I lost that much weight mentally, it took me back to being that kid again of this small skinny kid I came back from that tour, there's pictures of me and I think I dropped back into like nine stone thirteen or something like that, I dropped just below the tenon stone mark and that had an effect on me more because of my insecurities as a kid that I'd gone out there this big strong lad who was bit physical training instructor and I was now turning back into this weak skinny thrill kid. Steve, how are you brother? I'm very well Chris, how are you? Yes mate, I'm other than the fact I've got vertigo for anyone listening, it's the second time I've had it and I get it off the computer screen, I don't know what the hell it is, it's something to do with the way that the data pulses across the screen, it hypnotises me and then it takes 48 hours to get rid of it and I'm still within that 48 hour period so if I'm looking all over the screen folks, I'm not being rude to Steve, it's just I can't stare at the same you know, I can't like stare at the camera and non-stop. AJ Roberts, we must thank Steve and we've for putting us in contact. AJ, yeah good lad. Yeah very good lad, AJ, the AJ Roberts podcast for anybody wants to check out AJ's show, he gets some fascinating guests but we're here to talk about you Steve, so how's life? Yeah it's funny though because you know you reached out to me and I said this to you that I'd just come across your work probably two weeks prior, I think I was searching for something on Google and it came up and I seen and I clicked on and I seen this thing about the Ironmans and stuff that you've done yourself and I thought ah interesting guy and I clicked through a few of your things and kind of went down that rabbit hole as you do and yeah and then you reached out which I'm a big believer in this frequency thing that we attract things when we're on the same sort of wave level. Yeah it certainly seems to work like that doesn't it? Do you familiar with the concept or the term flow state? I'm guessing is it is it kind of do with energy and law of attraction and stuff like that? Yeah it's massively to do with that it's like if you're eating well right people will hear me talk about alkaline diet a lot and it's not a diet it's a way of being right that you keep your body like in its 7.25 pH state which is what we should be under nature right. You lay off the beer and the drugs or beer is a drug obviously. You make the most of your day, you take action, all the stuff I talk about if I'm ever like in life coaching mode and then what happens is out that action that you take the universe seems to give you back like 10 times as much. Yeah the opposite to that flow state is when you know you wake up you're depressed so you get out of bed late you should go for a run around the block we think ah we can't be bothered today you know won't have a shower just going to put some telly and nothing comes from that Steve does it you know nothing um I'm not not saying that we shouldn't all have a down day now and again and sometimes if I will just take time off and just just do nothing and it helps me reset but the flow thing is that when you're in that active state and you're firing and you're eating well and you're doing the exercise you it's like you say stuff just comes across your plate that it's almost like it's given to you you know somebody that I've been thinking of podcasting maybe for a year suddenly they're like there's their emailing me and it's like yeah I don't think that's a coincidence I'm a big believer in frequencies and energy so I'm a big believer in that I've got many many reasons to back that up um as well so uh yeah yes should we go back Steve and talk about how you joined the the army and what what you did while you served yeah absolutely so for me the journey started in uh September 1998 so I'd left school in 94 and uh I left school um I always remember Chris that um my mate so I'd been left school probably about a year at this point and uh one of my very good mates was going into the army and we were all going for a leave and do at his house and uh I remember on the way walking around for his house and uh the guy sort of saying uh it's going to be mad like I'll going in the army and stuff like that and I remember one of those uh one of my good mates saying can you imagine greeny going in the army and the more laughing at me because I left school I was five foot three I was absolutely tiny I was nine stone in weight um just very small very skinny and uh I remember the more laughing like about this thing about me going in the army and I didn't end up going in until about three years later um but I get it why they were laughing because I literally was the most feeble excuse for uh for a man you could uh you could ever meet and um I had issues with that I had self image self image issues with um the fact that uh I'll talk in and my dad a bit more but um I had this image of uh of my dad and how strong he was and how physically and mentally tough he was and uh he was my hero and I was the opposite um I had the mindset I was very determined I'd cycled at a high level when I was a kid and uh I was very fit but physically to look at me I was this very frail skinny uh small kid and uh I had issues with that so when I actually went in the army not long after the after my mates taken the piss out of me at that sort of level um and a lot of people saying things about me I actually went to my dad and I said I want to start doing some training and and this will give you an idea of how weak I was Chris that I said to my dad right I want to start training in the gym with you and uh he said to me you can't go anywhere near a gym he said when you can do five sets of 15 press-ups then I'll take you in the gym with me and it took me three months before I could do five sets of 15 press-ups and I always remember the first the first night I'd done it so he told me to do them every night he just said do as many as you can every second night and uh I remember the day that I was in my bedroom and I managed to get to the fifth set of uh 15 and I kind of ran downstairs and went dad I've done it I've done five sets of 15 and he went right okay show me and I said well I won't be able to do it now I've just done it so he said well you're not ready then so I attempted to do it and obviously I was tired because I've just done five sets of 15 and my skinny little arms were at the max and uh I obviously couldn't do it so he said to me right you need to show me in two days time so two days time I went to to do it and because my body was still aching I got to the fifth set and I couldn't do it I did four sets of 15 and on the last one I sort of stopped at 10 and he went you're still not ready so I was like for fuck's sake so I remember a couple of days later I done it again went down I went right I've done it again and you went right we'll show me so I had to wait another two days and eventually I'd done it and he said right okay I'll take you're in the gym with me and I always remember that first session because I've actually got the records um and I actually I was only benching 23 kilograms for the bench and I think I've done about six reps and uh that 23 kilos was including the bar as well so yeah 1998 um I kind of built myself up and uh I went into the army I just wanted to get away from where I was um I wanted to get away from the area I'd started doing drugs doing a bit of marijuana and stuff like that and I could just see where things were heading some of my friends and took things a bit to the next step and got on a heroin and uh I just kind of looked and I thought where am I heading me heading here and what am I doing I need to just get away and um I always felt that I was destined to achieve things um and I couldn't really explain why I think it was probably just this fire in my belly of always being knocked and being written off and uh yeah so September 98 I joined the Royal Engineers purely because um my mate Allen had joined and somebody else told me that that was the best regimen but I didn't know anything about the army whatsoever did you um did you serve in Germany did uh I thought I'd stayed in Germany uh a couple of times on the way to other places but I didn't actually serve in Germany so um I done my basic training in Basinborne and then Gibolt barracks for my phase two training um and there's actually a real story behind that as well so I did my phase one training September 98 went on my phase two training in the engineers um by this point when I joined I'd always been really fit from a kid so I played a lot of football I'd done a lot of running a lot of cross country and I used to cycle at a high level um national level uh so when I went in I'd actually I was fit and I'd now built my body up I'd actually got in a good physical shape and I looked really well so when I went in at 21 I was I probably had an advantage on a lot of the guys the fact that I was older a bit more mature and I now started to look like a man I was a fit and I looked healthy so I went into phase two and uh week eight I got a real bad injury and uh just my shins and um I continued with them and I got to the point where we'd done a CFT the first loaded eight mile carrying your 36 pound plus your weapon and and water and uh I had to go report to the carpools and shown my knees there were that badly swollen and I'd hid this for a few weeks and they just looked and they went whoa shit they're pretty bad you need to go to the med centre and they sent me to the med centre and I was told straight away that you're going to be pulled out of training and you're going to be uh you need some full rehabilitation you need arrest and that was absolutely devastating for me I was two weeks away from passing out being issued my engineer stable belt and going to my unit and uh and you I'm guessing you probably remember these times as well Chris uh back back in 98 99 when I went through training if you went on the sick the army made a point of humiliating you and uh on the top of your combat jacket we had to wear a big piece of white mine tape and and that's so you stood out that I'm a sicky um and that's what you were referred to sick or sicky get the bruise on um and that that was really difficult for me because I'd had such an insecurity of growing up and being this small kid that everyone had laughed at um I didn't start puberty till after I was 18 year old so my mates were going in pubs and I hadn't even started puberty at this point that that's how small I was and how underdeveloped I was so to go from that to now being this fit healthy looking guy um and I started to feel good about myself and now I've that stripped away from me again and it was like walking round on camp with this mine tape and I'm now being called sicky again and that's not who I was um I was one of the fit of guys in the troupe and that was a really really tough time for me to be honest yeah I bet did you say you you had problems with your shins Steve yeah I did yeah what was it like because I had I had this thing when a muscle's in my shins got too big for the sheaths around them yeah it's compartment syndrome isn't it horrendous yeah yeah just felt like you got iron painful iron rods down the front of your shins and there's I don't I was lucky they it it flared up once during my timing training and then I only missed one uh speed march where I got asked to get in the rat wagon as they say the corporal ordered me to and then I ignored him and then he saw I'd ignored him and he screamed at me so at that point I had to get in the rat wagon but luckily by the time we come to do the next thing and this is towards the end of training so we've got all our command of tests and stuff coming up they it went away again it just it it went away but do you think that's bad bad gay you know not landing on the right part of your feet or something I think there's a real because I ended up being an army physical training instructor I got quite clued up on shin splints and what people call shin splints is not really shin splints in most cases so where you've got shin splints where you've got cracks in the bones compartment syndrome which is exactly what you've just said is is what I had I didn't actually add cracks in the bones I had compartments syndrome where the muscles pushing on the bone and god that is the most painful thing I have I've ever felt it was just it was a rendus and I had that all the way up my shins and my knees went as well just just from not being used to carrying weight and doing a very different it's very different to running and cycling to someone sticking 40 50 pound on your back and um in them a rendus uh old army boots that we all used to work yeah so so sorry just to clarify what my understanding of shin splints is you have this compartment syndrome that you mentioned and then you have the stress fracture right they're two completely two completely different things that's right yeah yeah when I did when I ran the length of the country I had the stress fracture one oh and uh yeah it's hard to negotiate the most injuries you can just run through it's just your body niggling and yeah something like that well I still ran for it I had to but you're running through it at at quite some some pain you know yeah absolutely and I think like nowadays um training's changed a lot and not that I know because I'm not in I haven't been in 10 years but my mates that I served with um they just said you wouldn't last you you wouldn't be able to handle the army now the way that you are with that that sort of um just crack on mentality that old school mentality it's just not like that anymore and I mean I always remember in basic training and I could handle myself so when I joined the army I'd got into a bit of bother and stuff and I built myself up I was fit I was strong and I was starting to get into a few battles in the hometown and stuff like that I went in the army I could handle myself but you just had a respect for your leaders and I always remember cocking up in basic training um and and I laugh now because I know it is an absolute schoolboy error um I remember we were live firing on the ranges and I got a stoppage on my weapon and I literally with a live weapon just turned around 180 the other way pointing my weapon at all the corporals and just went my weapon stopped firing and I just remember um my weapon just flying out my hands and I've been booted in the ribs by one of my corporals and this this weapon just flies up in the attic to off me grabs hold of me by my helmet and just drags me off um starts ragging me about around the back of the building I look at that and I never ever lashed out or anything like that I took it on the chin because the reality is I could have killed someone there without that mistake it was it was that much of a schoolboy error I could have literally took somebody's life by pointing that weapon either way and it's uh yeah yeah they call it snowflake culture don't they yeah and the the army in its absolute lack of wisdom well obviously it wasn't the army as a private promotion company brought out this advertising campaign um and I spoke to Robin horsefail about it the sas Iranian embassy siege trooper yeah or one of them I should say and you know he he's a he's a guy that just will speak his truth right and he's like why don't they tell you when you join the army that like you might get dead you know a big part of the job is is for a lot of people is getting shot dead um um what is there a place in the army for snowflakes is it a change in environment now because you know you could be operating a drone from London never ever set foot in a you know in a area of conflict in in your whole career and your skill might be you know guiding in a guiding in a missile because you're bloody good at xbox or something right yeah funny times what