S01E05 - Excalibur, Cosmopolitan, and 2 Quid

In this episode Niko likens himself to King Arthur, wields Excalibur (The TRX), listens to Arnold Schwarzenegger for career advice and enters into the National Magazine arena...

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Hello and welcome back to the PT Chronicles podcast, the story of a small town Welsh boy and his rise to the very middle of the fitness industry. As always, I'm your host, Nico Algieri, and I'm also the main protagonist in the story. So let's get right into episode 5, Excalibur, Cosmopolitan, and Two Quid. The same amount of time that Excalibur sat in the stone waiting for Arthur to place his hand on it, there was a distinct risk, certainly with my ego, that the TRX would be sitting in the back of the car for eternity. Now I don't know why. It could have been boredom, fate, the force from Star Wars, destiny, whatever. But for some reason I Googled TRX and what I saw lit a spark inside me. Google led me to a YouTube video with two gentlemen in San Francisco hanging off a lamppost with this TRX strap coming down from it. Randy Hetrick and Fraser Quelch. Fraser Quelch was the head of training and development. Randy was the founder and the creator of TRX. Now he was an ex-Navy SEAL commander, and he designed the TRX basically because he was stationed away somewhere, there was no gym available, and he needed to mimic pole movements to actually train him to go up ladders faster and be stronger with pole motions. So he designed this thing with a piece of webbing and a jujitsu belt and hung it over a door and created what was to become the TRX. Now, watching this, watching these movements, I knew that I could apply everything that I'd learnt in fitness to this strap. I knew that I could make myself the best in the world of this. Now, call that ego or arrogance, it's not. It was confidence and knowledge. I just knew that I could take it and take it to places other people couldn't. So if you're a regular listener, the men's health competition was the fuel. TRX was the spark to light it all up. I couldn't wait to actually get my TRX wrapped around a tree or a pole and try it out. So the first thing I did was take it to my tree in Hyde Park, London. Now I say my tree because after I'd actually taught myself how to use the TRX and created a new training program for myself and my clients, I would spend eight to nine hours a day stood underneath that tree, wind, rain, snow, sunshine, whatever, with my clients developing my business and changing bodies. You'll notice there as well that I said I taught myself TRX. I did. I did research courses when I found the TRX and what they had available. Their fundamentals of training are fantastic, and the way they teach PTs to cue people into positions is great, but I wanted to make for some reason I wanted to make my own way on it. I wanted to make my own movements. I had experience in bodybuilding, kickboxing, athletics, football, reformer Pilates. I just had this gut feeling that I could apply all that knowledge and skill and confidence and just make myself the best in the world. And it takes me back even now to a speech that I've heard Arnold Schwarzenegger make a few times about his secrets to success. And it was rule two that I heard in this one video that I just had to listen to and follow here.

SPEAKER_01 3:07

And of course, rule number two is break the rules. We have so many rules in life about everything. I said break the rules, not the law, but break the rules. It is impossible to be a member or too original. If you too well behaved, you don't want to break the rules. You have to think outside the box and believe out of the law. What is the point? If all you want to do is be liked to everyone and avoid trouble. The only way that ever got any place was by breaking some of the rules.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

So that's what I did. As soon as I had that TRX in my hand, I started breaking the rules. And that would go on to cause massive controversy throughout the whole of my career, which we'll get to later on in the PT Chronicles. So stay with me. Now with this new passion for TRX and this new training program, and my passion increased because I'd found my Excalibur, my client base exploded. The TRX combined with bootcamp Pilates, the mini fame, the word of mouth, I was flying. I was unique. I stood out from the crowd. I was training eight people back to back, connected to one tree in the park, and the next day I was teaching nine hours of Reforma Pilates and absolutely loving it. I was knackered, but it was worth it. We're about eight months into my personal training career at this point. So I'd moved from Brixton Hill to Kennington because let's be honest, I'd made it. I was flying. New build flat with a lift and a concierge. Come on, mate. I was rolling in it. Okay, so I wasn't rolling in it, but it felt like it to me. Now back to the relationship with Sophie. We were getting on like a house on fire. So much to the point, right? We were so obsessed with each other that she had a recruitment consultant job in the city. Now I lived in Kennington. In her lunch times, if I had gaps, I would drive up, pick her up within 20 minutes, get back to my apartment, have a ridiculous amount of sex crammed into 20 minutes, and then drive her back so she was back in work within the hour. That's how crazy it was. In the meantime, at Bootcamp Pilates, I'd met one of the editors of Cosmopolitan Magazine, and they were looking for a new PT to become the lead fitness expert for the magazine. They invited me for a meeting to Hearst, UK, that's in Soho in London, for a meeting with the Cosmopolitan magazine, and amazingly, I got the job. I couldn't believe it. I'm eight months into my personal training career, and here I am, the lead trainer for Cosmopolitan Magazine. Crazy. Now that we had to have a photo shoot for this, and coincidentally, that took me back to the men's health photo shoot to the studio in Parsons Green. Although this time I got to be the star. Well, ish. It was more the model, Emily, who I've remained friends with until this day. I featured every month for 12 months with my own workouts in a national magazine after only six months after starting a career. The trajectory was looking perfect. With my newfound popularity and immense wealth and magazine fame, I decided that I needed to be rewarded by bootcamp Pilates. I deserved a fucking pay rise, and I was gonna say so. Bearing in mind I'd ended my medium com career on 22k a year. Jesus, in London. If you ever have that amount of money in London, you don't really live in London, you live in your apartment, and you can maybe go to Mackey D's on a date. So I emailed the manager of Bootcamp Pilates, Ali, ready to unleash my business acumen and prowess. I got a massive £2, £2 increase on my original 19. Big bucks. But my delusions of grandeur were about to get even worse.