Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #73 Why You Are Stronger Than You Think with Ross Edgley

Episode Date: September 11, 2019

“You are more powerful than your mind allows you to believe”   This week, I have the great pleasure of sitting down with arguably the fittest (but definitely one of the loveliest) men on the planet – swimmer and all-round adventurer, Ross Edgley. He believes that the next frontier of human performance is the mind and his superhuman feats are testament to that fact. He is the first ever swimmer to circumnavigate the whole of Great Britain without ever setting foot on land. And this is just one in a long list of mind-blowing accomplishments for Ross. But how is all that relevant to the rest of us? As well as talking about how he got through his epic journey, Ross explains the science behind why our minds limit us. He explains how we can all push ourselves beyond our comfort zones and reap the amazing knock-on benefits that come from doing that. We delve into the importance of intrinsic motivation and self-discovery through self-discipline. Ross speaks with wisdom and humility and is truly inspirational – he challenges you to go on your own journey of self-discovery. The overriding message from both of us is – it doesn’t matter where you start, just start somewhere. I hope this episode inspires you to push yourself outside your circle of comfort. Show notes available at drchatterjee.com/73 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee/ Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee/ Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The reality is, is you're so much more powerful than even your own mind allows you to believe. And we're now only just understanding this in terms of sports psychology. And I love what you said there, that the next frontier of human performance is in the mind. If you voluntarily subject yourself to something and you're able to achieve beyond what you thought that you were capable of, you're able to just recalibrate your mind, its implications for everything throughout the rest of your year, you know, work life, family life, everything, it all changes. Hi, my name is Rangan Chastji, GP, television presenter and author of the best-selling books,

The Stress Solution and The Four Pillar Plan. I believe that all of us have the ability to feel better than we currently do, but getting healthy has become far too complicated. With this podcast, I aim to simplify it. I'm going to be having conversations with some of the most interesting and exciting people, both within as well as outside the health space, to hopefully inspire you, as well as empower you with simple tips that you can put into practice immediately to transform the way that you feel. I believe that when we are healthier, we are happier because when we feel better, we live more.

Hello and welcome back to my Feel Better Live More podcast. This is the start of season three. My name is Rangan Chatterjee and I am your host. Now I hope you had a really good summer. I hope you managed to switch off a little bit, spend time with family and friends. Hopefully you got a chance to try and do some new things and that you are now feeling recharged and renewed heading back into autumn, especially as the days now have started to get a little bit shorter. I don't know about you, but for for me these shorter days seem to have come on really suddenly and there is no doubt now that summer is well and truly over. I didn't switch

off as much as I'd hoped as I was finishing off writing my third book Feel Better in Five. It took a lot longer than expected but now that I'm almost done I'm really excited for the book to actually be released. I do think it is my most actionable and practical book to date, and no doubt you'll be hearing more about this in the coming months. Now, on today's show and to launch season three, I have the great pleasure of sitting down with arguably the fittest man on the planet. He is certainly one of the loveliest, the swimmer and all-round adventurer, Ross Edgley. This conversation was recorded back in June, immediately after I had completed my very first endurance event. It was something called Swim Run that was being hosted by the minimalist shoe

company Vivo Barefoot at their second annual retreat. It was my very first time swimming in open water. So please do excuse me if I'm talking a little bit fast as I was on a very big natural high for the duration of our conversation. Now, my guest Ross believes that the next frontier of human performance is the mind and his superhuman feats are testament to that fact. He is the first ever swimmer to swim around the whole of Great Britain without ever setting foot on land. And this is just one in a long list of mind-blowing accomplishments for Ross. But how is all of that relevant to the rest of us?

Well, as well as talking about how he got through his epic journey, Ross explains the science behind why our minds limit us. He explains how we can all push ourselves beyond our comfort zones and reap the amazing knock-on benefits that come from doing just that. We delve into the importance of intrinsic motivation and self-discovery through self-discipline. Ross speaks with wisdom and humility and is truly inspirational. He challenges you to go on your own journey of self-discovery and the overriding message from both of us is it doesn't matter where you start, just start somewhere. I hope this episode inspires you to push yourself

outside your own circle of comfort. Now, before we get started, as always, I do need to give a quick shout out to the sponsors of today's episode who are absolutely essential in order for me to put out weekly episodes like this one. I'm delighted to announce that my favorite meditation app, Calm, are one of the sponsors of today's show. As many of you will know from listening to previous podcasts and from reading my books, I think that meditation is one of the most impactful things we can do for our health. It can help our mood, our sleep quality, reduce feelings of anxiety, and even enhance productivity. But many of us find meditation super tricky, as did I. Calm is a meditation app that makes meditation easy. All you have to do is load up the app

and play the meditation of your choice. I start most mornings with a calm meditation. In my latest book, The Stress Solution, I wrote about the three Ms that a well-structured morning routine should contain. The first M is mindfulness, and I managed to tick that off by doing a meditation on the Calm app as soon as I wake up.

If you have been thinking about trying meditation or if you have tried before but fallen off the wagon, I would highly encourage you to check out the Calm app. Right now, listeners to my podcast get 25% off a Calm premium subscription at calm.com forward slash live more. That's calm.com, C-A-L-M.com forward slash live more. 40 million people around the world have already downloaded Calm. You can find out why at calm.com forward slash live more. Now, on to today's conversation with the one and only Ross Edgley. So Ross, welcome to the Feel Better Live More podcast. Thank you. How are you feeling, by the way? Well, I'm actually feeling a little bit surreal at the moment.

Let's just set the scene. So we are here in Bantham in Devon. I'm not sure if I've actually been to Devon much before um but I'm here for a Vivo Barefoot weekend the guys at Vivo have invited me down for their Vivo retreat and I've just completed a swim run now for those of you listening who don't know what a swim run is basically it's a endurance event where you basically wear a wetsuit you're wearing your shoes you swim in your shoes and you run in your wetsuits. And to put it in, to put it in context, guys, I have never done an endurance event. The most I've ever done is a park run on a Saturday morning with my son, which is a 5k event. I've never done open water swimming before. And I've just completed my first swim run. So we're going to explore that. So that is

what we're talking about. We're actually here in this Vivo Barefoot wagon. That's W-V-A-G-O-N. And it's awesome. It's like all sustainable. It's made, you know, it's made of wood, the solar panels, and it's all about health and well-being. It's about sustainability. It's about community. So yeah, Ross, just setting the scene for the listeners. I love it. Ross, you know, for my listeners who don't know who you are you have done some pretty superhuman feats um and the last one you did was you actually what are you saying you swam around the uk explain that yeah i mean they're niche sports aren't they they're quite

new so yeah i perhaps best known last year so it was exactly a year ago now um i swam uh 1780 miles uh all the way around the coast of great britain uh took 157 days um a lot of uh skin from around my neck and my tongue from from chafing and salt water exposure um and yeah i i think to date uh and i know we're going to talk about this more uh a little bit later because for me that that was one event that that felt what we've just spoke about there cathartic afterwards it was done for intrinsic reasons it was this idea of i think afterwards i just love the fact that i can be you know an old man and i can go out to anywhere on the coast and go i swam past there so you know for me it was the culmination of a lot of of work and and studies in sports science as well yeah yeah well that's incredible

i i also have heard that you've done a marathon whilst pulling a car that's true what car did you pull that was a bad idea yeah it was a 1.4 ton car um well that was yeah so we i kind of finished playing water polo and swimming for great britain so when i finished i kind of needed something to train for um friend of mine who's absolutely fine now he was diagnosed with cancer at the time uh we wanted to do something to raise money for uh the teenage cancer trust um and so a friend of mine just said why don't you run a marathon someone was like you know that's been done it's like run two marathons it was like again it's been done and then someone went run a marathon pulling a car went that is not a bad idea so long story short agreed to do it silverstone race circuit heard about it and they

