Ross Edgley: The Science of Suffering & How Far Can the Human Body Really Go? | Ross Edgley | Ep 68

0:00Ross Edgley, welcome to the podcast. This has been a long time in the making, hasn't it? It has. It has. Yes. I'm not going to lie, it's a bit of a fanboy moment for me. I've literally read your work and watched you from the beginning. From the World's Fittest Podcast. You're an OG. That was a while ago. But I think equally, this is going to sound... I was thinking when I was driving here, I had to say this without it sounding creepy. But I love to watch you run. that sounds so creepy i know but your technique you know you're just gliding and running and i literally it's gonna sound so strange i watch looking at your biomechanics i'm like oh my god that is poetry and then i try it on my own treadmill never looks the same so honestly fanboy moment as well nah um for the people that may not know who you are i feel like a lot of people do but who are who is ross hedgley yeah so right now i suppose i have a bit of a weird career in inverted commas, if you could call it that.

0:58So I used to swim, I used to play water polo internationally, went to Loughborough University, long story short, basically kind of then went into the business of sports nutrition. And it was a sportsman's bet that went right or wrong, depending on how you look at it. But somebody basically, you know, bet that I couldn't swim around Great Britain, you know, so I did that. And that was 1780 miles, 157 days. And I think it was that that people were like oh my god look at this lunatic just swimming around my tongues falling off from salt water swimming with dolphins with whales and I think from then people were just like oh okay look you know if we ever need some lunatic to swim around a country to do something to raise awareness for ocean conservation for amazing charities to to pioneer our understanding of sports science I know a guy and I just go hold my beer so more recently it was uh it was Iceland actually.

1:50So the University of Iceland said, we want to track eDNA samples. EDNA samples are just environmental DNA samples. It means that anything in the water leaves behind a sample, whether it's a whale, a seal, a Ross Edgley. And if you take these samples, you can track biodiversity around the entire coast. The only problem is nobody really sails around Iceland at, you know, three knots, you know, four kilometres an hour. You just don't do that. So they were like, look, if someone could travel at that speed. and also almost make a spectacle of themselves so that becomes a Trojan horse for the science that you can bring it to an audience, then that would be amazing.

2:28And I just was like, where do I sign up? And so, yeah, last year swam around Iceland as well. Which is insane. And we'll move on to kind of like that because like you say, at the moment, you've written a book about it and it's about to be released. I've read most of it and it's genuinely incredible. and we'll go on to kind of like more into like why you did that and everything um but for me i feel like for the hybrid fitness space i feel feel like you were one of the first people that i especially me i looked up to but i think a lot of people looked up to um i'd put you in the same category as like david goggins i genuinely would like a poundland seriously because you just mentioned that and you've skipped over a lot of things but basically you've just said that that you're an incredible endurance swimmer and one of the best swimmers anyone's ever seen i'd say that but you've you're a hybrid athlete at heart and you're also an adventurer um like i just want to list for the people like the kind of crazy shit that you've actually done so first of all uh world's strongest marathon yeah so would you just be able to quick in a couple words explain what that was yeah pulled a 1.4 ton car 26.2 miles to raise money for charity terrible idea took me ages after that everish rope climb oh yeah 8 848 meters it was a 20 meter rope i kept on climbing it until i climbed that which is the height of everish we didn't count the bit on the way down as well which made it particularly hard uh lost lots of skin on my hands and for the science nerds out there that's because of the eccentric of actually lowering yourself down on the road exactly Yeah, just that bicep tendon coming down.

4:09It was just horrendous. Yeah. Insane. A thousand miles barefoot in a month. Was that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Weighted as well. Yeah, that was, I just got fascinated with just barefoot biomechanics. I started learning. I was working with Vivo Barefoot at the time as well. And, you know, I still am. And so, yeah, that was, again, his terrible idea. I'm not a good runner. We've just been talking about this. So that took me ages. If I was you, I'd have done it so much quicker. but no that's that genuinely incredible and that was carrying how much um so we had i was doing work with the royal marines at the time as well so that was a 50 kg backpack as well 50 kg backpack a thousand miles in a month yeah bad idea insane after that this one like i just find the craziest and 31 marathons in 31 days which doesn't sound that crazy today but one you did that 10 years ago which you know was unheard of then but also you did it to experiment with nutrition and breakfast and you did it within your kitchen exactly yeah it got weak so it wasn't like on show or anything like you was literally doing it in your kitchen yeah yeah it got really weird it was this is going to sound so strange but for social media so it was it was called google plus i remember google tried to get into the social media game so we were live broadcasting it through Google Plus.

5:27Had tons of views and loads of followers on Google Plus and then they shut it down. So yeah, it was a huge success with that. But just, yeah, it's just so strange that we document on something that doesn't actually exist anymore. What was the, obviously he was testing out different breakfasts. What was the optimal breakfast for running a marathon? Do you know what? And I want to ask you this question because it got really weird that sometimes it was just, it was donuts, it was Haribo, it was those sorts of things. And I think, and this is my question to you there, that it's kind of like sometimes, it's almost like, nutritional plasticity.

5:58You know, friends of mine at the English Institute of Sport Nutrition have said sometimes athletes who are almost too clean, you know, they eat too cleanly, their stomach kind of goes, okay, we know what we're doing when it's rice and porridge and bananas, but we can't introduce anything else. Whereas it's those athletes with a bad diet, almost like a dirty diet, that their body can just use anything and everything you give it. Do you think it's the same with you? Yes. And I'd also say competition weekend is probably, if you looked at the diet the most unhealthy time of an athlete because you're stripping all the micronutrients out all the fiber the protein the fats everything that you need in like a traditional diet and you're just giving your body the energy it needs to perform because everything else is just it's just energy taken up by actually digesting it and it's going to be left in your stomach maybe extra weight maybe extra and you just don't need that especially if your sport is power to weight ratio um so anything like high rocks running anything like that it's just pure carbohydrates and that can come in any form like i know there's you know arguments on complex and simple carbohydrates and you should have more complex carbohydrates but uh for me personally like i feel like and we'll touch on this as well because there's definitely like studies done in the lab but then there's also field and actually reality um for me having haribo having carbohydrate having um you know honey on rice and things like that that that works for me and it's probably like a lot safer than going having something in a completely new country and trying to kind of like get something from a restaurant that is more whole foods or something like that 100 um so so yeah that that my take on that next one tree swim across the caribbean yeah so that That one, that was weird.

7:52So basically, there's an island called Nevis, St. Kitts and Nevis, they're paired together. And Nevis wanted to become the world's first carbon neutral islands. They had these amazing initiatives for green energy, environmental charity. It was amazing. And they said, we don't really get the recognition as other Caribbean islands. So somebody could come and do our triathlon. We have a triathlon every single year. They could come along and do something to raise awareness. Again, it was a friend who said, look, I've got a guy who's just a bit odd who could do something. He's quite strong and he's not bad at endurance and maybe he could carry something.

8:26We all sat around a table. Somebody said, what about a tree representative at green energy? I turned around and went triathlon. Everyone was like, done. That is it. So fast forward, I trained for a few months and I am just on the start line of this triathlon and there's legit, really good triathletes. And I'm there just like they're putting the goggles on Vaseline and I'm just trying to attach a tree to my trunks and I'm just dying. And they're like, who is this dude? I did all right as well. I didn't finish last. I actually overtook some people on the swim. I went past a fair few people and they just went, oh, for God's sake, I'm being overtaken by a man with a tree.

9:04The cycle was problematic though. So basically I caught up with the Royal Marines and I said, look, how would you approach this? And they said, look, you just top flat it, which is how they, if you imagine a backpack and the top, that's how they carry missiles. They're like, we do this all the time Ross so you just like strap it to the top long ways so that felt pretty good until I am bombing it downhill and there are just lorries coming past and apparently I was inches away from just being absolutely wiped out but the triathlon was awesome yeah shout out to Nevis Caribbean island so good see I thought it would have been better to kind of put it vertical because then at least you're not getting more wind resistance especially on a bike and like you the risk of getting knocked off by a truck.

9:47Where were you when I needed you, Jake? I'm going to consult you for all stupid ideas going forward now. Then you did a 48 hour Royal Marines swim, which I think you've actually done longer than that. Yeah. Yeah. That was the first one. Yeah. That was the first one. Yeah. Yeah. I just kind of wanted to just see where I was at in terms of swimming. And the Royal Marines are just such legends. I've got so many friends who were PTIs. Mike Tanner, who was basically in charge of the Royal Marines at the time down in Limston in Devon. And I just said, look, this is going to sound so strange, but I need a pool for 48 hours.

10:18You know, I can't go to the local leisure center. They won't let me do it. And he just said, yeah, no, it's fine. If you can get some friends, the PTIs, to be lifeguards, we can sign it off from health and safety. And so we did. And I am just swimming and friends of mine, they even brought weights out on the side of the pool. They're just doing bicep curls. And in the middle of the night, we ended up getting pizza, fried chicken. I just swam, yeah, for 48 hours. That's insane. Even just staying awake for 48 hours, that'd be the struggle, I think. yeah yeah yeah i think your mind goes to some strange places and you're like the yukon swim we'll get into this later but yeah oh yeah have you ever fell asleep while swimming or nearly like drifted yeah yeah yeah you and but it's also when you are like when we did the yukon swim for instance so that was 510 kilometers uh 56 hours but what was interesting we had to actually get to the point as well so i think we were as a team a lot of us were awake awake for over 70 hours and you say you know do you fall asleep but it's just when when you're awake that long it's just perceptual distortions hallucinations so you sort of go am i asleep or no i think i'm awake you look over i remember there was one point as well one of my friends chris uh olympic swim coach absolute legend he is just kayaking he's freezing because obviously the yukon's so close to the arctic circle sleep deprived freezing and he's sitting there his teeth are chattering and i stopped for a banana and I remember I looked at him and I just went how we doing and he just went good can you see dwarves building a small cabin over there and I looked and I went no no Chris and he went yeah that's good and then he just carried on paddling I was like oh my god and then Scotland Loch Ness swim I mean that one was bad so basically Loch Ness is this like long sort of funneled lock lake.

12:05And at night, I think... Did you see the Loch Ness Monster, by the way? Well, this is where this... I thought I did. So I'm swimming and then at night, I look up and I'm having a banana and the branches of the trees are kind of just like swaying. But in my head, I'm hallucinating. I'm tripping balls at this part. I look up and it looks like the outline of like the Titanic or a cruise ship. And I'm eating my banana. I'm like, that is so strange. How did they get a cruise ship in the lock? That's amazing. And then these branches are waving. It looks like people have come to the side of the boat to wave at me.

12:40So I'm eating the banana. My girlfriend's on the boat, my brother's on the boat, my mum's on the boat. And they just watch as I start talking to the trees. And I just go, guys, thank you so much. Your support means everything. And they're like, oh, he's talking to the branches. And then I'm there going, if you can donate for charity, we're doing it for Ocean Conservation. Thank you, guys. This means a lot. And then Hester was like, look, this is, this is getting bad. That went on for another about four hours. I think the total swim was about 60 hours. I thought it was going well. All I remember is sort of like tunnel vision.

13:14It just kind of like you're looking through the eye of a needle. It got smaller and smaller and smaller until it just went black. And then I woke up. Next thing I know, I'm in the hospital bed. Hester, my girlfriend and my mum were at the head of the bed and I looked at them and I just went, it's not gone well, has it? And they he went no ross it's it's not gone well so yeah it's weird to answer your question yeah it's like are you asleep are you awake it blurs the line to some weird places yeah the only way it must be psychedelic i don't know like speaking to friends of mine they're like yeah that is like you're just tripping balls on acid that is crazy have you uh have you ever felt like frightened in in a situation like that where potentially you trip in it's middle of the night or anything like that has Has it ever been scary?

13:58Do you know what? It's strange because often the hallucinations are quite friendly. So maybe if something bad happened, but for me, again, in Loch Ness, I remember they saw and I was like swimming in zigzags. And I went, you know, those old divers with the big like metal helmets, they were coming out the water. And so I was apologising and, oh, sorry, I don't want to get in your way. And in my head, I was like, I just don't want to interfere with what they're doing. And then the guys were like, yeah, there's nothing there. I thought dogs were swimming with me. I love dogs. You know, so again, Hester was just like, you look really happy.

14:31And I was just like, hey, little fella. So yeah, but maybe we'll be speaking in a few years. I'll be like, I had some terrible ones. I remember, obviously, next up was The Great British Room, what you touched on before, which you actually did. I remember you did this in partnership with Red Bull, actually, didn't you? Yeah, yeah. And you did it on Red Bull TV. Yeah, yeah. I remember watching all the episodes. I think a new one or two episodes came out a week, I think. yeah and uh and it was crazy just seeing like how battered you are and for reference the craziest thing was it was 156 days right yeah yeah and it was six hours on six hours off and you had to stick to that because of the tides right exactly but how battered you got within the time period and then like how your body composition changed oh yeah from like when you started you actually started like pretty lean right yeah yeah was this like the first time you realized that like body composition and like your fat mass actually matters a hundred percent i think i think almost looking at biomimicry when we look at the animal kingdom like success leaves clues you know so you look and i'm looking at whales and i'm just like right i need that i need seals i need blubber so you're you're absolutely right i think i started so naive um was tanned ripped i I was just like, oh, I look amazing.

15:48And then by the time I get to Scotland, I'm like, I don't want abs. They're of no use to me now. I just need fat. And just like my beard was, I look like a fat Santa Claus, a sea dwelling Santa Claus, but jellyfish are bouncing off my face. And I think, yeah, that for me was really, I say I started that as an athlete and I finished as an adventurer because I think by the end, you're thinking completely differently, like no longer. So many of my friends who are incredible pool swimmers will talk about, you know, are you bilaterally breathing? What's your pace? Um, is it a two beat leg kick, a six beat leg kick, real technical.

16:22And I'm like, can I stop you there? When you are a hundred days in picking bits of your tongue out because it's eroding from salt water and you've got jellyfish tentacles in your face. No one cares about your two beat leg kick. It's just, are you stubborn enough to keep going? And I think that's where it gets really interesting. Yeah. And, uh, what struck me was, like I said, everything that you've done, you've kind of thought outside the box. You've not just thought i want to be in great shape and i'm going to try and do this it's always about optimizing your body and everything around it to kind of complete the task and you're not really asked about anything else i feel like that's the thing with yourself and i think that is true training for performance rather than right now with instagram and stuff a lot of people like to train for aesthetics they want to look good and they want to which is great and you know that's great motivation but i think like you say you become an adventurer you become kind of like pioneering when you do train performance and you're eating performance and everything is for you just executing that task yeah have you found that over have you ever like kind of like struggled with that over the years because you've been in great shape as well and you always i always see like after anything that you do you always get absolutely diced again you always get shredded so like obviously you like being in shape yeah and like i'm never saying that you're out of shape you're just different body shape a hundred no no no you're but you're absolutely right i think it's yeah i like because sometimes i am paid to get into shape you know so if there is something we're filming a documentary or whatever then then that's usually why but then equally like honestly like jake we're in iceland so i got up to about 105 kilos but what's really interesting is that 105, my body composition changed.

