Ep 1 - Tony Hayes | UK Special Forces ( SBS ) former Royal Marine Commando & Founder of SF1

[Music] in life it's not what we say we do that matters it's what we do and that's why this podcast is dedicated to those that have chosen not to make excuses as to why they can't in fact it's dedicated to the stories of those that have decided that even in the face of adversity that they want to show the world that they can [Music] bye now not just am i excited to be able to introduce this episode because this is episode number one but i'm also excited to be able to introduce our first guest and my good friend he's a former royal marines commando a former member of uk special forces and not just is he the sort of guy that you want in your corner when things go wrong but he's also a kind-hearted family man who just happens to have led a life that most want to write books about so this is episode number one and this is tony hayes so tony hayes welcome to podcastland thank you this is what it looks like somebody that's never been on a podcast before so much more glamorous well this is all for you trust me this this was just a bear workshop and today new tony was turning up and then we had this arrived and this this thing arrived and it's through fairly land rover it's awesome isn't it just well so for reference this land rover is actually for sale but we'll talk more about that later on in the podcast but um the owner is very proud of this hand built from the ground up it's made like an identical um copy of the land rover on james bond just for reference um it's hugely thankful that you're here today i will say i've got to reiterate this this is your first time on a podcast yes this is the first time i've ever hosted a podcast and it's the first time that the producers ever produced a podcast i mean nothing can go wrong today we are online we're on set when this is perfect nothing's gonna go wrong how are these lights for you because i know you're a bit delicate yes yeah i mean i should have put sunscreen on no like you're gonna need it by the end of this so tony look thank you so much this is the very first episode and i could not be any happier that it's you as the first guest i'm honored genuinely oh well oh well vice versa so what we want to do today that the whole ethos of this podcast is to talk to people like yourselves whose stories i think and mindsets and achievements um in sort of encapsulate the idea of what it is to live and no excuse life and i thought i would ask a question at the end of the podcast i'm going to do it at the very what do s think it is to live a no excuse life okay so i have thought about this so i didn't ask you this before the podcast obviously this you weren't prepared for this so for me personally is to have gone through things in you know whatever stage of your life and to to really you know crack on and still achieve the things that you aspire to without you know using it as an excuse and so without going into too much detail because i know you're going to ask and ask questions um but in my younger years with living in a big inner city in london um you know i did have some hair raising moments and actually cheated death on on one occasion and it did cause me to actually i didn't get any help afterwards and by the time i was 19 years old i had considered taking my own life because of the stress of it all um but it didn't hold me back i didn't use it as an excuse once i picked myself up uh still managed to aspire to a lifelong dream of um joining the special forces yeah and i made it happen that i didn't didn't use it as an excuse fast forwarding same book different cover type of sketch where joining the military getting into the special forces is something someone had said to me a really good analogy is about the water and glass way of looking at it so when i joined the military my glass was already half full and with three combat tours and don't get me wrong at all one thing i want to make clear is i could have had a tougher time in the military and there were guys that had much more of a tougher time you know i've still got all of my limbs um but at the end of the day because i was going in with my glass already half full and with what's happened in um previous years it didn't really take that much for me to really start feeling the effects of stress and and burning out but again on leaving the military i haven't used that as an excuse as tough as a time as i've been through you know i've picked myself back up and i'm still in the process if i'd be perfectly honest with picking myself up um but again i'm not using things as an excuse and i'm still forging ahead with another lifelong dream which is to have a successful business that you know can help make a change and make a difference and that's where i am now it's really interesting to hear you you talk about the fact that this isn't just something that you develop because you know we haven't introduced properly yet of course you're formal romance commando yeah you're a former member of uk special forces yeah you've you've done private contracting with the maritime security as well which we can talk about and also now you've set about establishing a new business the founder of a brand new product which we'll talk about this is what's hanging in in the in the video here yeah um but one thing i don't want to breeze over because i think it's really interesting and people will have questions about it is that the younger tony what would that that that tony of his early teens what would he have said to that question how would he have answered that what is it to live a no excuse life will you sort of carefree um talk about that if you don't mind cause i think that's a part of the story that maybe you haven't had a chance to talk about but i think it's so so important to everything else we're gonna talk about today the younger tony was just as passionate as i am now with you know if i get something in my head and and i want to do it you know i sometimes i can um be blinkered and so that can be a bit of a double-edged sword you know folk being focused is one thing but losing sight of you know what's going on elsewhere can can be quite dangerous as well as it can be quite good in some respects and needs to be handled quite carefully and it's that comes with self-awareness so the younger tony and wasn't that self-aware at the time so um i did get into trouble how old were you at that point so the school that i went to you couldn't really call the school it was more of a battleground and the the pupils ran the school so i quite quickly went down wrong paths so to to think of something as grown up as uh you know no excuses lifestyle when to um be aware of that doesn't matter what happens to you it's no excuse yeah you know get on do what you need to do um i was i wouldn't say carefree i had morals you know i respected my elders i was brought up right in that respect but i still kind of got into the wrong crowd and was was getting led down down the wrong way it was very difficult to not do that in you know the same as any big in the city um would be like for working class and is that with hindsight now you can look back and say that's what happened but at the time were you blinking to what was going on around me you were part of a gang i imagine or a group i was never part of a game so i was never blinkered in such as that i didn't know right from wrong um i was never part of a game but that ultimately didn't stop me getting targeted by one um i i think it was just more a case of a young lad in a city and you you know i i i was a bit of a bad boy in some sense sometimes yeah and did you have an influence in your life at that point was your father a big influence to your parents so my father was was an immensely strong man he he had a checkered past so he had you know hugely inspirational and he was a boxing champion so he was a professional boxer his career was cut short unfortunately and due to arthritis in his knees um but he got quite high up he fought three times on bbc one at the royal alcohol because his career got cut short it's that typical type of story really where he then found himself with quite a lot of time in his hands started off working on the doors again got into you know the wrong circles yeah and ended up doing 12 years in prison for using the shotgun and shooting someone essentially and 12 years is what you spent so you must have got you know exactly yeah and how old were you during that time i was involved it's always just before me but uh it is he was always a bit of a a wheeler dealer if you like so even though he wasn't really into crime as such when we were born by then he completely changed his life around he'd met me mum my mum had whipped him into shape like they do yeah like they do and and he had his own building company so he he moved away from you know anything dodgy that he was doing in the past but there's still that character that you kind of feed off of um so i don't quite know where i'm going with it but for me personally the younger tony i i would still get up to things you know i wasn't straight laced but that's the life you would get was was joining the royal marines something that you were thinking of at that point now apparently my first words were military related whether it be army you know from from day one i wanted to be in the military and that never changed it's just when i came of age i was already starting to get into running around the streets getting into trouble and being silly with me mates so the next thing you go the next thing that happens is you know you're 19 20 years old thinking oh my god you know if i don't that time's probably passed now then it's 24-25 you're saying yeah even though i can't get it out of my head and wanting to join the military and be specifically in the royal marines um that window's closing quick quickly so yeah it's looking back on it now that may have contributed to to the motivation of joining the marines so i know because we have spoken before in fact as far as saying that the the hour-long chat that we were going to have in your garden i do recall last time almost five hours and that was all i had sunday's right yeah i watched you guys stacked conveniently um um so i'm always trying to move it to you but actually i was moving it away you were every single time yeah it was a test yeah i don't know what you like but i i know then from that you you did join the royal rings later than most would in life but yes what i think what's really important for people to know and to hear about is the fact that prior to that price that start of your life you know you ran a business prior to that before then yeah you were involved in in what was an attack on you wasn't it it was and it's it's funny how in later on in life when big incidents happen you sometimes you find out things and it's like pieces of a jigsaw that then come into your head years and years afterwards and it was only about two or three years ago that i actually made the connection the the reason the attack had happened was because of a fight i had at school okay and the boy's cousins took a dislike to it all completely unbeknown to me and so when the boy i had a fight with because i saw him bullying someone and that that gives you a sense of the younger tony i would i was very um sort of had strong moles in in that way and one of the things that i've got in my head was that i don't like bullies because my dad didn't like buddies sure so it's like right that's how i'm going to be and if i ever saw any bulletin it didn't matter how big they were or you know who it was um i i would say you know don't do that you know and i would stand up for for the person always being brilliant and a lot of time it got me into fights this one particular time and the when i asked the lead look that's not on live boy alone he's clearly doesn't want to you know get involved in um there's in his backing down basically being bullied he just squared right up to me and was offering me out to fight and screaming in my face so i hit him and he backed down straight away as most bullets do and he must have the rest of it is unknown to me how it all came about but i can imagine that he might have had older brothers and you know he had to explain why he had this big lump on his face um and that's what kicked