EP018 - Formula 1 Performance - Jake Aliker

So welcome to the whole Man Academy podcast. I'm Antonia Astbury. Our guest today is Jake Alicker. You began working in professional sport in 2010, which was rugby and mixed martial arts. You were on our radar because in 2015 you worked as Max Verstappen's performance coach in Formula One, which we talk a lot about. You work in strength and conditioning and also the important point is mentoring. You spoke at our latest Wholeman Academy event which was great. You stepped away from Formula One at the start of 2020 to develop your own coaching company which specializes in personal development for internationals and motorsport packages for teams and young drivers. Jake, welcome to the Whole Man Academy podcast.

Anthony, thank you very much. It's a privilege to be here.

Excellent. Well that's a good start. Here we go with the questions. We always begin with how are you and where are you?

I am very well. I'm fit and healthy thankfully, which I'm very grateful for. And I am located in Cambridge at my girlfriend's, at my partner's parents house actually. So yeah, very, very fortunate. We've got a house where we can sort of siphon ourselves off and get out of each other's hair when we need to and people can crack on with their working days. So yeah, out of London about a month ago and moved up here and riding this crazy sort of time out.

I suppose it is crazy and I totally agree. I think a lot of us struggle to sum up what it's like just quickly for we've met before and I know you're how tall?

I'll round up six, four shy.

That sounds six four. Yeah, I round up to six even though I'm nowhere near it. But what's it been like? Because I know you're into obviously your fitness and training and doing all this stuff outdoors. So how's it been for you? Kind of things feeling like you're not being able to get out anywhere at all?

Yeah, it's been okay. When we thought, okay, we'll get out of London for a little bit and fortunate enough got a good sized garden which is incredible privilege in this time. And I sort of, from being in my previous role in Formula one, carrying one of my bags, kit bags I take around me was like a little mobile gym and any city I'd be in as well, I'd go into a sports shop and just buy an unnecessary little bit of gym kit that I probably didn't need. But I just thought accumulating, oh, I need this band because it's a different color and a Different strength. I need this type of thing you can do this ab exercise with and you need. I need this stick and I need this. By the end of it, I've amassed all this kind of equipment and now it's actually proving to be quite, quite beneficial that I've had it and I have brought it with me. And. Yeah, so you're able to go, right, okay, I can keep fit. I can. You know, obviously every personal trainer under the sun now is doing home workout videos, so, you know, no one's short of ideas. And then occasionally you sort of. You thinking, oh, yeah, there's no time limit on when you can exercise. And then other days and other parts of the days where actually, do you know what, I can't be asked and I'm just actually to sit and be alright with that is also proving. Is also proving. All right. So, yeah, from a physical and sort of training point of view, you know, there's lots of ideas out there and, you know, Joe Wicks is getting the nation moving on with his PE classes, which is great. And for all sorts of various people, for more serious athletes. I know my friends and colleagues at Harlequin's Rugby and at various rugby clubs, I think they're depending on how long it continues for in this situation. You know, you've got the know, serious elite athletes having to train with minimal equipment and sort of minimal facilities, which after a while will become a concern. But for now, I think people aren't short of help and support where they need it.

That's a good point because actually we'll get onto that. But I guess as a. If guys are not just guys, but those guys that are professional sportsmen, that it's not just nice to be fit, but it is essential to be.

In.

The elite category of fitness. I'm guessing for a lot of those it must be challenging moment because if you haven't got your home gym, there's. There's a, you know, you're limited to, as you say, using small bits of kit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There'll definitely be a point where I think, I think. And I said, Jose Mourinho the other day, he got in a bit of trouble, didn't he, because he was trying to sneak a session in the park with some of his spurs players or something like that, where you'll need a. They'll need a greater stimulus at some point other than resistance bands and sort of bodyweight circuits, which have definitely got their place even in elite. Even for elite sportsmen and women. But yeah, there'll Definitely be a point where the returns that you get on that and the diminishing returns will certainly start to kick in with it and then we'll see, we'll see how long it is.

Okay, well, I think the other important thing for the people listening is it's good to, to hear you say that sometimes it's right to just that you just can't be asked.

Yeah, well, absolutely. I think it's. And obviously I find myself and I've got, probably got. Everyone's gone through the same conversations. Some people have been sick of the same mantras. Myself now as a, as a performance coach, still grounded in physical performance, but like I say, mentoring and whether that's performance of your work life, social life, you know, relationships, okay, it's just, what can I add? What can I, what can I do? What a great opportunity, you know, crisis is a terrible thing to waste. All these kind of sort of cookie cutter phrases that are getting hurled at us on a day to day basis of what a great opportunity to make use of. But then also occasionally just being able to sit and have a day where you're a bit bored and a bit idle and you know, you're not really sort of concerned being super productive and you know, making a vision that's, that's also perfectly fine and very, very normal. And I don't think we should be in such a rush to be agitated with that now. That has to come from a grounding of, you know, how can I not get agitated? Because after a certain while people twiddling their thumbs and you know, the word anxiety and anxiousness is getting used a lot, understandably. But yeah, so the days when you sort of can't be bothered with the afternoons and mornings when you're going to lie in bed a little bit longer, that's perfectly, perfectly normal. And, and yeah, I think therein lies an opportunity to see what actually crops up for you a little bit in your self talk, in your feelings and your thinking. Those are the kind of opportunities to learn a little bit more. Rather than going, right, I'm gonna go read this, I'm gonna go do this, I'm gonna do that. And you know, I say as I've got my guitar next to me, sort of like half blowing the dust off it because I've said, yeah, I'm gonna pick my guitar up again. Guitar just is making very slow progress.

But I was going to say, how much of that you actually done?

A little bit, A little bit. But I think probably my missus and other people in the Household are probably. They're expecting me to suddenly just play a tune very soon. But I think as a beginner, learning the guitar is not the most melodic thing to be listening to when people are sort of trying to relax. So, yeah, so the days, it's just that as well, there's an opportunity to sit with doing nothing and see what kind of crops up from a physical point of view, from your physical health and also. But also mentally as a very big opportunity there.

Well, firstly, we'll make sure we tag everybody when you do your first Instagram live on your guitar. But let's jump into probably what a lot of the lot of the people listening would be really interested to get into the crazy world of Formula one. And for yourself, when you were working with Max Verstappen being his would you. Was your type of performance coach.

That was the. That was the title. Yeah, title was performance coach. And you could throw a very, you know, you could open a very large umbrella under what that entailed from. Yeah, physical performance, physical preparation, you know, mentoring, big brother role, soundboard. Yeah. And then. And then sort of developmental coach and it's all, you know, driver unique, client unique. Whoever your driver was, Max now is a. Is a. Is a near enough a household name certainly in Formula one. And, you know, he presented a great opportunity for me as a coach and really accelerated my learning as a coach to. To help create. I would try to summarize and get out really, like you say, what was the title of the role and what it was. It was sort of helping cultivate really the best environment for Max to go and be Max behind the wheel of a Formula one car. You know, he didn't need. Certainly didn't need any direction once he sat down in the cockpit or guidance. The interesting thing with Formula one is it's such a big circus. So many inputs from inputs into Max, but into the whole team as well. So the challenge had to be sort of when would I come in and then when would I take my opportunities to have conversations. So, yeah, performance Coach was the title, like I say, first and foremost grounded in his physical performance. You know, Max has to get through a Formula one season fit and healthy. He has to be able to compete in every race. He has to get through the race well and efficiently so that he's still sharp and able to make decisions under intense pressure in pretty extreme environments. I would sort of class for one on reallys almost. Well, as an extreme sport, certainly a high speed, high octane extreme sport. And so making the environment over a 12 month, 11 month season, making that as optimal as possible, as consistently as possible was primary role.

Well, I guess the interesting thing that people probably be surprised about is I know you'd said that you didn't actually know anything about motorsport or specifically Formula One before you, before you took the role. So can you tell us a bit about that and how it was that you became to be his performance coach?