18:07Severe atrophy in the legs, you know, because I'm not using them. I'm like an astronaut, you know, when they come back and their like musculoskeletal system has almost collapsed on itself. So my legs are just shriveled, but I just put on this bulk in the upper body, like big chubby triceps. But also I think what was crazy is habituating that amount of cold for so long. You talk about brown fat cells, but all sorts was going on that when I was basically going into a harbour and we were just in a restaurant, I was sweating. And it was like this, it was just a nice room, but I am like drenched. It's like someone's thrown a bucket of water over me.

18:41There'd be couples having a romantic evening and I'm just like sweating. I'm so sorry. And that took me a while. So I think after something like that, when people see that I get lean, sometimes it's just because I'm not force feeding myself to maintain the calories not only needed to fuel the expedition, but keep the body fat as well. So you'll know, you know, I then keep the sort of volume roughly the same, dial in my, I say dial in my diet. I mean, just not force feeding myself. GB swim, for instance, I love Toblerone. And if I woke up like in those six hours when I was meant to be sleeping and I needed the toilet, I'm so sorry for people listening.

19:21I would just take a Toblerone. So I'm just sitting on the toilet, just smashing a Toblerone as well, because I was just in this perpetual state of carb loading. I slept with just jelly babies under my pillow. So again, if I woke up, I'd just take a mouthful and then go back to sleep. So when I lose that weight, it's so interesting. It's not hard when you've been force feeding yourself. But I do understand I'm such a weird example. It would be quite hard for people to understand that. But it's like when you've gone over the Arctic Circle, force feeding yourself 15 ,000 calories, it's nice to come home.

19:56Is that how many calories you've eaten per day? Yeah, we worked out. That was really interesting. Professor Luke von Loon, literally, he's like the Lionel Messi of sports scientists when it comes to metabolism. Absolute legend. And he was just saying it's so crazy that you just look at, you know, calories in, calories out. The laws of thermodynamics, you must have been having those amounts of calories because otherwise you'd have come back emaciated. The fact that you put on weight is just silly. And I think that, like I said, I'm not a bad swimmer, but I'm really good at eating. Does that justify that when people say the famous words, you can't out-train a bad diet.

20:35If you're swimming for 12 hours a day, you can still put on weight. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. I think that there's also like just strange things that were going on. I think the body almost understood because it was where I was storing that fat as well. That it even went around like vital organs and say it was really weird that the body was like, this is stupid. What are you doing? Stop throwing yourself into the water over the Arctic Circle. So as a result, I was like, well, I'm going to keep doing this. So the body's like, right, we've got no other option but to adapt. So just weird things happen. But similarly, because we were talking about this just off air.

21:10Again, I don't think your marathon time gets enough credit. Like it's actually ridiculous at your weight running the speeds that you do. Have you seen any adaptations in yourself? You were talking about your biomechanics and stuff like that, whether it's like physiological, biomechanical. Are there any adaptations that you've had? I think it sounds strange from like a mental point of view. I think I'm at a point now with training where I have to be a little bit more reserved with training. Because if I, sometimes if I'm having a great day and I'm really feeling it, I'll push too far. And then I'll get kind of like injured or something later on down the line.

21:50So it's kind of like one holding back. And I think that's from, I've had a past of like running ultra marathons and stuff and then like, um, training in the gym and then training to failure. Obviously back in the day, like bro bodybuilding and stuff like that, like you'd be on the hack squat and someone wouldn't let you off that hack squat. Like physically wouldn't let you off that hack squat until you're on the floor in a pile and they had to lift the weight off you. And I feel like that that's great for hypertrophy. It's great for building muscle. um but for kind of like performance i don't think you need to take it that far you probably just need to leave like two reps in reserve or whatever so i found recently it's all about actually not going very hard in training because you want that longevity and it's all about the weeks adding up rather than maybe doing a really hard week and then being battered for a week and then you know rinse and repeating or potentially getting injured or whatever so so that that's kind of like one but like in terms of uh actually like when i when i start training for a marathon and stuff like that uh i think i really struggled with losing weight as well like um i actually like for before i ran that marathon i didn't train upper body for six weeks before the marathon and like i still couldn't lose it off my other half so i feel like i'm probably the opposite it like i i wish i could lose a little bit more i wish i could get skinny when i'm running a marathon because then i'd be able to run faster um i get it because it's weird as well what you said there as well because um we talk about in the book as well with carl young talking about your your shadow self you know this part of your psyche that you kind of don't want the world to see you kind of whether you're crazy competitive stubborn whatever it is you kind of like you hide that from the the world because you're like, oh, I don't want people to see that.

23:41I think when you look at people like Kobe Bryant, Mamba Mentality, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Mike Tyson, Serena Williams, the list is endless. And I always say it's really interesting because I think the world and certainly the public, sometimes they love success, but they flinch at the intensity needed to get there. So like, we want you to win, but oh, not, you know, don't be too aggressive about it. So I think what's interesting, Carl Jung says, you have to make peace with your shadow self. It's like sitting down with your demons. And I also love Jordan Peterson when he says, you know, you should be a monster, but then learn how to control it.

24:14You know, there's nothing wrong with having a monster inside of you, but know when to basically put it back in the cage. Do you think that's the case with you then? Because you're still quite young, but do you think back in the early day, you just were like, whether it was competitive, stubborn, whatever it is, you would just go to failure. Whereas now you sort of made peace with your shadow self going, And, oh, Jake, you're a little bit stubborn. You will go to failure. So just rein it in. You've almost put a leash on the monster, your shadow self. Would you say? I'd say I haven't done that, but I've got a coach that's right.

24:44And then that's been kind of like the game changer of having a coach that literally will tell me I'm not working with you again if you don't listen to me. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll feed my thoughts, my coach at the moment. But yeah, great guy. But yeah, he'll like tell me no. And I think that's what I've had in the past is more like yes, people where they're like, Oh, I'll say, what about this? And they go, Oh yeah, that's a cool idea. But, and they want it to be fun and they don't want to like stop me, but sometimes you've got to be stopped and you've got to kind of like dial in and be specific and you can't just go and do random stuff.

25:21Um, I suppose with, with everything that you've done, um, you've got to get super, super specific and you can't, you've almost got to take out the junk volume. Like say, for example, if you're training for, for a swim, you may have to take out them from gym sessions that you've, you've got to do it. They have to be really specific and boring and monotonous and like, yeah. How, how do you deal with that? Because I know you, you love training. You're so right. Yeah. Like I miss those. Like, I love what you said there, you know, I'm 40 now, but back in the day, just like a bro down, you just curl biceps, you know, and then go and have a burger afterwards.

25:57Oh, I miss that. But I've had to sacrifice that. I think it was Ingebrigtsen. And I love, he had an amazing term because he was just like, so often when people are in the gym, you know, let's use a weightlifting example, for instance, you know, when you're like a proper bro, you're like, I want to test my bench press three times a week, international chest day. That's just what you want to do. And he's just like, you can't keep doing that. And certainly the Norwegians have this amazing, their systematic scientific approach that he was saying, it's like, if you're trying to grow a carrot. You don't completely constantly test it.

26:29You know, you're not going to constantly just pull the carrot out to go, yes, it's still growing and then put it back in. It's like, no, trust the process, water it, nurture it, sunlight, everything, but don't pull it out. And I think that when I heard that, I was like, you know, don't pull your carrot out. I was like, I pulled my carrot out. That sounds so weird. A lot, you know, in that I'm just, and it was interesting you said there about your coach. I was never Eddie Good, but I was fortunate enough to try a sprint at Brunel university with Lymford Christie. And again, for me, more was always better.

26:58You know, I was like, if Lymford tells me to do, you know, 10 sprints, if I do a hundred, I'm going to be so fast. And especially when it comes to strength, speed and power, you know, Lymford would be like, go home. He'd actually take my spikes off me and go, go home. You're done. Like you're getting slower. You're drilling bad technique now, Ross. Like I can literally see you're deteriorating. go home and I think um even now there's there's still a sort of lack of maturity with my training um but I am trying to the grand old age of 40 trying to become more mature and like I said not keep pulling the carrot out and knowing when to pull the reins knowing when to put the monster back in the cage but it's hard isn't it yeah especially like I think we're very similar in the fact that we both love training and we got into this because we love training yeah whereas like you see some of these incredible athletes and they're so gifted that sometimes they just see it as a job and them going to the track or whatever it is like they're like well that's my job that's my work and then i'll after that i'll go do something that i enjoy whereas like we enjoy going to the track we enjoy burying ourselves we enjoy like that like if i wasn't trained like the hardest days for me is like an active recovery day in my week which sounds so sad and i need to get a life but if you if someone tells you to have a day off like the other week i was poorly i was sick i started getting a little bit of a cold and i had to take two days off and they're probably the worst two days of my life because i'm just like not because of the cold just because i'm sat around like i'm like i want to train i want to just because you're used to it so much and it's just like therapeutic and you're so right yeah but and i i was similar to you i was quite sort of apologetic about that and certainly was just like i need to be a more rounded human i I can't keep doing this.

28:40But in some ways, like I just think like now we found out that certain people have a wanderlust gene. It's a gene expression that basically means their dopamine works a little bit differently. They were basically when we were cavemen sitting here, you'd be like, I'm going to look at the fire. I'm going to cook tonight. But there'd be one guy in the tribe who would just be like, oh, what's over? What's over? Do you reckon I can swim that ocean? Do you reckon I can run up there? And that person, their dopamine just worked a little bit differently. And I think in so many ways, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if you have that, you know.

29:12Why is that? Is that kind of like a key for kind of like evolution? I think so. I mean, certainly when you start looking at like, you know, ADHD brains, and I don't like using that term because I just think it's, you know, some people's brains, their brain chemistry works a little bit differently. But certainly for myself, I just always, I mean, this is sort of neuroscience, but equally, you know, Viktor Frankl, the meaning of life is to give life meaning, you know, that over money, fame, everything, a human just desires purpose. And more and more and more. A hundred percent. Yeah. And for me, if I wake up and I, you know, I went through periods where I wasn't training for anything specific.

29:47And so I'd just be hitting biceps, you know, I'd just be training. I'm like, no, no, no, no, I need a purpose. Even if it's like five years away, it doesn't matter. So at the moment, for instance, I'm obsessed with my one rep max on pull-ups just because there's a direct correlation between that and your top swim speed. Can McAvoy, like McAvoy, the current 50 metre world record holder and Olympic champion. Absolute legend. He is literally doing, I've seen him do speed reps with 70 kilos. So he there just rips. Is that strict? Strict, Jake, strict. His videos are unbelievable. So he's there, bang, rips, and then sometimes uses that as neural priming.

30:25So he goes there, neurally primed, walks down the end of the pool, and then just rips a 25. And you're like, what is going on? So I'm now fascinated. I'm not trying to be a French. It's kind of like contrast training, but like directly swimming. Exactly that. French contrast training. Exactly that. You know, and again, you know, Verkashansky pied that with Soviet Union principles, you know, and then Westside Barbell have even taken that. But yeah, it is that. And so I now, that is my goal that, you know, my girlfriend will wake up and just see me on smelling salts. We've got a cool garage gym now.

30:56And I'm just ripped spamming pull-ups. But without that, I just kind of just wandering around the gym. You know, it doesn't, training lacks its potency. I'm just like, what am I doing? Yeah. Are you the same? You need something. Yeah, definitely. I think even if you have a setback, whatever it is, like when you're, maybe it's an injury, maybe, you know, championships didn't go well or whatever. like I always obviously you're sad when it happens but like if you can start planning for something it's something to look forward to and I think that's a great way to kind of just get rid of that like always have something in the book so even if it's just I want to get back healthy and that is my number one goal and I'm going to do you know three rehab sessions with a physio a week or whatever it is to get back healthy and just change your goals but have goals I think that's the most important thing um and you actually touch on it in your book like and it was literally one of the most interesting quotes but you you mentioned about um whether you're going through grief grief or or anything or a tough time in your life uh having purpose and having something to work towards will give you meaning what's the actual quote in the book because i know i've just butchered that no not at all but there was a few different ones so the one that really resonated with me One, the Viktor Frankl, like I said, the meaning of life is to give life meaning, that he believed that over fame and everything, it's purpose that drives human behaviour.

32:24But further to that point, and I love the myth of Sisyphus. So for those who don't know ancient Greek mythology, Sisyphus was basically one of the cleverest men to ever exist. He was a king and he was so clever that he tricked death. He actually chained death up. So then all the gods were just pissed off because they were like, hang on, if death is chained up, we're fighting wars and no one's dying. And then even Hades down in the underworld is just like, well, this is crap. I haven't got any new souls coming in. Like, what is going on? So anyway, really annoyed at Sisyphus. When he eventually dies, basically the gods are like, look, we're going to punish you for eternity.

32:55So we're going to have you, and you'll probably know this story, but roll a boulder up a hill. And just as it gets to the top of the hill, rolls back down. And you are doomed to do that for eternity. And he was like, oh, that is a terrible punishment. But this is where it gets interesting. Albert Camus, the philosopher, said, Sisyphus was able to outsmart the gods one more time. and that's if you imagine him smiling so he enjoyed the struggle he had purpose and this is the quote that i love he said because the struggle alone is enough to fill a man's heart and i think that for me i'm just like when i heard that i was like oh that is it that is it sisyphus you know as long as you're doing something you know the process is its own reward just struggling so as people go like why why is jake out on the track running in torrential rain and stuff.

33:42Struggle alone is enough to fill a man's heart. Is he doing it for Instagram? No. Struggle alone is enough to fill a man's heart. Yeah, that's, uh, that's insane. And even like with that, I know a lot of people search for like the perfect trading conditions. And I feel like when you start to actually look at what you just mentioned there and look at, it's actually the struggle that makes you grateful. It's a struggle that makes it kind of fun, puts a smile on your face. And it's probably the times that you remember as well. Like then you can start to use training to your advantage. I always think about training in the North of England.

34:18Do you know, the term up North, it's grim. It's true. It is grim up here. But for training, I think it makes worries. And you see it all over the country. Like there's a lot of people from the North of England, whether it's Yorkshire, Lancashire, or Cumbria. and there's just kind of like savages being built. And I think it's because they're not scared to go out when it's dark, cold, windy, wet, and they're just getting it done. And then when it comes to perfect training conditions and, you know, it's nice and warm, sunny, it's easy to get out. Like they can do that and it's actually enjoyable.

34:56You're so right. But like you've probably spent, I know you spent a bit of time in Australia and stuff like that, but sometimes it can get too comfortable and then you're still like, oh it's a bit of an effort to go out and but it's like perfect conditions and you know kind of like a month ago you would have loved it but because you've got used to it you're then like ah it's not as good and it's one of those things like you you can't take the good stuff for granted and no way to humble you is just just get out there when it is shit weather and just do it anyway i love what you said there because there was a few things so so i love stoicism ancient greek um philosophy and there was epic titus one of the great stoic philosophers and he had this great term, which was just getting wintered.

35:35He said, look, you know, wars are fought in the summer, but it's what you do in the winter that has a profound impact on your ability to perform in the summer. It's a cold, hard, mild winter training, this idea of getting wintered. So that's kind of stoicism, ancient Greek philosophy, which was, you know, years ago. But now fast forward, and Andrew Huberman was talking about this. So when it comes to neuroscience, they've only recently, it's a very recent development, actually found a part of the brain, it's called your anterior mid-cingulate cortex. This part of the brain basically is related to grit and quit, pain versus purpose.