off quite a big game so his brothers must have been connected in some way to a gang and then cousins got involved and and they caught up with me in the local shopping center i was with one other one of a friend uh walking through the local shopping center during daytime all sometimes about two two three o'clock in the afternoon maybe even a little bit earlier so there were people around oh mums we we've pushed chairs full-on quite quite busy you know people milling around doing their shopping and as we're walking through because we used it as a cut through to get to a friend's house so from where we were coming from you could enter one side of the shopping centre walk all the way through go out the rear exit doors and then a mate of mine lived just over the road and safe walking all the way around the shelter so that's all we were doing and uh i can remember so as we walked in seeing something that didn't quite look right and as we got a bit closer we realized it was a line of young lads from one side of the wide as you can imagine a wide walkway through a shopping center lined up from one side to the other literally lined up so mums and other people and old people shopping we're having to try and find a space and squeeze through them that was for me i just didn't enter into my head that that was a net waiting for me to walk through so on their search for me walking around and asking people that may have known me they must have got wind of the well you know who comes through here every now and again so as as i've got closer i fought himself when i was only with one other friend i've said to him look we can't we can't back down and again i didn't realize that they were from there for me so we can't back down that's the worst thing we can do because if we if we get seen we're turning around and walking the other way because we're scared to go through them they're going to know that and so if all right you know time to grab hold of your balls don't be silly because there's a lot of them so i'm not going to try and start a fight it's just you know try and stand up tall find the gap i turned my shoulders and tried to slip through but as i was walking through there was a bit of commotion where things were getting said and it was negative things as i was walking through but i thought i'm not gonna stoop down to him just carried on walking and i was hoping that was it as we got a bit further into the shopping center and i was looking around behind my shoulder i could just see these heads popping up every now and again in the crowd so i said to my mate we're being followed uh you know what you want to do should we get on our toes now and he was like know let's let's dive into cnas i mean some show my age here now i just want to see you later an old clothing shop and it was the last shop before the exit doors on the left and my mate said let's dive in here and hopefully they won't see us so i found myself sort of hiding behind some of the the close rails the security guard was obviously what's going on so we knew we wouldn't have had long in there and uh just left it for as long as possible hoping that they'd walk past so we left it as long as we thought was needed because i'm right we can't stay in here all day to let's go for it and we knew the exit doors are right there right as soon as we get out as long as we can get out of those exit doors if they are on us we just run but we didn't even get that chance the second we stopped steps over the threshold to go back out into the walk where the shopping center was surrounded straight away my mate was pulled away from me so that he wasn't with me so they separated it straight away and a big semicircle was created and my friend was trying to reach in to grab me to pull me out and say about leave him alone but they they'd maced him in the face and and pushed him away so it left me standing there with my back against the wall and semi-circled by this game and again my dad's voice kept coming into my head where if you ever get into trouble then you know try not to have your back against the wall so i thought [ __ ] that's that's that's gone wrong but at the same time i knew that there wasn't anyone behind me so i didn't mind that uh the other thing was to if you need to fight as aggressively as you need to to be able to make way to get away as quickly as you can so that was in my head as well also not to back down and try not to show any fear so that was the first call trying to go through an escalation system because if that would have worked then great so i started off with that first and said look guys what's you know stood up tall what's the problem here i actually it's one of me as it's only two of us uh i you know we're obviously not going to be interested in in fighting look how many of you are there you know what is it that's supposed to have happened anyway and just as i was finishing that sentence the punches started coming in and so it kicked off straight away and as i was trying to throw punches out just flailing and doing anything i could to try and get out and run away as that was happening the knife was was being uh used on my left side here but it was a short sword but the handle it was one of those like walking cane handles that that come over so he was able to hold it like a gun which is what aided in being able to step in nine nine times um the so three times in the fight three times just in the lower back on the top of the leg area here and they clasp up here as there's three wounds because it went through my arm out the other end into my chest puncturing my lung and scratching my heart on the way in right and and that was it lights out because nine holes with the blood gushing out i had i had time to sort of turn around and i knew something was going on and when to push that person away because he was on my blind side and next and i was on the floor unconscious were you aware that you've been stabbed or i knew you know it's strange because i didn't see the knife but i knew something was happening i knew i knew i wasn't just getting punched but my body knew that something was happening yes it's weird weird to explain um [Music] but it just sort of you know like i said it's weird to explain just kind of in the back of your head but what you're thinking there and then is well you know he's just trying to to fight and punch me on on this side and it wasn't until i woke up so i went unconscious within a matter of seconds because of the flow of blood um so as i hit the deck they must have all ran off because when i woke up it was my friend beside me trying to take my belt off to using the tourniquet around my leg now because three of the wounds were around the back and end up here i only saw the wounds on my fire so i thought okay cool let's you know they've just stabbed me in in my fire um so i went to get back up and run out of doors because i thought the flight's not finished stupidly well but what do you think of doing that just to to carry exactly just complete stupidness and to maybe you know just carry on finished because by then they've got me fighting so i thought well you know come on let's just keep going and luckily my friend was there and turned me back around and said you ain't going nowhere me took me back to cna's which was literally just there anyway you know we out just outside cnas and uh walked me back in sort of helping me walk back in by this time it was a river of blood so from where i hit the deck it was literally there was a slight little incline where it was the the ground was going up towards the exit doors and it was flowing down and there was about a meter wide and as we walked into cnas my friend said to the security guard my friend's been stabbed please help and the first thing the security guard said was get back out of shop you're bleeding all over the clothes seriously you're bleeding over the clothes so he turned me back around and i sat back down or he sat me down just there on against the wall outside of the shot and by then it was starting to get difficult to breathe and because of the punctured lung and starting to get a bit sort of busy head from from the loss of blood but um again psychologically i didn't feel too bad because i wasn't aware of the other wounds you know i couldn't just because i had a jacket on and i wasn't looking down there either and i wasn't in really any pain but again i just thought it was on my leg and the ambulance came and there was a policeman on scene actually that came first and his white topper turned red when the ambulance came to take over he was in bits he he was kneeling down with he was actually crying because it was a horrendous sight he's very much i was 15 16 years old at that time and then he thought this lad is not going to make it to hospital and straight away the ambulance could see that that was the situation as well i didn't bother messing about they'd done a quick survey cut my trousers off took my jacket off realized the extent of what's going on um got me on the stretcher straight down into into the ambulance and called me in as bear in mind lewisham hospital was 30 seconds away from the shopping center yet they still called me in as a possible dead on arrival so yeah it's um it kind of gets a bit emotional as well thinking about it because they the the the hospital my mum worked in in louisiana hospital so she was a nurse working casually at the time and they had to sort of get a hold of her and put her to the side and say you know you're gonna have to come off duty because your son's coming in and he's you know in a very bad way so that's sort of an emotional thing to think back on as well and yeah i died three times on the operating table very lucky to to survive it and did did your mum come to see during that time or did she stay away she was there she must have been immensely strong i could see that obviously she was crying and upset but she was you know keeping it together um because i was still conscious at this time in in in in trauma in in the um in the initial area that i got ticking into because they had to to do a chest strokes they had to cut cut me open they can remember the guy saying that this time he's like yeah yeah we're not going to have time to to give you like a anaesthetic we've got to make a little incision and get our finger in just to widen the hole to put the tubing for your chest drain and i can remember thinking at the time not actually being worried about what i was hearing and actually thinking why are you telling me just get on with it um and apparently it's meant to be one of the most painful procedures if you don't have anesthetic but i think because i'd lost so much blood at that time i wasn't really feeling much at all um so all of that was going on my mum come in i could see her upset and my older brother come in as well and i could tell that he must have been told by my mum that you need to go in and see him because it's probably the last time you got to see me because i could see how he really was not holding it together he was uncontrollably crying and uh and basically came in to say to say goodbye um and that's that that's that's the last memory i've got it of it apparently from people that were in the hallway outside other people that was in the hallway outside and from my brother and my mum it was at that point that i started convulsing and i was nearly lifting off at the table so that was me crashing that was me dying at that point and apparently they just started shouting and screaming nurses and doctors started shouting screaming for everyone to move right away and i just got wheeled off massive rated knots to obviously be resuscitated i think that was the first time i died and then died twice more to another two times whilst being operated on i can't even imagine i mean if you think about how young you were what be interesting to me here would be from that point when you came out of that you've obviously survived what pulled you through those first few months i mean how did you recover from that not just physically but but mentally because that's a huge there's a huge incident to have lived through did you just think that you were lucky and that that you know that kick-started positivity in life or did it bring about any form of you know was it not your confidence what did you feel it massively knocked