Yeah, so I, yeah, that's. That's absolutely right. I, I wasn't really a Formula one fan. As a big sports fan, I think I'd. I'd watch the first, you know, the start, first few laps of a race. Occasionally if I walked into the living room and it happened to be Arnold and I'd watch the last few laps of a race and heard of Lewis Hamilton and Jensen Button and all the old famous names. But, but that, that was probably. And it was 2014. I was working for Jersey Rugby Club at the time in the championship and living in the Channel Islands, which was great and a good experience in itself. Moving from London and I just chucked my hat in the ring for. On an old Facebook group, university Facebook group. This role came up. Performance coach for junior Red Bull drivers. And I was like, that sounds cool. And as a sort of. I was, I was, at the time I was in rugby and I was a strength conditioning coach and I, and I was very clear at the time, I was like, right, I'm just going to go all the way to the top in strength conditioning for rugby. I'm going to work for England rugby and it's going to be great and I'm just going to do that and get to the, get to the top of that. But I'd always wanted to sort of diverse and a lot of coaches even in rugby and guys who were head of performance and this ties onto a little bit of the sort of personal development side and of myself, I sort of thought, well that sounds bloody great. You know, the head of performance somewhere. The head of performance of England rugby, the head of points there. It's got that kudos and that's it be seen to be really great. So I thought, okay, well maybe I need to go do something a little bit out of left field and throwing my hat into the ring for this initial job. Junior performance coach for junior Red Bull drivers was that opportunity and I got sort of flatline rejected from that. He's now a very good friend and.

Because what's the reason why.

The reason why I sent my cv and that was exactly the question that was probably the moment that really made the difference of if I got the role or not, because I got this sort of fairly typical rejection email through and I very nearly just kind of settled on that and thought, yeah, okay, fine, I love where I am, I love my job, I love rugby, it's not a problem. But then I just simply asked the question why? And just kind of nagged a little bit because I wanted a bit more detail or even I sort of thought, this is the right thing to do. You've got to, you've got to ask why, haven't you? And the answer I got back was at the time my, my role and my sort of expression on paper was very strength, conditioning based, so sort of very sports sciencey and just that. And the role, as I later came to learn, but also the guy who was sending me this email is now a good friend kind of said, you know, that's, it's not really that type of world. Yes, there is a bit of strength, conditioning and sort of essential sports science. But then beyond that, the role doesn't require that, it doesn't require this very sort of heavily objective sports science focus. And at the time I was like, okay, well, I think actually I sort of thought, well, I think my strengths do lie in the, in the personal side of it, more so than sports science. And I think if anyone see my Excel skills or sort of data analytics skills, they could vouch for that. Yeah, they probably could. And so, so I nagged him again and I said, well, look, let's. He said, if this role is something you'd be interested in, you know, I'll keep you posted if anything comes up. Now in that meantime, and that meantime was about 10, 12 months. We kept in contact the old coffee in London and eventually said, look, I can see actually you have a bit more of an understanding of that personal side of coaching and of performance. So I'll keep you posted if anything comes up. And like I say, 10, 12 months went by and this was coming to the end of 2014. And then I got a call from Stu at the time, Stuart Smith, good friend and he's also a really good performance coach and was a bit of a sort of mentor to me as I got into that world of Formula one. He called me up and said, right, Red Bull have just signed this kid Max Verstappen as the youngest Formula one driver in history. I was like, red, right? He said, have you heard of him? And I said, no. They said, oh, his dad used to be a Formula one driver as well. Maybe you've Heard of him. Jos. Jos. I said, no, sorry. And they said, well, okay. And so straight away, you're thinking, well, Red Bull racing, youngest Formula one driver in history. That's a pretty big tagline as it is. So I said, well, there's got to be maybe something a little bit about this kit. So I said, yeah, okay, I'm interested. And then it went from there, really. The sort of first part was. Yeah, the very first part was to go out and meet Max and his family manager. And that was if. I said that was the sort of final part of the interview is really just to see, right, can you establish some chemistry and essential rapport in a very, very short time with a kid? And, I mean, he just turned 17 at the time. You know, different nationality, completely different background, sporting background, you know, I was 29, I want to say, yeah, 29 at the time, and 29, 28. And so. And just came and it's like, right, is there chemistry here? Rapport? And you. And you've got to kind of think, could you be friends with this? Different roles before in rugby and when I started working in rugby, there's always that coach, player line which you try and establish and keep and doesn't get blurred. Certainly the intention is for it not to be blurred too often. That may have changed now, I think, as well, in some sports, actually, this sort of. Yeah, keep it quite sort of disciplined, and one day you're gonna have to give them a bollocking. So, you know, when I moved to Jersey, I moved there, I didn't know anyone. And I was a very young sort of strength conditioning coach at the time. My first role on my own, and all the other players were my age also, just moved to the island and sort of. We'd finish a week's training, they'd be like, right, Jake, we're going to the beach, have a barbecue now. And it's like, well, was I realistically going to take myself off and sit at home, my own, and go for a windy walk on a cliff top on my own? Probably not. So I sort of, you know, I was sort of practiced and a bit versed in, in performance relationships where you can be a friend and if you. If you. If you get the relationship right and if you get the honesty right, that they behave, they react and respect and respond to you, when you actually then got your professional hat on, you are having to be firmer, more direct, more honest and holding some more accounts. So, yeah, so I felt confident going into it. And after that day and a Half with max, end of 2014. I was flying back to Jersey at the time, and I got a phone call from him a bit later that evening, or a text. I think it was just saying, yeah, Jake, I've sort of just let you know, I've decided I'd like to sort of press on with you and I'd like to go with you and take this forward with you. So, yeah, that was that. And then, so end of 2014, left Jersey, did a little. We had our last. Had our last game before the Christmas break. Leeds at home, it was. And I did a little speech to the team in the dressing room at the end of the game saying I was leaving and I couldn't believe I lost it. And I started blubbering. I started blubbering, right, I'm off, boys. And, yeah, thanks for all the time. And so that was. But that was good. But that's, I think, indicative of the sort of relationships and rapport I had with a group of mates and players that you built up with. And I started in 2015 and jumped on the. Jumped on the circus. And how would that.

When you first started, I mean, what kind of form would that take, your work? Were you primarily at a distance or did you have to be with him all the time? Because there's a lot of traveling involved.

There is. There's a hell of a lot of traveling. And in my first year, not really kind of knowing the lay of the land. Max also being, you know, incredibly young, still a young guy now, but, you know, really young, then I thought, right, I've got a. Because the company that I was subcontracted for at the time, Hinser. Hinser Performance, they're a Finnish sort of wellbeing company, corporate wellbeing company, and they use sort of Formula One, their shop window and testing ground, their coaching practice and things like that. The impression I was able, right, you got to move to. You have to move to the Netherlands. You got to live with your driver. And I was like, okay. Sort of at the time I was in Jersey on my own. So I was thought, yeah, great, I'll move wherever. It turns out it wasn't the Netherlands, which doesn't necessarily mean I thought Amsterdam straight away, it was Belgium. It was in a little town called Mosaic, which is on the Dutch, Belgium border, which sort of, yeah, for any people from that area, it's pretty quiet and it's pretty rural. So I sort of dropped myself in there, renting an apartment just around the corner from Max's father's house. Where he was living at the time hadn't made the big move to Monaco yet as these drivers tend to do so. And that was my thinking was I've got to be with this. If there's an event, if the race team have an event, I've got to go with him to it. I'm going to go around this house lots. I'm going to sort of show him my edge. You came in the kitchen and he's going to sort of buy into it. And it's so it's changed dramatically because I thought beforehand working in rugby you're looking after your programming and you're managing the health and fitness and performance of sort of 36 rugby players and the workload and any strength condition coach who's gone through sort of championship sport or not quite top level sport would tell you the workload actually is massive. And you know, performance teams or strength conditioning teams, physio teams are maybe one or two man sort of bands. So you're crossing over and taking on a vast amount of work and it's sort of long, long hours and then you go and look after just one guy and. But then, and that's where then the start really. And my first year I probably didn't quite realize my eyes weren't quite open to it, but it was the start of probably my development most as a coach because of the environment I'd chosen to put myself in and the individual that I was sort of working with. It was yeah, one guy. So people think, oh, and this is great. And I think it was, it was maybe one of my answers to your questions was I thought, right, this is, this feels a bit different because I was working in championship rugby and I moved to this job, I had a pay increase so I thought, okay, great. No one would always turn their nose up at that. But at first I struggled with it. The first six months, the sort of having this perceived kind of initial lots of free time, I. And I was getting paid a bit more. So from a very superficial point of view I thought, hang on, why do I not feel quite yet into this and I am missing something. I'm missing the opportunity that I'm not taking yet. I'm getting paid more, I've got more free time. That's the dream, isn't it? And as I saw the realization, I learned it wasn't so yeah, that was the big change for me.

