Ollie Marchon - #007

0:00Jake Dearden: Ollie Marchon, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me, Jakey. Pleasure to be here. How has your day been? You've been training this morning?

0:07Ollie Marchon: It's been good. As I said to you, I got in late last night from a trip to Gauru in India, so I've had 10 days of relaxing, got straight to bed, and then today I've had a podcast this morning. Had a jiu-jitsu session first thing, hit some deadlifts, and then made my way to London.

0:22Jake Dearden: Interesting. You're out on the jiu-jitsu train at the moment. Obviously, you've been doing it now, is it like three or four years probably two and a half on and off yeah how are you finding it

0:32Ollie Marchon: honestly mate it's i know there's a lot of it's very cult-like um probably a little bit like anything where you find you find something you're passionate about that really resonates but i think when i moved away from rugby that was obviously a sport that's very physical it's a bit of a man test every weekend um i love i love the physicality of of sport i've always like combat sport as well. When I finished rugby, I did Mai Tai for a couple of years. Found that probably a little bit too, like the striking, particularly in sparring. That was quite tough after like Sunday sparring, going back to the kids with like black eyes and a bit mashed up, legs kicked.

1:08Ollie Marchon: It wasn't very conducive with being able to go straight into my training week. But I find Jiu Jitsu a little bit more controlled. It's a bit like a game of chess. It requires a lot from you mentally as well. So above and beyond just the physicality of it, how dialed in you have to be when you're on the mats and when you're just like you're not thinking about anything so after a tough day's work or before you go i go to work i actually prefer training in the morning that that sheer like focus you're not thinking about anything else which is really nice for the headspace and i think there's something a little bit like primal about

1:38Jake Dearden: just like wrestling i suppose you can't really think about anything else when like someone's

1:42Ollie Marchon: trying to choke you out literally someone's trying to choke you out or take your arm you know snap your elbow take your ankle uh so it's really cool and i think when it when it comes to like the things i've always excelled in with my fitness with my training i've always tried to harmonize strength and conditioning i've always liked to be powerful strong well conditioned i've always liked to move and i think when you're um when you're doing jujitsu like your center of mass like how you position your body obviously using your strength is it isn't a bit of an advantage but there's loads of other bits to it as well that really challenge your like physicality and so i just as you age as well something that you can continually get good at despite the fact that you might be uh seeing like degradation in some of your athletic like strength and power you can still get

2:27Jake Dearden: better technically i really like that i like that and that's super functional and i feel like march on and the brand that you've built has been at the forefront of functional training since the very start like you guys brought it to the uk really in my opinion i remember watching you on socials and i was like i just wish there was a gym like that around where i lived because there was nothing like that there was no one else doing what you did where it was basically training everything to be ready for anything but in like a clever way you wasn't just doing junk volume everything had a purpose every movement that you was doing was getting you better at something and like you say it wasn't random i know a lot of brands and a lot of gyms tried following you and they kind of cut it completely wrong in my opinion because they didn't have that intent behind everything um how did that come around how did the idea of you building a gym you building a brand and march on come around i think we can finish the episode there just click that up i'm going

3:39Ollie Marchon: use that for promo and that's that's going to keep march on going for the next couple of years i think um mate i appreciate the kind words you're an og of the space i know you're still quite quite young but you've been in the space a long time so you probably were there in those early early days of march on i think yeah i've spoke about the story fondly like we um we came into fitness with a background of of training probably for 10 years prior to that through strength conditioning through rugby so obviously every sport at the top level requires a level of strength conditioning requires a level of like gym work and that supports how you're able to go and perform on the field, you know, decrease, decrease, uh, decrease risk of injury, improve.

4:14Ollie Marchon: The outcome speed to the ball speed to the, to the challenge, the impacts, et cetera. So in rugby is probably one of those games where you need that, that, that kind of like hybrid fitness, the most, you need that muscle mass, you need that resiliency, that strength, that power, but you also need that stop, start, you need that ability to endure 80, 90 minutes of a game. Uh, and so I think that that environment, um, and the sport that we were playing was very conducive with how we built our kind of philosophies on, on training afterwards. and probably like most people that grow up playing sport football running rugby whatever it may be that natural thing when you can't you know maybe compete at the top level anymore is to try and monetize and build a career off staying involved now that might be through owning a gym training coaching you know there's now sports like high rocks that have given opportunities to athletes to continually get paid through endorsements and whatever else and for me post rugby I couldn't continue being an athlete at that sort of level because there wasn't the opportunities there was grassroots kind of fitness events crossfit was bubbling along but you couldn't really and a living off that and coaching was also something that I really was passionate about and so I always liked like in school the PE teachers were always the ones that I really respected and looked up to and then in my sort of rugby career the S &C coaches were always people that I really got along with and so there was something about coaching that I wanted to try and um emulate for myself afterwards um and so yeah we just built march on around everything we knew from strength and conditioning and being athletes ourselves but then also looking at the fitness space at the time which was purest bodybuilding on one end of the spectrum um people that were you know they looked amazing but in great shape for going on stage um and then the other end of the spectrum if you weren't in elite sport there was like crossfit which was super complex lots of gymnastics weightlifting um a load of other stuff that you had to get really good at and to be fair maybe if i'd if i'd leant into a little bit more i probably could have excelled a little bit more but we found ourselves in the middle kind of adopting a little bit of both we wanted to maintain the good physique maintain the muscle mass but we also wanted to think about how our body could you know display athleticism strength and power and we adopted some of the bits from crossfit and then this bit in the middle kind of functional fitness was born out of that and it was like a diluted version of crossfit and a more athletic version of some of the sort of

6:32Jake Dearden: bodybuilding powerlifting that you were seeing well it was crazy like before functional fitness came around like and it still happens today you walk in a commercial gym everyone's got the headphones on they're doing a bro split the push pull legs uh maybe they might do some some low

6:47Ollie Marchon: intensity cardio what is it liss low intensity steady state yeah where they're walking on an

6:53Jake Dearden: inclined treadmill or doing the stairmaster and yes that's great for you um but i feel like you brought this sense of community as well not just like say being able to look good but being functional but then bringing the sense of community i remember watching like the workouts that you used to post on your story and where it was kind of this this crossfit class but again scaled back so you didn't have to be able to hands down walk if you because that takes years to learn so it's kind of isolating to most people only probably one percent of the people on the planet could hands down walk so you're automatically kind of 99 % of people are like i can't do that and you're in this space now where like you're being open to everyone everyone can get involved no matter what level they're at and i think it was just a really cool thing that i remember seeing and it appealed to me because i couldn't do any of the i still can't do much of the hands down walking the muscle ups things like that although it's great and i admire crossfit for doing that like i feel like the gap in the market was there for you just to kind of slide in and and take the majority of the kind of share of people that was wanting this sense of community but also wanting to be fit and healthy yeah i think the community piece because i think just

8:13Ollie Marchon: the style of training and kind of what it does for the way you feel the way you look the way the confidence i think it resonates with people and then when it starts to resonate with a number of different people in the same space at once you start to organically kind of build that community but i think the um you know the piece around the kind of crossfit and the skill acquisition required for that like i said it never really appealed because you think about the amount of time you have to commit to try and learn those skills and most people are time poor right 45 minutes 60 minutes maybe 90 minutes in the gym you're never going to be able to learn all of those skills across you know across that time across that week and so we really looked at and gone what are the bits that we think are integral to building you know strength and conditioning and then what are the bits that are integral for like this journey-centric approach to like skill development because i do think acquiring new skills whether it's your wall ball or your lunging efficiency or your burpee broad jump efficiency which is like big these days in the high rocks acquiring those skills and really finding those skills is super important and it's super fun because you get to unlock and you learn pacing you learn how to improve your efficiency for breathing etc so i think that's super important but when you you're asking someone to walk on your hands or catch a you know heavy snatch or a muscle up there's a level of novelty to those skills that don't really serve much outside of the sport of sport crossfit and so we didn't really tend to tend to you know pay them much attention because it was super complex to coach people and when you think about skill development for most people like they find it difficult to know where the hand and foot is at the best of times when you're talking about a wall ball and catching a ball so um from a coaching standpoint even more difficult to take someone's money and spend an hour trying to get them to walk on the hands so we really looked at like what was the what was the skill continuum and what were the exercises that we would that should fit within it for what we wanted to teach um i think the biggest thing that we saw was that the gap let alone the bodybuilders through to crossfitters is what most people did in the gym which is what you've identified whatever the split was and some low intensity cardio it wasn't really conducive with what people were trying to do outside the gym caveat that by saying what people were trying to do outside the gym back then wasn't what they're trying to do now there may be have been a park run there was the odd turf games there was the national fitness games which was a competition you know i developed uh now now it's called ethics uh recreational football game at the weekend but there wasn't really much where you've gone i'm training in the gym because i want to do this at the weekend or do this in competition um so you train in the gym for the health benefits the longevity to feel good maybe it was body you know body composition now or over the last sort of 10 15 year period with what what people want to do in their gym and this is everyone from the 16 year old to the 55 year old 60 year old because of the opportunity and access to high rocks ethics marathon running path marathons 10k it's like it's been largely just like the accessibility and the relevance culturally within social circles um everyone's now trying to do one of those things and so the training they do inside the gym the prescription the periodization the structure the progress these are all now things that people are willing to do in a program they're willing to do the same you know warball technique imam week on week progressing through to a 20 and amrap because they know the progress imperialization um and progressive overload all these things are normal whereas before outside of bodybuilding crossfit people just wanted to random class-based because they just variety was that was the spice of life hit training was the spice of life so i think the consumers become more sophisticated we were obviously an earlier doctor we were lucky at the time but there are loads of other good people doing some good stuff

