Man: A Quest to Find Meaning

Mind Games & Mental Anchors: The Secret Psychology of a Champion | David Legro - Part 2

• James Ainsworth • Episode 59

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What if the key to elite performance, emotional healing, and personal transformation wasn’t pushing harder — but learning to rewire your mind?


In this episode of Man: A Quest to Find Meaning, James is joined by cycling legend, coach, and NLP practitioner David Le Grys. With over 40 British titles, two world championships, and a lifetime of experience navigating physical and emotional trauma, David brings a rare blend of honesty, humor, and wisdom.


Together, they explore how NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) helped David reframe his anxiety, manage the pressure of international competition, and bounce back from burnout, addiction, and even open-heart surgery.


David shares how installing “anchors” — powerful mental triggers — helped him transform nerves into calm confidence, including a behind-the-scenes look at how world-class athletes like Johnny Wilkinson and Chris Hoy used these tools to perform under pressure. Through storytelling, David explains how you can build your own anchor to break through fear and unlock your full potential — whether you’re preparing for a race, a job interview, or a tough conversation.


💡 Key Insights from the Episode:

  • 🧠 NLP Is About Rewriting Internal Scripts – You can change how you respond to fear, not by fighting it, but by reframing it.
  • 🎯 Anchors Are Personal Power Tools – Anchors help associate specific gestures or thoughts with a desired emotional state, such as calm or confidence.
  • 🔄 Visualization Rewires the Brain – Techniques like the "Cinema Hypnosis" method allow you to replace painful memories with empowering ones.
  • ❤️ Trauma Lives in the Body – David explains how unprocessed trauma affects recovery, immune health, and emotional stability.
  • 🕯️ Sense of Humor as a Healing Force – Laughing at yourself (even when it hurts) can be one of the most powerful tools for recovery.
  • 💪 Healing Takes Patience – David's journey through heart surgery taught him that resilience isn’t about rushing — it’s about listening, slowing down, and trusting the process.
  • 🌱 Success Evolves – From chasing medals to coaching a diabetic teen to national gold, David's story reminds us that legacy is often built through lifting others.

In this episode, we talked about being world champion, the pressure of performance and self expectation. We looked at NLP and the power of anchors and how you can refrain fear into hope. Welcome to Man: A Quest to Find Meaning, where we help men navigate modern life, find their true purpose, and redefine manhood. I'm your host, James, and each week, inspiring guests share their journeys of overcoming fear Embracing vulnerability and finding success. From experts to everyday heroes. Get practical advice and powerful insights. Struggling with career, relationships or personal growth? We've got you covered. Join us on Man Quest to Find Meaning. Now, let's dive in.

Dave Legro:

Yeah. The going, it wasn't just the diet. I was on a rubbish diet. I could eat fish and chips cakes and biscuits. In fact, when I saw cane, he said, what'd you have for breakfast? I said, A cup of coffee and two digestive biscuits. He nearly fell off his chair. But it went a bit deeper than that because even going back to my nerves, I said I was really worried about my nerves. I put myself under so much pressure and without boasting, because I was that good. I knew I was capable of coming home with a gold medal, but that wasn't doing my mind any good'cause that was giving me this pressure that I didn't need. I look around at all my opponents and they're smiling and they're chilled out, and I'm there and I'm all tense and wound up and I'm thinking, why can't I be like them? And a friend of mine recommended Kane to go and he said, why don't you try NLP? And that's neurolinguistic programming. It is a kind of a reframing thing on the way you behave. And under understanding it and reframing it a bit like half full, half empty, it's the same thing. You reframe that half full, half empty glass. And there's different, various techniques. And when I saw a cane we went through it and he asked me how I'd like to behave. Now, that's the key thing, it is not he came into my world. He didn't say, ah, you need to snap outta that and do this. You, when you're working with something. Cain worked with me and he entered my world. He entered my world of eating digestive biscuits. He entered my world of nerves. And he went with it and he mirrored it. And then he started to restructure it and reframe it in a point that, as I said I could take my bad energy, thoughts and stuff and be on the start line and become a God. And that was how, mainly through NLP and when the, with the process of Kane getting me into a the way that I wanted to behave how would I want to behave? I wanted to be calm, a little bit nervous. I wanted to be able to manage my thoughts and manage my feelings. And he taught me into how I would want to do that. He's not telling me to do it. He's asking me how I would like to do it. And so I was actually, without realizing, installing my own anchor, in the thought that this is how I'd like to behave. Eventually he installed an anchor. And an anchor is a trigger, I dunno if you're a rugby fan, but do you do you remember Johnny Wilkinson? He used to kick goals for England and he used to do that, right? And that's NLP, that's his anchor. And what that is, is two rugby posts. And when he was being, helped with NLP one of the strategies that was taught to him that the, he had to imagine that, that the rugby posts were like a hundred meters apart. And then he said, go and kick a ball, and he couldn't miss. And when he did it a thousand times or whatever he said anchor it. And he come up with his anchor and it is by association of that, of him not missing. And if you recall, he would go. Sideways, even though the goal was in front of him, he, and that's him getting in the zone. The goal was over there. And then he would kick the ball and walk away knowing that he'd nine outta 10, he'd kick it. That's NLP for you. It's a trigger. He actually reframed how he thought about the pressure of kicking a ball and used a trigger, an anchor to use. And that's what Kain did to me. He installed an anchor. So on this particular occasion, I was off to Australia to ride the World Masters, and I come back with two golds. And I used my anchor. In fact, I phoned a mate up in the middle of the night'cause I'm, we're opposite time zones and I was up for a race and I rung my mate up and I said to him, this seven LP don't work. I'm still in a, he said, Dave you can't think about suddenly, he said, just go with the flow and hit your anchor. You don't, you can't just suddenly make yourself better. And that's what I learned with NLP. You can't, once you've hit that anchor you don't focus on it's gonna work. You just have to forget it.'cause it's by association. And understanding that more, if I was to explain that to somebody who doesn't understand that NLP technique is, if you smell something. It can take, that could be an anchor, a trigger to take you back to something that you've selt in the past that you liked or hated. Or if you hear a music, you hear a track of music that went back a few years and you are there and that's a trigger, so it's the same thing. The NLP practitioner can install an anchor that is, we've got loads of anchors anyway, installed through life.

