Ex-SBS Sniper and Special Forces Operative Ant Middleton Shares His Mental Resilience Tips
When Ant Middleton talks to you, you listen. Not because he’s screaming in your face, or probing you for psychological weaknesses. And not because he’s dealing out the physical “beastings” for which he has become notorious on Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins. It’s because he wants you to be a better version of yourself. He wills it, even. And it’s hard to ignore.
At the age of 38, he has lived more lives than most. He signed up for the army at 16, serving in the Royal Engineers in Northern Ireland and Macedonia, then joined the navy and the Royal Marines before entering the Special Boat Service (SBS), in a military career spanning 15 years. He has climbed Everest and captained a team of average men across 4,000 miles of the Pacific Ocean in a rudimentary rowing boat. He’s a Sunday Times bestselling author of two books and father to five children. He has been in prison.
Today, though, he is with Men’s Health at Farm Fitness in Essex, an outdoor training facility not too far from his family home in Chelmsford. It’s a rare break in his diary from the commitments of his current speaking tour, Mind Over Muscle, a bustling schedule of back-to-back live shows across the UK, from Glasgow to Brighton. His book First Man In was behind only Michelle Obama’s memoir in the hardback bestsellers list for 2018, and he is primed to launch a series of day camps, which promise to help you “reach your full potential” through testing experiences and workshops.
He has spent a long morning with MH, grafting in the soggy cold of early spring, repping out rope climbs, pull-ups, dips and deadlifts without complaint, chatting easily with the crew between shots before snapping into focus for every effort.
Now, in a garage away from the bustle of the training areas, Middleton reclines on an old garden chair dragged out from behind some half-fixed cars, dressed in tracksuit bottoms and a gilet thrown on after the photo shoot, tattooed arms bare. His focus and energy are palpable, despite his increasingly hectic media career and home life. How can an ordinary person apply his extreme experiences to normal life? Can they gain his self-possession? Before he answers, he leans forward – right forward – and looks at me.
“Most people don’t think about their emotions,” he says. “When an emotion surfaces, nine times out of 10, people let it take over. Fear is the main one: fear of the unknown, fear of conflict, fear of failure. We don’t see the emotion for what it is.
“My best example is Afghanistan. ‘Why am I stuck at this door? Why can’t I get through this door?’ It’s because I’m scared. It’s that acknowledgement that people don’t do. Don’t sugar-coat it, don’t try to bat it off, because it will come back and bite you on the arse. Just acknowledge it for what it is. Then, you can carry on. Acknowledge, process, execute. A lot of people don’t do that.”
It’s fair to say that Middleton is a staunch advocate of the beneficial power of a positive mindset. In his books, on his television shows and in his talks, he effortlessly fires off examples from his past to illustrate how his mentality has been forged.
Breaking Down Doors
Middleton says it wasn’t until he left the military that he refined his psyche, but the Afghan compounds he found himself outside as an SBS operative were where it started to take shape.
“You’re at this door and there are bad guys on the other side. Bullets are flying through, and you’ve got to get through that door,” Middleton says, leaning forward further for emphasis. “It’s the purest form of life, because it’s so simple. If you roll odds, you die. Evens, you live. When you deal with that on a daily basis, you learn to harness it. You have to.
“You take charge of your mind, and everything slows down, like in a film. People say that they’ve experienced it once or twice. But that happened to me 20 fucking times in the first few months: 60, maybe 100 times in total.
“You see everything and can plan it out. You know the enemy hasn’t been in that situation, so you go in feeling like you have the remote and can pause and play as you go. It’s hyper-confidence, approaching arrogance: ‘You can shoot as many rounds through that door as
you like, mate, but I know the right time to smash through!’
He holds up both hands, fingers cocked in an imaginary rifle, and strafes across in slow motion. “You just go into bullet time: boom-boom-boom-boom…”
Sitting back again, Middleton smiles, his hands safely holstered in his lap. “I used to say to my mates, ‘I can dodge bullets,’ and they’d think I was mad. Looking back now, I probably had gone a bit mad. I genuinely thought I could pre-empt someone shooting and move the right way to avoid it. It wasn’t until I said it out loud that it seemed crazy.
“But that was the norm. And I went from this code-red lifestyle to regular life. Now, having scaled things down, I can reflect on it in a positive way. It’s only when I’m uncomfortable that I feel truly comfortable.”
