The Red on Revolution: Be Ready for Anything

By Mike Chadwick

Mike Chadwick – secret coach to the elite – reveals his revolutionary approach to success.

Do you have a challenge that demands physical or mental strength? Are you struggling to sustain the commitment needed to achieve your goals? Do you know what it takes for you, personally, to succeed at the highest level? Coach Mike – a trainer of champions, a leader of leaders, the coach with the ear of the elite – is ready to help.

In The Red On Revolution, ex-paratrooper Coach Mike exposes countless fitness-industry myths and coaches you, personally, to succeed. Join Mike and a powerful line-up of guests – including Ant Middleton (SBS, explorer, entrepreneur), Simon Jeffries (mental resilience coach, Special Forces), the Stoltman Brothers (World's Strongest Man), Charlotte Spence (Crossfit champion and Army's Strongest Woman), Scott Meenagh (Paralympian and ex-paratrooper) and Tom Aspinall (UFC heavyweight) – on a quest for a better you.

Only one question remains: are you in?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Jan 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9781801509084

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

WHO I AM

THERE IS a strong argument to suggest that there is no growth in comfort, and right now … I’m uncomfortable. Coaching, training, and getting the most out of people is nothing new to me … getting it down in a book format is.

I am just like you. I want to grow. I want to get better, and I’m willing to do whatever it takes. So let me start by asking you: how great can you be?

Before you answer, let me tell you where my comfort zone does lie. It’s in making you a better and stronger version of who you are today; it’s finding a way to win and helping you unlock your potential and greatness – whatever that looks like. Hopefully that is why you’ve found this book. And hopefully you can already see that – by doing something new in order to improve myself – I’m practising what I preach.

So, who am I? And why should you listen to what I say?

My name is Coach Mike Chadwick. My background is in a 13-year career in the British Army – as a member of the Parachute Regiment, Special Forces Support Group, and as a Royal Army Physical Training Corps Instructor – across which I received multiple commendations and awards, culminating in being given the Bredin Trophy, handed to the soldier who has contributed most to enhance the prestige of physical development within the British Army.

When I tore up the British Armed Forces’ century-old approach to physical development, I was credited with revolutionising soldier training in the citations. And after delivering unprecedented pass rates across the army, including the Parachute Regiment’s infamous P Company, I have since turned my attentions elsewhere: to improving performance in other areas of physical development and competition globally. This includes international Special Forces, including the UK – being the strength and conditioning coach for people to pass what is arguably the most arduous selection course in the world; and to tactical professionals worldwide – including firefighters, police, first responders, private security officers and anti-poachers; and to athletes – training and bringing success to UFC fighters, marathon runners, powerlifters and GB rowers, as well as presenting to professional and international football teams: from the Premier League to Gareth Southgate’s England team.

I have founded my own companies while doing so: my businesses, Red On Fitness and Red On Socks, and my fitness app, The Red On Challenge. This book is called The Red On Revolution. It’s therefore already clear that the term ‘Red On’ is central to my message, and as we go through, you’ll understand why.

To date, much of my work has been done from the shadows: in essence, as the Secret Coach. A lot of me is built on secrecy. Until now. Welcome to The Red On Revolution.

This is my book. It contains my message, to the best of my ability. It’s taken sacrifice through effort, planning, commitment, and a LOT of time. It will go against the grain and probably put the backs up of people who don’t want to see me do well. But I love that. Spectators can’t get upset with the results they don’t get, from the work they didn’t do. I want this book to show you that our job is to do the impossible; the bystander’s job is to either believe we can’t or to stop us. That’s the balance of competition. We think it’s possible and prove everyone wrong. Without everyone else thinking we can’t do something, there is no contest and no point. When things are handed to us, they lose their worth.

I set out with a goal that required me to work on my weaknesses as well as harness my strengths, and I’ve stuck with it. I stayed the course. Which is exactly what you’ll need to do to succeed. I have realised over the years that it’s okay if you don’t know anything. What kills you is when you don’t know anything but you think you know something. My success comes not from what I know, but from how I deal with what I don’t know. That said, the very fact you are reading this in its finished form is also evidence that you too want to know more, and that my goal was achievable. If you’re clear on what it is you want and are happy to put in the work I have just alluded to, you will achieve your goals too. This book is here to help you do so.

Before I tell you what this book will do, maybe it’s worth me being clear on what it won’t do.

It won’t provide a quick fix to a problem. Because the reason most people fail in the first place is because they give up what they want most, for what they want now.

So it’s not going to piece together a generalised, one-size-fits-all training programme for every single person who reads it to all then go away and do. Even if you just listened to that sentence and your reaction was ‘Shit. That is what I wanted’; believe me, it’s not.

It’s not going to encourage you to train as hard as you possibly can in every single free minute that you have. Any preconceptions you may have about fitness, and especially fitness that comes from a military angle: get rid of them. This is not one of those books. If anything, it’ll do the exact opposite. Indeed, I will cover things such as bootcamps and thrashings, and terms such as ‘overtraining’ and ‘junk mileage’, and I cannot wait to explain why these are going to work against you rather than for you.