threw me the keys to stowe circuit and they said look uh as long as you need uh to complete it please you know have the circuit and it took uh 19 hours uh i think 19 hours 33 minutes something like that but 1.4 tons uh was pulled 26.2 miles i mean i don't know what to say that sounds absolutely incredible but but for those of you listening who actually feel we know what ross is superhuman as he is i have been watching roster a while and i think we can all learn tips um and principles from what you have done. And I really want to touch base because I don't want people to feel the same. You know what? That's all right for Ross. He's really fit. He trains hard. Yeah, he can do that. What's that got to do with me? And I really want to touch

on a few things like mindset and pushing yourself beyond what you consider your comfort zone to being. We were just walking up here. Guys, you've got to understand, I feel a bit surreal at the moment because I have just completed my first endurance event. I'm not eating much after. I wasn't that hungry. And I'm sort of floating on cloud nine at the moment. And in fact, maybe you could probably provide some answers for me. So given that I've just done it, let me ask you a few questions. The event I did today was the Swim Run Experience event. To put it in context, I've never swam in open water before.

I do swim a couple of times a week at my local pool. Maybe I'll do 300, 400 meters, but normally after each 50 meters, I'll stop and just have a little breather. It was the power of the community today that persuaded me to do this. So I swam about 1.8k today in open water, and I probably ran about 9k. Again, I only run about 5k once every two weeks or so. So well beyond my comfort zone, you know, and doing the events one after the other is something I've never done before. and doing the events one after the other is something I've never done before. But here's the funny thing for me. I started off with a 100-meter open water swim.

That was a short one. And I thought, oh, that'll be fine. I can swim 100 meters. Halfway into that, I start to panic. And my partner said to me, Ron, can you hyperventilate and just try and slow down, try and slow down your breathing? But I couldn't. So what was going on there? Because in that 100 meter swim, I was thinking there is no way that once I've done the next one, I can swim the 500 meters when I'm really far away from land or the 1k. And weirdly

enough, the 500 meters and the 1k was absolutely fine, but I couldn't do the 100 meters. What was going on there? Do you know what? I love what you said there because basically i think a lot of the principles that i experienced on the great british swim um it was an extreme example but it's absolutely applicable so everything that you just described there um i was experiencing through the 150 days at sea i think when you start looking at um tim noakes and his work on central governor theory he basically proposed this idea that um fatigue is an emotionally driven state that we use to pull the physiological handbrake. And what he meant by that was when you are 16 miles into a marathon, you think, I cannot go on. My lungs are on fire. My legs are burning. I cannot go on. There's no way.

All of a sudden, 25 miles in, you see your family and friends and everyone's clapping. You see your kids at the finish line and you sprint all the way to 26.2 miles and you heroically cross the line. Because Tim Noakes proposed that this idea of fatigue being an emotionally driven state, we use it because it's basically our brain, which is incredibly manipulative, which is trying to, just because it's trying to self-preserve. It's this inbuilt self-preservation mechanism that is saying, whoa, you're not safe. You're not safe, fight or flight. Just saying you're not safe, wrong and you're not safe. And it was exactly the same

that when you got in the water today, all of a sudden, central governor theory, your body started to go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. It's cold. You're hyperventilating. Get out of the water. I can't see the bottom. Yeah, everything was screaming out.

And it is, it's a primitive inbuilt self you know self-preservation so would you say an appropriate response absolutely but you have to understand we're still wired like our ancestors so that exact mechanism would have protected us and we would have like ran from a saber-toothed tiger or anything now we don't have a saber-toothed tiger to worry about but instead we're actually voluntarily putting ourselves in those positions and even though we're voluntarily voluntarily putting ourselves in those positions. And even though we're voluntarily doing it, the mechanisms are still there. They're still exactly the same. So I think once you know this idea, Tim Noakes also expands on it a little bit and talks about this idea of anticipatory regulation. And what he means by this is knowing now that you

are far more powerful than your own mind allows you to believe. So when you said, okay, how far could you swim this morning? How far can you swim and run this morning? You would say to me, oh, Ross, you know, self-preservation mechanism, you'd have gone, oh, maybe 5k, you know, and that is just your body saying, do you know what, Rangan, that will keep you safe. You're not going to go to complete exhaustion. You know, you're not going to hyperventilate. You're not going to suffer from hyperthermia. 5k, 5k, anticipatory regulation. The reality is, is you're so much more powerful than even your own mind allows you to believe. And we're now only just understanding this in terms

of sports psychology. So what you've experienced now is this kind of like, oh wow, this cathartic sense of unsafe. You know, there was that fight or flight, biochemically, all sorts of things. There was like an orchestra of things going on inside of your body. Neurotransmitters, chemical signals in the brain, everything was firing, going, whoa, whoa, what are you doing? What are you doing? And now you've come out the other end and you've gone, wow, you know, I did survive that. And it's almost like a huge reward as well. You look at like serotonin, dopamine, everything dumped in your brain to go, you're safe now. You're safe. Go and have a nice pizza. Go and relax. It's funny because rationally, it doesn't make sense't make sense just before i came here my son my family had come down for the weekend and it was great that my son and my daughter got to witness that and he said hey daddy which is which was the

tougher swim for you and i said it was 100 meters to him then it goes but you swam 1.2k at the end and 500 meters and i said honestly darling it was it hundred meter swim. And you've just hit the nail on the head. Our minds put on the limiting factor to what we can achieve. And I really want people who are listening to this, who, who think, well, I don't really want to do a swim run event, or I don't want to swim around the UK. Well, what would you say to them? Yeah, that you're right. It's all completely relative. And I love what you said there that the next frontier of human performance is in the mind. Previously, we looked at the human body, we looked at our physiology, and we looked at it in terms of almost like a simple mechanical approach. We'd look at lactic threshold, VO2, lung capacity. We'd start looking at that. The best example I can always think of is Roger

Bannister. At the time, people said with Roger Bannister, you cannot run under a four-minute mile. Simply cannot be done. Leading physicians at the time were saying, you know, physiological malfunctions, your heart will explode, like it cannot be done. Roger Bannister was also a medical student himself, but still laced up his trainers and, you know, Oxford ran the first sub four minute mile. Once he did, the number of people running a sub four minute mile the year after was incredible. It wasn't because there was an advancement in nutrition, technology, nothing nothing changed it was just because collectively we'd recalibrated the human mind to know what we were now capable of i think we're seeing it right now with kip chogey as well yeah i was about to mention that for sure exactly like there was no way that we thought you could run under a sub two

hour marathon no way and then all of a sudden runs 201 berlin he's just run like 202 203 whichever he was in london and now all of a sudden everyone's like wow this is possible but looking back through sports performance and and the history of sport you look at even um Emil Zatopek for those who don't know Emil Zatopek uh greatest endurance runner to ever exist um three gold medals in one Olympics Helsinki Olympics had never run a marathon before in his life but on the morning of the marathon decided to run it and had a third gold medal to his tally reason he did that with emil's aspect he had this and i find him fascinating because he had a military background but he fused the military mindset with a sport science he used to run 100 400 meter sprints with 30 seconds rest in between yeah it's always like let that sink in

there a little bit interval training to a max like like hyper interval training yeah and before a meal people said we didn't know the human body could train that hard you know this idea of work capacity so your body's ability to perform and positively tolerate training of a given intensity and duration and with emil zatepec he knew that he could take his body to that sort of a level. And when he did those 100, 400 meter sprints with 30 seconds rest in between, he does talk about that he was drilling lactic threshold, running biomechanics, so his technique and everything. But he also talks about one of the biggest benefits of those sessions was recalibrating his mind and his perception to pain. So when he

did go and run a marathon, never run one before in his life, Helsinki Olympics, and still won gold, it's because he knew he could take his body to that limit. So I think to answer your question, if you voluntarily subject yourself to something, anticipatory regulation, central governor theory, and you're able to achieve beyond what you thought that you were capable of, you're able to just recalibrate your mind, its implications for everything throughout the rest of your year, you know, work life, family life, everything, it all changes. Now with yourself, previously before today, you wouldn't have thought you could do that. Now knowing that you can, now knowing that your body is far more durable than you thought it was this morning, it's going to change how you look at things.

