The Bear essentials

Bear Grylls needs you

… T O I M P R O V E Y O U R L I F E . T H E W O R L D ' S G R E A T E S T A D V E N T U R E R

I S A T P E A K P H Y S I C A L F I T N E S S — A N D H E ’ S F E E L I N G I N S P I R A T I O N A L .

That’s not surprising: Bear Grylls has been getting things done for most of his life. He learned to climb and sail young, got a black belt in shotokan karate as a teenager and went hiking in the Himalayas after leaving school. He failed his i rst try at SAS selection — too slow on one of the marches — but was invited back and made it second time around. In 1996, he crushed three vertebrae in a parachuting accident and was in danger of never walking again; a year later, he summitted Ama Dablam, a peak Edmund Hillary once described as “unclimbable”. After that, he climbed Everest, circumnavigated the British Isles on a jetski and crossed the North Atlantic in an inl atable boat.

Then he started really getting things done.

Bear Grylls, it’s fair to say, is a man who makes things A G E O F A D V E N T U R E happen. “OK, who’s in charge?” he says, striding into our These days, Bear Grylls is a global megabrand. His TV shows have been seen by more than photoshoot during a tight window between his regular a billion people, and his biography was voted morning workout (more on that in a minute) and all the other “Most Influential Book” in China in 2012. daily commitments that come with being a successful But he’s also a father of three sons who hasn’t lost his love of adventure, and being in shape businessman, a best-selling author and one of the most is a top priority. How does he get that done? recognisable TV stars in the world. Ten minutes later he’s That’s what we’re here to talk about. in front of the camera, improvising poses, making suggestions “I’m i tter now, at 41 years old, than I’ve ever been,” says Grylls, in between doing Turkish and joking with the team. This is someone who knows how get-ups with a 16kg kettlebell. “When I was to get things done. training with the military, it was mostly about endurance, so I never felt as strong then as I do now. After that it was climbing stuf , which was all endurance again, and then I did that classic male thing where I went to the gym but never felt very i t. Then three or four years ago Natalie and I started training. I’ve totally changed in shape, in i tness level, in basically everything during that time.” Natalie is experienced personal trainer Natalie Summers, who was training Olympians and rehabilitating athletes when she started working with Grylls’ wife Shara. “It was actually Shara who arranged it,” says Grylls. “And I thought it would be a girly workout, which was my i rst mistake. I thought, ‘How can you train in half an hour?’ But it was revolutionary.” Grylls’ new training plan combines kettlebells, bodyweight moves and primal stretching in short, high-intensity workouts that

“I'm i tter now at 41 years old than I've ever been.”

Bear’s necessities

Strip your fi tness back to basics with Grylls’ fi ve-point plan.

Stay fl exible

■ “I’ve done a lot of yoga because of back injuries, but I’ve got so many friends who work in offices and their backs have gone through inactivity. They start going to the gym and pumping iron, but that just makes it worse. Stretching is important.”

…And stick at it

■ “Men are scared of yoga, but these sessions are real strength-building stuff. You’re thinking, ‘Why can’t my body hold out, why can’t I maintain these positions?’ But once you get there, you start being able to do stuff other people of your age can’t.”

Up the intensity

■ “I use a lot of Tabata-style training — 20 seconds’ work and ten seconds of rest, or sometimes 30 and 30. Push it hard, take a quick breather, then get straight back in.”

Never go easy

■ “I used to train with people who’d always stay within their comfort zones. But the fittest people I’ve seen training — Olympic athletes, those kind of guys — get to vomiting point. They know how to push themselves.”

Think 80/20

■ “I use the 80/20 rule when I eat — staying sugar and wheat-free 80% of the time, then having the odd blowout. You can still make things delicious and super-healthy.”

“People love to challenge themselves. They want to feel they have some of these traditional man skills and feel like they can look after themselves.”

are designed both for function and form. “I wasn’t able to do huge weights but over the months I was getting leaner, stronger and more lexible,” says Grylls. “Suddenly I realised it was all coming together. I only run occasionally these days but the strange thing is, I’m much better at it than I used to be. My heart and lungs are so much bigger because we do so much high-intensity stuf. My VO2 max has gone up. And I still get that ‘shaking muscles’ feeling a day later — I used to have to train for three hours to get that. It’s changed my whole approach to itness.”

