Interview with Rob Newman (part one)

In this two-part interview, I am going to be talking to my friend, Rob Newman, a very remarkable man who has been an entrepreneur, a bodybuilder, a soldier, a boxer, a martial artist, a yoga practitioner and an endurance athlete. He’s built up a million pound business, lost it, picked himself up and started again stacking shelves.  He has the kind of grit and determination that you only normally see in films.

What’s more, Rob trained as a personal trainer and is currently part way through training as a physiotherapist.  Now he practices functional fitness in his garage.

I’ve split the interview into two parts because we really got into it.  This first part is about Rob and his wild life, including general comments about fitness, martial arts, boxing, yoga and the armed forces.  The second part is just about his experiences as a bodybuilder.

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CB: Rob, thanks for agreeing to do this interview, as I know you’ve been incredibly busy recently.  Let’s dive straight in with a general question about fitness, as I think you have a uniquely broad perspective in a world that is becoming increasingly specialised.  You’ve seen an enormous number of sides of the thing that we all call “fitness”.  What do you define as fitness these days?

RN: Hello Chris, thank you for taking the time to do this interview.  For me, fitness today is about being able to do any of the physical things I want to do on a day to day basis without pain either now or tomorrow. Simple as that.

I have other goals I want to achieve that are physical, but they are not necessarily within the realm of what I consider fitness. For example, my goal for 2011 is to gain some size and “look” more like a weight lifter again. This is not fitness training, its bodybuilding, albeit hopefully achieved in a way that would not be recognised as such by the bodybuilding media.

To achieve my type of fitness I believe that the individual needs to partake in a range of activities that complement each other and balance out the function of the muscles and respiratory system. These include walking, running, swimming, cycling, rowing, weight training, bodyweight training, stretching, massage, myofascial release, heat treatments (sauna and wet rooms) and relaxation…

So you can see why I was drawn to CrossFit when I was lucky enough to be introduced to it in the first UK CrossFit gym that opening just a couple of miles from where I lived in 2004.  That said, I am not a CrossFitter anymore and I am also prepared to get out of what I consider balance this year to gain the weight and size that I want back.

CB: That’s interesting.  I was also briefly tempted by CrossFit but my need to see myself progess defeated my curiosity.  Let me ask you about the martial arts now.  We’ve talked about martial arts a few times, me from a position of complete ignorance and you from your lofty height as a 3rd Dan black belt Shotokan karate teacher.  How does martial arts influence your life now?

RN: Erm, only that I feel a bit guilty that I’ve become as rusty as I have, despite all the years of training I put in!  I first started Karate at a local sports centre when I was 6 years old. It was not something I wanted to do, it was a dream of my Father’s and indeed for years I did everything I could to avoid going.  Especially as we moved around a lot when I was a child and I changed clubs every 9 months or so and was forever getting my arse kicked by some dickhead who fancied giving the new boy the good news.

I was 13 and several grades in, before I got into it. It’s the classic story: I went to a posh school in a good area but lived in a rough one some miles away. One winter’s evening as I was walking home, a local lad decided to give me a kicking for being different to him. I ended up in hospital, and swore there and then that it would never happen again so I started training every day both practicing my karate and doing push ups and sit ups and lifting my 2.5kg Weider plastic dumbbells for 300 reps!

Yet I was still terrified every time I entered the dojo and went out in the streets… and so began a 20 years campaign of chasing everything that frightened me and my own sort of attempt at being a Nietzschean superman.

I joined the army for it. I jumped out of planes. I fought boxing matches, learned Krav Maga in Israel, climbed rocks, gambled, drank, took all sorts of chemicals, travelled everywhere, enjoyed ladies’ pleasures whenever possible, read every book I could get my hands on, did big deals and dodgy deals and mixed with people I detested all just to know what I had.

And I suppose the adrenaline became addictive and I kept on faster and faster until I blew up and collapsed into hospital.

Ironically, the Yin to the Yang that martial arts also introduced to me was Buddhism, which has floated in and out of my life since my mid teens. Whilst I am not quite able to call myself a Buddhist, I am almost there and become closer to being so with each day and each new experience.

Yin Yang: the Newman school of thought (image by MAMJODH)

Essentially, Buddhism teaches that life is full of crap (pain) and that the way to deal with the crap is to follow a path of acceptance and calm (the eight noble truths). It’s the complete opposite of what I tried to be for many, many years, but then perhaps that’s just the path I needed to see the truth?

CB: That’s a very enlightened perspective, I think.  I still tend to rail against the idiocy of my youth rather than seeing it as the path to something better.  Let me pick up on one thing there, which is the boxing, as I know that you renewed your boxing licence at the end of 2009 after ten years.  What is it about boxing that made you want to go back for more after so long?

RN: Adrenaline. I used to cry and piss myself before a fight, but whilst you are in a situation like that you never feel more alive.  For the record, I have done nothing with my licence since 2009 and don’t see anything on the horizon either.

CB: OK, so you’ve definitely become a man of peace, it would seem!  I hope it brings you what you need.  So let’s move away from the martial arts and boxing now and towards something more meditative.    You seem to keep coming back to yoga as something that you want to invest more time into going forward.  What is it about this practice that draws you and how do you see it benefiting you and other people?

RN: Yoga is a complete system of exercise and a calming experience. The Yoga I practice is Iyengar style and was founded and is still lead by Mr Iyengar, an octogenarian who is as flexible as rubber and has the glowing eyes of a teenager. I find peace in Yoga and it helps me to balance myself.