James:

Yeah. It's so when I wake up, firstly in the morning, my, I suppose my anchor is to go downstairs and do my morning routine.

Dave Legro:

Is that right? Yeah. I've got a sign that says, wake up and be awesome.

James:

Nice. He puts a smile

Dave Legro:

on my face.

James:

You so an anchor is something that triggers specific action. I assume

Dave Legro:

It's a, triggers a body behavior.

James:

Okay. Okay.

Dave Legro:

So if you are shy you are gonna be withdrawn the way your body behaves. And you don't want to be up the front. You want to be at the back, out of the way. Because you are shy. Somebody that's opposite would be right at the front, Hey, this is me here, I'm, and he wants to be center of adaption. So yes,

James:

it's it's almost similar to habit formation, but you've got some kind of thing that you do where, if I remember rightly, that's a anchor point, isn't it? Touching my thing. My bomb and finger together. I think I remember David Heer speaker I know close to me. He uses that quite a lot.

Dave Legro:

Yeah. I don't even know a famous site as Chris Hoy when he was on, on the start line. He used to do this with his glasses and that was his anchor, and everyone's got a different anchor. It hasn't gotta be that, but that's by association.

James:

Okay. Okay.

Dave Legro:

That makes sense.

James:

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. So basically what Kane did was to get into your head by acting what you did. Yeah. And then allowing you to dictate how you want your anchor to be, and then instilling those behaviors and thoughts into you personally.

Dave Legro:

Yeah, that. It was going through the, that thought process, but on a repetitive way. So if I was imagining this is I want to turn up at a race, I want to be calm, but in control. I don't wanna let my feelings run away from me. And I wanna warm up. And I, most of all, I. With anything. I want to enjoy it.'cause I never used to enjoy it. Yeah. I used to hate it'cause of the mess I got in. So all, going through all these processes of how I'd like to behave and came and said, let's do that again. And it'd make me repeat it over and over again, but make it better that I arrived really calm and I really look forward to it. And I was gonna have a great time. And he magnified it to a point that he said, right now hit your anchor. So my anchor was actually that. So when I hit my anchor, that was associated to the way I wanted to behave. So this is me managing me, not controlling me.'cause it just takes a simple, gesture and some p sometimes it's very subtle, you wouldn't even know somebody's doing it because it is a personal thing.

James:

Yeah. Yeah. So let's use an example. Say there's somebody who's very nervous around people, has a massive social anxiety, but they wanna be confident. How would they instill, how would they use NLP and instill an anchor?

