CHOICES (Episode #8) – Pete Allum

Pete Allum: British skydiving icon shares his perspective on building a healthy and sustainable lifestyle.

Today’s guest is British skydiver Pete Allum. There’s hardly a person in the sport of skydiving, worldwide, young or old, who hasn’t at least heard of Pete. He has been jumping out of airplanes for 38 years. He has amassed more than 33k jumps, including a competitive career spanning more than 30 years, more than 20 UK national titles and seven years on the Italian national team. Pete has earned numerous medals on the world stage, both for his freefall skills and his canopy-piloting skills. He has competed three times in the World Games, a pre-cursor to the Olympics, and two times in the World Air Games, a multi-discipline airports event conducted by the Federal Aeronautique International.

Pete has likewise coached the national skydiving teams from Canada, Estonia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Holland, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States. I could honestly speak for 10 minutes solely about his accolades as a competitor and coach. But I won’t. Instead, I’ll direct you to his website: innerrhythmcoaching.com

I’d like to shift gears now, away from skydiving, and encourage everyone to listen closely to this episode. While skydiving is a central theme to our conversation, the fact is, we never once talk about Pete’s competitive skydiving accomplishments. Instead, we talk about his life journey and the lessons he has learned. Pete speaks five languages fluently, and dabbles in several others. He jumped ship from the typical boyhood path at 16 years old and set out to travel the world. At one point he nearly joined the Royal Marines, but eventually found his way back to skydiving, where he has spent more than three decades perfecting the craft.

In this conversation Pete talks about staying fit and feeling good at 53 (he’s a triathlete, btw), including sustained mobility, atrophy prevention, strength training and endurance training. He shares his views on formal education, and ways he believes that schools can better engage their students. A father of two, Pete graciously shares his secrets to effective parenting, and while he had reservations about giving any “advice” to listeners who are trying to build successful lifestyles, he was generous enough to share some things that have helped him sustain, at the highest level, for so long.

Please enjoy this conversation with Mr. Pete Allum.