my confidence um i didn't get any help for it and i don't know why it's still something that you know i i haven't asked my mum honestly to be honest with you um where something like that happens nowadays so 15 16 year old they're now they're getting psychological help afterwards and supports that yeah absolutely um but it didn't have any of that so when once i got out of hospital which seemed like a lifetime um i was in icu for quite a while and then on the wall for quite a while and with you know waiting for for the wounds to heal up sufficiently and i had to have um sort of drains on the wounds as well and they had to be periodically drained with because of the fluid build up so and so forth so it took quite a while to actually get home and there was still quite a long period of recovery once i was at home as well with learning how to sort of walk on on the leg again um because the muscle deterioration some of us still suffer from now actually because you know you you end up compensating you've got you can visibly see where the muscle doesn't grow back properly on the lower part of my quad um so it took a while to to to recover and i can vividly remember the first time that i went back out again and it was i experienced more fear then than i did actually during the attack or before the attack and realizing i was being followed and so on and so forth um and it was things like getting on the bus for the first time and there being a young group of kids behind me who were a bit rowdy and i was convinced i was going to get stabbed again literally convinced and i was so paralyzed by fear that i couldn't even turn because every fiber of my body wanted to turn around and check if they're coming behind coming up behind me and if anyone's experienced real fear in that way you taste it it's like a metallic taste in your mouth and again yeah got just got no no help from it so that massively knocked my confidence i was always quite a confident confident led in that way was there anyone around you or was anyone sort of pinnacle in your life at that point who who helped you through that who helped that confidence maybe my dad in his own way but it's it wasn't it didn't looking back on it now it's not the way that things would be done nowadays you know the worst thing you can say to someone who's having difficulties is men up and that's kind of the undertone that it had i was never specifically told that but that's that's how it seemed now i can remember being in america um due to my mum with her work as a nurse in atlanta which was the gang capital of the world at the time and again this was only a couple of years after the attack and i can remember sitting in the car with my older brother and my dad in the front and i think we were waiting to pick my mama i can't remember what it was but i could see the gang members walking up and down the street and then some of them may not have even been gay members it was my brain you know big in everything cup and i was [ __ ] myself and even though i was with my dad an ex-professional boxer and my brother my older brother who could handle himself as well um my older brother said that he was going to get out the car and walk down the road to see exactly where he was that my mum was coming out from from where we were picking him up and i remember thinking don't what what are you doing and i was getting frustrated with my dad why are we just sitting here and i could tell that they were getting frustrated with me because if that attack hadn't have happened i probably wouldn't have been fine with it you almost distorted your perception what's going on around you wasn't it there was yeah there was a falsity to that yeah yeah we could see but instead of having a little bit of understanding and we're okay yeah i might be able to see where you know where tony might be having a bit of a problem with this i could feel their frustration that i was scared i'm interested i'll come back to this i really want to talk about um some stages after that in the marines but you talk about the maybe back then the idea of saying look man up faces big problems you've just been through we're not going to give any sympathy just man up yeah just fast forward quickly to your experiences within the military and even units like you know the sbs which we'll talk about yeah is that still prevalent today there that man up attitude because you you'd expect from the outside that must be or is it is there now more certainly after afghanistan and iraq is it more of an understanding of mental health and trying to pull people through things absolutely and uh which is a good thing even though i'd say in my day you know because in relative terms it still wasn't that long ago yeah um how long ago was it yeah so i've been out with six six years okay six yeah about six years um seven years maybe and but even then i it was only like the last year i was in probably not even the last year was from when i left it was only just starting to change so the time that i was in it was still of the opinion that if the shrink was coming in so like when you come back from from operations everyone's got to take their turn with talking to someone and it would very quickly go around the squadrons that look just remember that when you're sitting in there don't say too much so it didn't matter what issues you might have been trying to deal with from operations you were already of the mind of the you know yet you know not going to talk about that [ __ ] um and it's complete it's very different now it's very different so is it is it more different as well that you would be more comfortable to talk about your feelings because i can give an example but not on the same level as yourself but certainly on the police firearms teams you would have regular medicals where you'd go and sit down and in front of a doctor and i think sometimes a counsellor producer might better tell me counselor um and never once did i truthfully sit in front of her or him and be honest i'd probably answer every single question as completely fine everything's at home everything's fine and they're expecting that i appreciate that but it's different when you're operating within the world that you're operating in because the the pressure was was far worse i think for more prolonged periods of time and i think maybe you can correct me if you're wrong but the group of people you work around are very driven focused out for people yes they don't necessarily want to omit weakness they don't want to be seen to admit that so has it even changed within the very teams themselves not just the support you're given what about those on the ground are you all now more willing to talk to one another if you and i were working with each other would would you be willing to open up about something i'm a crap listener so maybe not yeah it's difficult for me to answer there's a few things i can comment on there but it's difficult for me to fully answer because i'm not in the teams anymore i'm not in the squadron in the squadrons and so it's difficult for me to say on sort of how the culture is in that sense now um i i should imagine imagine it what i do know is it's still very much an alpha male type environment um and that type of environment that you would expect that is full of blokes that are just switched on and driven you know um so it does so you know make for an environment that would be difficult to talk about emotions in that way because it's you know we've got to be top of top of the game here um and you know it's very competitive in that way to to be a and switched on operator so it would it would be very difficult to take time out or to find someone that you could confide in if you were having issues now the spsa i know have made leaps and bounds so that's the association army the charity arm of the svs the sbs which do fantastic things and there is actually things that have been put in place now and i think even a building that's dedicated to guys that if they want to go there and talk to anyone and about things that might be bothering them then they can so that would be confidential i imagine and i should imagine so yeah of course um so the thing there are things in place a hell of a lot more but it would be silly not to because from from when i left to to now the the suicide rate um even though because it's such an interesting thing and when you think about like we're always talking about earlier today or someone i think it might have been we were talking about with the falklands with you know there were more suicides over guys having problems in the falklands and there were actually died due to combat in falklands so it's not a new thing but i don't know maybe it's the age of social media and the media that um that it quite quickly came out as to how many service people with the recent conflicts in iraq and afghanistan um are actually you know committing suicide and that's because you know generally speaking ptsd is more return that we hear now spoken about yeah and it's probably more accepted that people now are experiencing that and not necessarily even just in a war zone you know yeah as an example even from a law enforcement background if you look at the united states i know very recently i saw a survey where in the nypd alone over 12 month period of the 200 officers took their own lives because they themselves couldn't just deal with some of the press pressures and stress around i think maybe a working environment wasn't ideal so i think i'm really glad to think that pdsd now is something that anyone can talk about alpha male or not yeah female doesn't matter what background you are because i think you can experience and live with ptsd from for all different reasons it doesn't have to be just an extreme one i know you know i've i've met with people who've been involved in serious road traffic accidents in fact police officers who themselves have been involved in the investigation of traffic accidents being the first on scene and seeing horrific injuries and that has a compound effect that's an awkward effect that a lot of people can't deal with yeah um so i'll told you we'll come back to that because one thing i want to do is bring us back to just practice doing the royal marines um you've now lived through an incident which was stabbed numerous times there's obviously going to be a knock-on effect emotionally to you maybe not dealing with with it fully i imagine yeah um so what happens from that point you know late teens now up until when you joined the war marines which how old were you when you joined the marines so i was 25 so in my mind because i can i can admit to this a bit of a man crush on the whole marine thing when i was young i wanted to be in war marines um and i always thought you know you you drove one where he's 17 18 years old so it shocked me to hear that you joined one reason 25 but we'll get to that in a minute but just talk me through quickly what did you do between you know leaving school overcoming the injuries and their self and then the time that you joined the war marines and then why was that you joined the war marines okay so it said by the time i would was recovered so i was you know 16 17 years old and life eventually got back to normal and my dad had a building company and my brother at that time then had his own flooring company and so i would you know be working for my dad sometimes um and sometimes working for mcgrubber it then sort of evolved into me working with my brother full time so that took me up to sort of 18 so after a couple of years of doing that sort of 18 coming onto 19 years old and i started feeling the stress of not dealing with um with with the stabbing and i i did consider um taking my own life at one point you know because of aspiring to the type of person that my dad was and so forth and i was really struggling with putting that front on because i was i've really had to struggle being around people um even if it was going out for a family dinner my confidence was so here i struggled with sort of being able to just have general chit chat with people so then i'd be sitting there making such an effort that it's tiring when you've got to make an effort to do things like that you know as months and years go past it just wears you down just going down the shots having to run through it all in my head