 I came off a chinnock, linked up with your man, he patted me on the back, gave me a load of kit, said a few words and that was him on the back of the chinnock and they were away again. Continuation training is a mixture, as I said before, of becoming more aware of the tactical part of becoming a special forces soldier. And let's just say you get involved in some serious stuff, people are dying. The most important thing is you're showing a weapon. Nick, I just think we should come on. I've done this, put the cart before the horse, but when you're in 2-3, can you give us an idea of continuation training that you do and also operations? Did you go into the Middle East, for example? Yeah, I did a couple of operations with them, as I say, I was only into about four or five years. It was a really short time for me, but I did a couple of operations with them. The obvious places that you just mentioned there, you insert by Hilo, get dropped off out and then cross-deck over what your specific job was for those locations I worked in. I was like that. The radio man, so it was a signaler, and the strange one was actually that the guy that I came off, it was black and white with all MBG'd up and all that lot, so quite excited as a young lad just getting an SF on that, came off a chinook, linked up with your man, he patted me on the back, gave me a load of kit, said a few words and that was him on the back of the chinook and they were away again. And many years later, one of the lads in one of my vehicles unfortunately succumbed to a tank mine that we drove over and it kind of just devastated the car, but I was lucky enough to get out and we were in a contact as well, so it was quite challenging situation. When I took the body back to one of the locations, the guy that was there that took the body from me that worked for the same company was him. In fact, when we were outside having a fag waiting to go and re-ID the body again for Gal, he said, I've served in two, three in that, I've done this one, done that one, I'm chucking around a few dits and stuff, and he said, oh, you were there, were you? And he went, when were you there? And I went, I was there, he said so, and he went, I was there then and we established that that handover in the dark and night at the back of the chinook was actually him, strange enough. But yeah, moving on to like continuation, continuation training is a mixture, as I said before, of becoming more aware of the tactical part of becoming a special forces soldier and all that that involves. That's essentially what that part of the course is about. And you're getting to fire lots of different, I mean, do you fire sort of nine millimeter pistols and and and automatic? What are you called? Sorry, what word I'm looking for? Like, Uzi's, that type of weapon, if you fire everything to be fair. Yeah, you just fire, fire pretty much. Machine machine pistol was the word I was looking for, wasn't it? Yeah, so you fire everything and you can establish, you know, what rounds essentially kind of fit what weapons so that you can you can explore when you're going into like a war zone, for example, if I was working in the Middle East, like I was back down in Afghanistan and all that lot, you pick up a weapon there, you know, you'd know that a seven point six two would fit that weapon five point five six wasn't for example, you know, so so it's just having a little bit of a better understanding about that, not that you need to be a ninja or the weapons, but for example, if you go into a location where they use these types of weapons, you would learn a little bit more about those weapons. So if you had to use it or or understand it, whether safe to catch us on how it works, etc. So it's a real basic kind of level of of looking at all the different types of foreign weapons and stuff. The most important thing is your own weapon and the carriage of your weapon systems that you're going to be using. Like we say, you know, I was only in two three, so I didn't have the luxury of doing some of the other stuff that to do and so the weapon systems were that we then used on operations were specific to those operations and not like house caretakers and stuff like that that maybe they do the MP kind of series weapons and stuff. It must be different as well because if you go into combat with two three, and let's just say you get involved in some serious stuff, people are dying, or you're you're having to kill people. You don't then go back to a regiment that all lives on the same count or all serves on the same count. You got to go back to civilian life, where you're not surrounded by these these mates and you kind of are because you if you're in two three and you're doing something like that, you signed on. So you've got full time reserve service, you sign on for like maybe a three year engagement or an 18 months in gaming. Same as same as anything else. If you were a reserve soldier in the army, and you were called up, they would say look, we're going to go and do an operation in Afghanistan. We're going to do an eight week buildup package. So they would sign you on you go for your medicals and bits and bobs, then you do an eight week buildup package, then you go on operations, and then you come back off operations. And then you'd have a bit of a dealer, wouldn't you? And then you would like to have all your briefings and you'd have a bit of a wind down from it and then you'd probably sign back off again. Okay, a few months later, you might then get get called up to something else. But within that time, your