Peaty first made a splash outside of swimming circles at the Rio 2016 Olympics, where his 100m breastroke victory made him the first British male gold medal-winning swimmer since 1988.

Five years on, he defended his title at the delayed 2020 Games in Tokyo, becoming the first British swimmer – male or female – ever to retain an Olympic gold. 

But while Olympics exploits captured national attention, Peaty’s year-on-year performances on the less-publicised swimming circuit are the real mark of his greatness.

A three-time Commonwealth Champion, 16-time European Champion and eight-time World Champion, very few athletes have so utterly dominated their discipline over such a long period of time.

It’s not a case of simply beating the next-best man, either; Peaty isn’t so much in competition with the unfortunate athletes in the same pool as him, as he is with himself.

It’s a point proven by the remarkable stat that at one stage in 2021, he held each of the 20 fastest times ever recorded over 100m breaststroke. 

Check out more of our interviews with top athletes

Pursuit of perfection

Clearly, such success is founded on a huge amount of natural talent. In fact, Peaty’s physiology means he was virtually born to swim breastroke.

Standing at 6ft 3in, with size 12 feet and shovel-like hands, he’s able to pull himself through the water with uniquely powerful strokes. Add to that double-jointed knees and ankles that allow him to kick more effectively, along with monstrous lung capacity, and you have the blueprint for brilliance. 

However, ability is nothing without application, and though all professional athletes possess greater drive than most, it’s difficult to imagine anyone with a more unwavering commitment to continual progress.

Despite all he’s achieved, Peaty is far from satisfied. 

“It’s about relentless effort in the pursuit of excellence,” he says, when I ask how he continues to stay motivated – for the 5am alarms and relentless training – after winning virtually all there is to win.

“For me, especially over the past seven or eight years, I’ve always found a way to get better – to get faster, stronger, fitter.”

It’s a lifestyle, he admits, which “comes at a cost” (Peaty has a young son with long-term girlfriend Eirianedd Munro), but though two years of coronavirus lockdowns allowed more time at home, he remains “addicted to this way of life.” 

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Adam Peaty’s cast iron mindset

Such a cast-iron mindset is something he’s seemingly always had. Youth swimming gets a bad rap in popular culture – overcompetitive parents and reluctant kids are common tropes – but speaking to Peaty provides the clearest possible sense that he simply loves what he does, and has done for as long as he can remember. 

“I’ve never really been into team sports,” he says. “I think it’s because I know that my performance is solely in my hands – I like my own standard and my own results. I enjoy going hell for leather – heart rate up at 200 – and pushing myself to my limit.”

That passion may have been a constant, but soon after turning pro Peaty was also quick to recruit the help of a sports psychologist to help him realise his true potential. In 2014, he started working with the world-renowned
Bill Beswick – who has Manchester United on his list of clients.

“Funnily enough,” says Peaty, “it was around then I started to get good.”

On their first meeting, Beswick gave the account of a rugby game between France and the New Zealand All Blacks.

Before the game, the All Blacks performed their traditional ‘Haka’ dance, which had the desired effect of intimidating the already-underdog French team – and it showed. France went on to get resoundly thumped.

However, in the next meeting between the two teams, the French vowed to face the Haka down and show no sign of weakness. Staring the All Blacks directly in the eyes, a member of the New Zealand team eventually looked away. What followed was a famous French win.

“Bill told me,” Peaty concludes, “that’s what you need to do: you need to look the challenge head on and say, ‘Not today.’”

Adam Peaty on motivation

But is that refusal to be beaten all that spurs him on, or are there other motivating factors? Well motivation, it turns out, is a weak motivator…

“David Goggins [former Navy SEAL turned ultra-endurance athlete] once said, ‘Motivation isn’t strong enough to get you through the tests of life,’ and I completely agree.

“Motivation can be a useful thing, but there’s no way around it, you’ve just got to be willing to go get it every single day. It comes down to dedication and respect: that I’ll always show up and give 100% both for the coach and myself.”

Performance in training is one thing, but what about when he’s lining up at the start of an Olympic or World Championship Final – how does he stay composed enough to put the thousands of hours of training into practice? 

“Pre-race I will imagine every single possible scenario,” Peaty tells me, “so before the breastroke final in Rio, I had swam that race thousands of times in my mind. When I actually swam it, it felt easy, because I’d already been there.

“In the pool, it’s all muscle memory. I will have done that race thousands of times and trained it pretty much every day for the last 15 years. I’ll just be thinking about the fine details to do with technique, as well as awareness of where I am in the water, then towards the end it’s fight or flight, going as hard as I can.”

