Team Talk: Team Talk: Joel Dommett on Being the Fittest Comedian
Joel Dommett is a man of many hats. He is a stand-up comedian and a presenter on the television set; an author of books and an actor in things. Most poignantly, he is a podcaster and a fitness obsessive. It was on the podcast that he produces with his wife Hannah Cooper, Never Have I Ever, that this happened:
So, of course, we called him. And found out that Joel trains to make sure he's not an 'arsehole' or a 'dickhead', how fitness is his 90 minutes a day of not over-thinking being funny and why he sort of enjoys being the weakest in the gym when he's working out with his muscly friends.
Men’s Health: Would you say you are the fittest comedian in the UK?
Joel Dommett: Probably. I don’t want to be egotistical and say yes. But yes, I would say so.
Could anyone challenge you for the title?
I can't think of anyone. I mean, it's definitely quite a niche. It's enough of a niche that I think I'm probably the fittest UK comedian. Well, comedian, presenter, podcaster, author-slash-actor-slash-fashion icon…
As a presenter/comedian/author/actor and the rest, does your routine make it hard to fit in training?
I started doing it exactly because it gave me routine, essentially. Because my job has no routine at all, as you say, and every day is completely different. Some days, I'll be filming from six in the morning till 10 at night. Some days, I'll just be doing a show, so I'll be driving all day, doing two hours of comedy and then driving all the way back. Some days, we’ll do a podcast. When I started training, it was to know that there was something consistent every single day, and that I had something to follow. If I have a programme, I follow it. I love lists. Every day, when I wake up, I have a list of things to get through. And that's the way I see my programming. I have my list of exercises, and I tick them off. It feels so good when you finish it. I think my main issue with programming is that I tend to follow them too religiously. I don't know when to, like, break out of those chains and go mad and have more fun. People ask me if I want to jump in on a workout? And I'm like: “No, I must stick to my plan. I have to do my accessories. I need to Bulgarian split squat!”
That said, having something to follow in my workouts is great. Otherwise, I would just care way too much about comedy and work. I'd care way too much about presenting y career. So, it just gives me something to distract from that; something else to care about.
Do you view your training as mindfulness, or a chance to be mindless and not think about anything else?
I know it's always really wanky to say you have an agent… but my agent knows that the one time of the day that I'm not available is when I'm in the gym. That's the time when I’m focusing only on that. It's also the time when I'm not on my phone. The rest of the day, I’m on my phone, doing bits and bobs. So, for that hour and a half, maybe two hours if I’m being lazy, I just get on with working out. It certainly settles my mind. Whenever I’m unable to train for a few days, or we've gone on holiday, I always feel like by the fourth day I'm just a bit of an arsehole. Hannah always asks me what's up, and I just say I need to go to the gym and sweat a bit or go for a run. I'm a nicer person when I work out.
Where do you normally train?
We’ve got a little gym in the garage, which is really helpful because it fits into the schedule of any given day. If I’m filming late at night, I can come back and I can do something before I go to bed. Hannah will come in and check on me. I feel like there are no time constraints if I’m in the garage. I'll just be pissing about doing random stuff, like trying different techniques for movements. She'll walk in because I’ve been in there for an hour and 45 minutes, then find me pissing about doing a handstand.
When did you get into fitness in the first place?
I was into running when I was younger. After I finished school, running was always my thing. I used to do cross country and marathon. Then my sister-in-law got me into CrossFit. She was doing it and it was very new at that point. It’s really frustrating. What I do with CrossFit is exactly the same thing that I used to do with comedy – when people ask how long I’ve been doing it, I’d always say three years. They would think I’m really good at comedy if I’d only been doing it for a few years. I do that with CrossFit because I feel like I’m probably quite good for three or four years. But I'm definitely shit for a decade.
When I started, I was only training every now and again. I found it kept me on the straight and narrow whenever I went away. I remember going to Melbourne Comedy Festival and there was a box right over the road from my hotel. It was perfect. It gave me something to do in the day before I went to my show. When I came back to the UK there was one close to my house, so I went there for a while. Then I went to The Yard in Peckham, which is such a good space and became my hub for years.
It’s a cheesy thing with CrossFit but it’s always given me a community of people and friends to hang out with. The industry I work in, it's quite easy to become a bit of a bit of a dickhead, because you're given things when you want them. You want a Diet Coke and someone brings you a Diet Coke. When you go to a TV show, you’re treated ridiculously nicely, which is lovely. But if you had that all the time, I think you’d very quickly become a terrible person. For me, the fitness space always keeps me grounded because I'm always the shittiest at lifting barbells with all of my friends. When I go to the gym, I'm definitely the most unfit of everybody. It's a leveller. I think it's important to be the worst in the room.
Do you value that your friends in the fitness space are completely separate from your career?
All my friends obviously know what I do. But it's just there's something about the gym. It’s a level playing ground. It just feels like everyone's in it together and we're all trying to get better at something. It doesn't matter who you are or where you've come from, or what you're doing, or what weight you have on the bar, or what you look like. It's a place that I feel like I'm treated like a normal guy, which is what am. I never want anyone to think that I've got lofty ambitions, that I think I'm a really super-cool dude. My friends in the gym are not afraid to treat me like an idiot. When I'm walking around, people in the street might go “That's Joel Dommett!” But when I'm in the gym, I'm just the weak guy.
What would you say your strengths are, then?
I’m naturally good at running and good at aerobic capacity stuff. I'm naturally good at things like burpees. That's my jam. I can always push myself through it. Whereas I don't have that mindset to snatch this amount of weight above my head. It's something I've tried to teach myself and so I do way more strength than cardiovascular stuff, because I feel like the cardio comes back quicker – if I stop doing my strength stuff it takes absolutely ages to get back. At the moment, I'm doing a pure weightlifting cycle, which I've been doing for the last six months. It's been really fun and I feel like my weightlifting has come on so much since I've started just focusing on one thing instead of doing everything all the time.
Has your training changed as you’ve got older?
Yeah, I’m 37 now and I’m less about trying to improve my snatch to 100kg. I just want to make my snatch at 80kg look better. But it’s only changed very recently for me. I’ve realised how much rest I need. It takes extra days off to get your body back together. Ten years ago, I was just going hell for leather. And it takes way longer to warm up. I'm okay with that. That is me. I stretch a lot more, I'm doing a lot more recovery. I mean, I'm in a very privileged position, but we just got an infrared sauna, put in our house, which is lovely, and I’m doing all the cold-water therapy stuff that everyone's obsessed with at the moment.
It genuinely does help my body but also helps me sleep better. I think I've just become a little bit more obsessed about recovery and sleep. At this point, I think it's about longevity, in my career and in my training. I’m happy with where I am with my career but staying there is the hardest part. There are not that many people who have stayed on television for 30 years, and to be one of those would be an incredible achievement. It’s the same with my fitness – I feel like I'm at a good level of fitness and I want to continue that into my forties and fifties. That’s what I think I'm trying to look towards now, instead of just trying to become an absolute beast.
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