Spencer Matthews wants to dispel the myth that he trains like a professional athlete. He is not a ‘rubbish pro’, as Sam Browne, founder and CEO of the endurance-event booking website, Let’s Do This, playfully christened him on his podcast, Untapped. He wouldn’t even describe himself as a particularly gifted runner. ‘I’m an enthusiastic amateur,’ he says.
Perhaps the timing of this interview is slightly unfortunate then. Four days prior to our conversation, Matthews didn’t have a running coach. But just before we spoke, the 37-year old began working with another guest on Untapped, former Olympic marathoner Stephen Scullion, on achieving a new goal: a 2:45 finish at the Valencia Marathon this coming December – a 12-minute improvement on his previous best. For their first session, Scullion put him through a lactate threshold test where he ran 800m reps at varying paces and had a pinprick of his blood taken at the end of each. He’s self-aware enough to know that’s beyond the reach of most amateurs.
As well as a running coach, Matthews also has a strength coach. But that’s a very formal way to describe the relationship he has with former world champion bodybuilder Shaun Stafford, who he trains with three times a week. The two of them actually met through this magazine, when Matthews was paired with the WBFF British, European and Pro World Champion for a transformation that ran under the headline ‘Remade in Chelsea’, a reference to the reality TV show Made In Chelsea, which Matthews starred in during its first 10 seasons, rising to public prominence. It’s with Stafford that we’re working out today in the bodybuilder’s gym, City Athletic in Victoria, London. The pair have trained together here for the past 12 years. Outside of his wife, the presenter and podcaster Vogue Williams, and their three children, Stafford is the person he spends the most time with weekly. ‘I see a lot of Shaun, and I love Shaun,’ he says.
Matthews bounds into the basement gym and immediately steps behind the counter to say hello to Stafford and some of the gym’s other trainers. I first met him a few hours ago for breakfast and a chat at The Ivy, where he prepared for today’s upper-body session with four poached eggs on sourdough toast and a bowl of yoghurt and mixed seeds. He’ll need the energy. Later today he has a track workout devised by Scullion to complete, so squats are removed from today’s gym programming, which is jokingly, but not at all inaccurately, called the Big Boys Upper on Whoop.
The workout starts with a warm-up consisting of four sets of assisted pull-ups, which Matthews flies through before moving on to barbell bench press. Tomorrow, during a recording of Untapped with the strongmen brothers Luke and Tom Stoltman, he’ll explain that bench is one of his favourite exercises, with his max peaking at around 140kg, maybe even 150kg at a push. Today, he’s slumming it with a descending superset of 110kg and 90kg. He attacks each rep with gusto. In the gym, he is exactly like any other bro, chatting easily about family, commitments and projects. Occasionally, between sets, he’ll jokingly reveal the six-pack abs lying in wait for the Men’s Health cover shoot or tense his guns to show off his pump.
If the gym provides comfort, Matthews’ marathon training is providing anything but. The plan for later is for him to hit the track and complete six 1k efforts with 60 seconds’ rest in between. Scullion has told him to get faster with each set, going from 4:05 per km to 3:55. The session will finish with an all-out assault on his legs: eight sets of 300m at 3:45min/km pace.
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Want to train like Spencer? His coach, Shaun Stafford, has created a four-week plan exclusively for members of the MH SQUAD. Join the MH SQUAD to access the plan, or existing members can head straight into their app.
Before his track session, he sent an invite to join him at the track through to a running WhatsApp group he’s part of called ‘Marathon Men’. Included in the group are Michael Murray, CEO of the Frasers Group, and boxing trainer Shane McGuigan. No one messaged back. But Matthews isn’t putting himself through this just for a faster marathon time. With three kids and a fourth on the way, not to mention two businesses to take care of, he believes having the 2:45 marathon attempt on the horizon will make a big difference to his whole life. ‘It’ll help me stay on track with good sleep. It’ll help me be healthier and more conscious around what I’m eating. It’ll help me drink less alcohol this summer,’ he says. It’ll also help him unlock the last remnants of his untapped potential. That has been a years-long process.