11:40Jake Dearden: I love that and I don't know how much you know about me being a super fan of March On but I remember when you used to have pdf documents that you could buy on your website and it'd be exactly what you say 50 different workouts where they were different but they were all towards the same goal of getting fitter getting stronger and they were kind of like these hybrid style workouts and I used to buy them and obviously go do them in the gym but then i used to kind of steal a couple maybe coach them in classes whatever it was and because like you say there was so much intent behind it it wasn't random everything was programmed and i think you was a really early adopter to instagram stories and obviously posting as well but you used to be so open and honest and you still are to this day whatever challenge you set yourself you document it all and i remember you doing like deadlift programs and each week you'd be like oh i'm you know i'm doing 180 for three this week and then next week you'd progress you'd do four five and then by the end of the block by the end of the 12 weeks you could see clear progression and i think that really kind of it really resonated with me because I struggled with that in my own training I'd kind of hit a plateau and we think if Ollie can do it I can do it and I don't know if you saw success in you know people following along with that journey and and kind of buzzing about it but like I yeah I saw you as a huge role model but how how was that and how important was that for you to

13:24Ollie Marchon: document your journey yeah again it means it means a lot that um the kind words i again i think social media has been a massive uh a massive part of my career and a massive part of my success in the early days but i would say that like now 38 this year i certainly struggle with where it's got to because i'm i wouldn't consider myself a creator i'm not someone as prolific as i used to be on social media i was someone that used to be like i'm going to post every day and so back then uh the strategy for myself was if i can post something from a from wearing my coach's hat to be like this is how i would do x or it was like a you know a tutorial in trying to squat better or whatever it may be or if i can post my workout and inspire someone to move and back then like if i posted a a strength you know a strength piece or a 20 minute amrap and then the following week showed the progression from that 20 minute amrap like the way i was working out was quite impressive back then to a lot of people but still it still is all it's it's impressive i suppose in terms of the consistency in the in the and the um the the detail of what's in it the weight yeah the the prescription but it's not in terms of like the weights or the speeds or the or the times or whatever else because the the level of athlete now is so far more advanced and so that level of content doesn't fit like it wouldn't stick out like it used to back then because back then like i said you had a physique competitor that was just posting pictures himself looking incredibly great and maybe doing some, I don't know, like some cuffed bicep curls where they're looking really vascular.

14:52Ollie Marchon: Or you had the CrossFitter doing some mad, like handstand walks into muscle-ups. Then you had these people, like I say, these functional fitness athletes or myself, which were piecing together workouts that had a little bit more, that had a bit of structure, a bit of meaning. You were getting a bit of strength work. You get a bit of a sweat on. And they were fun. They were enjoyable. You were including ergs. There was medicine balls, d-balls. There was sandbags. There was dumbbells. So it was getting people moving and training a little bit more creatively. It's a point where come the end of that 60 minutes, there was a genuine sense of fulfillment and like, I've achieved something there.

15:24Ollie Marchon: I can't wait to get back in the gym and do it again. So I was just posting those workouts. Um, and back then when there weren't many people posting and obviously looked a certain way, which obviously helps with the algorithms and what have you, um, that genuinely, and you know, you're, you're in those circles, the, the level of athlete now and the, whether it's runners or hybrid athletes or power athletes or high rocks athletes is so so high that that level of content doesn't necessarily stick out anymore but my goal back then was just to try and reach as many people as possible and to pay it forward um the the the level of coaching and the way i sort of view fitness which was all just a uh we all stand on the shoulder of giants it was all just stuff that i'd learned from coaches along the way i'd been in professional rugby teams i played for england sevens i'd traveled the world and gone to america lived in the west coast of america for six months been to some of the biggest and then some of the seen some of the best coaches at their seminars and learned all that stuff um and i was just so grateful being in the fitness space i just wanted to pass it forward so i just use social media to try and do that it's incredible to see and

16:26Jake Dearden: you've also like expanded into every kind of area that you can go within fitness but you've done it to the highest level i remember you started off and you was doing coaching programs online you had a gym you then thought well the standard pt isn't good enough and you i remember you talking about this and obviously you've got a team you know coach jens at the time um and i remember you talking about the standard of personal trainer in the uk isn't good enough so we're going to create our own personal training coaching and you're going to coach personal trainers to become certified and how did that go we were pretty um naive ignorant at the

17:15Ollie Marchon: time probably a little bit too egotistical as well when we first came into again when we came into it fortunate i'd been to university i'd studied sports science i'd then gone and done a master's in strength conditioning and i've been coached by some great coaches you couple that with the confidence you have i had as a as a young man i was quite a confident individual i went into so immediate went into my into my local leisure center started as a self-employed personal trainer straight off the bat asked for a list of um three months worth of the the latest people that had signed up back then that wasn't gdpr so i got this list of people i'm cold calling everyone delivering free sessions so straight off the bat i had those constituent parts for me being a successful pt i was very lucky most postal trainers don't get that that aren't afforded that because they go and do their personal training qualifications even the ones that have the best intent of becoming the best coaches they go and get a qualification that doesn't teach them what they need to know you also get the personal training that goes i love training i'm just gonna get the qualification i'll pay as little as i can invest as little time as i as i need to and i'm gonna get qualified i'm gonna start taking people's money and just like it's gonna be a cool cool little is it two weeks you can do a fast track course you know you can do everything from like a lunchtime through to like two year two year course it's crazy but the ones that wanted to be better they weren't given the education to be better and so that wasn't on them that was on the system that was on the syllabus and the more we looked into it so we thought we'll just create our own we'll create our own syllabus when we looked into it it turns out you you're not able to and so everyone basically was delivering the same syllabus so there's a there's a sort of standards that you have to map towards and whether you're delivering the qualification across two weeks two months six weeks two years everyone's mapping to the same standards this got made incredibly worse during covid because obviously all these then fitness providers were then finding ways to like make their course digital and so you were having people pre-record the the education it wasn't even alive often it wasn't even someone that gone through the qualification themselves it was just like i know some sort of some sort of teacher pre-record and then these people were listening back to pre-recorded lectures on stuff that wasn't even relevant to becoming a personal trainer so it was shit so once we learned all this stuff that we couldn't just rewrite our own syllabus we were we wrote our own syllabus and the one that we then we need to teach we were teaching two service alongside which isn't very efficient when you're trying to run a business um and eventually you get to the stage where you're able to do the right things you're able to get around the table with the people that make the decisions and they um very fortunately a couple years ago enabled us to deliver our own syllabus now so we are one of the only if not the only education providers through the pfca in the uk that deliver our own syllabus and it's not to say that you know what we know is the be all and end all but as you mentioned we've got a number of coaches that are great coaches we've we've probably got a master decades and decades of decades collectively between us of coaching traveled the world and been you know learned from a lot of other people and so we've consolidated a lot of information and education that we understand we work with thousands of people in person in the gyms and online and so for where we think fitness how we think fitness should be coached which is obviously a subjective because people have different goals um the qualification that we've

20:18Jake Dearden: built we think is pretty robust i love that and that was just like one of the elements you then went into nutrition i remember you you brought on nutritionists and you was offering like one-to-one nutrition service for people that needed it because again you if you want you was like providing the gold standard in everything that you did um and i remember is it dd that's yeah so i think she's moved on to different things at the moment but uh she'll love that you still remember the name yeah yeah so so we talk uh quite often just just back back and um two on instagram but uh i remember i did the same course that she did mnu so back in the time uh martin mcdonald um i think it's changed a little bit now but it's all evidence-based i remember she was pushing it and that's why i resonated i absolutely loved that everything that you was pushing was gold standard and you guys followed that and you were the you ollie was like the role model obviously along with other athletes that you had like uh baggio like you know uh back in the day like and i was just like in awe that you had the best people in fitness all working in and around the same gym um and then i i think i first saw you at nfg but it wasn't the time that i did it with george heaton it was the time before that where i went with hybrid performance center uh we put a team together uh and it was one of the best experiences i've i've had part of it was in the big blue yeah so it's half and half half outside i don't know what what year that was but uh then workouts were tough and i thought i just remember i remember actually seeing you like across the oh that's holly like you know like fangirling a little bit but uh no it's it's crazy how then obviously it's transformed now into you know one of the biggest functional fitness sports and events that there is which is ethics in the functional fitness world obviously like say there's ocr there's hyrox and then there's ethics which again you're better probably describing it but it still has the element of the strength that all these other functional fitness races don't really have anymore it's more i'd say hyrox being a hyrox athlete it's definitely more endurance although you need to be strong i think athletics is kind of bridging that gap for the people that still want to lift weights and still want to be strong and you're probably

22:51Ollie Marchon: better explaining i will give you the the lowdown in athletics before i want to bring you back to that that team piece you said because you see it in this room right you've got your team here you got tom you got emily so the the thing with building the team whether it was dd badger the people in the early days you're seeing it now with being around you like being the athlete you need those people you need that support system around you to be your best self right whether it's the capturing the content or whether it's making sure you're fueled the right way the nutritionist the coaches when i was building march on just to just to go back to that bit because i think it is worthwhile for people that may be you know building out a team or build a gym or looking at things the way i did again relating back to my rugby career you had the head coach person delivering the strategy on the field they were the technical coach you had the s &c coaches you had the nutritionists you had the masseuses team dynamics are really important if you if the athlete needs to you know is going to succeed and the same thing applies in when you're building a business and so when i had march on yes i was the guy that was delivering the coaching in the early days i was delivering the nutrition advice in the early days i was the person that was doing all the whatever it may be but over time you then need to think about how do i build a build other specialists into the team and so you can be you know you can perform the best at what you do i could go and learn mnu i think i'd done my i'd done my precision nutrition qualification pm whatever it was um but i wanted someone to come in that was only focusing about nutrition and so when i had an athlete or you know a member of our gym whatever else that needed that advice this person was deep in the science was deep in the literature and anecdotally had got the evidence to also suggest that these recommendations are going to work for them same things applied as were built at marching across the across the board whether it's our supplement range right now having liam our head of nutrition um he was head of nutrition at celtic tottenham at fulham deep deep understanding of ingredients formulations you know gaps in people's nutrition um same things happen in our coaches now the head coaches and the coaches that run our gyms far surpass my coaching credentials these days because i've not practiced it for the last you know five six seven years and so i do think that like you know in athletes whether you're looking to be the best hierarchical athlete you're looking to to do well and building a business whatever it may be when you have the opportunity to start to add to the team and create great domain expertise and yeah with singular focus um great things happen um so yeah it's worth so well saying and it's a nod to your team in the room and the people that you've got i think i think the main thing is

25:15Jake Dearden: like you again just don't fuck around with anything that you do you do it to the best of your standard i remember your gym and the led paneling explain a little bit of this like because

25:28Ollie Marchon: it was expensive wasn't it yeah so i've got john to thank for that who's our creative director you know he he looks at things and go yeah we're trying to create a gym the equipment matters a lot the flooring means that you know matters a lot but what about the lights and what about like how do we create this environment where when someone steps into the gym it's a motivating place to be before they even start sweating before they even start moving and so we look we always look at things a little bit differently but i think some of the biggest and best brands in the world do that you know you obviously um you work at 247 in the gym you're close to the guys there and you see the level of detail in the room here the level of detail that you go to so we wanted to look at the gym a little bit differently how could we create an environment but through the lighting through the atmosphere through the equipment through the music that that had a key point of difference um it's crazy to think how many gyms now have got leds like in their racks to try and emulate it.