own courses, you're doing your Dems course, I did my SFCT, I did my demolitions course. So there's lots going on. And so for a special forces soldier, I think it's misconception that, you know, you're just a soldier in the weekend, Wednesday. So I think it used to be like that before I went in there. And even to a certain extent, a little bit like that when I joined up, because I did my selection over nine weekends, and then going down and doing test weeks and stuff like that. But now it's a lot different. And so, you know, the expectations are that you might have a life and you might have a job. But it, you probably won't have it for much longer. Or if you do, it has to be very flexible and fit in with that. Yes, got you, got you. Right, now let's come on talk about some non military stuff. Well, maybe maybe it's got, we'll maybe we'll cross deck a little bit. But um, yeah, fitness it's, I was never like the fit guy when I was in the military, I struggle with running massively speed marching. Uh, I think just for the fact when you're smaller, I mean, I joined training, I was probably less than 10 stone. I'm only way 10 and a half stone now. Wow. And if I was to do a bit of a water fast next week, which I think I'm going to, that will go down to nine and a half stone. Um, and when you're, when you're that slight of build, even, even heavy footwear, like military boots is, is a strain on your body, lifting, lifting your legs out. I don't mean you never, when you think in terms of military fitness, you never stop to think about something like boots, but it's huge. Yes. I've even got these lightweight black running boots now. I wore them when I did the and I led the nine mile speed march for the veterans not long ago. And even wearing them the next day, all, all your sort of, um, the top of your thighs, I can't remember the name of that muscle group, but it really, what, what is the name of that muscle? When you're cycling, you can stretch it as well. At the top of your thigh, the bit that lifts your leg really, not hip flexor. Yes, the flexors exactly. Um, even that gets so, so I found it quite hard going at 18 years old to be cracking out nine mile speed marches and 30 miles with all, with all the gear. But the difference is probably between me and a lot of people, Nick, is I, I've always continued to fitness. So I might not have been very good, but I've always done it off and on. I mean, I probably, I might have gone for five years at one point without going for a run, probably during my sort of, let's call it my party phase of life. Um, yes, that is a euphemism, friends that are chuckling at home. Um, but it, what I'm getting to, it means that now at 52, I did a quadruple Ironman distance triathlon. I ran the length of the country carrying 15 kilos or up to 15 kilos. Um, again running out to marathon every day. I ran 200 miles around a running track and then 100 miles in the nature, all, all of which I did, I think in six, five or six days. So, and I run every day because I absolutely love the, the spiritual side of it. You know, it just takes me to a really good place in the morning ready to face the day. So I've come to it all a bit late, but it means that my fascination with it has developed late as well, which is why it's great to have this conversation. So let's just start off with a common denominator then. So if I was to be on a running track in trainers and I was to go balls out and try and do a mile, that's 1.6 kilometers for our metric friends. Um, I reckon if I had to, I could probably do that in about set between seven and seven and a half minutes. Um, what, what, what would your pace be at the moment, Nick? Well, I don't know. I could probably do that in there. Don't, you don't, you don't have to be humble or anything. If you can do it in five minutes, just, I'm just fascinated to know. It's probably close to that now, actually, but that's a more recent thing because I mean, bested in speed because since I did those, those world records, I've still got my speed, so it's been a struggle to get up to that. But um, so you could do it in about five minutes. Five and a bit, I would have thought, yeah. Actually, five and a half. I said seven and a half, didn't I? No, what I, I meant, I meant about four and a half. Yeah. Yeah, and you're all quite good, you're quite a good runner and you're light, aren't you? I think when I do my one-mile efforts at the moment, yeah, there'll be about five, 15s, five, 20s, maybe. See, this is the thing. I, I could only dream of that speed. I mean, honestly, is it that I've got small runs or something? Oh, it's just about, um, practicing to, to increase that by doing 400s and 600s and 800s and then doing like 0.5 of a mile at what you've just said then and building up to that doing 0.5 mile at a progressive pace, as in working very hard so that when you finish that 0.5 a mile, you're at about 88%, which is your efficient range to build lactate threshold. Then drop it back down to like an efficiency rate for half a mile and then build that up over time so that eventually, for example, if you want a good 10 mile speed for Paris 10 or, or whatever you're doing, or a good half-miles in speed, in a perfect world you should maybe have built up to doing three miles on one mile efficiency pace, three miles on one mile efficiency pace and doing that for a rotation of maybe three, that's 12, 13 miles in total, but you're teaching your body not just to be fast by going through the 400s and 600s and 800s and progressing to this, but also recovering at pace, the efficiency