It already has. I mean, it can only be two hours, something like that, since I finished. And mean, it can only be two hours, something like that since I finished. And I just had this strange inner sense of well-being, of satisfaction. I didn't do that for, you know, an Instagram post. I didn't do that so I could tell my buddies. I did that for myself. And I feel inside that, you know what, what else can I do? What else can I conquer so so for people who are listening who go okay that sounds great you not only you know have done this training on yourself I understand that you've also trained other people before yeah so do you have some top tips on how people can train their minds yeah and and I think it's something that we so often overlook you know I think when we're training we don't look at like mind training. We don't look at, you know, cognitive functioning. But I think kind of,

if you look back at the ancient Stoics as well, like Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, you know, they had a philosophy that was dedicated to coping with adversity. And I think too often, we're very adverse to adversity. We don't want to subject to adversity. We're not comfortable being uncomfortable. We don't want to subject to that. We're not comfortable being

uncomfortable. Yet when you look at our ancestors, we were very good. In the animal kingdom, we're not the biggest. We're not the fastest. We've not got sharp teeth. But one thing that we're really, really good at as humans is just suffering and just endurance suffering and sweating. So I think this idea of sometimes adversity training is so often overlooked. And what I mean by that is when you go into the gym, you might think, I'm doing a dance class today. And it's like, okay, cool. What are you training? I'm training deadlifts. Okay, strength, your body's ability to generate force, strength. Okay, what are you training? I'm training running biomechanics. But no one often goes into the gym and says, do you know what? Today I'm training adversity

training. I'm getting comfortable being uncomfortable. And what I mean by that is you don't have to go and run 100, 400 meter sprints like Emil Zatopek. It might be something like, you know, taking interval training, you know, up the hills, go fell running or, you know, ice cold showers to sort of go down that route as well. You start looking at our ancestors. We had this ability to thermoregulate, to vasoconstrict and vasodilate our capillaries, to open up and close blood vessels. We've lost that now because we're really comfortable. We'll go and change the thermostat. We'll put the central heating on. But as humans, we used to have this powerful physiological state. And I think, again, even to go back to Vivo Barefoot,

this idea of actually wearing minimalist shoes. So those intrinsic muscles in your feet, ligaments, tenders, everything works like it was designed to. I think sometimes simple steps like that, just getting back and making your body work like mother nature always intended, I think is one of the ways in any way, like I said, cold shower, minimalist food, something like that. Yeah, a%. I mean, there's so much to talk about there. I think for me and people who maybe heard the first early episodes on this podcast a long time ago now, I shared my story with my back and I had chronic back pain for years. I spent so much money and time going around different specialists, different experts. And I started to get a bit of short-term

relief and then it kept coming back. And then I a guy called Gary Ward who I think I genuinely think is one of the world's leading thinkers and movement mechanics and he I sought him out I went to train with him because I thought I want to learn this stuff people said wrong and you're six foot six and a half you're always going to have back pain I thought no way why does that mean I need to have back pain I knew there was a way of getting to the root cause. And Gary saw me and he said, Rangan, your right foot's completely flat. I said, okay, yeah. And I'd be told to wear insoles for that. And he goes, here's the thing, your right foot essentially, and I'm paraphrasing now for ease of understanding, but he basically said that your right foot's forgotten

how to work properly. If we teach it how to move properly i think your back problems will get immeasurably better and i did five minutes a day on foot exercises and instantaneously i got back to playing squash got back to everything so that tuned me in to actually oh my feet are important right and then that led me to barefoot shoes um and actually i tell the story the reason the reason i ended up Vivo Barefoot shoes is because at that time, this is about seven years ago, I was looking around, there was a few other makes, because I'm a tall guy, I'm a UK size 13. And none of them made a UK 13. And I found this company called Vivo Barefoot. And they made a UK 13. So I ordered a pair, started wearing them. And literally over two years, I thought, I just feel incredible. And now they're the only shoes I wear for work, for running, for gym, even for playing squash.

And it's incredible. So it's just going back to how the body was designed to function. So I guess there's a lot to talk about. But if we think about modern life, we talk about shoes. Kids are getting put in cushioned shoes from a young age. And therefore, I think are losing touch with the grounds yep um but but then the following question is also you know is modern life too comfortable i love that i think you're right i think we're atrophying these ancient age old

mechanisms you know the feet are absolutely one you've got all these you know biosensors in the feet providing you know this this biofeedback and how we're working how we how's you know the feet are absolutely one you've got all these you know biosensors in the feet providing you know this this biofeedback and how we're working how we how's you know the gradient are we running too fast too slow all that and we're shutting that off in these big shoes but also on top of that even like i said ligaments tendons you know they respond to to weight and resistance and we're not putting that through our feet anymore so you're right and then even like i said about the cold water i think what you did today i think it was a balmy 14 degrees i think 14 degrees i had brain freeze after two minutes right i felt like it had like as a kid when you'd have that cold milkshake really fast right i was how am i gonna do this event i just can't function but the same and did that coincide

with your hyperventilating as well so that gas reflex yeah it must have done i didn't know that happened my partner told me afterwards really though so i didn't know it was happening i just thought i don't feel comfortable here at all um but yeah it i think it must have coincided yeah cold water shock so you're absolutely right and i think too often again you know people i've seen it time and again like in open water swimming and people jump in and then they'll go i'm going i've got hypothermia i'm like no you've been in 10 seconds. It's not hypothermia. That is just a gas reflex. And you can do certain things that mammalian reflex where you put your face underwater and it's something that all his mammals have, and it will slow your heart rate down, reduce blood pressure, start pulling blood away from

your extremities and sending it to your vital organs. These are physiological adaptations that we all have, but we're just turning them off. I love what you said, that, yeah, comfort does come at a cost. So when you are really warm and you've got these big comfy shoes and, you know, you're running in the gym and you can control all of the environment, it's great. But you're now no longer working like Mother Nature intended. You know, you're not subjecting your body to go off on a very slight tangent here looking at like the work of Hans Celia so 1936 you know coined the general adaptation syndrome found that in a lab full of rats he gave these rats a lethal dose of poison they keel over and died and then what he found by giving another load of rats he gave them

a little bit of poison a little bit more a little bit more that he found that they built an intolerance to it and these rats these indestructible lab rats were just eating, that he found that they built an intolerance to it. And these rats, these indestructible lab rats were just eating poison, basically. He found that through stress and stimuli, that is the key to adaptation. And I think everybody, you know, we kind of forget this, that when you are in the gym and you are suffering and doing hill sprints or on a, you know, a rower and you're thinking, oh my God, I'm suffering. It's like, yes, that is stress and stimuli that we've known since 1936 is the key to adaptation. So I think you're right, you know, and being so in tune with your body when you start to understand it's a good thing. It's absolutely a good thing. What you did today was voluntarily suffering and you are so much stronger as a result. Stress and stimuli, you will adapt. You know, next, you know, next month, this will look, you know, you've shifted your habitual level.

