Forging Resilience
Join us as we explore experiences and stories to help gain fresh insights into the art of resilience and the true meaning of success.
Whether you're seeking to overcome personal challenges, enhance your leadership skills, or simply navigate life's twists and turns, "Forging Resilience" offers a unique and inspiring perspective for you to apply in your own life.
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Forging Resilience
S3 Ep91 Chris Tombs: Built In The Boring
What if physical performance looked less like punishment and more like momentum? We sit down with performance coach Chris Tombs whose résumé spans World Cup-winning rugby, professional cricket, action sports, and high-performing everyday people to unpack a framework that actually fits a busy life. No biohacking gimmicks, no three-hour sweat marathons just proven habits and smart training that compound.
Chris breaks down the trifecta behind durable results: mobility to move pain-free, aerobic capacity as your energy engine, and strength as your structural chassis. We dig into why consistency beats motivation, how to microdose training on messy days, and the art of finding a volume “sweet spot” that builds you up instead of breaking you down.
Expect practical takeaways like the eight-to-one habit framework sleep, steps, mobility, hydration, protein, training, and one grounding hobby that helps you win more days with less friction. Along the way, Chris shares the behaviours of the truly elite: high standards, integrity, and a relentless commitment to the process so the outcome takes care of itself.
If you want performance for real life more energy, fewer aches, better confidence, and the freedom to say yes to adventure this one’s for you. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs a reset, and leave a review to tell us the one habit you’ll start this week.
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Welcome to Forging Resilience. Real conversations for high performers facing transition. I'm Erin Hill. And join me as I talk with people about challenge change and the adversity they faced in life so we can learn from their experiences, insights, and stories. Today on Forging Resilience, I'm joined by Chris Toomes. Chris has spent over three decades in performance coaching, everything from world-class athletes, athletes to busy, stay-at-home individuals, helping them to stay strong, healthy, and consistent. What I like about Chris and draws me to bring him here today for a conversation is how he cuts through the noise and brings back training to what really works in real-life situations. This is a conversation about sustainable high performance and lessons that we can borrow from sport. Chris, welcome to the show, buddy.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you very much. I appreciate the invitation.
SPEAKER_01:No worries, mate. It's been a while on the cards, as I seem to say to most of my guests, but um uh it's the truth. So Chris, give us a bit about your background, mate, and um what brings us to be speaking today, buddy?
SPEAKER_00:Yep, so I'll give you the quick version because yeah, as you suggested, three decades working in performance sport, human performance specialist, I suppose, with uh, I guess a physical performance bias in my in my past life and now it's much more interdisciplinary. But um, I guess, yeah, started coaching in 1994. Um, I was a personal trainer because strength and conditioning and sort of performance sport angle at that point in time wasn't as kind of um developed as it is now. So I did six or seven years working in London as a personal trainer, which was a brilliant foundation actually, when I look back as uh I had to manage some quite interesting personalities, but also going full circle now in terms of I guess enriching busy people's lives from a health, well-being, and performance perspective. The personal training market was a really good foundation of, I guess, the human side of coaching and managing, like I say, some quite interesting personalities. Um, speculative application for a job in performance sport came off the back of a few years working in that in that sector. Um, privilege to work for Leicester Tigers when England won the Rugby World Cup. So a fair few very, very high-profile players were within that program at the time. So, top lessons learnt about managing again some quite interesting and demanding characters in the best possible sense. Some really, really good lessons, and hopefully, we'll tease some of those out as as we progress through the episode. Um came to Cardiff for various reasons. Um, ended up spending 10 years in Cardiff working with the Cardiff Blues as it was then, um, a multitude of roles from academy physical development through to the senior strength and conditioning coach. Again, pretty privileged and grateful to have managed to develop some of Wales's better players of the last kind of two or three decades. Um, I'm sure I'll name check a few of those as we go as well. Um I was again pretty fortunate to have married an American and explored a bit of the US uh West Coast with the rugby program back in Seattle. Um, what would that be? Mid 2010s. Um, bounced back and forward to America and back for lots of different reasons. Um, worked in professional cricket in the meantime, worked with some action sports athletes, downhill mountain biking, BMX, etc. Um, and then I ended up working for one of these said rugby players in um in Wales, Sam Warburton. He's got an online fitness program called SW7 Academy. I was head of performance with his program for two years. Um and then that was the first time we met. And the long story short, Aaron, would be you and I had a conversation around um my future and where I was going to head. And off the back of that conversation, I made a few inquiries to some of my um extended network around moving from a predominantly online performance services business into another kind of facing or human-facing uh coaching opportunity. And um, yeah, that saw me get out of the online fitness space as a main job and into a um a performance role in the military, which is where I currently work, alongside my online coaching, which I have maintained as a private kind of contractor, servicing anybody from uh young, aspiring athletes through to high-end execs through to international level sports people. So I've got a kind of checkered career, but the the long story short, 30 years in coaching, absolutely thrive in the human element of um performance and and looking after and supporting individuals who've got extraordinary talents and extraordinary kind of, I guess, capabilities in the in the current work that I do.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so yeah, there's that's that's fascinating. There's so much lived experience in being able to draw in those three decodes from those uh different areas as well, mate. And I I'm curious what might be like two or three of those top lessons that you might be able to pull out of the top of the top of your head from from a career with with so many high performers.