pace. Could you explain that in layman's terms? What does that actually mean? It's about just investing in your speed work and having a plan of action over an extended period of time. No, I mean, is what you're saying, like you run 400 meters fast and you rest for 100 or something? We have like an, we have RTG groups within elite outdoor fitness, remote training groups, and so I do all this for them, but it's group-led and we're all online, we fill out a document together and we've got WhatsApp groups and we're chatting about it every day, like today after this, I've got to go into my session, and everybody else, we do the same session, but at reduced level for basic or basic plus or intermediate advanced. And so for example, the speed work might be for a basic compared to the advanced, it might be five times 400s, but only working at about 85%. Because what you'll find is if you don't do a lot of speed work, maybe you don't do a lot of speed work, your higher heart rate ranges won't be open to you. So you'll only, you know, when you're attaching yourself at 86%, it will feel, your perception will feel, God, that is so hard, and I can only do it for that extended period of time. Whereas if you work with your speed work, your VO2 max and your lactate threshold, that's the basics of fitness will increase and you'll start being, just like we discussed about selection and how the mind works as well, your body is exactly the same, it will start to get very comfortable at being uncomfortable. So I'll give you an example of that, is at the moment, when I'm at the end of my 400s, I get to about 94% of my maximum heart rate and I've established what my maximum heart rate is as well, which is obviously very important. So when I went and won the fan doubts, I think it was last year or the year before, I normally work it as one of the DSP affairs, I asked Ken, I wouldn't mind wasting it just to see if I've still got it and I won it thankfully. I spent about two hours of the 304 whatever I got time, above 90% of my maximum heart rate, because I'd invested over an extended period of time before that, working my heart rate range higher and higher and higher, and once I got it into those ranges, I extended the time that I was working at that high range. If you don't do any speed work and you're a good at distance runner, because I expect that is, that's probably about where you are, I would imagine just making the assumption, you'd benefit hugely from just doing a very achievable set of 400s, and then, you know, if you say, well, but my, you know, I want to be fast for 10 miles, or you might be wanting to be fast for 5k, you don't need to be doing 3 miles on 4 mile off at the end, if you want to just be fast for 5k, you want to be doing something that facilitates the changes and the efficiencies that you need to go fast, straight off the bat for 5km, what's that 3.4, 2 miles, and so that would include some doing like 400s, 600s, 800s, and then maybe even including some jump squats in between your recovery as well, because that facilitates the type of reaction that your muscles need to generate that twitch, and the muscle fibres that are needed to project you forward, and also once you start doing a 5k run, it's relentless, it's never ending, isn't it? It's probably the hardest run you can do in that sense, because straight from the start line, you don't warm into it, it's just you're right up there and you just have to hold it for 4.5k pretty much, so depending on what anybody's wanting to do, it's very achievable, I think what most people get wrong when they're looking at fitness is they don't understand what fitness is, luckily for me, you know, I did sport science, I did nutrition at university as well, I was a PTI in the army, and thankfully as well I went and did special forces, which as we've discussed in this, to take me to the depths right in the hole, and yet I got to keep going and going, and so I've learned so much about my body and so I think if you went and did sport science, or you were physiotherapist and you use that understanding at a scientific level to train people, I think you're missing something, they tend to miss something, if you took it from a manual and said oh it says you're supposed to do lactate threshold training like this, or VO2 max training like this, I think you're missing something out, what I do is I use a part of that, and I use a part of my SF stuff, and also all my experiences, and I seem to get, it's having that mixture of those experiences, it seems to work quite well, not only for me, but all the people that we train, and most importantly it's where you start, most people have no idea where to start when they start getting fit, and they just go out, and they start training, and they're not utilizing the amount of time that they're training each week to kind of maximise the benefits, and you're going to train three hours a week, you might as well get three hours of good training out of it, and make those efficiencies. Yeah, tell me something then, because what I do notice is, I do get tired in the afternoons from my morning run, and I only run, I only do about five k, so my run's about three miles, it is up as I said, up the steepest hill where I live, there's quite a monster hill that goes on and on, and I do notice if I really push the pace up the hill, then I'm more tired in the afternoon. Is this an age thing, or is this normal for everyone, or is there something I might be missing in my nutrients? Probably a number of things really, do you do the same type of