F E E D T H E B E A R On screen, Grylls’ culinary achievements are near-mythical, the subject of countless YouTube clips and internet lists: there’s the one where he eats a rhino beetle (“crunchy”), the one where he bites the head off a tick, the one where he takes a bite out of a camel carcass he’s sheltering inside… and, of course, the many, many times he drinks his own secretions. Off-screen, his attitude to nutrition is far more conventional. “Basically I don’t have wheat, sugar or dairy, and when I have meat it’s good-quality, lean, grass-fed stuf,” he says. “I cooked last night, actually — got back from ilming in the mountains for three days and said, ‘Right, I’m cooking.’ I did heavy packs over long distances, and now it’s a much more dynamic sort of strength. I’m an honorary colonel to the Royal Marine Commandos now and I’m down at the commando training centre a lot, and I see soldiers diving over walls and carrying their buddies over their shoulders, sprinting, rolling, moving. What we do is definitely inspired by that, and also by the wilderness — a lot of crabs, crawls, leopard and panther stuf. Plus the stuf I do when I’m on the road — improvising with jerrycans or whatever weights we can ind.”

a big spaghetti bolognese made out of buffalo mince with buckwheat pasta — non-wheat but it’s great, really healthy, delicious stuff — and then I made a big chocolate mousse with raw cocoa, maple syrup and coconut oil and an egg.”

Perhaps inevitably, Grylls has a nutrition book due out this winter. “That means I’m experimenting with a lot of recipes — and the boys love it as well. I wish at school someone had taught me to eat healthy. If I ran a school I’d teach how to train, how to eat healthy, how to build teams, how to lead people, how to take risks… life stuf .”

Grylls doesn’t run a school (yet, anyway) but he’s created the next best thing. The BG Survival Academy now runs courses for all ages, including a parent-and-child option that’s booked up for years in advance. So does he think these skills are being lost?

“I think people love to challenge themselves,” he says. “They want to feel they have some of these traditional man skills — which really apply whether you’re a girl or a boy, of course — and feel they can look after themselves.”

And they don’t just do what Grylls calls “the boring bushcrafty stuf ” — a lot of it is based on the special forces training he knows well. “That’s changed a lot now,” he says. “In the old days we just carried

Bear facts The numbers that took Grylls to the top.

23 - 60° 1.2BN

■ The age Grylls was when he reached the summit of Mount Everest, 18 months after breaking his back. ■ The temperature low he encountered in an attempt to paramotor over the summit of Everest. ■ The amount of viewers around the world who’ve seen an episode of Man Vs Wild or Born Survivor.

7,600 m

■ The altitude where he set the record for the highest open-air formal dinner, eaten in a hot-air balloon.

E P I C W I N That improvisational approach to training has informed Grylls’ latest venture. BG Epic Training currently occupies four warehousesized spaces dotted around the UK, each decorated with little more than a few pullup bars, a rack of kettlebells and a couple of suspension trainers. The lagship is half an hour’s drive from the nearest train station, in Marlborough, a market town of 8,400 people — and it’s already packed.

“I said, ‘Let’s start a gym in the worst place in the world to start a gym,’” says Grylls. “It’s a terrible demographic, but already we’re seeing people who never train getting massively into it. We don’t have Jacuzzis and showers — people want to train, to get it done before work or on the way back. They turn up, do half an hour and come out absolutely knackered. My new approach to itness has made it fun instead of a chore — people love the concept of pay-as-you-go, turn up and get it done. That’s the reason these gyms have exploded so quickly.”

M O U N T A I N M A N And that, as Grylls gives out handshakes and prepares to head of, seems to be the point. For Bear Grylls, itness — like jumping out of a plane, climbing a mountain or drinking yak blood — is what outdoor people call Type 2 fun: tough, frightening or downright awful at the time, but life-enhancing in retrospect.