What you think is normal is shifted now. I was in there. I went to my room to have a shower and my kids were there. And I said, hey, kids, what can you learn from what daddy did today? Because, you know, as all parents, I'm trying to do the best that I can to try and inspire my kids. And I think my daughter said, daddy, it means, you know, you can do anything you want in the world, can't you? Or you can put anything you put your mind to. And I thought, okay, cool. Hopefully at six, she's learning that lesson. And I said, look, what about this? There's, well, there's this rectangular mat. I said, do you know what a circle of comfort is? She goes, no. I said, okay, imagine you're on this

rectangular mat here. That's your rectangle of comfort. And I said said okay imagine you're on this this rectangular mat here that's your rectangle of comfort and I said so you know what you might do park run or you go to school or you run in the garden that that's all what you're used to doing but if you do something outside that and you manage to do it then what you've just done darling is you've just expanded that that that rectangle's just got bigger so you've got a new circle or rectangle of comfort is that how you would look at it yeah and she got that she understood she totally got it i love that i'm trying to put it into words for us in a way or i just want you know maybe it's not the over the top you know i just want i never got exposed to this environment you know um i you know we're sitting here in this beautiful setting.

There's people there watching us talk. The views here are stunning. I didn't know this existed in the UK. I've got to tell you, right? My parents were Indian immigrants. They came over to the UK to try and give themselves and the family a better life. You know, they really pushed me hard at education. I lived in a pretty urbanized environment.

Every other summer, we'd go to Calcutta for six weeks, spend time with family, which was great. And I learned so much from doing that. But I didn't get that regular exposure to nature. And now as an adult, I'm craving it. And I see my kids there and I'm thinking, guys, I want you to inhale this and actually absorb it. And I want them to learn that, hey,

because my kids, you know, like all kids kids i sometimes think their mind really limits them and i want them to see daddy be scared in the morning but then go out and do it conquer it and i hope that inspires them yeah do you know what this is i'm gonna go off on a slight tangent here but this is what this podcast is all about okay good away right thank you right let's say like what you described there this is gonna sound a bit weird but it was over 10 years ago now um and this is what i wanted to ask you when you finish but i've waited till the podcast to ask you but i think uh i love when you talk about intrinsic motivation so doing it so the process is its own reward you didn't do it for medals and glory or anything today the the process

itself was it was enough that was its own reward And I think 10 years ago now, I was fortunate enough to live with the Yamabushi monks of Japan. They go on what they call an Okugaki, which is a pilgrimage where you run a marathon a day in the mountains. It's a mountain religion, Shugendu religion. We do a marathon a day in the mountains and then meditate under ice cold waterfalls for hours. And it's this idea of self-discovery through self-discipline. Now, when I was doing this, I think what I found so interesting is I turned to Kunyao, one of the chief monks, and I said to him, what's the record for the Okugaki? And he looked at me and he was like, I was 19. I was very young, very naive. I was an athlete as well, still competing, swimming and playing water polo for Great Britain. And he just laughed at me and he was like no no there's not a record for an okigaki it's like saying

what's the record for you know christianity what's the record for you know it doesn't make sense you know so he laughed at me he was just a bit like no no there's no competition when it comes to spirituality and certainly what i've taken with me since this idea of like sporting spirituality in many ways that i think way back when you look at an okugaki we've been doing it for hundreds of years thousands of years as humans have been voluntarily exposing ourselves to hardship in other in order to understand things about ourselves just this idea of like going and trekking a mountain a day just to refine the senses and focus the mind you know make you a you a little bit, you know, more, you know, impervious to pain, you know, this idea. And I think one thing that I wanted to ask you since

you finished this is, do you feel in some ways that was your Okagaki like today? Absolutely. You know, it's really hard to describe. You know i'm a generally fit guy okay i i don't do endurance though i go for short sharp bites you know i'll fit in a quick 10 minute workout here i'll go for a quick uh if i'm writing and i haven't right as well i'll go for a quick 20 minute run i don't go beyond that right so i'm generally fit but i don't do endurance so what has been panicking me all week but I don't do endurance. So what has been panicking me all week is the open water element. I thought I could probably get through the run. I thought, you know, I do 5Ks, yeah, it might be tough, but at least I can breathe in the air when I'm not in open water. The open water stuff worried me because I thought I'd never done this before. So I don't know what

it's going to be like. And it's funny, actually, I couldn't sleep last night, really. I was actually, I think it was excitement, but also being scared. And I did a podcast recently with someone and they were saying that actually you can reframe your stress response by thinking about it as excitement rather than fear. I actually listened to one of your podcasts, Ross. And I've heard you say this phrase before where you say, you know, I think this is about the Great British swim I think you said I was what were you would say it's about naivety right naive enough to start stubborn enough to finish absolutely and I loved it and I was thinking about that thinking do you know what that sounds like me naive enough I don't

know you know I was on the bus down to the start everyone's got their paddles their hand paddles they've got some equipment they're carrying with them and i'm i'm literally rocking it on my goggles on my swim hat as if i'm going to my local pool for a swim i love that and then i thought you know what maybe the fact that i don't know much about it is good so i thought when i was panicking actually not when i spent it on the second swim i remember thinking about that phrase so i've got to thank you for getting me through i thought naive enough to start stubborn enough to finish i am stubborn i didn't want to even though before i thought i was going to pull out i thought no you're not going to pull out you're going to

use your mind you can do this um so i think it was what's called okigaki okigaki yeah i love that phrase but that was for me yeah 100 because i've got a fear of the ocean yeah i love looking at it but i didn't grow up around it i don't live near the ocean you know until a few years ago i never actually got off of you know i've never really probably been in the ocean so i know that sounds ridiculous to some people but for me i that was out with my comfort zone so i feel i feel today was one of the most significant days of my entire life, if I'm honest. It feels that big to me. Absolutely. A hundred percent. But this is the

thing. I think sometimes people see these, this idea of, you know, spiritual enlightenment through sport and they're just kind of like, oh, is that some like fair? And it's like, no, like it's accessible to everybody. And I love what you just said there as well, because I think too often there's a little bit of a stigma attached or maybe a barrier to entry that you think I couldn't do that you know or do you need do you need the right kit do I need to have trained for that no no no all you need is to be naive enough to start stubborn enough to finish so the very fact that you rocked up and you were like I feel like I'm going to my local swimming bath I'm like yes amazing then that feels right you know and to finish it I think that's one of the biggest takeaways i'd love

if people took this away from the podcast that it's it's like it's not the great british swim was amazing i'm so incredibly lucky to have you know experienced it but it's the feeling that we're describing right now this idea of anticipatory regulation overcoming your central governor theory tim noakes you know that this is accessible to all of us you know that next weekend everybody listening could everybody listening could say, how far do I think I can run? I think I can do 5k. Cool, then go and do 10. And I guarantee if you finish it, you'll be eating your Sunday roast dinner thinking, wow, I'm ready to attack the week. What about someone who's listening to this, who is relatively inactive, right? So they live in a city, you know, they want to get healthier, that they've started listening to this podcast for whatever reason that they they want some inspiration to get going and so