36:05So at any given time, when you are in the middle of a horrible session, torrential rain, freezing, can't fill your hands, what's going on? Pain versus purpose. This is an oversimplification. But in my head, certainly around Iceland, I thought about it like a weighing scale. You've got purpose over here, you've got pain. So all of a sudden, you are swimming in lactic, your lungs are burning. And it's like, yeah, but Jake, remember, we've got a marathon coming up. Remember, you said you were going to go sub 220. That's the purpose. But then it's like, oh, but my legs are hurting. Oh God, I'm going to cough up a lung.

36:37And it's like, that is just constantly doing it. Now, some people, when purpose basically is less than pain, that's when they quit. So all of a sudden, when that happens as well, the anterior matingular cortex registers that and they've found, and this is what's fascinating. It's almost like a muscle. So it grows and shrinks, atrophies. It's actually smaller in people who are overweight, sedentary people. It's bigger in athletes. So it's this idea that next time you go out and you run and it's horrible, again, you know, it's freezing cold, can't feel your fingers. You're not just training, say it's a zone two run.

37:09You're not just training capillaries, mitochondria. It's not just aerobic. Please understand the neuroscience. There's a part of your brain that you are actually conditioning as well. And that's what I love what you just said, because granted, if I started on a start line and I'm about to run a marathon and I'm trying to be competitive. And to my right, there's some guy who's grown up in the fells in Keswick, you know, in the Lake District. And he is just like grizzly, you know, I'm like, whoa, or there's a guy, I'm trying to think of a really nice place, you know, Malibu or something like that.

37:39Maybe, I don't know, but you know, the sun is shining and stuff. I'm like, oh, it's this guy, you know, that I'm a little bit worried about. Yeah. Because his anterior mid-singular cortex must just be jacked. Have you ever had it where you've kind of pushed that too far? Because there's been some instances where yes there's that kind of like pain perception and you're pushing through the pain that much that you can also take a step back because I think dosing is obviously correct dosing is important with everything that you do and sometimes you can go over the top I remember speaking to Johnny Brownlee triathlete incredible but he, the famous part where his brother like carries him over the line and he was suffering with like heat exhaustion.

38:24Yeah. Yeah. He said, because he pushed his body so much then for the next two to three years, he struggled to kind of get to that intensity again. Like his body just kind of like put a shutter on like, because obviously like when you're pushing so hard, like what your body telling you to stop is because your body doesn't want you to die. and it's kind of like a safety mechanism and you're always trying to push the boundary of that but sometimes you can overdo it. Has there been a point where you've done that? You are so right. I love what you said there. So it was Tim Noakes. He basically came up with this idea of central governor theory.

38:59It's now known as the psychobiological model of fatigue but essentially it's the same thing. It just basically means that say me and you went for a run right now and we were 18 miles in. I'd be turning to you. I'd be like, Jake, oh my God, my lungs are on fire, my legs. My body would be picking up, you know, how's muscle glycogen? Are you overheating? Did you have electrolytes? All of these things. And so what happens, Tim Noakes proposes, is that basically the brain is almost like a hypochondriac and it pulls the physiological handbrake ever slightly. It'll get you to stop or certainly slow down because it's self-preservation.

39:28Never wants you to go to complete failure. And we'll see this because all of a sudden when we're 25 miles in, I might see family, friends, people holding up a banner, go Ross. And then I goose step and I sprint to the end and you go, hang on, what? What from there? you said you were done at 18 miles so we now know that but i think what's really interesting and certainly on my swims i i say that i out call outsource common sense and what i mean by that is my friends and family and certainly my girlfriend know that i will just go to complete failure we've done it in logness did it in lake tresomino and we've been in a hospital bed quite a few times oh yeah yeah and i don't say that it is a personality defect i'm not saying this proudly at all but i will go until you know that the body just goes so everything that i've told you there when i'm swimming i'm there going remember tim noakes central governor theory psycho biological model of fatigue you're far more powerful than your own mind allows you to believe this rule all that all that shit exactly exactly this is just a handbrake put the handbrake back down you're good ross and and i've just found i'm able to do that until the body just goes right we're just hitting the off switch this is a terrible idea um and again i don't say that proudly so i now outsource common sense and so my doctor uh you know who was on the yukon.com absolute legend and the entire team we've got like jurk kennedy one of the greatest ice swimmers ever he understands hypothermia right ross is now you know dribbling and not making much that do you know me so they're brilliant and i trust their judgment because i'll be there going no i'm absolutely fine and they'll be like no you're not you're getting out safety outsourced don't trust it's exactly it's exactly it but they're brilliant as well because they just they know you know where that line is like we play with probably gonna select them people like quite carefully because you don't want someone who's overly careful and you don't want someone who's gonna push you to your limit so you actually do you're not you're so right and that's why jerry kennedy's amazing because because like i said he's one of the greatest ice swimmers ever um so when i'm hallucinating you know he's just like it's okay he's just hallucinating he's still actually speaking he's quite coherent you know so he's good yeah so it's weird the conversations that we have your barometer your threshold for like things going wrong you know on the actual sort of like the team it's uh yeah it plays with the boundaries of common sense and and sports science with uh both your huge swims like your endurance ones the great british swim and then the aslan swim um the main kind of thing that you need is not to get ill and not to get sick because you can't afford to miss any days, especially the Iceland one because your little boy was being born.

42:06Oh yeah. So you had to make it back in time. So you couldn't afford to be ill at all. How would you actually prepare for that? I think work capacity, so your body's ability to perform and positively tolerate training either given intensity or duration. I think that's massively underappreciated in sports science. You might have two marathon runners with exactly the same VO2, biomechanics, top end speed, everything is identical, just theoretically, everything is identical, but one has a higher work capacity. When training them, that just means the one with a higher work capacity, you can almost like flog them like a horse.

42:42Do you know what I mean? You can throw more volume, more intensity. So it's really interesting. I think that's massively sort of underappreciated. And again, I think that's almost like, it's almost my superpower in a weird way. Like when it comes to something, People are so kind and they'll say, Ross, you're an amazing swimmer. I sort of go, oh, let me stop you there. Adam Peaty is an amazing swimmer. He is poetic. Look at him in the water. He's like a dolphin and he's glistening in the sun, his abs. He's amazing. I'm not. You know, he's like a dolphin. I'm more like a chubby whale, you know, but I am ugly and I'll keep going.

43:19I'm a stubborn swimmer. And so I always make that distinction. So I think it's work past it, like I said, so physiological, but also sort of like mental as well. It's psychological. And certainly towards the end, I mean, this is what we talk about in the book, but there was this moment at the end. So we are like, we've got the final hundred miles to go. And on the south coast of Iceland, we had basically over here, you had Hurricane Erin coming through the Atlantic, which is just like torn through, actually displaced people. Few people died. It was a really bad hurricane. that's coming through the Atlantic.

43:52So that's coming over on the East Coast. On the West Coast, we've got Grindavik, so an active volcano had gone off and just literally just ruined an entire town, just like, just engulfed it. And there was poisonous gas coming from it, so we couldn't get close. And then here we had Europe's largest glacier with literally shards of ice as about as big as this table, like which you would hit when you're swimming in the dark as well. The team turned around and they were just like, Ross, I'm so sorry. You know, we're going to be here for two weeks until, you know, this is actually blown over and then we might be able to continue.

44:23My first, it was our first baby, was due in a week. I turned to the team and I was like, look, no, I'm sorry. I don't want to be that guy, but I need to get back. I've paid for the boat. We need to go out there. And so we went out there. People are chundering. There's pots and pans. And I'm just trying to keep the team together, going, oh, good day for a swim. I made it back by two days. And I think sometimes having a deadline that is an absolute non-negotiable can really do some amazing things. Like, you know, there's a lot of people, again, anterior mid-cingulate cortex, pain versus purpose.

44:59Your reasons to continue need to be bigger than your reasons to stop. And for me, every time that anterior mid-cingulate cortex did that calculation, it was like, Ross, if you're not there for the birth of your son, how will you feel? And so that as a motivator, I'm just swimming, jellyfish bouncing off my face, It's like, it wasn't an issue because my reasons to continue was so big. Would you say that then final kind of like couple of weeks then were like perception wise, like a little bit easier than the rest of this one? Because like you was now, again, if you're running a marathon and you're aiming for a sub three hour marathon and you've got to run a certain pace for the last two kilometers to get under, you're now not even thinking about the pain.

45:42You're thinking about shit. I just need to run as fast as possible. like and then them two kilometers feel like the easiest yeah of them all yeah was it the same within the swim i think it was because i think that uh central governor central governor theory psycho biological model of fatigue it was almost like i can lift the handbrake you know i can just go now to failure whereas certainly on like the north coaster at the start when i was you know say 100 miles in i was like i cannot completely lift this handbrake because i've got so far to go, I have to pace myself. This would be suicide, my immune system, like central nervous system, adrenal fatigue, everything.

46:17So there was an element of just like, okay, I need to pace. Whereas when you've got a hundred miles left, you can just go like all out. And I think, again, we talk about this in the book, but I drew such inspiration from, you know, the Icelandic Norse warriors, the berserkers, you know, so berserkers basically would enter a trance-like state where they wouldn't feel fear, pain. Now they're actually saying that there's a theory, not necessarily proven, but there's a theory that they're even experimenting with certain mushrooms, certain plants as well to just get into this crazy state. But afterwards, the berserkers would basically just be wiped out because they would just be like, oh my God, my central nervous system, I am in pieces.

46:56Like a really bad come down basically. And I think for me over those final hundred miles, I was like, I just have to go berserker. You know, that's the only way. And again, it was, I love Norse mythology, which, you know, runs through the entire book. But, you know, Odin, for instance, you know, the Allfather, you know, King of the Gods, he basically traded his eye for wisdom. So he knew what was going to happen to him. And basically, there's something called Ragnarok. It's like the Norse apocalypse, like the Battle of End of Time, where the gods battle the giants. Odin knew because he'd seen it that he basically dies.

47:31Spoiler alert, it gets eaten by a massive wolf. but that's not the point he still rides into battle anyway and that's the point that i love because in norse mythology it's like you can't control the outcome but you can control your attitude to it and i think with odin just knowing that he was going to die with a giant wolf he still rode into battle he still chose to do that and i think for me at the end i was like if this fails and i don't make it that's absolutely fine but at least in the book that i write for my son he'll go at least dad tried he chose his attitude towards the inevitable failure and i think it was you know Nietzsche who said I know I've no greater life purpose than to perish attempting the impossible I think with that all playing on my head with the berserker story I was like let's grow that's insane and obviously you you are an author as well like you're kind of like a jack of altars you can do everything I don't like that we've not even touched on like the adventuring side yeah obviously yeah you've done a little bit but I want to go into kind of like your your earlier stuff that you did.

48:29Um, but with, uh, the books and stuff, especially when you're doing it about the swim, are you sat there within your six hours off? Obviously all I'd be stressing about is eating enough and getting to sleep. Are you kind of like taking notes and stuff as well? And like, what are you going to talk about in the book and stuff like that? I love that you asked that. I genuinely do. But it's really interesting because I would like get in, collapse into bed, you know, pulling jellyfish tentacles out of my face. And I'd have like a really cool idea for a chapter. So sometimes I would leave like the most incoherent voice note for myself.

49:02And sometimes it was genius. And I was like, oh my God, that is poetic. And then sometimes I'm like, that's awful. That makes no sense. So yeah, it is. And I think that's part of it. I love, I love documenting it as well. And I think it's like the heroic age of Antarctic exploration. So, you know, when the world was just trying to get to the South Pole, you know, we had Admanson, Robert Falcon, Scott Shackleton. And it was fascinating because everyone would basically go on these expeditions, come back and then write a book, you know, and they'd be like, this is my adventure. And every step in Antarctica uncovered something new in terms of exploration, geometry, rocks, samples, anything, every single step.

49:44So I think for me, it's kind of carrying that on, but almost like a modern version. So no one had ever swum around Iceland. So I knew every single stroke would allow me to write something about it. And yeah, I think it's taking more inspiration from them than sometimes sport and athletics. And Admanson was a great example. So Norwegian, first guy to get to the South Pole. And he was competing in what is called the greatest race in the world against Robert Falcon Scott, the British guy. And the British guy, we turned up and it's sort of well documented. We turned up with horses, with ponies that fell through the ice, the orcas ate them, tinned food, which was just terrible, ended up like lead poisoning, mechanical skis as well and stuff that just broke down.

50:31Terrible. It was awful. But Admanson had learned from natives up in the Arctic, learned all these tricks and stuff. So one in particular, for instance, he knew he used dogs because you can rely on dogs, not ponies, not anything, dogs. And I know to get to the South Pole, I need this many dogs. And when I get to the South Pole and I plant the flag for Norway, I'm going to come back and I know how many dogs I can then eat. I can eat them and I can feed them to the other dogs, the stronger dogs to get back. So he was just like ruthlessly efficient. Whereas the British, Robert Faust got, you know, unfortunately perished on the way back.

51:06And I think certainly the British media at the time was almost like, oh yes, you know, we're admins and beaters but uh at least we did it properly we you know we didn't eat our dogs you know and we went and we gave it a good go so it was it was really interesting that looking back over history with some of my swims now i try to be very much norwegian efficiency admins and a little bit less robert falcon scott but but just a disclaimer no eating dogs no eating dogs yeah thank you yeah i love it i love it like you say you've got to think outside the box you got to uh you got to do what you can do to survive that that's it do you know what i mean have you same question to you though not about the dogs but is there any like training methods where you you're like you know whether it is you know i mean i've experiment with all sorts intervals in a sauna i've been in there like honest and i'm just ripping into an assault bike just drenched anything like that exactly i do exactly the same as you so uh i I think it was Hayden Wilde.

52:06I've not had the luxury of meeting him, but his athlete manager for Red Bull mentioned that he came out of nowhere with kind of like his training, obviously, he's a triathlete and he started doing basically bike work in a sauna. So the next day I got home and I teared apart my sauna. There's no seats in my sauna and now there's just an assault bike in my sauna. How long will you do? What's your protocol? So my protocol is I'll keep it because obviously the thermometer is like at the top of the sauna. When you get in and you start moving the assault bike, because of the assault bike spins the air around, the temperature will come down, but I'll keep it anywhere between kind of like 50 and 70 degrees Celsius.

52:53And then I'll just cycle in there for 30 minutes after a session. So instead of like my heat training, my typical heat training. and for me the science behind that is one heat training increases blood plasma so if you actually go and train in a hot country normally you'll probably one to two kg heavier after a couple of days because your body knows that it needs to sweat more so it increases blood plasma but then if you think about your your blood concentration you've got red blood cells and then a load of things but then you've also got your blood plasma which is almost like water so you increase the water and your body then sends more signals that it needs more red blood cells to even out the concentration so over kind of like a five-week period you actually start producing more red blood cells and it can be it can mimic altitude training almost so you can have like more red blood cells and then that in turn improves your vlt max it makes you more efficient at carrying oxygen to the muscles.