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I guess I guess the summary three, if you're gonna put me on the spot for three um Jeepers, it the the biggest one is sort of the most unsexy, which is consistency. So in terms of what that really looks like, I think it's um and we'll get into habits, I'm sure, and and behaviors and and values and all those things. I think a lot of people, in my experiences over the last 30 years, are either all in or all out, and there's nothing in between. I think the the best lesson I could probably share around the best athletes, the best performers I've had the the fortunate um, I guess, ability to work with has always been consistency is the main thing, which would be consistency of habits. And I know we're probably fast-forwarding a little bit around habit stacking and what have you, but preparing, having the ability to prepare when some of the things seem so cumbersome and so mundane, and the monotony of performing at the highest level requires you to have week after week after week, tick box, tick box, tick box. I've done this, I've done that, I've done the other. So I think even though you're talking about top three, I actually think consistency is is one, two, and three. It's consistency of it's consistency of your physical preparation, it's consistency when it comes to sports players, of your tactical, your technical, it's consistency with your psychological, it's consistency with your your nutrition habits, it's it's all of those things, and it's when you don't feel like doing it that you're gonna do it anyway. And I think that translates into all of the work I've done across the whole of these three decades, which would be I don't want to train today, but I'm gonna train anyway because this is important. And I think when nobody's looking, that's the best, best thing I can think about. When nobody's looking, you will do the work anyway.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and and and I'm curious then, is is it sometimes okay to show up with low energy and just get done what needs to get done rather than have to do the whole session type of philosophy, or or is it go big or go home?
SPEAKER_00:The former, without a doubt. I mean, this is this is brilliant. So I have this conversation a lot at the moment, and and the and the terminology that's now come out in the kind of modern day um performance space is microdosing. So a great example would be I don't have an hour, and all these people are looking to get out of jail with I don't have an hour, so I'm not gonna bother, versus I've got 20 minutes, what can I do in 20 minutes? Well, I know as a performance coach that chances are if you're over 25, you've got mobility restrictions. So we can do some mobility in 20 minutes. We can actually, I've got a little system called Feel Better in 20 Minutes, which is a basically a mobility flow. It's like a hybrid of yoga and all sorts of other stuff that's going to help you unlock some of those areas of tightness that are typical in most people: ankles, hips, knees, necks, backs, whatever it might be. So you can do something, you can do something positive in 20 minutes. You can also, depending on um what kind of physical condition you're in, and I've done this twice this week because I've had a fairly heavy week. Um, I've done two sessions that would be far from optimal, but actually, from an output standpoint, I've just layered some, I've stacked some bricks. So I've done a 20-minute interval session on a on a rower and a bike. I've done five, one minute on, one minute offs on a rower. I've done five one minute one minute on, one minute off on a bike. 20 minutes, I felt great at the end. I didn't absolutely smash myself to pieces, but I've walked away with a level of accomplishment that I've done something when I might have wanted to do 40 minutes in the gym that day, but I've managed 20. I've actually got something positive out of that, and I've kept that consistency streak going when it comes to just layering good habits day in, day out, week in, week out. And the second one of those was again not having 60 minutes to do my customary sort of second weight training session of the week, but I got 45 minutes in. So I've done 75% of what of what I had kind of planned to do and left the gym feeling bloody great because actually, I'll tell you now, I was actually going to post it on the socials, but I didn't bother. I did I did 12 really, really good work sets, and I think one of the other big lessons that have come out of my coaching career over the last 30 years would be I've answered the sort of consistency piece, but the second thing would be volume has massive implications on either crushing people or getting the sweet spot right where you dose appropriately and you make sustainable, consistent progress over a long, long period of time because you're not breaking people, you're actually giving them a nice, high-quality dose of whatever stimulus that's required, in this case a strength stimulus, where I didn't feel absolutely crushed by the session. I actually left feeling really, really good. But I also know from an accomplishment standpoint, 12 work sets, you working total body is actually for someone of my age, probably just about enough so that I can sustainably recover well from that and go again in a couple of days' time. So I think those two little things are really, really important for me because to your point, showing up week in, week out, and ticking away, I need to think about my long-term health, my long-term well-being, my long-term performance. Mobility is really important, aerobic system is really important, strength's really important. Okay, so yes, I didn't have three hours to kill, but I did 20 minutes of mobility, 20 minutes of aerobic system work. It wasn't necessarily development, but it's holding me where I am, it's not making me regress. And I did a half decent, if not a bet more than half-decent, strength training session. So across those three, those three kind of core pillars of performance that I think are really important, I've ticked the box. And yeah, I haven't come in and gone 100%, 100%, 100%, but it's almost like you've seen these memes or you've seen these posts on social media. 5% feels good today, 20% feels good the next day, 50% feels good the next day. You just keep on showing up and doing that work. And I think there's a few kind of amazing inspirations that I kind of lean on to sort of follow that sort of system, which is yeah, just keep showing up, even if you're not feeling great today. But you still sometimes have to listen to your body, and recovery is also an important pillar of performance, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, definitely. And I think that's an important point that you make there. It's worth stretching and and and and talking about slightly because yeah, I'm not an athlete, and I I sometimes can be drawn to what athletes do. Um you know, or or their their programs or their the the movements that they do and recognise that yeah, I'm not in their position. I don't need to be doing that and nor do I need to be doing the amount of volume or time in the gym that that that that they are as well. Um so yeah, I'm I'm curious then, what's the biggest misconception that you've come across or yeah, in general when when when working with with normal people, average day people that have got lives, jobs, families, commitments when it comes to training and yeah, you make a really good you make a really good point there about trying to copycat athletes, for example.