they think well there's no way i could do a swim run you know i barely go out i don't go to the gym i don't do much where can they start and how can they apply this in their life i think i love that question for two reasons number one is because i think too often we are heavily marketed, you know, the gym or certain sports or, you know, they'll say, oh, this is the best way to lose weight. And it's just like, no, no, no, no. You have to start looking at behavioral science, you know, only just an hour understanding adherence. So are you actually going to adhere to this way of life? Again, to go off on a slight tangent, International Journal of Obesity 2008, they did a huge meta study. So a study of thousands of studies and they wanted to know what the best diet was for fat loss. Everyone was sitting there going, well, this is amazing. They were on the edge of their

seats thinking, oh my God, is it keto? Is it Atkins? Is it South Beach? What is it? And they said, after analyzing all of these studies, we have found, and everyone's on the tent hooks on the edge of their seats, that we have found that weight loss was highest in those most adherent. And they went, what? And they were like, yeah, yeah, yeah. The diet doesn't matter. Sticking to it does. And they were like, oh. So there was this idea that, okay, so in terms of when you are completely sedentary and you're just setting out, whether it's a diet plan or a workout plan, look at adherence. Are you actually going to enjoy this? Is this your okugaki? Are you going to be motivated for intrinsic reasons? Or are you saying, I want to do a triathlon because you get a nice medal at the end? That's probably not the right answer. Do you know what? Pick something

that you intrinsically like. What's your okugaki? What are you going to be able to adhere to? I think for some people, they're like, I used to play tennis as a kid. I've not done it in ages. Cool, then go down your local tennis club. I used to a kid. I've not done it in ages. Cool, then go down your local tennis club. I used to swim, but I've not done it in ages. Cool, then dust off those goggles and get in. You know, I spoke to Vassos Alexander about, I don't know, nine months ago or something. We had a fantastic chat. And he told me, I think, again, I might be slightly wrong with the age, but it was about the age of 29.

He went for a jog and he couldn't get to the end of his street without feeling out of breath wow and literally within about two or three years he's doing some ultra marathon in greece and i thought that was inspiring to go hey guys it doesn't matter where you are it doesn't matter where you start just start somewhere um and and just build from there yeah i really want you know i love intrinsic versus intrinsic motivation perhaps the first question is perhaps you could explain what those things are for people listening who may not be familiar with those terms. But the second question is,

and it's a really, it's a follow-on question is, in this era of social media, where everything we do is documented on social media, and for many people, if it's not documented on social media, it almost doesn't exist. Are we in danger of um doing things for extrinsic motivation rather than intrinsic motivation or is there even some benefit in that

because even if that is going to stimulate you and inspire you to do something it's better than nothing yeah i think you're absolutely right. So in terms of intrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation is when you are motivated for internal reasons. So the process is its own reward. When people say, why are you, it could be anything. Why are you knitting? Why do you like going walking in like the countryside? You go, because it just feels nice. That is intrinsic. Extrinsic motivation is why do you want to go and do that triathlon? And they say, because there's prize money. Why do you want to go and run up that mountain? Oh, because I want to take a selfie at the top. I want it for my Instagram profile. Nothing wrong with that, but these are extrinsic motivating factors. And I think consciously understanding which one motivates you is often

the first key. I think, you know, subconsciously people aren't actually, you know, they're not aware of it, you know, so they are just, they're just training, they're plowing on. It's just like, well, hang on, like what's the motivating factor here? Reason being, and there was again, a study done with the US military and they found that those, it was a huge study and they found that those who were intrinsically motivated, there was a direct correlation between that and them higher achieving within the ranks of the US military compared to those for external reasons who were maybe saying, oh, it's good money, you know, or I look good in a uniform. You know, there was those people who intrinsically motivated were saying, because I just want to do so. I want to serve my country. I want to, you know, my great, great granddad was

in the military. It was those sorts of reasons. Do we know if there's a genetic predisposition to that or is it something we can train like you know are some of us more driven by that intrinsic motivation some external and if we are more external do you know yeah i don't know if you know that know the science on this can can we train ourselves to be intrinsically motivated that's do you know what that is a brilliant question just because they say training is the realisation of one's genetic potential. And so you can see right now, lining up on the start line, okay, you know, he is genetically predisposed to strength training, he's good at endurance. Yes, we know that. But what we're describing, talking about now, is so many intangibles. It's like, does he have a genetic predisposition to be good at resilience?

Does he have a genetic predisposition to be intrinsically motivated? It's like, we don't know. But this huge gray area is where there is like complete untapped resource, you know. And I think the only thing is, is if you start looking, I'm a huge fan of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who, you know, preached this idea of, you know, self empowerment and, and really like that you are your own best expert. You know, I love what you do. I love what you broadcast. But the reason that I love your podcast so much, Rangan, is because you actually empower people to make the decisions themselves. It's like if you, to use a swimming analogy, you know, quite often when you're going to see a doctor, you need a lifeguard. But what you're doing is actually equipping people with the swimming

lessons. You know, before you're their swim coach in some ways so that prevention is better than cure well i mean that's just i mean as i say in the in the intro but you know i'm trying to empower every listener to be the architect of their own health yeah i don't want i don't want people to do things because you told them to or i told them so in fact i don't think we're telling anyone what to do we're having a conversation i hope people feel inspired to you, I hope someone listens to this and goes, you know what, let me just examine the things that I do in my life. How many of them would I be happy doing if I didn't post about them on social media? Would I still do it? You're right. And no one else can answer that. There's not an expert that can tell you the

answer to that other than yourself. So you're absolutely right. That I think all we can do is equip people with, you know, the definitions of extrinsic, intrinsic motivation so they can actually understand. But you're right. And I think all of these intangibles, you don't know. You can only empower people. But I would love it if in a month's time,

people take to social media and say to us, I found my okigaki. I'm doing this for intrinsic reasons. You know, I'll be like, that's amazing. Guys, guys, that is a challenge after this. I mean, you know, we've still got a long way to go, I hope, in this conversation, but you must, that, I mean, please think about that and do let Ross and I know on social media. We would love to. And we're not anti-social media, both of us are active, right? And there's nothing wrong with posting about what you're doing. We're trying to just tap into what is your motivation? Is that the But the reality is you had to switch to have almost like a split personality in that sometimes I'd be extrinsically

motivated. It went coming into the Kyla Lockhouse. It was amazing. We just set the record for the world's longest stage swim. The media were there. They said some very nice things about me. I would be lying to you right now if I didn't said that didn't motivate me extrinsically of course it did you know there was also you know coming in at the end of the swim knowing being told that i had a trident created for me i was like well that's pretty cool was that the trident i saw before it was i've seen the trident so there was these reasons i was like yeah absolutely however in those moments across the moray Firth, where you are 60 miles from land, you cannot see the hand in front of your face. It's that dark.