what what do we think I guess it's fit for purpose isn't it um it's not the army that I'd want to join that's for sure um I know I sit on the fence of um I don't believe in getting sick I don't believe in um complaining I don't believe in injuries and that's why although we get them and I've I'm actually carrying some now from the latest event that I've done that just crack on mentality is it's the way I was brought up my dad was tough with me um I was laughing about this the other day with my partner um we were talking about she's just come back from Dubai and we were talking about jet lag and I always remember going to America when I was a kid in my last year of school and I had a been 16 years old and all of the rest of the people we flew back on a on a Sunday night landed early hours of the Monday morning and everybody else got the day off and my dad was like ah he came in the bedroom dragged me out the bed as he used to get you get your uniform on you're going to school and I was like I was seven hours behind on time for two weeks um massively jet lag just flew back and he was like you're fucking going to school and I remember all week being knackered and as you do at 16 years old I'd come I came on from school on the first night nearly falling asleep all day but you then want to go out with your mates you want to go um to the youth club you want to go see the girls kick the ball about and stuff and I remember going out and getting back in at nine o'clock and telling him I was knackered and him saying you can't be that tired otherwise you'd have went to bed after school and I remember all that week as being absolutely knackered and uh by the time I'd finished school wanting to go out and he just kept he was always just really tough that way um it was just there's your bike get on it don't don't ask questions and just do as as I say um and I think that that that's had a big impact on the person that I am today so yeah snowflakes are nothing here I can't I can't work with people like that um that that word in the background it's been drummed into me prior to the army and all the way through so I guess there is a place for uh for these drones and stuff like that it's a very different world now and um I guess it's uh more of a thinking man's battle rather than a physical man's battle it's not just the you know the it's not just the level of um or the entry levels that the forces are playing around with though I mean there's other things to consider like my little lad likes to watch YouTube right and Jesus some of the stuff and I've had to have I've had conversations with this with my girlfriend about is this is this what we want you know it is I've been a parent isn't it you know it's you I want him to grow up I want him to understand the world I want him to be able to use technology um but on the other hand I don't want him to think this is the new normal right yeah and by that I mean the thing the thing he was watching yesterday was a bunch of what must be like 28 27 year old lads and there's a lot of stuff like people people who these kids watch this sort of stuff will know exactly what I'm on about and basically they go out in the nature or they go to a a shop first or a store as they those are american brothers and sisters call them they'll spend a thousand dollars on just shit junk you know absolute toss stuff they're not prepared to like master how this stuff works or and then they go into nature and attempt to build something right but they're all massive this they've they've never had a dad to teach him you know how you use a saw and what a hammer is and so they get masking tape right this is ringing bells for anyone that's been in the military but they get masking tape and they're you know and it's it's such a clusterfuck this thing is never going to work mate because you you don't understand you can't do that like that it's not it's against every law of engineering and every law of physics that is um and then of course that stuff is just junk then there's there's all this plastic crap that is going to end up in the ocean right because these idiots have just used it once for a youtube video they've probably left it in a nature to be honest right at the worst it's all gone into landfill and that's all going to soak through into into the river system into the seas and then you've got the fact they're 28 year old blokes right when I was 19 and I'm not saying this is right folks and I'm not slagging off young people I'm just raising this point to see where the hell the armed forces sit sits in modern modern day life because the 28 half of them wear their their jeans halfway down their ass right showing all their you know their boxer shorts and they ran pounds you ran a company making these videos that are just shit right I've said to my girlfriend yes they said look if they actually stopped now and pointed out that building there and discussed its history and what you know is that a shepherd's hut is that a farmer's thing is you know what's this doing in the nature or they discuss the weather system or the ecosystem coming in or you know they they made reference to being in the great out this would be a great video right I get it I get it it would get zero frickin hits right this is what us content creators it's our curse you put the good stuff out sadly everyone's so mind screwed using the word screwed there instead of the word I want to use but they're also mind screwed that they can't you can't soak in decent stuff anymore it's got to be quick fast junky shit that is never going to get you anywhere in life right it's never going to educate you it's never going to get you see the truth it's never going to get you to understand you know how society works against you 99.999% of the time so no I totally agree with that Chris I put a post out about this the day just saying as a society we've become weak we need we need to toughen up I think that okay maybe it's the days of booting people in the ribs like we probably got and I got a few I remember on a few occasions getting my bosses my sergeants my sergeant major saying head or gut was was the old question I don't if you were you got that as well if you cocked up and it was do you want the punch in the head or do you want the punch in the gut I think those days we did need to move away from that and probably a bit more in this coaching environment but I think we've gone too far the other ways not just the UK I think the world in general has gone way too soft and I think we've probably got that balance wrong and need to go back the other way a little bit yes I talk about this a lot Steve um I don't know if now's the right time for it but I'm massive I'm massive massive for trying to wake people's eyes up to the agenda that's going on yeah um yeah saying yeah there's a reason for all this there's a reason for destroying our culture for this mass it unchecked immigration that we're experiencing for certain people in society get away with anything and then for other groups to be like hammered hard it's all social engineering yeah what they want is a docile thick infeminate young man who can't fight for himself let alone fight for what's right for his people right and by that you know I'm an Englishman and it's really I'm going to actually do next week I've got a guy called Richard Willett coming on the podcast and we're just going to help people to understand what's going on and how it all relates to this Orwellian agenda that George Orwell wrote about the language you know yeah that people don't understand our language is being simplified it's being dumped down and it's having all the you know all the corners gently polished off it right people now say past when what they mean is is died right yeah and you see how weak people are just copying that what they hear and then they start saying it right they think oh that that's like the politically correct or that that makes me you know I'm right and it's not it's all a gender it's all to soften down the reality of life to get us living in a fuzzy bubble where if you want to wake up one day and choose that your gender is now you know pink fluffy unicorn then that's perfectly fucked you know it's freaking not you know it it's just not it's we're lying to our children right people say they want to you know Chris I never join the Marines I I regret it for the no join the Marines don't make you a warrior what makes you a warrior is standing up for what is right standing up for the children standing up for their future yeah allowing them to be subject to these sociopaths that are just destroying everything so that they can control you know the whole show am I making any sense Steve 100% um I'm very much sure that that we're inclined as well of uh I think more people need to speak out I think uh we do need a tough one up a bit more and I'm like that with my kids I mean financially um I'm well off but I don't spoil my kids at all my kids probably get less than what the average kids get um I'm more for taking them out and and sometimes I am tough on them and uh my my partner says sometimes you're a bit hard and and I just say no the need that the uh the need that experience because when I'm not here the need to be able to learn that life's not easy and sometimes it's going to throw shit at you and I want them to be prepared for that um mentally I don't care what I leave my kids financially at all I want to leave them where they can control their own mindset and they're able to generate their own wealth and uh they're not going to fall off the end of a planet just because that somebody said something about them or um life's thrown them a challenge I want I want them to be able to handle the shit that life throws at you yeah they've also you know this whole social medium and archigist and I know we're all a part of it because you've you've got to be its modern life right um but it's all just so bloody wrong you know yeah you people genuinely now think if you have a keyboard in front of you that that's your right to say so and it's fucking not you know the stuff that people say to each other they never would have said that and yeah I'm older than you Steve they definitely wouldn't have said it in my day do you know why because bang you'd have the decency knocked into you and I'm not I'm don't condone unwarranted physical violence right but what it did in my day is it acted as a check to stop people becoming a fucking dickhead yeah and definitely you know you could you could have a laugh with someone fine you could have a joke that that's okay you could take the mickey out you know depending on what the scenario that that was okay but if you overstepped the mark and you just blatantly disrespected someone yeah they would turn around and just punch you in the face right and then you'd go ah I overstepped the mark yeah sorry fair one oh oh and for the rest of your life then you you knew where the line was right yeah knew where the line was now you know now in a situation where people think oh I've got a keyboard in front of me I'm allowed to say whatever I I I want and it's like dude you wouldn't say that to this person's face never right you wouldn't go on this person's podcast and say you're a coward yeah you haven't got the guts right and yeah no I agree I think it's uh I think there's a lot of respect being lost you triggered a memory there of when I was 19 years old 1920 it was before I went in the army and I'd left school I was probably about 19 20 years old um and it was when I'd started to put somewhere on I was I was quite uh physically I'd put a couple of stone on him where I started to look quite uh physically strong and and I was starting to get quite physically strong and I remember in my my dad's house of um in question me about summer and I just told him a shut up I was like oh for fuck sake stop going on all the time and he literally ran at me and he just punched me in the side of the head and he just it was just I was laid out on the floor and he kind of grabbed hold of me and went don't you ever fucking speak to me like that in my house and uh I remember uh disappearing for a few days to my mates and sleeping on the couch and and again I don't condone that and I don't raise my hands to my kids I think there's another way of doing that and my dad says that now that that was just the the thing then and he looks and he says that he would never do it now because he's learned that that's not the best way but I also look as well it never done me any harm um I've always had respect for people when I went in the military when I went into people's homes I'd take my shoes off them them old school values that my dad drummed into me um I don't believe the done me any arm and if if I had my time again um I wouldn't change anything can I remember my dad being a complete ass at times like I remember one Christmas waking up but probably 16 years old or something like that and a few days before Christmas he was kind of saying to me look you're not getting anything you know you're going to get this you're going to get a bit of money in a card and you'll get one or two things you're not a kid now um you've left school you're a man now and and I was like kind of saying yeah yeah and I genuinely wasn't bothered and I was just saying yeah yeah that's fine and he brought this up for about two days and he kept saying look I'm not joking you know you're going to get a bit of money you're going to get one or two things and I was like yeah yeah that's fine I get it I get it and he obviously thought that I didn't believe it and I was going to get this big cheerful of presents as you do as a kid and I remember on New Year's Eve that the night before he said to me he went look I want to have a word here and he said you're only getting some money and a couple of things and I said I know dad you've already said it on a few occasions and I was genuinely I wasn't bothered and I remember he lost his temper and he literally he went into the cupboard pulled all these presents out and probably five or six presents and started unwrapping them all ripping the paper off them all and going that's what you've fucking got now you've seen it all and I remember him ruining my Christmas day like shouting at me and being full on um and again I'm not condoning that but that's what I believe made me as tough as what I am that that's what got me through a world record that's what got me through two iron mans that's what got me through pea company that's what that's why I strive to to have that that level of pride and and that that I've got so I'd never change anything at all um I don't agree with it in in the respect of what you don't I'd never do that with my kids um but it's also made me the man that I am to do the yeah it's an interesting one isn't it some of the stuff you're saying is like really it's just it's like listening to my childhood right um I think what it is is there's a lie again there's a line there in the way you interact with children where a good tough lesson is fine it's when it traumatizes them that that's when it that's but but then you know I remember being homeless for the first time I think I was 15 I stood at the end of my row because I obviously couldn't couldn't go back to the house I mean my freaking school uniform for crying out loud right and I'm smoking a siggy and even in that moment Steve I went you know what I wouldn't change this for the world yeah I thought I don't want an easy life because fine and easy love I've been missing out on this experience now being homeless smoking a fag at the end of my you know when all my mates are going off to school and I don't know what to do I'm a man of leisure I could do what I want with my day don't know where I'm going to sleep but I can do what but I'm making light of it but I do remember thinking God if I didn't have these tough experiences I just didn't want to trade