SPEAKER_00:I think all of us, and and especially as we kind of age and we mature and we have a level of I guess self-awareness, I'm not gonna try to compete with the Instagram generation of 25-year-old elite athletes showcasing the work that they do to prepare for whatever competitions that we're seeing showcased on their on their platforms. Um I think from my perspective, it's well, yeah, the the volume thing is just not applicable for your everyday athlete. And I'll and I'll challenge you and say, yes, you are an athlete, as as the famous Bill Bauman of old Nike fame used to say, if you've got a body, you're an athlete. But I mean, define what athletic kind of requirements you need, but I'm I'm being flippant, but you know, we're all athletes in some respects, but in terms of what our athletic kind of competencies allow us to do, it's going to be very individual and and down to what really interests you. I think you're into your mountain biking, so you know, you are an you are an athlete of sorts, but um sometimes gravity will help you if you're going downhill. But yeah, that's definitely d definitely, and I'd like to talk about it.
SPEAKER_01:But though that's a really interesting point. And do you know what I I think for through some of my um Yeah, Iron Man specifically, for whatever reason, before I was really into mindset and coaching, I I grabbed onto the phrase I am an athlete. And so for those training blocks that I didn't really want to be there, or the the really early morning sessions, I you know, I could convince myself. I pretended, I played, and it's something that I still kind of do today as well, because I do I love my biking, but I also train and I also go to jujitsu as well. So I have to really be be aware of what my body's saying, especially at 46 with lots of little knocks and bangs, um, and what I can and can't do. And just because I did it yesterday doesn't mean I necessarily need to do it today, nor do I need to try and match the 25-year-old in terms of his commitment um levels to the gym or or or family. So yeah, I I'll allow that that that challenge, mate, and I accept it.
SPEAKER_00:Good, good. No, but I mean that's the that's that that is the challenge that we've got to accept, and we've also got to realise it that yeah, it's it is goal-specific, it's very much it's very much individual. Um, it's how much, I guess, importance you place on being healthy, performing well, not just for you, but for your support system, and you are part of a major support system as a family man. So I think those those things keep coming up in my kind of DNA, which would be I do want to be an athlete for life in terms of a level of capability, but it's more it's showing up with good habits to pass down to my kids. So they see dad training, they train all all of my kids, thankfully, are into sports and whichever sports they want to take part in, doesn't really bother me. I just want them to be active people. And if they see dad training, mum training, the habits, the behaviours, the the importance that I place on being physically active. I mean, it's my work as well, so I guess from my perspective, um how I present at work and how I present online is important to me. If I'm going to talk about mindset or consistency or showing up when you don't want to, and I don't do it myself, it's kind of like that, you know, you know, you're telling some lies to not only yourself but to the to the wider, you know, platforms on socials or what have you. But um those those are the things that I think for me are it is very individual, but I think going back to the main core fundamentals, this trifecta that I kind of think about. Like I say, everyone needs a level of mobility for living a pain-free, injury-free, you know. What's the right word? Sorry, I'm stuck here. Um yeah, but basically living a pain-free life. And then, like I said, in terms of like a the analogy of a car, your your engine work, your aerobic system is really, really important for health and longevity and and performance. But and so is the chassis, your strength training, your structural foundation. So that that trifector is applicable to anybody at any age because if you do want to live, and longevity seems to be the big buzzword at the moment, people are trying to anti-age as best they can with not only the hacks, but the the fundamentals, which are those three things. Have good levels of mobility, have a good level of strength, have a good level of aerobic system capacity. But in terms of fitting that into an everyday life, what does that really look like? Well, you as a person have to make sure that you've either got a really well-organised calendar, you've got some level of education, so that if you are time for, i.e., the last examples I gave you, 20 minutes of this, 30 minutes of that, 20 minutes of that, versus I need 10 hours to train for triathlon, or I need 20 hours to train for a triathlon. Well, busy family people, busy business builders, busy anybody have not got necessarily 20 hours to dedicate to training unless they're getting up at half past four in the morning to start their long run, for example. But the the reality is, can we, as an overall general population, feel really good with between three and five hours of training a week? I believe the answer to that question is yes. And then it's about okay, let's bolt on specifics to that. So if you've got a foundational physical capacity or physical capability that aligns with eating well, sleeping well, lifestyle factors, you can be in pretty decent shape to accomplish lots and lots of things with between three and five hours of training a week.
