Matt Roberts, the celebrity personal trainer and newly appointed fitness
expert to The Times Health Club, sits opposite me in “peak
relaxed” mode. His trim frame is draped on a Mayfair lounge-bar sofa, but
he’s still electric with energy, taut of posture, sparkly of eye. I keep
expecting him to spring into a round of ab-crunches and one-armed push-ups.
Roberts, 33, is the Rumplestiltskin of well-heeled weightiness, turning Alist
flab into washboard abs. So who better to ask for tips on keeping motivated
while trying to turn new year resolutions into reality? With his boy-band
looks and gymnast’s physique, he has worked his way to preeminence on a
roster of celebrity customers that includes Madonna, Naomi Campbell, Natalie
Imbruglia, Mel C and John Galliano.
But his gyms also welcome mere mortals, and his opening advice to them is
simple and memorable: he puts his clients into the role of being a
celebrity. “If you ask Alist actors why they want to get fit, they tend to
have a target; to look good in a film or at a launch. For most people that
does not exist, unless they’re getting married, so they’re quite contentto
drift. I make a business-plan approach with clients. We form a strategy for
getting to the next point, a set target by a set day. It’s a business model
for fitness and, for people involved in business, that’s a good way for
getting inside their head. Everyone has a resonance with this to some
degree. It works astonishingly well.”
Working out a smart business strategy
It’s no coincidence that Roberts uses this approach: beneath the tailored
gymwear is a smart business strategist. He pioneered the elevation of
personal training in Britain from niche occupation to must-have lifestyle
adjunct. On the way, he has written nine books, become a TV regular,
developed a flagship gym in Mayfair (he’s opening three more London gyms
this year) and soon will launch his own line of clothes. He had the whole
plan in mind from an early age.
“When I was 15 or 16 I had an idea that I thought was rock-solid. My father
John, an Arsenal and Wales footballer in the early 1970s, needed help with
nutrition and stuff, but he couldn’t get it,” he says. “I wanted to change
the way that fitness was perceived . . . the service level did not exist. I
thought that I would create a venue with professional health support and all
that, in the right place.” So, at 22, he found a run-down empty gallery in
Mayfair and spent “all the money” he had on it, and more. “It was mad, but I
felt committed to it.” Commitment is a big thing with Roberts. He’s a hard
taskmaster and, for his standard rate of £150 an hour, will push clients to
achieve their goals. There’s a three-month waiting list for this kind of
treatment.
But then you have only to stay in his company for a short while to feel fitter
and more focused through some eerie osmotic process. It’s not just the
chiselled jaw, perfectly tousled hair and the fixed gaze – his skin radiates
some kind of 21st-century übermensch quality that makes you
wonder if muck and dirt could ever cling to it.
Roberts certainly seems testament to his life-by-business-plan approach. As
well as heading an ever-growing empire (which also sells sports drinks and
supplements), he and his school-sweetheart wife, Helen, live in fashionable
Blackheath, South London, with their two children, both under 6.
He says that it’s important that everyone has a goal in mind. “Just thinking
on January 1, ‘I’m going to get fit,’ or ‘I’m going to lose weight,’ isn’t
going to work. How fit? How much weight? When? Is your goal about improving
your body’s oxygen intake levels, setting an amount of weight you can lift
or a time in which you can run 100m?
“These have to be realistic goals based on scientific evidence of what people
can achieve. One reason why people fail in February is because their goals
are too unrealistic and aren’t measured. They assume that the quick fix will
work. But it’s about planning a strategy; creating habits and routines. If
the goals are too high, it creates self-doubt.”
Setting only long-term goals is another certain recipe for failure, he says.
Instead, think of things in terms of a week, a good timescale to base goals
around. “There are clear rules with my clients over what has got to be done
on a weekly basis. If you want to lose weight, for example, you have to
exercise for 45 minutes, four times a week, minimum. It sounds totalitarian,
but it is giving clients knowledge and it is improving things for them.”