26:17Ollie Marchon: But again, it's a good thing, right? I think the fact that you're able to adopt different things from other brands, even outside of fitness, you get inspiration. I think when you've got your eyes open and you're open to getting inspired by the other things, I think you can adopt from it and then you can start to add your own unique flavor to it and make it uniquely your own. That's how we get iteration. You're just trying to move one or two percent um you know move something forward and get and get improvements i think it's

26:45Jake Dearden: it's a cool cool thing to experience it's really cool and then um we you invited me and george down to your london uh gym when i think it had been open a little while but you did uh one of your team training things again the the whole team aspect of it of the march on days and the game days that you had like yeah they uh they were amazing like to have an online community where they're all over the country potentially all over the world and you say look you can come for a day we can all train together we can all meet up we can all have pizza together and we can just celebrate like fitness and all getting together being on the same program i thought it was just you was at the forefront of that there's obviously people have tried copying since and stuff like

27:30Ollie Marchon: that but uh no one did that before you it's like the good old days man because now when you look around it's like you're right everyone's doing it and like i said i don't i don't say that distastefully um because it means that more people are engaged in fitness more people are traveling from one place to another to get involved in another fitness community and ultimately that's what we will do it for but i think when you are trying to like when i was coming up through the fitness industry like i said there was you've alluded to it there was people just training in gyms they still are now boring headphones in not getting involved the training program they're on isn't really conducive with the goals that they have the environment isn't conducive with the goals they have but they don't know any better and so when i was coming up there's just so much of that and so the opportunity to create march on and to take us back as coaches as the people that come to the gym into that atmosphere that we had in rugby where there was the music was always at the level the vibe was always there there was always a coach there was always the program you knew that every session it was detail orientated you were going to come out of that session whether it was 30 minutes or 60 minutes long having achieved something like that was something we really wanted to put into like everyday fitness for the everyday consumer and then when we started to think of like if we had the online community growing alongside that how could we give them access to the gyms how could we create these moments throughout the year where we bring those people in and we get to build more deeper intimate relationships with these people so yes from a business standpoint they stay around longer they love your brand more there's a there's a deeper connection but these in real life experiences you can't replace those so game days were a fantastic way for us to try and do it yeah and that wasn't even my point i just remember that but uh stepping

28:58Jake Dearden: in that gym it was like a five-star hotel and i think i remember speaking to you about him that was kind of like your aim like it's a five-star gym like that's what you want to like i remember walking in uh to the bathrooms and there were showers with towels already there and stuff i'd never been i don't know if it's just because i'm from the north of england i just never ever been

29:18Ollie Marchon: in a gym like that and it was uh but again again that's not um we didn't create showers and towels being a thing in gyms right there's something you adopt from other people you're from the gyms you look at the look at the boutique experience or you look at the hotel experience when you go to a hotel gym equipment's pretty shit music's pretty shit environment shit coaching's pretty shit i shouldn't swear so much it's all quite bad but there are there are elements of it that make a really nice experience and so when you're thinking about the experience whatever your brand your business represents you want to try and take it to pay attention to those details let's go back to ethics but before we go back to ethics let's go back to the nfg thing um because you said you saw me and you were you were a fan girl and i remember your team the hybrid boys were like you need to pay attention to this kid um and i think you'd i think you'd done some of your early ultras or some of your some of your running challenges or whatever else and they were like genuinely this guy's gonna be a star um so that's worth mentioning the other person that always said you're gonna be a star with george so those those those boys and girls back to you from the from the get-go but yeah nfg was basically our our fitness competition and again you think about the the game days the accessibility whatever else how could then we take the like philosophies and principles that we were trying to build around training and they have those defining moments in competition um this was pre-high rocks days there was turf games there was crossfit competitions we came up with national fitness games which was the idea was to test strength power speed endurance obviously now and you know incredibly well like to try and test those qualities you actually need only need a couple of real tests and they don't really make a very fun you know uh fitness event and so the events kind of ended up all kind of the same a little bit bar endurance endurance was like you know typically 25 minutes of just continuous work that's how you sort of test endurance in a fitness competition strength was like you test it with through like a one or three or five or at max how do you really test speed and power is quite difficult particularly when you think about the equipment you've got available to you the time constraint the logistics of getting any other one through and so workouts of that format four workouts a day over eight hours you work out for 20 minutes you eat a sandwich you chill out you usually get rained on because all outside it was becoming a little bit tired hyros came along created a 60 minute to 90 minutes experience indoors faisal and gus on the early days on the mic music shout out faisal shout out

31:45Jake Dearden: faisal i'm gonna be fair they're both legends we just see faisal more often yeah he's pretty much

31:50Ollie Marchon: everywhere isn't he you know puma red bulls your big brands are now coming in the lighting's sick um you you feel like you've fucking spent come the end of it but it's not taking your whole day and so you can go back you can go out for dinner with the missus or you can take the kids out whatever else and so there was something really about that that inspired me not to mention the

32:10Jake Dearden: business model of the conveyor belt system yeah incredible you you go back to athex sorry go back to nfg or turf games like and it was incredible but again it was so long the day like normally things probably overran a little bit like if it was everything was on time like it was a miracle because just there's so many things that could potentially like go wrong and a lot of waiting around because you've got to get so many other teams have got to be there and then at the end of the day how many people could compete at an nfg like exactly when you think about when you're

32:43Ollie Marchon: trying to test that much that many different things you've got a critical mass of people

32:47Jake Dearden: you can try it through so it's like three four hundred people or something like that but that's your entire day and that's your limit how do you scale that you can't really whereas i think that's where hyrox came in and they were like this conveyor belt system like let's have people starting every 10 minutes and i felt like it was almost like who can create this within the functional fitness world and you guys managed it that was the challenge it was like i said i i i

33:16Ollie Marchon: think it was 2019 i went to i went to watch charlie compete in the mixed doubles um and i i went just to watch him and i came away thinking i cannot wait to compete in that uh and it was 20 i think

33:26Jake Dearden: it was 2022 was it october birmingham uh was it birmingham was where you was against the uh men's doubles was the first one yeah yeah the doubles that yeah because i remember watching that i think that that's uh the first time i actually had a conversation with yeah because uh what were you did you do men's doubles no i did that was my first ever you won the open didn't you yeah i won the open uh that day but you was on first thing so we watch you um yeah yeah we won the men's doubles yeah you you absolutely smoked everyone i think that the the guys like shout out to um where i used to work how we performed some of the guys that are like are amazing they genuinely did teach me how to work hard like you know the days that we we did there it was just normal like emily like say exactly the same but it was typical to be there at 5am and not leave till 9pm every single day like you back to back with clients you train twice a day if you wasn't training twice a day you was lazy and that's just how it was so shout out to them guys for teaching us how to work hard because i feel like that is genuinely an advantage in life um But these guys, they were wanting to beat you.

34:35Jake Dearden: And I think they felt a couple of minutes short. I don't think they realized how much running was actually needed and you needed to practice running. But I think they came second and third or whatever. But yeah, you guys, I think you won on the day and it was incredible just to watch.

34:51Ollie Marchon: It shows how much High Rocks has moved on. That was 2022. I think that was Birmingham. And then London, I did mixed doubles. and I won that in 59 minutes with mixed doubles back then which was like breaking 60s mixed doubles was like super tough you just see how much the sport has now moved on like the times you're running back then it's like wouldn't even I mean I don't even know where they would you probably get your 100th or something like if you're lucky um I digress though but yeah High Rocks inspired me that that that format really inspired me and by the time I competed in it I was like this is this is really cool because like I say 60 minutes worth of effort I didn't really I mean now obviously you guys it's full time you guys have to train year round to you know to compete at the level you're at you're at back then it was like i want to go and compete and do really well and like challenge myself six weeks worth of training was all we really needed to do given the way we trained was really conducive with performing yeah you was fit it's not like you're starting from square one exactly and until the sport became what it is right now where you've got a load of endurance athletes coming in you've got people that you know a lot of run you know runners coming in learning movement efficiency back then that wasn't that really there so we could we could win or do really well with just a general sort of background but i was super inspired by it the challenge became to us how do we modernize what nfg is to bring a point of difference and functional fitness to that kind of competition and like i said the bits i really enjoyed were tighter on time production value indoor not exposed to the elements um a defining moment in someone's like or a couple of defining moments in someone's like year of worth of training it was worth training for but it kept the hallmarks of what i believe fitness should be defined by which is absolute strength a level of in you know endurance or work capacity and and a level of like metabolic you know conditioning um and so i i sort of took that to my co-founder i was like how do we test you know three rms but then also test someone's endurance but then also test like a like a net comp um and he sort of like mapped it out and that's kind of where we landed so year on year ethics changes um so we have the advantage over higher rocks and that we can somewhat change the workouts year on year so every year there'll be a new set of workouts and that allows for

37:00Jake Dearden: progression as well and like improvements i remember the first time you did it and the run was on a runner correct it's not like that anymore is it and i assume this is from a viewing point of view and like an excitement for the crowd in my opinion yeah like you didn't know how fast these guys are running on the treadmill whereas if you can physically see someone running and you can got like you get this appreciation for the dedication and how much time it's kind of they've put in to to get that fast yeah there's a level of like and not everyone is going