before i go okay so what if i get approached what if i get into an argument you know what if that happens okay like don't be silly build yourself up you know you go through a certain amount of years with with having to deal with that it wears you down and then all it takes is other stuff external things in life that normally you'd be able to deal with but it just starts piling up by nuts you have money problems that's another thing to to add on to the weight and i found myself 19 years old just sitting on the toilet um on the toilet seat that's fine but um and just with me having hands and i seriously considered taking your life luckily it didn't really get past that point it was just a real low period um and then i started picking myself back up and didn't use it as an excuse you know it was it was you know if i if i don't if i don't continue forcing myself to build my confidence up then the alternative is to actually you know go through on the things that is now starting to enter my head which is i just didn't want to do that you could have used that actually looking back you could have used that entire beard as an excuse to be somebody that goes in a completely different direction absolutely and always have that in the back of your mind i've got a reason for why i'm doing this i've got a reason why i'm behaving this way yeah you didn't no so that's that's interesting so what did that push you into what part of your life was that uh so that pushed me into um you know getting particularly good at what i was doing with my brother on the floors with doing you know wooden floors and and renovations and so renovating old floorboards was really coming into fashion at this time which was early 2000s late 90s early 2000s where everyone was ripping up their carpets and seeing floorboards and thinking oh yeah we'll renovate these and it put was putting the the price of the sand up on houses and so business was booming and i was got to the stage where i was being left on jobs where my brother had dropped me off drop a machine off and the tools that i needed he'd come back at the end of the day and the job was done and i thought to myself i can just do this myself all i've got to do is save up a bit of money for to buy a cheap van put out some advertising and i really am showing my agent and in local yellow pages um so this was pretty sort of internet days and uh get the tools that i need and just go for it and that's what i've done i i got my head down for a couple of months screwed away a couple of grand and then when the time was ready uh just got into the the local classifieds and the auto trader found a van for a thousand pounds bought that um i think it was 500 pounds for the actual flooring tools i needed it you know got the bits and pieces i needed and and the advert sorry to put out it was a thousand pound on the advert in the yellow pages and the thompson local and the date that it was supposed to come out i can vividly remember standing there with my now wife um looking at the telephone in the morning thinking i wonder when it's going to ring so the advert goes live today i wonder when the phone's going to ring and say yeah i wonder it might take a couple of days you know and going through all the different things not not trying to manage your own expectations when i made a cup of tea and during making the cup of tea the phone rang then that was the first job that was the first person calling to get me to go around and do the estimate and since then the phone didn't stop ringing for the period that i was doing it so it that was my first taste of building something from scratch because i applied myself what i wanted to do so i applied myself to it and did you gain a level of confidence in yourself at that point that's when my confidence really started building up and it was after about two or three years maybe two you worked actually so night so 20 so um so what we're talking four or five years even of the business running what's your established this is a real thing now this isn't just bear in mind you say established it was i got up to about five guys working for me and i had two uh three bands at one point on the road um but i was still self-employed you know it wasn't bri i didn't have any bricks and mortar that was going to be the next stage of getting a shop and actually really becoming an established flooring firm but the when we were moving house one time cut a long story short the we've phoned up um i feel i think it was phoning that bt making sure no yes he was making sure with bt that the phone number could change and all we could keep our phone number because we'd only recently just got out a new advert and when we moved got sent to the new house set up the office found that bt and said right yeah we're in you can switch this on now and then we're like oh sorry mr hayes we don't know what you're talking about so it's like [ __ ] so we just paid for new adverts that were going to have the wrong number in it so when people were flicking through to to shop around they'd call me and then they'd get please hang up and redial so we had it all redirected but the amount of people that would just move on to the next advert so we lost a massive amount of business and we knew we were going to really really struggle through that first year so that's when the idea of joining the marines really started coming to life because it was like okay so we know we now know what do we know we know that we're going to need to restart from scratch again more or less from scratch at the end of the year because we're just about going to make it through so it's going to be redoing the advert and rebuilding the work back up and if we do that we're all in we're then working towards getting a shop so and so forth and that's going to be the future or make it through this year and instead of paying out all the extra money to restart the business i joined the marines which first tick in the box is doing something i've always wanted to do second tip in the box is that it gets us out of london third tick is that it's you know a stable um a stable job with regular money and it's a career i can build on it's not dead end you know and if with the passion i knew that i had inside because it's what i'd wanted to do from from birth almost i knew that they'd be able to sort of just go as high as i wanted to just hold on a minute because look you so you're 25 years old yeah you're a mature man you've been running your own business for five six years you've got people working for you yeah well by that time i hadn't because we had to massively scale down because the work wasn't coming in due to the long advert so it literally was just me getting the small bits of work that we had coming in to keep us ticking over but you've been this was in this role in this capacity to then switch your mind at that age to join the royal marines where you're going to go in as a basic recruit at the very very bottom with a high likelihood that you're going to fail because that's i think where most people would agree that it's a very very difficult cause yeah what was your mindset even like at that point going into that what was your self-belief like because it sounds to me like it must be through the roof looking back on it now it must have been and it was and it was unwavering and i don't know what it was there was something inside of me that was driving me forward and there's so many funny moments that i can look back on because when i first mentioned it at first the wife who wasn't my wife at the time my now wife she was like oh my god am i even going to get a say in this because she could see the look in my eyes that i've made this decision because i'd convinced before even talking to her and looking back on it now it's like well i wouldn't get away with that now it was the wrong thing you know it was the wrong thing but i was young um and i'd convinced myself already before even speaking to anyone that it was the right thing to do for various different reasons you know because i took on um two children that the wife had already had at the time by by the previous relationship but they were so young and they've now seen his dad um so i was thinking right i've got a young family i can get them out of london you know all the different things that that would have plus and so i was already convinced so then that cleared the path i didn't have to worry about that then all i could do i just had to concentrate on actually making it happen and there were so many elements to that and this is where the drive i don't know where it came from it was there i couldn't map read the [ __ ] i knew that was going to be a big problem so i would literally get myself out with a map and just beg borrow and steal from where i could asking people around right who can matter do you mind coming out with me um and my i was never very academic i didn't do i could have done well in school but you know i chose not to um so i knew that i had to work on that and the fitness as well i knew that i had to you know i'd never really up until the age of that age you know 25 i hadn't really done much even i did leave lead a manual sort of life if you like with with in the building industry but i knew that i needed that military fitness with you know the cardiovascular fitness getting out there getting the miles in on the road so all of that was getting done um when i came home from the royal marines recruitment office with the royal marines brochure that gave you the basic information of what would be asked of you and what you need to prepare for and at the back was the specializations so that was their sort of sales bit if you like and sbs was there now i grew up with an sas soldier on my wall and it was that post that i must have got from a magazine in their black kit with the respirator on and they had all the different bits of writing with with arrows you know and i just you know idolized that and just was fascinated by it all you know one million pounds and that was back then per soldier to train and all the different bits of kit that they had and just that look of you know that dark mysterious look and obviously the iranian embassy siege by then um so straight away i was sold this was before i'd even passed the potential war marines course which you have to do before actually getting loaded on full basic training yeah i was convinced that's what i'm doing and the phone call i had to my dad one time and i told his exact words i said dad i'm getting special forces he said [ __ ] off son [Laughter] [Music] which was basically get realistic but my mind was made up that if i was going to do this then i had to aim for what i've really wanted to do i wasn't just going to draw in and you know see how it goes that's the ultimate goal that let's see how it goes and if i do what it no if i join the marines it will be to get out of the marines as quickly as possible into special forces and i made it happen i i was in in the marines for just under just over two years i'd done the minimum time and i badgered and pissed off enough people asking for selection because i would just get laughed at but i must have pissed off the sergeant major um 4-2 commander in plymouth so much that eventually the last time i went in there to say right no i don't want to be a signal i don't want to be this i don't want to be there i want to go on selection and in the end it was just like okay if that's what you want you're the one that's going to be sorry the odd one's going to come back here with you tail in between your legs but he said on one condition if you don't pass when you come back your next draft will be in scotland it's awful [ __ ] okay that gives me a bit of motivation but it is a bit worrying went home told the misses she said if you don't pass when you go to scotland i won't be coming with you not like pressure so it was all to play for but you know what it didn't really enter my head i i knew that i could pass i i knew that i could what worried me was um injury that's what worried me if they're you know if i twisted my ankle or so did that come confidence come around though by the fact so you've now you've passed warmer in selection you're now serving warm rain yeah so you know what it must be like to manage an injury no doubt you would have seen people in training within the