Did you, I guess also going from working with a big group of, you know, guys playing sport and I'm experiencing a part of that myself. There's a lot of banter around and it's always very lively. So then going to somewhere very quiet and working with just one person.

Yeah.

How did you find that? How do you navigate the change from being, I guess, uber busy to having more of that downtime?

Yeah, yeah. Like I said, I found it difficult initially and that was my own part of that was my own doing because I'd changed and stepped into this role and this different sport. And kind of naively I was comparing it all to rugby. I was comparing it to a sport I'd not played all my life, not to a serious level, but played all my life, been involved with all that life. The individuals, the families involved, the kind of the way you build your weekend around sport on the telly, rugby on the telly in the weekend. So yeah, so I was always looking over my shoulder comparing it to rugby, comparing sort of trying to get used to racing drivers and get used to their mentality, get used to the language and the kind of feel and the culture. And culture in this sense by just the behaviors and the sort of the feel of it all. When Max first started, he was with Toro Rosso, which is kind of Red Bull's second team, if you like, or sort of Gina team, Italian based team, and not that sort of being around. I was born in Italy, my mother's Spanish, my mother was English, so that wasn't a thing. But just in terms of being in an alien environment in a sporting context and sort of going, well, how do I become effective here and validate here and then in a team where, you know, it's kind of broken English and broken language and being sort of far away from home. So that was, that was a lot to sort of adapt to at first, but. And once I sort of released that and going, look, this isn't. Yeah, am I okay with this? This isn't a kind of, you know, I train all the time and from a very gym based environment. You know, there's not many people that love going to the gym. Probably rugby players and crossfitters and sort of bodybuilders who love going to the gym. You have to. Most of the people can't stand the places, which I totally understand. But at the time I've sort of grown up with that. It took a bit of getting used to. So you had to. So that's where I. The start of the role. Whilst I was there to say, you know, I say, I wouldn't say I was sort of directly mentoring Max. Max certainly wouldn't say, like, you know, yeah, Jake's my mentor. He would say, yeah, he's my trainer. I was really. The mentoring started with Max, with me, largely, and that's really what. Then where I got to. After probably the first 12, 18 months, I took a little look into starting to understand myself a bit better. I got an external coach to coach me, to realise how I could be more effective in the conversations I was having and the way we spoke, because that was probably. That was. That's the significant part of the role. You asked me earlier, Anthony, sort of, what was the title of the role? The title of the role is Performing Performance Coach. And it's great when I've, you know, the role itself as well. You mentioned Formula One, Rebel racing. People want to hear about it. And it's. And it's. And it's really. It's a real privilege. And people are excited, you know, hear about the world of Formula One and then guys who have kind of been in either coaching or personal training or strength conditioning, they're like, what do you do with a driver and how does that work and what does that role look like from a performance point of view? And I suppose if I'd have just said, well, my role is to try and have better conversations, not just with Max, but the people really closely involved in that is the majority of the role. Now, that doesn't sound particularly sexy or blockbuster, like, as a performance coach, what you do. I really try and have better conversations with someone. That's it. Physical training, traveling around the world, the competition, they give you the inlets, they give you the opportunities. And so. And, you know, even, I'm sure, like yourself, you've got. You got a lot of questions prior to this podcast of former Encham, probably a lot of them may be from the Netherlands. I don't know if you sort of spotted, but. And that. And that's. And that's, you know, and even for me now, as a new kind of business owner, I'm fully aware that, you know, my, you know, my great opportunity has been the individual I've worked with, the team I've worked with. It's been great. And I, you know, use it say working with this and it's that, but it's the science and art, a little bit of trying to structure and choreograph better conversations over the course of a season. And that's always what I was trying to do, sometimes with better success than others with Max and with the rest of the team, engineers, managers, team principals, was always sometimes sort of ebb and flow but really it all started from opportunities that the competitive environment of Formula One gave to have better opportunities. Whether it was an incident on track that happened between Max and Daniel, I think Baku 2018, when they crashed into each other, took each other out, you know, big, big drama. It's always kind of. And sport does that when something happens, it's kind of this cataclysmic event. And then conversely, when something really good happens, there's the opportunities and pitfalls within that. But I suppose now more than ever, things are getting put into perspective a little bit of. Of what it really means to sort of when the shit hits the fan, I suppose.

Well, on that we've got a couple of questions, certainly that. Because we put it on our Instagram and then I'll invite people to ask questions. But actually one of them was, it was actually about race day. So what is your role or what was your role on race day with Max or any other Formula one driver, if you're working with them?

Yeah. So come the Sunday, the actual race day, Formula One is like a four day sort of starting competition. Thursday is the. Is the media day. And then Friday and Saturday are predominantly practice days with Saturday afternoon being qualifying, which in itself was almost a separate competition and mindset around the competition, which was great. So those your opportunities to get prepped. But come Sunday, I would almost take on at the track, I was, you know, sort of backroom support staff. So you're logistically practically making sure everything's kind of set up for Max to move very smoothly through the day from when he gets out the car to his media when he comes back, from his media to the hospitality. He knows what he's doing with his kit, he knows what time his meal is. I've spoken with the chefs at the start of the week and we've planned out his menu in the Red Bull Hospitality, you get looked after pretty well in terms of a buffet for lunch, dinner. You can eat pretty. You can eat pretty well from a healthy point of view. You can also eat pretty indulgently. I mean, they. Homemade ice cream every race, sort of Nutella ice cream and things like that. And it's just in sort of these fats around there. So. And Max would be the first one to say he finds it a challenge standing in front of a buffet not to go crazy as I would. So that was a big part of it, you know, structuring his meal times and how he felt with his meal times. And then come race day, I mean, the actual pattern of race day was if it was a late race, evening race, sort of think, well, Singapore, very, very different. But an evening race in Bahrain, Abu Dhabi might do something, might do something in the morning, maybe a little loosen off in the gym. This was something that changed and evolved as I went on as. As Max and our relationship sort of developed and Max started to take a bit more ownership of the process himself. So, for example, that on the morning of a race or a morning practice, I'd be like, right now, let's get in the gym, we'll do a real specific loosen off and we'll get your neck fired up and we'll do the switching off. And I had to start weighing up between how much sometimes he wouldn't be up for that versus my thing of going, well, I want to be seen to be doing the right thing and looking like we're doing the right thing. Well, actually, the right thing is probably that he has an extra half hour in bed and he gets up and he's just proper happy. He had in bed and got some room service to the room. Now, is that a performance metric? No, but that is the name of the game. That's the name of the game of Max arriving feeling completely at ease, completely calm and knowing exactly what he has to do at the racetrack. So if he says, nah, Jake, I'll meet you at the car and we'll go straight to the track, I'm fine. And then once you get to the track kit, make sure his driver room's all set up. And then it's just Sunday's probably the day where I'm least sort of walking around doing bits and pieces. If I'm rushing around on a Sunday and sort of looking like I'm really busy, something's something right, something wrong has occurred, really.

So you need to take care of everything beforehand, basically, yeah.

And then it's just ensuring I say, damage limitation notation in certain races are really busy and hospitality would be really busy. So there's a very short walk from Max's driver's room. And in European races, that was in a nice big hospitality and it was a lovely room and everything. In Flyaway races, the further overseas races, that might be a small sort of compartmentalised room in the garage next to the tyres and there's cars like the wheel guns going all the time and it's bloody noisy and you sort of think trying to create a nice Zen environment for him to just be chilled and go, whatever. So sometimes it would fly in the face of it, but generally it was a short walk to the Paddock and then, you know, he'd get ambushed from either press crews or fans in that, in that sort of short walk. And you know, I'm not gonna, I was never really gonna be that training performance coach who would dart in front of, you know, a 12 year old boy who wants Max Arsenal and go.

No, no, no, like a bodyguard.

Yeah. Like you can't disturb him now or you know, get that camera out of face because actually he should be, you know, and Max say, and sorry, I'll try and stick to the point where you're going towards race day. All right. So how that reflects in other instances. But so, yeah, and then. So he's getting to the garage. He's at the garage, he's set up, his helmets and gloves are there and it's. But it's just this. No other sport do you have such a, an intrusion on the performers kind of space, personal sort of space. And right up until the sort of blow of the whistle, if you like to use it, field sport analogy than in Formula one. And we do a warm up, we do a physical warm up in the driver room, a bit of Prep at say 2 o' clock or sorry, 1 o' clock and then. But the lights wouldn't go out in the race car until 10 past 2 or 10 past 3. So nearly, nearly 45 minutes to 50 minutes would pass until he's actually going to compete, you know, physically exert himself and compete. So the, the effect of any warm up you do from a physiological point of view was pretty negligible. But it, what it did establish from a cognitive and mental point of view was rhythm conserving, you know, cognitive space and just starting to get into a mental space where he, you know, he knows what's coming and he can save that for when he's going to be really in a stressful environment in two hours time with five, six laps to go.