“Discipline? I’m a great fan of that . . .”
Roberts’s rigid attitude stems from his days as a sprinter when he trained in
Manchester with Darren Campbell, a future European 100m champion. “There’s a
great degree of discipline in sprinting. If you have the slightest variation
in what you do, it has negative connotations. That instils discipline . . .
I’m a big fan of that.”
With the discipline goes a fair degree of health obsessiveness. His idea of a
“proper” breakfast is a wheat-free croissant, a bowl of muesli with yoghurt
and mixed berries, and a cup of Earl Grey tea with soya milk.
But it has not all been an easy self-directed path. Roberts gave up sprinting
because he realised that his training mate would always come out on top. The
disappointment echoed an earlier sporting setback. He was a promising
schoolboy footballer and looked set to follow in his father’s footsteps. But
then his skull was fractured by a stray discus on the playing fields of his
Chester comprehensive, and doctors warned him not to head the ball. End of
soccer career.
It’s easy to imagine how that might leave many a young man shuffling his way
through life, maundering on what could have been. But when I ask what he
considers his greatest failure to have been, he becomes uncharacteristically
introverted, bites his lip and looks blank. Failure? Hmm. “Some things have
failed over the years. But they are not failures. That’s the entrepreneur’s
spin,” he laughs. “I learn from my mistakes. There has not been anything
other than a learning experience.”
This is another business approach that he has adapted to the gym. “I ask
clients to write down the reasons why they have not achieved what they want
to achieve in the past. Most people come to us because they have failed. We
write down 10 to 20 reasons why it has not worked before. Maybe they don’t
like exercise, or they don’t like fruit, lack time or don’t have close
support mechanisms,” he says.
Small steps bring long-term changes
“These are the clients’ hurdles. Rather than saying, ‘Let’s knock them all
down’, we pick out three of the easiest and tackle them. So it may be about
doing more exercise, but not cutting out the fried food yet. When they have
achieved a few things, they feel ready to take on a more challenging hurdle.
It’s all on a small-step, short-term basis to bring in long-term lifestyle
changes.”
On top of that there’s another psychological process beloved of business
coaches: visualisation. “We ask people what was the last time that they felt
they were in good shape and to visualise that shape when they are
exercising. When things feel tough, we tell them to close their eyes and
think of that image, push through it and keep on. There’s a little bit of
NLP [neuro-linguistic programming] in there, but we don’t go any deeper with
it. It’s up-talk, self-talk.”
But beyond all the modern business strategy, there’s another tactic, probably
as old as human tribal culture, that Roberts says beats everything – finding
a buddy to help keep you on track. After all, what’s a buddy if not an
infinitely cheaper form of personal trainer? “Buddying is crucial,” he
says. “Find someone who is on a relatively similar goal path. The results
are far better, not least because you feel you can’t let your buddy get too
far ahead.”
HELP ME GET SLIM
NAME Angus Donald
GOAL Lose 2st in 6 months.
WHY “I want to wear trunks on the beach this summer. Although I walk
up to 15 miles a week, I can’t seem to shift the pounds.”
HOW THE TIMES HEALTH CLUB HELPS
Angus should try Amanda Ursell’s new pick’n’mix diet (see page 9) and by
choosing family and friends as motivators, and logging his workouts, it will
encourage him to achieve his goal.
HONEYMOON HOPES
NAME Olivia Leigh
GOAL Lose 2st in 9 months.
WHY “I’ve put on 1st since I got married but I want a fantastic beach
body for my belated honeymoon in November. I started exercising, but life
got in the way!”
HOW THE TIMES HEALTH CLUB HELPS
The “track anything” function will help Olivia to find a balance between
socialising and time for exercise. It will also let her keep a record of her
daily calorie intake.
Feeling as thick as my waist but how do I 'join up'?
Mo, Weybridge,