them you know I know that sounds crazy on the one hand I didn't the sum of the stuff I had to go for and I won't even go there it just wasn't very pleasant certainly wasn't the stuff you know you look back with fondness at your childhood yeah um it but it provided a great lesson in in what kind of adult am I never going to be right no I got it you know I'm never going to be an adult that puts a rule on on on my children that there's no re you know there's no logic beyond the rule it doesn't achieve any you know I'm not just going to do it just because my parents did it right yeah kind of this kind of thing but this um you mentioned P company there how's that how's that for you well it was again there's a bit of story behind that so I was I wanted to do P company after training so I had to go on the sick I was forced I could hardly walk I built myself up I took that shit in the training I went back into training um and then I wanted to go do P company and I was told by the physio on the doctor that um there's there's no way you can go do P company you're not long after a real bad injury that that was two and a half months I was on the sick four and they just said look you're not going to pass you even if you were in peak physical condition it put a menstruing on the body and uh for somebody who's just recovered from that injury you're not going to pass it anyway I was stubborn as I was and I was like no no I'm still going and a week before I went I got on with the the rehabilitation instructor and he pulled me on one side and he just said look go to your unit get six months behind your belt just build your legs up a little bit more you can go and apply for it once you're in your unit um and I wasn't aware you could do that so I took his advice and I pulled off it I went to my unit and it was one of those things I just never got got around to doing it um until I went to training regimen and again it came off the back of another failure and uh people look at me now and they say well you've done all of these things you've achieved this um you've built this eight million pound property portfolio um you've you've had quite a lot of success in a lot of people's eyes but I've had a hell of a lot of failures as well and uh one of the things was training for PT course selection and uh I trained for that and I never got selected and again I was absolutely gutted because I put everything into it and I remember finishing that and um one of my mates coming in my room and just uh sort of are you alright and he knew I was gutted and he just said look why don't you go do P company he said you're only going to be judged on your fitness it's not on somebody's opinion and uh I thought yeah that's it that's the answer I'm going to bounce back and I went straight to my boss and said I want to go do P company and initially he wouldn't let me he said look you're quite emotional right now um you've just come off the back of not being selected go take a bit of time at home and so I went home and after a few days I rang my boss and said I want to do it I have to do it because it was affecting my identity this person that had now become this I was a physical training instructor I was in real good shape really really fit and uh it was kind of taking me back to that being that kid again then that that insecurity and I thought I have to do this for myself and feeling was not an option and uh I remember going on that and people were saying to me or you'll piss it you'll fly through you you really fit and I was I was one of the fittest guys on camp uh but wow I was not expecting that at all um anybody who says to me that they found P company uh they were comfortable on it I you've got my respect because I didn't I found it really really hard um and that's me just being honest I in the first week I remember coming home and just thinking shit this shouldn't even be allowed um the thrashings that we got for like three four hours uh that were just absolutely brutal and then two sessions a day and you'll know from uh from being marine sort of background um of what these courses are the set there to put you under immense pressure immense stress sleep deprivation and um I picked up an injury on that and it was kind of like oh shitty we go again and I just thought feeling is not an option because if I'd have failed that as well as I don't know what it had done for me mentally and uh I just continued through that and um I remember on my on the log race which was by far the hardest thing that sticks out in my mind and I literally collapsed as we we came over the line it was um that that's how much I've been pushed and um then courses are set there for uh to break most people and you'll know that the pass rate on uh any sort of command or marines paratrain and anything like that the pass rate is uh is very very small and uh I was certainly put through my paces and uh I looked back on those times and probably uh one of the most proudest moments was being awarded that maroon berry um because I knew I'd put everything into it I couldn't have put anything more I left nothing in the tank and uh I don't know if it's the same for you guys but on pea company um again the setup is brutal so you finish the last event and uh you get told to go get changed and and you've got a parade and you're all stood on parade to shout your number out uh you shout yes sir and there just shout either pass or fail and if that's a fail you've got to uh fall out of the troop walk behind the group and go face the wall you're not even allowed to look at the instructors if you've failed um why everybody else is being handed the berries and um I remember them shouting my number out and shouting yes sir and it that then few seconds just felt like it was about two minutes um and then saying the words pass and I remember I started to fill up um because it was just kind of like fuck I've done it thank thank fuck for that because I put everything into it and um if that had a been a fail there was nothing more I could have done because uh I was I was really fit I was really strong mentally um I was at I was at a good age um I couldn't have done any more but yeah extremely tough and I've got massive respect for anybody who's uh I know there's that rivalry between marines and paras and the scs and sbs and stuff like that but anybody who's gone to that level to pass any training like that we've got respect for me yeah I'm smiling a bit because there never really was a rivalry for us marines it it it it's um the shit stuff went on but um what I mean is I don't think in the marines it was such a rivalry as the part as it was in the paras yeah I'd agree with that you know like to be honest mate we didn't really care yeah um but there were interesting situations there was one troop on the on the range one day and um there was a group there was a I don't know if they were recruits or I or qualified I think they were recruits but there was one group of paras on the range and one group of young marines and the paras started singing what they used to was I surrender I surrender which was to be honest I've seen them singing that this is this is this highlights my point I was on the range one day and I heard all the paras singing that I was the only one in my troop that I knew what they're on about they're referring to the folk that the initial invasion of the folklands for people listening um but it was all like on deaf ears on everywhere but this driver I was with chatting to one day he was he said his troop was on the range and and the paras started singing that he said and the instructor went right last fucking up there was a a big fight a big fucking fight broke out um can you just talk as quickly through P company because I'll reckon there's a lot of people watching this that will be fascinated in like what I mean I know the basics you got the high the highest so yeah yeah well over to you Steve yeah so you were the way that it was done when I went through was the engineers you had four weeks training with the engineers so you had to be at a certain level before you'd even get on the the engineer prepara and the engineers took you through their four weeks of build up which was two sessions a day the first one was usually around about six o'clock in the morning on parade for five o'clock to get your weapon the usual water bottle had to be full right to the top if it wasn't it went over your head which left you wet and uncomfortable before you've even got out you stood on parade for maybe 30 40 minutes freezing and fucking soaking because your instructor's just made you pour your bottle of water over your head um you'd then go do a probably two to three hour session in the hills carrying full weapon round your waist with all your kit in your your a bergen 36 pound your water and your your weapon and that was just a thrashing that's the only way I can put it was just run fast up hills um and then you came back you were allowed some food get a shower and they used to tell you to go to sleep which was it was one of the good things about it was kind of come back go get yourself a sleep for a couple of hours and then at one o'clock you'd go back out for your second session and again that was a rock hard session probably around about an hour to an hour and a half not as long and it was just that every day you got the weekends off um and then if you got through that stage you would then go on the all arms pre-para and again that was just a complete thrashing for two and a half weeks similar sort of set up on the morning you'd be out running bergen on up the hills and then on the afternoon you'd have another session might be a long run carrying your weapon and your weapon or a gym session and then if you got through all of that you then went on the test week which for us guys is a series of eight tests all designed to challenge you in a different way and I think the two ways and you've probably talked into this before Chris is the difference in the tests for the the commandos and the marines versus the paras is use guys tend to carry a lot more weight a little bit slower those guys will carry less weight but moving at a quicker pace and those tests you start off one of the first test is the trainesium which you've just mentioned and that's a straight pass or fill you're on the 60 foot high shuffle bars no railings no safety net walking across those bars and if if you fail to go over those bars or to do with the illusion jump any of those things it's an instant fail so you've just done practically most people have probably done four months training before they've even got that and then they've just done best part of three four months on the actual course to get an instant fail so and some people did some people um they got up on them 60 foot shuffle bars and I'm not scared of heights but I was nervous up there it's when you're sliding across a little scaffold bar like that um and you've got no railings and you're looking down and you think shit this is I um and and it is and some guys failed to do that which was an instant fail uh some of the other tests is um a two miler so that's carrying full kit carrying your weapon carrying your burgan um and your weapon and you've got to do two miles in 18 minutes which is moving at a pretty rapid pace considering you're carrying full kit then there's the 10 miler so you're doing 10 miles in uh one hour 50 again over very hilly terrain carrying your weapon uh your burgan um and then one of the the ones I found quite hard was actually the 20 miler um not particularly that fast um four hours 40 for 20 mile but again it was just more the terrain and um that really grinds you down but for me by far the hardest out of the entire lot was the log run and uh if you look at the log run on paper you wouldn't think it was that hard I'd done hundreds and hundreds of log runs um in the army by that point I'd been in eight years and I'd done when I say hundreds I mean hundreds I was a PTI training regent used to always jump on the log but the way to set up the log run on P company it's just absolutely brutal it's only 1.9 mile you're carrying I think the uh the log's about 60 70 kilos I forget the exact weight but it's just the sheath pace there it moves up so what they get you to do is there's nine people on the log that you start with and your arm has to be in this position so you're pulling it with a straight arm you can't have your arm as soon as your arm drops like that that you're not dragging the log forward so you get a warning it's a tap first warning second warning you pulled off there's a red card you've potentially failed after three months of hard work um so everybody's pulling the log and it just keeps generating more and more pace and uh your heart rate is at such a high level I was just hyperventilating um in my head um I'm a tough character I've been brought up with that when my dad's thrashing me sending me out on my bike in all weathers um I was an army physical training instructor I was strong I was fit but I was having some serious conversations in my own head of fuck can I do this and as people start dropping off the log the weight of the log just gets heavier and heavier and the further you're getting round and the more people are coming off it and eventually we finish with four people on our log and I remember seeing the finish line and I'm talking literally nothing more than a hundred metres in front of me and I could feel my legs buckling I've just literally gone and I was thinking shit I'm not going to make it I'm not going to make it even though it was so close and I was kind of coming up to it the last 50 metres and my legs were starting to stumble underneath of me hyperventilating just slather coming out of my mouth like literally losing control of my bodily functions and uh I literally I just I fall over the line and um but the weird thing with that is I always ask myself and I think this is where that sick sort of um pushing myself comes from I always think what happens if that finish line had been just one metre further would I have made it and the answer is yes I would have and then I ask myself what happens if that finish line had been another 10 metres what happens if it had been another 100 metres um and I just think that we don't tap into anything near where what we care for below and I certainly found that when I did the double Ironman back to back and um when I thought I was at my limit and I'd only done one Ironman and for anybody who's done a single Ironman again I've got massive respect to them because um extremely challenging and and to finish one and to go straight into a second one and start it all over again when it was one o'clock in the morning it was freezing um again that was massively challenging and it just made me realise how much more we care for below massively yes let's let's come on and talk about that Steve that's um that's the sort of stuff I love love to discuss but um going back to your time the miniature and did you go on many active deployments yeah I did quite a lot um I did Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, RAP twice, Afghanistan and then I did a few few nice places as well so I got the opportunity to go to Australia, Canada, Hawaii, Kenya, which was another experience so yeah Falklands twice so yeah I got about in the military um done quite a lot of tours and were you in the thick of it at all with the with the rounds flying and things going by yeah I think the first probably realisation for me was um um was going to Afghanistan and uh I remember us uh boarding the the helicopter and um kind of like shit the speed that we were coming down and we were told that we had to land at night because there would be uh RPGs rocket propell rocket propelled grenades for people who don't know and they fire those at the the helicopters and the planes as you as you as you're landing and um I