SPEAKER_01:Because if somebody's listening to this and thinking, okay, that's interesting. Um But yeah, especially given that we're recording this that the latter parts of the year and potentially when it comes out in the new year, there'll be people that are gonna make a bit more of a conscious choice about their health, um as often happens at this time of year. If they were to consider one thing of those three, strength, uh um aerobic capacity and mobility, what what where might be the most benefit beneficial place for them to start in general? I know that's quite a broad question.
SPEAKER_00:That's a c that's the cracking typical strength and conditioning coach's response to that would be it depends. So I so there's three things. There's three things to look at here. You're fit, but maybe not strong. And this is just, you know, I'm strong but not fit, and there's someone else who sits in the middle of that. So it it is a classic, it depends. I I personally, and this is just my own goals for the moment, I've always been, because I've worked in strength and power sports, being biased towards strength and power. Always very happy, comfortable, doing my gym training, never really skipping my consistency levels across the year, like minimum three a week. But I know I need to get fitter. So the answer to that question for me would be I need to do more aerobic system work. You might think, shit, actually, I need to do I need to do more strength work. I'm comfortable on the bike, swimming, running, whatever. So you're fit and not strong, I'm strong, not fit. We so we need different things. So it's a really hard the broad brushes, uh oh it for females, let's just chop this up. For females, strength training. No doubt about it. Because a lot of ladies in my experience, HIIT training, um Pilates, broad again, very generalized, um don't necessarily look at strength training as a really, really good anti aging tool, but as a really good metabolic health. Health tool. And I think most men who gravitate towards the gym would happily do their strength work and what have you. And I'd flip-flop that and say probably more aerobic system development work for men in general. But there is it is the any it's the n equals one scenario. Yeah. It really does depend genuinely. But also for all, and it's something that I've literally over the last 30 years seen time and time again from general pop to high-end elite athletes to high-end military personnel, mobility and injury mitigation. That's the missing 15 minutes of a training session consistently. It's I'm time poor. I'm going to skip that bit because I want to get to lifting heavy, sprinting, you know, aerobic system development work. The the mobility piece is massive. It really unlocks so much more of your potential as well. If your ankle range of motion is good, if your hip mobility is good, if you can move your thoracic spine, all of those things make you a much, much more efficient and effective trainer for the big rocks. You want to get you want to be really fit, you want to be really strong, your mobility makes a massive difference. That would be my that would be my kind of if I to nail my colours to the mast, I like hard training. I like hard training, but what the precursor to hard training is always the preparation that goes into that session or that main the bulk of that session. The the movement and integrated movement prep thing is big for me.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and and you've spoken to so many interesting things there, mate. And and for what what jumps out at me as I ask that question is sometimes this can sound really overwhelming for people when they don't when they haven't been training for a while. Um yeah, where do I start? And I think it's almost a little bit like coaching as well, is it's okay to ask for help. It's okay to to get somebody to to guide you. Um and there's a million and one different ways. Um much information out there.
SPEAKER_00:But you mentioned it right at the top of the show, which was cutting through the noise. And I'll take that as a compliment because you said to me that you'd I could I can cut through the noise. And I think one of the biggest challenges all of us have in this particular time in life is how much information and misinformation is out there. And I think it it is really hard. If you're if you're not in the space, we are human performance specialists, that's our SME. We we've lived and breathed it for quite some time, and we can filter the noise and we can filter out the kind of Instagram influencer kind of bullshit versus actually what's important to most people, what's going to move the needle for most people. And some of the things, as we've just alluded to, are just unattainable for the for average Joe, and let's not undermine average Joe. But there's there's people who can run a 220 marathon. They don't grow on trees. They're they're a very, very niche minority of people. And I think comparing yourselves to that, which is what we've talked about previously as well, and being realistic about what we're capable of doing, is literally being savagely good at the fundamentals. And it's a a good friend of mine uses the hashtag built in the boring, which again goes back to this consistency, this doing the work, showing up when you're not really in the mood for it. But that that is so true. If you want sustainable long-term health, well-being, performance, it's just savagely boring, savage fundament, savagely good at fundamentals. The compound first principles, squatting pattern, hinge pattern, pushing, pulling, carrying. You can't deviate too far away from that when it comes to gym sessions. We can see all the snippets of 30-second reels of people doing weird and wonderful stuff. But the squat pattern, the lunging, the hip hinging, the upper body push and pull, the fundamental movement patterns are the fundamental movement patterns. You can't deviate away from that to get sustainable, effective results. It's the same with the aerobic system. You have to have sustainable exposure to heart rates being more than 60 to 80 beats a minute. You just have to. And it's it's nothing more important, there's nothing more uh kind of basic than that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, but you can understand, you can understand. I I know this is important to you because I can tell by by how fast you're speaking and leaning into the camera mate. And I get it, I get it. But you can understand why why some people don't do that or could stay consistent. So my question to you there then is how might they introduce the fun? Give if if doing the boring basics is get what gets the results, surely there's a there's an argument for for making it fun as well. How how how do we go building about building that into our lives or routines?