Gritting It Out
Prior to becoming an enthusiastic amateur athlete and around the same time he was starting to film scenes for a new and innovative reality TV series (a strange way to describe the medium that has become hackneyed in recent years) called Made In Chelsea, Matthews worked as a foreign-exchange broker for ICAP. This was London in the early 2010s, post-financial crisis and around the same time austerity was becoming the order of the day in Britain. Part of his job at the time was to entertain bankers. A lunchtime tipple wasn’t unusual and neither was a couple of after-work drinks, either. ‘You’d feel pretty dusty arriving at your desk the following morning because you’d had several pints and probably a few cocktails, too.’ he says. Drinking would spill into the following day, as Matthews often took a hair of the dog approach to his health.
Matthews’ drinking continued throughout his time on Made In Chelsea and beyond. The general advice he was given was that for his own good, he should consider being teetotal for the rest of his life. But he kept drinking. How could he not? At this point in his life, he prioritised socialising, and socialising meant getting drunk.
The decision to sober up was influenced by his now wife, Williams, whom he married in 2018 after meeting the previous year on reality TV show The Jump, and his desire to become a better person for her. ‘I didn’t want to lose her,’ he says. It was, he now recognises, an important inflection point, where he went from being ‘self-destructive’ to someone capable of realising his potential. His alcohol-free spirits brand, CleanCo, began in 2019, after, and because of, that decision.
But his journey with alcohol has been neither linear nor black and white. In 2021, Matthews signed up for the brutal 250km Marathon des Sables to punish himself ‘for the state that I got myself into with my drinking problem that I have, and to some degree will always be in me’. This was the 35th edition of the race that was organised for October, rather than the traditional April, and the first edition of the race to be held after the Covid pandemic forced a two-and-a-half year hiatus. ‘Freakishly’ high temperatures beat down on competitors, while a stomach bug also swept through participants. One person died that year; almost half of the field failed to complete the race. He says the event brought him closer to his brother Michael, who tragically passed away while becoming the youngest Briton to summit Everest at the age of 22 in 1999. Matthews was 10 at the time. Almost three decades later, he remains a huge part of his life. ‘In the back of my mind, I’m always trying to make Mike proud,’ he says. In the heat of the Sahara, Matthews finished in 69th place out of the 354 runners who completed the ordeal. It took him 39 hours and 49 minutes. The experience taught him something about himself: that he had a talent for gritting out difficult experiences.
Buoyed by the Marathon des Sables, Matthews entered the Ice Ultra but tested positive for Covid after completing two stages; DNF, and the Jungle Ultra – a 230km, self-sufficient race through the Amazon rainforest; finished in third place. These led to bigger and bolder challenges, the first being his ‘Great Desert Challenge’, where he undertook 30 marathons in 30 days on sand in 2024. He still holds the Guinness World Record for that adventure, which saw him trekking through the middle of the Jordanian desert. Then, in late 2025, Matthews took on his biggest challenge yet: Project Se7en, aka the Guinness World Record for the fastest time to complete seven 140.6mile triathlons on seven different continents. He achieved the feat in 21 days, making his way through London, Arizona, Cape Town, Perth, Dubai, Rio de Janeiro and Antarctica in the process.
Today, he jokes, his back goes out more than he does. Drinking remains a slippery slope, but time that was once devoted to alcohol and socialising has been diverted to other pursuits: fitness and entrepreneurship. ‘If I were to suddenly decide to prioritise socialising again, that would probably end up in a rough place for me,’ he says.
Data from CleanCo claims that 80% of its customers still drink alcohol. He is no different. But now, if he drinks, he does it in a setting he can control – at a lunch or with family – not often in a setting he can’t, with friends who he would previously have been pulling all-nighters with. Today, he’s the master of his drinking, rather than his drinking mastering him. ‘I don’t walk past a packed pub on a beautiful Sunday afternoon and look at people and go, “God, I wish I was in there having a few cold pints,”’ he says. ‘It doesn’t feel like a big, ugly creature on my back that has the potential to control me. But I am careful of it and I am conscious of it.’
