to me as his father figured a little bit more you know and and and I now is a really crunch time for me to build that relationship with him I think for the first 18 months, as much as I, you know, I do believe I'm a good father. I've not been probably been as good as I could be if I'm really self-critical. And now that he's come into an age and now where he's going to need me more and also Lauren's going to need me more and the new baby will need me more. I need to make sure that I get that right. So that's where I'm going to develop myself.

That's awesome, man. Have you got any plans to read stuff? Are you considering taking courses, or is this just a, be as present as possible, use the self-reflection and iterate on what works? Yeah, that's always sort of, that's always sort of worked for me. And also I think, again, just a more collaborative effort with Lauren. And I think, like, look, I know where I know where I fall short, I know that I'm the sort of person when I get home and it's time to switch off and I get an email at 7.38 o'clock at night, I try and answer it. If I get it, if I wake up in the middle of the night and it's, you know, and it's midnight and I, and I stupidly, I know you've always told me keep my phone at my room, but if I, if I, if I know that something needs doing that isn't going

to affect anything, but I just, it will weigh on my mind. I'll try and do it. So, like you know, you've got no phone Sunday. I think you do it, no phone Sundays. There's things like that, I need to be able to look, if I want to get home, whatever time it may be on these certain days, just get out. Like, I mean, last night I spent 20 minutes

on the floor in my bedroom with Leo diving off the bed onto me for 20 minutes. He just jumped up one side of the double bed, run across it and dive on me. And it honestly was so fulfilling. And when I normally, again, like I sit down stairs and I'm trying to decompress and I'm eating and I'm doing some shite on my phone, trying to, know, feel it through social media post conversations that I haven't got back to. And I can hear Lauren and Leo, like, conversating in like baby language and her talking and there's like giggles and fun, all this stuff, I'm like, shit, I should be up there, man. So it's an effort and now I've put it out there and

I'm going to hold myself accountable today. It's just, you know, and again, make it easy, start slow, I'll go and do two nights, you know, I can't go and get involved with part time a little bit more. And then and then progressive overload myself into it because, you know, we need to, you know, do yourself a bit of self-care. Don't try and throw yourself in the deep end because you'll sit yourself up at failure. Progressive overload, progressive overload is king in all areas of life. That is the takeaway from today. Two fantastic podcasts that you should go and listen to. If you are a young father or mother who is thinking, how can I make more time for my family? First off is my conversation

with Greg McEwan, the author of Essentialism. He has his family as the most important thing in his life, by a factor of 10 to everything else. And this guy is a New York Times best selling author. So if his book is by a factor of 10 less important than his family, you begin to get an idea of how highly he holds his family. And I would suggest listening to Chasing Excellence with Ben Burgeron, I think he has a fantastic structure for the way that he pieces his daytime work running CrossFit New England, CFNE now, CF North, New England, and his family life together. He has some hard lines that you could implement into your life as well.

Some stuff like at 5 p.m. everyday, he leaves the gym, he's out of the dorm, and he has a meeting with a client or whatever. He'll pack his bag at 4.59 and be saying, right, yeah, that's great. That's great. And then he's out the door and he's away because that's what Ben does.

He leaves his phone in a box and blah, blah, blah. It's tons of different things, but as Ollie's mentioned here, start by being deliberate with your practice. You don't just get good at lifting weights or doing a squat. You have to learn about hinging at the hips and bending at the knees, then keeping your chest up, then tightening in on the bar, but after a while it will become to begin to flow, but you have to put the work in, you need to learn. And especially when you have these things that don't necessarily

have an instructor, you know, there's no one coaching you through being a parent at the moment. It's just this, it's a daily game where you can get caught up. So set yourself some bright lines, see how they work, and then reflect on it without judgment. Not everyone is going to be a perfect parent or a perfect athlete or a perfect coach or a perfect businessman or a perfect husband or wife or whatever it might be, but you can be a bit less shit than you were yesterday. And I think if you continue to try and iterate on that, you're going to end up in a good place. Yeah, two things on that. It's Greg McEwan, right? Essentialism. I listened to podcast. I actually bought the book off the back of it to give to give to one of my friends.

And there was something really wrong, true with what he said there. Whenever he goes on a business trip, he takes one of his kids with him. Sick, I do. of something really wrong, true, with what he said there, whenever he goes on a business trip, he takes one of his kids with him. Sick idea. Just, it's just incredible. And it's like, you know, why not take the business trip on your terms with, you know, with your closest comfort on IEO, your offspring, and take them with you. And what a relationship that you're gonna then

gonna have as a father. I really, I really enjoy that podcast, and took a lot from it. And then just that second bit he said there about, I mean, for me, like last night, that example, which was real positive reinforcement, it's like, I've gone upstairs, wasn't what I'd normally do at the time, which I'd normally do it. And I had 20 minutes of just uninterrupted, amazing time with my son. Like that, that would only be like compound interest. Got there again today. Do the same thing. Go to bed so fulfilled.

And what a perfect finish to the finish. So yeah, we're all done. I love it, man. Look, Ali, man, we made it. We made it. The internet asked for it, and you fucking delivered me. So where should people go? They want to find out more about you, what you do, the gym, what do you want to leave them with? So yeah, if you follow me me on Instagram, it's just at Oli Marchin. I'll service to the gym at www.marchon.co.uk. So programming, if you just want to reach out, we do new training and nutrition.

If you just want to come and have a chat, just follow me on Instagram, slide into my DMs. I do try and get back to people that approach it with, you know, the right, a bit of effort in what they're trying to communicate across to me. Yeah, other than that, I promised Chris like I've been waiting to come on this podcast or we've been waiting to set this up for it. For a long time now, I've been deflecting other podcasts

and stuff because this was it for me. I think the only thing better than doing this is Joe Rogan, Chris. And then that's what's next for you, man. Chris has helped me with a little bit of setup for my own podcast. So in time, again, it's for me, the podcast is just an opportunity to bring some of the people which I've sat the table with and had good conversations with and bring that to the people that follow me and interested in me.

And hopefully at some stage, I'll be able to tempt you with a bit of bait to come on that and I'm afraid of failure. I am ready. If you can get Chad sat opposite me with his mustache and this mustache, we can all wear out. We can all wear our blue blockers and you can get the brownies in. I think that's what a way to spend an afternoon. Is that going to be the March on podcast or something similar? Yeah, I've toyed with names and stuff.

It's either going to be something around the March on podcast or this and it mentality, but we'll see. Cool. Well, if that is out before this episode goes up, it'll be linked in the show note below. If not, just follow Wally on Instagram. He puts up fantastic content, great workouts and a pretty good rig in a great time as well. So that's all man. The internet's going to ask for this again. So you probably get a better get a better get ready for round two. Yeah, perfect. Look forward to it it mate. Thanks for having me on.