Dave Legro:

They could go in there and far, that sounds bonkers, but it's gonna make everyone laugh and go it breaks the ice. This is where sense of humor comes in is an understanding. I don't mean that necessarily, by the way. I'm just getting you to understand that sometimes your sense of humor can be a good tool. Yeah. Because they're anxious, they're very tight, they're closed. We've gotta open them up and get'em to chill, and again, understanding, visualization of easy, how, again, going back to how you, how would you like to behave? And they're obviously gonna come out. I say I'd like to be confident. I'd I don't wanna be shy. Tell me about it. How would you like to behave? And there's various techniques that NLP can use and it depends on for instance, if you are, we all have different ways of processing our thoughts. So with me, I'm not very visual. If you said to me, can you remember that last race? And think about, and I can't actually roll it through my mind, but I can hear the bell going, I can hear the crowd cheering, I can smell the invocation. So I would use a different technique to somebody that's visual. So for instance, if I said to you, what color is your front door? What is blue? Okay. And do you, did you notice that you looked up to the left? And IQs are a very good thing. You know it, when you look up you are actually searching for what you can remember, right? And it's, it changes from left to right, different people. If you look up to the left for instance, that's your instant. I know that. And if you look the other way up, that's I know that I'm trying to figure out what, so just thinking about it, okay. And then you got the eyes that go backwards and forwards or you can shake your head that's trying to connect with audio, trying to connect with what you can hear as well as looking up. Because you know some people when they go like this, oh, I dunno, right? They unbeknown to them, they're trying to think about it. As well as trying to pick up some sort of other senses. And then it gets more interesting when you start looking down, you are starting to talk to yourself'cause you don't know the answer. And that's where people lie or they're in denial. So getting to understand when you, when I'm talking to people, I would look at their eyes as well to see what they're processing and see if they're not so much telling lies, but seeing how they behave under, because you ask just basic questions, how you going, you know what's going on in your life. And all these IQs are giving me an idea of the person and how to deal with it. Yeah. So if you was visual, a good example of working that experience is taking them to the cinema is one of my favorite hypnosis sessions. I deal with some people. And what that is to, when I say hypnotize, is you're just getting somebody in a very calm. There's lots of levels of hypnosis. We're not going through rooms and going into another room and turning into a chicken. We're just getting them into a relaxed state and being perfectly aware of what's around them.'cause they might have cars rushing by and odd siren or birds tweeting and getting them to absorb all that. As well as listen to my voice, and we'll go through the cinema and I talk them through entering the cinema and I talk with them. I said, can you, are you standing outside the cinema? I go, yeah. I said I want you to walk through. And long story short,'cause it does take about 45 minutes and I'm not gonna do that. It'll take me a couple of minutes to explain. So I'll get them into the cinema, get them seated. They go through the foyer, they haven't gotta pay. They can pick up the popcorn if they want, and they sit down and there's nobody in the cinema except them, him, her. And there's just a screen and they look up at the screen and they're gonna roll the film. And it's all about their life. And then this, the, whatever the trauma is, they're gonna go through it and we're gonna watch that film about them watching themselves. And then this is where it gets weird. You can get an out body experience. And I said, what I want you to do now is leave your body watching that film. And if you look behind you, you can see the projector room and I want you to walk up there, but you still gotta be looking at the film.

James:

So I

Dave Legro:

get them to walk up to the projector room and they could see a projector running around flickering away. There's nobody in there. And I, and then there's a little peephole. I said, go and have a look through the pee pole. And they look at the peep hole and they can see themselves watching themselves. This is weird, isn't it? But don't forget, they're on a kind of a very low hypnosis there. And they're living this moment. They're watching themselves through the peep hole, watching themselves on the screen. And I we were talking, I said, how do you feel? I said I don't like this film. I said, no, but can you notice the way you are sitting, they're slumped down. They don't really wanna watch it, but they are. I said, look, turn your attention to the projector. And they look at it. I said, see that film, I want you to rip it off and destroy it. Absolutely. In whatever way you want to do it. You can set fire to it, you can jump on it, you can blow it up. And they do all that. And then get'em to pick up another reel. And I said, this film is all about you. You're gonna make a film about you how you want to be. And they get the film going and they started going and they go back to the peephole. And I said, can you see? And it's all, everything the opposite of way they behaved and they notice that themselves are starting to look forward at the film. And I'm, I like this film. I said go back down, come out the projector room, go back down and get back into your body. And now they're full on watching their film that they like, and we are changing lots of things, it could be a, yeah. A bit of a sunny day. And I said let's make it more sunny, brighten it all up and make all the feelings better and stronger. Eventually we get to the anchor point. We anchor it, and I say, in your own time, I want you to walk outta the cinema. So I've installed this anchor of them watching the film on how they wanted to behave. But the thing is, I've left the film running, so if they're ever have a difficult point, even with the anchor, they can just sit in a quiet place and go back into the cinema and watch that film again.'cause it's still running. And it's a very good technique for people that are totally focused. It could ping up visualize, I should say.