Untapped Potential
Matthews’ business interests are built around his passions. CleanCo is a product of him exploring his relationship with alcohol, while Untappedbegan as he was looking for ways to unlock hidden fitness potential. Recently, as Matthews’ attentions have turned to running, and the 2:45 marathon attempt, the podcast’s focus has zeroed in on that, too, with recent episodes investigating whether super shoes make runners faster and including conversations with athletes such as runner and content creator Hugo Fry.
I’m joining Matthews for a recording of the podcast in early May. Untapped is part of the High Performance network of podcasts and is recorded in the same Soho studio as the original High Performance podcast, fronted by Jake Humphrey and Damian Hughes. Written on a whiteboard in the production office is a message left from one team to another: ‘Have a great day, Untapped, Team HP.’
Before the show begins recording, Matthews is guided through lines of questioning for today’s guests, the brothers Stoltman. The pair represent a slightly left-field choice for a podcast that is now ‘a hub for runners’, not to mention possessing a different size and stature to the podcast’s regular guests. ‘We’ve had to change the chairs,’ says senior producer Simon Longden on efforts to accommodate the two hulking strongmen.
Nestled inside the production office, Matthews and the team hear the brothers before they see them – big, booming voices coming from down the hall, jovially introducing themselves to everyone in their path on their way to the podcast. Soon they enter the production office – Tom walking and Luke wheeling one leg in on a knee walker due to a snapped fibula, a consequence, he reveals, of a jump into the sea that went wrong. Matthews first compares his size to the two brothers by placing himself in between them. His height falling between them like the bottom of the Sycamore Gap. As they chat, he is genuinely awed by the brothers’ accomplishments, particularly Tom’s 200kg bench press for reps.
Conversations about size continue into the podcast recording, and are only punctuated by an obligatory running question. The brothers see the funny side. Although they would never describe themselves as runners, they do run: shuttle runs carrying an extremely heavy, 180kg sandbag. Once their size has been put to bed, the hour-long conversation touches on everything from Tom’s dislike of tomato sauce (because it’s too spicy) to his experience of living with autism. They also discuss brotherhood and its significance, which is a topic Matthews relates to.
If Made In Chelsea traded in drama, Untapped trades in data and information, Matthews says. Over the course of the podcast’s 82 episodes, the first released in January of last year, he’s honed a talent for putting guests at ease and gets as much out of the conversations as the podcast’s growing audience. ‘I love having conversations with these people. They come in and they broaden my understanding of physiology and what’s humanly possible, and I leave the conversations feeling invigorated and wanting to do more in sport,’ he says. Anecdotally, Matthews says the popularity of the show reminds him of Made In Chelsea at its peak, with runners interrupting his sessions around Battersea Park, near his west-London home, to voice their approval. It’s stacking up accolades, too, including being named one of Apple’s best podcasts in the UK for 2025 and regularly featuring at the top of the podcast platform’s health and fitness charts.
Home Straight
It doesn’t matter whether you’ve broken a record for the most marathons completed on sand or if your first full-distance triathlons are completed in seven different continents over the course of three weeks, the question that you inevitably get asked by pesky journalists and the general public is always going to be, what’s next? Not wanting to disappoint, I also ask the question, but Matthews says that while he hasn’t got a challenge in his mind at the minute, one day he’ll wake up with the nugget of an idea for another epic adventure and say to himself, ‘Let’s do that.’
Whatever it is, it’ll have to be big. He cites Russ Cook, whose run across Africa inspired his own epic adventures. ‘If Russ Cook were to announce he was going to run across Australia, [people would say] he has that in the bag, right? He’s run across Africa. He’s run across New Zealand. So keeping it interesting is front of mind.’ He recognises that part of the appeal of these challenges is that he might fail. If he keeps succeeding, who cares?