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, interesting. Fun. Is Jeepers, there's a bit of psychology here as well, isn't it? I mean I I get enormous amounts of satisfaction by being physically capable. And yeah, I've never actually I've never been artist before, so this is this is really, really good. Um I guess the fun part for me would be if I want to go and hike tomorrow and it's gonna be a two or three hour kind of hike, I've got the capability to do that. Because my aerobic system and my strength levels are adequate enough for me to kind of go and do that if someone invites me to go. If someone invites me to go to the bike park up the road and go, do you want to go and you know ride for six hours tomorrow? I've got the capability to do that because I've got a sort of physical capability. So I guess the fun the fun comes from having the confidence to know that because of all the training I've done over the years, that actually if you come and ask me to go mountain biking tomorrow, I could say yes, because I know that I can enjoy my physical qualities in a different way. Does that make sense? Yeah. If if Jake, my boy, tells me, Oh, can can we go and like go down the park and play rugby or go one-on-one on the beach and I can smash him into the sand or whatever it might be. My my my capability allows me to actually enjoy the fruits of my labour. I'm trying to kind of come at it from that angle as opposed to the things that I do in the gym allow me then to enjoy things outside of the gym. And I think that's one of the anchors that I've always had, which is actually, yes, it's boring, and it's built in the boring, and I'm happy to show up week in, week out and do these things because for those three reasons: the health benefits, the well-being benefits, and the performance benefits. But the performance might not necessarily manifest itself every week in a specific way. But literally, I do want to go and walk the hills over the weekend. That's for fun. And I know sometimes when you're when you're walking up some of those hills that I walk up, it's not fun until you've accomplished the sort of end of the journey. But that that I guess is where the fun piece comes. But also there is room, there's absolutely room, just going back to the core question. There is room within training to have elements of fun embedded within it, whatever that might be, chucking med balls around, um, challenging yourself to do activities, learning new skills, for example. I think that's where I'm not going to sort of specifically pinpoint CrossFit or HyROX or any of these fancy, uh not fancy, any of these kind of really popular things at the moment. But actually, some of the things that I've learned and pulled out of them is the skill elements of conditioning and training. So I know HyROX needs less skill than than uh CrossFit, for example, but you know, using gymnastic movements or doing something that's going to challenge you outside of those fundamental movement patterns is absolutely part of the maybe the learning, which maybe also adds to a level of fun or at least a different stimulus. So you can absolutely have some room within your program to explore new new learning and new skill development, which inevitably will challenge you in a different way, which will hopefully keep you stimulated for longer.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, what what I'm hearing there for myself is to remember why I'm doing it and what I can do because of it.
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:So yeah, yeah, yeah. Like it could be running around with the kids, like you said, um playing, it could be for an event or it could be just to walk with the dock or or up a hill. And it reminds me, now that I think about it, of something Dan John, uh a very well-known trainer, wrote about in terms of uh again the basics, but if if we've got I I'm gonna bastardise this slightly, so apologies. Um but if you've only got four hours a week to train, then a uh X amount of that time needs to be dedicated in the preparation, which is all the other stuff. So it's it's healthy it's the shopping of the ingredients that you need to fuel those sessions. It's understanding what kit you need to do that sessions, when you can do them. There's a lot of planning and preparation. It's not all the tip of the spear type of all or nothing work. There's a lot that goes in behind it.
SPEAKER_00:There absolutely is, but I think you're absolutely right. The the individual why is really important. Why you're doing it, and I've done this before and I posted this years ago. Um in your twenties, I'm not saying everybody, if you're a sports player, you've you've got a why is potentially a lot lot different, but in my twenties, vanity was definitely a driver in my training. 30s, I started to creak a little bit, mobility became an issue, tightness in my lower back, for example. Um, then it was maybe not necessarily at that point moving pain-free, but it definitely moved, it definitely moved from vanity to performance to living and and moving freely and well in my 40s and into my 50s, it's absolutely now longevity weaved into longevity would absolutely be vanity. So I've gone full circle. It absolutely I'm honest, I'm absolutely honest. It's it is those three things it's it's health, and I and I'll and I'll bracket my physical and my psychological health into that. It's it's absolutely well-being, which I guess is the is the psychological piece of that, and it's performance, which is actually I do get a lot of satisfaction out of people saying for my age, I'm pretty physically capable. And I've never asked anybody I've ever coached to do something that I've not done myself before. So I'm not saying that I'm the level of an elite athlete when it comes to programming and or my own personal physical qualities. Some of those people are absolutely exceptional and truly, truly elite. But if you ask me to, you know, push a heavy sled, do some weighted pull-ups, you know, row row a kilometre in X time, I'd like to think that I've got a level of capability that actually people wouldn't go, oh yeah, that old fossil's not got the kind of physical capability to do what he's asking us to do, but he'll um he'll have a crack of it. And that's I guess that's satisfaction from a I guess a pride but also professional standards uh perspective.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, in terms of your fun or driver, your why it's that's it's important for you. What what might change generally speaking as we take as we go from the 50s to the 60s in terms of of training and looking after ourselves in the in the gym?