James:

Yeah. I'm a very visual person. I thrive with seeing yeah. Massively. Yeah. That's actually a powerful, because I think quite often we have, we I'm all for out of body experiences. I'm a converted person. Don't but it's this idea that we see this physical side of our life, but what we don't see is the non-physical. And with our imagination, we have the power to completely transform the way we see things. So for example, if you went into a pub to meet a girl and you froze in physical life, yeah, okay. That's one way of doing it. And then you come back out and then you can probably go and rehearse that again and again, but completely transform it into being more confident, more self-assured, more yeah just like a completely different person. And there's this idea that what we see in our head is the same, almost same as what we see out here in the world. So if you practice and practice a visualization, the power can be phenomenal.

Dave Legro:

Oh, definitely. And it is again the visualization is trying to install your conscious mind. To behave that way.'cause it is the subconscious that does, can do damage and you can overall that and reprogram. A silly, for instance when we was, I was learning NLP, our practitioner was explaining a simple thing that this guy had a fear of spiders. And he got this big Flipboard and he, and then and he drew a letter, Hey, on the Flipboard. And he run out the room screaming, ah, run out the room. And the class was going, what's going? Or the guy with the plum room of the spider, he'd go what's he doing? And then he'd knock on the door, he said, can I come back in? He said, yeah, of course you can. He went back in. What you do that for? I don't ask. Anyway. Then he flipped it over. And then he wrote the letter R and he went, ah. And he run out again, slammed the door. And this guy was like, I come here to sort my phobia out. And this guy is a complete head case. Long story short, he wrote the letter spider in, not order like A, a P and then an R, then an E, and then when he finished, he knocked on the door. He said, can I come back? He said, yeah, can. So he ripped on the poster and then he put them in order of the spelling. And this guy completely, he loved it. He thought it was hilarious, and it just changed his outlook on spiders and he never looked back. It, it's knowing the person as well that might not work with some people. And that's why you need to, yeah. To work with them, to understand that this ain't gonna work with this person. But it did with that. And it's, and again, that's going back to sense of humor. Sense of humor is the key in a lot of people if they can, hit that note.

James:

I know Tony Robbins does NLP.

Dave Legro:

Yeah.

James:

Do you know Tony Robbins?

Dave Legro:

I know of him,

James:

yeah. Yeah. So he uses NLP and he has done before he even got on stage, and you can see the impact. So when he does, like I've done one online session. With one online workshop that he ran and it was like, it was a three day one. Wow. And there was like 50,000 people on online and he used NLP and the impact of doing the NLP then and there and doing a visualization was super, super impactful. So I can, I know it's such a NRP is such a it's such a powerful tool. You've wrote two books. Yeah. And in one of the books you mentioned about fear of Yeah. The fear of heart surgery. How did you reframe the fear into hope?

Dave Legro:

If I go back before surgery I didn't know. I went after my first divorce I started smoking. And I spoke for a few years and I gave up, but I had this constant cough that left me damage that way. So when I was training look, I cough cough after the race and I couldn't get my breath. In fact, I, one of the chapters is death by five hundreds. And what that means is a lot of my sprint training was over 500 meters and death by 500 meters was being me rolling up to my, sprint sessions, smoking a cigarette, stumping it out, do a sprint, regretting it. Like afterwards I'm sitting up ripping on my clothes off trying to get my breath back and I'm thinking, I've gotta stop this smoking. And I never did. But later in life when I did pack up smoking and I had to I did my normal training. I was on my second wife then and I couldn't get my breath back. And I went to the doctor several times and they gave me inhaler to say it was either my smoking or I've got exercise induced asthma. Anyway, I was badly diagnosed. It wasn't until I rode a race that I nearly had a heart attack. I couldn't get my breath. And one of the guys I coached, he's a cardiologist Dr. Nigel Stevens, he was racing too. And he said, come see me tomorrow. And he diagnosed me that I had a leaky heart valve. Which is quite horrendous because the valves work like that. Or is it like that? That's it. And they were just floppy skin. So the bum wasn't being pumped out. It was going back into the chamber, getting evaporated into my lungs. And that caused me to go seriously breathless and in heart failure. And I was training through it. I would get over that panic attack, if you like, and getting myself back to normal. Now, go again and again, Anna. I was racing and each time I was struggling to breathe, not knowing that I was in heart failure. So some of it that wasn't denial, that was just me, didn't know what was going on and putting it down to smoking and the doctor's advice I needed to take a puffer. So when they said you need to have open heart surgery, my instant thought was, ah, that's all right, no problem. And I did it at Papworth Hospital. I was actually going for a world record attempt in Mexico when I got the phone call and the cardiologist rang me up and says what are you doing Saturday? I said, I'm flying to Mexico. He said, no, you're not. He said, you're coming to Papworth. And I said, why is that? He said, we're gonna, and he told me about the surgery. I said, can I do my world record first and then come back and do it? And he said if you wanna come back in a box, go ahead. So obviously I went to Papworth and right up until I had surgery, I was fine. I told my wife, don't worry, you don't have to come visit'cause you was ni 90 mile away. Don't worry about visiting. I'll be fine. And I was actually in denial. I actually didn't realize the scale of what they're gonna do until maybe 10 o'clock at night. I started to panic. And the timing was this guy, Frank Wells, his name was, this is a cardiologist at Papworth. He actually came and saw me at 10 o'clock at night. It was coincidence. And he put my mind to rest. He said, I've never lost anyone. I've done a thousand operations like yours. You are gonna be fine. And that did calm me down. What also helps is ro hip noll the day of.'cause you're like,