running every day, five days a week? Pretty much, I do the same run. So what efficiencies are you making? You're not really, you're just ticking over aren't you at that level? Yeah, yeah. Are you just getting it, you're working a bit harder? I don't think age has to come into it, you know, some of the stuff that's happening and some of the people that are winning some extraordinarily kind of times on Paris 10, and you know, I won it and I got 122, somebody's done a 116, it's a good, you know, it's a motivator, isn't it, to look at some of the people that are winning stuff like this. I did a fair one down here the other day and it came 30 second, and I think I'm relatively fit and strong, and I was, after people were like in their 50s and 60s, they were in front of me, you know, it's a good motivator. In fact, all I would say with you is mix your training up a little bit, you know, because you're probably doing very same as training. If you look at the real basics of it, Chris, you look at training from 60 percent all the way up to 100 percent, you're, you're, if you can manage that process of going, okay, well one day I can train at this level and then that level, but where do you start? Elite outdoor fitness do that. So for example, if you want to start somebody training, you know, look, you know, you're 27 stone and we've got plenty of people that are very overweight or they've had hip replacements or coming back from cancer and the remission or had heart issues and stuff like that, and I think this is where we're kind of, you know, we have our proudest moments really is by taking people like that and saying, Mike, this is where to start. You know, where do you start? Do you want them to get fit? No, not initially. I want to start working their heart and their stroke volume, you know, their one beat stroke volume, and you can't, you won't make any more efficiencies above 60 percent of your maximum heart rates. There's no point going out and training above six percent. So in actual fact, you can start somebody off from walking and they would make huge benefits over an extended period of time just with their heart, their stroke volume, rather than getting them running where their heart stroke volume is struggling a little bit and they're trying to lose weight and they got little niggles and issues with their ankles and their hips and all because they're overweight and you're trying to get them to run, you start with 60 percent and as you progress through, you start kind of going to the range sort of like a little bit more. So if you break training down, very simply, you've got 65 to 75 percent which is recovery and LSD type stuff where you build your microchondria, which is the powerhouse of all your energy is in your cells, in your muscle cells, and that's really important to build. That's probably what you're very good at doing actually with your, some of the stuff that you've seen that you've done. And then 75 to 82 percent, that's your efficiency range. So although you're making efficiencies in all that area there, when you're working at 100 percent, you're not making the heart stroke volume at 60 percent of your maximum effort, you're not making those efficiencies that much at all, because you're working 100 percent only for like 10 seconds. Whereas if you're running at 65 percent of your maximum heart rate for like 80 miles, you're not really kind of using your explosive power, you're not really kind of delving into other elements. But when you work between 75 and 82 percent of your maximum heart rate, you're hitting all of them. And that's probably where you're at because it feels very comfortable working between 75 and 82 percent and you're making lots of good efficiencies when you just take it over. But 82 to 88 percent is where all the golden stuff is, that's where all the changes are made, that's where you start to increase your VO2 max and your lactate threshold. So this is part of the reason, Nick, that I run up the biggest hill. So first mile is a gentle sort of jog downhill, a bit flat and then a bit down. Then it's up this monster hill for the middle mile and then it's almost completely flat all the way home. And the reason I opt for that, I used to just jog around the block and I loved it, but I got so quick at it it wasn't worth, it just wasn't worth going, it wasn't worth putting my trainers on. So I've upped it to the three and the reason I like that middle hard mile is it's not just a cruise is it, it's not just a three mile jog around the local area, it's there's a, I guess what I'm trying to say is I figure I'm really putting my heart rate up by running that. And you probably are, but if you run that Monday, Wednesday, Friday this week and said I'm going to work quite hard at this to see what kind of sub, maybe just slightly sub race pace to see what time average minute mile pace, which includes the hills and everything and you've got a bit of a you know steam on as it were and maybe you ran it at, I don't know, eight and a half minute mile pace overall on average. I would argue that if you just for two weeks broke it down, so for example you go out and you do your run and you do a warm and up pace, so for example on one part of the week you just go out and run, you don't include the hill or anything like that, you just go and do a nice easy recovery run and you make sure you stick between 65 and 75 percent. That's that one done, boxed away and then the next one you go and do hill reps, so you go warm up a little bit and then you slip one of those hills and you might like