remember coming down and just thinking on the herk and just like shit it literally felt like we were falling out of the sky because they were they were having to come down at such a rapid rate so they couldn't take us out with the missiles and um it literally it was scary um and I remember one of my mates had sort of warned me for the landing that that we were going to have because uh in Afghanistan you've got all the mountains and you really expose for for those missile attacks on the on the helicopters and sometimes they get taken out um there was an helicopter that that got hit around about the time that we were out there and I think there was four guys in that plus the pilot and stuff like that and um this sometimes happens they get taken out in mid flight and the the pilot's just bringing that down at a rapid rate to to get you're out of sort of range I remember uh I was getting off off the herk and just going to the tents and on the very first night um you literally you just heard it you heard it come over the top of the tents and uh and the missile landed at the back end of camp um hit where the uh where the uh Hesgo Bastion um protection was if I had landed on the tents you're taking a full tent out and there's nothing you can do to defend against that and for me that that first realisation of shit we're just sat here like sitting ducks there they're up there in their mountains and they're able to just fire these missiles at us and we're just hoping that the don't land on our tent and um in that first week I remember sort of three of four of them missiles landing very closely at the tents um and sometimes the would land on the tents and the take people out and lads would be killed um there was nothing you could do about that um and as you know eventually you start to switch off from that stuff um I remember as well going into Iraq and crossing the border and being told I was doing top cover and um you're just prying for being taken out by the snipers so you're in the top of obviously the wagons and you understand this Chris so you're in the darts and they've got this big round hole where you're stood up uh out of the top of the vehicle giving top cover and uh I was a fairly young lad then I'd passed my PTI course I hadn't been promoted and I got told it was sort of the guys that it was always one of the younger members so if the snipers were going to take you out the work taking out one of the one of you section commanders or something like that but it was usually one of the young lads that were about to be promoted so they were pretty switched on um ready to take a leadership role but if you were killed by a sniper it wasn't going to have as much damage as taking out a section commander or an officer and I was told that right you're going top cover and it was kind of like shit um and I remember being top cover coming across the border into Iraq and um being very very vigilant just looking all over um because as you know them snipers the shit off and the can pretty much um I was speaking to one of my mates of the day and um he was telling us that the snipers killed one of his mates because they got wise to our body armour uh been exposed down the side yeah and uh sniper had just watched him through the binoculars and when he turned round on the side that waited for him to get a drink of his water bottle and as he's brought his arm up like that and created that tiny little gap on the side sniper just took him out and these guys can hit could hit a penny from from practically a mile away and you're doing top cover um and you're seeing the infantry that we'd followed behind and there's there's cars and stuff like that that are on the the rooftops and obviously the REF had been in the tornadoes and you're just like shit what's been happening here and um as you're coming across the border and you're doing that top cover I don't think I've ever been as vigilant in my life for that probably hour that I had to do that top cover and unfortunately we didn't get um any sort of fire at us at that particular period but um once we went into Iraq um again another big eye opener for me and uh I kind of look back and think why did nobody sort of tell us these things I remember uh prepping to go to Iraq and prep as engineers our role was to disarm bombs um that's what I'm trained to do and uh can I can I just stop yeah because I yeah yeah I very rudely didn't ask who did you join when when you got your cherry berry what do you you might want to explain that for for for those of us that don't know yeah so in the royal engineers um if if you pass a pea company um you haven't gone through the para routes the engineers and the signals and and other forces the other other armed forces um different cap badges have a way where you can go do the commando course and the para course yourself and that's what I've done I've done the all arms course um and for us guys it was um I think it's two three you come under two three uh air brigade which um the main squadron for our guys then was uh was nine para squadron um which a lot of the the airborne larch used to go to but um yeah I just think um a lot of stuff you you kind of thrown in the deep end Chris um I always remember it in in Iraq and um we were walking along at our weapons track to our backs and um literally the loudest explosion and it sounded like it was so close it literally sounded like a missile had landed on our heads it was that that I just knew it was that close and I remember diving and it in the ground and my mate just stood up and kind of like laughing at me because he'd been out there about a month before and I was like fuck what the hell was that and uh he said oh it's fine it's just period and I was like what do you mean what do you mean and he just like looked dead relaxed as if it was a normal thing and it was the American obviously um anti-missile device that they had which um knew if there was a missile inbound and that used to intercept the missiles in the air and it was just the device that was close to us and uh had launched to uh to accept an incoming missile and he said to us that Patriot it's faster than our device he said the alarms will go off in a minute and uh literally at that second the alarms went off and we had to run to the bunkers and um that that first time of experience in that and we didn't know if the had chemical weapons and I remember flying into this bunker for the first time and I was sergeant major of one of the squadrons running in um and guys it that shut the buttons down and this guy was on the outside brain on the actual door and it was that risk of um do you open the door and potentially kill all of those soldiers that are underground in the bunker um or do you open it to let somebody in on the outside and anywhere the decision was made to to open the door and uh I remember the sergeant major coming in and literally falling over on the floor and it was just sheer carnage inside because we just thought fuck he's he's having the effects of a chemical attack and you just literally you're fastening everything up strapping your respirator as tight as you possibly can thinking fuck if any of that that's come on the inside we're all dead and that that's what you're literally thinking and um what he'd actually done um and this was quite a joke in the engineers was um the sergeant major had been asleep in his camp cot this alarms gone off he's woke up disorientated like shit what's going on thought he'd had a add the effects of a chemical attack um and he'd gone and stuck his pen in his own leg and he was now suffering from is it atropine isn't it is it our friends at home we're talking about the epi pen as we use yeah that's it yeah it's like a an antidote to if you get chemically poisoned you whack it in your leg quickly or someone whacks it in your leg and the sergeant major's obviously jumped the gun a bit yeah and whatever chemicals is in that injection i don't think you want them in your body too many times in in your life well again you can die from that cart here i think it can actually it can actually kill you and the act to then go give him something to counteract the pen that he's gone and put in his own leg or um he was literally all over the the effects of whacking that pen into his own leg and we just thought that it was a chemical attack we just thought shit that um it was the effects of uh of a nuclear attack and it's uh it that was really really scary for me that time in that bunker because you're just expecting and and as you know Chris you taught that you're going to start uh involuntary shitting yourself being sick your your skin's going to start melting off and um i don't think i've ever tightened my respirator up my kit as tight as that in my life we had a situation steve when we were i was top cover in um belfast one day we're in patrolling through the ardoing ardoing for anyone listening with is was one of the the the most hardened republican areas in in northern island or certainly in belfast um you drive through there you're on tenter hooks because even the three year old kids as soon as they can lift a brick they're coming out to chuck chuck them at you and it it might not sound um okay the three year olds generally don't throw them very far but the bloody teenagers do and and many people have been taken out you know seriously injured by a brick yeah i don't know what i'm talking about bricks for but anyway the point is is you are on you know you you've got to be on your toes when you're driving through the ardoing you've got to be on your toes anywhere in in in yeah republican areas um and suddenly there was this massive clunk like a metallic loud clunk something techy military like right not good basically and something had dropped in between i'm i'm facing this way obviously el was was my oppo he's looking the other way something had felt as if it had dropped down in between us hit the floor and when we looked down this device was just whizzing around and all this smoke was coming out of it so one of the screams chemical attack is it something along whatever it was or or gas gas gas yeah or um we literally in that moment none of it we just knew something wasn't right right the driver pulls over on the edge of the road everyone bombers out the vehicle and then i think it was jock walked up and went it's the fire extinguisher it was the fire extinguisher we had inside the cab dropped off its bracket it landed upside down and pop pop pop the you know the the pin on top and it was spinning around and um that was quite funny but that's the old um i don't know the word for it but that's the thing that any any um commando like soldier who fancies himself as a bit of a scrapper you don't want to have to deal with the mbc stuff do you the nuclear biological and chemical it is not fun going on any sort of patrol in that clothing which is just it's so hot inside it's so fixed basically like wearing layers of charcoal wasn't it yeah then you've got the respirator you can't you can hardly breathe with it on and so everybody when i was in you know when i served you wanted to go on exercises you wanted to let loads of rounds off you wanted to go into combat or whatever it was everyone was more than happy when the umpires went right there's no mbc threat you can get rid of all that yeah no absolutely and as you say chris you just can't breathe in it can you it's it's literally that hot and um doing it for real in afghanistan and iraq in 50 degree temperature in iraq uh carrying full kit and having to put that on um yeah that's why i laugh now when people say oh it's a hot day it's 30 degrees i can't do this and they're walking around in shorts and it's like fucking try putting full kit on boots mbc kit in 50 degree temperature when someone wants to kill you then then you'll know what heat and pressure is we're a bit i think the old school mentality of like you know roughy toughy soldiers it's a bit deluded now isn't it because in technology it's just so massively increased the the notion that you'll go out on patrol you know on a fighting patrol and no one's going to see you and you you know you're going to try and engage the enemy and take them out i'm not saying it's never going to happen i'm not saying it's not happening as we speak but more and more the enemy's only got to have eyes in the sky so if they're a modern enemy like you i'm not talking about the enemy in the middle east so obviously i haven't got the technology at war haven't haven't got all the technology at their disposal but any enemy any enemy worthy so is going to have um what's it like infrared cameras you know they're going to see you coming a mile away um you know they're going to they can just take you out with one quick drone strike or one miss one guided missile um all they've got to do is drop some some bloody gas on you and that's your screwed yeah i think i think the theatre was just really going to change Steve don't you yeah i do i completely agree um i just think it is um it's a very different sort of army to what what i went in and my mates have told me that um they said i probably wouldn't like the way that it is now um and i guess some things did need to change and i can see why they're having to adapt because of like you say it's a very different threat than um that arm or arm combat than some money being clever and putting a drone up in the sky it's like um um how do you deal with that and also in um one of my good friends was killed um he was a sergeant and he was taken out by an ied command detonated ied for anyone who doesn't know that basically means somebody physically pressed the button of a improvised explosive device and just killed him instantly and um they've got really smart with that stuff um it's it's it's so difficult to how can you you prep from that but they're watching your they're watching your patrols they know how you move they know where the leaders are and they just get very smart to how we operate how we move um the route you're taking and it's just so easy for them to uh set up an explosive device when you come near a bridge or or anything like that it's just that that was the reason for me getting out um i was meant to go back to afghanistan again and my daughter had just been born and i'd just lost my mate and i just thought this this isn't for me now it's it's just becoming a very a very different war and i just knew that that was my time up and uh anyone who was serving um i've got massive respect because uh what what happens to your mate steve if we if if i may ask uh it was um a command detonated ied yeah so um the basically just watched them patrolling and uh they were crossing over a bridge and when when they got to that bridge um the detonated uh exactly that time they needed to to take out the uh the recce sergeant which uh which he was um and like i said did one of my other good mates who's still serving now actually he's a warrant officer he's just been commissioned and uh he was in a situation where uh he he had to go to actually react to go to this situation and again an ied had been killed a couple of the lads but they'd set up a series of of other explosives for when they extracted and ran out of that area that they would then take out the rest of the group and they were all at head height um attached to the buildings which would have just automatically just cling took the heads off or all of the guys that are are walking past and fortunately there was a malfunction what the um when the uh uh eod guys had gone in our engineer specialists to uh to have a look at the scene and stuff like that there was a secondary device that would have took out the rest of the section and he just it malfunctioned and hadn't gone off otherwise uh that are being probably six seven other soldiers that had lost their ads because uh they were perfectly lined up at head height to uh to take out the rest of