Not that success was always guaranteed with Project Se7en, which he completed at the back end of 2025. Matthews had never done a full-distance Ironman triathlon before he set off for the first leg in London. The night before that event, he put his hands together and prayed to his brother Michael. ‘I said, “Please give us the strength to push through this in a healthy and strong way.”’ Matthews prayed to his brother again just before 5am on the beach in Cape Town. He begins painting the picture: ‘Couldn’t see anything, freezing cold, the wrong kind of kit, no boots, no gloves, thin swim cap, wetsuit that was tailored towards 12°C or 13°C when the water was 8°C. Everything about that morning felt off.’
Sitting in The Ivy, relaying what happened in Cape Town, Matthews breaks off to take a call from his friend, former Made In Chelsea co-star Jamie Laing. Matthews’ wife Williams is appearing on Laing’s podcast Great Company later in the day, and he’d like him to record a short voice note to play to her. He skips out of the restaurant to do the favour. Back from his call, and after a brief detour to explain that it was ‘a bit of a fuck-up’ on Laing’s behalf to have not invited him to his 2023 registry office wedding in London to Sophie Habboo, which swiftly became tabloid fodder (he did attend their main nuptials in southern Spain weeks later), but the pair remain good friends, he goes straight back to explaining his Cape Town ordeal. His apprehension, he says likely had something to do with the fact that his fixer for the trip had warned him that it wasn’t the great white sharks he should be concerned by, it was the seals, who had attacked one of the fixer’s friends a few days prior to Matthews’ swim. Within 10 seconds of getting into the water, he sat bolt upright, perceiving that his life was at risk. He tried to control his breathing and keep moving, attempting not to let the cold add to his list of problems. By now it was getting lighter. In the distance he saw rocks. But like something straight out of a Hitchcock movie, they were covered in seals. He started screaming at his support crew on the boat. ‘I’m screaming, asking if they have rabies and the guy is just like, “You’ll be fine. Most of them are just playful.”’ The word ‘most’ wasn’t exactly encouraging.
He tried to fix his mindset. ‘If this dude had said to me that, “You’re gonna get to swim with seals and they’re lovely,” then I would be having a nice time, right? So I started to think, “These are nice animals, try to enjoy the swim.”’ But his ordeal wasn’t over. With about 800m to go, he started to hyperventilate, and the idea that he wouldn’t be able to finish started to creep back into his mind. Again, he tried to rationalise what was happening. The chances of a seal or shark attack were slim. Even if he had to bob his way to the end of the swim, he could. So he continued swimming. Upon finishing, he had to be dragged from the water by his team. ‘It took me a good hour and 10 minutes to warm up in a hot shower. Then I got on the bike and that was also, coincidentally, the worst cycle that we had of the whole thing. So Cape Town wasn’t great.’
While he knows he’ll have to go some to top Project Se7en, exactly what happens next, he isn’t so sure about. That’s not to say he doesn’t have plans for the future. A little while ago, a famous CEO asked him, ‘What’s your personal five-year plan?’ Matthews went away and thought about it. Aside from all the crass stuff – the amount of money to be made and assets to acquire – he’s keen for any endeavours he pursues during the next five years to keep his life moving forwards. Whether he achieves it or not, the 2:45 marathon attempt will do just that. It’ll be difficult and it certainly isn’t guaranteed. But the plan is to give it everything he’s got.
Photography: David Venni
Styling: Abena Ofei at Wizzo & Co
Grooming: Nat Schmitt using Drunk Elephant
This interview features in the July 2026 issue of Men's Health – out now. Subscribe to MH by hitting this link.
Daniel is Men’s Health UK’s Features Editor. He’s a writer and editor with a decade’s worth of experience covering health, fitness, tech and sports. In his time at Men’s Health, he’s written about everything from Black men's mental health to The Rock's cheat days and has logged training time with NFL footballers, Olympic gymnasts and the British Army. In his spare time he enjoys fitness of all kinds, from deadlifts to long runs, and is always on the lookout for his next challenge.