Equally – no matter how catchy The Coach Mike Method would have been as a title – the contents of this book do not constitute the latest fad regime, mass-produced for a quick buck, before becoming irrelevant and disproved in six months’ time.

Finally, although I will cover it, and will identify it as an undeniable part of your weaponry – especially as your aims get tougher and tougher – this book will not concentrate on mental strength ahead of physical strength. Your mind can be the strongest in the world, but if your body is not up to it, you’re not going to succeed. As I say, my lane is physical development – and, when it comes down to it, it’s the biggest lane of all.

What this book will do is show you the optimal pathway to follow for any goal that involves a sustained physical and psychological effort.

It will change how you view physical development and force you to question and reassess how you approach training and making real, sustainable changes in your life.

It will myth-bust and reframe. There are literally so, so many things that I am going to show you how to think differently about. I won’t detour by previewing them here but trust me when I say you’ll come across them from practically minute one.

Rather than selling a snappy, flash-in-the-pan, get-fit-quick method, it will clearly present you with the fixed, old-as-time principles of physical growth. If you are an athlete with a high training age (i.e. you’ve been training at a good level for a long time) and you wish to further improve to hit a next-level target, it will provide you with the most efficient route to achieving that.

If you are an athlete with a training age of zero (notice how I still refer to you as an ‘athlete’, even if you are a total novice) and you want to get fitter, stronger and better than you were yesterday, the pathway I provide is EVERY BIT as relevant to you.

Equally, although many of this book’s practical examples will be taken from the military, this is purely because my experience and expertise lie there; and so, although military-centric, such examples can be applied for anyone to grow from. If you’re not interested in the military, it’s not a deal-breaker. This is a book about physical, psychological and psychosocial strength and development, which often cites military examples, rather than a book about the military with some physical and mental tips thrown in.

The same applies for the examples of athletes that I will draw on. Yes, I may work with elite competition who are at the very top of their game, but they follow the exact same principles that will apply to you and your training. I want to give you access to their secrets.

Now let me tell you what this book will do.

After this section has finished introducing you to WHO I AM, we will begin a five-part pathway that focuses on YOU, and how WE can develop you, together:

–First, I will ask you to tell me WHO YOU ARE, as that’s where your journey starts.

–Next, I will tell you WHAT WE NEED to even be able to begin our journey.

–Then, I will show you HOW WE WILL GO ABOUT getting to our end point.

–Fourthly, I will explain to you the science behind just WHY we do it that way.

–Lastly, to supplement your new-found physical knowledge, I will give you the psychological tools to make WHERE WE GO FROM HERE an upward and sustainable process.

–And to cap it all off, in the form of an outro that bookends this introduction, I will pose you one final question – WHEN DO WE STOP? – and I will see if, by then, you have learned that there is only ONE answer we should ever give to that particular question.

Now, in addition to this pathway, each individual section will come with its own set of practical applications for you to then incorporate into your own arsenal.

It’s important to me that you are not left thinking: ‘I’ve just read all of this and, although it all makes sense and sounds compelling, I cannot apply it to my life.’ That is not what I want. I want you to be educated to go forward and help yourself; or, if in a position to do so, help others. One of the key aims when I started conceptualising The Red On Revolution is that I wanted to create what I call an ‘Army of Experts’. And so after each chapter my optional ‘Tactical Takeaways’ will strive to bridge that gap between education and application.

I am confident about the tools and advice you will read in this book, but I am not a doctor. Therefore, if you have a medical condition, illness, a history of injuries or are pregnant, you should always consult a medical professional before embarking on any new fitness or exercise plan.

Each individual chapter will also be complemented by its own accompanying special guest interview. In these, I have either looked to harvest additional insider knowledge from an elite performer, so that their wisdom can be extended to your own training; or, in cases where the topic strays away from my lane, I have sought out expert support.

As a result, I am proud to say that this book includes contributions from current UFC interim heavyweight champion, Tom Aspinall; reigning World’s Strongest Man, Tom, and reigning Europe’s Strongest Man, Luke, aka the Stoltman Brothers; former Royal Marine and Special Boat Service operator Simon Jeffries; elite international CrossFit competitor and current holder of the title of the ‘Army’s Fittest Woman’, Charlotte Spence; former SF operator and now TV star, Ant Middleton; former airborne and commando trained, and now nutrition and performance expert Dr Ash Cox; former Parachute Regiment and now current Team GB Paralympian Scotty Meenagh; and ex-Special Forces operator turned entrepreneur, Anthony Stazicker.

From time to time, I will also take the chance to build for you a picture of who I am now, and how I have got to where I am today. These ‘Intermission’ sections, as I call them – of which there are four in the book – will go back through my professional life, counter-chronologically, across key defining periods: from my time at the Infantry Training Centre and Army Foundation College, all the way back to when I joined the military as a fresh-faced recruit in 2007.