CB: Sounds great.  I hope I look like that when I’m that age.  And what life lessons, skills or mentalities did you gain from your time in the army?  Did you feel that your “army fitness” was fit for purpose?  How close was it to true fitness?

RN: Lot of questions here and I could waffle on for hours over dinner and drinks. The major life lesson would be to get and keep your shit together, which can be summarised as: Proper Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance.

You can do amazing things if you have a plan, work together and stay on focus. I try to live “square” and organised and tidy.  It doesn’t always work, and I’ve yet to train my wife who is wonderfully bohemian, but structure gets you through. It’s also amazing how little you need to live. I lived out of a Bergen for years, and lived well.

Army fitness is bang on purpose. The British Army needs you to be able to move weight over a distance, to be able to run and jump and climb over things. As such the focus is endurance training under load and calisthenics. The need to tab long distances carrying weight is an operation necessity (in the infantry, all you have on an op is what you can carry) and one not recognised or understood by our American cousins who in my opinion rely too much on helicopters.

The PTI’s are amazingly fit and I remember being astounded by the speed and strength that some of these 9 and 10 stone guys had surviving on a diet of Guinness and chips! I joined up when I was a bodybuilder, lost it all (the muscle weight) in 6 weeks and felt the best I had done in years and years.

It depends on what you want and what you are trying to do, but for everyday Real World Fitness I don’t think you can beat the approach the Army takes and I would heartily recommend one of the best summaries of the approach written by Robin Eggar in the early 1990’s called the “Royal Marines Total Fitness: The Unique Commando Programme”. You won’t look anything following this approach and depending on your job and your diet you won’t even be too lean, but you will be able to move and lift and carry anything you come across on a day to day basis.

CB: I think that’s a great motto: “you can do amazing things if you have a plan, work together and stay on focus”.  I will remember that.  Keeping with the theme of the questions, what life lessons did you learn from being an entrepreneur?  Specifically, how does it affect the way you approach hitting your goals?

RN: Let me tell you a little story, which I think it fully explains my entrepreneurial experience: I was a rising corporate star, then in 2001 I was gripped by the entrepreneurial myth. I set out on my own and swiftly gave birth to an elephant (editor’s note: this is a metaphor).

1. Phase 1 – When the elephant was born I was bigger than it, could see a great future with it and foresee no problems. The only snag was that I didn’t have any skills in managing elephants – I knew HOW to do what elephants did, but did not know how to GET THEM to do what they did, but I thought that this wouldn’t really be a problem and off I went.
2. Phase 2 – The elephant soon grew much bigger than I was. I was no longer strong enough to control it and it took over my whole life. It pulled me along, wreaking destruction in its wake. Standing behind it, it blocked my whole vision and I could neither see nor know where I was going. I was so preoccupied by being dragged along by it that I thought that there is no way to ever bring it under control, it ruined my life and my family’s life.
3. Phase 3 – I was trampled under the feet of the elephant and came to in hospital in 2008 after suffering a nervous breakdown. The elephant continued (and continues) to thunder forward, but it was stolen by those I trusted with it when I was injured.
4. Phase 4 – My health has been ruined, my finances have been atomised and I have lost everything I had worked for. I now work for an international retailer earning in a year less than I did in a month, whilst continuing to fight two large organisations through the Courts neither of whom have any desire to settle.

What did it teach me? That I am mortal, that I am not indestructible and that I have very clear limits. However, since the elephant was stolen I have learned far, far more than I did when I was being dragged behind it. I now know what I value, what I want and more importantly what I don’t want. You see, EVERYTHING I did before the elephant WORKED, whereas the elephant was my Vietnam and it’s only been through its loss that I have seen saved.

Elephants: Rob Newman’s kryptonite (photo by Sarah McCans)

But hey, in terms of my goals, I am – and have always been – with Rocky Marciano: “You can be anything you want to be, if you want it bad enough… most people just don’t want it bad enough”

CB: Well, I’ve heard that story a few times, now, as you know, and I think you saved the best version for this interview!  I like the metaphor, too, it’s a nice way of putting it.  Moving on.  Knowing you as I do, I know that you have been through a number of incredibly stressful experiences, both in the army and as a businessman and as a result of illness.  Nowadays, everyone is a little stressed most of the time so it’s great to hear tips on how to manage it.  How do you manage stress?

RN: I really am not the person to ask about managing stress. On the surface I appear not to really suffer stress at all. I have a way of boxing things up and putting them away for ages and just getting my head down and my arse up .

A great example being that I bought my first proper company on the very day my Mother died, saw a client later on, arranged my Mum’s funeral and then flew to London for a three day bender – but underneath of course I am not really dealing with things. Yeah sure I am functioning at a high level, but I am not dealing with it, I’m just saving it up until the box is overflowing with stuff and then I’ll disappear for a week or explode in rage. (I have a history of just disappearing and have been the terror of many a poor secretary!)

My wife has helped me with this. Her patience – and the help of my former very good CNP – has taught me to recognise when I am starting to fill the box up. When this starts to happen I now try to take on less, eat well, sleep well and get the balance back. It’s a day to day process and it’s worked for the last couple of years, but, like an alcoholic, I just have to live with today and not think too much about tomorrow. 

CB: OK, I won’t talk to you about stress.  It sounds like you manage it even worse than I do.  In fact, let’s avoid any more stress by pausing there and picking up next week.

For part two of the interview, tune in the same time next week…