Is that also because you're just, you know, for each race you want to get and have a structure and a routine that you follow just so that your preparation before every race is absolutely on point.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And this is where, you know, Max and I, as our relationship developed and the pleasing thing was I think overall any, any S and C coach, performance coach was, or in my opinion believe should ultimately get to a point where they are making themselves redundant. That's kind of what we want eventually just to sort of, for that, for your drive to sort of graduate, for him to really just own his process. And Max and I would have some great conversations about It. And Max, he's. And I think all athletes are actually very, very intelligent individuals. They sometimes, I think because they sports, whether they're footballers, rugby players, tennis, most sports drivers, you know, being so single minded, they sometimes get thought, but you have some great discussions with them. And Max said, look, I agree, like, yes, most of the time we want this preparation to be like this. And we had a thing, I was quite sort of particular about 30 minutes, 20 minutes before you get in the car. There's no, there's just no, there's no distraction, there's no, there's no, there's no sort of input. You know, you've got family coming and going, all this sort of thing. But the way those conversations went, I said, look, help me understand what's going to get you there as well. And I think he'd say, well, if one race weekend that doesn't happen or I don't get this, it's got to be okay, I don't have to think like, oh God, I didn't do, I was late to do my lie down exercise or I was late to do that sort of preparation or we went a different way or we forgot to do it. Doesn't throw anything off. Yeah, I think that's actually a great, great strength of his. And so me then going, okay, I've understood that, you know, kind of, you know, if I'm to, you know, seek first to understand, really then just kind of try and get my point across, we can help make that the case. And I'll spot when there's opportunities and I'd say, look, do you want to do this? Or look, we forgot to do this. But you're right, you know, you feel it doesn't matter. And he's like, absolutely not. Whereas if it's like, oh shit, we haven't done that, what then everything starts to unravel.

Just going to add to his kind of the load on his mind at.

The time, you know. Now in business and in sports certainly they want players to sort of adapt in the moment and just be in the moment and be fluid in their thinking and responsive and sort of just be able to handle what comes of them. And so in practice sessions, and that's always great, like come Sunday, yes, we'd normally have things nailed down and we'd stick to them. But on the Thursday or the Friday, sometimes we take a relaxed approach and from an outside point of view that could be seen as maybe a bit lackadaisical or just a little bit, oh, you've been quite sort of chilled or whatever. But actually they're the opportunities where we're practicing just not being, being okay with being sort of here and now and not having to be so, so regimented and boxed in by your thinking, your approach because, you know, come the lights out then, you know, anything could happen. And often, often he'd respond well to it.

Well, I guess you've, you've brought me nicely onto the point, which I think, you know, for, for any of the people listening, the average sports person that we know, important for preparation, it's important to be trained well and have the right mindset, but they're not in danger of dying whilst they're performing and how, I mean that goes to any time they're in the car, I guess, whether it's, you know, it's the actual race day or qualifying or pre qualifying warm up, etc. So how would you work with a guy on them being okay about. And they all know that obviously there's that huge risk every time they get in the car.

Car. Yeah, it's a good, it's a good question, I don't think.

Yeah.

And you know, that's a sense. It's an extreme sport. It's up there with big wave surfing. The reality is they could kill, I think, you know, any event where you've involved high speed, mother nature or an animal. I think they're probably sort of up there with the three sports that, you know, pretty, pretty bloody dangerous. And it was Spa last year in an F2 race a young guy lost his life in. Yeah, it was one of the races of the weekend on the Saturday going up a rouge famous corner at Spa Circuit. Spa Frank Champ circuit. And right away it was live on tv. It was covered in the Netflix documentary Drive to Survive this season two and horrific event. And straight away, everyone in paddock news, something bad had happened. And as it turned out, sadly, tragically, this lad, Antoine Huber, he lost his life. And the feeling in the paddock was unbelievable. This just weight came through the paddock. Max's teammate at the time was really good friends with this lad and he was pretty distraught. Everyone was feeling. And that's the first time I saw, you could see it definitely affects everyone, drivers, you know, Max, all the sort of names that people think of. You could see it affected them.

Yeah.

And lots of talk about whether people should, the race should have gone ahead the next day. And there's a little bit of this sort of, sort of cavalier spirit, a little bit of like, oh, he's, you know, he's A racer. And this is what he would have wanted for us to go racing. And I sort of understand that. But then I definitely understand as well that, you know, we've been racing the next day. But drivers are very good at compartmentalizing. There's. What's his name? Actually I had a talk, I was at an event a year or so ago, leaders and performance guy called Kevin Dutton. Have you heard of him? Kevin Dutton does work on psychopaths. I think he's from Cambridge Uni and his sort of big interest of area studies, sort of high performance and, and yet psychopathic tendencies. And he did a presentation, start us off with all these questions, you know, what would your answer to this be? And the audience was sort of laughing because there's some questions that are a bit out there. Probably more people wanted to admit to sort of certain answers than others. And if you're kind of on the spectrum, he says, these are, everyone is on the spectrum of having psychopathic tendencies. And I would definitely say racing drivers and elite performance sort of generally could be classed there have, have that kind of coldness that, that need not to get vexed and because for them it is a matter of potentially life and death if they do. That's why I sort of put them this, this. What is a similar effect? When I worked with combat sport athletes and I, when I was learning, working with combat sport athletes, I was having to take part in some of these classes, kickboxing, wrestling, mma. Um, it was ridiculous. And I very quickly realized that combat sport athletes are a type of person. They, they don't mind hitting people in the face, which is quite a thing actually to overcome. They also don't mind getting hit in the face. It's just like, it's like a little brush on the, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't flux racing drivers, high speed athletes, you know, they don't think it excites them and takes, it opens up a level of potential. If we're in the passenger seat of a car that's going over 200 miles an hour, it's like the most terrifying thing in the world and you're saying completely stop this. So that coldness and that ability to compartmentalize, like I say, is what keeps.

Them safe, is that them being in the flow, for want of a better description. Because I guess when they're traveling at that speed, they're not thinking about, I think I'll break here, I'll put my foot on here, I'll do this. It's, it's kind of Just a natural reaction.

It's definitely, they're definitely in the sort of autonomic programs and subconscious program there. That blood is not going to an area of the brain where they can access conscious thought. Definitely not. Maybe, maybe on certain tracks it differs because there's such variation in, in racetracks. There's some racetracks where the straight might be over a kilometer long and actually there they actually a little bit of self talk might come in. They start think about, start thinking too further ahead about the end result, start thinking about the mistake or the incident just happened. But largely some of the tracks they just, they can't, they're not accessing. They're just relying on years and years and years and years and years and repetition. And many of these guys and girls are, are early specialization cases in terms of sport performance. It's a sport that requires huge, huge level of practice and huge. You know Max started go karting when he was 2, 4 years old, this sort of age. And from that point it's just layer upon layer upon layer upon layer of his consciousness of what it feels like to go fast, what it feels like to crash, what it feels like then to get in the car the next day. So that's just built upon that, it just builds upon that experience. So for them to. They'll all say similar things like they can't think about it, they can't think about the danger of them being in danger when they get in the car because if they do then they make a mistake. And I think a lot of sportsmen that I've worked with certainly in rugby, you think about it coming back from a long term injury, the minute you go in to attack or into a situation a little bit less than 100% you will come out of it. That's when you're going to get more likely to get hurt. And does that tap into kind of flow states in these high levels of performance of non thinking time sort of standing still? I think racing does lend itself to that level of performance feeling. Feel is a word that gets used a lot in racing. You know the driver's seat that actually gets put in the car sometimes has fiberglass seat, millimeters of fiberglass to then where it's on the actual floor of the car. Some seats even have little holes cut out on the, on the ass bones of a driver. And some drivers don't have them filled in. So they are literally. Their ass is literally on the floor of, of the. Which is which you don't see on TVs as much but there's massive fibers will take up the length and width of the car. So they can feel what it's like getting into the corner, so they can feel what it's like accelerating out the corner. And that is drivers. One of their big challenges is the way they communicate that and verbalize that feel. To say, a room full of engineers who are looking at data, who are looking at sums and theoretical ideas about what should be happening and what the driver should be feeling. And then again, so this is where then a coaching opportunity is in terms of language, in terms of communication, how effective both the engineers are and both the driver is of relaying that feel and then the engineers to sort of with their objectivity and data and all that sort of stuff understand and relate to that. So, yeah, that's where something. But certainly the sport would lend itself. Long races flow when a car's out in front of. If he's in no man's land. Generally they. The whole classic thing of what are you thinking about? When they're not thinking they are just in highest state of performance and going with the flow, if you like. Absolutely.