37:33Ollie Marchon: to these events to to compete right whether it's high rocks or athletics there's a level of people that go to high rocks to just fade away into the crowd and just like you know get to the finish line and that's their sense of achievement which is amazing same in ethics some people don't really care for who's left to write with them who they're racing but for the people that want to be more competitive when you're running on a running machine you can't see what the person's on next next to you that adds a level of like um the added level of running around and racing people adds something to it so that was that was super important to us um truthfully as well from a from a financial standpoint like 40 running machines uh being transformed around you know the country and now overseas compared to running around a track um the cost to do that is far more so um we we iterate on the challenge on the workouts but we stay within the guidelines of how do we test absolute strength so you're always going to you're probably always going to use a barbell because that's how we can maximum load the body there's only going to be a certain level of movement squatting dead lifting pushing and pulling and we're always going to work between rep ranges probably one to five and we maybe increase that during certain um certain events certain years as well so once we've tested strength how much rest does someone need before they can go and express endurance obviously if they can have a day's rest that's beneficial but when you're thinking about a competition you need to just allow change your footwear a bit of maybe some fuel that you're going to take on and then how do we test endurance so we have to define that by 25 minutes of continuous work not stop start continuous work should it be longer than 25 minutes well it could be if we have more time but then you'll start to factor in the day's going to get longer and longer so we try and keep it within 30 minute chunks 30 minute warm-up 30 minutes to test strength 30 minutes to test endurance 30 minutes full rest and recovery after endurance 30 minutes metcon is a two and a half hour experience we keep the same events each calendar year so if you compete in london birmingham paris we've got miami later on this month this month you're competing against the rest of the world you see where you stack up the competition is very tightly um uh sort of controlled so that how you compete in london is very is the same same length of track same environment just the change is going to be the weather i guess um so you can really see how you stack up against other athletes but when we come through to 2027 we'll change those tests sticking within the principles of strength endurance but we can change those tests to give it a little point of difference now the key i think that the difference here is when we think about strength conditioning or you think about just like athletic development there are certain exercises certain movements certain time domains that are always going to stand the test of time in fitness they've stood the test time for decades pre us and they'll be there for decades post us and so when you someone goes into a gym they've probably got a couple of arbitrary goals i want to do my first pull-up i want to know what max deadlift is once you're ready to deadlift one rms i want to know my 5k run is my 2k row my 5k bike whatever it may be but there's like there's certain things that i think are always going to resonate unless some other fancy bit of kick comes in those things are always going to resonate your high rocks time does by definition probably define how fit you are to a degree within the constraints of high rocks um but some of those other things i've just spoke about are more broadly accepted as definitions of someone's you know strength and aerobic capacity and so ethics speaks to those things over and over and over again so it's never going to be like you know what's my ethics time like it is a high rocks time but in by doing ethics and preparing for ethics and you're going to be if we zoom out you're going to be doing what you should be doing with this health and fitness thing which is preserving movement quality building structural integrity and strength preserving muscle muscle building it and building aerobic capacity which when we think about like say well we all do this yes it's to look good but it's to preserve quality of life move better live better um and so outside of it being a competition that's the that's the message no that's so clever and it's

41:35Jake Dearden: it's interesting that you have managed to like you say make it successful because uh let's be honest fitness isn't the most exciting thing in the world like like you say moving an object from one place to another isn't exciting but you've made this event that is exciting and like you say with the music with uh the rest with the competition with um everything you've just created it into this event where people are going to remember for the rest of their lives if they're competing one and it's it's incredible and it's something that they can work to they can do in the gym and let's say touch on all the things that you've done what i find really interesting is obviously you've created a supplement brand and you've intentionally put a rest in there where people can rehydrate they can replenish the glycogen stores and you're super convenient for that like your brand can be in there it can be all branded and it's just so clever how you put everything together and it's it's just so smart and then another question that i have with with athletics which i know hyrox have struggled with a little bit but they've got better year on year on year is the judging how do you keep that standard of judging the best that it can be

42:56Ollie Marchon: yeah i was going to say when you mentioned that like how smart athletics is but it's only smart because of the culture we find as the fitness culture we find ourselves in right you guys all play a massive part in the success of of high rocks and ethics you know without the jake deardens without insert you know all these great athletes that are producing great content and training and providing inspiration the everyday person which is the person you're trying to get to show up to this thing because that's the mass market they're not going to come and compete because they don't find it cool so moving away from a to b hasn't all of a sudden become cool it's just become somewhat more accessible and it's also become cool through you guys so it's the it's the culture i think that helps us helps us kind of get here and speaking to the judges it's the same thing it's the the fitness culture it's the opportunity to be involved i might not want to be involved in a hierarchy yet because the intimidation i'm not quite ready i'm going to train for it it's my on my goal vision board for 2027 but if i can go and judge and i get to judge jake or i get to judge insert whoever like that's that's fucking cool um it means i'm a part of it and i think we we underestimate the power of um of belonging and being part of the community we're athletes we always want to compete that's what our that's what our role is come those days but there's a huge level of sort of behind the scenes back office team judges that play a part in that that make it happen and for them that's their defining moment um like i said i think it's probably going to be a first step in their ability to then be on the other side of the fence and competing um but the culture and fitness and belonging community there's gyms where they might have 20 of their gym members are going to compete another 20 might just go want to go and judge um and like i said there's there's now value add because puma might give them the t-shirt they get to there's there's value add stuff that kind of comes along with it but without the judges and i know hyrocs have done an incredible job to you know invest in the judging standards and improve we are real sticklers for it it's arguably a little bit more difficult in our world because um we're really having to make sure that we're managing you know heavy back squats and dead

44:50Jake Dearden: lifts and things um it's an element of danger as well like yeah do judges step in if you know someone's getting crushed by a back squat i don't know like or like an overhead press like

45:02Ollie Marchon: it's such a shame as well when when judges because it's human error like judges can get it wrong because it can completely ruin someone's experience the athlete maybe that's either getting no reps or uh allowed to do stuff that they maybe shouldn't have done and then the person next them is is is you know their standards are being held to a different level um but we have to remember these judges invariably are volunteers they've given up the time for it uh it's not that deep uh for you guys it is you know it's putting food on the table it's your profession it's your career for other people it's not that it's not that deep obviously you've got a big team now

45:36Jake Dearden: you've got quite a large team and you want to hold everyone to the highest standard the standard that you'd put effort into with whatever you do how do you find managing people because from my experience of just like we've just a couple of people it's it's one of the hardest things to navigate in my opinion it's completely different and obviously to run a business you're gonna have to at some point manage people you can't do it on your own forever how do you find that and how have you found that you know relieving responsibility on someone else or whatever it is you know march on your baby like i know you oversee a lot but you've given a lot of responsibilities to people yeah it's not easy and i don't think i don't profess to always get it

46:25Ollie Marchon: right i don't profess to be the you know the best leader i think natural leadership is always something i've i've had you know captaining sports teams has always been something that's been on my resume uh and i like the idea of developing people i think that's the kind of coaching I like the idea of personal development for myself and for others obviously I think you know that the usual hallmarks of a great business or a great team is with culture is like a strong set of values a strong understanding of how we show up so we've got a couple of guiding principles in terms of like how we show up things that people have probably heard us talk about but you know effort being the only currency that's something we talk a lot about so effort is the only currency team is everything um world-class basics so we have a few things that people can hang themselves on now that might mean slight different things to different people but it's fairly um it's fairly well understood inside the company of what these things mean and what what that standard is uh so i think once you've kind of got strong set of values a really strong vision everyone can get behind everyone knows what the mission of the company is once you've got that you've got some like some general like centered alignment around how we operate how we show up then you need kind of your your sort of like lieutenants that can maintain that standard so as long as you've got a few senior good people around you which are usually going to be some of your first hires or some of your more senior hires they're going to be an extension of those values um i think when you you know you put stuff out online or you know the brand stands for something you have this whole like you attract your vibe attracts your tribe thing so really people are only going to come and you know apply to work at march and if they have if they perceive themselves to have high work ethic they perceive themselves to be high performing they perceive themselves to go the extra yard to do the 5am till 9pm which is what it took in the early days from from the early people that were at the business because you wouldn't look at Marshall and be like oh that looks like an easy ride I reckon I can get away with cutting a corner on that workout or you know not you know not getting to work 20 minutes earlier whatever it may be um so I think we've always been lucky to sort of we attract the right sort of people and then when you're in like I said vision values strong sense of mission the the team you'd soon get found out if you're the the one person that's like that's cutting corners is there anything that you kind of do to help

48:40Jake Dearden: people say someone comes in for the first six months they're really highly motivated they pass all the tests pass vibration and they like take their foot off the gas and is there any way that you kind of deal with that because at the end of the day like it's your baby you've got the largest piece of the pie these guys might not have a piece of the pie they might have a monthly paycheck and that's the reality of most most people that are employed they may not have a percentage or equity or anything like that and to them it's a paycheck how how do you incentivize incentivize and like make them feel what you feel when you go to work because i guarantee you don't need motivation to get up and go to work because you're so motivated to

49:32Ollie Marchon: it's like you say it's your baby i think the people that are going to go the furthest in the company are going to get the highest you know that are going to their careers are going to progress they're going to get the most responsibility and in turn they're going to get paid the most they're the ones that treat you like it's their baby right so case in point if you look at the gyms i haven't played an active role in our gyms for the last probably six years i've never stepped foot in in stratford bath or victoria as a coach but those gyms are extremely successful um the culture the team the product is you know is the march on product i don't have any influence over that i oversee the gyms from like a leadership standpoint but it's very much the boys and girls that are in those gyms that's through their own hard work and doing you know that gym that got opened in victoria victoria that's ran by paddy he treats that place like it's his own bath justin stratford liam harpon and alex uh because they have standards for themselves and again like whether it's equity or paycheck whatever else like first and foremost equity means genuinely nothing until there's until there's an event um but equally you're able to you can incentivize people by going like your career and your what you get paid your enumeration the you know the the level that you're working within this company which comes with different job roles which comes with a high level of flexibility more autonomy etc it's down to the work you want to try and put in and for every five people that don't want to go the extra yard there's you're going to find someone that does want to go the extra yard so if your brand can attract those people i'll just go after those people and that doesn't mean there's going to be some b team players that end up on your team now if you're a b team player that has the potential and capability but we just need to get out of you maybe you're a little bit more junior maybe you've not been in environments that pull that out of you march one is a place where we can get that out of you But if you're a B team player that's comfortable being a B team player, you just know that you're going to be one of those employees that at some point in time, the business is going to outgrow you and you're going to probably move yourself on because it's going to get super uncomfortable or you'll be moved on.