world rings that didn't pass out because of injury yeah so how going into something like special forces selection did you do anything to prepare yourself physically which you did differently when you joined the royal marines or was it more of a mental thing by this point oh no it was i don't know the the mental side of things i don't think really changed or the approach to how i sort of got myself ready mentally didn't really change it's just they had more confidence so obviously we're passing raw marines and becoming a royal into commando i knew that the sky was the limit as far as you know physical abilities was concerned so yeah that was the easy part it was just applying myself and being a plymouth 4-2 commando was was brilliant preparation because it's so hilly it's ridiculously hilly so it's great for going out and running and getting healed you know hills legs plus you've got the moors with the tours that you can climb up it's great for navigation and fitness as well so i'd get weight on my back and just get out on the road and i was just beasted myself and got myself as fit as i possibly could but in a smart way because someone told me some really good advice and it kind of at the time i struggled to get my head around it and a lot of people can't get their head around it but it kind of it did click and i thought that makes sense a lot of people would fail selection because they were too fit they would go on there to fit so a lot of ptis would would come off of the course sort of at the heels phase halfway through because they would burn out because if you imagine if you're you know as fit as you can possibly be where else have you then got to go and it just opens up the possibility for you to burn out one time with all the pressure of everything you've got ahead of you you're just going to be like ivw i've voluntary withdrawal i'm out here whereas even though i was pushing myself and getting myself as ready as possible i tried to listen to the advice on you know a week before you've got to resist the urge of wanting to get out rest you've done all you can you're not going to lose all your fitness in the last week you know take it easy and recuperate so i started the course fresh and i can remember you know feeling a bit of a peak and feeling really strong just before the end the endurance the last march that you do at the end of the hills phase was properly emotional you know and it's about it's a timing thing i found personally just a timing thing because if i'd have missed time to be training i may have peaked a little bit sooner and either i'd have been on my hands and knees trying to cross the finish line with endurance so so for those listening and and watching the raw marines your your training is just a a constant course 32 weeks 36 weeks yes it's three two weeks yeah um so it might be very for now i think they've added a couple of things but 32 when i was in okay you then go into a new period of training this is now for the sbs how does that look ahead of your first day of training you know you've you've passed the selection that you're there how many people were with you um i think the course started off with 150 200 people okay um talk us through what happens because i think so many people will be keen and eager to to listen to this part of your story because i think it's so so important that people understand you know you are you are just human beings you know you achieve amazing things i know that firsthand but you start from the beginning like everybody else so you're there with 150 people yeah what did that look like what happened um they drop off quite quickly and you can kind of tell those that because you're going on with such a um a frame of mind of the you're here for really this you know you are you're passing me you know no one's getting in your way it's all you're in fight mode almost um and you can tell those that that aren't really in it looking back on it now yeah is that an age thing or just you know if those the obviously you're gonna get because of the the glam and it's not as glamorous as what you think it is but because it's got that persona and and that sort of um you know a lot of people are injured if you're if you're in the military you know anyone would say that yeah i wish i'd have done special forces so it it will the course will have a lot of people on it that aren't there necessarily because they have a true passion to want to do it yeah they're just on there because yeah i wouldn't mind giving it a go that's the mistake you you literally have to it has to be on your mind when you're going to sleep you have to be you for me personally maybe not but what i found is that i visualized being an sf operator yeah i understand i get that so you know it the the drive for it and the motivation and then those times where you need to be able to keep yourself going that that massively helps because it's a true want it's not you're just doing this and see how it goes it's a true one and i think that's where the thing is with where some people think that you're super human it's not it's just because you want it so if if i tried to go for being a brain surgeon i don't think i'd be let's see if i was a bit more academic by the way sure yeah but even then i don't think i would get through the the work the academic work that you need to do because it's not what i want but you're you know you said almost correctly from wrong but almost joining the royal marines became a stepping stone for you yes to join the sps and you know at this point would there be any advice you would give if anyone was watching this now and they were even themselves kind of playing under normal marines but they may think well i want to go on to special forces but i almost don't feel like it's the right thing i want to be telling people what would you what would you say to them should that be something that they go vocal about this is what i mean before this is what no you don't have to go vocal about it it was just um it was just the way that i i didn't even think about staying quite about it i i was it was almost like um had no sort of conscious thought in that way yeah i didn't see an issue with it it's only looking back on it now and because at the time i was thinking do people think that i'm lying and then eventually i did go quiet because i thought to myself i don't want people to think i'm either bullshitting yeah or being crazy so it was almost like i had to hold back and it was almost a bit frustrating because it's like i can't understand why people can't or don't think it's normal for to be looking at something that you want and say right i'm going for that and i'm going to get it a lot of people do struggle with them because they might think oh he's just you know a chance or you know a bs they're talking bs or whatever um so yeah i wouldn't say don't go vocal with it but if you i certainly don't try to not listen to it yourself if that makes sense yeah yeah if you if you've got some because that is the key to it that's the key to achieving whatever it is that you want to do but you've got to actually want it it can't be just if it's something particularly hard that is you know and there's there are some people in the world and you'll know as well as anyone that they've got that natural gift that anything they turn their hands to they they'll just do you know um but if it is something particularly arduous like if it is um wanting to aspire to be a doctor an airline pilot or in the air force as a pilot raw marines special forces you have to genuinely really want it otherwise you're gonna you're gonna either struggle or you'll have to build yourself back up again because you won't make it yeah interestingly when i look back there was um when i first joined uh when i when i applied to become a firearms obviously you go into firearms basic firearms course and i always remember it was a it was a one course but we had to pass that course we moved on to some other courses and other elements but i put so much pressure on myself to pass that i completely zoned in nothing else really mattered um i probably wasn't a great husband i wasn't a great you know family man at that time at all looking back on it i was probably being quite selfish in the way i was around those at home and i put a huge pressure on myself to pass that course and i'm not sure this is how anyone deals with this don't know how you would how you took on the courses that you confronted by sounds the same so far yeah i i again looking back i didn't even naturally i didn't actually like how i felt by doing it because i became just all consumed i had to pass this course it meant so much to me but don't know how i would have handled it had i not passed and then when we got to the end of that course the basic course um there was a really high failure rate at the time there were 14 of us on the course and i was the only person in the past and i remember sitting in a canteen with the police canteen as it was at the time and everybody one at a time you'd have to walk out it's right the end of the course it's the very final day come off the final exercise everyone's hanging everyone's peed off you're filthy you're dirty you're stressed out because this is it now and then one one by one everyone would walk off into little firearms work at the time and i'll then see them coming back you know some men were in tears it was really really really really emotional time and there was i was the last person to walk in and i thought i was just what i was just [ __ ] going why am i putting myself through this everybody else has failed yeah so i walked up and then to be told that i'd passed the feeling was you're for it it was amazing and it did set my mind forward to to be that person i was during those times in the forest team but i looked back and it was an uncomfortable time because i put so much pressure on myself so a long story but when it comes to you and you're saying that it's similar did that follow you throughout the whole selection process or was there a point where you realized the confidence in yourself now because i know how confident you are as an individual um but was there like a turning point even during special forces selection we thought now i've got this like i've i don't have to put this pressure anymore this is mine or was it really the very last day did you did you know that you passed so to speak or does it really happen to that last week the only pressure that i put in myself was making sure that i knew what i was doing so anything you had to say with with the heels phase making sure that i was proficient on mac reading and i put massive amounts of pressure on myself leading up to it so that's where i put the pressure on myself preparing for it when i was actually on the course so maybe i could like enlighten go about using a boxing analogy just because it's something that my dad always used to say is that um he would always be scared before fight and if anyone if any boxers said that they're not they were either crazy or a liar but as soon as you step in the ring all of that fear goes and it's fight time yeah i get that so once once i was starting the new room on the hill dude that the butterfly butterflies the night before making sure that you know you you're going through the roots in your head because you don't know which one you're going to get or the grid references until until then that morning you don't get it until after each checkpoint as well so even though you kind of know the routes you don't want to get caught out so you get to the checkpoint you have to show where you are and then they'll give you the next grid reference for where you've got to go from next checkpoint you've got to find it on the map then show them so every point they're checking that you know what you're doing it's probably a safety thing and then off you go so because i prepared and put a lot of pressure on myself to make sure that i was proficient in whatever was in front of me i could then just concentrate on performing come come the time of when it was actually happening because i i'd already had a few experiences of failing things in the marines and failing map reading or navigational exercises and it's a horrible feeling so all i had to do was relate that to failing a march on selection and not being able to achieve my