SPEAKER_00:Um I guess evolutionary-wise, and it's about understanding physiology, and this is one of the things that I'd pick out of a 25-year-old coach versus a 45 or 50-year-old coach. I I 100% understand that my body can't take the volume that it could when I was 25. I'm obviously twice as old, but but I think one of the biggest mistakes, and this is again going back to this Instagram generation or us slightly older people comparing ourselves to what capabilities a 20 or 30-year-old's got. We cannot recover from the volume that's expected of or the volume that's kind of generated by younger, younger people. So I think going back to my 12-set scenario from last week, this week actually, I've kind of got to recognise that actually less training of higher quality allows me to get the stimulus that I need to maintain physical capability, but also gives me more time in my overall weekly structure to recover from that training experience or from that training exposure. So I think if I was going to answer that question, it would be um probably less less strength training, but still of high quality. And I would personally, and I think this maybe rings true for more people as well, more focus on aerobic system. So you've got the combination of that um performance element through those those pillars, but also inevitably going back to my trifecta, absolutely that kind of integration of mobility, but let more aerobic system work and less kind of heavy strength training, even though I'd like to still maintain good levels of strength. I know I need less of that because I haven't got the recoverability to do more than I'm currently doing anyway. But I know that all three of those things are really important.
SPEAKER_01:Um I'm I'm curious in terms of some of the traits and behaviours that you might have seen. I know you've mentioned quite a few already in terms of consistency and and and mindset, but the traits and behaviours of of some of the people that you've coached that the that the rest of us can take away from and learn from those yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean the truly elites that I've kind of had the luxury or the fortunate uh ability to work with, yeah, the the consistency piece we've boxed that right off. I do think it's having the capacity to just do things that most people are not prepared to do in order to be accomplished in terms of what you what you achieve and your and your goals that you set out to do. And I think that goes back to performance in in a sporting context, for example, would be yeah, when I'm not in the mood, it goes it does go back to consistency, but it is its values, it's its integrity, it's its high standards. But what that really means is when you say when you say you're gonna do your 15 minutes of mobility every day, whether you want to or not, you're gonna get it done. You're gonna live the lifestyle of that professional athlete to the highest possible level. So you've you prioritize sleep when you know that you could do an extra hour of something else. You prioritize eating as well as you can because you know that your optimal body fat level is gonna impact on your performance, whether it's this weekend or long or long term. So, you know, those those type of things, it it does all kind of embed itself in the in the consistency bracket, but I think it's more than that. It's having that awareness that I am going to do what so few people are prepared to do in terms of I will call them sacrifices, but ultimately it's being single-minded enough and driven enough to put those goals really as the as the highest priority so that you can accomplish extraordinary things. And I think that's that's I've seen that in sport, and I've seen that in um in some of the most amazing kind of characters that I've worked with in in in other areas as well, both you know, corporate and and in the military. People who will literally focus on their goals and be so so determined and single-minded, but without taking their eye off a wider bigger picture thing as well. So family men, for example, Sam Warburton, I always bring up the same sort of characters, would absolutely prioritize performance, but never ever, ever kind of shy away from his parental responsibilities when he did become a father. And it's kind of the the balance of those demands, it's not sort of calendar management, whether you're it's it's just making sure that your priorities are your priorities and you are gonna make sure that if you've said you're gonna do something, you're gonna do it. And that's I guess that's personal standards, personal mastery, intentional focus on keeping the goal, mentioning Dan John, keep the goal, the goal. And it's it's a really, really important thing because I think that's another thing about the wider context of how people get kind of derailed. It's they jump from I want to do um high rocks to I want to do something ultra, I want to do basically program hopping is the kind of analogy I use from a work-related perspective, but just like keep the goal the goal. Keep the focus on on the thing that's most important. And when you've accomplished that, then you reset and you refocus. And I think the key lesson here for me would be the integration of that sort of interdisciplinary approach to high performance, which would be not just looking at physical performance or sports performance in isolation. It is the lifestyle habits, it is the behaviors that you live your life to, which allows you to accomplish those extraordinary goals.
SPEAKER_01:I was having a conversation just before with you about high performance, and and this guy was runs a leadership company, and he Yeah, high performance can seem so untainable, but for most of us it's higher performance. So, like you alluded to earlier, how do you move the needle in a bit? And knowing this goes back to to right to the beginning about showing up is enough. It absolutely is. Um rather than comparison, looking across there uh what somebody else is benching or or not. But yeah, what I'm hearing for what you say there is that they there there's goals that these people are going for that we can do well to set our own goals and or have help setting them, and there's the commitment to to the process. There's some Yeah, um, written or verbal commitment to show up to to do what needs to get done.