51:27Ollie Marchon: But that's also normal. It's something that when you first go through your first employee leaving or you have to get rid of them, you're like, fuck, I thought they're going to be there forever because they're part of your initial team. once you've gone through a few cycles of business which for me happens every sort of two or three years depending on what stage you're at and how much you're going after this you know level of growth people kind of come and go and you realize it's not it's not personal it's not you know we can still have a we wouldn't have a beer but we can you know i'd still look after you personally because i resonate with you on a personal level but the business outside of it being my baby the business has 50 employees and you're involved represent you're involved with big companies yes there's a founder yes as a ceo yes there's a couple of people but there's multiple people who have mortgages and things you know this business is responsible to supporting and so outside of it being my baby um there's a number of people that rely on x y and z the people left and right right of them showing up and being their best and so if you've taken your foot off the gas after six months usually we have a formal way of managing performance anyway you know monthly one-to-ones um always pegged back to you know roles responsibilities kpis that we're measuring against it's objective it's black and white it's not emotion it's this is what we said we're going to do did we do it yes no why not let's support there's always going to be a level of how can we support you more what did i not communicate how can i be better for you so that i can keep the best out of you there's always always going to be a level of people have peaks and troughs people have periods where they're not as motivated or they've worked super hard they need to take the gas maybe it's they need the holiday what go take the holiday a lot of employees are you know a great employees that want to work and work and work forget that they need to also recover rest and you know go and get some restitution and you know some mental respite so take take the take the trip away go go relax um so you like to think you create a work environment where you can have those open conversations sometimes it's just misalignment and so that person's no longer you know probably the right person for the business and that i think that's okay yeah it's

53:23Jake Dearden: interesting um you see it also because i've witnessed it myself and i i was just wondering

53:29Ollie Marchon: how you've dealt with that but it's really tough and initially when you when you when it's your first exposure to it as a as a founder or an employee employee employer um there's a lot of emotion attached to it because it's super tough you spend in our businesses you know we train most days together socialize most days together and so there's a lot of like heavy interpersonal kind of relationship where you've built with this person. But, like I said, I'm an employee. Marchand is my baby, but I'm an employee of Marchand. I'm the founder and CEO. If I am no longer the best CEO for that business, it's my duty to try and find someone that's better than me and replace myself.

54:07Ollie Marchon: So you just have to just separate the emotion a little bit. It's the same thing happens in sport. You know, if your coach, it's John, right? It's John. Got you to an incredible level and, you know, touch wood, he can continue to get there but athletes leave their coaches athletes these are their managers athletes leave their endorsement to go to someone else because at some stage potentially there becomes a misalignment in in the way both parties see the relationship of the world um and it's you know seldom is there going to be opportunities where people just with each other for the whole time other than hopefully me and my wife but yeah i think i like that one thing that you do really well and march on as a

54:47Jake Dearden: brand does really well is i think you react to the times very well you you such a great business at reacting to what's going on and being at the forefront of everything that you do like say newly with well not newly it's been going a while going on for a while now but supplements obviously you've been developing them over over the years your clothing like say expanding with the gyms but your online coaching like obviously like i say it started off as pdfs online and now it's a fully fledged app you've got athletes representing you designing the programs you've got the best coaches designing the programs and you've got like you know one-to-one support on there and everything else like you have the gold standard for everything how do you keep up with that is it super stressful for you like you've got a million things going on and how do you how

55:45Ollie Marchon: do you keep balancing all these plates i am i often use this analogy that i'm like the uh the i'm like on a surfboard like riding the wave looking really cool surfing into the beach but everyone else is there kind of keeping the wave going and making me look cool that's the like i said i think that's the beauty of having a team we've got some some great people who are maybe not as front-facing maybe not as prevalent on social media uh that do a fantastic job with the operations and with the marketing and with you know just making sure the business you know from a financial standpoint we maintain um you know health and discipline there so it's certainly a team a team effort i'm obviously the person with maybe the biggest social profile i'm the one that you know my role is to open doors beyond podcasts talk to people network etc so i'm always going to get the plaudits but it's very much a team effort you know i liken it to you right you ran a 229 marathon and then you wanted to run the 219 right yeah so it's like when you're conditioned to for me that the the strap line is without limits when you're conditioned to think there's always the next goal there's the goal post it goes from the six sub 60 higher rocks to i'm going to run this time then i want to get into elite 15 whatever you always move the goalposts and so you're always trying to grow you're always thinking how can i improve and so the same things apply in a business if you just sat and would like you're comfortable which for some people that's that's absolutely fine might be a lifestyle business you know you've got family you've got your own personal kind of health and and and ambitions and you've got your business and and career ambitions um and you can only really dial up and dial down and it's you know a certain rate and certain certain amount and for some people having everything nicely finely balanced in the lifestyle business is absolutely fine for for us uh whether it's in competition or whether it's in business we're constantly trying to like you know push the needle and and progress and so i think in business where we've pivoted and try to be at the forefront we've seen an opportunity i've tried to resource it with the very best people i can find whether it's a coach a nutritionist an operations person a marketing person and when you add that level of like talent and experience into the team it just adds a new level of momentum and like energy and inertia you know it's like if you added a when you do an athlete announcement at 247 or when the new designer comes in to the team.

58:00Ollie Marchon: It raises everyone else. It's just new energy and excitement.

58:03Jake Dearden: Even if it's like an athlete, say a new athlete comes on board, every other athlete's like, well, I need to up my game.

58:10Ollie Marchon: Exactly, exactly. And I think when you're involved with a business or an organization that wants to grow and stay at the forefront and whatever else, you're bringing in that talent. This all becomes a byproduct of that. So yes, it's super stressful. and it's difficult and we do try and stay at the forefront but i think it's a team effort there's a lot of understanding and ip in the team that um you know and and domain expertise that goes above what i'm a very much a generalist the same thing applied in my rugby career same thing applied in my athletic career fairly strong run okay i'm a bit of a generalist uh and the same thing applies in work like i'm jack of all trades yeah jack of all trades yeah um slightly it's the train everything situation but you know pretty good leader okay business acumen good understanding of finance good understanding of of team dynamics good understanding of marketing but i've got real

59:01Jake Dearden: experts to sort of sit in there for someone starting a business or you know they've got a business up and going would you recommend dipping your toe into every aspect of the business or at least like spending a little bit time learning to know everything i don't think you've

59:18Ollie Marchon: got a choice at the start you know if you're not if you're not like capitalized by you know external funding and you're starting whether it's a coaching business or you've built a product you're probably doing elements of all of it right you're probably doing elements of operations you're probably doing elements of marketing you're doing sales you're looking at you know you look at the finances so i think you have to um i don't is there a point you can step away yeah i think so i think when you i think when you're looking at that you're going okay what what bits do i really like enjoy doing you know we talk about getting up at 5m and finishing at 9m at hybrid you probably didn't really think about it probably just did it because it's like i'm about this yes they taught you hard work but you had that in you to to show up there

59:59Jake Dearden: they were so clever we used to have weekly meetings it was honestly like really inspiring we used to have weekly meetings on a friday where all the coaches would come down we'd have a whiteboard we'd have how many pts we've done this week how many online clients we've got how many classes we've done um how many like whatever else there was kind of like a list of things and we used to basically everyone used to go and put their numbers on and you'd stand up go put your numbers on sit down and then everyone else would be able to watch you put your numbers on and every single time i'd want to win and we did the classes basically for free i still wanted to win i'm so clever from that from their point of view for business it was so clever and you're smiling because you know the guys but uh yeah it was so clever uh but that element of competition like

1:00:48Ollie Marchon: it's it's crazy yeah i think that's why we did it you know you know what what lights like lights your fire so like say for you hard work you know there's a few things that you know they get you up in the morning and get you going so when it comes to like building your business i think you need to look at those look at those things that you think you know you can uniquely own and then get the business to a stage where you can then hire in the expertise to take over there's certain things that you just have no energy to try and do right for you training coaching you've got all the energy in the world when it comes to maybe shooting content or booking in the podcast you're outsourcing it because like that's the stuff i want to get off my plate i think the same thing applies in business you're going to outsource when you get it to a certain stage where you can maybe generate some cash flow to pay that person to take it off your plate and then your time is freed up for the hundred pound task not the ten pound task all of a sudden you can make more hundred pounds which then gives you more money and liquidity to then invest in more people that could do the 10 pound or the ones that you see as 10 pound tasks and they're taking what you thought was a 10 pound task and they're they value it really highly so they're making it better and more efficient and whatever else so then it becomes a more important part of your business so that's how

1:01:49Jake Dearden: you you kind of build that dynamic that's that's very clever um but another thing that i wanted to kind of ask about which i've seen i think as social media is getting more and more prevalent having a face of your brand is super super important and obviously you charlie you've been you guys have been the face of the brand like you're there and i feel like it would be very hard for you guys to step away and go invisible and the brand still exist do you think that's what divines when you've kind of made it when you can leave march on march on's on its own it's not got your face on it anymore it's not got like yes you've got athletes yes you've got everything else but it's a success i feel like it's a very very hard task to do that and obviously a lot of people look up to you and support you and that's why they may buy the products but you probably want it to get to the point where the products are good enough that they can sell by themselves and do you do you see that happening and i don't know you can look at so many examples over the past where you think a brand's doing so amazing and then the founder kind of maybe might take some time off and the brand just goes like that I don't know you being in the brand every single day even just you walking around like does it keep the quality high does it keep everyone accountable not just the social side of it but like you say being in the actual business do you think there's a stage where you could like just so it's a really good question it's

1:03:23Ollie Marchon: promised land isn't it being able to just disappear into the into the background well it is the promised land but then again i don't know you might not want it yeah and another great point so a few things on that one i think well you tell me right when george comes back to hq is there a different energy around the place uh yes a little bit positively

1:03:41Jake Dearden: uh i think it's i think it's hard because mike's still there full time but uh yeah people are happy to see George I think people will probably I don't want to want to look like they've they're working a little bit harder.