You're getting like just hit in the face by jellyfish. Extrinsic motivation probably isn't enough. Exactly the same as you today, that when you were there hyperventilating everything, you know, extrinsic motivation, it probably wouldn't have been enough to see you all the way through. Someone couldn't have just constantly gone, oh, but you'll get a medal at the end i don't care

about the medal i don't care about the middle however if i'd have said oh wrong and just to let you know there's no medal at the end but but your kids are watching i guarantee you would have sprinted so now knowing what pushes your buttons and what intrinsically motivates you is very powerful and you just need to do that yourself as well. And I think knowing how to ask yourself, push your own buttons, you know, what's motivating me today? You know, but to just sort of sum up on that as well, because this might be something that a lot of people can relate to, but I think even body composition, body fat, you know, training purely for aesthetics. So in this kind of social media driven, you know, world that we now live in, there's a lot of people who will, you know, train just for that selfie on the beach and there's nothing wrong with that,

but you've got to acknowledge that's purely extrinsic. So once that pitch has been taken, what's left, are you still motivated? If you have things that are intrinsically motivating you for, for me, for instance, I like to keep my body fat quite low just because um i'm quite a chunky runner and i don't want to be putting four to five times my own body weight through each foot with every successive jump and run so i try and keep lean for that reason but the reason i also do that as well is because i want to enjoy running i like the intrinsic feeling of running and i wouldn't enjoy that as much if i was holding a lot of weight. So my body composition is a byproduct of being intrinsically motivated to enjoy running, you know, but also I won't lie. It was quite nice again, to be so honest and open to be asked to do

the cover of men's health. That was extrinsic, but I had both. Yeah, you had both. And again, I love the way you put that Ross. It's not about saying you know we're all saints and we don't like putting up a good shot on instagram right we're not we we're humans we've all got an ego to some degree right absolutely unless you're a buddhist monk and when she might have just about sorted out your ego but do you know what i mean it's it's not i don't think we're here to say don't do that that's fine but just figure out what it is yeah don't do that. That's fine. But just figure out what it is. Just taking a quick break in the conversation to give a shout out to some of the sponsors of today's show. I'm absolutely delighted that Vivo Barefoot are supporting this episode. As you will know, if you are a longtime listener of my show, I'm a huge fan of minimalist shoes

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in open water before today to swim um i just find that insane that you swam around the uk so what does that look like in real life okay you you you want to swim around this island yeah what are you wearing where are you sleeping what are you eating what happens are you sleeping? What are you eating? What happens when you're knackered and you're in the middle of the water? I mean, tell me about it. What, you know, what, yeah, teach me. Yeah. Do you know what? I'm glad you asked that just holistically to talk about it really only because, um, I'm honestly not self-deprecating when I say I wasn't a swim. I just got really good at floating and eating, you know, so really, it was just about, you know, 10,000, 15,000 calories, you know, per day. You know, trying to manage wounds and chafing.

Trying to manage your immune system when swimming through, you know, shipping lanes. We were all looking at, you know, gut bacteria. We really tried to drill down. How do you manage it? You say you want to manage your immune system. How? And this is what got weird. That I think for everything, and you'll understand this far better than myself and most other people.

But for everything that we were trying to treat, we didn't know. So when we were looking at gut bacteria or when we were speaking to medical professionals, they were saying, oh, I mean, we can treat you if we know what you're digesting and what's in those shipping lanes and polluted water but we don't know what we're treating so we can't really look to preempt that what was it pretty gross at times oh like yeah i mean yeah no it got like but i do you know what and again this comes back to something that's slightly weird so i do a lot of work with uh wim hof um so i love his stuff oh god again you know it reminds me very much of yourself though he's just trying to empower people with the tools that they need but so wim hof for

those who don't know um you know turned around uh to modern medicine and said i can control my immune system and incredible and they were like no you know you can't it's your autoimmune system you don't have control and he said no no i can um and then there was a study you know widely publicized basically injected him with quite a violent virus and several other test subjects. All of them signs of vomiting, diarrhea, Wim, absolutely fine. And not only that, now he's shown that you can pass that on and he can teach other people to control their immune system. So I did a lot of work with Wim before I left. And I think one thing that was probably overlooked. And again, now, objectively, we understand cold therapy, therapy you know cold water therapy has been

shown to actually increase you know white t-cells it's been shown objectively to a small but significant amount so i think one thing that was really weird is throughout the 157 days is i wasn't ill i didn't take a single day off sick but that makes no sense when you start looking at it in terms of you know conventional wisdom that like hang on you're swimming through shipping lanes and sewage and sewage oh yeah like toxins from the jellyfish that makes no sense but it's like is it or could you argue that i was at sea doing cold water therapy you know for hours a day tapping into this powerful primitive state where over 157 days i became like hans selvia's indestructible lab rats and it was this complete yeah i mean express sea experiment that i never intended but looking back now i was like yeah that was a bit weird that i wasn't ill yeah you're right i

mean are you so many lovers it's mad that you weren't ill you weren't taking prophylactic antibiotics or anything nothing it's exactly even looking at pacing strategies as well so we know you know anecdotally and objectively everyone will experience this if you go and do a huge week's training and you're there like swimming in lactic acid you need a recovery day your your muscles are sore you got dons delayed onset muscle soreness and your body's just in pieces your central nervous system is going what are you doing adrenal fatigue everything that is fine that but that will directly impact on your immune system whereas with me it was trying to manage that throughout the entire swim so whenever i could just maintain that aerobic state where i'm not breathing heavy and i can supply enough oxygen to the body to maintain this aerobic

state i knew that if i could maintain that that prevention was better than cure i love what you just said there because it's like absolutely when i'm starting to take medication it might be too late i need to actually prevent myself getting ill to that point so so you were doing cold water therapy by default rather than thinking about oh i'm gonna have one minute at the end of my hot shower yeah to go cold right which again that might be a strategy you recommend but um vimhoff right i'm super fascinated i actually saw him speak in la last year maybe a year and a half ago and he said at the start i was there's about two or three hundred people we were sitting there watching him

and i knew i'd seen his podcast i'd seen all the stuff i love it and he said within uh within the next i don't know 15 minutes you're all gonna be holding your breath for three minutes i was thinking no way no way everyone in here is gonna be holding their breath anyway we went through the method and then after one round of his breathing i held my breath for i think a minute or a minute and a half i thought that was pretty easy and then two minutes and then three minutes and i was like i've just held my breath for three minutes if someone had told me that 20 minutes ago i was like no way can i hold my breath for three minutes so vim's got a technique which is brilliant and i am speaking to him at some point in the next couple of months on the podcast we just need to fix up the dates um which i can't wait to do but so you have done some training with him you have practiced his

breathing methods yeah so what i'm interested in when you're out there you're swimming for 150 plus days 157 yeah 157 yes you swim for 157 days are you practicing that breathing method in the morning on your boat before you go in the water or had the training you had done prior to going you know i'm interested is it something you have to do a daily practice i i think for the swim certainly it was just i love what you said there inadvertently i was just doing a daily practice? I think for the swim, certainly it was just, I love what you said there. Inadvertently, I was just doing cold water therapy. And I think for me, you know, that was all I was, there wasn't, when you're swimming for 12 hours a day, you're sleeping, eating and doing tidal charts

and everything for the rest of the time. So there wasn't a lot of time to do, you know, prehab, rehab, everything like that. So for me, I think it was inadvertently doing it. And that's what I love about Wim though, that sometimes he's saying, let's remove all this, you know, stigma with this breathing exercises. You know, I love that some people they're going, okay, do I breathe, uh, in through the nose, out through the mouth? And he, he just will go, you know, just use whatever

hole you can use. And then you're like, and I love that, that I think it's the same that on the swim, I'm like not through any purposeful or intelligent approach do I claim that I wasn't sick. I think it was now only retrospectively, I'm kind of going, maybe it was the fact that I was doing, you know, cold water therapy. Maybe it was the fact that I was trying to maintain a permanently aerobic state where I never really tapped into that lactic threshold where I took my body just beyond, you know, that point. Um, you know, maybe it was because I was coming like Hans Seldier's indestructible lab rats through stress and stimuli. You know, I was basically becoming this kind of, you know, like, yeah, indestructible lab rat. Um, that, that only now I think i wish i'd have known before the process but i'm trying to deconstruct and reverse engineer it basically no yeah yeah absolutely love it i mean