nail it up for like 30 seconds and then you might do three minutes and you mix it up a little bit, quite possibly, so that you're doing those hill reps and you're only focused on hill reps and recovery, you were covering at the top and you're running down and you also get to the top of the hill and continue your effort on the flat, so you get that muscle transition and you box that one away, you do that one at another time and then the last part of your run, you say it kind of goes quite flat and I would imagine you would like to pick up a good quality pace because if you're running that flat bit at the end of your three miles and you're running a nine minute mile pace it'd be nice to feel the same kind of exertion, but you run an eight minute mile pace because that's fitness, that's latex threshold training, so what you could do is you could do four hundreds and sets of four hundreds like starting with six four hundreds and then doing seven four hundreds and eight four hundreds and trying to keep the same pace as you originally would do in your six four hundreds in on average and I would say that if you did that for a couple of weeks and then you went back and did your Monday, Wednesday and Friday tests, you'd be a lot fitter, you would be a lot faster over that period of time and you just feel stronger as well, but what you're doing at the moment is you're not really making many efficiencies because you're not breaking those down, that's the real basics of it. I'm just basically staying in my comfort zone, is that what we're staying? Well a little bit, it's great you know you can you can go and do that one like here's quite flat, I have to run to the hills, like three and I four miles to get to the hills and then start doing all that, but I would certainly say that if you are very specific in your training you can train one day and you can train hard, but you're actually recovering at the same time from another element, another system, so you've got loads of systems and you're taxing them at all a different level, when you go for a run, you're taxing all your system, you're just going out and doing an efficiency run, you're kind of hitting these different systems whereas I separate all the systems down and I work them all individually and then much later on I start merging them together, so you know you go okay so he says I've got to do hill watch, now you look at, sorry let me finish this first, so then much later on I call it warm-up phase, capacity building phase which is separating them all down and towards the end of that start merging them together and then I call it a deficit phase which is essentially I break it all down, if I want to go do my first fell run for six or seven miles, that's you know a fell run is quite hard if I included like 250 meters in a six mile run, that potentially can be quite daunting and it can be quite hard on the legs, but if I started in the previous few weeks doing hill reps and all that lot then when I progress onto doing a fell run it's not going to be as hard, if I do a fell run for 14 miles like the fan dance with weight on, look at all the systems that are being taxed, but what you need is you need to have the confidence to know that you're okay, you know you need to be working hard and go on that hill with weight on and go fine, because if you start doing it's like I said in the previous conversation we had about you know how to mine my boots well you know don't go out and just wear a pair of boots, you should be running one 500 meters in a pair of boots or walking around with them and then do one mile and then doing two miles and then do four miles and do 10 miles and after a while you just just do it there, it's not about just loving it straight in there and if you break your training down very specifically and then start to put it all together, you start taxing your body and there is a lot of information, sorry not a lot of information, a lot of research that's been done recently and one of the guys that's part of it's got like a quite high acclaim award and one of them's got a Nobel Prize as well to suggest that there's three elements within our bodies and systems that normally are relatively dormant in people and they've a lot of research has proven that if you can stimulate these responses, this fight or flight or this defence mechanism, these elements fire off and they suggest at the moment that it can contribute to maybe 14 extra years of life for a human being and they've tested it in rats and other animals and stuff like that and they've almost reversed the ageing process, now that might not sound very interesting to some people but certainly I want to live forever but that's because they're recovering and they're recovering better and when I looked at the research it's exactly what I've been doing in my life, overall which is shocking the body, if you shock the body hard one of the elements, so physical fitness but working at quite a high level and shocking it hard, will fire off one of the elements, reduce the amount of protein which if you're training hard most people would eat protein most days but if you reduce the amount of protein that you have, not every day but quite often and run and train on lack of protein, it fires up another element because it's a flight or flight response that your body has because it needs protein so that it goes right, we've got to do this to obviously compensate and the other one is shocking the body with things like hot, cold, lack of water, lack of fuel and most people would say rightfully so to a certain