If you don’t want military stories, then feel free to crack on and skip them. As I say: this book is about WHAT I CAN TELL YOU, NOT WHAT YOU CAN LEARN ABOUT ME. However, they’re not just there to talk about my life: instead, they’re my best attempt at showing you why I know first-hand that everything I am telling you works, and should give you an idea of who I am and what I’ve had to do to get where I have. You’ll realise that the twists and turns in my life and career were often out of my hands, but I utilised every defining moment to my advantage. Success does not happen by accident. It’s hard work, perseverance, studying, analysing, sacrifice and most importantly loving what you do. Success is also a snapshot in time, and as Sir Winston Churchill says, ‘Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts’.

Who I am writing this book for . . .

One of the biggest myths I want to bust is that what I do, and what I teach, only applies to elite soldiers or athletes. Because the principles I preach – and the practical applications that I prescribe – are universal, not exclusive.

It’s for everyone.

It’s the methods and individualised pathways within these principles that change to suit you and only you. The end goal is what determines the traits needed, which in turn determines the pathway. Your ability will then determine the working parts within and how long it will take you. This book is for you, and I’ll share everything I know.

This leads me on to the last point of this introduction, which is – why am I telling you this? Firstly, I think there is a hell of a lot of bad information about physical training out there that needs addressing. And I think I’m as well placed as anyone to do that. I’ve got thousands of hours of studying and coaching and I’ve genuinely seen it all. From the good, the bad, the stupid and the dangerous, and I want to share it all with you.

Secondly, everyone has something that they are obsessed with. For me, it’s coaching. I love nothing more than putting people who shouldn’t be on that start line, on that start line. That’s what my passion is. That alone forms a very large part of my Why.

Third, across the fitness industry there has been a skew in recent years towards the importance of mental strength and fortitude. These kinds of books are, more often than not, fantastic, and deserve their success, but I want to add a greater balance to what is out there on the market, to better represent the huge part of the performance pie chart that is physical ability. See this as a prequel, or as a companion to, rather than competition with, these psychology-heavy, mindset-focused books. To win, you must cover all bases.

Therefore my five-part pathway is going to be mostly physical, but it’s surrounded by psychological and psychosocial considerations to form the whole picture. The philosophies within can be applied to business, the battlefield, the pitch, and for everyone and anyone who wants to realise their true potential and be the very best version of themselves. And because any journey you take is always going to start at one place, it makes sense that we should now begin with finding your Why. And to do that I need to find out Who You Are.

Chapter 1

WHO YOU ARE

TO BEGIN this, I firstly want to know who you are. This is quite a difficult thing for anyone to answer, and in fact takes quite a bit of internal searching. But it’s extremely important for our journey to understand your start point. Without knowing who you are right now, it’s very difficult to begin and get to where you want to be. To do so, and to help me to get to know you, I’ll begin by asking three simple questions, which allow me to determine your start point, your barriers and your commitment.

Question 1: Tell me about your current training regime, and what you want to achieve

I want to talk about you, right now. What I don’t want to hear is who you used to be.

I find so often that the moment I start asking these questions to people in the context of training, most start by telling me about their previous training experience. They would explain that they could ‘do X amount of sit-ups ten years ago’; or ‘I had trials at Y in my youth’; ‘I ran a sub-three-hour marathon before I had my children’. Now, understanding previous training experience is beneficial, but that’s not what I’m asking. I don’t want a training history at this moment in time; I simply want to know about you now. How many sit-ups can you do right now? How fast can you run your marathon, now you have had children? This is you, today, and be ruthlessly honest in how you view yourself. If you are a long way from where you want to be, this may feel like it’s being cruel, but it’s being kind. As it’s the most helpful thing you can do come the beginning: both for me and yourself.

You see, I am not going to be working with a version of you from another era, and therefore I do not care about anything prior to today. It’s going to be about you right now and what you do from this starting point onward, and so I only want to know who you are at this point. If your answer is ‘I currently do absolutely nothing’, then that is a true and current reflection, which is fine, and we’ll change that. Reverting back to something you used to be is a trigger that most people do; it’s to shy away from who they are now in an attempt to distance themselves from their current situation. Maybe it’s embarrassment, pride, or maybe it’s just mortification about how you have let a once-high standard slip. But that doesn’t matter; that negative emotion is no longer needed – because you’re doing something about it now. It’s vital you own this situation, be honest with who you are and take pride that you are here to be better.

So, what do you truly want? Hypothetically, if you had a clean slate, what is it that you would want to achieve? Imagine you don’t have to worry about time, money, family issues and other external pressures. You have no obligations and zero responsibilities as everything is taken care of; your life is just a blank slate for training. What would you want then? What is your goal, and when do you want it by? Psychologically speaking, are you doing this for