the section as well yeah secondary devices are famous aren't they for causing way more carnage than the first yeah they usually cite them in a place where when you're dealing with the first incident everyone's going to camp here you know set up camp here to set up the control centre or the command centre and of course the enemy's not stupid they know that you're probably going to set up there so they put another device in and um yeah this is the this is why war isn't nice mate isn't it no absolutely uh I always remember another thing Chris and you triggered that there when you were on about it was um with the secondary devices and exploded that I remember being in Afghanistan and our route from our tents to our to the cookhouse we'd been walking that route for probably six weeks at least every day probably um I don't know 200 200 dish soldiers had walked this exact route from the tents to the cookhouse every day the camp that we'd set up in Afghanistan and one of the particular days there was a real big explosion and everyone was like kind of shit what's happened there we were out repairing one of the schools at the time and two guys they were both foreign I think they were I think they were German off the top of my head um there'd been a device underneath the the floor which um apparently had been from the war the wreck and when they'd been battling with the Russians and it had just never ever um it had just been planted there and as we'd walked over and over for for a couple of months it's probably been there for 10 10 years or something like that and eventually the ground got unsettled and and it just went off and killed these two guys but I'd walked that path god we we walked that path three four times a day um for six weeks and it was just that that look of um there were the the ones where the ground was obviously just unsettling putting more pressure more pressure on the the pressure plate and eventually it just went off and killed them both and uh watching them coffins going back and being flown back home and being stood there and just thinking fucking all that that could have been me it could have been any one of us um and just knowing how helpless you are in situations like that you're looking at the ground and thinking there could be more of them any anywhere at all that I'm walking here right now and like you say that that's what triggered it when you say war's not fun um it's very real and um and a lot of the time you you've got a great army around you but you're absolutely sitting ducks you're helpless in a lot of situations is it odd I might sound like I'm asking a a stupid question for our friends at home it's just that everyone deals with grief differently everyone justifies it or rationalise it in their head and and that's their their coping mechanism I'm guessing some some mechanisms work better than others and probably some mechanisms are just not helpful at all so I'm thinking about the you know you get some people they just want to cry in their beard the rest of their life and that's my opinion and that is that's not honouring the dead and it's not it's not getting out and smashing your you know your one life right yeah but how did you find it steve to loop to lose a friend uh I think that that was probably one of the hardest things when I found out about that um for myself I struggled in Iraq the first time in 2003 and um it was more it wasn't so much what we what we're seeing um I never once really particularly thought that my life was was at risk it was it was always kind of shit that was close um but I was never sort of in a situation where I thought um I'm going to lose my life here that didn't go through my head why I really struggled was because of the the heat the temperature um and all of the guys on camp had sickness and diarrhea um which probably sounds bizarre that you're out in war people are trying to kill you with missiles and the stress came from being sick because what actually happened to me because I lost so much weight it went round camp constantly you had sickness and diarrhea you got rid of it you got better and within 24 hours you had it back again because we were having to purify our own water we only had two liters of water a day um for the first weeks until all of the supplies come in and you had nowhere a wash nowhere a shower that that two liters of water you were drinking it so hygiene just went out out the out the water completely and um everyone was just sick constantly and I lost that much weight mentally it took me back to being that kid again of this small skinny kid um I came back from that tour there's pictures of me and I'm I think I dropped back into like nine stone thirteen or something like that I dropped just below the ten stone mark and that had an effect on me more because of my insecurities as a as a kid that I'd gone out there this this big strong lad who was fit physical training instructor and I was now turning back into this weak skinny frail kid where my insecurities were and that's what I struggled with more than anything um and I got PTSD 10 years after serving um after serving in Iraq the first time it was 2013 I'd been out the army three years and again it was a really bizarre thing that triggered it off and I can pinpoint it exactly now it was my granddad's death and my granddad had died and because I'd been very close brought up by my grandparents and in the army as you know you I was always taught that it's weak to show your emotions and you didn't cry you didn't there was no time for crying it was just get on with stuff and because I trept my granddad's death the same and just sort of buried it all trying to forget about it it caught up with me and I ended up seeing a psychologist a specialist in the army and what she'd said to me was because I'd had this trauma in 2003 and never dealt with it and this has now happened the subconscious mind has brought it back to the surface again and I was having dreams what my mind had done it was quite weird how this had happened was when I came out of the army around 2010 I read a story in the army and it really really affected me and you'll probably know this story and it was four military police were trapped and they basically ran out of ammunition and I read that story and they were caught by the Taliban and their heads were cut off and this was in the papers and stuff like that and they were publicly drove around with their heads on the back of the wagons and all that and I remember reading that story and just thinking fucking hell like people think of stress I couldn't think of anything worse at all of being with three of your mates coming under attack when you're not expecting it and realising you've ran out of ammunition and you are now literally minutes away from your head being cut off and stuck on your back and that's exactly what they're done and I read that story and it had a real impact on me of I went there I took myself there and I imagined it and because I'd done that I started having these dreams that I was one of these guys that I'd run out of ammunition and that never happened to me I was never in a situation like that at all I'd just read this in the paper and because of the trauma I'd had in Iraq and my granddad's death my body just wanted to release it and it brought me this immense worst nightmare I've ever had and a week later I had exactly the same dream again that I'm in this small group of people I've run out of ammunition and that got to every three days two days every night three four times a night till eventually I cracked that I literally broke and I had to see a psychologist and that therapy work was massive for me it completely changed me it allowed me to to get rid of all that crap I'd stored for 12 years and probably as a kid all of that stuff from from my dad being tough with me throwing spades at me throwing padlocks at me and forcing me to go out on my bike all all of the stuff in the army the whole lot just came up and I remember in them sessions and I'm strong enough to admit that I cried and cried my eyes out in every one of those sessions with that therapist until it all came out but off the back of that my results I remember the fourth session walking out of there and just thinking there was physically I could feel a weight lifted off my shoulders as if I'd just released it all and it was was kind of like now I'm going to really I'm going to really get some results now that this shit's out the way and that for me this is why I say to people if you're having any sort of trauma do not think it's weak to go speak to someone because that woman literally changed my life and I wouldn't be where I am now and I wouldn't be getting the results that I am if I hadn't gone and seen that therapist so for me anybody if they do watch this at all reach out speak to somebody yes exactly Steve just one second did you get any rounds down during your all your time in these different theatres Steve no I didn't I was it always felt that I was at the other end of it where you couldn't really do anything about it it was certainly in Afghanistan that they didn't want to really make contact with you it was it was all done from from range with with missiles was the majority of attacks you'd quite often here if you were travelling about and stuff like that there was a couple of times when I was outside and we were repairing the schools and there was gunshots fired at you but there were just pot shots there were people taking the odd shots and to even know where it came from was was just virtually impossible and I found the same in Iraq to be honest it was um any sort of threats were uh were at distance um one of our claims of films with with the with the Iraq war tellyc one was that entire war couldn't start until my uh troop had finished building the concrete pads for the for the for our planes to land on because um it was obviously just desert land and one of our roles as engineers was building the concrete pads I've gone and forgot the actual plane now it's the one that can go up and down what is it um it's a plane but it can fly like an helicopter where it turns oh yeah I I'm not that technically minded these days but I know exactly the one you're on about yeah I've gone and had a head blank but basically we I mean that that was one of the main planes we were using and we were working 18 hour days um when we when we finished that last concrete pad uh that night all all of the planes came in all of the um all all the American jets and everything like that they're all landing on these pads and um we declared war as soon as we've got that pad finished we declared war and I remember that first night uh probably about 20 odd jets um some of them with the the tomahawk missiles which were a million pound of missile attached to them all going out all coming back in empty just one after another after another after another just in a loop just going out um obviously uh just taking out all the major buildings and and stuff like that and uh coming back and reloading and just going back out again and it was just one after another after another so what was like on the other end god knows was it the uh osprey was that the one no it wasn't no um if you said it I'll know it yeah somebody if you're watching put it in the comments for us enlighten us all um yes let's let's come on to um your Iron Man stuff Steve and I'm guessing it's this kind of mindset that that is also probably ties in very much with with your business yeah is that how did you get from the military um well into either into the business or the Iron Man which came first so I actually set up my property business while I was in the military um I started buying properties one of the things my dad always drummed in to me was um to save money um he's never particularly been a businessman or an entrepreneur but he's always been a a sort of safe put your money into things save some of it for a rainy day and he always drummed that in to me as from a kid and um I started to make obviously excess money in the army you're going to afghani rack you can't spend anything so I started to put it into uh standard life policies and then I got to a point where um I was coming back from touring I'd have sort of five six grand um just sat in the bank and that was building up and uh I eventually I bought my first property which went up in value and then 2006 I started buying more properties um I'd seen how much my own house had gone up and I just thought if I could get a few of these this would be a great pension and uh I started building that up for the last four years before I uh before I came out and then um coming out in 2010 just before my 12 year point I uh excuse me I'd uh I'd not done a lot of running so I came out and because I was extremely fit because I was a PTI and um had been obviously a past P company I actually said I don't care if I never run ever again I think I've just got that sick of running tabbing being thrashed as a kid I had a big passion for the gym and I just thought right I'll train in the gym and that's what I did and I put some real size and I went up to 14 stone which for my height and my body weight um I was very muscular and that was my life it was just eating training um I was immensely strong I'd really sort of built my body up and then uh probably after about seven years of being out I had an itch and I just kept thinking about more cardio stuff I wonder what I'm capable of I wonder if I could still live up to the reputation that I had in the military of um I was a horrible PTI in terms of thrashing the lads I used to love thrashing the lads I love thrashing myself and people used to say that I was uh a bit sick that way and it was just in the back of my head what am I still capable of doing and um I sort of thought about it for about a year didn't really do anything um and then I started kind of asking the question to a few people um thinking about maybe he's doing a challenge and people are like why don't you do a marathon with me and I just said no disrespect I can't get motivated for for doing a marathon and people said do the course to course it's 120 mile on the bike and again it just I'm not disrespecting anyone who's done those things because the great life achievements and it's all about our own goals what we're doing but they just work big enough to motivate me and um last year that it's just got bigger and bigger and I remember just thinking I want to go do some of that's going to really push me some of that I don't know if I can do as crazy as that sounds that's what's always fascinating me doing the things that I might feel and uh I went and spoke with uh probably five of my mates guys who I really respect ex-commando's ex-paras um ex-SES and uh just kind of said look I'm wanting to do a challenge I want it to be somewhat hard and every single one of them this was the crazy thing all said you need to go do an iron man and uh I wasn't expecting that and I knew what an iron man was um and to be honest I knew it was anyone who trained or done an iron man was obviously a serious level of fitness the level of commitment and mental strength the must have to do that what surprised me was every single one of those that I spoke to individually all said to me if you want a real test you need to do an iron man um and that's where I thought right okay um obviously uh this is the event which uh people measure that level of commitment fitness strength so I decided to do two I'd never done one I'd never even done a half before and I decided to do two back to back with no sleep um just straight through continuous and I remember announcing it on Facebook saying 16 weeks time it practically was I'm going to go do this double iron man that was from scratch I'd done no running um I'd never swam more than 400 metres I was immensely conditioned I trained four five times a week I get healthy I push myself really