there's yeah it's just incredible and it's a thing that vim does his um you know his method is breathing and i think another point shot onto my head there which is these days we have this perception that you know wellness or well-being is to preserve of the wealthy or the or the middle classes but let me tell you breathing is free right you can watch a video on youtube and watch what Wim Hof teaches and you can practice it yourself right and it's free of charge that is applicable to every single person listening to this right now. Yeah. I think you're right, actually. And on that note, I mean, one thing that I didn't have the luxury of, because obviously the tide changes every six hours. So it was six hours on, six hours off, six hours on, six hours off. So for me, it wasn't just sleep deprivation, but sleep

disturbance. I never got that deep, you know, sort of growth hormone rejuvenating, you know, neurotransmitter replenishing sleep you know that really deep stuff i never really got that did you track that no again no this is purely sort of subjective you know but i knew that time after time the physio was coming on the boat i could feel like upper respiratory tract infection i was like oh no i'm getting ill you know my my tendons and joints were just like contorted and my my physio was just, you know, Jeff was amazing, was just saying, you just need sleep. That's all you need. It's free. You know, and he was saying exactly the same. And I think certainly looking at a lot of studies, I sometimes argue that because sleep can't be monetized, breathing can't be monetized,

you know, very well, that there's not as many studies on it. Whereas in reality, love that you know yourself and a lot of you know medical professionals now will just say let's do the basics the basics right oh almost like maslow's hierarchy of needs you know you look at the very bottom that physiological needs you know sleep warmth you know food it's like do that right and again maslow's hierarchy of needs it's it's slightly again for those um you know listening you don't know maslow basically dictated this a pyramid had a hierarchy of needs, it's slightly, again, for those, you know, listening, you don't know, Maslow basically dictated this, a pyramid had a hierarchy of needs that said dictates human behavior. And, you know, at the very bottom, there is just this idea of, you know, warmth, sleep, and food. As you move up, you start looking at family and friends, as you move up, self-worth, and as you move all the way up, philanthropy at the very top. But at the bottom,

at the very, very basic, you've just got these physiological needs and i think for me certainly during the swim there was a lot of people who were saying oh this is amazing ross can you talk about your motivation i'll say absolutely and sometimes i'll talk about central governance theory tim noakes and i'll be and they'll going oh okay yeah yeah i'm like yeah yeah but there'll be times you for instance today where you were all of a sudden you jump in you're hyperventilating, feels like your chest is closing up. I can't have a conversation with you going, Rogan, oh, let me tell you about the central governor theory. You'll be like, no, no, no, no, no. I am so, yeah, exactly.

You're like, I am so primitive right now. My body's going warmth, you know, and oxygen. That's what I need. And I think it's the same, like seeing you run past here, you know, and I was like, when i was like oh how you doing again you might have been thinking i'm getting carb depleted so right now blood sugar levels i'm looking for carbs you know i'm looking for sugars you know and i think again sometimes just taking everything back and stripping it back to its most powerful and primitive form is the best what we can do and that's exactly what you did today you were just like okay literally me the ocean and a bunch of mountains let's find out let's do it yeah yeah it's funny have we ever had we had this conversation this morning right and i'd learned

all that with my rational brain and i'd absorbed it i don't think the outcome would have been any different right i still think first time in the cold water first time in when you can't see the bottom i just think that's just an inbuilt primitive reflex that would just kick in so your rational brain is like that's all it's all very well to talk about it yeah you've got to just go through it you've got to experience it and come out the other sides um you're right but i love what you said there just because i think again for anyone listening is these takeaways when you are on your okugaki, you know, and you think, oh, yeah, Rangan and Ross, what are they talking about? Oh, Okugaki, I'm going to go and run up, you know, do that fell race. And then all of a sudden, you know, it's cold and you're hyperventilating.

You wanted to do like, you go, I'm going to go open water swimming, actually. And you get in. Understand that everything that they're, when they jump in and they get that gasp reflex. It's just like, we're all human. I i would do the same i still do it now you know so i think that when you do embark on that intrinsically motivated okugaki of yours please understand that there's nothing you know special about me and and the great british swim and there's nothing you know it is just the application of certain principles that we've discussed and so when you do think oh you know maybe maybe when ross swam around great britain he didn't gasp and you know hyperventilate no no no i did you know 100 yeah when people go oh maybe ross is impervious to jellyfish things no no no

i like it still made my eyes water i felt really bad for myself you lost part of your tongue is that right you're right yeah i mean which part show me show me it's grown back now like yeah which bit went off just like the top layer i could i could peel peel it off basically it was just and yeah again so when people i think sometimes have this romantic ideal of swimming around great britain and emerging from the water with my beard glistening and it was like no with your trident oh yeah it was like i hadn't showered in 157 days like my beard had jellyfish tentacles in it and so so i think that's been nice but but i guess what it shows ross is what we were talking about at the start which is what is your circle of comfort right you went your circle of comfort when it

comes to fitness is clearly a much bigger circle than mine you're a very fit guy you've written a book what world's fittest oh the world's fit yeah yeah which is great um and i want to talk about you about your new book that you're writing which i've seen on instagram that you're writing at the moment but the point is isn't it that you had your circle of comfort and for you the great british swim was outside that so you had to still go through the same stress adaptations absolutely that maybe you know someone sitting at home who doesn't do much might get from when they're literally going to do a 30 minute walk around the book where they haven't been up you know or or a 1k run you know it could still be a similar type thing it just depends where

you're currently at just expand it a little bit absolutely or a lot as you did yeah you're right that it's this like we humans we like our habitual level homeostasis we like that and it's just it's all relative it's completely the same but equally um i think looking at uh to use you know said principles specific adaptation to impose demands in sport just means you get really really good at what you repeatedly practice. So I think that's even another thing that fitness is this really malleable fluid term. You know, there are components of fitness when you look at strength, speed, agility, cardio, respiratory endurance, you know, these have specific definitions, but fitness doesn't, you know, fitness is just like, it can be whatever you want it to be. You have, you've got an interesting theory, I think,

that I've read about basic levels of conditioning for people. Maybe you could expand on it, but it really resonates with me because looking at you, you are ripped, you're stocky, you're muscular. You don't look like the typical endurance athlete who might be, you know, I'm not saying you're not lean but maybe thinner and leaner in a different you know you don't have that conventional look of an endurance athlete yet you've just done a phenomenal endurance event so what's going on there why are you able to break the rules yeah do you know what and and i'm glad you asked i mean there's there's two things going

on i suppose one is this idea of um work. So your body's ability to perform and positively tolerate training of a given intensity or duration. And I think like everybody, again, kind of imagining anyone listening here. Imagine we were in the old Soviet Union era and we were handed like 100 kids. And I look at, you know, young, you know, wrong. And I'm looking and I'm going, OK, I don't know if he's going to be tall. I mean, you're six foot six. Six and a half. Yeah, you're a large man. Yeah, I, you know, six years old when I'm handed you and I'm going, okay, I don't know if he's going to be tall. I mean, you're six foot six. Six and a half. You're a large man. Yeah. You know, at six years old, when I'm handed you and I'm your coach,

I don't know if you're going to be tall. I don't know if you're going to be strong, good at endurance. We don't know. So what we do is we equip you with this idea of just general physical preparedness, where we teach you to run, jump, climb, crawl, building this kind of neuromuscular efficiency, these like basic motor skills then you know 12 years old if all of a sudden you start like growing really tall or you get really fast we're like okay here is he has a genetic predisposition to be good at strength speed stamina whatever now we can start to specialize so i think in many ways um my physique i built because on on theories of general physical preparedness of these sporting so Union principles where I just wanted to build this baseline of fitness.

