CLAY BUSH
World’s greatest coffee maker, Aikido practitioner, Japanese swordsman, foul mouth, beanie wearer, philosopher and CO-FOUNDER OF BRUTAL TRAINING.

When did you become involved in Brutal Training?
The first time that I can remember would have been when Haydn asked me to come to an indoor beach volleyball tournament. This was still in the early stages when Brutal was known as Psycosis. Haydn had recently won King of the Beach, a volleyball tournament where everybody plays with everyone else, swapping partners and the person who wins the most games is crowned King of the Beach. At this point Haydn knew very little about the game of volleyball (he still doesn’t). But he won this tournament simply by doing all things Brutal. That is shitfighting, art of war, basically implementing all chaos principles. As a result some people approached him and asked him to train them. When he had trained these people for a while he asked me to come and have a look at them. Not for volleyball skills, I too know nothing about volleyball. But to see there hearts. There’s a saying that we have in Brutal, and that is we can make anyone a champion, even someone who comes to the table with nothing, which is preferable. But the one thing we can’t give you is a heart, or courage to live your life, not observe its passing but living it. And if this is missing, you may as well call it a day because you’re the one doing it. If you have no will, or this will is covered by shadows as long as the sunset give it away. Not Haydn, me nor anyone else can help you. So he felt strongly about these athletes and he asked me to take a look at them. I think that was the first time but you’d have to ask Haydn as he might have another story.

Why do you think Haydn started referring athletes to you for philosophical training?
Firstly, because he’s a lazy prick and he loves to handball shit off to me. And secondly, because when athletes train Brutal for long enough they usually start asking questions. When these conflicts can’t be sorted out in training then they come to me. I make a coffee and we thrash the shit out. If you’re to draw a line in the sand, in the early days that was really my role. Haydn did the physical training and I did the mental training. I didn’t really train Brutal. When I say Brutal I mean the training principles that we use today. I was studying martial arts but I hadn’t started adapting these philosophies to athletes. To be honest at that stage I didn’t know how. These days it’s different, our roles have merged a lot more, and both he and I do both mental and physical training, but we still have a different approach and see different things, in different people.

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