“You don’t have to go to the ends of the world for adventure,” says Grylls. “Just grab a tent, get a friend, tell someone where you’re going and go climb a mountain. We all want to climb mountains in life but it’s a case of doing it and not just dreaming it." And with that he’s gone, heading of to climb his next mountain. With most people you’d assume it was a met aphoric al one. With Grylls, you never know. ■

Build primal fl exibility

■Power stretching makes up the injur y-proofing par t of G r ylls’s exercise routine, in which he combines flexibility and streng th moves into a fat-burning circuit. Do each move for 30 seconds, then move on to the next. Repeat three times, and do two sessions a week .

1 BABY BACK BEND

In a standing position bring your arms overhead, palms together, and reach back behind you as far as is comfor table. Reverse the move slowly.

4 DOWNWARD DOG

Star t on all fours with your weight distributed between your hands and feet. Press your hips back and up until your legs are almost straight.

2 WARRIOR ONE-TWO

Stand with your feet double hip-width apar t, drop your shoulders and brace your abs. Turn your left foot outwards so it’s at 90° to your right. Bend your left knee and drop into a lunge, turning your right hip forwards to keep your hips square to your shoulders. Lean forwards slightly, extending your arms with your palms facing in. Extend your arms, turning your rear palm down and your front one upward.

5 WILD THING

Star t in downward dog, then lift your right leg into the air, bending your knee and bringing your heel towards your glutes, rotating slightly. Lift your right hand off the floor and rotate your body towards the ceiling, putting your right foot on the floor. Reverse the whole move back to the star t. Continue, alternating sides .

3 TRIANGLE

Stand with your feet hip-width apar t, drop your shoulders and brace your abs. Turn your right foot 45˚ inwards and your left foot outwards. Stretch your arms outwards to form a T-shape, then ‘windmill’ your upper body towards your left leg, resting your left hand on your left shin. Hold for 15 seconds, then repeat on the other side .

6 JUMP TO CROW

Star t in a plank position. Walk or jump both feet forwards so they’re just outside your hands. Keep your hips low, engage your abs and bend your elbows, pressing them into your knees. Lift your toes off the floor, keeping your body tight as you balance your weight on your arms .

Prepare for anything

■Gr ylls uses kettlebells to combine high-intensity inter vals and streng th training, for a lean mass circuit that also builds cardio. Do each move for 30 seconds, then move on to the next. Repeat three times, and do two sessions a week .

1 LU

Holding the kettlebell in a rack position with your other palm facing up, take a big step for ward. Bend your knee into a lunge, simultaneously bracing your abs and pressing the kettlebell overhead. Alternate sides.

4 HIP BRIDGE TO CHEST PUSH

Lie on your back with your knees bent so your feet are close to your glutes, hugging a kettlebell against your ush your hips off the floor In this bri ards, then lower under co

2 KETTLEBELL POWER PLANK

Star t in a plank position with one hand on the ground and the other on the kettlebell. Bring your free hand off the ground steadily and hold the plank position for 15 seconds. Switch hands and repeat

5 STANDING 8 TO WO

Pass the kettlebell between your legs in a figure-of-eight motion. As it comes around the back of your leg, swap hands and drive it up to your opposite s gh your legs and continue the m

M o d e l B e n C o l e s @ B G E p i c Tr a i n i n g 3 CRUNCH TO STANDING

Lie on your back with your legs bent, gripping the kettlebell by the horns. Exhale and curl your upper body up, bringing the kettlebell overhead and putting your weight on your feet. Stand up. Then reverse the move, hingeing at the hips, bringing your tailbone to the floor and rolling back to a lying position.

6 POWER PRESS-UP

Get into a press-up position with one hand on the kettlebell. Lower yourself, then press back up. At the top of the move, shift across and switch hands, then lower into the next rep.

ONE DAY AT THE VERY SAME TIME ALL OVER THE WORLD MAY 8, 2016 MELBOURNE, 9PM