hard in the gym um but in terms of fitness I hadn't done any hardly anything at all since leaving the army and um I put it on Facebook and a lot of people just said you're crazy you're too old you won't be able to do that now you've not done fitness for this long you're living in a dream world and one of the guys I used to serve with we were both corporals together um he reached out to me he was one of the army he was on the army triathlon team as a coach and he he reached out to me and said look how you're serious about doing this he passed P company as well he knew I was a fit lad he knew mentally that I was determined to do it and he just said if you're interested I'll I'll train you to get you there I'll give you the training programme but I think you need to put it back and I said no no I'm doing it in 16 weeks and he just said right okay um it's your call but the training is going to be immense if I've got to get you at that level in 16 weeks and it was um I built up within within the first two weeks this was before I worked with him because he kicked my ass about this I went out and ran 20 miles within the first two weeks from from nothing um and then he took over the programme and said we're going to steady that down a bit we don't want to be doing anything crazy or get injuries and he created the training programme and I was probably about four weeks into the training yeah about four weeks into the training and my brother ran me one morning and just said um mam's not well I've taken at a hospital and I was just about to go out for my run I think I had a 10 mile run to do and I came back in and um I'd had a couple of missed calls off him around him back and he said mam's took a turn for the worst um it's not looking good and she was 62 years old it came as a mega shock and um within literally an hour that put her on life support and for seven days she was on life support I was training at the same time reporting back to my two younger brothers and uh day seven the the doctor I've been speaking to daily just said there's nothing more we can do we're going to turn off the life support and um we were invited to go into the to the hospital and sort of say our last goodbyes and um they obviously pulled the plug on the life support and she died within minutes of them of them doing that and uh I said at the funeral that I'll dedicate that I'll now dedicate this double iron man world record to my mam and um I give myself no way out it was um again I'm a big believer in burning your burning your boats um and giving yourself no way out and that's what I said I'd do and uh that was that was difficult it was a hard time to to to face that my mam was only 62 years old and um I did the iron man the date came and obviously uh to do that two back to back and um got through the first one and I always remember my mates saying to me who one of the guys had done a lot of iron man distances and uh he said to me I cannot think of anything worse than doing an iron man and then having to do another one straight after it he said because I know you're a fit lad I know you're determined but he said to do an iron man it's going to take more out of you than you than you realise it's extreme doing the three different events that for anyone who doesn't know the 2.4 mile open water swim 112 mile on the bike and then run a full marathon and then to do another one straight after that um he just said I couldn't think of anything worse and I guess I didn't listen to him um until I finished the first one or till I got towards the end of the first one and I was completely wiped out I was back to that sort of level I was on that log on peak company and like shit and now I've a whole different level of respect for somebody who's done an iron man and for the first time in a lot of years because I don't get negative thoughts I'm very much believing what I'm capable of doing and I for the first time started to look in the mirror when I came in for a pee break and I just thought I'd not lost the desire but I started to question was I capable of doing this and it was like shit I've got to do this all over again now and it was 12 o'clock at night it was in October it was cold and it started to rain it was pitch black and I had to go back into the river again to start over again which which river was that state the river T's so um in yam I got into the river in yam and got out at Preston Park and it was weird Chris because we started this whole interview we're talking about energy and being in flow and I remember getting back in the minibus and you'll remember this I laugh at this now and again in a sick way I got back into that minibus to start the second iron man and we got into yam as I say it was cold it was October it was dark it was raining and when they opened the doors for the minibus and I'm about to just go start a second iron man no morale at all at this point was kind of like shit I do not want to do this it reminded me of being on exercise in the army when the first time you get off the back of a wagon and you're just about to start a a seven day exercise and you know it's going to be shit you know it's going to be cold you know they've chose January to do it or as a purpose to just make you cold and I had that same feeling and I remember getting out the wagon and out the minibus got to the side of the river and I remember just looking up to the sky and I remember just thinking mam if you're there just right now I could do with some support some strength and just a fucking huge I've only ever seen two others in my life and a huge shooting star just literally went across the sky and fucking lit the entire sky and my swimming coach was with me because he was swimming with me for safety he just went look at life that's not a sign and he knew the situation when my mommy knew why I was doing it and I just cracked on I got back in that freezing cold river and I just grinded it out it took me an extra half an hour to do the second swim where it did the first one I got on the bike I was immensely slow on the second one took me some at like 10 hours to do the bike and then I had to run the marathon again and bizarrely my body just kicked back in again and I ended up running the marathon I think 20 minutes quicker than what I've run the first one and when I finished it I actually felt quite I felt quite fresh as if I could do do more and that's the reason why now I'm going to attempt to do far back to back when I'll sleep bloody hell right let's peel back a bit because the the the adventurous side of me wants to ask you some techy kind of questions so what um god and just a reminder for people watching it I'm all over the screen today I get that it's because I got vertigo I can't just stare at Steve talking you know my guess like I normally would so apologies aren't this why I've been popping um sea sickness tablets so yeah if you see me throw up guys that's um that's why um yes so when I when I did my quadruple I am man distance triathlon Steve right um I'll say distance triathlon meaning I didn't do my swimming open water I tried to do it in a Lido pool which is an outdoor cold water salt water swimming pool yeah and I'd spent 500 quid on the best wetsuit I could find which was a zone three um it was the latest one it was very cool looking graphite grey with a orange you know stuff and clever stuff on the wrists apparently it's supposed to tell you like how your stroke you know it's supposed to help you refine your stroke and here's where having a plan B can be really fricking good because I got to about four mile and I started going down with hypothermia right I mean I'm I can be skinniest at the best of times right when I go into an event I've usually lost about two stone in in about about a month I lose two stone in I can do it really quickly um and so I might enter event at under 10 stone and I'm 5 for 8 right just to give people an idea and my body literally had no not enough fat to keep warm in these wetsuits they're not like you'd wear if you were scuba diving 40 meters down in winter you wear some big sort of seven mil wetsuit these they're five mil on on on on your body five mil on on on your thighs the rest is all three mil and some of it isn't even wetsuit material it's like this stretch you like one millimeter fabric right so you can the idea being you can move your arms easier well what I found is is that using this kind of wetsuit in the summer was fine um did my first olympic triathlon in the summer eight weeks later it's quite funny actually I came I came last on the olympic triathlon and then I said all right in eight weeks time I'll do a quadru but I'll man them right site um it it things went in my favour so for start the run which funnily enough was this this run and it's not why I wore this shirt but it was the Robin Hood 100 mile ultra was in a week's time right right so it or it was in six days time so I started my quadruple distance iron man with the kind of goal of getting it done in a week because I had the hundred mile run at the end of it it was 108 mile run in the end um and so yeah I got in a water and I started going down mate you know I started going down and and it was there is it wasn't about like being tough and tough and it no I would have had a stayed in there I'd have a shivered myself to death right I'd have lost consciousness and um so I went to plan B I went to the indoor pool and I finished off my 10 mile swim or my nine mile swim whatever it was in the indoor pool and it all because when you do your own vents there aren't any like rules on you obviously in a proper iron man it's got to be in in in open water yeah although I have seen like these 10 decair iron men's done and they they do the swimming the swimming pool yeah I've seen that yeah but I'm fascinated to know what wetsuit you have been because you're getting in the water in October it's going to be bitter it was uh I've gone and forgot its name now um it was a 3.3.6 mil um I've gone and forgot its name um anyway I'll come back to me it was a 3.6 mil um I was fortunate in some ways because I'd been on holiday I'd been in Turkey in August and I was doing the event in October and one of my mates he's um he's a very seasoned open water swimmer and he said to me you are fucking crazy swimming in October that open water swimming stops in September um and he said I've swam in them conditions he said but you're going to struggle he said I'm conditioned to swim at them them them sort of temperatures um and the temperatures dropped to sort of seven degrees um I remember coming back from Turkey and we were meant to do I think it was a 1.2 mile swim we got in the water and I couldn't breathe I literally again it wasn't down to me being weak it wasn't a matter of being able to crack on I physically couldn't breathe I was just that cold and I'd had cold water shock um and my swim coach and my head coached both the work concerned I was I was very concerned because I thought shit I've got now got a real problem here um their work concerned they just said what you you've just come back from Turkey it was red off uh you you'll you'll condition to it um kind of man up because they're both uh the both ex uh well the both still serving actually uh one's got his commission and the other one's just about I get his commission and they both told me a man up um in a nutshell um but when I did the second swim it was the same it was so cold um it was just draining me massively um the uh the wetsuit was a hub that's what it was it was a hub yeah yeah um and uh going back into that water the second time um I was just like the same as what you're saying I was just completely drained that that that the cold temperature um massively took it out on my body um and by that point I'd already done over 140 mile um so yeah I know what that feeling is like yes um so I'm just pleased that this wetsuit kept you alive then Steve obviously it fended off the hypothermia which is what it's supposed to do right yeah well what what I'd done was this this was a a tip from my head coach so I had this 3.6 mil uh 3.2 I think it was 3.2 mil uh wetsuit what I'd done was I put a 2 mil uh neoprene vest underneath and a set of 2 mil shorts as well and then I had 7 mil socks uh and 5 mil gloves um and then I had format I had my um a zone uh head um head cap on and then I also had a a thermal I think it was 3 mil um over the top of that as well um and and it was still just cutting through it it was fucking freezing and that's the only way I can put it did it how I mean did you go with the current in the river did that yeah I went with the current it was a very the route that I was swimming is a very very mild it was almost nonexistent but there was a there was a slight current um which definitely helped me a little bit and we looked for those advantages um the world record that I'd done um I don't dispute for a minute that any of the guys that are doing world record triathlons and stuff like that that have been able to do what I'd done it was just the configuration that uh done a full iron man when people are doing doubles without arrest without having the overnight sleep if they do a double they'll do uh double swim double by double run uh and often as you say the swims are done in a swimming pool um because it was an open water swim swim bike run and then starting the whole thing over swim bike run it had never been done before in in open water um back to back like that um had never been recorded so we looked at it and thought it's going to be hard to do it that way because I've then got six different transitions basically I'm having to do the the swim the bike the run and then swim bike run and all of them changes of the kit the travel back to the river again which was practically another hour all of that was going to add time on to to me not being asleep and the whole thing from start to finish with the travel and the um the transitions was 37 hours in total so um we never went for speed um I've never particularly been quick even when I was in the army as a physical training instructor I was never particularly quick at doing a mile and a half but I was immensely good at endurance being able to continue a solid pace but I could break people around me that always they'd always given before I did um so we thought play our strengths um the marathon wasn't particularly at a quick pace I think I did it in five five and a bit hours or something like that um the first bike was about seven and a half hours second one was 10 hours um swim times were I think it was one hour 20 for my first one and then one hour 50 for my second swim um so not particularly quick times um it was more about just that endurance and going back into that cold water and that ability to do two like that without any sleep was um what we done and as I say I dedicated that to my mom's death I got a world record in the process um and the most amazing thing was I raised 27 000 pound for mental health which is something close to my heart and that money's being very well received by people um so uh yeah um overall it was a great experience awesome what um what bike did you have Steve? I had a a giant it was it was my dad's all bike so my dad's a fanatical bike rider um he's still massively into his fitness so he did both of the 112 mile bike rides with me and um and he's 65 years old to put it in perspective and and did both of the bike rides with me he led the way and I tucked him behind him again it was tactical um to keep me out of the wind he practically led both of those my coach done some stints as well and I just tucked him behind basically and I had one of these old bikes which I'd bought a few years prior which was a giant propel a really hard setup of a bike and it was good in in the respect of um it just glides it's just so light it's all um uh what's the um many I've got a giant propel all right okay propel