After leaving the military, Middleton soon found himself on the wrong side of another door. After a brawl outside a nightclub in Chelmsford, during which he played the peacekeeper by separating his friends from the antagonists, he was approached by two police officers with whom he lost his temper. After a foot chase, he hid by submerging himself in a nearby river under a bridge, but he was found, arrested and spent the night in a cell.
In court, Middleton was convicted of the unlawful wounding of a police officer and common assault on another. He was handed 14 months in prison and sent down. To him, it was a blessing.
“When that hammer went down, I felt this wave of relief wash over me. I knew exactly where I was going, exactly what I was doing and exactly what I needed to do. I needed to get out of there. How do I do that? By being the best prisoner. Acknowledge: I’m going to prison. Process: I need to be a role-model prisoner. Execute: stay out of trouble and do all the shitty jobs I can to keep myself busy.”
Middleton mopped the floors, acted as a gym orderly and taught English to inmates who couldn’t read or write. After two months, he was let out for good behaviour. He took the positives from his time inside and left the rest of it behind him. It was owning his transgression completely, he believes, that prevented it from defining him.
“When I was on trial – I’ve never told anyone this – my barrister said I should claim I had PTSD and I’d get a slap on the wrist. I’d get a two-year suspended sentence and that would be that. But I said, ‘I haven’t got PTSD. I don’t suffer from any mental health issues. I got pissed and fucked up!’ Can you imagine if I went down that route? Fucking hell, am I digging myself a hole for the rest of my life? Of course I am. You have to be honest with yourself.
“It was just a bad life decision. It’s not because my father died when I was five years old. It’s not because I’ve been to war. I fucked up, chose the wrong option, put my hand up and did what I needed to do. That’s nothing to me now.”
Going All In
The first series of SAS: Who Dares Wins aired in 2015. Since then, there have been four main series and a celebrity version to support Stand Up to Cancer, with the programme hugely exceeding expectations to make the Sunday 9pm slot its own, attracting more than three million viewers. As chief instructor, Middleton and his fellow former special forces directing staff initially put recruits through selection in south-western Wales, before the success of the show propelled them to the Amazonian rainforest, the Atlas Mountains and the Andes.
Who Dares Wins has taken him about as far from Chelmsford as you can imagine, and for increasingly longer periods during preparations for each series. Then there are his media engagements all over the UK. But he does not allow the logistics of his post-military career to impact upon his performance at work or with his family. He simply gives both barrels.
“When I do my work, I’m 100 per cent work. When I’m being a husband, I’m 100 per cent a husband. When I’m away from the family, I see it as a short-term sacrifice. I love doing my challenges and adventures; they allow me to be myself. So, when I get home, even though they might have me for six months of the year, they get 100% of me, rather than 50% for 12 months.”
The idea of going all in on each aspect of your life is an attractive one, with clear benefits to the average man. Predictably, though, Middleton’s “challenges and adventures” tend to be more challenging and adventurous than a long Sunday bike ride, or a 10K every now and then.
For last year’s Channel 4 programme Ant Middleton: Extreme Everest, he led a small team in an attempt to summit the highest mountain on Earth – a six-week expedition in which he, cameraman Ed Wardle and a Sherpa successfully reached the top. Once there, however, treacherous weather made the already difficult descent from the “death zone” a perilous one. Middleton was the last person in the queue to descend, with oxygen dwindling and other mountaineers and even Sherpas struggling in front of him.
“I was stood at the summit for three hours,” he recounts. “There was a climber hanging off the side of the mountain and he’d been there for 45 minutes. They were going to cut him away. Two other climbers had already fallen off the mountain.
“The situation told me that I was in trouble. I remember this state of sheer panic – ‘Ant, you’re not getting off this mountain.’ It took over for 10 seconds. I sat down and thought: ‘I’m dead.’ Then I looked at myself and thought, ‘You’re not fucking dead. Practise what you preach.’ And I snapped out of it.”
Middleton eventually made it back to camp, after Wardle and the programme producers had begun to entertain the thought that he had perished. His eyesight was worst affected, and it took months to return to normal. The lesson he learned on top of the world was that your internal monologue can make the difference when it really matters. He leans forward again, even further somehow, to make sure this point hits its mark.
