Joe Wicks promotes his fitness remedy to the nation

With 4.5 million Instagram fans, the self-proclaimed ‘Body Coach’ is now the proud owner of an MBE thanks to his YouTube videos during the pandemic. Passion, positivity and determination have driven the 37-year-old’s success, but as he confides today, the secret ingredient in his ascendancy to near national treasure status is his wife of four years, former model Rosie Jones.

“Rosie is 100% critical to my success,” admits Joe. “I met her when I got famous and things exploded, and I was in love from the moment I met her. I was not tempted by nightclubs, red carpets and fame. Instead, I just focused on being a good dad and just being the Body Coach.

“I don’t get distracted by other things that come with recognition and the kind of audience I have.”

Raised on an Epsom council estate with older brother Nikki – now CEO of his company – and their younger brother George, Joe’s early years were worlds apart from the free education he can provide for his own children, Indie, four, Marley, three and four month old Leni..

His roofer father Gary, now 62, struggled with heroin addiction, and his mother Raquela’s OCD-fueled anxiety and depression meant that domestic stability in the Wicks household was only fleeting. It is clear today that those early experiences shaped Joe’s attitude towards relationships.

“My mum and dad never married, and I didn’t believe in marriage,” says Joe, whose latest venture this weekend is three days of pop-up fitness events in central London designed to counteract the tendency people have to their New Year’s resolutions to get fit in mid-January.

“I used to have a very negative view of commitment and always thought: ‘Nobody stays together.’ I used to think all those negative things about commitment and loyalty.

Today he tells me with a smile, “The glue that holds me and Rosie together is dedication. That’s what we both really appreciate and when I met Rosie I thought it was a great idea to be grandparents with our kids and show them that you can stay together and be happy.

“We both also love raising our kids to be lovely people and just being there with them. We agree so much that we don’t often disagree, and I learn so much from Rosie just by watching her. She is patient by nature, while I am impatient. I have to work on it, but for her it is very easy.”

When Joe isn’t demonstrating burpees to his online disciples, he’s likely to be found burping newcomer Leni or hanging out with Rosie, 32, and the kids in their five-bedroom, £4.4 million Surrey mansion.

“Leni is great,” says Joe. “She has such beautiful olive skin; she looks like she has a tan every day. She’s really cute, and she just fits in really well.

“I thought it was going to be a big jump between two and three, but because Indie is four, she dresses herself and is a bit more independent, so it’s definitely not as stressful as I thought.

“I’m lucky enough to be able to work from home, so we have that teamwork element. I think it would be really hard if I was just out the door at 7 and Rosie was alone but we have a good balance and we take turns doing the school run and stuff so one of us gets a little lie in and our sleep to catch up. But so far it’s working out well.”

Also working out well is Joe’s improving relationship with his father Gary, which he explored last year in the emotional BBC documentary Joe Wicks: Facing My Childhood.

“He’s clean now, but he’s still doing the Twelve Steps and going to the NA meetings, which is an important part of his recovery,” says Joe.

“I’ve just learned to pull him in a bit more, get him to come over for dinner or I’ll say, ‘Let’s go on the bike for a few hours’, so rather let him isolate I’ll say to him : “You have to do all the things that work for you, so let’s go for a walk or let’s go eat.”

“He needs to find other things that make him feel good and that ultimately is connection, family and going to meetings.”

With his genetic history, Joe has clearly spent time thinking about the nature of addiction, and he carefully monitors his own obsessive nature.

“There is definitely a lot of addiction in my family. My father, my grandfather, and even his father, I think, was a drinker, but if there’s an addiction in my life, it’s definitely with exercise and with work and the travel and the legacy I’m trying to build.

But am I worried about having that addictive gene and would a really difficult life experience derail me so much that I turned to booze or drugs?

“I certainly don’t have that temptation. I have a good relationship with alcohol. I can go out and have a great night, have a drink. And that’s it.

“It’s once every few weeks, once a month and that’s fine with me, while some people get into a rut and that lasts for weeks or months. I know exercise makes me feel good and I know alcohol makes me feel horrible and down the next day, so for me the negative side effects of drugs and alcohol would be so overwhelming so I don’t think I’d ever go to that. “

Obsessive work, on the other hand, is more difficult to curb. “People might say I’m a workaholic,” he laughs. “But I love it and don’t see it as a negative thing, but you should try not to let it affect your real relationships.

“I have a virtual world where I can talk to people all day, for hours every day on this phone.

“But I also need to have a real experience with my wife and kids and my family and friends, and if you can have that balance, I think you can have both.”

Connection is clearly central to Joe’s ethos, and his success has allowed him to build several high-profile friendships with stars he used to admire from a distance.

“The people I’ve interacted with are the people I’ve always loved and watched from a distance, people like Russell Brand, Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay and Louis Theroux. It’s weird with Jamie. When I was 16 I used to come home from school and watch him on The Naked Chef and think, ‘I love this guy.

“I love watching him cook,” and a few months ago I was at his house with my whole family and he cooks this amazing Sunday Roast for all of us.

“I’m not one to go out with different celebrities week after week. I’m not a party guy, but I think you’re only attracted to the people who inspire you and have a positive energy about them. But me and Jamie don’t hang out all the time. That’s the first time I’ve been to his house, but I brought my kids and we had a great day.”

The most immediate challenge for Joe, ahead of his PE With Joe tour next month, first to Australia and later this spring to America, is to dissuade dismissive fitness enthusiasts from putting aside their positive fitness intentions for the New Year.

“Mid-January is when the numbers start to drop and people stop going to the gym and everyone loses focus,” he says.

“I hope that people who come to my pop-up sessions feel revived and I hope they leave the practice buzzing with practical tips to create lasting change. That’s what I’m trying to achieve.

“I know it’s not easy with the pressures of social media and the cost of living and everything else going on in the world, but you can’t just turn to food and alcohol and drugs and gambling or Netflix to make you feel better. to feel, because it doesn’t work.

“Thinking about how you train and what you put in your body is no longer optional — it’s essential.”

• The Body Coach Studios are open from January 20 – 22, with tickets costing £12. Tickets now on sale at thebodycoach.com/studios/