That brings me on to one of the next questions, which was actually more personal to you. But the question was, have you been in a car with Jake or another Formula one driver? And if so, what was it like?

So I've not been in a sat. People going, have you sat in the car for us or too big. I've not sat in there, no, no, no, no. I've not sat in the cockpit. I have. I've never got the rounds. I probably. I haven't got beer in my bonnet about it. But he never took me round a track. In some of the races they did a. Yeah, it was called hot laps, I think, for the sort of VIP guests and things like that. They'd come and was either an Aston Martin or a Mercedes and Max and some of the drivers would take them around for az. But I did. I have been in the car, a road car, plenty of times with Max Stapp and if I say we were in Germany on the Autobahn, then I suppose it's all right from a legal perspective. And yeah, there was probably one or two times where I said to him, right, thanks for that, but don't do that with me in a car again.

Where you can do any speed you want.

Yeah, it is, yeah.

And if you're with a Formula one.

Driver, you're asking trouble. Yeah, exactly. And he's, you know, he's got some. He's got some alright motors in his collection now, so, yeah, he has done before, but obviously probably fairly safe with a guy who's pretty handy behind the wheel.

It could be worse, I guess. Well, that I've picked just three of the questions from the ones that got sent was. The other one was, what's the craziest thing you've seen for one track?

Good question. Craziest. I was always, what's craziest things? Well, lots of crazy things there, sort of ridiculous things. The sort of fanfare around is kind of bonkers. And the Texas Grand Prix was always growing and growing and growing each year. And with other. Each new American owners, they try and make it more razzmatazz. So everything from. I think probably, I think it was 2017, Texas, the entrance for the drivers. Normally they do a sort of driver's parade just before they sort of get ready to go in there and the drivers go out there on a bus, go around the track. But this year in Texas, they roped in the announcer from Las Vegas, MGM grand boxing announcer of going, you know, this is.

Yeah, it's the let's get ready to rumble guy.

Let's get ready to rumble. So we had the let's get ready to rumble guy. 20 Formula One racing drivers and. But, but it was, it wasn't just, you know, he was on this stage. We had. They had the stars and stripes laid out. You had Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders sort of, you know, making a tunnel for each of these drivers. I meanwhile, I'm. I'm waterboy at that point. So I'm holding Max's water bottom, you know, water bottle and helmet and kind of waiting backstage just kind of making sure Dallas cheerleaders are alright, they're fine. And then everyone.

It's very good of you.

Yeah, I just, you know, and then, and then walking out and then. But it was just this bonkers sort of thing. And I don't know if it worked or not. I mean, it seemed quite good fun racing drivers. There's, you know, you got Lewis Hamilton rocking down the paddock with his chains and Max will be the first to say that as well. He kind of, you know, each wants to get in the car and drive. And that is absolutely Max. None of this kind of fanfare. So you've got this big announcement, American crowd going crazy. And then one or two drivers. One or two. Daniel Ricciardo is one, who be quite sort of extrovert and like to sort of lap up and have a bit of a laugh with it. But you've got a lot of these other drivers who didn't quite know what to do or handle it. And this boxing announcement coming in, just cheerlead, easy the side and just come out giving a little away. So that was pretty crackers and just bizarre. And then in Texas as well, they weren't shy of pulling in big names for the entertainment with Stevie Wonder one day, Justin Timberlake. So I think it was. The thing I would never get my head around is. Was like. I touched on it before was the kind of intrusion of just madness. And the grid in Monaco, the starting grid in Monaco is a ridiculous spectacle of. I'm sort of elbowing Hugh Grant out the way as I'm sort of trying to walk through there or. And these kind of. You've got these Victoria's Secret models walking away and you just like going, terrible. It's terrible. I know. I'm going, knock every mate. Yeah, maybe I should have touched on that, not getting the money. But in terms of, like. Is this like elite. We're trying to do elite performance here and it's just. It's just crackers.

What's it like then, if you're on the. When they're kind of prepping to get in the car and you have got all the celebrities. I know usually when. Yeah, on the. On the BBC when they used to have. Is it Martin Brundle who would go round and do it, do the grid walk?

Yeah.

But often you'd end up having Naomi Campbell popping in and a few of these random celebs. So for yourself, would you. Would you see them trying to want to speak to Max and would they respect his desire to focus more on the race?

I think. I think if it was kind of a celeb sportsman, they'd sort of be like, yeah, okay, and now. Now that I'm not going to. I'm not going to get above my staging and say, oh, yeah, I held back, you know, Daniel Craig or whatever. I said, no, not. Not yet. Now Daniel. Max is trying to focus.

You got him in the headlock.

That's all right. I wasn't really. I wouldn't really been in that point, like, if. If these, you know, with Red Bull being Red Bull, quite a marked and think, you know, they. The camera crews come in there and Max. And that's an example there of actually Max being comfortable with the flexibility and the fluidity of his thinking and his behavior, actually. And some people would be, like, quite astounded by it. They'd be like, that's just having a laugh and joking and then. But the minute he sits in the car and pulls the visor down. That cold, calculated, you know, risk kind of leaning into risk and just going, bring it on. And I'm not going to get flummoxed by anything would be there but for us sort of mere mortals, we're in the garage going, what is looking around to get screwed. Baku it was like Mariah Carey and some like. And some and her sort of entourage and it was just like, you just get around it and it's mad. So that's always a scene. And the other thing, it happened a lot of races, but it was always an incredible spectacle was the kind of flyovers after the national anthem. You got these A380 jumbo jets flying hundreds of meters above these racetracks and helicopters coming in. And in America it was like this military helicopters, like a scene out of Apocalypse now or something. And so it's just that, that whole kind of razzmat and weirdly by the end, you know, after a few seasons you kind of condition to go, oh yeah, that's cool, that's cool. Yeah. Whereas other people saw it, it's like what is going on here?

It's such a. It sounds like such a crazy world and I guess for us normal guys, unless you've been around that you can't really appreciate what it's like whilst we're actually, let's say to about normal guys now you've moved on to as you said, I know, working perhaps with young race drivers and if we were talking about the strength and conditioning side of it or just their performance, how would you for a guy listening, what kind of simple tips would you give him to start working on his performance? I mean what would you do when a guy walks through the door?