James:

yeah.

Dave Legro:

The anesthetic obviously'cause you're just like sparko and six hours later you wake up. Traumatized in a lot of pain and a lot of confusion. So I went through another mental process of having to deal with this. And it wasn't pretty, having your chest split open, you couldn't just get up and walk away. The energy and the pain together just standing up. It was very physical, and I'd be so out of breath to standing up. And then I started to understand what the doctor said about being deconditioned. And I was a mess. I couldn't cope with this. I don't understand. Not being able to, lift up a glass without it being a major. I was in a big mess. That went from me being a grumpy old man, feeling sorry for myself and then me having to deal with it. So then I changed and used my tool of sense of humor. And then out outcome, the videos, I was making videos every two weeks, giving everyone an update on how I was feeling, but I wasn't actually feeling like that I was in a bad way.'cause it's a long process of you. You can't just snap out of open heart surgery. It takes a while. And for me it was, the, they say the higher you are, the bigger the fall. The, if I was unfit, overweight and had that surgery, I wouldn't have noticed a lot of difference in my condition without taking, I'm not taking advantage of how fit I was. But the fitter you were in some ways made it worse.'cause the come down was bigger. It flawed me. And I didn't know, I've never been flawed before. I didn't know how to do it. I didn't know how to deal with it. So the depression, the anxiety, all of that came in until I just woke up and says I'm gonna make a video, make a fool of myself. And it made everyone on Facebook and the social media that, they're going, you are nuts. I'm glad you're recovering. And my wife would just, and she'd come home from work and see the video on Facebook and Why are you doing this, you are not. It's getting to me now'cause I was not in a good place, but I was making everyone happy and I got through it and I used my sense of humor. So that's completely, it was nothing to do with being focused out about getting back on your feet and, doing a rocky this is a different strategy altogether. And as I grew stronger in itself, I was racing within five months, I was racing. Can you believe that? But that was, again, going back to being ego, that was a bad mistake'cause I'm paying for it now.

James:

So obviously you've had quite a lot of major injuries and you've come back from them all. What are some of the biggest lessons that you learned from going through these injuries and these surgeries

Dave Legro:

to calm down Literally. Because see, with anything it, let's just label it. It doesn't matter whether you had a major surgery, a major crash, or a major crisis, it's called trauma. You can't see trauma, it's in here. And trauma doesn't go away until it's ready. And therefore it's gonna hold you back. And you don't know all this because it's within, your emotions are affected by the trauma. Your actions, your recovery, your strength, everything is affected by the trauma within especially with surgery because they've, you, if you open up your chest and do that, or open up your back as well as what I've been through, that's gonna be pretty traumatized for a few months or even years. And that trauma can lead to illnesses. You could be run down, you can pick up so many illnesses and it is unexplainable.'cause you're thinking why am I always ill? And it's actually, the trauma within you is actually affecting your immune. Yeah. It does happen.

James:

Yeah. I think in modern society, especially men have this idea of do. And obviously it has its detrimental side of things. And as, as the idea of patience. I've, I'm having to learn patience so much, but it's so hard to learn patience. Yeah.'cause you just wanna do stuff. Yeah. But I think in myself, over the last year, I've had to, I've allowed myself to slow down because again, I think we get so caught up in. Go and doing something, whether that's through after a surgery or whether that's after a, whatever it is. And you get, you when you're always wanting to go a thousand miles an hour, you miss things.

Dave Legro:

Oh

James:

yeah. Come,

Dave Legro:

no, sorry to interrupt, but going back to childhood, my dad was always telling me to slow down. I was always running about a hundred mile an hour. And I still do. I have to remind myself if I've got I've gotta do something, I just get up and do it. And actually I don't need to do that if I prioritize my day. That wasn't actually that important. But there's me running around. You know that sometimes you can do a thousand things and achieve nothing. And that's who rushing about. Oh, and, or you can actually screw something up that needed a bit of patience and a bit of thought and a bit of calm down to actually figure this out instead of it go storming into it and making a hash of it. And that's the story of my life in sometimes.