extent you've got to fuel up, you've got to get the right sleep, don't go out when it's too hot, don't do this, not that, do you know what I do, I do completely opposite to that but I only do the opposite to that when my body is ready for it and I slowly start doing it, when the summer comes I'm training in the midday sun with a bourbon on and I built up to that and I'll sometimes train and I put a bit of autophagy in there as in I don't eat anything after about seven o'clock at night and I don't eat until three or four o'clock in the afternoon, nothing and I train twice or three times during that time as well, so I'm firing off all of those responses in that fight or flight and I always find that I always have a little bit of an edge on people generally because of the way that I train and I train people when we've certainly found that within the outdoor fitness, so I think there's something to be said about that and people when they come to elite outdoor fitness they're normally training too hard and I wind them back and say look you can achieve some great things but it's a journey, you want to enjoy the journey, she's just not going to be on it, you know, most people just go and train for the sacred like you and then in that efficient system they go how can I fit in with this, how can I do that? You can actually achieve anything, it's amazing, as you well know the body is absolutely amazing and it can achieve great things but we don't even tax it hard enough, people either tax it too hard too quickly, they've either got too much of a steeper training curve and they drop off the other end and just having a little bit of an understanding, some people think you know what I can't be asked for that, just give me a training program and tell me what to do and that is fair enough also, but if you have a little bit of a better understanding on how the body works, it taps into the rest of everything else in your life, it makes you more balanced so when your kids are doing your edit and I mentioned the previous post, you'll be better balanced because if you train hard week by week by week and this is another point that I was going to make about you why sometimes you might be feeling tired, when do you de-load, when do you have a week where it's fully reduced so your body can catch up with a little bit, you've probably done it, a few people asked me about three years ago how can I get a part man, I'm on it, I can't get under 26 minutes, the other one was like about 20 and the other one was 18 because he was a lot younger and I said well when's the last time you had a de-load and a week's recovery, I know I just train all the time and I said we'll have a week's de-load then a week's warm-up and then go and race it again and they all beat their times so it's having a bit of an understanding but why do you do that, you know what's actually happening within your body, if you go and train hard now when you go for your body, it probably doesn't happen as much as me and that's why you're just ticking over, your body straight away will release a lot of hormones and certainly two hormones and we discussed this before as HGH and testosterone which me and you unfortunately have got minimal amounts of in our body compared to an 18 year old but what you can do which is why on eBay and all these different things they look at me I'm 56 years old and I look ripped as anything it's because they're training in a certain way and they're trying to sell that product to go in, shock your body, shock your central nervous system, the training that we do I start to add that in a little bit so that you start to naturally build these normal hormones that help you recover, they make you live longer, they make your skin good it makes all that recovery kind of work for you but if you keep training every single week they drop off and that's when people come off of their training and they say I've got a lot going on at home I'm feeling depressed, I'm feeling a little bit down, I feel really nervous and anxious at the moment why haven't fights with my kids or why from that and normally a week before they said oh I'm flying my train, I'm loving it I'm training really hard at the moment and a week later they drop off the other side and that's why most people generally you're on training, off training, on training, off training so all you've got to do is understand how at the level that you're training how many weeks are you going to get to that and a week before just put a delo in your training program and then you will be consistent in your in your movement forward I see so you almost hit like a a wall of you don't progress you don't become efficient it stops becoming efficient you're zapped basically and it starts to affect actually negatively affect your mental health yeah it does let's do it all the time they'll say to me and we women we've got a lot of women as well obviously and they'll say I am flying at the moment I know they've been training off about two or three or four weeks and it's all dependent everybody's different and I'll go right need a delo and they go no I'm flying at the moment I go no no and then they'll drop off them a week later it's quite it's quite normal and if you expect it it's not a major drama else you'll just drop off and the lads are going I'm fine they train on their own and then maybe they're not part of one of the rtgs or personal training programs and they're just doing this stuff on their own they'll say I don't know what it is I'm just lacking in so much motivation though I just I've lost a thing