Prof Greg Whyte interview: The LJMU sports scientist challenging celebrities

Professor Greg Whyte achieved sporting success as a modern pentathlete, winning championship medals and competing in Olympic Games.

Now a professor of applied sport and exercise science at Liverpool John Moores University, Greg has also become well known for putting some of the nation’s favourite celebrities through their paces to raise cash for Comic Relief and Sport Relief.

He chats to Your Move about physically testing the likes of David Walliams and Jo Brand, his enthusiasm for endurance and what the Commonwealth Games could mean for Liverpool.

Interview by Natasha Young

Tell us about your own background as an athlete.

I started training as a swimmer at six and in those days you could start competing then. By the age of eight I was competing and I became the national champion when I was 12.

When I came to being about 14 or 15 all my mates left swimming because that’s a classic age when you find other things in life.

I migrated into modern pentathlon and fortunately I was good at it.

Was it difficult going from one specialism to having to be good at everything involved?

It’s that jack of all trades but master of one thing and it’s very tricky. To some extent that’s what set me up for the way I live my life now – I’m quite eclectic in what I do but I like that, it keeps me motivated.

I won world silver, European bronze, I was seven times national champion and an Olympian which was really nice.

Since then I’ve migrated into endurance stuff – I swam the Channel, I raced in the Marathon Des Sables which is the toughest foot race on the planet, a cycle race across America and crazy stuff like that.

So you did your own challenges before working with celebrities for Sport Relief?

Yeah, and alongside it as well. With Sport Relief we started training in 2005 with David Walliams and he did his now iconic Channel swim in 2006. He went on to swim the Thames in 2011.

I’ve looked after all of those challenges for Sport Relief and Comic Relief and there’s been 23 of them. I’m always proud of the fact we’ve raised over £35 million for people less fortunate than ourselves so it’s quite exciting.

You do the challenges with the celebrities. Which has been the toughest?

They’re all tough, without a shadow of a doubt. They’re not manufactured for television, these are fly-on-the-wall documentaries about massive challenges.

I think the toughest would be the Thames swim with David Walliams – seven days, 20 miles a day consecutively in September when it was brutally cold and rained an awful lot.

The environment was tough. David got sick and I got a bit sick and it was a brutal attrition, but at the same time it was utterly amazing.

 

 

David had already swam the Channel and John Bishop plays in charity football matches on TV, but are many celebrities starting from scratch when training for these challenges?

Yes, Jo Brand was the most recent one and if you want to see transformation then in the first training session I did with Jo we did three miles and it took us over two hours.

Just 15 weeks later she walked 20 miles a day for seven consecutive days from Hull to Liverpool. Because of who Jo is, what the challenge was and critically where she came from, she was definitely not an athlete before we started but by the end of it she was truly iconic.

What’s that process like of taking someone from the beginning to one of the most extreme situations?

Invariably in life we’re bounded by what we think we can achieve and, critically, what other people think we can achieve. We’re bounded by what our friends, family and a lot of the wider society believe is possible.

What we all have to do is step outside of that sometimes and set an audacious goal because if you do that you can really understand what’s inside of you and what you can achieve.

For me, what those guys articulate best is exactly that and I think Jo really did resonate with people. Yes it’s physical, and there’s a huge amount of psychological and a massive behavioural change. It always sounds a bit crass but you are changing people’s lives.

Do you find afterwards that they stay on that path?

Definitely because they’ve stretched their boundaries in what is possible for them. Equally what’s  interesting, and you find it working with elite athletes, is that when it comes to physical challenges they understand what misery is.

Most people never push themselves far enough to understand what real misery is when it comes to physical exercise, whereas David Walliams knows what it is to be on the edge of failure and to be at his maximum capacity. Davina McCall knows that, John Bishop knows it, Eddie Izzard knows it, so it resets your boundary and you can push up much closer to it.

Everyone has an idea of what a famous comedian or pop star is like, but you must see them in a way they’ve never even seen themselves.

Definitely. It’s why they’re all really good friends of mine now, because it’s a very personal journey but it’s a very different one for them.

Part of what they have to do is trust in me because I’m not just looking after the challenge and their personal health; to some extent I’m actually looking after their profile because I’ve done 23 now and nobody wants to be the first one to fail so it’s really important on multiple different levels.

“Set an audacious goal because if you do that you can really understand what’s inside of you and what you can achieve.”

Is there another challenge in the pipeline?

Sport Relief is every two years so we’re just designing for 2018, and then for Comic Relief we tend to do either team challenges like when I took the guys up Kilimanjaro, or mini individual challenges like when Dermot O’Leary danced for 24 hours, which was really good fun.

Did your interest in endurance draw you into sports science?

I was intrigued by what makes people who they are in terms of performers and what makes them up and how you can make that better.

As an athlete that intrigued me too – at the time I thought how could I be a better swimmer and how could I be a better pentathlete?

At the same time sports science has almost been born in the UK and it was a really new subject. Liverpool John Moores University actually awarded the first ever sports science degree in the UK in 1975 and I started studying sports science in 1986, so it was a really young discipline at the time. Very few places did it, very few people did it so it was almost a leap in the dark.

I went on to do an MSc (Master of Science) degree in the States in human performance and then came back to do a PhD in cardiovascular function and it’s an amazing space to be in. It’s true science and true physiology but in the context of exercise and sport which is fantastic.

Liverpool is planning a 2026 Commonwealth Games bid. As someone working in sport in this city, what opportunities do you think it will bring?

I’ve worked with Team England at three Commonwealth Games and it’s a fantastic festival of sport. Glasgow was amazing not only because of the sport but because of the impact it had on the city and the engagement of everybody.

It was a fantastic place to be for almost a month and, in terms of volunteering, a huge number of locals got involved.

The opportunity for young people to see the best in the world competing is fantastic. There are multiple levels as to why it’s brilliant and the great thing about the Commonwealth Games is that it’s really accessible.

It ranges from classic track and field through to bowls – the type of sports you don’t always see at the Olympic Games but the sort of sports that engage the whole nation.

In Team England in Glasgow the youngest athlete, I think, was 16 and the oldest was in their 70s. It’s an amazing eclectic mix.

> Related: Liverpool’s Commonwealth bid: Can the city stage the games?

Is there a sporting challenge you’d still like to complete?

There’s so much out there but one thing I haven’t done is a big polar challenge. For me it’s about racing, more than it’s about just competing though.

A big race to the pole – south or north – would be really good fun.