James:

Yeah. This is idea that in, in our head let's go and do this. Let's go and do that. And you always, ideas are coming in, but I find it where, for me personally, if I move myself in my head, into my body and start to focus down there, I start to slow down and see more around me.

Dave Legro:

Yeah. You have to ask yourself, do I actually need to do this now? But we never do because we're on, we're programmed, that's a big good word. You are programmed the way, it's the way you carry yourself. As my physio once said, you got a bad back. And I'm like, that. Walking along, he said, look, you gotta carry way. You carry yourself and you'll get better quicker by the way you carry yourself. And that's also the same in your mind. So the way you carry yourself, it affects your mind. And you can always, not always, sometimes you can tell somebody's depressed in just the way they carry themselves. They're slum they're looking down a lot or negative thoughts and that sort of thing. And it is it's a very good thing to I keep reminding myself to the way I carry myself, and that also affects the way I'm thinking. Or, I'd like to think.

James:

Probably about seven years ago, I noticed my post was, so I read a book called A by Amy Kdi forgotten what it's called basically. But it was about building confidence in yourself and I naturally, I noticed that I was slunched over and like you said before, so I have to re retrain myself to bring my shoulders back, chest dot. And rather than looking at a pa, a pavement, I'll look people in the eye now when I walk past them.

Dave Legro:

Yeah. I relate to that.'cause when I was very young I mean I'm 70 this year and when we were kids we had the boys and the girls and then it was actually quite I don't think they use this term nowadays, sissy. If you had a girlfriend or associate yourself with the girl, you was a sissy, you was a boy, and you did boy things, you got muddy, you fell outta trees and, did all these things. And the trouble with that is when you're brought up like that I remember when when girls come, I was a early teenage, 13 or 14 years old, I used to go bright red. As soon as I saw a girl that was talking to me, I was so embarrassed. And I'm, but why? And I, I dunno if you as a person that blushed and I can

James:

relate. I was, you could feel

Dave Legro:

your face, even though you don't wanna be married, so you can feel your face burning. You're gotta go bright red. And I used to go bright red, not just a bit of a blush, and it must have looked really funny. But I overcome that, time, I got more relaxed and it is under this here, the more I, in my sport, there was a lot of women involved, there's other women competitors, not that I raced with them, but that they were there with me the women officials, all of that. And I just grew confidence just through no technique at all. It's just that I was able to come out and be quite relaxed about it and not get upset. In fact, I, it's the thought of this is how the mind can work. If you think you're gonna get embarrassed, you will. And that's looking at the outcome, isn't it? It's going back to that and then going back to the process. Look I'm here, I'm gonna sit there, I'm gonna do that and do this. And all of a sudden you, you're blocking out the outcome that you're gonna be embarrassed. Yeah.

James:

Yeah. I can definitely relate. I remember chatting to women in secondary school and or everybody, I don't, they would notice I'd be going bright red and I'd be like, oh, he's blushing, kind of thing. And some people would deliberately come up to me just to make me blush.

Dave Legro:

Yeah, it's funny, isn't it?

James:

Yeah. Yeah. It's it's just within childhood things and obviously there's still times when I still get nervous around certain women, but I notice I'm how, I'm a hella lot more confident now. It's like confidence is through the roof, but it's something you can train and yeah, it's just the way. I think sometimes we'll talk earlier talking about slowing down. Just by acknowledging and being aware of your body posture, I think you naturally slow down. So if you are obviously making a bigger effort to push your body out so you're more confident at the same time, you are aware in that moment of how you are functioning as in that, in your body. So you're naturally in the moment

Dave Legro:

there is that, but there's a opposite side to that as well. And we all know them there. There's I've got two or three friends of mine that they would be very open upfront in your face, but they're not. That's a shield. They're actually quite insecure and they're using that as an armor. So that's the reverse,'cause there's two ways of dealing with this, isn't there? Or under not dealing with it, understanding it, overcoming that anxiety, shoulders back, and the way you carry yourself or the opposite, the same, a different person would do all of that. Be but be very insecure'cause they're actually hiding something. Yeah. It's, it makes it, that's why I like working with people with not mental problems, but it is a wrong word, but people that have got issues. I actually enjoy that more than coaching.'Cause I'm I coach cyclists as well as doing a little bit of nlp. Now. Again, I enjoy that more actually in helping other people and understanding, and I'm learning all the time as well, and NLP is such a simple fix. It's not rocket science. It really isn't. And when you think about it, it's very easy. And it is not to be confused with somebody with a degree in psychology. I'm not saying that's what we do. Definitely. It's just a simple, easy procedure to change the way you behave. Simple as that. Yeah.

