I'm flying with SuperGuy

By mfreeman

MY EARLY forties are a fading memory, as is the hair on my head, although the stuff sprouting from my ears and nose is vigorous.

My bonce is shinier than my shoes, which are as worn as I feel.

I can't get up from my chair after half a day in the garden without a range of sound effects: creaks, clicks and an exhaled 'Ooooph'.

My style consists of pulling on what I left on the bedroom floor the previous night.

I've lost my… whatever. And motivation and ambition, too.

I need more than a makeover. I need SuperGuy.

Which is handy, because he lives just up the road in Plymouth: Woolwell, to be exact.

Or does he?

Gavin Wilson answers the door dressed not in a cape and lycra but in a T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms.

And he tells me: "Superman and SuperGuy? They don't exist."

Gavin is SuperGuy, the lifestyle coaching company, but no super guy.

"Those super people don't exist," he says. "People look at the guys on the front of men's lifestyle magazines, the muscly guys with their six-packs; they look at celebrities like David Beckham: but they're not perfect. They're not super.

"They're more confident, maybe, but they have problems, too.

"My strength is about making people feel good about themselves, to get fitter, lose some weight if they need to: to be more confident and go out and do what they want to do."

Gavin has a background in neuro- linguistic programming. That's the encouragement of positive thinking by, among other things, hypnosis. The aim is often to help somebody quit smoking or shed weight.

He has a successful company, MINDSi, which concentrates on that side, but 18 months ago found he wanted something else.

"Most of my clients on the neuro-linguistic side are women," he explained. "Not many men go looking for help.

"Men aren't good talking about themselves, not even to other men."

He thought there was a gap in the lifestyle coaching market, so he set up SuperGuy Academy and discovered he was right.

SuperGuy now has clients throughout the country who go to workshops, intensive bootcamp weekends, personal fitness sessions, image consultancy and one-on- one coaching.

Gavin, who also has fitness and personal coaching qualifications, can provide most of the above himself, but when geography or a gap in specialist knowledge get in the way, he has a list of experts who can bridge the divide.

There's a SuperBabe Academy, too, but Gavin has a special empathy with us blokes.

"I'm not perfect," he says, returning to that opening theme. "I'm 42, I'm divorced, I'm a full-time single dad.

"I know what it's like to go through bad things and hard times. I know plenty of men who've hit 40 and gone through something like a divorce. You can have a great time after that. I want men to be the best they can."

Well, that's good to hear because here I am, about to have a little of the SuperGuy treatment.

Before we met, Gavin got me to fill out a lifestyle survey.

There was the usual: age, height, weight, family details and fitness level.

There was the unusual, including naming a couple of tunes that inspire and make me feel good, and a dream date.

And there were the not-unexpected personality assessments: eight words I'd use to describe myself ('unconfident' was among them), eight that others would use about me ('bald' topped that list), and a 'How I rate myself' satisfaction level assessment from 0 (very dissatisfied) to 10 (excellent) which covered work (7), happiness (9) and sex life (mind your own business). My wants list included how I'd like to be (more adventurous and less worried about failure) and where I'd wish to be and doing what in 10 years' time (living by a Cornish beach doing Cornish-beach-type things).

A few minutes after meeting Gavin, that's where I was: on that beach in Cornwall, doing those things, while listening to The Only Living Boy In New York (a bit of Simon and Garfunkel – one of those favourite tunes) and watching Penélope Cruz running towards me (that dream date).

Gavin was there, too: kind of. Last thing I knew he was talking calmly and I was relaxing in a chair and the next I was under hypnosis for the first time in my life, with warm sand between my toes and a goddess before my eyes.

Gavin's voice was somehow still there too, dropping positive thoughts into my mind.

I felt more confident.

I believed I could achieve more.

I was convinced I would be able to take risks.

I was certain I would not fear failure.

And then I was back in the room.

Gavin had promised me beforehand that "Hypnosis isn't like you see on the TV; I won't have you running down the street pretending to be Elvis Presley.

"This will be very light: a deep state of relaxation," he'd said, and it was.

Now fully awake, I still have that sense of calmness and confidence (and no sense that I've been running through Woolwell asking complete strangers if I can be their Teddy Bear).

I also have a strong sense of curiosity.

Who, apart from reporters in search of a story and a boost to their self-confidence, goes to SuperGuy?

"Everybody you could think of, from students to successful professionals," he says. "The younger people tend to want help with dating, say, and how to approach girls, and a lot of the 30- to 40-year-olds want their images improved and to get fitter.

