EDITOR’S LETTER
IMPROVE YOURSELF AND THE WORLD AROUND YOU
When I spoke to Joe Wicks over Zoom around 15 months ago, things were rather different. For a start, it was over Zoom, which was still in and of itself a novelty (oh, the virtual pub quizzes we would have long into, um, May 2020). Meanwhile, the prevailing mood was one of dissonance – as the pandemic grew in intensity, accompanied by the narrative of dismal daily TV bulletins, outside a glorious British summer blazed in counterpoint. I was interviewing from my office-cum-man-cave and still secretly quite enjoying this working-from-home lark, before it gradually and insidiously morphed into living-from-work. Down the line, Joe was lying on the same bed on which he’d experienced the epiphany that had launched PE with Joe a few weeks earlier – a phenomenon that saw half the nation get its daily aerobic fix, while the other half got quietly sozzled on supermarket booze. Those were strange days, indeed.
Nevertheless, for the most part, Wicks was just as we’d come to expect him to be over the numerous times he’d been profiled for Men’s Health – self-effacing, utterly without guile and seemingly incapable of being anything other than straight up and forward. So, it was disarming at one point in our conversation to hear him change the tune a little – to call the shots and slip into uncharacteristic audacity. “I want to be the person who completely transforms the health of the nation,” he said. And all of a sudden, I went from suspecting that we had already covered everything worth knowing about Joe Wicks to thinking that here was a man with a drive and a calling that was not only rare but demanded attention.
Fast-forward a little over a year and much has changed – not just in relation to COVID-19 but in terms of Joe’s character and ambition. He is still the no-nonsense, no-frills Joe, but now there’s a calm maturity to the way he speaks, as well as a noticeably steelier resilience. Crucially, he’s staying true to his commitment to transformation – not just in before-and-after shots of housewives who’ve managed to shed a view kilos courtesy of a Body Coach plan, but in terms of people’s livelihoods, mindsets and mental health.
Wicks’s journey from jobbing PT, scouting for work in Richmond Park, to Instagram sensation and best-selling cookbook author is a tale well worn. But in recent months, the brief has widened. Average Joe has become Joe Wicks MBE. He has turned into a serial fundraiser, having famously donated profits from PE with Joe to the NHS and then completing a 24-hour workout challenge, raising over £2m for Children in Need. Most recently, he has been made ambassador for the progressive fitness apparel brand Lululemon. And he is the host of a successful podcast series that quizzes well-known personalities from Mo Farah to Jamie Oliver on their secrets to good health and happiness. It might just be the first time that Sir Tom Jones has been asked to expound on what makes him physically and mentally strong – which can only be a good thing.
For this issue, we decided to turn the tables on him and recruited various luminaries from the worlds of mental health, nutrition and fitness to put their own questions to Joe. Ever game, always unflinchingly honest, his answers deal with everything from personal motivation to burnout, balancing family and ambition, positivity and negativity, and even the lure of drink and drugs. But it’s his response to the transformation question that shows just how far Joe Wicks has come.
“I like inspiring adults, but with the kids, it feels so important and I feel like I get more energy from it,” he says. “Because I know I’m changing people’s lives. If you can get them when they’re young, really inspire them, then they can fall in love with exercise. I think, in years to come, when I’m 80 or 90 years old, I won’t be remembered for cookbook sales or YouTube views. It’ll be for the impact I had on fitness in young people.”
TOBY WISEMAN, EDITOR IN CHIEF