yeah um I'm just trying to make sure we're we're talking about the same bike it's got quite an interesting head setup isn't it it's um yeah can't really explain it but I had a I don't know racing bike that I use when I did the um the uh Olympic triathlon right the Olympic distance triathlon and the bloody difference between that thing and my carbon fibre bike yeah was just oh my god the car the giant it's like it it's like a racehorse it just wants to go on its own yeah you know you can carve up any hill whereas the the old aluminium bike it was you know there's quite some work out to get up a steep hill yeah there's a big difference isn't there yeah just amazing I I got on it um and I started I remember when I rode it for the first time I got about 500 metres I still couldn't work out how was this was it how to change gear yeah I'm like where's the gear levers can't and I'm just playing with stuff and then I realised it's in the brake you know it's in the brake uh whatever you call them the brake levers yes incredible how um and let me so I'm just moving stuff around it so I don't spin out too much um and it's not easy cycling that distance Steve is it I I thought it was going to be yeah I just get on the bike and do it but no I found um bearing my eye to do 450 miles and I had four days to do it in so uh 110 mile a day and the first day I did that little bit extra but I was going flat out from sort of six in the morning until I don't know sometimes like 10 at night yeah just and I'm not I'm not a good cyclist rainy I find it really quite hard if I was honest when I look at the timings when I when people talk about timings I realise I'm well slower than most cyclists I don't know why I'm done if it's weight or what it is but I was still having to go at it all day long it wasn't like I was having a two hour lunch break or anything you know I was grabbing a pasty and cycling along eating it just to keep going yeah I was cycling anywhere I could think of so we got a very beautiful reservoir near us and it's four miles all the way around so I just do you know 12 12 times around that until I got bored and then I'd fuck off to somewhere else and and I'm just checking the tracker all the time going oh come on come on come on um it's not easy is it no it's people asked me um which was the worst out of the three events and they were all bad for their own reasons um the swim because of the cold water the the swim would have been a gift um in some respects if the weather had been nice but the swim was brutal I was just freezing cold right through to the bone where I could hardly lift my arms up my technique and everything I was rather than like nice stroke I was kind of swimming like this and arms coming over the side and really fatigued really cold weather um the bike was just horrible because it just goes on forever and ever and ever and just doesn't seem to ever end um and then the run was hard just because of the the sheer compounding of of running uh 52 miles um after you've done all those other those other stuff the running just uh I find the running takes the most out of you um but the bike was horrible and the thing with the bike as well and I still have it now because you're using the giant propel it was great because it wants to glide but because the setup's so hard and there's no suspension I had a pain I've never had it along both of the fronts of my arms because of the vibration of the bike being so solid um I was on the bike for the best part of 18 hours in total and um I still have it now where I've lost the feeling in these these end fingers here in my little finger on the end and I had that really bad for the first four weeks after the event where I couldn't feel them at all um and I've still got it a bit now I guess it's just like white finger that vibration of doing 224 mile on a bike um guess our body's just uh not meant to do stuff later well just an interesting point there and I hope this helps anyone listening when I did the 108 mile run which just turned into an an epic anyway um I lost all the feeling in my toes right in fact I'm going to chuck a couple of things in here for our for our run-a-type people listening right I bought my my my normal size training shoe I bought some ASIC say that these things are never cheap these days you always pay 120 quid for a pair of shoes now right 100 quid if you get some in a sale you might be lucky and get them for 70 right but they're not cheap bought these ASICs in a seven which is what I am silly mistake right should have got a size bigger if not especially as I was running in the summer right my feet swelled and ripe from about mile 10 I started to get blisters well um what I what I did when I ran 200 miles in five days at Christmas I bought uh Brooks they do an extra wide setting and my feet are fairly wide um I didn't buy a size bigger but I just got the extra wide and I wore these new double skin socks that have just come on the market or they they're fairly recent they're like they're socks but they've got two two walls like that and because that takes the friction it stops your feet taking the friction so so I ran 200 miles they didn't get a single blister not didn't get any foot foot pain discomfort um got got a killy stuff which is just bloody awful yeah I've got that as well that's what I had a killy's off off the back of mine I've never had it before right I had it in training but that's because the boot used to push into the back of my killies where it all the boot it all dried out right this 200 mile have chucked up loads of stuff I just never I'd never even considered you know my body was no way like ready to run that um it was just injury piling on top of injury even in the last half mile I tore my bloody calf muscle right and that feels like it it just feels like um like a rubber band snapping right it's almost like you can hear it um by that time I was so hacked off of it I just I just I just literally ran through that pain I just didn't even think about it um but um what was I saying that oh yeah after that 108 miler I lost all the feeling in my left toes right so from the fourth toe across to the little toe all of that gradually progressing into feeling nothing at all and I thought it was something you know to do with a shoe right and it wasn't until one of my followers of subscribers pointed out no Chris it's probably your back right uh because I've had you know I've had back problems I've had um a diskect to me and all this kind of stuff what I found out Steve is if I get dehydrated which I tend to be quite a lot of the time I'm just not a person that drinks a lot of water um I lose the feeling in my toes and if I had to guess I'd say that when you get dehydrated your body will take liquid from your discs so they shrink so they shrink so your spine shrinks and it's putting pressure the possibility is it's putting pressure on a nerve right that's why that's why I lose the feeling in my um in my toes so when I start to lose the feeling in my toes I just go and get a pint of you know a pint of water or put a bit of juice in it or something and um and it goes away again Cruising yeah but the the hand thing that's that's quite a common thing in cyclists isn't it I don't know to be honest um it's never some of that I've experienced but saying that I've never I'd never cycled at that that the most I'd ever done was 130 mile which I'd done in one of my training sessions building up towards it um but yeah to when you're starting to do 224 mile and you've had no sleep and you've done that a marathon and best part of by then five miles of swimming um obviously it starts to take its toll and and it did um but yeah Achilles for me was um I've still got it now so I'm now three months after the event and I've still not been able to shake it off how how did that come around and what did what did it feel like it it happened on the first marathon and I was probably about 20 mile in at the marathon and it just started to feel a bit sore and um I had I had Achilles problems when I'd done P company um never had a man any other time just when I'd done P company and anyway it came back about a 20 mile point I said to my head coach my Achilles is hurting we'd done a trainer swap which we were doing regular anyway and um he he felt that it was um down I like wearing Adidas um so I've got a couple of pair of hawkers um but I also I've always liked running than Adidas and and he wasn't a big fan and he kind of said I think it's them trainers um I don't believe it was I just think it was the sheer the sheer amount of of miles what I'd done by that point personally um I then went back I finished the first Ironman started the second one and it started to play up a lot more on the bike um the second bike it was starting to hurt more and more and when I'd done the second 112 mile on the bike and went to start running again practically that whole second marathon I was in pain um there was a period from probably about the five mile a 10 mile point I was limping for best part of an hour um and I ran the whole lot I didn't I didn't one stop um once I'd sort of got to the the 40 15 mile points I started feeling better I think probably the adrenaline of of knowing I was coming to the end there was a lot of people out on the streets there was a lot of kids um a lot of families the police were out beeping the horns cars were beeping the horns the fire engines were out beeping the horns and I think all of that that adrenaline took over and I stopped feeling it um and I came to a really warm reception there was hundreds of people waiting for me to uh to cross the line it had all been sort of shot live into um all of the local um groups in my area and there was um a lot of people were watching it live and um I came to work like a really warm reception like I said a lot of kids were out and um people cheering and stuff like that cars beeping the horns and uh the last lap that I done the very last bit I put a t-shirt on with Rest in Peace Mam um which was sort of the the finale of the the whole thing and um we created a documentary off the back of that which is on our youtube channel and that's uh it's had four awards already um it's it's reached the final in three different awards for documentary of the year in international documentaries um and that that's on my youtube channel which uh we're hoping we're going to pick up a fairly major award for it brilliant and what's your what are your sort of did you say your your next plan is to do a quadru pool yeah that's the uh that's the the intention right now I've got to shake off these injuries um but I finished the two and there was more in the tank so there's there's that question there of can I do more um might be a bit crazy but I guess that's why I'm the likes of people like me and you do what we do uh it's that curiosity uh you want to push yourself to a point where you might not be able to do it and and for me that that's intriguing that's um kind of excites me that that feeling of something may be able to beat me but maybe it won't did you did you have to take any painkillers Steve yeah on the second run um my my feet were fine um I um I got one blister on the second run and having army team around me so mainly the guys around me were my head coach my swim coach were military guys uh past pea company um the dunai and mans themselves so I had a really good team around me um and I felt pain on the side of my foot and I said I think I've got a blister we stopped on the next loop whipped the socks off um and being military guys the dealt with it dead quick stuck the needle in um squeezed the blood out taped it up um and sent me straight back out it was dealt with really quickly um and I think that that that really helped having military guys around me that the work flapping there were mega calm throughout the whole thing even when I was having really low dips and it looked like I was completely gone um they were fine they knew that I would sort of come back out of that at some point and it was just a matter of um keep moving forward um and let's we were going to talk about your homeless project won't we I'm conscious not to forget that shall we cover that now yeah so um the year before I'd done another project which um was I wanted to go out on the streets and um the the reason for doing this and I'd wanted to do it for five years prior was I wanted to I wanted to make the point that the importance of mindset and that it's only mindset that's stopping us from doing anything at all so I wanted to go out on the I went out on the streets in Leeds I had no phone I had no money um and uh I wanted to go live on the streets and I set myself a series of tasks and the the point I wanted to make was we can move out of our situation improve wherever you are now whoever's watching this there's a better version of you and there's there's a there's a better place and I always say be grateful for where you are but always have a desire for more and I wanted to make the point that we can improve our current situation um so I went to Leeds um my partner wanted me to have a mobile phone I wasn't willing to do that um so I went out there and um I took heroin so I wanted to because I knew people would say well it's all right for you you you're only out there for so long and these people are on heavy addictive drugs uh so I went and took heroin to get myself addicted to that um and I remember the the sort of first night of doing that being in the car and I was scared um and it's not often I'm scared um because people had said to me um one guy said something to me about a week before and I fucking wish he hadn't because I thought shit I need to blank that out because he said to me you've probably got the mental strength to do heroin and and it not having any long-term impact and you've been able to get back off it but it can change the chemistry in your body and you may never never feel the way you do right now and because I'm in such a good place I thought shit um I never really considered that um I was already committed by that point it was already happening I thought I'm not going to warn that story I'm just going to blank that out and I remember that first night of being with a guy that we'd um we'd sort of brought in who was a next heroin addict um to do it and he was sort of burning the heroin and that that smell um and doing that for the first time and that impact that it had on me it just literally it just wiped me out um I was just gone and uh uh the guy who we'd done it with Dean who did all the media um you can see in them pictures that again the documentaries on YouTube and I'm just completely gone um I had no desire to do anything at all I just felt really warm and it felt really it felt good um and I've admitted that on the on on the documentary that it was just this really warm relaxed content feeling and I can see why homeless people do it because I didn't feel cold there wasn't sort of that thought of shit I'm on the street you were sort of in your own bubble um which I've now learned um the homeless people call heroin this um the heroin blanket they actually call it this this blanket that it feels like you've got around you when you're doing the heroin and um I stayed on the streets I um I slept in the doorways I shared food with them um our camera guy Dean he experienced it all as well first hand in terms of the drugs that we're taking watching them taking drugs um watching them buy them the alcohol begging for food begging for money I really got in there and I'd done the whole thing and then uh after we'd spoke to quite a lot of people and and I made some really good friendships out there uh we got to a point where I was going to prove now that I could get back off it and uh I had to go I'd grown a big beard big scruffy beard hair was all long um so I had to go get a shave my haircut new clothes an apartment and a job