"I had one guy turn up for a life coaching session who had a very smart Audi and a really nice suit. He looked like the sort of guy I'd want to turn people into, but in reality he was a bag of nerves.

"His job meant he had to do lots of presentations and he really lacked confidence."

While there are takers in Plymouth for the neuro-linguistic sessions, the clients that go for the full SuperGuy treatment tend to be in the bigger – and more moneyed – cities, especially London. The two-day intensive 'boot camps', covering mind, body and image and held regularly in Bath, Edinburgh, London and Birmingham, sell out, even at £349 a time. "Nobody else in the country does what I do."

Others go for a £50 one-off personal trainer or image confidence session while there's telephone coaching, too, at £39 an hour. "That might seem a lot in Plymouth, but that's really not much for somebody working in London," says Gavin.

"I wouldn't say to somebody, 'Oh, you'd need a minimum of six sessions.' I'd recommend they try one or two hours and see how they go."

From the comfort of his home, we're next out and into a neighbourhood park for Gavin to give me a flavour of a personal trainer session.

This was the part I thought I'd cruise through. I count myself pretty fit for my age, as long as I stick to what I'm OK at: running and a spot of circuit work.

We do that bit fine, but Gavin believes in the benefits of a range and variety of fitness work and soon I'm pulling on the gloves for some boxing. Add in sprints and deep, deep stretches and the workout proves much, much tougher than I imagined (four days later I was still feeling tender in places I didn't know were even supposed to have muscles.)

Back indoors, it's time for Gavin to analyse my look, the session I was least looking forward to.

His own is pretty good from where I'm standing; he's 6ft 2in and 14 and a half stone, with the easy athleticism of somebody with a sporty past. He was youth team goalkeeper for Plymouth Argyle before a different kind of custodianship beckoned: saving others from their weaknesses or failings.

Youth still seems to sit with Gavin. He looks several years younger than his 42.

I can relax, though. He begins with kind words about my fitness and figure. My body mass index – a measurement comparing height and weight – shows I'm neither too fat nor (as I've always believed) too thin.

Here he would normally bring in an image consultant if I really wanted to transform my look. There are, though, some simple things that can be done.

One of the first is to take a little pressure off myself by lowering expectations. "Men are under increasing pressure today," says Gavin. "Newspapers, magazines, TV and films are full of images of 'perfect' men. Don't compare yourself to David Beckham, but do try to look your best all the time.

"If what you like about him is that he has the confidence to look different, then why not try to look a bit different yourself?

"This isn't about tearing people to pieces," he says, distancing himself from the searing criticism meted out in TV makeover shows such as Ten Years Younger and What Not To Wear.

"People don't need laser surgery and expensive teeth-whitening and all that. You can get big changes from simple things like a haircut, a nice watch and some good shoes. Those are the things that a woman notices first about the way a man looks.

"Just think about the thing in your wardrobe that you look good in, the one that maybe people notice or make good comments about. Then wear it, and wear other things like it."

He asks whether I was making a special effort today (I turned up in a suit before changing into more comfortable clothes for the lifestyle coaching session).

Well, um, no; the suit was about the only clean item I could find. I've got a wardrobe full of clothes that need dry-cleaning.

"What would you say if I said Penélope Cruz was in the next room and about to come in and meet you?" Gavin asks.

If my dream date really were about to step into my reality I'd say nothing. I'd lower my head and stare at my (unpolished) shoes, quietly wishing that the ground would open up and swallow me and my only clean suit.

"We have two choices about the things we can change," Gavin adds, filling the silence. "We can do something or we can do nothing. Doing something, like polishing your shoes or getting a new pair and getting the suits cleaned, is easy.

"Why not look your best all the time? You will feel so much better."

And that was that: my time with the SuperGuy.

Before I met Gavin I'd thought about going to a lifestyle coach, or at least somebody who'd boost my confidence and reduce my fear of failure.

I never have done, because I thought I might get taken to the cleaners. The cost would be enormous, I figured.

But an hour or two of advice would cost less than I might pay to call in a plumber to fix a problem tap, he points out. "And what's more important – how you look and feel or your plumbing?" he asks.

I don't need to answer.

That nagging drip, drip that drains my confidence when I think about trying something new really does seem to have receded.

I haven't been taken to the cleaners. But I do feel motivated to go to the dry- cleaners.

www.superguyacademy.com/