Ant Middleton

“I’m very competitive and always commit 100 per cent.”

Ant Middleton

Spend time with Ant Middleton and one element of his character quickly stands out: his “No Excuses” approach to life. The former UK Special Forces soldier, now an adventurer, TV host and bestselling author, lives life with a responsibility many people would find intimidating. His remarkable ability to overcome intensely challenging situations is only exceeded by his desire to place himself in them, something he has done for most of his life – and still does.

“I joined the British military at 16 years and ten months of age,” he says. “I wanted to stand on my own two feet. I come from a big family and I’ve always been self-sufficient and I love challenging myself.”

He also thrives on achievement. It is difficult to determine if his high-performance mentality is the cause or effect of his desire to conquer near-impossible situations.

Earning top recruit and “Best PT” after his basic training, he tackled some of the UK military’s toughest courses, including the gruelling P Company to become a paratrooper, earning his Maroon Beret and Parachute Wings at the age of just 18.

The Royal Marines and a Green Beret followed. After entering the UK’s Special Forces, where more than 95 per cent of the UK’s highest-performing soldiers don’t make the cut, he completed three military tours.

“I felt I’d set the bar so high from the start that I had to maintain it. I’m very competitive and always commit 100 per cent.”

He reveals an unlikely source for the intense motivation needed to succeed in these punishing environments, where margins for error are zero and the consequences of failure unthinkable.

“The preparation, planning and detail of executing a mission,” he says. “If you plan and prep correctly the delivery is the easy part.”

But there was one discovery he made during his punishing military journey that explains his dedication to high performance.

“I came to realise ‘elite’ doesn’t mean ‘better than anyone else’. An elite level is achieved when you do the basics of anything to a high standard, consistently. And it’s consistency that takes you to the next level of any pursuit.

“Consistency comes down to the individual. And this is critical because you have to be fully committed to the cause you’re pursuing. You need to be passionate and obsessed with it, and this is especially important with teamwork. The right level of consistency and commitment can help you tune your teammates to function two or three per cent better, and this can make all the difference in a high-performance environment.”

Pushing himself in such settings showed Ant how to manage fear, which he says unlocks people’s potential to succeed.

“Understanding fear is the skeleton key to high performance and becoming the best version of who you are.”

He has proven this point many times over. He proved it as a young boy when his family moved to France, where he started school without being able to speak the local language. He proved it throughout his gruelling military career and he later proved it by conquering some of Planet Earth’s most dangerous challenges.

“My adaptability to life definitely stems from my childhood, from being thrown into situations where I only had one option and that was to sink or swim.”

He showcased this cornerstone of his character when he decided to climb the world’s toughest mountains.

“Mount Everest was the first big mountain I ever summitted,” he says. “I trained on a number of others such as Mount Snowdon and the Matterhorn, but I wanted to stand on the apex of the world.”

Taking in the view from the top of Everest might signal the end of a quest for most people. Not Ant Middleton.

“Reaching the summit triggered an addiction. My first thought was, ‘Right, Everest is the highest, which one’s the most dangerous?’ That’s when I decided to tackle K2, the second-highest mountain but the most technically demanding to climb.”

Ant’s thirst to adapt his highly tuned physical and mental powers has taken him far beyond his elite military career. He sees the similarities between his remarkable journey and the high-performance Cayenne Turbo GT he enjoyed during a recent trip to Australia.

“Today, I’m fine-tuning the excellence I’ve achieved,” he says. “Porsche is doing the same. The thread of high performance consistently binds this brand and its sportscars. They have masterfully adapted it in the Cayenne Turbo GT; the best elements of an SUV with the incredible performance of its highly tuned sportscars. That’s an elite-level performance.”