dream i would live so similar to sort of um visualizing winning something visualizing being a special forces operator to help with that motivation and drive i i've visualized failing as well and how that would feel so it okay i sort of visualized how bad i would feel if i failed so then that would spur you on even more to to prepare as best as you could yeah so yeah i don't know if dave so i've probably answered that in a roundabout way but i would put a lot of pressure on myself in preparing for what i needed to do so that when i was actually on the course itself i was just going all guns blazing to make sure i was doing it i love that maturity of mind you must have had in a way to be able to envisage the failing aspect because just going back with that story i said in relation to me waiting to hear whether i passed or failed this course i hadn't got that far at that point i think i'd actually accepted the whole time through i'm not going to fail this it's a strange place to be i didn't have the confidence every single day that went past was like a day of survival that's another day over oh i've got a score on that i've passed that never once during that whole course i think i [ __ ] got this never never once so it was a surprise to me then to forget to hear that i'd actually passed yeah but had i failed i hadn't really prepared myself honestly for that i don't know how that would have affected me i had the same questions because i i thought to myself am i going to have the strength to redo this like a lot of guys you know it's like their second time they've failed the first time they're on there for the second time it's three strikes and you're out right as well you can't if you if you fail the third time on selection that's it you are never going to be a special forces operator for the rest of your life so i didn't that didn't really bother me because i thought to myself bloody hell i don't even know if i'm going to be able to do it for the second time they'd learn first time but um that was always a question that i was asking myself throughout the whole process over the years is would i have is as strong as there's much confidence i've got in my mental strength with you know being able to do this because i know i really want to if i fail for whatever reason if i come off from injury or whatever else or you know [ __ ] up somehow would i have the strength the mental strength to be able to do again do it again so in a way that was kind of helped with a bit of pressure to make sure well if you if you can't answer that then just make sure you pass first time yeah stop thinking about it just past stop thinking about his past but i did i do know what you're talking about in regards to having wobbles and thinking have i got this yeah and don't get me wrong i had a few wobbles there the first wobble was when on the hills phase when the club came in one of the last marches before the final final march and it was literally piece of you could not see your hand in front of your face and it took me forever to find the first checkpoint and i was lost at some point and navigationally challenged if you like and i knew that i'd wasted a load of time and eventually found it and i i was then in catch-up mode and it was horrendous and all these things go through your head because it's like this is the worst thing i would needed to happen because i'm using all my energy that i want to save for the final exercise or the final march and now i'm having to use it to catch up this time um anyway that was the first sort of wobble because as i was walking around what seemed like in circles not being able to see the map in front of my face i thought this is it i'm not passing this march and that's me freaking bend and didn't happen the second wobble was in the trees in the jungle for the second phase of selection and i had i think it's safe to say i got lost it's safe to say so it was just two of us and if you if you turn around for a second the person in front of you if they walk off within a split second they've disappeared and i think i turned around to to check her back blast and when i turned back he was gone so i thought right don't panic don't like just go wandering off just wait here for a second and i thought if he's gonna know that i'm not with him so surely he's either gonna come back or i'm gonna see him go come here i didn't i'm by this time i'm kind of disorientated which way did it go off and i found myself walking around the jungle on my own and there's a pressure right now that if if you don't find your way through what is that it yeah if beta vectors in our search team uh it's unlikely i'd have carried on just for the fact you could have lived down yeah i think they'd have them come to the conclusion well you might not be the person that we want yeah because the heels phase is you can map read okay good you're strong okay good it doesn't mean that you've got common sense or that you've got the ability to you know really sort of learn and be the person that we need you could be that starts creeping in when you're in the jungle yeah and so it by once then we eventually met back up again and found and he was slightly lost as well to be honest with you so you know it's thank god yeah yeah it was it wasn't just me when we found out when we met back up with each other he was like where did you go and i'm like don't [ __ ] start that where did you go so we eventually bumped into a ds who was kind of it was still on that borderline of we weren't actually being looked for but we were a little bit late for the checkpoint he's like where the [ __ ] are you tubing and i owned up straight away because i i sort of knelt down and said stuff um you know i've i should have stood where i was or stayed where i was but i did i might have gone off in the wrong direction um and the other guy got some [ __ ] as well anyway without going into too much detail ever since then after that for the rest of the time i was in the jungle which was i think another another week maybe a week and a half you know because it's four weeks that you do in total in the jungle so that's the that's the jungle that's the jungle phase yeah so it was a couple of weeks after it was just after halfway through so i had the rest of the time being completely paranoid that they were just going to bid me at the end anyway because of it not good is it no i hated it yeah horrible horrible experience to still have to perform to the level that you've got to and for as tough as a environment as it is and to have that on your mind it was my worst case scenario um and looking back on it now it's just another thing that actually adds to chips away at your armor because having to deal with such pressurized things it um it does sort of then then your armor for later on yeah i really i really associate with that um but yeah all the training courses that you do if you have been that person you've done something at the start of a course but it's not been enough that you've not been immediately booted off but you're carrying that on the back of your mind thing right there's a mark against my name now there's no more room for me to do anything yeah um it's not a nice question it's not but looking back on it now do you know what it's because we care true it's because we care and yeah i i used to look in the envy of those that had thicker skin in the [ __ ] don't give a [ __ ] to get on with it um which is great but i don't know maybe maybe it's equally not as nice to to have as much feelings as we may have true yeah yeah i guess you know you don't want to hear any of this i'm a cuddly bald bear so i didn't want to mention the boldness but you said it um so obviously you've passed election what i'm always interested in so everyone who was you who you were training with i think they were all naked all right marines there was no army perfume i'll take it there's no joint training between you and the sas yeah yeah yeah so it's joint selection has been for years i i think that happened reasonably you're going to test me on the history now um in back in sort of you know 1940s 1950s there was a definite divide you know you read harrisburg and and you had the sbs it's the sas and sbs whereas um i can't remember the date that joint selection came about but it's been going for quite a few years um maybe surrenders the arraignment in 82 83 i think he was 1982. he don't make three you're going towards dave yeah he was hoping he'd get him good yeah um it must have been around about that time just just afterwards but basically equal amounts of or not equal amounts but there were there abouts of hereford applicants for the sas will be on selection just joint selection so you know if there's um if there's 150 of you then roughly half it could be sp right a lot of the time it would be quite it might be unequal depending on on how many candidates apply that for that year um but it's joint selection and when we on my selection it was roughly equal amounts that passed i can't remember how many it was quite a big selection we had a really strong course so if it was 20 of us that passed it was roughly 10 that were going to herrera further telling us and that was a big course you know it was a big big course would that be a normal expected password i think it was higher right yeah that was higher we had a really strong course and where would you put yourself on that course because there might be people watching right now that would well as in where do you place yourself do you think and those who who passed you know as to the strength of the candidate was the strength of her as far oh i smashed it as far as selection was concerned undoubtedly i smashed it and i had that mentality and um how interesting is that to hear though from somebody that you know you get through a course like that and most would say that's just a matter of complete survival i survived it i just got into that you know thank [ __ ] i've passed tony hayes smashed it yeah because i wanted it and it's almost like i prepared for it my whole life so and i think that that helps you a lot don't get me wrong because of what i i i you know it was slightly different for me moving on and a lot of the guys that pass um selection are extremely switched on and they are you know the you know the the top echelon of of human beings is the nougat remember being um in the squadrons after a couple of years and new guys coming in and younger guys younger generation but they're just sparking that's switched on and you've got to struggle to keep happening so as much as i smashed the election and again i had my own bosses i've already spoke about but the the jungle other than that that bit of a tough time at the end i quite enjoyed it because again it was you you've prepared so you know what you're doing you just you've got to show the drills and skills and have your admin squared away i never had an issue with my admin so that's probably why i didn't struggle too much but i enjoyed it because i was physically ready for it and the the heat didn't really trouble me as much as it came with some people but um i struggled a lot with the academic side of things so i i had to work a lot harder than others might have had to with retaining information and and learning the new skills so for fac training for instance one of the specializations in the squadron being a forward air controller when you've got to talk to the jets and bring the bombs in um not particularly hard course but you've got to apply yourself there's a lot to know you're speaking to jets and fighter pilots uh you know they're switching on cookies as well um and you have to really live up to their expectations when you when you're talking to them you've got to be um you know completely on the ball with what you're talking about and obviously the the being accurate as to where you're saying for these bombs to drop yeah yeah just a little bit exactly other guys and on my course in particular the they didn't really have an issue with that because they may have done university before the military um you know their brain might have been trained a bit better in that way with learning new stuff a bit easier because they're already used to studying in sort of past years whereas i didn't have any of that not using it as an excuse because i still obviously forged ahead and cracked on