53:58So it's great for kind of like efficiency, endurance and stuff like that. So that's one thing. Another thing, sweat rates. So again, a lot of people don't realise they'll see someone sweating a lot and they think, oh, they're out of shape. But actually sweating more technically means you're fitter because it's a cooling mechanism. And the more you exercise, the better you get at sweating. So then that cools you down, it makes you perform better. So training in kind of like a sauna or in a sweatsuit actually speeds that up. And what I find fascinating about it all is the boxers used to do it in the 80s.

54:35I was literally about to say this. It's crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then it all came in like the early 2000s. People had put like a black bean bag on trying to burn fat. And they thought, oh, the boxers do it. So we do it. Really, it's not about burning fat. It's about the heat adaptation and the kind of increased aerobic fitness. So, you know, they're doing it back in the eighties and nineties. And, uh, and now it's kind of like this new revelation or anything, but it's always been around. I love that. I think there's so many methods as well that like they were just doing back in the day. And now we've caught up saunas is a great example because now all the studies on it.

55:08And then, you know, got these Scandinavian countries going, yeah, I know we've been doing this years. And then we're like, oh, okay. Yeah, good. It's the right thing. But just loads. I mean, we were talking off air, weren't we? Like Jeff Capes. Oh, you know, world's strongest man. one of like one of the best athletes just all-around athletes just an absolute specimen and his training it was just like so you'd call it old school but it was just proven it was just tried and tested and he was just like why now we're trying to reinvent things there's new machines coming out and this he's just like no no no and his training was so simple but it was just an absolute beast and i think we've lost that i think sometimes we're getting back to it a little bit you know but yeah i think a lot of people over complicate things that's definitely yeah and with the world of social media like i think it can be a place where you you've actually got to come up with something new or some crazy exercise because then that'll go viral and it'll get your followers or whatever but uh sometimes the simple stuff works and you you've only got to look back in the books to see what actually worked i agree yeah you know 20 30 years ago but one thing that i do want to ask you about because i feel like you're the king of this ice baths because a lot of people But like, what is the science around an ice bath?

56:18Because a lot of people have now come out with studies saying that ice baths that aren't actually as great for you as what people say. And sometimes it's just like mental and you're not staying in them long enough to reduce information in like a certain injury or something like that. It's kind of like full body. Well, what's your thoughts on all that kind of stuff? I completely agree. And certainly recent studies. Well, it started out, I think, with hypertrophy. and they're saying that basically an ice bath afterwards will blunt that training response. You don't want that. So you want that pro-inflammatory response from training.

56:54We'd have all experienced it, whether weight training, done a horrible lactic session, whatever it is. Afterwards, your body's like, whoa, that was horrible. You want that because that's where the adaptation comes from. But there's even studies now saying with anaerobic conditioning as well, that it will blunt that training response as well. So I'm actually really, really careful when using it. I think, you know, if I am having it, I separate it from my sessions. I don't want to blunt that training response at all. And it's as and when I need it. You know, it's really just almost like I think of it in my head like a sponge, you know, because obviously there's that vasoconstriction of blood vessels and capillaries.

57:30It just like rings them out and just gets rid of all the sort of waste products, DOMS and everything. But I've become very protective of that training adaptation. you know even whether it's you know if i'm slightly injured i trapped a nerve in my neck recently and i just refused to take ibuprofen and stuff because again the studies around you want that pro-inflammatory response you don't want anti-inflammatories um so they were like and i was like swimming like this they were like just take some painkillers i was like no i'm good but yeah i i think uh i wouldn't want to rob myself of that you do a hard session you want it Did you find that?

58:06Yeah, definitely. I think, again, blood flow is what I try and aim for with everything that I'm doing. So heat is great, stretching great, mobility great, all that kind of stuff. Because that, again, if you're trying to recover, then for the muscles, yes, you can do ice. And it kind of almost numbs. It's like a numbing effect rather than a recovery effect. So that's how I see it. Whereas you want the blood flow because that's going to bring new nutrients, take away the bad nutrients, but then also... Repair the tissue and like actually make you adapt to the training. So, so definitely that I probably only use like ice bath or recommend it if you're doing multi-day competitions where you, you're not really, you peaked for this one competition and it might be over three days, say it's the CrossFit Games or whatever.

58:58and you just want to perform optimally, but you're not actually bothered about actually getting stronger from this workout or whatever, because that is your peak. That is your pinnacle. Absolutely. So like in between sessions or whatever, you want to take away that pain. You want to take away, or if it, you know, if you're running heats in the Olympics or whatever, you're doing an 800 meter and then two days later, you've got another 800 meter and ice bath's great. You're so right. Yeah. I would agree. Yeah. When you're in your taper, when you're peaking, it's then. No, I agree. I think the other thing that I found really useful recently is blood restriction training.

59:31Have you ever used that? I have, but I've not optimized it as well as I should have, really. Can you just explain? Yeah, I really enjoyed it. So with blood restriction training, let's use biceps, just a bro example. Imagine you're training biceps. So basically the cuff goes around the top of the arm there. The theory is that if you do, as a protocol, let's just say you do five sets of 15 reps, So the first set is kind of like, it's okay. The muscles are kind of going, okay, this feels okay. You've stopped blood flow, but we're still coping. After this, all of a sudden the muscles go, whee, okay, and your biceps, they go, hang on, what's going on here?

1:00:09If there's no blood flow, there's no oxygen. If there's no oxygen, then all of a sudden that means we're going to turn off the slow twitch fibers. If we turn off the slow twitch fibers, we can only use the fast twitch fibers and fast oxidative glycolytic fibers. We can only use those. So for strength, speed, and power, it's amazing for switching those on. But equally as well, there's just this accumulation of lactic acid as well, which in turn will spike growth hormone. So all of a sudden, it's almost like the fatigue and burning. I've never experienced anything like it. In your quads, it is horrible.

1:00:38But it's essentially asking your body to work over that limited oxygen environment. And as a result, accelerate certain adaptations as well. But I've loved it. So I've got the swimmer at home. So I'll have the cuffs on there and I am just ripping into it. So my triceps finishing off that, that final part of the stroke, they are just on fire because I'm basically saying, okay, do this now. And then when we are high up over the Arctic circle, you know, chasing orcas or whatever, then that's when this adaptation will actually be useful as well. So, yeah. Interesting. And how, like you said, the procedure isn't actually to do that much of it.

1:01:17What did you say? Five sets? Yeah, not at all. You're so right that it's just something that you can add on afterwards towards the end of your workout. It's just a different training stimulus. Do you get DOMS? No, no, not actually. No, because it immediately flushes afterwards. Also, there's no real emphasis on the eccentric contraction. It's just blood flow and restriction of it. And I think that's where it gets really interesting. And I always say this, it's like any given workout, you'll know this, Jake, that I say every single workout needs a clear cellular signal. Like, you know, Robert Hickson studies in molecular biology.

1:01:51he talks about every single workout needs such a specific signal. What are we adapting to? And I think too many people, when they go in the gym, you know, might go, oh, I'm going to go on the treadmill for 30 minutes and get a bit of a sweat. And then they go. So then the body goes, ah, treadmill, cool. Zone two, mitochondria and capillaries, got it, aerobic conditioning. But then you look over and then someone goes, oh, my mate's doing biceps over there. I'm going to just go and do biceps quickly. So they start doing biceps and they go, oh, oh, oh, sorry. Right. It's not aerobic conditioning anymore.

1:02:18We're doing biceps. Okay. Bodybuilding centric work hypertrophy got it and then all of a sudden you go oh god i should really do something on legs so then they go over and they start squatting and it's like oh cool squat strength your body's ability to generate force it's like what are you doing whereas i think what's really nice about blood restriction training is it perfectly complements whatever session because it's just tagged on at the end as a kind of an additional stress and stimuli that doesn't interfere with you know like that weird example that i was just giving about someone jumping all over the gym yeah no and when you do jump from like you say the treadmill to doing biceps to like you always feel like shit like you're like why am i not getting a pump with these bicep curls and it's probably a reason because you've just used all your glycogen when you're running 100 everything else and then you can't lift as much and stuff so i think going into a session like you say and just having a specific goal tick the box one thing that i learned from uh reese reese bartley as well um, loose child's about his husband, uh, is that you go into a session for a stimulus.

1:03:22And once you've got that stimulus, get out of the session as soon as you can. I love that. So say for example, you're, you're, you're doing a track workout and you've finished your track workout or like you're just about to finish and you're thinking, oh, should I do two extra reps? And, and sometimes you're like, oh, well, um, I might get better from these two extra reps, but you've got to think back to what you actually went to the track for. If you've already got that stimulus, then leave the session because you need to recover and you need to let that kind of sink in because there's, and it's always, I don't know if you go into the gym, there's two ways of going into the gym.

1:03:59I think the mentality of, I want to smash myself here and break myself down and then in a week's time i might build build up or i'm going into this session and i want to leave this better than when i started and i think for performance and if you've got a clay goal in mind you're probably better with the the second one like the gym is always about getting better and you shouldn't be breaking yourself down to the point of like exhaustion because you're leaving that for the swim, the Great British swim or the, you know, the Iceland swim, that's when you're breaking yourself down. That's the thing that actually matters.

1:04:36Whereas like the gym is the thing that's going to serve you. So a hundred percent. Yeah. No, I agree. And some of the best CrossFitters, that's exactly how they train as well. Like some, you know, elite CrossFitters won't go into the gym and go, well, what have we got today? No, they are drilling. Like I've got an aerobic session. I've got my strength session in the afternoon when I'm well rested. I'm going to work on technique for my Olympic lifts. So I think, yeah, that is just that idea. It doesn't matter who you are. You're so right. I love that. Chase the adaptation. Once you've got it, get out.

1:05:08I love that. And they're amazing, Lucy and Rhys, aren't they? Yeah, they're so clued up. I think Ingebrigtsen, referring back to him, I think he once said a quote where, like, leave your intensity for competition. Because that's when it matters. No one's seeing that one great training session that you had. That doesn't matter. It's what the result is on whatever you've chose, whether it is a huge challenge like yourself or whether it's the Olympic final or whatever it is. I agree. Or whether it's 10k race. Yeah, I agree. That's where it actually matters. So leave your intensity for that. Yeah.

1:05:46And then in the gym, always stay a little bit more reserved. I agree. I want to actually go back to the world's fittest book. So obviously you're coming out with a new book, How to Hero. that that's coming out on the 8th of October, but you've actually got quite a few books already out. And for me, like the OG, the world's fittest book is like, just, just mind blowing. But you actually talk about like the exploring days and like pilgrimages and stuff like this. Are you legend? No, no, no way back. Yeah, it is way back. But like, I just found it so interesting. Can you just explain like some of the, some of the shit that you've done like back in the past i remember like was it like an african tribe or something that you went uh like hunting with you're such a legend that is like yeah the very fact that you've brought that up that is way that's like 20 years ago now so yeah it was um this was really weird um uh it was bbc3 uh and they basically needed athletes to go around the world for a tv show and compete against mother nature and i was just like right i'm in so we're in ecuador and we were wrestling bulls that was amazing then we're in bangladesh and we were charming poisonous cobras uh all of this i was like oh and then we were wrestling sharks in the bahamas all of this i was like this is amazing this is all physical then we got to the amazon and they went right you're going to take ayahuasca and i was like cool what's ayahuasca had no idea at the time like you know powerful hallucinogenic incredibly potent spiritual i didn't know any of that you know so so so i i before i tell this story i just want to say you know at the time I was 21, had, you know, been playing professional sports.

1:07:24Everything was, you know, everything that I had had to be, you know, water tested and stuff. Drugs were bad. Every that's, you know, my body was so pure. And then they dropped me in the Amazon jungle and go, here's the first drug that I would ever take, Ayahuasca. So that's the sort of backstory. And now I understand Ayahuasca is like amazing. People have these incredible experiences. It's needed. It's profound. I didn't get any of that because I'm 21 really immature and just an athlete so basically they gave us ayahuasca tastes like hairspray for anyone listening it's disgusting I had it I was like oh so what is it and then I remember at the time my friend Ruben um he works at Glastonbury so he takes like all the drugs basically he's a professional when it comes to that and I remember being like oh so what's this going to be like um were you just like you know sort of see things where you get a bit giggly and Ruben was like oh I strap in basically first of all I'm sweating it's like someone's throwing a bucket of water over me I'm sweating that much and then my tongue swells and it's bigger than my mouth I'm now like this sweating with my mouth like this I'm like oh this isn't good then it purges your system so I'm projectile vomiting like violently sick and I was like oh I'm in trouble I turned to Ruben who's sitting to my right because I look for guidance.

1:08:39He's found a feather and he's licking it because he can taste the colours. I look and I go, oh, you can't help me. Then in my head, I was like, right, I've got an idea. If I lay down in my own sick, someone's got to come over. There's got to be a medic on the show or something. They're going to put an adrenaline needle in my bum and then this will all be over. I was like, Ross, that's a great idea. I now understand that's not how it works. So I lay down in my own sick, pretend to stop breathing. And I just hear, and someone goes, it's gone wrong. And I was like, yes, adrenaline needle in my bum.

1:09:10And then it's all going to be over. I look up. Oh my God, Jay. Carlito, he was this 70 year old shaman from absolute legend, really wrinkly. He looks at me in the eyes like this and then wipes his armpit sweat on my face to cool me down while the tribes women sung prayers into my skull for my soul. I was like, oh, that's not what I wanted. I had the worst night. It was the worst experience. but I think you know from there it was really interesting actually because you know I I had spoke to them the tribe and afterwards I was like that's horrible I'm never doing that again and I was like look in my culture back in England if you were just in the park you know with your tongue covered in sick and you know sweating people would be like oh that's not a good person he's not contributing to society and they were like yeah but Ross you have to understand And we take it, we speak to the, you know, our ancestors, the spirits of the jungle.

1:10:04So for me, like I said, I was very close minded as an athlete. But that one experience afterwards. Did you get anything out of it? I would love to tell you that I did. But no, I think, I mean, it even got worse. No realisation or anything? None. I remember the sound guy came over and he was a lovely guy and he came over and he was smiling at me to show that he wasn't a threat. And so he was like, hi, Ross, are you OK? But as he's smiling, I thought he was laughing at me. So I pulled his sound cable out because I was like, if I pull your sound cable out, you can't record me. Then it gets even worse.

1:10:37And again, I've never had a fight in my life. I'm the least violent person ever. But the director comes over and he's wearing a Hawaiian shirt and he puts his hand on my shoulder. Again, just very polite, just went, okay, Ross. So I've got a sound cable as a belt. And then I look and I go, if I can get your Hawaiian shirt, you can't film me anymore because there's no continuity. So I stick him on the floor, put him in an armbar and then rip his shirt off him and I end up putting it on. And I'm now sat in the jungle, covered in sick. My tongue is bigger than my mouth and I'm sweating with a Hawaiian shirt.

1:11:11But I was like, can't film me anymore. So no, I didn't. But it was, yeah, it gave me like a profound respect for other cultures, certainly psychedelics. psychedelics and uh yeah i've not i've not done it since and nor do i have any intention of doing it but it was yeah it was it was pretty powerful yeah i don't know what i learned from it but that's insane is there any other stuff that you've done oh i think um probably i mean i oh this would i'm gonna apologize now to everyone listening so we were in siberia and we were a herding reindeer and basically we're in this corral and we're separating the male reindeer from the female reindeer.