1:03:56Ollie Marchon: I don't know if you programmed a session at 6am in the 247 gym.

1:04:00Jake Dearden: Yep.

1:04:01Ollie Marchon: And one day you're there one day you're not there. Do people work harder when you're there?

1:04:05Jake Dearden: I don't I don't even I think they just they just kind of cross out whatever bench press bench press and biceps.

1:04:12Ollie Marchon: I think we've got us like I say we've got yeah not taking anything away from the team. I think we've got a super motivated team. I think there are always going to be a level as well as being the founder I'm the CEO of the company whatever that wanky title means these days so when that person's role is leadership that person's role is to set the vision that person's role is to make sure we stay aligned with the strategy and to hire the best people so if you took that person out of the business whether it was me or whoever else was replacing me you are operating with a level of influence that's no longer there so I do think whether it was me or someone else being in the business internally, I think there's probably a 1 % or 2 % level that you're going to unlock.

1:04:53Ollie Marchon: And I've been told that before by people. They're like, you know, when you're not here, it's not quite the same. But we're talking marginal gains. I think from an external standpoint, I think there's elements of our business that can last without me being there. Again, if I talk to my gyms, there will be a huge percentage of people that currently train in our gyms and we train over a thousand people across the gyms a month. Do you think there's anyone that trains at your gym who doesn't know who I am? Who doesn't know who you are or buys products? 100%. That's what I was going to say. There'd be a number of people that would not know who I am.

1:05:31Ollie Marchon: I would probably be in the gym training at the same time and they wouldn't know who I was. Genuinely. How does that make you feel? Does it make you feel like... Great. Brilliant. Yeah, it's brilliant. It's brilliant. I never wanted my name above the door. You know, I know it sounds contradicting the fact that it's called march on but genuinely we called it march on at the the 11th hour of starting the company it was called one athletic before um all the way up until a week before we opened it was called one like the number zero it's o-n-e athletic um it's a completely other story why we eventually called it march athletic but i never wanted my name to be above the door and the reason i started the gym was because i was a really really busy self-employed personal trainer doing 50 hour weeks completely overran and i was like fuck i just need to get away from me being the guy that everyone wants to come and see um and so yeah i

1:06:19Jake Dearden: never wanted to be called march on and so getting to the stage now where it's a bit like nike or

1:06:23Ollie Marchon: whatever insert any brand where now march on just like it resonates it means something it's got a meaning behind it without it being my surname i think it's really powerful if i turned my social media off and i didn't influence you know marketing the brand would it be detrimental i think so but I definitely think the business could survive beyond me certainly the gyms certainly the app I don't program the app I've never programmed in the app so I don't write any programs I do the program but I'd say if we looked at like if we if we looked at attribution for a cohort of people that come in every month and how many people directly came in from me you look at like UTM links as an ambassador and affiliate there's next to none some months um from a supplement standpoint maybe i have some influence i'm just like an ambassador do you know what i mean it's like you know you cut jake out of 247 puma red bull whatever of course it's going to impact them that's why you're there because they believe you're the best man for the job at the time being so if you cut me out it's going to impact but i don't necessarily think it's the business wouldn't

1:07:25Jake Dearden: you know the lights wouldn't go out overnight oh i love that and i think that is the definition or the the mark of where you've created a successful business in my opinion where it can stand alone from the owner or the face especially if you start with that role like like you say you you you uh created your personal brand and before all of this if that makes sense

1:07:51Ollie Marchon: yeah and i think like if we look at the some of the coolest brands now and you know obviously we keep referring to 247 and represent i think these founder lead brand founder led brands and we look at like youtube content social media profiles that probably you and i follow most of them are founders of brands or athletes um most of them are founders of brands that also i think that's

1:08:10Jake Dearden: because you get a feeling like you yeah you can follow along with the story you can you feel involved with the brand so and i think it's got to a point now where people aren't just buying product because they've got choice in product there's not just one supplement company or one clothing company they've got like every market is saturated so what makes you the difference and you go in and being a customer and feeling something from wearing an item of clothing or taking a supplement you're going to feel like you're part of that tribe and i think that's

1:08:43Ollie Marchon: that's super important completely i think that's what social media has done right it's given you access to the to the lifestyle the routines and the and the behaviors and the you know the kind the way that founder does things and i think if that resonates with people you're more inclined to buy their products so i think like particularly for where we find ourselves right now and particularly where i find myself in life i'm more than happy to play my part in building the brand through like the the lens that i can share um and to the other bit you said in that question i i don't think there's anything else i'd rather be doing particularly for the next year sort of five ten years um so long as i can balance what i'm doing in business with my three kids oh that's

1:09:20Jake Dearden: So I wanted to move on. Obviously, we've talked a lot about business and your business, but I want to talk more about you. And how do you find balance? Because you've got everything going on what we just talked about. And then you've got an amazing family at home, like say, an amazing wife, three kids. And how do you find the balance? Is the balance? And do you believe in balance?

1:09:43Ollie Marchon: Yeah, the question always comes up. And the cliche answer is always like this whole integration thing. it's definitely for me is work like work life integration if you think about everything that i do like we talked about the team whatever else the people i spend most time with are away from work are the people also spend the most time in work i'm very lucky that my wife gets to train in the gym that you know is part of the business the office is close so everything's very very integrated into each other uh i think in the past i had you know terrible balance um i've certainly as i've got older particularly into my sort of you know get into my late 30s i've softened around the edges i used to be very much like competition is everything i'll go toe-to-toe with anyone in any any arena at any time um kids certainly soften you a little bit you know you're trying to do a plait in your daughter's hair like that that will soon you know humble you um so i think like who i've become in different phases of my life kids being probably the biggest uh catalyst to change has has changed I'm no longer training as much training as intensely you know pushing my body as hard as I was there will always be a level of you know whether you'll find that level of competition to get the you can find that thing that can pull the most out of you but it's within tighter guardrails of like time availability how you need to recover from those certain things and all the other things that you've got on you've got on your plate um but genuinely i never thought this prior to having kids kids have given me a bigger sense of purpose than any professional athlete title i had any competition i ever did any medal i ever won and any business metric that i ever have achieved um that's not to say that for some really successful ceos that have kids they might see the see the world very differently um but for me the three kids come before anything now and does that mean that you take a little bit more time at home yeah yeah again so again i work seven days a week in the early days 5 a.m to 9 p.m work work work you know train train train now i leave work early on a monday afternoon 3 30 to take the kids to football practice i leave the work i leave work early on a tuesday afternoon to take the kids to jujitsu uh wednesday thursday friday i'm at home like normal hours or 5 30 so my wife does after school clubs um saturday sundays like reserved exclusively for the kids unless i'm traveling obviously with our with our worlds weekends are taken up often with events and things but sunday is um rugby training with the boys um and saturday we'll do some sort of activity so yeah i mean if you'd asked me before i'd work seven days a week 24 hours a day because i wanted like for me getting the business you know out in front uh yeah pushing past competition whatever else was that was my goal but the what i'm doing it

1:12:45Jake Dearden: for now everything you expect to the kids i love that and your training obviously like i said that's another element that we've got to fit in somewhere uh the last couple of years you've been going deep into the running i've seen that obviously you you've completed a couple of ultramarathons i remember when you went away with the lads and did the multi-day event that was that was a really cool documentary that you you did on youtube if you've not seen it go see it on ollie's youtube but uh that that was incredible to watch and then you've been chasing sub three i think you got it i'm not gonna lie i think do you yeah i i think that's all i need click that one as well i'll take that yeah but then again the running police will say that you didn't get it there's a lot of them out there now and yeah i saw that i saw them come for you so apparently you're not allowed to put watch time you're not allowed to put watch times but um yeah obviously you got three hours on the dot um 259 on your watch but uh 258 258 on your watch was it 258 38 or but uh obviously since then like you said you you said that you've fallen obviously you were still doing this at the time jiu-jitsu but you've said that you've like kind of fallen in love with strength training and jiu-jitsu and you've been doing that and you've been absolutely loving it what's the importance of actually enjoying what you do rather than just giving into maybe social media trends maybe what other people do in your friends family what's cool um what's the difference

1:14:17Ollie Marchon: in that and how do you see that it's really easy to get swept up into all of this stuff and like i said it's very different it's very different when you separate people that i get paid to do the sport you know to train and to go and compete to people that are doing it recreationally i find myself firmly in the bucket of someone that does this recreationally and so when i think about what fitness gives me to a very high level by the way yeah yeah and we have this we have a beast come on ollie we have this yeah but we have this debate internally quite a lot because i'm i call myself an everyday athlete and the guys are like you can't be an everyday athlete because you look like that or you lift this and you run that and you know sub three for some people is a million but i've been a professional athlete where i got paid to to be an athlete i'm i'm not that now i don't get paid i don't have any endorsements to to mean that i have pressure to go and run this or do that or x y and z and so i'm an everyday athlete i show up my mindset is of an athlete my behaviors are of an athlete you know the way i move is maybe an athlete but do you think every everyone should

1:15:11Jake Dearden: go into the gym with that intent of thinking they're they're an athlete no i think everyone

1:15:17Ollie Marchon: should go into the gym with intent i don't necessarily think again being an athlete is very subjective and i think it's been commoditized that term has been commoditized now democratized whatever the term the phrase is because of high rocks and and the participation piece now where everyone can they might identify their nine to five as a corporate bod but wherever outside of that everything else is going into the athlete bucket. But I do think this stuff, we talk a lot of it, Brian, I do think this everyday athlete, goal-orientated individual is a big thing now. Everyone is spending every bit of energy, money, time, even their holidays, weekends, after work, before work, on athletic development and building themself.