Well, say aspiring racing driver. Yeah. Firstly would just see I think firstly and I've sort of done it start this year with some other younger drivers I'm now working with as well. Historically they don't physically exercise much. I think that has changed a little bit now. And you know, younger drivers, there's kind of driver academies now. So young drivers are sort of starting to take part in knowing that actually there's big, big advantages to be gained in terms of. From their mental performance, concentration of focus, from being superior, more, you know, fitter than their rival. One of the first things I kind of do them is just see what they're like with discomfort where their tolerances on a physical discomfort place now and that's not just. I'd give them a flogging but you kind of need to see A little bit like what their threshold is like again. And that leaves us a big opportunity of having a different conversation. But neck assessments, neck and kind of shoulder assessments, they got to be kind of slim, lean and strong. So I work with a colleague who has a pretty thorough neck and shoulder assessment with a bit of kit and just get some base physiology testing done. Would I say it has to be really specific? No, because there isn't, there isn't a yet a specific driver fitness kind of test that's being. It's not like. And so if your preference was to do a VO2 max test, if your preference was to do some lactate threshold testing, it wouldn't necessarily be wrong. You'll get some good information. So that's firstly what I would do as well because we need to start making the training, their cardiovascular work specific to them. And once you've got that, you've got a good foundation to take them onto more specific forms of training such as heat stress. That's a big area actually that drivers become superior in dealing with. Most of the time the races are in warm, hot climates. Singapore, Malaysia, it's 38, 36 degrees and it's 50, 60 degrees in the cockpit, 70% humidity. Singapore is a two hour race. So it's a very unique, it's a very unique sort of skill of physical conditioning skill that they have in terms of a sports science backed, research backed, sort of lots of literature. There isn't much out there. So. But, but certainly making sure they have superior and very high level cardiovascular work. So you could. Would it be, would it be. Would I say take a, take a triathletes training program, take a cycle endurance program. It's just so a lot of training is not sports specific and that's a word used in a term used in strength conditioning a lot. Oh yeah. Try and make it as sport specific as possible, but the minute you're not doing a sport, it's arguably not sport specific. But in driving, yeah, you're even more removed from that. And these guys can't practice their sport either in Formula one less so some of the drivers I work with now compete in different categories, Porsche Supercup, things like that. And they have few more testing days and your ability to go in a similar type car, have some hours at a racetrack is more possible than say taking. You can't go and take even drivers, some drivers can, who have contacts and extreme wealth to hire a racetrack and an old Formula one car for a bit. But these guys can't go and practice their sport and that's one of the challenges with the role and with the application of sports science and strength and conditioning science in the role is they can't go and practice their sport, they can't put their boots on and go and take some pot shots at goal or things like that, like rugby kick can do or a footballer can do or a cyclist can do. So making their sport, they've just got to, they've got to be, they've got to have very good general fitness, overall fitness, some specific areas, neck and shoulder and core. Definitely older racing drivers, tire drivers do suffer with sort of disc problems in their spine because of the compression in the G forces, the cumulative G forces over a, over a career, that is a concern. So as healthy as you can be through your hips and your shoulders and your neck is definitely a strong suit. But first port of call, someone wants to me is say, well, what's your general conditioning like? What's your sort of base level like? What's your tolerance to discomfort and heat stress? Because that's what you're going to be exposed to. And then you sort of see the tantrums or sulking comes out and it's fine. But then that's the opportunity there. So, so yeah, it's. They've got to be really, they've got to be really elite generalists. Yeah, you can say, can't. You can say, yeah, okay, neck and conditioning. And then, and then it's trying to quantify, which is very difficult, the sort of cognitive capacity. And people say, well, what do you do? Like for their mental training, there are skills based exercises. You can do hand, eye coordination stuff. Juggling is a great one. And then, and then, yeah, more coordination based, reaction based skills. But you know, reaction training predominantly is genetically predisposed anyway. You can, you can optimize, you can just optimize what you've got. Can you dramatically improve your reactions? There's, there's no. I don't think so. But you can definitely. With what, with the bandwidth you've got, you can be operating a poor level or a good level of what you've got.

So much isn't there. Just think there's so much I guess you have to cover. And actually we had one or two more questions that were more technical, but it might be that we'll ask you those on Instagram and then we can share them on there. But I was going to ask you then about the reason we kind of are on this call is because we ended up with you kindly speaking at one of our whole man Academy events.

Yeah.

And what brought you. No, let's rephrase the question. What brought the Holman Academy to your attention? And what was it about it that kind of you thought was a, you know, was an important part of coming along to speak?

Yeah. So firstly it was, it was actually a friend's mother said oh look, you should check out Hallman Academy because she's a yoga instructor and personal development kind of coach, a little bit on the spiritual side as well. But she said, yeah, check out this whole man Academy, do really good things. And that's when I first sort of looked you guys up and seeing the nature of your events, guys getting together, talking about a little bit about male identity. But it was particularly any thought there was a slant of kind of career and job performance and aspiration. And it's just that I had, I was going through and I was right in the middle of that time when we made contact. Anthony, I had like to say just decided to step away from doing Formula one for a few reasons, but one was actually taking the plunge and going right, I can, I can sort of do this on my own and all those kind of feelings that doing this podcast, like okay, actually yeah, no, I can do this. And there's definitely, I would like to see if what I've experienced can contribute in another way to the performance outside of a sports result, outside of a race, result of a rugby result outside of a fight, whatever it might be. And that's it. And then I saw your sort of events and it was, I know you guys, the events. Every time I'd seen them on Instagram, I told them once again, oh yeah, come to this event. And I was like eh. And then I was like next time I was like well what, what if I maybe I want to start just another thing. And this taps into some of the questions I know that we've spoken about is like yeah, I want to develop myself, I want to see if I can talk to a group of guys and a nice environment is like a group of guys who are sort of just really understanding that and like minded. And I think that's the, I think that's the attraction certainly for your listeners, for your followers, for your subscribers, for, for the guys that have spoken at your events is that actually there's, there's, there's, there's, there's value to be seen in all sorts of things. And I, and I hope from the conversation we're having today that one or two nuggets that people come away with and listening to some of your podcasts as well. And the conversation I did with Judge Rinder was brilliant and I love listening to him and it's just, yeah, it's just these sort of nuggets that can help us all. And at this particular time it would be. Be good if the frequency which you're certainly contributing to is up there.

So, yeah, my next question really was about that. What was it like for you? I mean, we had obviously Judge Rinder there or Rob as he's actually got a name. I was calling Judge Rinder.

Did I say. I said Judge Rinder.

Did I just call him Judge when you see him? And obviously Charlie King spoke as well from Terry. I spoke to him earlier today actually, just on the joys of WhatsApp. But what was it like for you sitting in front of the group of what we had roughly 25 to 30 guys in that event. And I know I had the joy of interviewing, but what was it like for you sitting up there and answering the questions?

Yeah, it was good and I'm self critical, but like to think I'm reflective on anything I do. And I think it was, I suppose I got my answer really by the fact we all went to the pub afterwards and had a drink and talks then about what we'd all just talked about. And that was that kind of sort of confirmed for me. Like, like, yeah, it was absolutely fine. And did, did I maybe waffle on one or two questions and maybe get a bit nervous? Absolutely. Absolutely right, I did. But, but just there's an engagement there and there's a, there's a, there's a curiosity there and that's the, that's the exciting thing. And to talk to that and talk with that is, is. Was pleasing. So yeah, I found it a good experience and I think with Rob there and Charlie as well, it was kind of like, okay, yeah, there's just in some respects there's such a breadth and difference and then also there's. It's all the same shit.

It's a good point you make there because I think that's the important thing. If you took yourself and Charlie and Rob Rinder, on paper, you're all very different people. One's reality tv, you know, Rob on his daytime tv and you've got the sports performance. But actually in that room, you know, all the guys that came along took important, let's call them, nuggets from all three of you.

Yeah.

And actually having a real mixture of guys in the room I think is part of the fun of it where you might not have ever mixed with those guys and vice versa. Even the guys from the Shake up, you know, who are the men's cosmetics range, you know, they stayed all day and we got a chance to talk to them about men's makeup and cosmetics. It's just. What's the word I'm looking for? Kind of growing your network of interesting chaps to speak to. And whilst we talk about guys, I know we asked you a couple of questions beforehand to kind of meditate on, but one of them was, what have you learned from the men in your life? Now, what we find is sometimes people like, oh, I can't remember what I answered, but I know you said the value of hard work was from your dad, so could you just tell us.