it's because you're probably over training because they really fit and strong they get personal best but then and it just drops off the other side it's really important to make sure you know how can you keep individuals for me individual group of individuals groups of people that pay me every month it's not very expensive but how can I engage them for years and years and years because that's what I do you have to like invest in their motivation and their drive to keep them participating all the time and wanting to do it you know I've got a few people at the moment and they're just starting and every week they're saying I just love in the train and I can't wait for Mondays now because you want to you want to set the seven-day period up so that they attack themselves over the period of time and making lots of efficiencies all individually and then moving forward so that it feeds that motivation that drive you must have felt to yourself when you get something you give yourself a goal there's so many kind of a bits of ammunition and it just changes people's lives because there's no greater feeling than being very capable I'll give you an example of that if you don't mind and it's a bit strange one but you know my wife has said to me many times what is it with you you're always in the mocks and things just happen to you like for example we were at car fest a few years ago and the plane spanked him bless him I was the first one on scene you know I had a pair of flip-flops on it was as a crow fly just under a mile and I think I did that in about four and a half five minutes through woods in a pair of flip-flops but nobody else turned up except for six army lads that were from an army you know they were showing all their army stuff on there's only me that turned up and then a copper turned up about 20 minutes later and I I told him what the script was and what was there and that the fact there was some explosives there from the seat because he hadn't ejected can I say just that was a bit quick so it's a military aircraft crashed is that what you're saying a civilian pilot ex-military pilot yeah he piled in to the wood line unfortunately about a mile away when I was at car fest a few years ago but I'm making is you know nobody nobody responds to things like that because it was only me that responded and some army lads no kind of why is that it's because people don't have the confidence they don't feel they're capable of doing something you know it was only me and my wife was pregnant at the time as well I just said I'll meet with a so-so tent in an hour if I'm not there and meet you back at the camera and I took my day sack and luckily for me I had a med kit in there and and I went not that it was used at all but unfortunately but the point I'm making is it makes you more capable and if you kind of do the right type of training we've had a number of things people within elite outdoor fitness now that have responded to instance not as similar to that but like the lad that's been piled in on the brick and beacons when he fell off the top of the fan that rugby player you know Darren one of our guys responded to that and I'm not saying that's down to elite outdoor fitness but he did say that he felt more capable he was strong in the hills he had all the right kit because that's what we do as well it's about making sure that people are prepared so that if they are going out in the hills if they're going for a fair run or if they're going for a long walk or whatever you know I can talk them through so that they've got the right kit and they have a better understanding of maybe the fueling and the hydration that's needed all the way up to you know we do try an adventure I won the DS on going to the Arctic you know I mentioned it before to you you know we lay down like a and get in a bit of a huddle when people are kind of quite nervous and feeling vulnerable because they're so cold from extended here at a time but it's about saying you are capable when you can do this and at the end of like eight days doing an Arctic trip and going up on over the mountains cross-country skiing when they'd only learned five or six days before how to do it was 65 pound Burgans on it changes them as people and they all say at the end of it they say I would never do anything like that and I feel almost now that I could I can take my son or daughter out on the hills and I'm more ready and prepared and I feel like I could be exposed to the elements a little bit more and have a clear understanding of what my boundaries are and that starts I said it approached up the other day that starts by doing 400 efforts because at the end of 400 efforts a one 400 effort you're piling in and your heart rate's going up and you feel like you have to stop and but just by increasing those that type of training but so that it's achievable not so that it's really hard all the time changes you and it allows you then to tap into an area that most people just don't don't get chance to tap into because they're not training the right way and it doesn't have to be hard when you're tapping into those high zones you're ready you're ready to and you'll enjoy it as well Nick where can people get hold of you obviously we're going to put all your links below our podcast but yeah so just google elite outdoor fitness I think there's a place in New Zealand or Australia that does the same but we're top searches not that lot elite outdoor fitness I talk to every single person if they want to so if anybody wants to come and say look I don't know where to start my