1:15:59Ollie Marchon: And I think if you compete, you can call yourself an everyday athlete. Like I say, it's about mindset, it's about behavior, it's the way you move, it's the way you show up, the way you fuel the way you think about fitness your meal prepping you're thinking about the whoop or the eight sleep your footwear whatever else like these are all things that athletes do the only difference is athletes get paid and usually compete in some sort of sport at a professional level um and everyone else doesn't it's more recreational and it's weekend warrior type stuff um so i would consider myself in in that camp i'm just probably at the upper echelons trying to break into professional ranks that boat sailed um so so yeah i think um for me it's always been about enjoyment we know that enjoyment breeds consistency it breeds all the things that you need to stay stay in the game that being said commercially it makes sense for my business and my brand and myself to play the game a little bit with what's topical what's culturally relevant running high rocks whatever else it's just as i said to you before we started recording some of those things probably last year i just it's took a little bit too far you know when i'm i'm trying to fly around the world and build a brand i'm trying to do it all these different things i train typically between 5 30 and 7 o 'clock in the morning that way there's no emails there's no phone calls or what day hasn't started there's nothing that can distract me it's my time to go train you get yourself into deep into a marathon block you're in week nine of 16 you're trying to train for a sub three with the capability that i have which yes i'm agreeing it's at a level but running a sub three is still tough for me i still got to put the time in all of a sudden you've got a 20k 25k tough run in the fucking peak of winter in the uk and get yourself out there no longer does the 537 cut it because it's now going to take you two minutes there's two hours you've got fuel prepare whatever else there's a level of discipline that forges which is super important you know going out and slapping the tarmac at 5 a.m in the pissing rain in the fucking freezing cold builds a level of resilience and toughness that's you know super important to everything in life when times get hard you can call upon that level of um of toughness you've built the same time it can get a little bit tedious when you then got to go and do a whole day's work look after your kids in the evening everything else and so i just think it's like pick and choose based on the season you're in life as to what's super important and what the bigger you know why that why it's important to you and ask yourself why i think last year like i said for 12 months a year i probably got too caught up in the sub three thing because fitness said it was cool when he really sub three is a fucking arbitrary number it's not even that impressive anymore you're trying to run a 219 you know there's levels to the game so pick something that's challenging that's tough that's maybe got a time commitment that that you can carve out um did you feel like you mentioned then you were still doing all the

1:18:46Jake Dearden: other work whether it was going working a full day being with the kids but did it make you a little bit more vacant in the other things 100 % I don't need more discipline I don't need I don't

1:18:58Ollie Marchon: need more like things in my life that teach teach me that that hard work is going to get makes you more irritable yeah I've done all that like I've spent 20 years plus yeah I started my first job at 14 years old washing dishes I worked my whole childhood I've like started my business at 27 years old prior to that I tried to play professional rugby from 18 to 27 I've done enough things to like build the skills and the mindset and the grit and determination you need in life and i don't think there's anything really that will make me put my feet up smoke a cigar and get soft and so some of those things in particularly in fitness like i say you can easily get just pulled down a bit of a i think about down a path where you didn't really want to end up there i want to run a sub through our marathon that's a bucket list goal that's that means something to me because i know that the marathon journey that i've been on and you you mentioned earlier the first thing i did was that iron march on do you remember where i skied a marathon bike to marathon ran a marathon that marathon was three hours 50 then i ran a 330 then a 320 then a three something with george in la then a 309 and so the journey of running a sub three hour marathon i do think when i'm on my deathbed it'll be like yeah i got there i put in the work and i got there and i do think doing it officially in a proper official race um would would give me you

1:20:11Jake Dearden: a sense of achievement personally do you think that's down to it taking you not taking you so long but like having so many cracks at it and almost like falling short a little bit it makes when you finally get it it's going to make it sweeter and it's going to make you more proud

1:20:29Ollie Marchon: than anything definitely will but like i said it's one of those things that you know you know that running a 205 marathon for you impossible yeah it's impossible but you know that running a 219 it's on that line of like i can do that but it's going to take a lot out of me yeah it's going

1:20:46Jake Dearden: to take absolutely everything and then if then i might not do it and and and the sub three for me

1:20:51Ollie Marchon: is kind of that like i said for other people it's like what sub three you're saying it's going to take everything out for me it will because the time i have to train uh all the other factors age kids everything else it's something that requires exactly it requires a ton of effort the whole marathon needs to come to, I need the right temperature. Like my way I've fallen short is because it's been too hot.

1:21:12Jake Dearden: Oh, I've seen you. You are a sweater.

1:21:14Ollie Marchon: I sweat so much. And that's been probably the biggest reason why I've not been able to get there. Because in Sydney, where I got the 258 by Strava, so my official time was three hours, three seconds. I could have legitimately got sub three, but I just didn't push the last like 5K because I was starting to cramp a little bit. And cramping was something that took me out in London. then it took me out then a couple of weeks later in berlin um and i thought given where my watch was at that i thought that actually done the sub three i crossed the line thinking i fucking nailed it the reason so so what i'm saying here is like running sub three is super tough i need the right conditions i need to feel well and everything needs to be on my side i need to have put the training in so yes it will give me a sense of achievement because i've had a few stabs at it and i've known what it's taken me to try and get there but equally it's like one of those goals given my genetic makeup all the other things that you know are conducive and personal to me it's a tough goal that when you achieve that it's like fuck yeah you did it for some people that might be a sub 20 minute 5k you know they've gone through a 15k uh fat loss journey getting a sub 25 whatever the arbitrary number is everyone knows where the limit lies and what's super unachievable because of all the other factors sub three for me that's one of those doing 160 100 miler is one of those.

1:22:32Ollie Marchon: I know physically it's going to take a huge amount out of me, but mentally it's going to push me that little bit further as well. So at some stage I'd like to do one of those. I know an Ironman, at some stage I want to do those. Everyone's got those kind of like things that are just within touching distance if they put the work in. Might take you six months, might take you 12 months, might take you 18 months, but if you're willing to put that work in, you can do it. Once I've run a sub three, I've got no interest in trying to go to 250. I've got no interest in going there because I know what I'll be sacrificing.

1:23:00Ollie Marchon: what i'd be sacrificing elsewhere um i'm not i'm not so keen on that because of the i love training for what it is i love at 6am in the morning nothing more than some days going in there and just doing 60 minutes on the ergs and not really doing it for any reason now i know that sounds contradictory to what we spoke about the very start progressive training structure whatever else when you get to a certain level 60 minutes of work there still is intent like you're going in

1:23:27Jake Dearden: there you're going doing that but there will be an intent you're ticking over you're you're ticking the boxes exactly you're kind you've got a couple of boxes to take a week uh your strength work your cardio work to keep you healthy and you're taking one of them boxes even though it might think like you're just going in there to relieve some stress um and enjoy yourself like

1:23:49Ollie Marchon: you are ticking the box so yeah and there's there's i'm at a stage in life where i want some more of those sessions so you wake up but poor not sleep maybe because the kids you've got a big day of work in the boardroom meetings whatever else you want training to be serving those other elements of life it wants you to serve the energy level you have served the fact you're going into a meeting not i've got to go in there i've got to hit fucking threshold efforts i'm going to bury myself and i've got to then scrape myself through the rest of the day um i'm in a period of life where the former is more important to me not because i'm a pussy not because i don't i'm not about it it's because you need just need to know where you're at and what's right for you i think

1:24:29Jake Dearden: some people as well actually benefit more from that and if they let themselves just go in and do sessions that they enjoy rather than every session being tedious and boring you're actually going to recover better from those sessions because you're going to be in a better mood and you're going to get better gains rather than going in thinking not this session again I'm dreading it it's almost like this thing that I found where stress and too much stress or overtraining is bad for you and sometimes it's better just to have an evening off or it's better to go in and instead of going for that long run which you're not really feeling it because you're careful so you'll do a bike instead because you want to enjoy it but you'll benefit more from that as well so listening to your body like you dreading something is technically your body's way of saying like i'm potentially not ready for that sometimes it depends how well trained you are and how like if you if you've never done it before then i think you've got to almost again earn the right to earn the right to be in tune with your body to know what it needs and i think that's what stage you're at yeah

1:25:39Ollie Marchon: no exactly i think that's the point i'm making so you know i don't i don't need i don't need the session where i'm like maybe not feeling it for me just going bury myself to prove to myself

1:25:46Jake Dearden: i can do a session but there will be times where you're like i want to rip it today yeah yeah yeah no that's uh i like that i like that i want to finish with uh just some quick fire questions first of all you do a lot of cooking what would your best meal be what you cook yourself

1:26:10Ollie Marchon: what are you the master of i do a lot of cooking but i'm rinsing repeating the same the same thing i'm very good at under cooking a fillet steak um so i i'm i'm good i'm good with what are you talking about like medium rare i like it rare rare i like it rare i like a fish i do i do like rare meat like rare meat so i'd always be order if we're going for a steak i'd always order a rare steak um but i'm very good at cooking a rare steak because i've just perfected it um i'm quite simple you know like steak and some some homemade wedges and some salad yes um again when you've built a career around just like time efficiency and convenience and like you've got a little window of time to eat you're thinking about ways where you can get really good food into the system that doesn't take that much time um i've seen that you're all right on a barbecue as well so what i so the reason that that is because i love i love other people eating i like this i talk about always breaking bread i love i love uh the the idea of everyone around the table having food filling their tummies and enjoying the food and so there's um there's a level of i guess personal satisfaction when there's an opportunity to to barbecue that i get from like cooking all the meat putting that time in making sure that it's all cooked at the right time and together and then everyone gets to feast um yeah i don't think it's necessarily because i'm good at barbecuing although i've done it a lot so i'm probably quite good it's more i like the act of

1:27:34Jake Dearden: them people being able to eat together that's really cool and uh it's something that i've actually taken from you i like to do that uh i think like you say it just brings this togetherness that you don't really get with anything else um it's cool it's nice to look after the people

1:27:50Ollie Marchon: around you it's like working out right i think there's the reasons um working out training together the bond the sweat whatever else like there's a there's a shared alignment of like a thing and i think it's the same thing when you when you when you eat if you have if you have an opportunity for a proper window of like time where you can sit and eat together parasympathetic nervous systems activated rest digest you know relaxed there's a nice feeling in the room and i um we we try where possible whenever we've done a workout together there's opportunity to go we had a big day's work together we've had an event we've done something we always try and go and celebrate with a good meal together i like that bad habits do you have any should ask my wife this bad habits um i am she thinks is lazy i can be a little bit lazy at home

1:28:39Jake Dearden: um so i'm i'm very lucky that i uh i think that's what makes a good athlete i'm very lucky that i've

1:28:46Ollie Marchon: had some amazing women um my mom my wife uh look after me and so at home i'm not very good at washing up i'm not very good at tidying up i'm very good at just like dumping my clothes on the floor even though it's a meter away from the washing basket uh so i think those are bad habits i think i've i've i'm a product of the fact that i've been looked after too well by the by my mom

1:29:10Jake Dearden: my wife so yeah i'd say they're my bad habits i love that i love that you've actually been honest as well because i ask other people that they're like no i've not got any bad habits i'm like i

1:29:19Ollie Marchon: i think self-awareness in life is the most underused or underexplored uh thing you know and i do think it comes with maturity and perspective but when you're not aware whether it's you know what your bad habits are or whether it's like your leadership i'm a bit i'm short tempered i'm irrational i'm aggressive at times i can get hangry so you need to know yourself to be able to like mitigate those situations happening because some of those things aren't particularly like they're not necessarily good you know depending on what situation you're in so you need to know those things and i think if you don't it's just i just think it can be ignorant and that i don't think that's uh and that's good so self-awareness i think is really important and i know where i'm i know where i'm good and i know where i'm not very good next one hardest workout

1:30:06Jake Dearden: you've ever done might be in a competition it might just be one that you've made up or one

1:30:11Ollie Marchon: I think a Mico's triangle, for me, at like a 22, 23.