and and still produce the goods at the end but it was a lot harder for me compared to some people i really had to struggle yeah and that put loads of dents in the armor as well because that wore me out having to struggle a bit more than most other people were to keep up with the uber uber switched on cookies and [Music] dented density quite a bit and it does weigh you out but ultimately you pass um how long is that how long is the course at that stage where you you've passed selection four phases yes you've got the heels phase um you then if if you pass that you go on to the the jungle phase i'll be useless i think spiders okay absolutely my wife has to remove spiders so i would have failed spiders are fine bloody snakes that yeah you forget that as well i would once you've passed that it's then escaping evasion and um when you if if you pass escaping evasion then [Music] you which you then have resistance to interrogation to at the end of that yeah and if you pass that because that rolls into one so you go straight from escaping the version into resistance um if you pass that that's just the beginning you've just passed you then do continuation training which is even though you're badged and you've made it you've then got to do get yourself ready for the squadrons so whether you're going hereford or pool you've then got to do whether it be dive course you've got to do all your jumps your parachuting courses um your close quarter um battle courses your cqb stuff so that's where you're in the killing houses up in here referring with all your black kit on um learning all of those basics so that you've got the basics of everything clearly then you go into the squadrons so there's there's all these different areas of when you're just beginning so even getting loaded onto selection and passing the briefing course before selection once you've passed that it's just the beginning you've got to start selection get past selection once you've passed selection it's just beginning again because now you've got to go through continuation training you can still [ __ ] up once you've done that and you start this you walk into the squadrons for the first time it's only just starting again because you're you're fully aware of the and it's almost like not be careful what you wish for but it's you for me personally one of the lures and the wants for going special forces and getting out of marines as quickly as possible is because you're treated more as a grown-up and you're given more than enough rope to hang yourself yeah so because you're treated as a grown-up you're expected to know what you're doing within reason obviously um but you're expecting a jungle but uh no yeah yeah yeah exactly but um and yeah and that that in itself as much as i liked that it comes with its own pressures because then you you've really got to make sure you know what you're doing i imagine constantly yeah and just standing by guys that the majority of them are just naturally good at that you know naturally good at being able to be good at things very quickly how did you find the diving element during the training and certainly diving in just pitch black water from so for me the um the diving side of it i um was a non-diver for for a lot of the time the obvious is because most of it was was in afghanistan yeah and so i've done the three combat tours out in afghan um so i didn't really miss much because my period in the squadrons was in the heyday of when you know afghanistan kicking off so it's fair to say that really you know upon parcel selection you've you've pretty much been thrown straight into deliberate action constantly yeah kind of changed things because what they've done with us is with um with those of us that went to z squadron um we missed out some of our continuation training because of afghan so the last part of continuation training was the diving course and they picked a handful of us um to go straight on to the specific relative courses that we'd need to go out to operations so that's where i got loaded straight on so i was informed as soon as walking into the squadron i was informed right tony you're not going to be doing the dive course you're going to be doing an fac course because as soon as you pass that you're going straight out to afghan it was like now and when i come back it was straight into that rotation so if you don't do your dive course straight away it can sometimes then be years afterwards that you don't get to do it because something else would always come up um and it just so happened i never really got around to doing it when the one time that i did i ended up with an infection in my lungs due to a dirty bu which was horrendous i went had an x-ray by the doctor in the local sort of med center in gibraltar and he came out with the x-rays and he said well that'd be why you're out of breath and you could see the two the bits of the dark bits of water that are sitting at the bottom of my lungs um so i had to come back and it's like oh this is never going to happen yes so just thinking about the fact that you've passed selection now you are you're in the mix of it with seasoned operators um you've achieved what you wanted to achieve but ultimately there's still life outside of the military there's those around you that love your family so what was the family situation like there i'm just interested to know yeah i think it must have been quite challenging to be honest with you because the um the one of the things i think that i haven't really gone into is the struggles that i've had from day one going into the squadrons and i was very very quickly dealing with with stress and so it must have been tough and for the wife because the last couple of years so i was performing at the standard i should do even though i had to work a lot harder than most others i was performing to the standard i should have been for you know six seven years in squadrons which was just a relentless rotation and three tours of afghan the the counter-terrorism black role as well and it was just a continuous cycle did you have any downtime at all did you you you got limited downtime um to be honest with you very limited very very limited you didn't detour off into some other sort of form of training or specialism that you were just you could do you could do you could do external drafts and a lot of guys did so after a couple of years in the squadron you could put into ever being a training team go off to hereford which was a bit of downtime one of the training teams locally for like the boat or the dive team yeah and and that put you into a bit more of a stable thing for two years um i opted to stay in the squadron which was a mistake looking back on it now because i didn't want to miss out on anything i wanted to stay at the sharp end if you like which was silly um so for the whole time i was in the squadrons for seven eight years in the squadrons i was on that constant operational cycle um the last couple of years was when things were really starting to sort of break for me i was i was drinking heavily over weekend i was sinking a couple of bottles of wine in one night easily putting the music up full blast and my next-door neighbor if he ever listens to and watches this the time um at that time in the married patches he must have been like what the [ __ ] is going on because that was it was i didn't i wouldn't say i didn't know what i was doing but that's how much i was struggling i i would of a weekend to try and get away from it all i would just sink a couple of bottles of wine and by then by the time i was pissed enough to to forget i'd then whack the volume up right on in on the stereo and and then you know drowned everything out yeah what were you trying to escape for that day just the the day-to-day struggles and everything was starting to catch up so the stabbing was starting to catch up the the struggles of having to compete at such a high level we're starting to catch up and um you know you're just a you're just a man at the end of the day aren't you and you're not talking about that again very openly with people at that point you're dealing with not at all not at all no it wasn't the done thing um then on top of that my dad died unexpectedly suddenly with a massive heart attack um and that was kind of the final straw because he he wasn't insured my mum was about to lose her house um and i'm like you know i almost saw it as an escape almost as a as an out that's my reason this it gives me a valid reason to say that's it no more i want to get out um and i kind of rationalized it with no i'm doing the right thing i'm trying to look after my family um but maybe maybe it was the right thing anyway mentally i don't know how much more i could have handled arrest might have helped but um i think it was time i needed to change because to be able to operate that level if you if if you've lost your edge so to speak and you've lost that 100 commitment then you're not just a danger to yourself but you're a danger to your mates i don't want that sort of [ __ ] starting to creep into my head yeah sure when you're about to do something when you're stacked up on the door or you're doing underway drills which are massively dangerous climbing up inside your ships and if you've got an important role in making do where you've got to do something that if you don't do it right could jeopardize someone else's safety or yourself then you need to be grown up enough to um to be able to say that's me you know if if i feel that i've lost it and i can't perform 100 then it's time for me to go and then going because this is something you know i stepped away from something that i was part of 15 years and i struggled immensely with feelings of loss and uh yeah identity oh identity was a killer for me and i wish in a way it wasn't i wish in a way that that having done what i used to do wasn't such a part of me because i realized that whilst i was doing it it defined me far more than it should have done gave you a quiet confidence didn't it yeah yeah so as you're you know you could just be in a shopping center walking around and you know you could just exactly you just hold your head up and you've just got that thing inside you where it's i don't have to prove anything but like you said you know i know um and it can help in situations where someone might piss you off and it's like you know what i'm not even going to bother with you no i'll get that i get that you know so all these little things and yeah so that might sound silly and trivial but actually it becomes part of your life and the way that you live your life it becomes part of your identity and it's a big thing something i didn't even think about and something that could possibly be really good for to be a part of talking to people before they leave i don't know if they do they certainly didn't in my time um but it's it's a massive thing it took me years it's only in recent times now that i've realized it's a thing and it is something i actually struggled with um that that loss of identity it doesn't think it affects it does affect you and i think looking back as well the knock-on effect for me was i stepped away from the police at a time where i didn't have a great deal of savings i didn't have a big escape strategy that made sense so i had to sort of put my feet on the floor and just start walking i needed to start bringing an income in that's how it was at the time yeah and i had to balance with i had to balance the feelings of loss and all of them it's like a feeling of what was depression there was depression there without doubt yeah um but you wouldn't have known that face-to-face talking to me you wouldn't have known that clown face goes on completely yeah that work faces back up again yeah but behind the scenes my [ __ ] my life was all over the place again i wasn't a great husband there wasn't a great father i was just only doing the minimal because i didn't even know where i was where i was in life everything that i used to measure myself against have gone yeah it's really it was a horrible feeling so i can curl completely if there's a chance to talk to people in similar situations whatever unit force law enforcement government whatever it will be i think it's vital because you don't know you don't know how strong a feeling that is until it happens exactly but that's the goal