Adam Hollioake | Grief, Gratitude & Greatness

08/25/21 • 71 min

Having captained the England cricket team, as well as later becoming both a professional boxer and mixed martial arts fighter, there is no one else in the world who has experienced a sporting career like Adam Hollioake has.

Despite having been born in Australia, as well as living in Hong Kong throughout his childhood, Adam Hollioake captained the England cricket team for the first time in 1997. In that same year, he made his test debut playing alongside his brother.

Adam and his brother would go on to share the field together across multiple seasons with England and Surrey C.C.C. In 2002 though, in a piece of news that shocked all sports fans across the world, Adam’s brother Ben tragically passed away in a car crash. As Adam refers to in our podcast, the emotions that the game evoked and the associations the game had with his brother, meant he faced a difficulty of playing the sport and it wasn’t long before he then retired.

Since retiring, apart from a brief return to T20 cricket in 2007, he became a professional boxer and a professional MMA fighter. The ability to not only face the physical fear of entering a ring, but also the fear of entering a new sport completely, is something Adam coped with in a way that not many could. In our conversation he says it's down to a lack of fear - something that, if harnessed correctly, can be incredibly effective.

Adam had stints coaching England Lions and Afghanistan after calling quits on his fighting career, the latter stint of which led him to experience a terrorist attack – which Adam details in our podcast and the reflection and description could not be more timely considering the shocking scenes that we are currently seeing in the country.

He now coaches Queensland Bulls, the Sheffield Shield winners, and the side of Marnus Labuschagne – one of the world’s best test player. It was amazing to hear first-hand reflections of how one of the best performers in one of the world’s largest sports, goes about their daily work. As Adam says, it’s a thirst for knowledge and an unrelenting dedication to improve that lead him to his success.

Adam is an incredibly deep-thinker – which suits what we’re trying to achieve with the podcast perfectly. We talked about everything from the importance of living without fear, the reality that life is a constant learning journey and how success seems more sweet when you’ve experienced failure with it.

Previous Episode

Tony Underwood | Flying High: A Story of Resilience

A British & Irish Lion, international rugby player and producer of some of the most memorable moments in English Rugby.

Coming off the back of a Grand Slam win in 1995, in which Tony Underwood and his brother, Rory, scored 7 of the 9 tries their team scored all tournament, England entered the World Cup of that same year full of confidence. The highlight of that campaign for England would be a quarter-final win over Australia – a side who had beaten them in the final four years earlier - with Tony scoring one of the most memorable tries in English rugby history, out-running the reigning world-champions’ defence from his own half.

Weeks later in the semi-final, Tony Underwood had the job of marking Jonah Lomu. After the 80 minutes, Jonah Lomu had announced himself on the world stage with four devastating tries, while Tony understandably had one of his lowest moments in the game. With New Zealand beating England 45-29, Tony had by his own admission under-performed on a big stage. However, as you will see in the podcast, he is far from someone who lets setbacks define them. Tony focussed on controlling the controllable, and rather than ruminating on past mistakes, he focussed on what constructive actions he could do to ensure he got back to his best.

Testament to this was Tony gaining a place on his second Lions tour two years later– one of the most memorable Lions tours of all time – which many will know from the documentary ‘Living With The Lions’. That tour, Tony would get a full Lions cap in the third test, which he refers to as a ‘symbol of resilience’. From one of the lowest points of his career in the semi-final in 1995, to achieving the ultimate honour in British rugby, Tony is proof that resilience and self-belief are some of the key components in maximizing your potential.

Since retiring from rugby, Tony has gone on to captain the largest commercial aircraft in the world - navigating an A380 across the globe. More recently though, in his role with Wordplay, Tony is helping organisations and individuals drive performance through better relationships and teamwork. As can be heard in our podcast, he has a set of proven methods to help people achieve their goal, and to help people facing their own Jonah.

Next Episode

Thomas Hal Robson-Kanu | Taking Your Shot

Thomas Hal Robson-Kanu's most famous moment on the football pitch came in 2016 when, against all odds, Wales reached the Semi-Final of the Euros. In the quarter-final, Hal Robson-Kanu scored one of the most memorable goals in modern football history, beating three defenders with one Cruyff turn and putting it past Thibaut Courtois, one of the best keepers in the world at the time. The individual brilliance of the goal warranted it being awarded a Puskas award and to all football fans, it perfectly encapsulated the exciting journey the Welsh side had been on that tournament.

Since that tournament, Hal has continued to play at the highest level of football, playing internationally for Wales and in the Premier League with West Brom. As if this wasn’t enough, he’s also managed to launch a global e-commerce brand at the same time. As Hal says in the pod, some footballers play golf in their free time, some play call of duty, instead he’s decided to use his free time and mental energy to enter the world of entrepreneurship. Since beginning in January 2018, the Turmeric Co has grown to become a leading e-commerce brand in the world, now distributing 300’000 shots each month to over 50’000 consumers. Whilst these figures are impressive and help to paint a picture of how successful the brand has been in a short space of time, Hal says real success for the company will depend on the amount of lives he manages to change.

This opportunity to build a community of wellness, and to help habit-form healthy behaviours in people’s lives, is what stands as his main motivation now. Although the motivation to play in the Premier League was the focus for Hal throughout his teens and twenties, it is now the opportunity to change people’s lives that “goes beyond scoring goals in the premier league and the adulation that comes with it” which we found really interesting. Hal’s experiences in getting to the top of his sport, as well as leading a start-up, have led him to gain an incredibly detailed understanding of the psychology of performance, whether that’s techniques that allowed him to perform in the semi-final of a euros watched by billions of fans, or maintaining positive mental wellbeing when starting a dynamic and ever-evolving business.

In our podcast, Hal’s understanding of the awareness of mental health is clear – in a revealing way, which many sportspeople would shy away from doing, Hal helps paint a picture of the hugely under-reported mental health crisis currently taking place in professional football and the structural reasons behind this. In his words, if it came out “you would not believe it”. For Hal, one of the main reasons for this is fear; players and managers fear under-performing, they fear social media abuse, they fear losing their livelihoods and what this creates is a hush culture, which needs to change.

This podcast was aimed to help display athletes as more than their on-field personalities and we feel this episode is a perfect example of this. It also marks a cool milestone in the podcast journey we’ve been on in the last year. We thank Hal so much again for his time and the ability to meet him in person – we encourage you all to check out the Turmeric co and appreciate the amazing work he’s doing in that space.