all from scratch couldn't use any contacts no CVs or anything like that um getting the haircut happened really quickly so I went in at the very first barbers um I don't know if I just came across a good guy but I just went in and I uh I had a hidden hidden camera on and I just said to the guy uh I'm homeless I want to turn my life around um and I need somebody to clean me up is there any chance you could give me a shave and cut my hair and I said I've only got this money on me and I think I had like about 50-60 pence on me or something like that and the guy said to us look I don't want any money mate he said come back at two or three o'clock and uh I've got a spare slot I'll get you whipped up and uh went into the barbers give me a shave cut all my hair off smart and me up I still had all of these smelly dirty clothes on and then I confessed to him afterwards that actually I was um quite a wealthy guy and we gave him 10,000 pound of business training for his for his business which he was absolutely over the moon with um and I said to him I'm after some clothes where could I get some and he said uh I know somebody I know there's a guy where I buy some clothes from he's a really good guy he might be willing to help you out um we went to this particular place and it was closed so um I went around a number of shops to try and get closed a lot of them just kicked me out um because I was stinking I had all of these dirty clothes on these dirty boots and a lot of people sort of um didn't want me in there um and then uh I went back to this place and it had opened up again and I said to the guy look I'm homeless I'm wanting to turn my life around I've had a haircut and a shave off a guy who knows you and um he just said you I'll get I'll get you sorted out mate you said just go pick a few things that you want don't worry about the money it's good to be able to help you um and he let me pick some jeans a shirt um a sort of sweet sort of old style jacket which looks smart um he only had a pair of seven shoes so I had to take um these size sevens was like a retro type um clothing place and they were too small for me so I had to walk around with them crippling my feet and then I had to go get um a job in an apartment which proved to be a lot harder than what I expected I thought that I knew it was a numbers game I thought if I knock on a hundred doors someone's going to give me a job it's as simple as that um and we went door after door after door after door after door and it just wasn't working um I got offered a couple of part time things a little bit of bar work but straight away people were saying to me have you got a bit of a reference where have you come from have you got a phone number because I didn't have any of them things it just shone through that I was lying um and you could just sort of see that the the summit doesn't stack up with this guy at all and um that was really really difficult to the point where I was walking round I was going into pubs and just shouting can I grab everyone's attention please um I'm homeless I'm wanting to turn my life around somebody's given me a shave and they've given me these clothes I'm after a job does anybody know of anything going and people were just laughing at me um and and that was really difficult and then we found a charity that we're giving food out and um spoke with those got some free food and stuff like that and um I got talking to them and and she she was under the impression that I was homeless I wasn't able to tell anyone and she took me to her house that night and said look you can stay here tonight we'll get you sort of cleaned up have a shower and stuff like that because although I had these new clothes on um I was still stinking I've been washing in sort of the local fountain and stuff like that and uh the next day she managed to uh she said look I might be able to help you out I know somebody used house uh that have the branded it out has been used to grow drugs if you're willing to clean it all out um she's willing to give you a place to stay free of charge for six months and she'll also pay you for clearing it all out and uh I went to this house and you literally you couldn't write it um they'd been growing this cannabis farm inside this property and and I had to clean it all out and because there'd been a bit of a dispute they'd left um fish in the fridge um and there was just maggots everywhere it was the worst smell I've ever smelled in my life and I had to gut the whole place out and at the end of it I obviously came clean and told them who I was and we offered to renovate her whole apartment um I took my team of lads my construction team down and we'd done a full revamp on her on her property so yeah overall it was um it was an amazing experience the biggest learns and most people have got homeless people wrong and I can say this from spending a week on the streets most of them want to be there they don't want accommodation when we offered them it they didn't want it the scene paying bills are stressed so um all of the people that we spoke to were either alcoholics or on drugs every single one of them there was only one of them who wasn't on drugs and he was an alcoholic um they are targeted so when they become homeless the drug dealers if they know someone's new on the street they'll go give them heroin or spice free to get them addicted so they'll now come back to them um and that's how they were sort of trapping them and keeping them on the streets some of them uh had had jobs respectable people and probably wouldn't have stayed on the streets but because the drug dealers had pinned them at this sort of lifestyle and they're not blaming the drug dealers because obviously they'd got themselves in that situation in the first place but they were kind of stuck they were addicted to the drugs and um they didn't want to change the lifestyle um but the number one thing I was never ever out of food I was never ever out of water and the same as the guys that I met out there the number one thing that they all wanted was somebody to just acknowledge them and speak to them and I can completely second that because I sat there and people will walk past you and even the ones that give you money they'll kind of throw the money down nobody speaks to you there's thousands of people walking past you nobody engages with you and the amount of people that belittled me um and said nasty things um about me being homeless and a waste of space and things like that it was absolutely shocking and every person that spoke to an interviewed had all been physically attacked that had alcohol poured on them that had been kicked in the sleeping bags um just just brutal it was it was a real eye opener um but uh again it's had an impact on a lot of people's lives and um we've been nominated by the gold movie awards for that documentary as well which is also on my youtube channel oh blimey what a thing to do well done mate yeah probably a bit crazy some people so yes well my good friend james english did a very similar um did a similar thing he made he went homeless on the streets one christmas in fact it was the inspiration between him making this documentary where he just took a i think he just took a GoPro on the street and slept rough for seven days while everyone was enjoying christmas um but it was that documentary that inspired me to do my running home for christmas which was this for people listening that aren't aware i i ran 200 miles at christmas um um the project was called running homeless for christmas i started off running around a running track to really add to the the kind of boredom factor um again to relate it to to being homeless and uh yeah but anyway that's that's another thing again yes really well done steve thank you yes so what are you up to now how's the public speaking going what how's how does the housing portfolio look at look at the moment uh so my portfolio with the project i'm just buying which actually should be completing today it takes my portfolio to over eight million um it's completely changed my life i now train other people how to do the same out and make money through property uh by having the right mindset uh and the skills that i've learned of 15 years in property um and uh i've been resting for a while i've been trying to train but it's sort of one step back one step forward two step back at the moment um the intention is to do another big event this year but um my body hasn't took um two hasn't been too keen on what i've done should we say in terms of that double iron man so when when a sort of technique as it is when did you do that remind us when you did that steve october so just over three months ago oh really recently yeah oh gosh yes so um yes these uh injuries can take a while to um get back to normal the the body just the mind and the body takes i mean i'm i'm still smashing out if i was honest um that's why we do these things isn't it very easy they wouldn't really be a challenge um and how about the um the public speaking house yeah great again um obviously um with uh where we are um we've sort of changed our model and um we've we started doing more stuff online um but yeah the the training's going really well it's just come it's just growing and growing more people are wanting to work with me because of the results that i'm able to get other people uh i was on rich house poor house last year on channel five and they're doing another special on us this year because um the guy i'd done the exchange with i've put him on our training and he's completely transformed his life him and his partner so channel five said because of it being one of the highest viewing ones they've ever put out and it being such an inspirational watch they've they're doing a special follow up on it um which is out this year wow have you ever done that secret millionaire programme no um a bit before my time we um with the homeless millionaire we we sort of stole the idea a little bit from that or should i say not stole but inspired by that um and that's where we we called i was the homeless millionaire where it was sort of um i was undercover similar sort of thing but we wanted to scale it up like i do with everything i always one iron man's not good enough i need to do two that sort of thing and and that's what we wanted to do we wanted it to be like the sort of um the um the secret millionaire um and to sort of homeless programme but banging them together and uh taking the heroin with it as well just to put the cherry on the top um and again that took me a long time to recover from that i came off it but my body wasn't right for probably three months after that yes i've had similar coming off opiate medication after my back surgery um stuff still isn't right but i've still got a tinnitus had it has been you know two years now or whatever um just lots lots just lots of weird stuff seems to happen to your body the older you get but was was it difficult coming off the heroin because that can be absolutely awful i'm obviously my experience is more prescription i mean i smoked heroin in the past it was um but i just remember trying to get off this prescription medication i used to just look at my my girlfriend and say the devil's got me yeah the devil's got me you know if there's ever a devil and a god this is the devil yeah he's got he's got me again you know he's got me again in my life he's got me this he's got me this way this time it's it's it's really hard to put into words but to try to be getting off something but then to be feeling so out of sorts in yourself that all you want to do is be back on it yeah you know physically just you you just feel so strange on top of all the the the the painful experiences you have to go through and even when you think you're out the other side you get stuff that kind of lingers on that that you know really like for me it was a tinnitus you know i i didn't know when i got off my opiate medication because i suddenly had this to deal with that i hadn't i didn't have this while i was on it right how was your experience day i think the next day was um after the first time of doing it the next day was was was probably um i'd just felt terrible i couldn't eat i'd lost my appetite so when i went out there i was in really good shape um i was training in the gym regular i was in really good shape really good condition um i trained four five times a week regular i have a good diet so to go out and to now not train all week to eat pasties drink cans of coke and whatever i was given a sort of get by to be sleeping on a hard concrete floor um and then obviously taking heroin my body was kind of like shit what's going on um because i'd been very healthy consistent with my eating as i am and uh it was more um i always knew when the heroin weighed off that my mind was stronger than the drug so i knew that i wouldn't i was able to not go back on it i was confident of that that's why i i've done it because i was confident um what i wasn't prepared for was probably about after i was fine so i wasn't taking heroin it was probably about three weeks after doing it all i got a feeling i kind of went back to thinking about doing the heroin and it was good it gave me a it gave me a good feeling and i kind of thought to myself i remember i was in my kitchen and i thought i could probably do this occasionally if i did like one off and it's not really going to do me any arm and then i just stopped to myself and i thought fucking hell what are you thinking like you're trying to justify it to yourself to go out and just do some heroin because it'll be all right doing it the one time and i just thought shit um just how i can see how it gets people that that's what i'm seeing because for somebody who's very mentally strong and to be having a conversation with myself sort of thinking of it and thinking oh i'll probably be able to do this and it won't really do any arm if i did it occasionally and i just thought shit this this is how it gets you and i wasn't expecting that um it was more of um and that word what you said the devil it's kind of sums it up for me because it was kind of i thought i'd beat it i thought i was off it and there it was sort of in the background trying to creep up on me in a sneaky sort of way and um that's where i realised i thought shit um what are you thinking and obviously i didn't go do it um but i just i lost motivation that that was the biggest thing i didn't want to train so going back in the gym i felt fine within myself i didn't have any side effects other than i just couldn't get motivated it took me probably three months i was going in the gym i was still i was still being disciplined and that's my whole ethos but i had to grind out every single session for about three months and just did not enjoy you going in there every single day for a few months just felt like an absolute chore um so yeah i guess obviously the stuff going on in the background at a deeper level that internal dialogue that you mentioned there should i shunt i i'm going to feel like this it could be good it could be good oh no it will be bad yeah that's that's like my life 10 times a day for for the last 30 years just for just i'm just putting this out there for isn't it this is what i have to negotiate um you know it's um that i'm not saying this is not trying to get people to feel sorry for me nothing like that i'm just saying addictive psychology is a fucking evil thing you know it's it's horrible it's not something you can just go ah just blah blah blah no it's it it's in you and it's in you every day of of of your life and uh as you get older especially when you become a parent you you have to just freaking try to keep the lid on it you know you've got to yeah you got to just try to keep that get everything in perspective go to the good side go into the light you know stick with what you say take action smile at the morning sun