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Mental strength and ‘hard graft’

However, in sport a powerful mentality can do little with a weak body, and Peaty’s commitment to mental strength is bettered only by his commitment to, in his words, “hard graft”.

In the pool, that means 55,000m each week – length after endless length, perfecting every aspect imaginable.

Out of the pool, it’s about building the strength and mobility to move as powerfully as possible through the water. And that’s the stuff he loves.

“Strength and conditioning, for me, is the fun side of training,” Peaty admits. “I love putting my headphones in, with a bit of Metallica, and just going for it. I love the challenge of it.

“Swimming is extremely hard, but I’ve been doing it all my life, so I can always find a way to do it. If I’m doing new exercises in the gym, it’s a fresh challenge.” 

Barbell complex routine

He gives the example of a barbell complex (essentially doing all the exercises without putting the bar down) recently introduced to his routine: 6 x hang clean, 6 x front squat, 6 x shoulder press.

“Do that five times,” he says, “and it absolutely hammers you. I’m less used to this type of stuff, so it’s building a completely new side to my fitness.”

On Saturdays, he also cycles through a high-intensity bodyweight circuit – “these exercises are easy for anyone, but it’s all about intensity. Much better to do a 15-minute intensity block than 30 minutes half-arsed.”

Regular readers will remember our interview with strongman Eddie Hall a few months back. Hall credited much of his superhuman strength to years spent swimming competitively as a teenager.

Towards the end of the conversation with Peaty, I ask if he agrees that swimming can be a useful complement to work in the gym.

The short answer: yes. “Swimming creates flexibility,” he says, “and if you’ve got flexibility in your joints and muscles, you have a very good base from which to build muscle and strength.” 

But for anyone tempted to dip their toe in, Peaty brings the main benefit back to the mind. “To progress in any sport,” he says, “you have to be willing to push through when you feel like you’re going to break.

“For me, the main thing is that swimming makes you a grafter.”

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3. 15 minutes with… GB swimmer Ben Proud

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That victory catapulted him into last year’s CrossFit Games, becoming the only man in Ireland to gain entry to the world’s premier CrossFit competition.

Here he talks favourite WODs, finding a way into the sport, and how beginners can follow suit…

‘I found CrossFit when I was in secondary school, thanks to a man who was extremely overqualified just to be called a PE teacher. He was an excellent strength and conditioning coach who had produced serious athletes throughout the years. He got me to join an after-school CrossFit club. I already had an interest in fitness because I was doing kung fu and Chinese kickboxing, but it was all cultivated in an after-school setting.

‘It was a tough introduction – but justifiably. If you were a kid who wanted to be physically active – which I was – he was all for it. He would go out of his way to help you develop as an athlete. Back then, because we were younger, it was less of the Olympic lifting kind of weights work and more bodyweight stuff with some running, kettlebells and medicine ball sessions. Hard, but ideal for developing a growing body.

‘Towards my last year of school, I was thinking, OK well, and I don’t want to get hit in the head too much as I’m doing exams, so it’s time to drop the martial arts! At the age of 17 you’re starting to see your body develop and by then the weightlifting started to come more naturally.

Sam Stewart: ‘I already had an interest in fitness because I was doing kung fu and Chinese kickboxing’

‘It’s special when you’re at a CrossFit Games, and you look out into the crowd and see that almost all the fans in the crowd are CrossFitters themselves. It’s really made up of people who train for CrossFit. I think there’s a great connection with us, through a shared suffering. Everyone goes through these workouts together. And that has built a camaraderie and community among fans that appeals to newcomers.

‘The key is to be consistent, don’t fall into the trap of seeing the new flavour of the month exercise, and don’t constantly swap between different programmes. Find a respected programme, with a solid coaching methodology, and stick with it for the long haul. If you want to actually see results, you’ve got to be training consistently.

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There are two types of CrossFitter: those who do this for health, so that when they’re an old person they’re more capable than someone who’s sat on their arse for 50 years; and then there’s the type doing it for sports, out to compete. Depending on your individual goals, the style of training might change, but what shouldn’t change between those two is that you need to be consistent with your training. That’s the secret to achieving your goals.

Sam Stewart: ‘There are two types of CrossFitter: those who do this for health […] and then there’s the type doing it for sports, out to compete.’

Just as important as all that cool stuff you do in the gym, is what you fuel your body with. What you do to recover. Your attention to stretching properly and ensuring you’re getting plenty of sleep. You can do all the CrossFit gym work in the world, but if your diet mainly consists of ice cream and you sleep two hours a night, you’re not going to be a good athlete.

I train hard five days a week, but look to have Thursdays and Sundays as complete rest days. In the build-up to a major event I’ll up the intensity, but when that competition is over I’ll take a whole week out and let my hair down. You have to reward yourself and refresh your appetite for training.