training or I'm a bit of a ninja of the hills but I'd like to become faster or I want to include weight so I can do some of these weighted stuff because they're they're really enjoyable and challenging you know and and if you get involved in that type of stuff you know you're hitting all the components physical fitness then just give us a shout and I can like establish what your maximum heart rate is and help you out even if it's just that alone you know I'm more than happy to help people I start my company not to to run it as a business for money as such although obviously is doing we're trying to make it cheaper and cheaper all the time the more people we get the cheaper we get because I want to provide some for people and say look you know fitness is not art but it is when you don't know what to do and people just need a bit of help to keep that motivation going and make it part of their life there's no point being fit for three months you want to be fit consistently at the right level for years and years and years because that is a game changer and that's what makes you more balanced and healthier because we all want to live longer and we all want to be all more balanced and enjoy our time with our family instead of being stressed out all the time so yeah come to Elite Outdoor Fitness if you've got loads of different types of training you've got fitness days we've got the tier test it's a bit hidden a little bit that but it's a tier test that goes from that kind of takes you through a number of SF stuff if you want to do that much later because it goes from yellow to green to blue to maroon to sandy to black that I think there's only about five people who are on the sandy this year actually because it's quite unique and you need to pass all of those before you go up and all it does really doesn't cost a lot of money it's like virtual tests and it allows you to start to tap into the areas and we help you do that so that you're hitting all the components physical fitness everything we've discussed tonight and speed work with weighted fitness strength conditioning etc etc so we've got personal training but I don't do a lot of that it's normally for people that really need that extra bit of help and we've got the RTG groups as well we've got a number of those we've got speedy and international running we've got donkey and use excellent forces and runs the baseline one you've got me and I run the events one so whether you start running for the first time or cycling or whatever we're doing crossfit there's a place for everybody and you get a one-to-one interaction every day by coach like myself so you know personally and I know I'm biased I think it's a great opportunity for people to come and get and get fit and we've proven it as well you know this year I've run Paris 10 I won the Commando Shuffle and the Fan Dance this year I've run plenty of triathlons 5Ks 10Ks it's not about that but the training works it's about getting it right and so why spend an hours and hours a week training when you can come to us doesn't cost a lot of money we have a great community we're always training together on that and it's just getting bigger and bigger Sounds brilliant friends at home you heard it here first get involved which areas do you operate in Nick? Everywhere we've got Chilterns Elum Valley, Breckin Beacons Worcestershire up north a little bit we go to all the Paris 10s and the Commando Shuffles and we have lots of socials in that respect as well we do lots of team events next year we're kind of focusing on doing a lot of our own events as well I've got two Laziks SF Ladd as well who also works for Avalanche Stu and one of the others to kind of facilitate kind of building up some really unique kind of training just for specific events as well and fitness days Are you doing online coaching for people as well if they're remote? Most of it's all online we do fitness days as well all around the country but most 90% of it's all online so you'll come online go right in if I just want to get fit I look at you or work where he stats out okay you've never done any training before or you can run a maximum of three or four miles or whatever we'll reduce it down so it's nice and capable and easy for you put on an RTG you chat to everybody else that's on that RTG you're part of a community of people that have given you information about events and kits and all that lot and you've got a document and I give you a training program that everybody's filling out so you can see everybody else's 400s their stats and then every week I go through it and say look you're a little bit inconsistent with your 400s or your 800s or this that and the other we need to invest a little bit more in the hill which you can do a bit more on all reduce your training and I'm going to reload this week etc etc like at the moment on the RTG event we're into the last couple of weeks before Christmas for the fan dance and what you'll see on the fan dance is probably the top 15-20 people most of them will be from elite outdoor fitness and it's not that that type of person it's because they've allowed themselves to engage in something that gets them fit and stronger and it's a nice journey as well doesn't have to be too hard sounds ideal friends you heard it like I say get involved send Nick an email and yeah only good can come of it can't it Nick thanks ever so much again thank you I don't think this would be the last of our our chats by any means and folks if you could like and subscribe that would be wonderful and we'll see you next time thank you