Joe Wicks, fitness trainer and author

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 14 June 2020

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Joe Wicks, professionally known as The Body Coach, is a fitness and nutrition coach. Since the lockdown, he has been running daily free virtual PE lessons for children and adults stuck at home. In March he became a Guinness World Record holder after his second PE with Joe class was watched by 955,158 people around the world, a record number of viewers for a live streamed YouTube workout. Getting children to be more active has been a long-held ambition and in 2019 he went on a tour of fifteen schools around the UK delivering High Intensity Interval Training workouts as part of his mission to get school children working out for 15 minutes a day. Born in 1985, Joe’s mother was nineteen when she gave birth to him while his father was in and out of his life with a heroin addiction. He was a hyperactive child whose salvation at school was channelling his excess energy into PE lessons. With a Sports Science degree under his belt, he briefly became a teaching assistant himself, but found it wasn’t for him and set himself up as a personal trainer instead, preaching the importance of combining training with the right nutrition. With the advent of the video function on Instagram, he started posting free 15-second recipes using the name The Body Coach, building up a following of first hundreds, then thousands and eventually millions. His phenomenally successful business began when he created a commercial 90-day plan with workouts and meals. He published Lean in 15 in 2015 which became the bestselling non-fiction book of the year, and he has since written eight further cook books. He married his wife, Rosie, in 2019 and the couple have two children, Indie and Marley. DISC ONE: Shotgun by George Ezra DISC TWO: Bright Side of the Road by Van Morrison DISC THREE: Three Little Birds by Bob Marley And The Wailers DISC FOUR: When You Were Young by The Killers DISC FIVE: Thunder Road by Bruce Springsteen DISC SIX: River by Leon Bridges DISC SEVEN: Nothing Can Change This Love by Sam Cooke DISC EIGHT: You’re Welcome by Dwayne Johnson BOOK CHOICE: Lord of the Flies by William Golding LUXURY ITEM: An acoustic guitar CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: River by Leon Bridges Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts
0:04.9	Hello, I'm Lauren LeVern and this is the Desert Island Disks Podcast.
0:08.8	Every week I ask my guests to choose the 8 tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take
0:13.3	with them if they were cast away to a desert island.
0:16.4	For right reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast.
0:20.6	I hope you enjoy listening.
0:30.0	My cast away this week is the fitness trainer and author Joe Wicks.
0:46.0	Professionally known as the body coach, he's no stranger to transformations.
0:50.2	However, in recent weeks he's undergone one himself.
0:53.6	Before coronavirus hit the UK, he was already well known as the face of a hugely successful
0:59.0	fitness empire, but in recent weeks he's become the nation's favourite PE teacher after
1:04.6	taking a spur of the moment decision to start holding free online workouts for lockdown
1:09.8	school kids and their families.
1:12.2	His 9AMP sessions have become an online sensation entering the Guinness Book of World Records
1:18.0	in the process, but getting Britain's kids eating healthily and being active is a mission
1:22.8	he's been on for years.
1:24.6	As a contrast to his own childhood, he describes himself as a hyper active kid hooked on sugar
1:29.7	saying fruit and vegetables were nonexistent in my house.
1:33.5	So how did he grow up to be the Jamie Oliver of fitness, a man on a healthy living mission
1:38.6	whose debut cookbook sold 3 million copies and caused a 25% spike in broccoli sales?
1:45.4	He says, I'm not motivated to be famous, I'm motivated to be successful.
1:50.3	To reach people, I've got to get on TV, I've got to get in with the government, I've
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.