How Spartan races founder Joe De Sena meets his fitness goals

A Spartan race is a hardcore obstacle course which includes barbed wire and muddy crawls. Creator Joe De Sena is in Australia to launch his Regional Recovery initiative to help bushfire-ravaged communities spark their economic recovery.

• How you can get skin cancer in just 10 minutes
• Stubborn anti-vax suburbs targeted in new campaign

To see Joe De Sena now, what with the hundreds of gruelling obstacle races under his belt, you get the impression he was born carved from granite.

This is a man who routinely walks through airports and offices carrying a 25kg dumbbell, just for practice, and he simply radiates grit and determination.

But it wasn’t always that way for the founder of the wildly successful Spartan race series.

Like so many of us, he spent much of his adult life feeling fat, frazzled and fed-up.

“I was sitting on a trading desk on Wall St and I was making money, but I just didn’t feel healthy,” he tells Health Hacker.

“I just didn’t feel like I was at my peak performance level.

“Then I actually ran into some guy in the stairwell of our building because the elevator was out and I was taking the stairs. This guy was just shredded, he looked like he should be on the cover of a fitness magazine and he was carrying these dumbbells up the stairs.

Spartan races founder Joe De Sena. Picture: Tim Hunter

“I was hooked. Those stairs became my happy place. I basically started living in that stairwell and doing a ton of yoga and I was feeling great.

“I started recruiting others to join us until we had a heap of people in the stairwell — so many that the building was trying to throw us out because it was a fire hazard. And that’s where the Spartan idea really started.”

MORE FROM HEALTH HACKER:

How childhood illness turned Brandon into a soccer star

How cricket star James Vince stays cool under pressure

A Spartan race is like a hardcore obstacle course — think barbed wire, flames and muddy crawls — that can stretch as long as 50km. The series now hosts more than 130 races around the world each year.

And while, at a glance, that sounds a little like paying to be tortured, the races are hugely popular, both in Australia and overseas. And according to Joe, there’s a simple reason for that.

“You get to be a superhero for a day, or a Navy Seal for a day, and through the Spartan process you become unbreakable. It changes you,” he says.

“A lot of people don’t get that because they’ve been bubble wrapped their entire lives.”

Joe is in Australia to launch his Regional Recovery initiative, with eight Spartan races planned for bushfire-ravaged communities to help spark their economic recovery.

So who better to help us hack committing to a fitness goal this week?

FAST FACTS ON ... MEETING FITNESS GOALS

1. Make a date

“You need to put a date on the calendar,” he says.

“Once there’s a date, you work backwards from it and change your life. What happens once that date passes, though, you’re back on the couch with the ice-cream. So the secret is to keep putting dates on the calendar.”

2. Fire first

“In the military, they talk about ready, aim, fire. I believe in fire, ready, aim,” he says.

“I want to commit first, I want to fire. I can get ready afterwards. So you’re going to do a 200-mile run, so you fire, you say you’re going to do it. And then you go and get ready and you aim. Most people spend their lives aiming, but they never fire.”

3. Get hooked

“Every year a billion people make a New Year’s resolution, then by January, 800 million of them have given up. You’ve got to hold yourself accountable, you’ve got to tell people you’re going to do it, then you’re on the hook.”

ASK ADAM

Question: Hi Adam, I keep falling off the diet bandwagon. I’m usually exhausted when I get home from work and I find myself reaching for whatever is easiest to cook, or worse, the nearest takeaway menu. Help!

Answer: I’m a huge believer in meal preparation, mostly because it means the quickest and easiest thing to eat after a long day is something healthy and wholesome you can just heat up.

So dedicate a couple of hours on a Sunday to cooking up some healthy meals for the week ahead. Think of it this way, if you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail.

* Send your questions to [e-mail]

Adam MacDougall writes his Health Hacker column for The Sunday Telegraph.

GET FIT AND HEALTHY WITH ADAM MACDOUGALL

Lose the beer gut without losing all the beers at themanshake.com.au

Adam MacDougall is the creator of The Man Shake. A new, healthy, weight loss shake that is low in sugar, full of protein, fibre, vitamins and minerals that you can have on the run and leaves you feeling full.

For FREE Health & Fitness tips, follow Adam on:

FACEBOOK:

facebook.com/themanshake

TWITTER:

@adammacdougall5

INSTAGRAM:

adam_macdougall_

Originally published as How Spartan races founder Joe De Sena meets his fitness goals