My diet is very different to a bodybuilder, who might be trying to lose body fat to be extremely lean on a certain date. I consume a lot more carbohydrates, as I’m training at high intensities and at different loads. I could be running, lifting, or walking on my hands, and I need to have enough calories in my system so that I don’t crash halfway through the day.

Getting into CrossFit can be daunting, especially when you see the Netflix documentaries and you’re seeing the top 0.0001% of athletes in the world. But what’s cool about CrossFit is that there’s always a scalable level. You see these guys doing an Olympic lifter snatch and they’re lifting, say, 125 kilos. There’s no reason why you can’t get the same development from an empty barbell or a broomstick to start with.

Sam Stewart: ‘Getting into CrossFit can be daunting […] But what’s cool about CrossFit is that there’s always a scalable level’

You can’t jump the gun: you have to be willing to take a few steps back to take massive leaps forward. Get your technique right, be consistent in your training and who knows where you’ll end up.

My favourite exercise is either the squat snatch or ring muscle-up – those are two pretty sexy movements. The most demanding drill, I think, is a wall ball, which is basically squatting down and throwing a medicine ball up at a target. It’s very repetitive and you spend most of the time staring at the wall from just a foot away. It can be a killer.

As for WODs, ‘Fran’ is my favourite:

(21-15-9 reps for time)

• Thrusters (95/65lb)
• Pull-Ups

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Sam Stewart is a PUMA CrossFit athlete

Interview: Rob Kemp

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If you’ve never heard of Michael ‘Venom’ Page, there’s a YouTube video you need to see. Walking into his mixed martial arts debut – in the UCMMA promotion, a level below the UFC – Page looked like a man with dozens of fights under his belt, with a style that’s half Roy Jones Jr, half contemporary dance.

Related: MMA Training: Why You Need To Try A Combat Sport

Then, less than two minutes in, he dropped the big one: a full-rotation 360° tornado kick that sent his opponent to the canvas while Page stood there, unruffled. 

It’s more than a stunningly assured debut. It’s basically real-life Tekken. Not surprisingly, Page has been at this game a long time. 

“My parents, aunties, uncles, brothers and sisters all study lau gar kung fu,” he says. “And my dad was my instructor, so it’s definitely a family thing. Literally as soon as I’d taken my first couple of steps, my dad was like, ‘Alright son, kick!’” 

Having fought 21 times in a storied Bellator MMA career, Page has had to maintain next-level discipline in the gym to stay at the top of his game. 

“I do strength and conditioning workouts twice a week during camp, to help build my speed and explosiveness before a fight,” he says.

“The sessions are designed to replicate real fight scenarios. It’s more useful for me to use free weights, perform circuits or add extra weight to bodyweight exercises than it is to sit at a stationary machine pumping iron. In terms of cardio, there’s no better training than just doing MMA sparring.” 

Fight-specific MMA Workout to Build Power 

“This workout helps to develop speed and power by replicating the kind of movements you perform in an MMA fight,” says Page’s coach, Paul Ivens. “The idea is to get quality reps in.”

1. Tuck Jump with Weighted Vest (4 sets | 6 reps)
2. Sprawl with Weighted Vest (4 sets | 8 reps)
3. Medicine Ball Drive into a Heavy Bag (4 sets | 12 reps)
4. Medicine Ball Slam (4 sets | 6 reps)
5. Landmine Barbell Punch (3 sets | 15 each arm)
6. Weight Plate Hip Rotation (4 sets | 10 reps)

Keep reading for full instructions on how to perform the exercises in this MMA workout.

1. Tuck Jump with Weighted Vest

Sets: 4 | Reps: 6

• Squat, then jump explosively upwards, bringing your knees up towards your chest.

2. Sprawl with Weighted Vest

Sets: 4 | Reps: 8

• Drop to the floor, keeping your chest upright and throwing your hips down and your legs out behind you.

3. Medicine Ball Drive into a Heavy Bag

Sets: 4 | Reps: 12

• Standing above the heavy bag, ‘punch’ the ball into it. Retrieve it for the next try.

4. Medicine Ball Slam

Sets: 4 | Reps: 6

• Lift a medicine ball above your head with two hands and then slam it forcefully into the ground, releasing it shortly before impact.

5. Landmine Barbell Punch

Sets: 3 | Reps: 15 each arm

• Holding the end of a barbell (secured to landmine attachment) in one hand, twist using your hips and core to punch the bar forward.

6. Weight Plate Hip Rotation

Sets: 4 | Reps: 10

• Hold a weight plate in front of your chest, then rotate your torso from side to side.
• Maintain a braced core throughout.

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