and then you've got to deal with it that's the problem we've we've sort of we've strong characters with alf not even just alpha males but proud men um it's it takes it's got to come to a stage where you really are struggling and if you go back and say to someone like if the guys in the squadrons or guys in in the police units so and so forth and you go back and say look it's a mistake to not talk early on so if you get a wobble and you think it'd be okay i'll get past it talk because if you let it build up you might not be as lucky as what i've been and what you have been where it really does hit ahead and and and get to the stage where you're contemplating suicide um but lucky enough to actually come through it some guys aren't lucky enough but i wouldn't have listened to that at the time so it almost is that sad reality of that most guys are going to have to wait until they're in a situation where they hit rock bottom to find out if they're going to be that person or not to to to actually go through with any silly thoughts so it's quite easy to implore people and to say look talk please talk and a lot of people would listen to that and i i should imagine it would it would help people in the first instance it still needs to be said don't get me wrong because unless it was said so much i i wouldn't have eventually talked but it did take for me to be in an extremely dark place for me to eventually pick the phone yeah yeah but it absolutely saved my life look i'm going to admit a schoolboy admission right now and that's that i'm aware that the battery on our cameras very close to running out um so i could talk about this all day long i think what what we should do is just summarize by saying um i think there's no there's a whole other video actually in talking to you about your story certainly within special forces but i think we can we can at least find that final sorry finalize this by saying you spent you know six seven years is that right yeah ten years in total including two years in marines so um seven half eight years in squadrons and coming out of that with the with the the pressures upon the stresses upon you like they were you've gone into a period of if you can explain what he was private contracting maritime security yes and i'd love you to just touch on what's got a few minutes left and we will make another video i promise you because i think there's so much to share and it's important that we do but what this is hanging here what this is and how it came about so this this came about whilst i was doing maritime security operations on ship in in the indian ocean where you've got limited space um and i was lucky enough at the start to have british guy ex-military british guys in my team and more often not one of them would either have some olympic rings with the straps in their bag or a trx or something similar and i really started getting into using them and there was one time where i got caught out because the structure changed and we ended up having local nationals in part of our team so i would have like indian gurkhas or pakistani navy or x navy from from pakistan so they they made up the team but i didn't think they're probably not going to have a trx olympic greens in their bags so i was really getting into it and i thought right i don't want to miss out um i should have bought one myself but anyway i made i just looked around the ship found an old piece of rope um found some bits of plastic to use as handles and just made my own suspension trainer because let's face it a trx is effectively just a strap with plastic handles on so i thought to myself that's all i want to do because i want to continue my suspended dips because if you if you if you know about going to the gym you know and you've got the dip bars or if you use a chair and do dips they can be quite hard but once you get used to them you know it's a good exercise for your tries and you can sort of build up to being able to do quite a lot of dips quite quickly so you build yourself up if you're quite good at dips and then you try doing them saying olympic rings or you know you can't really do them on trx but if you do suspended dips it's a completely different ball game altogether so i thought ah that's going to help get over a plateau and build build more massive more strength so i really wanted to carry on getting into it um so yeah made put these plastic handles on a bit of rope and i thought if i hang it up and make it like a trx you're going to hunch up as you try and do a dip because it's a fixed point so i made two separate ones one bit of rope hanging down with a plastic handle on and then a separate bit of rope with a plastic handle on so then i could use them like olympic rings so and that's where the idea started you know coming to life and where it was born almost now how this came about with the two separate straps with the multiple handles on is the the rope that i was using with the plastic handle the rope carried on going down to the ground so as i was finishing my exercises doing the dips sort of mid height exercises i thought well if i just tie a knot in the bottom of the ropes i can then jump down and start doing um suspended press-ups so then it's almost like we're getting a fuller workout with a circuit more of a circuit and that's where the idea was born and it eventually evolved into something that we've got patented because the handles aren't fixed like they were on that old rope version um they actually move up and down on on the strap and they self lock as soon as you put pressure on them they self-lock you press the button to move them downwards and you can position them instantly wherever you want on on the strap get it set up the full version has got um three handles on each side and so you can position the low ones for whatever height you want for press-ups the middle ones forever mid exercise and the top ones for pull-ups you know leg raises whatever it is you want to do so you can effectively set it up how you want and do a full circuit training on it without having to touch or adjust um any of the the anchor points so you at the minute this is you're referring to this as sf1 the sf1 yeah and so i can say for persons we actually very kindly um gave me a set of this yeah and i've always loved suspension training so outside i've been talking about this now i can i can personally vouch for the fact that some of the things that i was always frustrated by by suspension trainers one is a stereotypically a trx will have a singular anchor point yeah and i didn't like that because if you are trying to do for example a press up you've got the straps rubbing across your body that's not representing the width of your body it would change depending on everybody so that's the first thing i've always liked was that years ago i actually used a suspension train i think we said body for life or something similar long gone okay well it was two separate points that was the first thing i thought that was great but i couldn't even find that in this one model the next thing is if you're using it intentionally if you can if you're using this for example to add muscle it's important to know how many reps you've done of something but at the same time it's important to know the angle that you're at and the positions of your hands of course look perfect you've actually marked the fabric with numbers so if you're that way incline if you've got your notebook or your working log you can write in there exactly where the handles were the handle placement now can be tracked with every every handle on the on each set which i think is fantastic the fact that this this locks into place does not budge there's no movement at all in that when you hang up for this thing yeah and the fact that you've got multiple handles i i'm genuinely excited about this then you're not getting mine back i don't care what history you've got you'll have to do a lot to try and get myself me again i i cannot emphasize how effective these are and i'm so glad that you're in a position now to go loud about this you have to show the world about sf1 because this is this is the new generation of suspension train and i'm not even selling this for you because you know yeah basically right it really is yeah what should have been done 10 years ago with suspension training i think it covers those bases that you know the separate anchor points the fact that you can track your progress that you can move the handles up and use the same set i i've been using it in circulating between four or five exercises yeah per circuit i don't have to do anything else other than move the handles which takes me a second it's absolutely fantastic so we've got there's so much more exciting things to come out from this because we we're already on the end of it innovating track if you like yeah because we don't want to stall after we launch the mark ii is already um on on the drawing board which um you know would i say mark two but um you know we've got a product range already in mind um the the customization of this as well and the um the ability to be able to uh to change it you can condense this down to just having um two handers on each side or just one handle so it it it even can sort of compete with just in the trx fashion and it can be as light and as mobile as a tlx if you so choose it to be um but similarly if you've got it hung up on um in the gym or a pull-up bar that you've got at home yeah you can have the full allocation of all three handles where you can do full circuit training without having to touch it but it it it will still condense down to a lighter version the handles you know you can just slip straight off the bottom yeah there is even without saying too much won't be involved in the first um in the first batches that get sold it's still slightly in development um but we've got a an attachment that will go with this that turns each side into its own trainer and it almost turns into exactly like what you get from a trx a single fixed point trainer so you could buy one product and if you wanted to train with a partner then you put it into um into that mode with the attachment that will come with it and it turns one trainer into two trainers i think it's amazing and i'm genuine look i'm so excited for you i'm so excited for this journey ahead of you because this i can see this being a great success um if people now i appreciate so we're on an early launch stage so to speak you know this is fully developed this is ready to go yes um in this in the short term it's going to be something that would be available so just in closing because i know we've got to close this off we'll make another video where could somebody find this in the future so we've the website is still um they're having the finishing touches put on it and the social pages will be up and running or are up and running sorry so sf1 strength is is where you'll find us okay so people search for sf1 strength social media yeah she better hunt you out exactly we'll have all the links on there and you can get further information and that will be the starting point to find out and what we've got going on oh it's fantastic look tony there's so much we didn't talk about i will take full responsibility for that because the battery's now about to go dead um i can feel dave's eyes piercing into me um let's make another video if anyone's been watching this and it's something that they want to hear more of we'll make another video we'll talk more about this i'd love to delve a little bit more into some of the things just as you're leaving the sbs but for now thank you so very much thank you for having me no it's been great this is this is episode one and this was tony hayes [Music] you

Channel: NO EXCUSE PODCAST

Views: 83,697

Rating: 4.8684654 out of 5

Keywords: Tony Hayes, SF1, Sf1strength, Sf1suspeniontrainer, Royal Marines, Sbs, Special boat service, UKSF, Ukspecialforces, Special forces, Jamieclark, Jamieclark47, No excuse podcast, No excuse films, Davetaylorfilmandimage, Tony Hayes, SF1, Sf1strength, Sf1suspeniontrainer, Royal Marines, Sbs, Special boat service, UKSF, Ukspecialforces, Special forces, Jamieclark, Jamieclark47, No excuse podcast, No excuse films, Davetaylorfilmandimage

Id: ddg4q5Bh6sw

Length: 108min 52sec (6532 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 03 2020