A little bit about that? Yeah, absolutely, I think. Well, yeah, firstly it was sort of passed on my dad, and he is. He's sort of known to my friends. I've got some friends that have never met my dad and yet they. They do impersonations of him because I do impersonations of him from a comical sense of view. But he's kind of, you know, and as I'm sure we've got a parent, he's like, oh, yeah, so. And so dad's a bit of a, you know, quite funny. And when I was younger, it was all the things that would wind me up about him is sort of obsessiveness and his sort of getting up really early, cleaning all his shoes on a Sunday or whatever it might be. All these particular things. When you're young and sort of going through teenage years, you're like, God, that's so sad and pathetic and like, why'd you do that? And then as you get older, you start realizing you're doing exactly the same things. And to later, some of the questions sort of, you know, what is your. What's been a big indicator for your success, whatever. And they kind of go, well, who are these modeled off? And yeah, and then with growing up in, say growing up working in sport for, you know, over a decade now, motivation, discipline and particularly in sports. I've worked in combat sports and rugby, you know, very hard on discipline and kind of these kind of a little bit. These cookie cutter kind of sayings for sort of taglines of, you know, know, yeah, discipline. And discipline equals freedom and all this sort of stuff. And. But, but it, but it is like you can't. You cannot really occasionally can. People can chance it and some things turn out great with a massive stroke of fortune. And I've got a stack of books I'm reading here and they're all coaching books and my dad berates me that I should pick up a novel for God's sake, and I should read some pretty different. But that, that idea of reading really, you can't really get much without hard work and the feeling of fulfillment really is not there when things, when you haven't had to sort of really stretch yourself, when you haven't had to get uncomfortable and when you've not sort of suffered a little bit. And I've got the word suffer on my website actually and I remember when I first put it on there I was like, ooh, is that, should I put the word suffer on there? But I really, really mean it from a control point of view and a kind of functional suffering. But I really think adversity is absolutely essential in some form and that's different for every people. Again, I'm not trying to lose perspective here on what really is true adversity in these times in particular, but it really is an essential ingredient and being able to work through that systematically and, and work hard and not get bored with the hard work. Yeah, that's a test of it. And I talk about, keep referring to sport as it's my large reference point, but I've seen now a breadth of sportsmen and athletes, various different abilities, various different characters and I think say the top ones because all the people I've worked with had their sort of moment of brilliance and moment and greatness relative to where they are, but they all share an ability to not get. Not see the repetition, not see the discipline as sort of monotonous and see it as the grind. They are comfortable with it. Racing drivers are comfortable with the obsession of say sim racing at the moment with sport being really virtual, motorsport is actually probably thriving most in a virtual competitive world because it's actually really taken. But I talked about drivers not being able to practice their craft physically in a virtual world. They do it a lot and they can do it a lot. It would be the equivalent of going out training for a cyclist on a six hour ride and they. Whilst you go, oh yeah, they're sitting down and not. But actually it's completely different. But there's a mental ache and a mental concentration doing daily. And so that kind of that ethic and that understanding of not enjoying the hard work and finding ways to enjoy the hard work was a value that got instilled for me pretty early and I think probably circumstantially as well. I was not academically gifted and I always think I always think of the story of when for my GCSEs for the year before I had to do. My old man would force me to do a GCC pass paper every Saturday morning. I used to hate it and I used to have fun and I used to have so many tantrums and I was just like, I hate it because I was rubbish at it and. And I did it and I still. I passed. Got my gc, but not particularly U grade or anything and. And those kind of things at the time was one example. But yeah, it's kind of taught me that, that I've. You've got to maximize what you've got. And there's good examples in sport, art, music, wherever it is, where you see the. Not necessarily the most highly naturally gifted individual.

Yeah.

Trumping. Trumping someone who has got that sport is littered with cases like that. And it's. You talk about coach coaches, a bit of a cookie cutter, but I always pick work ethic or I'll pick character over talent any day. And maybe I was from a sort of. From an academic point of view, I certainly felt, well, I'm certainly not gifted in that point of view. So I've got to. I've got to go through the sort of suffering. It's not really suffering doing a GC paper every Saturday morning. But at the time it felt like it was it. Yeah. Oh, God, it actually definitely ticked that box. So. So, yeah, hard work's a big one. And just finding ways to enjoy and this time now actually finding ways to enjoy and be okay with monotony and just sort of continuous thing is a really great skill set that I think whether you're a teacher, coach, leader, trainer, whatever, to come out of it, out of this time would be a big one for.

That's a good point.

I know.

In our previous podcast we spoke to.

A chap called Chevy Ruff and he.

Spoke about the importance of being okay with solitude. Yeah. Which was. Which was an interesting one, which we've.

Not touched on before.

One of the other questions we asked was about what one personal habit or daily routine has contributed most to your success.

Yeah. Yeah. I remember answering this one. And I sort of thought. I don't want to just say doing exercise, I thought, obviously. But coming from a. Coming from a personal training point of view, originally playing lots of sports when I was younger, it's hard for me to look beyond that. But the impact it has on your state and from a coaching point of view, personal development point of view, communication point of view, understanding how it impacts that mental, physical, emotional energy around you, how that can impact your relationships, working and personal. It's hard for me to look beyond a quick win of shifting that, that physical state. I did it before this podcast because I actually sort of went out for a walk with my girlfriend this morning. But I did a bit of work this morning, but I wasn't quite feeling energized and wasn't quite feeling sharp and wanting to contribute positively to this next to this discussion. I just thought, okay, go and go and change state. I was like, I really can't be asked. I was like, I know it's going to impact me in a way that will just, is just unfounded. And so that's. So it's hard for me to look beyond physical exercise, any form of it, you know, and from whether it's the, you know, the people starting moving, getting off the sofa with some Joe Wicks or this sort of, you know, elite athlete, any everything in between, whether it's walk in the morning for 10 minutes, it's hard to look beyond that. I think, I think being aware of your physical state, emotional and mental state and what impacts it is a quick win if you can understand that and understanding that all communication is state based. So for me it's physical exercise, I know impacts my state in a, in a big way. My coach, I work with call me a state junkie. I'm so sort of like, I'm so my, my mood and emotion and inner chatter is, is, is largely dictated by my state and I get quick wins and momentum from, from exercise. So for me it's hard to look beyond where it's 5 minutes, 10 minutes or an hour's slog.

Whatever it is, it's important because I think there's two points here. One was that one. One of the events we had, which is quite early on in the whole man academy, we had a group of guys who were either involved with yoga or Fitness and TRX experts, etc. And we spoke a lot about the importance of physical exercise. And I appreciate that one or two of the guys that spoke to us after said, you know what, I find it hard to listen to because I don't like doing gym and sports. And, and our point was, and you just said it's not necessarily saying you need to be doing weights or running, but you say is it just going for a walk or is it, you know, it sounds, might sound odd but literally putting on a track that you like, like music and jumping out of the room to it. It's just Doing something that gets the blood pumping and gets the body moving.

Yeah. And it can be listening to a piece of music. And the question I sort of, you know, and rightly so. And it's just that I didn't want to kind of say, oh, personal trainer, you know, doing some bench press before I have my cornflakes or whatever. But the question I sort of asked back to that, you know, individual would be, well, what, what's the consequence of, you know, can you do nothing? And what's the consequence of doing nothing? And whilst that is a fair, valid point, it's like the thought of doing. Excellent thought of doing that. You know, everyone's bloody jogging now, everyone's on Strava. But what is the consequence of doing nothing? Is doing nothing an option? And then, and then he'd open up into hopefully another form of conversation. We'd actually go, well, yeah, well, you know, and that's a strategy. And it's a strategy that he's running and maybe. And you dig a bit deeper into his point of going, I hate, you know, I hate, I hate it. I can't do that thought. The thought of it and actually the language that he uses there actually is your realization that, well, hang on a minute, there's a big, there's a big opportunity for him there because he's just saying the thought of it. So we just need to look at, is it, is it actually doing it? Do you realize the impact of doing it? Do you realize the impact of not doing it? And is it a thinking thing or a feeling? How does he know that to be true in his experience or just his thinking? And I think that's the big difference. And I would see that in, I'd see that in sports. I've dealt with sort of, you know, a non compliant athlete or a sort of rebellious athlete. Definitely put Max in that category. And that's why he's great and that's why he is who he is. Brilliant. And one of the ways I would, and I've had it in rugby and other individuals and they say to me, I don't like that or you know, I've never do this, I don't want to do it, or this doesn't work, or I don't know, all this sort of resistance, resistance, resistance. And again, resistance is good. It means I can look at my own communication because if I'm getting resistance, probably my communication is not. But that thing of going, yeah, I know, I don't like this. Probably they're just, they are create, they're not always but they're. There's a good chance they're creating a good story for themselves and creating this thinking that is stopping them doing it for a reason with a positive intention behind it that stops them from doing it but it less likely that it's their actual real thing stopping them from. From doing it.

I think you said it's that it's the thinking that's usually the thing that's stopping them. And that leads us on to the other question. And the last question was what one piece of advice would you give to a man so he can do life better?

Yeah, I thought about and I really like these questions that came through because I sort of, you know, wholeman academy starting these podcasts and you're learning these podcasts and I thought, I thought this is cool. This is like a sort of Tim Ferriss type thing. And I'm like okay. And I've enjoyed listening to answers that people are kind of like, not this grand philosophical thing but maybe try and lean into that a little bit. And I started. So I try and answer in two ways. One, if we're staying down the physical way, leading the States, I think I answered do more press ups. Yep. And I sort of various other coaches I follow and physical trains to follow and there's even a study on life expectancy and press ups and things like that. But I'm probably understanding the way those studies are done. It's people who do more press ups tend to probably look after themselves a little bit better. So do more press ups. Really, really simple military based exercise. But core, lower back, you're going to look better with your top off. There's a touch of vanity there which I think we can all speak to. It's not a bad thing. So do more press ups. Great way to charge morning and change your state straight away.