SPEAKER_00:That that is the summary in a nutshell. Commitment to the process. The best have committed to the process, and then the outcome has looked after itself. And that and that I w I mean there's yeah, there's tons of them. There's tons of them. Any any truly elite performer has committed to the process. And they don't have to be high-profile sports people, but what they have done is done exactly that. That is the that if that's going to be the summary of our conversation, commitment to the process and the outcome will look after itself.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and and I think for for for me as a as a normal athlete, a normal day person with with everything else going on in life as well, is then the awareness piece to know that it, yeah, the awareness piece. So when it is okay to rest, but when it's okay to do those 20-minute sessions and and and that is the tick tick box good enough for today and and be okay with that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think that's a key, that is a key message because I do think people put a lot of pressure on themselves. And I also look at this now from a perspective of a different well, a different lens, I guess, which is I'm in it for the long game. But you tell you tell a hungry, instant gratification type character, which is the the modern day generation, think about not just this year, but next year, the year after, the year after. A lot of people can't compare uh can't conceptualize that. The the story that's told from years gone by, I was in the Blues Academy, and in year one, some of these lads maybe just just let's pull out an arbitrary number, 100 kilo squat. In year three, they could squat 200 kilos. But the the key message and the key learning from this story was these lads showed up week after week after week and just added a little bit to the bar, week after week after week. So it went from 100 to 200. But so few people are prepared to commit to the process because they wanted the 200 squat next week and not two years away or three years away. But what that 100 kilo squat to 200 kilo squat told them was that actually if you layer a little bit. Progressive overload week after week after week, keep showing up, keep showing up, keep showing up. You transform your physical capability, but it's not going to take two minutes. It's going to take three years. And how many people are actually going to stick to the process long enough to realize all of those kind of physical quality developments or skill development, whatever? You can you can you can change the squat for anything, but just say you need to focus on this process long term in order to help you develop the physical qualities required to play at the highest level. And so few people have got that commitment to the pursuit of excellence that they'll actually fall off by the wayside much, much quicker. And they might be touching distance away from really, really making the leap or making that sort of jump to the next level, but they haven't been prepared to sort of commit to that process and they've wanted that instant gratification when they've fallen by the wayside. So many of those lads would tell the same story. All we did was commit to the process, trust the process. We transformed ourselves physically so that we could actually be capable of playing at international level in rugby circumstance. And all they did was show up consistently three times a week for three years. And they did their skills training and they got exposure to good playing and good coaching and all that other stuff. But in the long story short is exactly that. They committed to a process.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and and I guess they, from a coaching perspective, for where my mind goes, is they've separated themselves from the outcome in the sense of, yeah, going to the gym and doing that work today is enough. I've showed up. Good. Yeah. Tomorrow's another one. Come up.
SPEAKER_00:Go again, go again, go again, and in three years' time they've actually got the capability to do things that other people have just not got. I say it to my son all the time: if you go to the gym three times a week for the next two years, next three years, you will be in the top 1% of those kids because so few are going to stick to that process. They're going to go maybe, you know, this month they might go three or four times, next month they might go ten times, then the month after they might not even bother, they get distracted by the bits and pieces. And then over the course of three years, they might have done 50 or 60, 100 training sessions, you might have done 300. Look at the difference that's going to make physically to you if you need physical prowess to do well in your sport, which in his case he does. He plays rugby. So physical domination is part of the part of the game. So if you don't show up and do that work, you will not be able to play at the level you aspire to play at because you won't have the physical capability. And there's a and there's a load of other examples in every other sport as well. If you don't show up and do your skills development, you won't be as good as those who have done. But you have to show up week after week after week and do that work.
SPEAKER_01:What what's some of the the most effective or efficient habit stacks and small wins or the microdoses that we can take away for applying to our own lives, do you think?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, I was lucky. I did I pres I presented to a group of people this week, actually, and it this is true. Um and it's not just my work, it's a few people that I work with who've done this interdisciplinary kind of habit stacker. Um it's eight to one, it's really, really simple. And this isn't about being perfectionists, by the way. It's just a little framework that could absolutely benefit anybody from any walk of life. Try, and I know this is again n equals one, try and get eight hours sleep a night. Look to walk seven times a week for a minimum of seven to ten thousand steps a day. So that's seven. Six times a week, do some targeted intentional mobility. It doesn't have to be an hour, it can be five minutes a day. Five um opportunities to hydrate every single day. Eat four times a day with protein-rich, nutrient-dense foods. Either aerobic or strength-based training three times a week or twice a week, depending on your bias. So basically train five days a week, and have one hobby that takes you into your own personal safe space and uh something that you enjoy to do either in isolation or in a community. Eight to one. Simple framework that can have positive implications and impact on anybody. And we talk about people who've got constraints in their life. If you know that you're only going to get six hours of sleep, how can you try and get six and a half? If you know you're not gonna be able to move seven times a week because you've got constraints in terms of, you know, the the best analogies for us is just be mindful of your step count. We're not saying that you must hit 10,000 and you must be obsessed with your wearable technologies, but just be mindful, and I do it myself. I park my car in the furthest car park away from the building that I spend most of my time in. So I know that I'm gonna get 3,000 steps a day just by walking from the car to the office and back. Then I've got to walk to the gym. That's another thousand each way. And so just be mindful that actually you can probably do five to six thousand steps by just changing your behaviors. If you work in an office space, go to the bathroom that's as far away from your office as possible. Walk past the other three or four. You get a thousand steps, two thousand steps a day just by going to a different bathroom. Go to the floor above if you work in an office spot, whatever it might be. There's just little things that you can tweak. If you know that you're more sedentary with your everyday work life, think about why, where's the water fountain? Is there a water fountain? Do I need to prepare some food on a weekend to so that I can eat my protein? Because the biggest things for me and the nutritionist that I work with would be hydration is a massive one, and not eating enough proteins and another. So just tiny little tweaks in your in your habits so that you get a little bit better each time until these habits are stacked on top of each other. Everything I've said there in eight to one is nothing more than accomplishable for most people. And that's what makes it so good. Because that is that's the habit stack. Can we live a little bit more of a healthier lifestyle? I mean, not every day. I don't get eight hours a day every night. But that's my goal to try. Yeah. And then the hormonal piece is kind of ticked away. I've got more cognitive, you know, alertness, whatever it might be. But the the habit stack for me, and it goes back to the fundamentals of kind of performance and recovery. Sleep, hydration, nutrition are the cornerstone of a of a optimal, optimally functioning human. Yes, you've then got all the other bits and pieces around it, but those get those things in order, and you'll you'll feel so much better. Yeah. And hopefully perform well as well and sustainably.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's about the basics, and this is something that is was hammered home to me, and that that people that have listened to this podcast will have heard me talk about. If they'd coached with me, they'd heard me talk about it, and lessons from a past life as well, um, which has stuck with me to this day as well. So yeah, I'd love to hear that in a different context. Times, as as we start to wrap this up, I'm curious if there's anything that we've not talked about that you feel that you would want to mention.