James:

Yeah. How do you, obviously our definition of success changes as we go through live. Yeah. So how did your definition of success back in when you were at your peak and now, how has that differed?

Dave Legro:

What happened when I was at my peak, I never actually achieved my real peak because I broke my back in a horrific crash in the Commonwealth Games. I. When I was actually climbing the ladder of being an international superstar, if you like, I never quite made it. And that broken back injury changed my life. I, when I returned back to racing I lost a lot of power in my legs. I was a bit deflated, so I turned professional and I thought, you know what? I'm not gonna be as good as I was. I'm not gonna, things are changing in my body. I might as well earn a living. So I went from that to being a professional. And I went through the ranks and I started earning some really good money cars and stuff. And that escalated into, I break up a marriage basically, or my first marriage because I was so keyed up on making money or being bike rider and neglecting my wife. And it's one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made in my life. And I hold my hand up for the horrible person that I was. And how I've changed, so where did I go from there? I ended up going to Australia. That's where I took up smoking.'cause the guy I was living with was smoking joints and smoking cigarettes. And the way I was going, I was in the land of ferries half the time, but I started running. And from there, run marathons. And from there I did d ENSs. When I came back to England, run, bike run. And then I re I discovered my bike again and fell in love with it and started racing as a veteran. I. That escalated, and I got all my mojo back to becoming a bike rider again. And it fired me up big time because my motivation was unfinished business. What I didn't achieve in being, I achieved a lot in, as a youngster, multi British champion, silver in the Commonwealth Games, but I was still on an upward spiral. I never knew where I was gonna go until I broke my back. I was never the same person, but this time round I'd unfinished business. So that motivated me to become a world masters champion. That really did, and that was my tool, to get me going again. And the fact that I fell in love with cycling, again, yeah, you gotta love what you're doing. That's what, going back to embracing things, you can embrace your fear as well as you can embrace what you love rather than just take it for granted.

James:

Yeah. Yeah. If there's one thing that you want to leave this world with, actually, if there's one thing that you want to leave this world with, what would it be?

Dave Legro:

I embrace it. When you, it is not until things happen that you start to appreciate the small things in life. You, you know what what you smell, what you hear, you take for granted. You take for granted just walking out the room and go and make dinner or jumping on your bike or go for a run. All of these things. And it's not until you get disabled at some point, even if it's only temporary, that you actually think, I'm lucky here. So my thoughts would be on focus on what you got, not what you haven't got. And that's going to, I look out my, I'm in the middle of nowhere and look out. I've got a pond, I've got loads of birds and trees and I'm so lucky, even though I'm unlucky that I can't race again. I'm looking at what I've got, not what I've not got. So that's my message is it, is to look at that, but it's getting it through to the youngsters. That's the hard bit. Somebody of a certain age would understand that somebody that's 18 or 19 would go, what do I wanna look at the birds for? I wanna get out my bike. Yeah, they will learn that one day.

James:

Yeah. It's just the idea that a lot of people focus on what they want. So the car, the house, the wife there's not what the partner, shall I say. Yeah. And really, you've gotta be grateful for what you currently have. That's not to say that you can't strive. No. But it's the idea that yeah. You just you, when you're more grateful, actually it gives you, it changes your whole attitude and life.

Dave Legro:

It does. And even, going back to my racing things, I made a point of shaking hands with my competitors. I've made a point after the meeting going up to the officials and thanking them for their help, their support.'cause without the officials, we had no race. You need conversations, you need judges, you need, helpers. And I made a point of, because that's part of it. When I was younger, I just took it for granted.

James:

Yeah.

Dave Legro:

There's people there giving up their time for me and everyone else, and I just didn't think nothing. In fact, if there was a bad decision made, like they disqualified me, I'd have a big argument over it. Now I just, they're in charge. Okay. They're the boss. Yeah. Yeah. So the you change through life. And I've actually written it that when this is my per, when I become, the, when I reach the age of 60, I become the man I am. I'm not gonna change anymore. Life changed me, that happiness, the tears, the really bad bits of really good bits. The wrinkles all earned, all of that. And I've changed and this is I think, I believe that eventually you become the person you are eventually. Yeah. And you settle. Yeah. Yeah. And that's where you don't care about fashion. I want to dress the way I want to dress, I do what I want. And because I don't have peer pressure, I don't have to live up to any sort of standards. I'm I'm at ease. I'm at peace with myself.

James:

And that's the,

Dave Legro:

I think that's the key, isn't it? Being at peace with yourself and not trying to fight yourself. Is it okay if I tell you a quick story about one of the guys I coach was a diabetic?

James:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Legro:

He, Nathan, he's a lovely guy. He is a, he was a type one diabetic and his diet was rubbish. He used to have all these spikes, sugar spikes, he'd take a test and his sugar levels and he eat loads of Mars bars and then his sugar levels. Then he'd take some insulin to try and drop in. It was all over the show. And I was a coach to a very big professional team and had all the best riders, Brad Wiggins and all sorts of, riders of that caliber. But we had a development squad with a load of kids I was looking after, and these kids were cleaning up everywhere. It's not embarrassing, but everywhere we went, now these kids that I was coaching in this team were just winning everything, every race. But Nathan he was getting his ass kicked and a lot of it was his diet and some of it was, he lacked confidence. And on one of the meetings he sat down he got. Dropped in a race and he sat down, threw his Barton floor on the grass, sat down and cried his eyes out. Now this kid was only 15 years old and he's sobbing his art out and his look, he said, they're all winning and I can't even keep up with them. And I said, you know what? Na, every dog has his day. I said, you are gonna be national champion at the end of the year. Now, that's quite a big thing to say to somebody that is that young, given them a promise that they think that's not gonna happen, right? If you fast forward four months, and some of the work I did with him he rode a race. It's a British National under 16 points race. What that is a race of say, 60 laps, and they sprint every 10 laps and they accumulate sprint points and the one with the most points wins. It's a very tough race. There's sprint in every 10 laps, as well as a fast race attacks going everywhere. Anyway, nathan won the gold medal right as soon as he won the gold medal. I went out the stadium. It's an indoor ve jump Manchester and had a cigarette because he was gonna go on the podium and get his, you get a medal, you get a jersey not like that one, but it's a white one with blue and red stripes to signal your national champion. While he was on the podium, I was outside having a cigarette and people were saying, why aren't you with your rider? I said, it's not my moment, it's his, and this is where it gets really, it gets to me because after the cigarette and after the podium, how. Nathan was back in the rider's enclosure, and I walked in and he's got a big grin on his face. He's wearing his jerseys medal. He said, I'm fucking national champion. I said, I know, mate. And we cried in each other's shoulders and it is the most beautiful thing. It's the most rewarding thing I've ever done in my life to see this kid that was almost outlawed in his own team because he was rubbish to become a national champion. And it's surprising what you can do with some people. Now, I hadn't trained as an NLP advisor, then practitioner. I was using, sense of humor, common sense and always being on his side. I. If he lost a race, it was still an achievement. I said, you still got up and road, you still put a number on your back. That's what counts. We worked our way through and I sought his diet out, and the rest is history. But that's a very special moment. And I wrote a chapter about Na Nathan in my book because it's more than what I've just said, but it is a very good story on what you can achieve. Even though you don't, there's no chance of achieving it. You just think, what I told him was a bit of a risk, really, would a hell of a let down, wouldn't it? If he had got, not done that. That's,

James:

yeah. Thank you very much, Dave. That was a, it's very inspirational story. Thank you. Can you finish off by telling us what is it that you do and how can people get in contact?

Dave Legro:

What do I do? I'm semi retired, but I'm a cycling coach. I organize cycling holidays in New Yorker. You used to call'em training camps, but we call'em gros cycling experience.'cause more, not so many racers come now, there's just more club cyclists or, fun cyclists. So I, I do that. And also I've got a website gros training camp.com. And in my profile it's got con yeah. Saying that I'm a NLP practitioner. Yeah. So they can contact me through that if they wish. But yeah, I'm open to anybody that needs, I've become a person that was very selfish to somebody that actually wants to help people. I'm passionate towards that.

James:

Thank you very much, Dave.

Dave Legro:

Pleasure. James. Pleasure talking to you. And can I plug my book? Yeah. I'm font her bill. That's it. And you can get that on my website. Leg grows training can.com.

James:

What we'll do is I'll get the links from you and then we'll put it into the show notes.

Dave Legro:

Cool.

James:

So yeah,

Dave Legro:

it's a pleasure talking to you. Thanks for having me on.

James:

Absolute pleasure. Thank you.

Dave Legro:

And I've got one of these studio type microphones too. Yeah,

Thanks for tuning in to Man a Quest. Find meaning if today's conversation sparked something in you, take a moment to reflect, then take a step. Remember, real growth comes from action, not just insight. If you found value in this episode, share it with a friend. Leave her a review, or reach out and let me know what resonated. Your feedback helps shape the journey we are on together. For more conversations like this, make sure to subscribe and stay connected. You can also follow me on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn for updates, tools, and upcoming guests. Remember. It's not about having the answers. It's about daring to look.

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James Ainsworth

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