1:11:53What temperature is it? It gets down to like minus 50 with wind chill. It gets cold. Minus 50? Yeah, with wind chill. Yeah, yeah. So it's the same with water. You can imagine, or even in the air, anyone would have experienced this. It's kind of like, if you're in an ice bath and you're sitting there, it's fine. But if it starts, the water moves around you, that's so much worse. And it's exactly the same with wind chill. The air temperature could be like, you know, minus 10, but with the wind. So is that on your weather app? Yeah, yeah. It feels like, it's the feels like. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:12:25And so we were there, we were separating male reindeer, female reindeer. And then the head of this particular sort of, you know, tribe comes over to us and he said, look, there's too many male reindeer. And I was like, okay, what do you want us to do? And he said, well, look, you know, we're going to have to, we're going to have to castrate some of the male reindeer because they're fighting and stuff. So it's not good. So, and I was like, oh God, that's, that's pretty off key. But just give me the knife and I'll do it. Just tell me what to do and I'll do it. I'm here, you know, let's go. and he was a Venki herder.

1:12:54And he stopped me and he just said, no, no, no, Ross, we don't use knives. We do it as our forefathers did it. And I was like, what? How did they do it? Genuinely looked me dead in the eye and he was just like, we do it with our teeth. They then pinned down the largest reindeer I've ever seen. I'm so sorry for people listening. Basically, it's also, it's a form of semi-castration. So basically you put, for anyone who finds themselves in Siberia, you put it basically to the back of your mouth with your molars, you bite down on it and then it crunches and then you massage it into a paste. So you don't actually bite the testicles off.

1:13:31You just basically make that. Crush the testicles. Yeah. Yeah. To make it obsolete. So it's a semi form of castration. And then what's interesting is they then become more docile, cooperative. They're not fighting anymore. So it goes back into the herd. And I mean, I didn't ask at the time, the first guy who figured that out, I'm like, why? But yeah, that was, So you did that? You just didn't ask any questions? Yeah, I just, yeah. I just had a reindeer's testicle in your mouth and chomped down on it. Yeah, yeah. And they said, I mean, this is the weirdest compliment I've ever had. They were like, you've got amazing teeth for castrating reindeer.

1:14:04I went, thank you so much. That one takes some beating. That was probably one of the weirdest stories along with the ayahuasca. Did you feel bad for the reindeer? Did it like squeal? Yeah, yeah, I did. But then when they said it, like it's this like semi castration. Yeah. I mean, I still didn't, you know, I still don't feel good about it. But that's, but they really, they rely on the reindeer. So, so again, you know, I've made light, but they really rely on the reindeer and that is one way to manage the herd. And they've been doing it for, you know, hundreds of years and stuff like that. So it was, yeah, so that made me feel a little bit better about it, but I still don't feel great about it.

1:14:40Yeah. And then with, with the tribe that like runs ultra marathons just for hunting and stuff like that. Where was that? Yeah. Yeah. We were in Namibia. Yeah. They were amazing. and it was just um just their ability as well like just to go on no food how fit are they are they pretty fit yeah yeah i mean they're walking are they running like both their pacing was amazing but but that was namibia but they they actually told us because one of the guys was actually part of the and i hope my national nice but the curligin tribe where they produce like just in these insane marathon runners so that wasn't there we were in namibia but they were telling us about this other sort of collective of people.

1:15:19And then that's when they were talking about, and again, I'm going to apologize now, but they, they talked about, they said the reason they're so successful, do you know, Ross, and we're around a campfire. And I was like, yeah, like running in barefoot, you know, shoes and stuff or barefoot, good biomechanics, altitude VO2. And they looked me dead in the eye and they were like, no, no, no, no, no, that's, that has nothing to do with it. It's their pain threshold. And the reason they're so good is ritualized circumcision. And I was like, excuse me? They're good at running because of ritualized circumcision.

1:15:50They said, yes. Allow me to explain. They said that basically as a young man in the tribe, what they do when it was your coming of age, you'd be there in front of the whole tribe. So imagine this, Jake, you're chilling and you're there like on your 18th birthday, all the tribe are there. And then basically this chief guy will come over, take your tackle in his hand. Everyone's watching. You know, your mum's there, your dad's there, everyone's proud, your girlfriend. Oh, there he goes. There goes Jake. He gets you tackling his hand and then basically almost like with a, it was described to me as almost like a bamboo shoot.

1:16:19So certainly not a sharp knife, you know, and then they basically castrate you. Sorry, sorry, circumcise. Definitely don't castrate, circumcise. And this is where it gets interesting that basically they would have mud on your face. And if that mud cracked and you grimaced at all while he was basically circumcising you, then all of a sudden everyone in that tribe would go, oh, he flinched. oh he's not desirable he couldn't handle the pain so you then don't get a girlfriend you don't get to reproduce so years and years and years for the rest of your life so so like one that's brutal one crack one crack but but the the theory is is then the ones who were able to say and the mud didn't crack they then are considered desirable they pass on their genes and the genes that they're passing on is that they were good at pain tolerance do you think you just get to that point or do you think like they're kind of like practicing it in other ways like you know just putting mud on the face and then like get battered like like because obviously you can't practice getting circumcised but like how are they practicing that before or not or is it just like down to the day i didn't ask yeah just what big game day just game day that's it like this is the rest of your life like do you know that you either make it or you don't I didn't ask yeah that's a really good point can you train for the ritualised circumcision I should have asked yeah yeah but if you want to be a faster runner next high rocks you know you know what to do yeah if I get clipped up now and then on socials everyone's getting circumcised by what a bamboo shoot a blunt knife you'll be rapid you just won't feel pain power to weight ratio as well a couple of grams you legend but yeah i think pain tolerance is one isn't it you know some athletes just suffer yeah yeah yeah i remember uh chatting to jake whiteman and you'll have had your lactate tested before and stuff like that so uh working in millimoles like when whenever you kind of go to kind of like your LT2 anaerobic zone.

1:18:30It's normally around like four millimoles, which is, you know, you're moving, it's burning. Like you can feel it. You get to kind of like six, seven, and that's kind of like very anaerobic. That's like doing an all out 400 meter effort or whatever. Jake Whiteman's trained, and obviously he's a 1500 meter runner, but he's trained to get to the point where I think he was saying about 25 millimoles. He can withstand and he'll do his lactate. and he's seen that. Withstand that. So he lives there at that. That's like an all out effort for him, 1500 meters or whatever. But yeah, that's what levels he can get to.

1:19:07And obviously that's just through training and training and training and repetition and getting used to pushing yourself and pushing your body. I always, I love this story. One of the best athletes I've heard for that was James Cracknell, the rower. So one of my friends who was head of physiology at the English Institute of Sport. And he talks about when they put together, you know, the rowing team, British rowing, when we were at our peak, just killing it. They said it was really interesting because Steve Redgrave was a rugby player, went into rowing afterwards. And it was really interesting that the way that my friend tells this story, it was almost at the recruitment.

1:19:41And they had Steve Redgrave and they went, cool, we just want to see your power. So this is called a hang clean. So you're here and as the bar comes up, speed, disappear under the bar and then you catch it, okay? So that's what you got to do. Let's see what you can do. And apparently he just literally grabbed it and then just like reverse bicep curled something ridiculous. Like apparently 140. I can't remember the exact figure. But he just like reverse bicep curled it and went, yeah? And everyone was like, no, that was not it. That was awful. But you're so strong. You're in. Then Matthew Pinson, they said, right, cool.

1:20:14Going to look at your VO2. And they said, that makes no sense. You have the lungs of a horse. Like that's just ridiculous. So now you've got red grey, freakish strength, and you've got pinson, VO2 of a horse. And this is the part I love. They said with Cracknell, they said it was nuts. The way that he describes this story is he is just ripping. And they are testing his lactate, looking at VO2, everything. And they went, good, good. Keep going, James. They've got their clipboards out. And they went, good, good. And you are now at the point. You are now lactic, OK? You are accumulating lactic acid.

1:20:46Cracknell just rips. He went, no, I'm not. And they went, no, no, no, you are. because look it's on the on the the thing there we can see it's very clear your physiology goes it's lying and he just carried on riffing and they were like right cool red grave silly strength pinson vo2 cracknell no regard for his own safety can just push past anything perfect trio oh yeah and did you ever see there's an amazing documentary where he did it might have been the marathon and De Sable, have you seen with Cracknought? No, I've not seen it with him, but I've heard of them. Oh my God, it's amazing that he turns up at the start line and he's just like, sets himself a ridiculous goal.

1:21:28He's like, I'm going to be top, you know, 40 or something. And they were like, well, but that's ridiculous. I said, because the guys who were winning a Moroccan, you know, they're 50, 60 kilos, you're 110. That's a terrible idea. And he took off like a silly suicide pace. And it just went on for days. And then they were like, oh my God, he's actually holding this. This is ridiculous. And in the documentary, it's so bad, but he's basically in the tent at the pit stop and his body is cramping, probably, you know, rhabdomyolysis, all sorts, dehydration, all sorts going on. And he's in bed, literally just kind of like his body is contorted.

1:22:05And there's this doctor, I think he's French, and the doctor was just trying to put a drip in his arm. And then Cracknell, and again, he can't hardly speak as well because he's that you know and he's going no no no and he's moving his arm and he's going no no if you give me a drip it's a penalty and if you had a drip it was like a two-hour penalty and he didn't want so he's going no no no the doctor gets really annoyed at him and he's like you're going to die and he goes no no he goes right i'll make a deal with you if you can walk out of here in the next four hours and start the next leg then you know i won't but otherwise i'm putting a drip in your arm and then four hours later he just emerges from the tent and just carries on I can't remember where he finished, but it was something ridiculous.

1:22:45Again, because of his size as well. But yeah, I love James Cracknell. Just like, just an absolute beast. Yeah, an absolute brute. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy stories like that. And there's just, like I said, there's freaks and nature in there out there. There is. I think we're cracking it up. I remember when I rode once and it was, I think it was my 500 time. I just went all out and I wanted to impress him. And I've got a video of it somewhere. and I remember he looked and it was quite good, my time. I can't remember what it was off the top of my head. But he was like, yeah, that's really good for a non-rower, you know, because he'd done it with like Lawrence Delaglio, the rugby player.

1:23:19And he was like, Ross, that's, you know, really, really quite good. And he wasn't saying this to be mean at all. You know, I was like, oh, amazing. I'm buzzing. I was like, oh, what do you do? And again, he wasn't being mean. He just goes, oh, well, you know, that's my split time for 5 ,000. And I was like, how? I have ripped and that's your split time for that. It was nuts. You know, I do love that being humble, but when you see like the best in the world, you go, ah, there's levels to this. Yeah, definitely. And like you say, it's, they've practiced it all life as well. Like for things like that, like, you know, people would look at you and think, oh, I can't swim 25 meters.

1:23:59Nevermind around the country. Yeah. Yeah. It is, it is absolutely crazy. What's Ross like outside of fitness? Oh yeah. Really simple. I'm a really, I don't know. I don't know if you're the same. I'm really boring. Are you? Yeah, a little bit. Well, I struggle to switch off. Yeah. I don't see that as a downside. I don't see that as a negative. I see that as like an advantage really. Yeah. I just, yeah. To your point, I just, I love training. I love sport. You know, that's all my family. Are you watching it? Yeah. Yeah. My dad was a tennis coach. Mom was a sprinter. Dad was a marathon runner. Yeah, my granddad, sorry, was a marathon runner.

1:24:37So it's just something we've always done. I think now, though, it's probably changed a little bit. Like, obviously, being a dad now, 11 months, fatherhood is awesome. You know, I know we've just been chatting. You're not quite there yet. You're still so young. But, oh, like, I was so selfish, introspective, you know, single-minded. you know so and now he's come along and like he's just started walking oh my god like on honestly it's so hard to explain but it's like that that feeling was it was probably better than the gb swim in iceland i never thought i would say that it's just seeing him walk we he had his um check up as well they do it around approaching a year and they were the nurse was just like oh my god his motor skills are incredible he's top top marks and i was just like it's just the pride that you it's uh it's really weird yeah so now evenings will just be like watching cartoons with him and uh just like wrestling and fighting and it's just like oh for your for your soul it's just it's so good he giggles and you're like oh yeah so that that that's now my new favorite pastime yeah no incredible do you uh did or did you beforehand like did you watch netflix did you read did you like oh yeah are you a normal bloke yeah oh yeah just love yeah love love food you know and so and then i think films as well like this i think this is a question for you top films for you i'm gonna go my top three because i love animation puss and boots second one amazing when there's have you seen it no i haven't you've never seen oh my god yeah you've got homework to do i'm gonna give you a list so yeah animated movies that's off track right yeah yeah and he did a spin-off spin-off yeah yeah but what's the first one yeah well then you'll love the first one but the second one is amazing it is it is so good there's i'm not going to ruin anything for you but there there's like the personification of death it is so deep so there you go puss in boots cloudy with a chance of meatballs second one but the first one's pretty good as well and then luca on disney it's about a boy who's a mermaid amazing so basically at you yeah it's based on but what about you top films top films oh i do like a comedy i do like a i love happy gilmore oh i mean that's hard to beat that's hard to be happy gilmore is great that's the one that i'd like to shove on the second one wasn't as good i don't think the first the first yeah the first one was like iconic right yeah yeah second one when they brought back it was kind of good with shooting mcgavin and things but the first one was yeah uh forrest gump pretty relatable like you know i mean it's pretty pretty good story uh yeah that's pretty cool and then um oh third i'm trying to think of a sport remember the titans denzel washington yeah yeah uh even like the the rocky films are pretty good oh yeah how did i miss that like but like yeah it sounds weird but they're so slow but the build-up makes it so good like you just don't get that anymore it's always like straight to the point yeah everything but like you've got this two-hour build-up for for one fight yeah for for every uh every rocky it's it's pretty cool it's pretty cool looking back but yeah rocky's such a great example because again going back to the book without a hero you know the whole thing was based on this idea of um joseph campbell a professor of literature uh talks about the hero's journey so you know rocky is the perfect hero's journey.

1:28:14Basically, he said that every single story, great story from Odyssey to Harry Potter to Lord of the Rings follows this same journey. There is a hero, it is Jake. He is reluctant to accept the call to action. So it was Frodo sitting there kind of in the shire, just going, oh, I don't really want to take this ring all the way to Mordor. It seems quite far. So there's a reluctance to accept. And then it's there, trials, tribulations, battle the innermost cave, slay the dragon, come back with the elixir, you know, something to benefit society and everything always followed. Harry Potter, exactly the same, lives under the stairs, call to action.

1:28:50You know, was it the owl comes in, the hog was, it's the same. Odyssey, exactly the same. They all follow this. And I think what's so interesting with Rocky, it's exactly the same as well. And I think what's, this is going on such a tangent here, but what's so interesting is certainly of the ancient Nordic mythology, it talks about these heroes. But what I loved about Norse mythology is they were never perfect. You know, so it was just kind of, they had faults, the gods, you know, you look to Odin, who had this crazy obsession with knowledge and the pursuit of it. You know, Thor loved to drink as well.