“If a situation can’t define who you are, and you’re courageous enough to ensure that people can’t either, you’re left with one thing – yourself. If you wrote your own appraisal for your boss or your partner, you’d write that you’re the best fucking work colleague or boyfriend or husband in the world, wouldn’t you? So, why don’t we do that? Why don’t we write the shit out of our own appraisal? Ultimately, what we do is define ourselves. We say: ‘I can’t do that,’ or ‘I’m not fit enough to do that.’ It all starts with believing in yourself. And when you believe, you’ll try something. And when you try, you learn. And when you learn, you grow.”
Personal growth is a leitmotif for Middleton. He is single-minded in his desire to better himself, as well as provide the mental tools for others to do the same. It’s a mission that strongly echoes the Men’s Health credo, though his messages are delivered with a percussive force and in rapid fire. In person, the volleys give you the irrepressible feeling that he’s onto something. About everything.
“People say that you shouldn’t make the same mistake twice. Fuck that. Go at something 30 times if you believe in it. Most people try something once, maybe twice, then say, ‘Oh, I’m just not meant for this.’ That’s bollocks. Resilience is that repetition. Failure is an everyday part of our lives. We’re petrified of that word – failure. It’s a dirty word.
“I’ve failed up to this point in my life and I’m going to fail until the day I die. It doesn’t matter how big or small that failure is: I’m going to fail. And I embrace that. That is part of my make-up – failure. Resilience is dealing with knock-backs and knowing that it’s going to fucking happen your whole life. Get used it.”
Master and Commander
In 2016, Middleton was approached by a production company about a show called Mutiny. In it, he would captain a team of eight men in the manner of Captain Bligh’s survival odyssey following the famous uprising on the Bounty. They would be using a replica of Bligh’s ship, stocked with the same rations and following the same route, starting near Tonga and traversing the South Pacific, across the top of Australia, and landing at Timor in the former Dutch East Indies. He accepted, with a crucial caveat.
“I said I didn’t want to see the safety boat. Of course, there has to be one, but I didn’t want to see it. It would have to be out of earshot and out of sight at all times. Otherwise, it would burst our bubble.
“I wanted to train the men’s mindset. Tell them we put ourselves in that situation and we were the only people who could get ourselves out of it. That if we stuck together, we would get through this.”
Among his crew were a chef, a banker and a carpenter. Only one, Conrad Humphreys, had the navigational and sailing experience to complement Middleton’s skills of leadership and survival. It was a test of the captain’s resolve, not to mention the physical reality of 60 days at sea, during which he lost more than 10kg. Middleton describes it as one of the hardest things he’s done.
The crucible was a windless 10 days that left them bobbing listlessly in the South Pacific heat. Humphreys wanted to start rowing, hoping to hit a zephyr of wind to get them going. But Middleton’s instincts told him to preserve the crew’s energy, despite the rumblings of discontent.
“We had 500 miles to go, people were passing out on 400kcal and less than a litre of water a day. Some had lost a couple of stone. Conrad wanted to row, but how many calories would it take – 600kcal an hour? Where would we get in an hour? Five or six miles? If we had 50 miles, let’s go. But there was no way I was going to let the men row. I’d have killed them.”
Middleton’s decision wasn’t popular, and as the days without wind dragged on, more began to side with Humphreys. But the captain refused to bow to consensus. Survival meant doing as little as possible to conserve energy, even if it increased the frustration. “Leadership is taking charge of yourself before you take charge of others. We were stuck there for 10 days and on the 11th – boom – the wind came back.”
Every beat of a conversation with Ant Middleton is shot through with this unflappable conviction: conviction in his mindset, conviction in his way of working, training and communicating. When he fixes you with a piercing stare and speaks, you are mainlined to that will. His is not the soft approach of a social-media mindset guru. It’s enthralling, exhilarating thinking, dealt in concussive blows.
“If you reckon you don’t have time to think about yourself because of work or your kids, just consider: what are you doing? You are thinking about yourself, but you’re reflecting negatively. Flip it. Start thinking positively. That’s all it is. Why do we hate ourselves? Why do we do it to ourselves? No person is brought into this world to be down on themselves.”
He leans forward a final time.
“My purpose in life is to be the best version of myself. And it’s a fascinating journey when you look at it like that. And you’ll never get there. That’s the point.”
For more information about Ant Middleton’s Mind Over Muscle day camps, visit: mindovermuscle.com
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