Yeah. Don't need any exercise, don't need any space.

Definitely not. If you can't do in full you can do it for your knees but you can start and if you thought of it as hard, you can do five press ups every morning. You can do 10 press ups every morning. Absolutely you can. Before you get in the shower. I was doing this and I was thinking can I put that? That's not so grand flexible. But I actually, I've been doing it. I always say I'll try and do it every morning. Since the lockdown I've been doing it more consistently probably five, six, six, six days a week doing. And I'm just like yes. And that's the thing. And don't miss twice one morning. I won't do it. And that's fine. I think it's James Clear. There's like this psychologist and behavioral psychologist who. Was this book actually called Behave? No, it wasn't called Behave Habits. Atomic Habits is a great book. He's like, look, whatever you do, life's gonna get in the way sometimes. But just really try not to miss twice. So on your calendar if you, if you're in this time that we're in now and you're like, yeah, okay, I've been trying to do these better habits or good habits actually mark them down. We don't do that enough for anything as little as making the bed or tying the room before we go out or doing press ups or going for a walk. Tick it off and visually see it every time you do it. And then when you start to see, oh, I miss one morning, that's also no need to go mental and, and think that's a disaster. Just try not beat yourself up. Yeah, just try not to do it twice in a row. If you go twice in a row, that's when it's then just far easier to miss it three times in a row, four times in a row before you and then you're not doing it. So don't miss twice and do more press ups. And the other one which was probably a bit more behavioral and a bit more coachy and just speaking of my own experience and understanding my sort of personality a bit more was my area for sort of growth and development is challenging. What I sort of not being as agreeable, not being as not saying no a bit more.

Yeah.

And the opportunity now is, I think I put my answer was a way of sort of micro practice little opportunities to work against instinctive resistance. So that might. So it's the classic thing of. And now we're in households with our families with sort of other people's families that we're in really good little opportunities to micro practice sort of rocking the boat and then dealing with whatever comes about of it. I think it's sort of, there's a, you know, talk about sort of anxiety and in a chatter and thinking, worst case scenario we will tend, we tend to sort of do that but actually trusting yourself and going, look, I'll rock the boat temporarily because I'm going to be a bit. It's not being selfish but it is, it is just being true for you in a moment. And they often happen in discussions or has to be conflict, conflicts things arise, say what you want to say and Be direct with it and then deal with the, and then deal with the consequences. You adult, you can trust yourself to navigate a conversation. Well, I think from a work point of view, whether in business relationship point of view and coaching I spoke about probably summarizing my role was in formula one was having better conversations. Not a real glamorous blockbuster tagline, but in a way that kind of was it. So that's going to help your relationships, you know, tenfold if you can have better conversations and the way we are. But often those better conversations come from the things we instinctively don't want to say in the moment. Really nice time now with lockdown, with parents, girlfriends, brothers, sisters, family politics. Just test the waters in small levels. You know, I'm not saying go for a social hand grenade in the the dining room table tonight, but just have some, have some frank discussion, say something quite direct and blunt and then that's, you know, the more you move into that resistance and lean into that resistance, that's your areas for growth and having sacrificing short term peace of mind for the real relationships that you want to have. I guess that that's the way to summarize my point there and probably from the long answer to it, how does better life be okay with sacrificing short term peace of mind for the relationships you really want to have and do more press ups?

Well, that's the thing you said about, you know, being practice being disliked. And I guess in a way that's, it's a bit of getting out of your comfort zone. And even for us doing the podcast and we're probably, we're going to speak to a huge range of people and you're probably, when people listen to it, going to hear suggestions or things maybe they don't like. But realizing, you know, that's, that's it's okay being, going against the grain of what other people think. As long as you kind of believe in what you're talking about, I think we're going to see that a lot. And again, I guess I should acknowledge you because for all the people that come on the podcast, we know that being on social media or on the airwaves in any way, shape or form leaves you open to usually people challenging you about your knowledge. It's not often we find that people come and say what a great job you've done. They'll come on to tell you what you got wrong.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

So it's been good to hear and especially also just to understand that world of formula one because you know, for all of us, we just. Even if you watch it on tv, you can't understand what the circus is like when you're. When you're in the belly of it.

Yeah, no, it is, it is. It is as I'd often described as a circus. It's great. And, you know, I love my time there. I was very, very lucky to be with the driver I was with and with the team I was with. And, yeah, it's complete bonkers. And yet in there, there is definitely. It is a. I think there's everything there's is not as what it seems on the tv. There's real, real high performance and cutting edge there alongside just absolute, just sort of madness. Because I think, I think. And sometimes you're thinking, what is that? Is that Formula One? Or is it. Is this just craziness? Because they've got to accommodate just so much and so much can sometimes get clouded. But no, it's. It's been probably my. It's been the learning ground. And I didn't, I didn't certainly know my first year. You talked about that first year, how to deal with it at the time. I was like. I was like, oh, no, what have I done? I think maybe I should. Maybe I should sort of go back to, you know, what I know a bit more little to know. I sort of. It set me on a path to be actually getting into this form of my career now that I want to get into and actually opening up my eyes a bit more as to what I can, what it. What it could do for me and what I could learn from it.

What's next for you, Jake?

What is next for me? Next me is I've sort of, as I said, and you very, in your very kind introduction, you kind of said, at the moment, I have this coaching company that is, you know, my recent learning reference is motorsport and it's a very unique niche and I'm very grateful that I've worked in that niche and have a moderate degree of understanding of that role now and the competitors that exist within it. So working with motorsport performance and young drivers and offering performance packages for drivers individually or teams individual, individually. Just recently did a great. I've started working with GP Elite, who are a Dutch race team, nevertheless obviously realized I was reasonably well seen, I suppose, in the Netherlands. So they're a great bunch of guys competing the Porsche super cup and Carrera cup and working with six young drivers there, which is great. And then for me, and then the other kind of intention of my, of my. Of the business is to. Is to have is to do personal development coaching and sort of personal self development for teen individuals. So I'm in the process of upskilling myself more there. I am interested and have been on the receiving end of coaching grounded largely in sort of NLP neuro linguistic programming the understanding of the relationship between body and linguistic language and how that can have an impact in having better conversations and developing myself. So that's the big area for me at the moment and it's a new area for me in terms of working with business people corporates understanding that language and mindset a little bit but as I sort of grow and know a little bit more about about myself in terms of how to get the most out of racing drivers and crossing over in other sports is it how different is that going to be in a corporate setting or another setting in performing arts? I sort of want to chuck myself into more so yeah that's next to me at the moment and then it's seeing whether I need to hopefully not postpone a wedding getting married in September. September which be very cool.

Whereabouts?

Well North Norfolk hopefully. We'll see. We'll see. So they're big things. It's the career development and yeah just fantastic good personal stuff on the side.

Well last question I was trying to remember to ask is how could people get hold of you or what's. I mean we'll put your details in the show notes but if people want to get hobby what's the best way?

Probably a email on my on my website I have a contact page on my website really really easy to find that is WW do three W's there so let's put one yeah. Www.ForceAndGrace.com that is Force and Grace. That's the name of the company I went with at first I had sort of my name as a coaching company but I wanted to maybe have something a little bit different and it spoke to me and it's a little bit. I suppose there's a philosophy behind it but it's a little bit how we learn and have to go through sort of learning, performance and life a bit really you need to apply a bit of force, a bit of grunt at times and we all want to get to a point where we're carrying off a skill carrying off a process and feeling and understanding a little bit more grace, gracefulness, gracious movement but grace in sort of mind and appreciation, gratitude. So that's kind of where the the name came from Force and Grace. I'm at Instagram as well. Akeforce and Grace Akeforce and Grace Sorry, but my website's probably best bet a bit of more background information and a contact email there.

Lovely stuff. Well, we're always on Instagram, so we'll be tagging you on the post and when we publish the pod, we'll send you the link. So just to say thank you once again, because at least we've already spent a whole day with you you on one of our live events. But thanks for spending another hour and a half with us on our pod and hopefully when the world goes back to whatever normal was, we'll see another event very soon.

Sounds awesome and thanks very much. And thanks for the invites. It's been a privilege to talk.

Super thanks. Jake.