1:29:25I'm not going to say he was an alcoholic, but he loved a good drink. And then equally as well, loved to fight, had a bad temper. And when he fought, he wanted people to celebrate him. You know, if Instagram was around, he would have been on Instagram going. And I think that's what's so interesting that Joseph Campbell basically said that when you look at the hero's journey, it's not just a story, it's not just a blueprint, but it's a vehicle for profound moral instruction. And I think that's what's so interesting that everyone has a hero's journey. Going back to that purpose we were talking about, and that's why it's been so good catching up with you today, because it's just like talking about your hero's journey, you know, going around.

1:30:02And I know you've had your fair share of injuries as well. You know, that was, you know, the hero's journey. They're the trials, the tribulations. That was your innermost cave. You had to slay the dragon. And I think I was introduced to it actually by, it was Chris, Chris Hemsworth, just absolute legend. I am just in pieces. It was after the Italy swim. My creatine kinase was at 19 ,000. 19 ,000? Bad. I'll show you the report. I think that like a thousand's unhealthy, right? Well, relatively, I think anything over 500. is like you need to chill out a little bit is exactly yeah yeah and then what is creating carnase for the people that they don't know so basically your muscles essentially when the rate of exertion exceeds the rate of recovery your muscles almost rupture the muscle cells and they release things into your bloodstream that you don't want in your bloodstream toxins exactly but more like myoglobin for instance that rupture that ends up in the bloodstream and then uh creating carnase is an enzyme so that appears in the bloodstream you don't want it there so the kidneys then go, this isn't good.

1:31:02Muscle cells have ruptured and there's now things in the bloodstream. So we need to filter it out and they'll do that. But should that number be too high, all of a sudden the kidneys just go, nah, this isn't good. And that's renal failure and physiologically and death to put it bluntly. So I am in a bad way. You know, like I said, creatine is 19 ,000 and so many of my friends and family like are amazing and they mean well, And they're going, oh, Ross, you know, maybe, maybe retire. Like maybe, maybe you stop doing this. Maybe you don't do any more swims. You know, maybe, maybe just chill out now.

1:31:35And, and, you know, that, that's good. You've had a good run. Do you know what I mean? You did the GB swim. That's good. That's good enough. But it was Chris Hemsworth. I remember I caught up with Chris and I was like, oh man, I'm in a bad way. And he's just, he is the sort of, he's such a legend. Like he's just in the trenches with you. And he just sat with me and we were training. And I was like, I don't, I don't know. People are telling me to just stop and maybe slow down. My creatine kinase was at 19 ,000. Chris looked me dead in the eye. I was like, amazing. I went, what? He goes, innermost cave, slay the dragon.

1:32:07He goes, act three, this is amazing. As soon as he said that, he just reframed the whole thing. There wasn't pity. He just said, no, Ross, this is your hero's journey. This makes such a better story. If you'd have gone GB swim, Yukon, Iceland, and just world record after world record, that's not a hero's journey there's no trials tribulations you're not slaying any dragons I remember when he said that to me I was like and for me it just reframed the hardship that all of a sudden I was like oh okay yeah this is this feels like yeah in the most cave that battle yeah similar I know I think the yeah the lows in life like make the highs worth it like you say if you just won all the time if you went on to you know you did the GB swim and then you did your next world record and then you went into Dyson and it was all just pretty easy and you had never had any struggle.

1:32:59I don't think you'd be as grateful today. I agree. For it. I agree. On that, what has been your lowest point? I think probably, I think, I mean, we talk about it in the book, but I think the Loch Ness swim followed by the Lake Tresamino swim. So they were a year apart. And I think because I lost my dad a year before and you know it wasn't just my dad he's my mentor he was my coach he was I call him like my moral compass because when I had these stupid ideas he'd always be the first one to go Ross and he's one of he's literally the only person I'd listen to but with Loch Ness and Tresomino so with Loch Ness we were due to go in this perfect weather window but the queen actually died right around that and out of sheer respect we were like we we can't do this swim now.

1:33:54We need to move it. And so then the swim went further and further into the winter. It just became sort of stupid, sort of suicidal, this swim. But the part of me was just so stubborn. And certainly with dad not there, I was just kind of like, if I just plough on and I do this swim and I raise loads for charity and maybe that will ease the feelings of grief and erase certain things. And it just got it worse. And then afterwards I was like, oh, I'll just go to Italy and I'll do the swim there where it's warm. And then we got caught in a heat wave. Temperatures were up to 46 degrees. People were dying in the street.

1:34:28It was bad. Again, because of Italian bureaucracy, you have a certain window to do that swim. You can't move it. So again, I just remember just walking into the water in a heat wave, just going, again, you know, if I'm just stubborn enough to do this and I win, then I'll feel better about just everything. Didn't happen again. and I'm just in a hospital bed, just like, what are you doing, Ross? You know, and that's why with the Yukon swim, it just felt so different. You know, it was for the right reasons. Interestingly, didn't want to post to social media. I said, I want to go. I don't want to announce it that much.

1:35:06I just want to go to the Yukon. I said I was in the Yukon doing a swim, but I didn't, there was no, you know, and it was, I don't want to say like spiritual, but it was just, it was so much better just doing it for myself. and then afterwards we released the documentary. But in the moment, I was like, I just want this to be for myself. So I think it was probably that, yeah. Similar, I mean, because you've had your fair share of injuries, haven't you? Yeah, yeah. I think there's always that point of where you contemplate potentially giving up and things like that. Did you ever feel like, right, enough's enough in any of it?

1:35:40Or I just want to give up or I might quit this career and go and do something else? Yeah, no, I think I'm never. No, because and my girlfriend, she honestly, she it gives her a massive headache. But I, I just can't leave it alone. I've always got to do something. And that could be a positive and negative. A hundred percent. Like after Iceland, for instance, I have, I would say Hester always says it's about a month, maybe a bit longer, but that period where I'm cathartic and I'm like, that was good. I achieved that. So it's about a month that time where you're kind of like, because I was intrigued about like after these big challenges, what do you actually do for like the couple of weeks after?

1:36:21Obviously you're recovering. I just, I get, I train, but it's just really nice not to have to like, especially going into those big swims. I'm literally doing like 16 hour sessions just in the pool. So afterwards it's really nice that I get to do like biceps. I do like a bro, but I've got to train. But after a month I am on a globe. Yeah. I've got an Atlas. I've got a globe and I'm looking at swims and looking at rivers, you know, and Hester is just like, oh, okay, fine. Yeah. But it's just, yeah, it's just for so long, I tried to remedy that and now I've just kind of accepted. I'm just like, that's just, yeah.

1:36:57Yeah. Yeah. And it's even, because it's even like, and I don't know if this is the same for you, but as time's gone on, it really is less about the outcome as well. It's just like having a process in place, testing it and then the outcome at the end goes oh cool that process kind of worked it's that that i'm fascinated by is it the same because i know you've got so many protocols i uh i did a podcast with a guy called stew stokes who was steeplechase champion uh and olympian back in 2012 and he said throughout all his career he wanted to do the absolute best and see where he could take himself and do everything possible in his power to be the best athlete he could be and then he knew then that he could retire happy knowing that he couldn't have pushed himself anymore and i feel like that's where i want to go yeah i want to do it until i i know i've optimized absolutely everything and uh i i don't want to retire knowing that i've left something on the table so it's always kind of like that that shoot and then whenever i've had like a struggle i've really struggled with my back for kind of like two three years now um but uh finally got down to kind of like the bottom of it hopefully uh touch wood but uh there's been there's been times where i've thought oh i might have to change from high rocks do something else but again i think just always making that decision positive and thinking about everything that can come out of bit like someone someone mentioned to me they're like every injury or setback is a blessing because it opens up your your world and eyes and i spend a lot of time at the red bull athlete performance center and obviously them guys are crazy some of them are you know they're biking off mountains literally and they have the fair share of crashes uh but when when speaking to a couple of like the bikers and the action sport guys when they're walking around they can't walk their embraces or whatever, they say, ah, it's actually quite nice being injured because I can have time with family.

1:39:12I can travel. I can do activations. I can do all the stuff that when you're like in prep mode, you can't do. You can actually do all them things. So I have to like listen to them. And it might actually like do better for your career as well because you can put more time and energy into something else, whether it is a business side, whether it is family, friends, and yeah, you just got to, it's a ride at the end of the day. What we do, the ups and downs is a ride. And without the downs, like you say, the ups are pointless. I agree. I think what's also interesting is when it was Kipton, wasn't it?

1:39:50Who passed away, the marathon runner. Was it, have I got his name right? There was, because when Kipchoge, he ran the 201, wasn't it? Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. And it was Kipchoge who had this obviously like insane career, but it was so interesting that friends of mine were saying, who know far more about running than me, was saying what Kipton was doing was the volume of his training being so young was nuts. And they were like, is this sustainable? I don't think it is, but will he run sub two hours? And everyone's like, yeah, probably. Or do you have a career like Kipchoge where it's kind of like longer, more accolades and stuff, but it's more sustainable long-term?

1:40:28And I don't think there's a right or wrong answer, but what would you say with yours? Because you're still quite young. What do you think your goals? I think I train for longevity within the sport. I try and say, and I want to be in High Rocks for the next, and competing at the top level for the next 10 years because it is an endurance sport. So I've kind of got to look at that as building blocks to my training and everything. I'm not going to say I'm going to be a world champion next year because it's probably a five-year plan. But I think that makes it more worth it. like if you could just achieve something within a year of trying, I know a year sounds like a long time, but if you could put everything, all your eggs in one basket for a year and you, you're the best, you become the best in the world.

1:41:17That's great. But it doesn't seem like it shouldn't, it shouldn't be a thing. Yeah. They talk about like the$10 ,000 rule and stuff like that. Like it takes longer. It should to be the best at whatever you do or, or to be, um, um, someone who people look up to, I think it takes more than just a year. It takes years and years and years. And like you say, you're probably learning something every day. I agree. And you're probably not at the end of your athletic career. Would you say that or not? I think it's interesting. And what are you next? Yeah. Well, I think with ultra endurance events, but certainly swimming, it's really, there was a meta study looking at like the top finishes, you know, champions.

1:42:03So these aren't just, you know, participation, top, top people. And it was really interesting, cycling, running and swimming, that sometimes they were saying like, it's that kind of like 38 to 45, where I think that not only like nutritional strategies, like mentally coping, all this, but with ultra endurance events, capillary density, mitochondrial efficiency, things that you get from like years and years. So I think it's really interesting that if I was still in a strength, speed or power sport, I would be openly going, I can't now compete at the top level because just elasticity of tendons, fast twitch fibers, hormones, everything, none of that is on my side.

1:42:38But I think with ultra endurance, I'm sort of sitting here going, I think I can keep doing this for, you know, until the wheels fall off, just like really like keep on going. And I think that's what's interesting with ultra endurance. Yeah. I feel the 20, if you put my 21 year old self and me now and said, go and swim around great Britain, the 21 year old self was fitter, stronger immune system could recover everything. I'd put money on my 40 year old self beating him just because of everything that I've learned. 1000%. I think, uh, your mental strength goes probably even beyond 45. I remember I did my first ultra marathon.

1:43:20I did a hundred kilometers when I was 17, I think. Uh, and I remember starting on that start line and looking around and all these like old men and women and they're in the fifties, sixties. I think, you know, I've never done this before. Like, but, uh, this is interesting. This is definitely interesting. and then you start the ultramarathon first 20k you're absolutely fine and you feel like the hair and then the tortoise suddenly starts coming past you and they're smiling and they look like there's no pain on their face and they end up finishing that ultramarathon before you and they're not in the best shape they've got a pot belly uh they might be old they might be 60 70 years old or whatever but i think they can just they've had 50 years of pain and especially i don't know i think growing up in the 70s 80s whatever it must have been tougher than what it is now growing up yeah so i think uh i think just yeah time on your side i think every year it probably gets more more comfortable for people yeah yeah really like if you look at the whole world um do you know the world's getting a better place just getting more comfortable um and i think uh all the older you are the more mental resilience you've got the more you've been through as well i agree yeah again we were talking about mike tyson talks about that when people have said to mike tyson oh you were the greatest ever and he's like no no no no and he's such a historian of boxing and he starts listing these boxers who have had a hundred fights in a year and it's just like those guys oh there's levels i think with them cinema with myself looking at like water polo for instance Again, you know, now, yes, sports science and everything is advanced, but there's some of the water boat players of old.

1:45:02Oh, my God. Just like grisly old guy. Just famously, it was the Soviet Union versus Hungary during a time of complete conflict. And they then got drawn at the Olympics. Hungary won 4-0, but it was called Blood in the Water. to have famous match because they just went in and with all like that political unrest they just went and there's just pictures of them coming out covered in blood and you just go yeah like my era of water polo is new a hundred percent yeah a hundred percent but with ultra endurance you need that grit you need that determination and I think even like we mentioned a little bit like grief I think I lost my father like like six seven years ago So, and like the one thing that I'm so grateful for is it's made me so much stronger, like almost numb to some things, which can be a downfall.

1:46:00And sometimes when other people are going through it, you struggle to sympathize because you're like, ah, like you're not having a hard day. You've not, you've not seen a hard day. If that makes sense compared to, but, uh, it definitely makes you, you think, uh, and makes the struggles in life a lot easier. I think. Have you found that? I completely agree. And I think it's almost like the stories that you tell yourself as well. I think, going off on a slight tangent, but we talked about the anterior mid-singulate cortex, that part of the brain with grit and quit. But I think what I found interesting about the Iceland swim, there's also a part of your brain, it's called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

1:46:41And I'm oversimplifying it, but that's almost strategy. So over here, anterior mid-singulate cortex, we've got discipline. You're doing it because you said you were going to do it. You're stubborn enough to keep going. That's why you're doing it. But over here, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is more strategy, where you strategize your way out of hardship. So one, if you're like, I'm struggling, I'm doing an ultramarathon. This is horrible. My lungs are on fire. I missed the feeding station. I'm depleting the muscle glycogen. Anterior mid-singulate cortex, keep going, Jake, because you said you were going to do it.

1:47:12Grit your teeth and get through this. Man up. Keep going. that's the anterior mid-singular cortex. But the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex might go, right, how do we strategise our way out of this? Where's the next feeding station? Can you cool yourself down? Can we slow our pace down? Should we make up pace on the descent? And it's that. But I also think what's interesting about that is it's the stories that you tell yourself as well. So the way that you have taken what happened with grief and you've just spun it to tell yourself a slightly different story. And I do that a lot where it's recalibrated my brain that I'll just go, this isn't as bad as Loch Ness.

1:47:51It's not as bad as Tresemino. You've got worse situations. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So it's knowing which part of the brain to constantly tap into. It's so clever how you play games on yourself because again, you know, in times of struggle, you might even just the thought of someone who's passed away is looking down on you. and if you stop now then then you're doing them a disservice you know as deep as that to then even planning your workout so i did a workout on sunday and it was uh a long run but we had intervals in it and we started off 5k next interval 4k then 3k 2k 1k one of the easiest sessions i've ever done because you're starting off with the hardest thing and then every time your mindset is well at least i don't have to do that again i'll do 4k then 3k then 2k so there's like they're two completely different ways that you can go about stuff yeah again i got told running ultra marathon just worry about the mile that you're in don't worry about the 20 miles that you've got to go just worry about getting through this mile because your your mindset will be completely different your thought process will be completely different in a couple of minutes time it always is like that did you ever get that within the swim all the time it's like oh i really feel like giving up right now.