SPEAKER_00:Um, no, I think I've had a really good opportunity to have a chat with you, talk about I mean the sustainability is the one for me. I think that that's the big one. I think all these things about habit stacking, around the the behaviours and the and the sort of traits that I've seen in the very best of performance people that I've managed to deal with in the past. It's just as we go into that longevity sort of cycle and the trend that is wellness, it's just think about the long-term process. It goes back to what you've said, and I think that I'm gonna really gravitate towards that as we go, which is committing to the process of living a longer, happier, healthier life, which is sustainable. I think it goes back to again the Instagram and the in the social media generation, which is everything's about intensity, everything's about now. But actually, yes, I've got that trifecta of physical capabilities and what have you. But the recovery pillar, it is okay to do nothing sometimes. It is okay to take a breath, it is okay to stop and reflect. And I mean, those sort of things are really, really powerful. And I and I and I do think that there's there is so much noise on the internet, unfortunately. But if you can filter it, it can be really, really powerful. And there are some seriously inspiring people on there, but you've also got the snake oil biohack salespeople, which inevitably infiltrate the the marketplace. But that's that's the world we live in. But just be a little bit more discerning with your thinking around actually nailing the fundamentals, however boring that may seem, is actually the the sort of process that you need to adopt to sort of live that that comfortable, kind of healthy, happy and and high performing life. And it is available to everybody. There are tons of things you can do that absolutely won't sort of bankrupt you. And it's just being that little bit more mindful about actually I can be a bit more thoughtful here, here, and here to to make some quite substantial changes in my life for the better.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, no. And I I guess it's a process. Um yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_00:Commit to it, yeah, commit to it. I mean it's personal mastery is a never-ending pursuit, right? In terms of understanding yourself, and yeah, don't get me wrong, we've all we've all got an end date. It's inevitable. But the the realities are what what can you do to actually feel good? Because I do think in the in the modern society, especially in the Western world, so many people, inflammation, possibly overweight, you're not, you're not the best version of yourself. And I think exploring that opportunity is something that's you know should should be kind of not taken for granted.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, lovely, mate, love it. Um if people are interested in reaching out to you or having a conversation, where might they find you?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so very, very um original kind of uh way to find me. Uh Instagram and LinkedIn. My name on Instagram is Christoom71. Just uh yeah, nothing fancy about that. And um a little bit not that active anymore, but um I have a level of presence on there. I like to try and be as positive as possible, share good messaging. There's a lot of coaches that I kind of flip onto my story every now and again and share some information. Um yeah, I do have a private coaching business alongside that. So um that's uh but you can find me on Instagram, find me on LinkedIn. Um I like to share the positive messages around you know health, performance, well-being. So those are the two main ones really.
SPEAKER_01:Brilliant. Well, I'll put those in the show notes, but I've I've really enjoyed that conversation, and I think straight away what I'm taking away is to for as as we move on is to a goal, some sort of goal. Um I'm quite good at doing the the eight to one stuff, um, but I think the missing piece would be the the the goal. Um I'm committed, but to what that's what I'm asking myself and and and and the protein, just watching mantra and that.
SPEAKER_00:Your why. And then you can just you can reverse engineer it from there. Yeah, but I think it's important to capture that and speak it out, have it on paper, and it can change.
SPEAKER_01:100%.
SPEAKER_00:Um see you on a downhill mountain biking course sometime soon, is it?
SPEAKER_01:Ha ha not anymore, mate. I I'm still recovering from a shoulder injury, but that's another conversation. There you go. I really enjoyed this, too, so mate. I really appreciate your time um and and and trying to condense some quite uh complex big topics and 30 years of experience into my childlike uh curiosity questions. Um yeah, brilliant. I loved it, mate. Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_00:Brilliant, same. Thanks for having me.