1:30:17Jake Dearden: Is that with the minute rest? Yeah. And what, so ski, roll bike? Echo bike, yeah. Echo bike as well, yeah.

1:30:25Ollie Marchon: Yeah, I think that when you're six rounds in, you're fucking, yeah.

1:30:32Jake Dearden: I think this is going to be an easy one, but would you rather lift weights for the rest of your life or do run? Lift weights. What would you choose? for the rest of my life got to say running now you know what i think i'd take running because when i did the recent marathon prep i didn't lift weights for i think five or six weeks you feel amazing i felt amazing didn't really didn't lose in my opinion i don't know obviously i got skinny so it's hard to think if you lost that much muscle obviously i lost strength but I didn't lose as much as what I thought. And I think people underestimate how long it actually takes you to lose muscle.

1:31:14Jake Dearden: Have you been watching Truett Haynes at the moment? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Truett's not literally,

1:31:19Ollie Marchon: not lifted a single weight. When you say you didn't, so we'll come back to Truett, when you say you didn't lift weights for six months, you didn't lift weights?

1:31:25Jake Dearden: No, not six months, six weeks. Okay. Six weeks. So it's a little bit shorter period. But when I said anything upper body, that was, so the only thing that I did was lower body, but not heavy just mobility and isometrics um which obviously does have a carryover even to maintaining upper body uh muscle mass but uh been following triet haynes i think he's not lifted weights since november apparently and still pretty jacked well he's still struggling to lose it so really yeah i think i'd pick running there's something about running as well i've fallen in love with it uh i don't know whether it's because i do for my for my work it's high rocks and therefore there's not really much pressure with my running but i've just fallen in love with it there's nothing i've run twice a day and it's just no chore whatsoever it's lovely

1:32:19Ollie Marchon: yeah it's a super tough question i think the only reason i say strength

1:32:23Jake Dearden: i don't there's nothing better than going into the gym with your mates there's a level of like

1:32:27Ollie Marchon: capability like maybe i'm linking linking it back to like jiu-jitsu which is a thing that is my hobby like there's nothing worse than being manhandled by another bloke on the mats i mean you don't have

1:32:38Jake Dearden: to worry about that because fortunately i'm a lover not a fighter but i think there'd be one stage where i'd be screwed if i needed it but when i came back from so the last year i ran those three

1:32:48Ollie Marchon: marathons so pretty much the nine ten months of the year was very much running focused i went back the mats after berlin marathon and bro like i was getting manhandled and i was like the feeling i have uh of being more capable on the mats and this isn't about me wanting to fight people by the way this is just about a hobby of jiu-jitsu like it's i really enjoy it really enjoy it you sure yeah yeah um the feeling that i had of being capable on the mats even if it was just like a bunch of just like everyday people at whatever level they're at in terms of like their they're grading their belt versus the whole world knowing that i run a sub through our marathon i'll take the feeling of being more capable there's just it just there's there's something about it and maybe you will experience it if you ever you know take up a combat sport i would love to but there's something about it when you realize that like i'm i could be you know choked out or manhandled at any moment if i don't if i if i can't defend myself and a level of strength is important in that well if

1:33:50Jake Dearden: the world ever ends we we definitely need that over being able to run a fast marathon i think

1:33:55Ollie Marchon: you know if uh i do find it mental as well people you can i mean obviously you this is a stupid statement because i know how this happens but you've built a level of capacity and and conditioning where you can just run twice a day and be no because i sometimes if i had to do a double day or or even just like a long run it takes a lot of motivation and my body as well like through surgeries and things it does take a lot i think i don't know you've probably experienced this but

1:34:21Jake Dearden: i think just being addicted to exercise as well like that feeling that you get that you know when you're when you've not worked out you take a purposeful rest day and you're just grumpy and you go for a run and it fixes all your problems like it's one of them things that i think i've done it so often i now like kind of like rely on it for that release yeah nice um but uh yeah it's it's definitely a pleasure to run at the moment um but uh yeah like i say i i do want to give jiu-jitsu a goal i think i don't know about you what's the risk of injury doing jiu-jitsu no

1:34:59Ollie Marchon: i mean it might be different in bolton where you're all a bit mental um but if you if you go to a decent club uh where you know it's a bit like a gym right you go to a gym where they they value proper technique they value progression they value like looking after each other and you know if you're a new person to the gym i'm not going to tell you to do 100 sled pushes and make you feel sick um and you also don't go in there with an ego where you're going to go okay i'll do 100 pushings but if you go in you're a bit more controlled you're a good club you all you've got to do is tap you literally just got to tap um whenever you feel yourself in danger but i thought the same thing i've had acl reconstruction this knee i've got a torn labor in my shoulder i've got lots going on um and you pick up a bangers because it's a contact sport but yeah it's it's

1:35:49Jake Dearden: safe i love it i think i'll give it a go but uh not whilst hyrox is around i think it's gonna have to be after hyrox i think i've got too much on my plate already what is the goal now my goal uh well we've got hyrox world champs coming up i'm in for the doubles at the moment singles i'm yet to qualify so i'll be racing in the elite 15 major in london trying to qualify for world champs so that's my goal and then all sites on stockholm and then i need to get this 219 so i will be doing another marathon prep for the end of the year i've not decided yet whether i'm going to do berlin or i might try and do valencia or cim california international marathon they're around the same date um so it's either september or december we try and hit but the london hyrox

1:36:38Ollie Marchon: is this this um is this a regional one yeah it's the regional one so it's kind of almost like a

1:36:43Jake Dearden: last chance qualifier uh it's only one spot up for grabs but it's just europe so it's the uk and europe that's uh that are going to be in and hyrox is getting more and more stacked uh every every single year like you've seen the times that i think i got into the elite 15 last year with a 58 now you need a 54 minute to get into the elite 15 just to get in which is insane so uh you know four minute difference off something that again was considered last year of an amazing time now like for the elite 15 like if you're not running equal like 54s 55s then you're not in with a chance really so it's crazy the level um i i hopefully expect my berlin sorry my houston marathon running to then transfer over but as of since the houston marathon i've been a little bit battered um trying to get back to where i was um building back up the strength like i said i didn't strength train for that much so i need to get back stronger but i aim to peak in london and about yourself have you got any big kind of obviously goals let's go quick personal uh physical and then business goals um for the next year or it could be even longer from a personal standpoint so from away from fitness um it's all just family like family related so go on i was gonna say have you got any like a certain amount of like holidays that you try and get not holidays but like places that you want to take the kids and yeah so i try and do it and obviously we're

1:38:25Ollie Marchon: very fortunate we can do this i know this isn't easy for everyone to do but every school holiday we'll try and get out of the country um probably the biggest thing we've got on the radar is we've

1:38:35Jake Dearden: got a plot of land we want to build a house oh incredible congratulations so we've we've submitted

1:38:39Ollie Marchon: planning for a for a massive house with all we could dream for uh building it from the ground up

1:38:45Jake Dearden: so and this will be like the forever family home i think so i think so yeah yeah it's a bit of a

1:38:50Ollie Marchon: once-in-a-lifetime opportunity really so we've uh we've designed uh our dream house so we'll just see see what happens with that not getting too carried away uh so that's a personal goal but it's going to take a bit of time over the next couple of years um from a fitness standpoint like i've got the bath half marathon in a couple of a couple of weeks it's just a probably more of a participation thing than anything else i think valencia marathon at the end of the year would probably be where i try and try and nail the sub three um but competing in jujitsu kind of is going

1:39:18Jake Dearden: trump all those things um do you aim to like you say compete in jiu-jitsu go to some competitions

1:39:24Ollie Marchon: um yeah almost did it last year back in the last year but the the so it's quite strange that you you compete basically in weight category belt category and also age and so like mine mine's a little bit niche like being a blue belt my age my weight's a little bit niche there wasn't anyone really in my category so i wasn't gonna gonna go um but i want to get on the mats and just and just start competing and just like just start competing basically and put myself in that environment and

1:39:48Jake Dearden: see how is there anyone that you've like imagine you you want to twist up on that mat is there anyone that like does does jiu-jitsu in the world that you're like oh i wish i could compete with

1:39:58Ollie Marchon: him and there's not necessarily does jiu-jitsu that i care to compete there's probably a few people that i'd love to get on the mats and twist up but we'll talk about afterwards um and then from a business goal uh i think just continue more of the same like in the past i've put arbitrary numbers on where we want to get the you know the business to revenue whatever else but i think that when you start again it's a little bit cliche same thing around fitness when you start focusing too much on the destination i think it changes the dynamic of how you experience the journey um and so so long as i have the same energy and sort of passion for what we're doing now it's just like doing more of the same like more good work with good people add value where we can build a really solid robust business but trying to fund doing it well i think you're

1:40:40Jake Dearden: definitely doing that and you've been doing it since i started following you many many years ago and you're someone that i've looked up to and i will continue to look up to um throughout my full journey you are a role model not only to me but to a lot of other people out there i think so

1:40:57Ollie Marchon: thank you ollie thanks very much thanks for having me said that cheers jakey