1:49:06And then like 20 minutes later, you're easy. All the time. Yeah. It's such a rollercoaster. And knowing that as well, it's like you can't trust your own brain. That's what, you know, you kind of got to go like, oh, it's playing tricks on me. I see what you're doing. You know, central governor theory, you know, that you're pulling that break. I see what you're doing there. But it's weird because you're so right. The voice is in your head. So with the central governor theory, when you're trying to pull that physiological break, I found that your own brain will, and those voices will find anything.

1:49:34So it will go, your deepest, darkest fears. Oh, Jay, I think your back might be going again. And you're like, no, no, it's not. But it would go, oh yeah, that feels weird. And it's the same for me. You know, I had shoulder surgery. So, you know, swimming around Iceland, it was like, oh, Ross, that, that shoulder, that doesn't feel very good. I'm like, I know what you're doing. So it's really strange that you're having this conversation with yourself, you know, and it could go to some weird places. You just got to always make sure you win that argument. And I love what you just said there, whatever strategy you use, someone who I've lost is looking down on me, you know, from heaven, looking down, just going like, one that I always love is imagining like dad chilling up there at the, you know, he's a tennis coach.

1:50:16So he's at the tennis court in the sky, you know, in heaven looking down and everyone's just like, oh, who's that? And he's like, so proudly like, oh, that's my son. That, like I get, I get goosebumps. I'll swim the Arctic circle again. If I think that dad's looking down from the tennis court going, oh, that one pointing that, that one's my son. And I'm just like, oh, this is amazing. Yeah. It's powerful. You, uh, you strike me as well as someone that uses optimism to drive them forward because some people thrive off being angry. And I've seen like in a high rocks race, like they'll get hyped up behind it.

1:50:47They'll listen to, you know, some, some hardcore rock music, like really like amp them up. Do you kind of go down that side or is it more like just smile and your perceived exertion? Cause I know you, you know about the science of a smile and stuff. which which you kind of take to or is there certain times where you you like to be aggressive and that kind of pushes you through or i i found it was chris williamson actually i was talking to him about this and he said it brilliantly because i love david goggins and his self-talk is quite aggressive sometimes negative you know man up what are you doing this isn't good enough who's going to carry the boats and that's that's amazing and that works for him and i've certainly tried it because i'm like oh my god look what david goggins does so i tried it but it just doesn't work for me because for me it's not sustainable like you you're almost for 112 days around iceland you can't keep calling yourself a bitch like keep going because it's just like oh just stop it so chris williams said it best it's like you're putting the wrong fuel into a car and there's nothing wrong with that some people will use that negative self-taught they'll put diesel in the car but you might be petrol do you know what i mean it's just there's a difference and um hearing that i was like yeah mine just runs a little bit better on positivity because it's just more sustainable.

1:52:02That said, there will be one or two times where I will swim just like angry and like ripping through the water, but you just can't do that. You can't maintain that. Going back to the berserker example, you just, yeah. Yeah. I find, especially with endurance sports, like I think, because the aim is to be as efficient as possible. So if you're angry, you're more than likely tense. Yeah. And if you're tense, you're burning more energy doing anything. So whether it's swimming through the water or whether it's running down the track, if you're tense, You're annoyed and your fists are clenched and you're going to be wasting more energy.

1:52:36I agree. So if you can be nice and relaxed, smile takes less energy. I agree. And like you said, the sense of a smile, it actually, what's it released? Does it release endorphins and stuff like that? Yeah, all sorts. I mean, that one particular study that I referenced in the book was so fascinating where they had people cycling to complete exhaustion and then they were showing them pictures of people smiling or frowning, But they were, it was so fast. It almost didn't register on a conscious level. It was almost subconscious. They just flashed the card like that. And it was crazy. The results showing that people who were showing people who were smiling went so much longer.

1:53:11And I just think if you're aware of that, that can help so much. But so often people aren't, you know. It's crazy. Even like a marathon. Have you ever seen the kids who are holding the signs like tap for a superpower? Tap them, tap them signs. and it just gives you this instant energy. No pain anymore. You can fly. Yeah, my mate would say that. He did the London Marathon and obviously he's got his name on his bib and he said complete strangers, little kids would be like, go on Ash, you're doing well. And when they heard his name, he just said, he was just like bawling his eyes out, but running quick.

1:53:45He was like, I will do this for you. It's crazy, isn't it? Yeah. It is crazy. So what is, obviously, like you say, you're a family man now. you've got a full family to look after uh but what is next for us have you got anything in the pipeline oh yeah i keep saying i am like a mercenary for like amazing causes so basically if anybody has an ocean a river a lake whatever that needs something to raise awareness or then then i am there so it's interesting we're chatting to a few people at the minute nothing confirmed because oh like i think the nature of my swims now i've got so big that just getting insurance is an absolute nightmare.

1:54:22You can't get permits for certain places. So right now I'm in the process of trying to convince insurers that I won't die. But there's a few locations. I mean, you'll be the first to know when we find them. But yeah, I think basically anything with an amazing cause, I'm there. Somebody needs someone to make a swimming spectacle of themselves. My goggles are ready. That's crazy. Has there been much competition in your space? Like I always see like, or you could refer to kind of like hardest geezer and people started to run across countries and stuff like that. Or William Gould running across America.

1:54:56Like a lot of people are doing that now. Have people took to the water and doing like crazy challenges like yourself? Like are they looking at you for inspiration? Oh yeah, I think. In the swimming space especially? Yeah, I think it's really interesting with swimming because we're at this amazing sort of period now. So the World Open Water Swimming Association is the governing body that basically looks across most things. So everything from ice swimming over to long distance swimming to marathon swimming. And everything has different rules and regulations. So if you're a channel swimmer, for instance, you don't wear a wetsuit.

1:55:28That's against the rules. So marathon swimming rules, you do not wear a wetsuit. But in ice swimming, again, their rules, it's got to be below five degrees and you do it wearing nothing but trunks, goggles and a smile. And they are crushing these insane swims in the Arctic, Antarctica. So it's really nice that there's these kind of like categories. And I say everyone's got a swimming superpower. I mentioned jerry kennedy like great friend of mine he one of the greatest ice swimmers ever swam all around the world doing ice miles so an ice mile is just basically a mile where in only your trunks in water that is below five degrees like i've seen and he he's done it in literally like minus so it gets below zero degrees because salt water has a freezing temperature below zero uh and it's not some of the swims that he's done so it's amazing how everyone in our community celebrates people but there's different categories.

1:56:18And at the moment, I think I'm the only one, the only one silly enough to be, you know, floating around countries on, on these sorts of scales. But yeah, there's been some amazing, Lewis Pugh, he, an amazing, still doing swims now, but he's done so much for ocean conservation, done it around the world. And he really took, you know, adventure swimming and pioneered it. But I think as far back as Captain Webb, 1875, you know, first guy to do the English Channel, you know and I always love the story uh did it breaststroke because at the time front crawl was on gentlemanly like so with his head out the water he just crushed it on on beef broth and brandy I think it was his cousin he was like good so I think yeah it's amazing that there's different categories and and the World Open Water Swimming Association does an amazing job of uh of celebrating them as well yeah no it is incredible I just think it's a little bit it's probably harder to do as well like say the amount of stuff that you've got to plan like i assume these big challenges that you do take probably like months and years to plan i do know and i'm so glad you said that you're right as well because like they're such team sports i'm just the one who gets in the water but the way that like on iceland like you know that the weather routing tides currents like it was just nuts it's it's a real like sailing master class um and like i said i'm just the one stubborn enough to get in and swim, but we just had some amazing people on the ice and swim and the GB swim as well.

1:57:46And I think that's what's so important, even with the Yukon as well. So we teamed up with the guys from the Yukon. There's basically a famous kayak race down the Yukon River. And I was like, look, if you can kayak it, you can kind of swim it. So that's how that idea came around. So these guys do the health and safety for the kayak race. And I said, look, you know can i go and and swim it and they were like yeah look in theory so we turned up and they were like oh i love canadian people but people from the yukon are amazing just big men who just have guns they kill wolves hunt bears like just proper men i remember i was swimming and black bears are okay because they're a bit skittish so they're looking at you going oh you're not a salmon you're not you're not a bear i don't know what you are i'm just i'm gonna leave you Whereas like the brown bears are just looking at you, just like, am I hungry?

1:58:38I could mess you up. Like they are looking. I remember I'm swimming and I turned to one of the guys on the boat, Brian. I said, Brian, I said that, that brown bear just over there on the side. It is, and it, Jake, it is huge. It is just a tank with fur. It is massive. And I was like, oh, do I need to be worried? And then Brian pulls out. It wasn't even a gun. That's a disservice to it. It was a cannon. and he pulls it out and he just goes Ross don't worry keep swimming if it gets too close to you it'll end up in my freezer and I was like that is exactly the response I wanted I don't want bear spray I don't want whistles thank you Brian so yeah just knowing that you've got the right team with incredible expertise as well like some of the guys Stan and Liam they'd lived on the Yukon so they understood log jams currents whirlpools counter currents you know I just did as I was told.

1:59:29They're like, Ross, swim that way, swim this way, avoid that bear. What are the biggest risks? Because like you said, there's obviously strong currents, currents that can pull you down as well. Is that correct? Yeah, Corrie Becken. Yeah. Yes, Scotland. Yeah, giant whirlpool in Scotland. Yeah, ships have gone down. People have lost their lives. And it was nuts knowing about that in Scottish folklore as well. They say there's a hag goddess who governs the Korya Vekin. And I remember hearing this from local fishermen and sailors and I was just like, hang on it. Yeah, I'll be fine. We approached it at night and there was just this eerie silence.

2:00:09The same with Iceland as well. Did you feel anything? Did you feel like a slight pull or anything? Oh, for sure. Yeah, as I'm swimming, imagine I'm trying to swim to you, but my legs were just coming out. It was pulling me like that down and I could just - Pulled you down? yeah not just like a current pulling you away it's pulling you down down yeah to the side so i'm trying to swim straight and just imagine i can just feel my legs just kind of so it's pulling me slightly diagonally and i was like i can i can feel that we skirt we gave it a really wide berth and we obviously didn't swim through the middle of it we tried to go as wide as possible how strong is it like in the middle i i can people like sail for it or anything like i think but it takes boats down yeah takes bolts down yeah yeah so we gave it such a wide berth but even as wide as i was you could just feel and and that's why i'm like if you captain matt knight was amazing of the gb swim absolute hero and his understanding of the ocean is incredible but but if you didn't know you could easily just sail into that and it's the same with like the penland firth at the top of scotland as well um you get that wrong and you are you know disappearing to finland it's just you And that's what I mean.

2:01:16You could be the best swimmer in the world, but if you don't have an amazing team who understand currents, tides, then it can go wrong very quickly. What about sharks? Yeah. Seriously. Like, did you ever like worry? Yeah. Oh, we've had a few. So it's always interesting because obviously we, we have sharks in, in, in England, certainly in Scotland, basking sharks, for instance, um, are terrifying to look at. They've got these massive mouths, um, but they're absolutely fine. Like they know, that you're not on the menu. So I actually swam for a few days with a basking shark. It was in a storm and we just kept each other company.

2:01:52Equally, you've got Greenland sharks up near Iceland. I think what was so interesting though is it was with National Geographic. I got to do this show and it was amazing. Basically, I was trying to mimic and learn from different sharks. So I had to Polaris out of the water with a fence, a swim, dolphin leg kick, and try to get out of the water like a great white shark. That's how they basically hunt. I had to swim as fast as a mako shark. I mean, spoiler alert, I didn't even get close, but that was the whole purpose of the show to say like, look, you know, we are so poorly equipped in the water compared to these apex predators.

2:02:30But off Tasmania, I was fortunate enough to dive with some of the great white sharks. And Jake, like the females, especially at a certain point, they stopped growing in length and they just get wider. Like it was just, it was a submarine with teeth. Like they are just huge. And they have something called the Ampulli of Lorenzini. Basically had these nodes that can pick up electrical impulses. And it was so interesting that when we were down there, some of the divers were like, Ross, they will know. They will pick up electrical impulses. They'll know if you are nervous, what's your heartbeat doing?

2:03:07Are you twitching? Are you hesitant? They'll pick up all of these things. This is what they told me before we went down. So we went down and it was amazing that there was about eight of us down there and they were really, really experienced divers. And amongst all of them, this great white came over and it knew instantly that I was the least experienced. Instantly came in like that and it just went, oh, you. And it is looking at me and it's like, I can see your your heart's beating quite quick. You're a bit nervous. You're a bit hesitant. The way that you say it just knew. So we come back up and they were like, Ross, you need to control your breathing.

2:03:39you know, to go back down there and they were like, I'm not saying square up to the shark, but I'm saying. And don't back down and look like you know what you're doing. So we went back down on the second dive again. Shark comes over and I was like, yes, can I help you? But my heart is and the shark kind of was like, OK, you know, you kind of it looks like you know what you're doing. You deserve to be down here. and then with that said Bahamas tiger sharks like tiger sharks are bad as well like aggressive but ambush hunters as well so it's really interesting they were like Ross had have your head on a swivel at all times because sometimes if you just look at a shark it's enough for them to go oh it's seen me you know I could take you but but I maybe you might like gouge my eye out or something like that as I eat you and that's not going to be good so so sometimes just looking is enough to discourage them and when we were down there we were filming they were like Ross tiger shark behind you behind you and i turned around and this type massive was coming at me and it jake it was so weird it was it kind of looked it was like oh i almost got you and i was like yeah you were trying to eat me and then it was like yeah your little tinker i'll get you next time and it just sort of swam off but there was a real like if you hadn't turned around i was taking your head clean off and i was like no but i saw you and it's like yeah you're good you're good it was so weird oh god yeah

2:05:05but there's a real intelligence to it there's an intelligence that we can't understand because we're limited by our five senses so to understand it's like that knows that if you don't worry you don't really worry if you come across a shark in the sea especially like UK Iceland you're not really bothered yeah yeah UK and Iceland you kind of go it's kind of And then orcas as well. I mean, they have echolocation. So I was swimming with orcas up in Iceland, which was amazing. I never approach wildlife ever. But if they come over to me, that is a privilege and I am in their world. And that is what happened in Iceland.

2:05:42but it was just crazy because they are so intelligent. They knew exactly what I was. You know, people go, oh, it might think you're a seal and stuff, but there's never been a reported case of an orca attacking someone in the wild because they're just that intelligent. And as it came over, it was like swimming under me. It was blowing bubbles in my face and was just kind of like playing, just kind of like, what are you? But it knew that I wasn't on the menu. I wasn't a threat. And if anything, it sort of looked at me, because I was obviously trying to swim around Iceland, And it looked at me and was like, why are you making such hard work of this?

2:06:16And I was like, because I'm not very good in the war like you. It was a real, like, not to say it pitied me, but it certainly looked at me and was like, dude, what are you doing? That's incredible. Yeah. It's crazy. Do you think you'll stick to just kind of like swimming challenges? I think so, just because we were talking about this off air that I, at the moment with an amazing team behind me, we have a real opportunity to pioneer our understanding of human endurance in swimming. You know, so I'm going to have blood work analysis, muscle biopsies, everything. And it's going to tell us so much.

2:06:56But if I went into another sport, I can't contribute anything in running, for instance. You know, I couldn't push and advance our understanding. I'm just not good enough. Rowing couldn't do it. But swimming very, very stupid long distances, that is something I can uniquely do. So I'm very much staying in my lane and acknowledging that there are much better athletes. So if someone says, oh, we need someone to understand something about running, I'll go, speak to Jake. Not me. I think that's incredible. I think that is cool. Yeah. Yeah. And with kind of like the, the endurance stuff, especially with the shoulders, like you say, with, with the continuous swimming that you do, like you're a big guy and you've built muscle and you've almost like, obviously you've got different types of muscle fibers.

2:07:41You mentioned it before you got, you know, fast twitch, slow twitch. Have you just like built your slow twitch that much that they're, they're big now? adapt. It's so interesting you said that. So I had an MRI scan and I'm going to get a muscle biopsy, but the MRI scan revealed that one, my slow twitch fibers that are usually smaller. So when you look at a marathon runner, that's why they're not carrying that muscle mass because they've got slow twitch fibers, which are smaller in diameter. But they were saying, you've been doing so much that your slow twitch fibers are almost hypertrophied in a way.

2:08:11And then what was really weird is I've got a large proportion of fast oxidative glycolytic fibers. So for those listening, you've got your fast twitch fibers, your sprinters, your powerlifters, you've got your slow twitch fibers, your marathon runners. But there's a third, which is almost your 400 meters. I think you would have this as well. You have to do what you do. But it's your fast oxidative glycolytic fibers, which are your fast twitch fibers that also are quite resistant to fatigue and good for endurance as well. And they found that I had a really weird, good combination of all of them.

2:08:42which when you hear that you go yeah that explains why when i was powerlifting my best bench was was 210 you know so i can bench 210 what were your numbers gov you know was my bench was so good because i'm built like a hobbit though like honestly so when people go 210 i'm like yeah but that's my range of motion so that was pretty good uh i had a 320 deadlift and my squat wasn't very good it was like a 270 because i have really bad ankle mobility yeah that's not good is it No, no, it was bad. I think what was interesting, because like I said, it's so interesting that in a lot of gyms, they would be good numbers and people would stop and go, oh, wow, you know, look, he's putting up some big numbers.

2:09:25But when you're training with people like Eddie Hall, Andy Bolton, first guy to deadlift a thousand pounds, you know, when I'm training with guys like that, Tom, Luke Stoltman, like I am the runt of the litter. And you said that you're training now for kind of like your max pull-up, weighted pull up what you're at now or what have you done in the past I can get an ugly 70 70 kg attached to your hips yeah yeah which is it's not bad but like I said when you see people like Cam McAvoy that's a single ugly and I don't know if in a calisthenics tournament I don't even know if they'd have given me it you know when Cam's doing a clean 70 for three speed reps I'm like oh there's levels to this well do you reckon you could do obviously this is perfect for you but like max body weight pull-ups what do you think you could do i do you know i don't i want to test it i'm gonna say no i'm gonna i think i'm gonna test it because you've got that endurance like you say is exactly it and i think this is what's so interesting that you've certainly done this because of your strength background and endurance but but i think one component that's overlooked in endurance is your strength reserve um so strength reserve of just basically meaning if you are capable of generating force, huge amounts of strength, then let's take one rep max on pull-ups, for example.

2:10:41If you can do one rep max on pull-ups at 100 kg, that means you are so, so strong. So when you swim, every single concentric contraction of the lats is a smaller percentage. The force generated is a smaller percentage of what you're actually capable of. And I think what's so interesting, the best example I can think of is Eddie Hall. So Eddie, silly strength, silly. And I can't remember, it's going to annoy me now, but there was, he set a CrossFit world record and I believe it was like, and I'm going to apologise to the CrossFiters listening, but it was there. And then it was kind of like up shoulder press or a push press or a jerk.

2:11:22But because Eddie was so strong, he was literally kind of like, it was a deadlift and he just did a front delt race with it. I can't remember the way, But he just absolutely smoked this record because his strength reserve was so big. So that weight where some people were basically cleaning it to the chest and then push pressing it, he wasn't doing that because he was so strong. It was just a delt raise. So I think that's what's really interesting now with strength. But going into high rocks, if all of a sudden you get stronger, then the sled is going to be a smaller percentage of what you're capable of.

2:11:57So raise the ceiling and then everything else feels easier. Exactly. Exactly. And I think people, again, yes, certainly on the sled, that is a great example. If you have a larger strength reserve that when you get to that and you get to it fatigued, you'll just be like, ah, it's a smaller percentage of what I'm capable of. I assume you've messed around with isometric training for this. Yeah. That's obviously a great way that you can build that kind of like top end strength and contraction, muscle contraction and stuff like that, but not get the DOMS. So you can still kind of do whatever it is, run, whatever.

2:12:31Because if you think, if you're trying to increase your squat strength, and then you say, oh, I need to squat two, three times a week to do that. But then you've still got to run every day. You're going to be a little bit battered. So you see a lot of runners now doing isometrics in the gym. Yes. Yeah. I think one of the biggest things for that with isometrics, certainly for my one rep max on pull-ups, one thing that I've been experimenting with is supramaximal isometric holds. So supra just basically means above and beyond, so over 100%. Supra maximal sprints, for instance, if I said, what is your 100 metre time?

2:13:08What's your best PB? And if you say I can run 10 seconds, I go, cool, that's you at 100%. But all of a sudden, wind assistance or you're running downhill, that becomes supra maximal. It's above and beyond what you're capable of. So with supramaximal isometric holds, basically the theory is, is that setting up again, let's use the pull up as an example. You would say you were going for 70 kilos, one rep max on pull ups. You would obviously get warmed up working sets, but then you would basically get onto the bar into an active hang for no more than three seconds with 100, 110 kilos, not 70, 110, 100 kilos hold.

2:13:50Get off the bar, rest. And this is what's so important. You now need to rest where you're not fatigued, but you're neurally primed. There's a real sweet spot that for me, sometimes it's between, I reckon, 160 to 200 seconds. It's somewhere in between. That right there, I then get 70 kilos on the weighted weights belt. And then I get into my one rep mass and pull-ups. The theory being you are then neurally primed because the body's gone, hang on. You've just done an active hang with 100 to 110 kilos. So now you've removed that central nervous system is firing. You get on the bar. In theory, 70 kilos should just fly up.

2:14:28And you can use that on everything as well. Say you are deadlifting, for instance, supramaximal hold. Hold, hold, hold, hold, hold. Get on smelling salts. You're like, ah! And then you go, put it down. Minute, two minutes, wait. And then get onto your deadlift and rip. And that, for me, has accelerated my one-rep mass on pull-ups so much. Interesting. So you do that. What else is in this pull-up regime that you're doing at the moment? Do you know, there's no substitute for pull-ups itself. I'll just hammer those. A lot of like bent over rows. Are you doing a lot of volume? No, no, no. Just because this is all in conjunction goes back to what you said.

2:15:05This is all in conjunction. This has to work in synergy with the swimming. If at any point that interferes with my swimming the very next day, if I start trying to do a 10K session and I'm tired or the lats are on fire, then I'm like, well, then it's defeatist purpose. So no, a massive reduction in volume, no hypertrophy at all, just pure strength. So one to five rep ranks are not even that far. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And sometimes as well, I think what I'm going to do, I'm going to do a training block as well, like almost like the Bulgarian training model. You know, that idea of squatting every day.

2:15:36It's great now because we've got a home gym. So I just think like multiple times throughout the day, I'll just go in, rep, rep, you know, Pavel greasing the groove. you know that idea of just volume um and no i don't think anyone's really used that yet for then endurance cam mcavoy like i said i'm a huge fan of him he's done it and pioneered sprint training because for so long in swimming even if you're a sprinter there was this idea of just like junk volume just get in and swim you gotta you gotta you gotta do six seven k sessions and it's like but i'm a sprinter usain bowl when when did he ever run a mile he's not doing it I actually had dinner with Usain Bolt and he was like, yeah, very rarely has he run more than two laps of a track.

2:16:21Wow. It's just crazy. And that's it. And Cam McAvoy was the first to go, then why are we doing this as swimmers? And for him, sometimes his sessions are like 600 metres. And people were like, that's ridiculous. Like, that is so short. You can't do that. And then, you know, a few years later, a world record and an Olympic gold medal that says, oh no, actually it works. Yeah. it's so fascinating isn't it yeah no I'm really intrigued with like the max strength stuff it's something that I need to incorporate a lot more like say with high rocks with it being 8 exercises plus your running so it's 9 different disciplines and then trying to work on maybe top end strength your strength endurance and then getting the running volume and then the cross training it's quite difficult to kind of like manage but yeah it's definitely probably something Something that I have been neglecting is that kind of like top end, that max strength kind of work.

2:17:20So yeah, I'll definitely be incorporating that. I love that you said that though, because too few people actually even identify that, that you were like, what is the weak part of this? And that's one thing that I love with all of my swims. And it's very similar to what you're doing with Hierarchs. You have a goal, you have a date, and then you reverse engineer and deconstruct that. But so many people just do it blindly. you're actually saying, ah, that's like a strength reserve. That is something that I could look into. And I think too many people don't want to do that. Like, you know, there's, you've got to do the homework and the stuff you probably don't want to do.

2:17:51For me, it's zone two training. I really need to build my aerobic base. It's so boring. I don't know how you can say that when you've been swimming around countries. Like, yeah. What do you even think about when you just like your head's in the ocean, you can't even see the bottom. And it must be quite therapeutic, but I don't know if it's therapeutic if it's 12 hours a day for 100 days plus. Do you know, it's weird because I honestly was like on the GB swim was a great example. You know, I was 100 days in. My girlfriend came up to see me. I've got like a beard, a jellyfish, I look horrible. And people would always go to Hester and they'd go like, how is he?

2:18:33Is he all right? Is he coping? And Hester was just always the same. She was like, I've never seen him so happy. He's having the best time. And the reason is, is because now back on land in civilization, you have to work. Have I taxed my car? Have I got insurance? Is the mortgage due? The baby needs feeding. Out there, I wake up and there are two questions. What's the tide doing and what's for breakfast? That is easy. I suppose you're even everything away from social media and stuff like that. Like you're probably limited to what, like 10 minutes on your phone a day or something like that? Yeah, yeah.

2:19:05Because of Starlink as well. We barely had any internet access as well. So we didn't even have that. And it was so right. It's kind of a full detox from life. Oh, honestly, Jay. It was just like, I was like, this is how humans are meant to live. Not like spiking cortisol throughout the day, checking emails, looking at, you know, social media. Is that post done well? Because I've got to do it for sponsors. Dopamine. None of that. It was so pure. And I think even coming back, it was really interesting. A friend of mine who's a world record ocean rower. And after the GB swim, he said to me, he said, Ross, when you get back on land, things are going to feel quick.

2:19:40And I was like, that's such a weird thing. What do you mean it's going to feel quick? He goes, you've been used to everything, traveling at two knots, you know, and everything's really, really slow. The waves. And it was so right. I remember I finished GB swim, was in the middle of London on a press tour. And I just was like, whoa. And there's people running around, taxis, cars. And I was like, oh, this is a lot. It was weird. Yeah. Really weird experience. Yeah. I felt the same about that in, in Iceland as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So sometimes you're probably thinking, oh, I wish I was back out at sea.

2:20:14Yeah. Yeah. Genuinely. Honestly. Yeah. It's just life is like simple there. And, oh, Icelandic people are just like, they're so good as well. They just have this like incredible understanding of like nature. That's why we've like, you know, the mountains, they believe are trolls that didn't make it back before sunset. And there's mermaids. And, you know, A lot of Icelandic people, this is what's fascinating. I didn't understand this, but when we were driving, for no reason at all, the road would just go massively out, like a mile curved out the way. And I'm like, who has built that road? That makes absolutely no sense.

2:20:48And I was speaking to a lady out there who was just like, well, in Iceland, we understand working with nature and stuff. And that road in particular, there are stories, the documented stories was going over sacred elf territory. I said, what do you mean? And they said, well, we would turn up, there'll be bulldozers, there'll be equipment, and it would just break down. And then they would go, okay, get another one in. They'll bring another one. And then it would break for no reason, it would just break down. And so then they were just like, right, okay. So they consulted her and she would come in and say, yeah, like that is sacred territory.

2:21:20So Icelandic people go, right, okay, we'll build around it then. So if you see a road in Iceland and it just makes no sense, that's probably what's going on. It's just, no, I love, honestly, the stories are amazing. it's so good no that that is crazy um I could literally talk with you all day I feel like we've only just like we've covered a lot haven't we irawasca ritualistic circumcision what uh what would you say your worst habit is oh yeah you might have to ask her stuff for this yeah I I uh probably just being so single-minded a lot of other stuff i forget it's like yeah the room the kitchen will be a mess but you know none of that are you messy at home oh i'm so bad i'm so bad yeah i'm glad that you say that because i'm not exactly the same oh yeah really yeah my my car's like a wardrobe like stuff like you know training gear whether whether it's you know stuff that i'm taking to the gym or whatever yeah it's just a cardrobe that's what i call it so it's a nightmare every time someone gets in my car i've got to like move everything off my front seat and put it in the back and stuff like that but uh i think yeah when you're just sort of like focused on on something yeah it's so weird though as soon as like i have a rest day it's like the complete opposite i'm like i can't sit still yeah so i ended up cleaning because if i'm not training what we're gonna do a hundred yeah yeah i know i know what you mean I think it's the training that makes you messy and a lot of lazy of a life.

2:23:00Yeah. I can just obsess over anything. Yeah. Like, like me and my brothers got really into Mario Kart and I am, I am so good on Mario Kart, but we have played like an unhealthy amount of hours on Mario Kart. So we have like 32, cause there's 32 races on Mario. So we will have 32, right. It takes two hours if you do it quite quickly and we will just sit there and we have a 32 race tournament. And I'm, yeah. Don't get into gambling, eh? Weirdly. I know what you mean, but that like, for me, I did it once. I went to the dog races and I just lost. Like, honestly, I put like three pound on, lost and was like, that's terrible.

2:23:36I feel horrible about the world. So I've never done it since. So with that one, it's weird how I've just gone, nah. Yeah. I was like, I don't know, obviously some people love gambling and stuff like that, but I feel like it's like, even if you win, like you've not earned it, if that makes sense. Yeah, no, no, I know what you mean. You'd be like winning a competition, but like having no competitors I know exactly what you mean yeah getting free money I don't understand it it'd be like so I don't know it's kind of like you like the process exactly yeah yeah yeah so like gambling I'm like no but if someone said marry a cart I'm like yeah come on come on so yeah thank you Ross for today you're such a legend thank you me we covered a lot thank you you're such a legend