So then later when I wanted to specialize, I could. But and just very quickly to talk upon sort of strength and stamina coexisting. Basically, you look at the work of Robert Hickson. Robert Hickson was a biochemist, but also a molecular biologist and powerlifter. And he came up with this idea of concurrent training. He said that if you are training for strength and stamina in one session, in a single session, if you're trying to improve your bench press, but also going to try and run a 10K time on the treadmill, in one session, you are diluting the potency of the stimuli.

time on the treadmill, in one session, you are diluting the potency of the stimuli. What he means by this is on a molecular level, you don't know what cellular signal you're sending to your body to adapt to. So again, me and you go in the gym right now, wrong and I'll go, okay, cool, right, let's see what your max deadlift is. Your body will go, oh, okay, cool. On a cellular level, we are now working strength, your body's ability to generate force. And then if midway through that session, I said, okay, right, let's go for a swim. Hang on. Okay, now we're looking at cardiorespiratory endurance, aerobic fitness, swimming biomechanics. Your body doesn't know what to adapt to. So it was this idea that you dilute the potency of the stimuli when you do that. So you don't really know what you're training for. However, having said that, now we're looking

at these hybrid athletes who are able to fuse strength and stamina. You look at Strongman as an example. You look at Brian Shaw, a former basketball player. Eddie Hall, former swimmer. You look at Mariusz Pudzianowski, karate background. So these guys, although they are the world's strongest men, they have that baseline of cardio fitness as well which science again looking at studies in sports science they would argue with a baseline of cardio respiratory endurance you can basically your capillary density so that the the delivery of oxygen and blood and nutrients to the working muscles if that's improved you're only going to be a better strength athlete and looking at it on the reverse that if you're looking and you're midway through a marathon or today,

when all of a sudden you're exhausted, you're coming down on those descents, you know, and you're like, oh my God, I'm 10K in. All of a sudden, if you're an endurance athlete, but you don't have strength to hold efficient biomechanics when you're running, all of a sudden misalignment things, overuse injury, all sorts of things can start to occur. So now we're seeing how strength and stamina can coexist and not only that they should coexist if you want to be some of the best athletes in the world yeah this just reminds me that there's a book out you'd absolutely love it a new book by david epstein called range and um he's basically talking about generalization versus specialization and the intro is brilliant because he talks about, you know,

the Roger Federer versus your Tiger Woods. You know, Tiger from the age of two was drilled to become the best golfer in the world. Roger, like many other athletes, was, you know, they could have done many sports. They were doing, they had a broad base of different sports that they specialized. They said the guy who won the US Open golf last week, Gary Woodland, apparently he was a pro basketball player. then he said actually i'm going to go to golf and david epsi has gone deep into the research and he's and he's basically concluded that actually generalization is more important than specialization and it sort of reminds me a

little bit what you're saying which is get that general level of um fitness and well-being and then later on you know in your 20s, if you want to do this sort of sport, yeah, you can expand out and do it there. In your 30s, you want to do something else, but you've got that broad base. So there are some fitness professionals and some really fitness experts who listen to this, who I think can apply that. But again, I always want to bring it back to people who maybe aren't fitness professionals, who aren't regular gym goers. Can they learn anything from that principle?

Yeah. What can they learn? I love that because I think too often if you are completely sedentary and you've not really trained before, I think too often you are marketed, you know, come to this dance class, come to sprinting is good for you, cycling is good for you. Hang on. What we're describing there is, is very specialized movements. You know what, what you can do. And I love this. One of my friends said, sometimes you have to train to train. And he said, what I mean by this is like, again, right now, if I was handed, um, you and someone is exactly the same height, weight, age, everything, but you had a higher work capacity.

So your body's ability to perform and positively tolerate training of a given intensity and duration that you build through this idea of general physical preparedness. That if they said, right, we're going to train you to run a marathon and this other guy to run a marathon, I know if you had a higher work capacity, we could start tomorrow and do 10K straight off the bat. And all of a sudden your rate of progression, you'd positively respond to that. and we can look to increase that incrementally but far faster than if we had somebody else who was exactly the same height weight level of fitness everything is you but they didn't have a higher work capacity as you i know i couldn't push them as far we'd have to start on a 5k

so to your point when people are training i would love it if people just instead of this are you know like sort of an end goal saying i want to run a marathon i'd love it if people just, instead of this, you know, sort of an end goal saying, I want to run a marathon. I'd love it if people in the gym just went, what are you training for? And they went, general physical preparedness. I am training my work capacity right now. And they went, oh, how are you doing that? And it's like doing light cardio, you know, doing like 5k runs every other week. I'm supplementing with calisthenics of body weight work push-ups these really general sort of like motor skills then people go oh that's a really kind of valid reason for you rather than saying what you're training for oh i've got my marathon oh i'm

training for a holiday i'm trying to like reduce body fat if people had this really kind of i am just improving work capacity my baseline fitness well that will improve not just their fitness that'll improve their cognition that'll improve their focus that'll improve every other aspect of their life if they want to read more is that what you cover in your first book absolutely yeah and that's it's trying to get people to just like understand the periodization that matt vaiev you know russian scientist long long ago we've understood this but he there was nothing wrong with this. You could say like, what are you training this year? And you could be like, I'm doing a year of general physical preparedness. And next year, I might

specialize and run a marathon, but this year, general physical preparedness. I would love that even as beginners, if we understood that basic concept that sometimes it's fine to train to train. You know, you don't have, you don't have to have a goal i think i've heard you say maybe on a previous podcast that actually you want people in a gym or wherever they're training to be able to in one line tell you what they're training for yeah i think it's brilliant because that applies that apply you know for me someone taught me that about my own um career in my mission and what is it and they said you've got to be able to say in one line i'm like i want to do lots of things no no no you could be able to say it in one line. I'm like, yeah, I want to do lots of things. No, no, no. You've got to be able to say it in one

line. And, you know, it took me a lot of work, but again, it's quite simple when you come up with it. For me, it's to empower every single person I come across to understand that they can be the architects of their own health. So I've had to refine my views until I understood what am I here to do? And you're sort of saying the same thing. When you're training, know what you're training for. Yeah. I think you can go into the gym, when you're training, know what you're training for. Yeah. I think you can go into the gym, you can stop somebody, you know, on a treadmill and say, Hey, what are you doing? And they might give you this long, verbose answer. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. Then going back to Robert Hickson's theory of concurrent training, if it's too long,

if you're saying, Oh, I'm training strength, but I'm going to go and do bicep curls in a minute. And I've just seen someone's just finished on the ab roller. So I'm going to go and do that. It's like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. On a a cellular level you're diluting the potency of the stimulant what I mean by that is your body doesn't know what to specifically adapt to but if you just go into the gym and you just say what are you training for and you go ah I'm just going to go on the treadmill because I'm trying to achieve a calorie deficit because I want to lose weight cool valid answer what are you training for over there in the squat rack I'm hitting heavy squats I'm training strength my body's ability to generate force cool done what are you training for over there general physical preparedness because next year

i want to specialize all of those are very specific answer but it's it's very rare that you'll get people who actually just say that well i've never heard anyone talk about fitness in that way before i think it's saying it's very novel to me yeah you know i've never heard that i think it's a i think it's a beautiful way of thinking about it yeah and actually to that point if you stop somebody and you say like if we walked around here around bantham you know in devon and we stopped somebody and said hey can i stop you there i notice uh you're going for a run you know what what are you training for it's actually fine to maybe just say because it's cathartic and i'm taking my dog for a walk and it's like okay cool you're not chasing a physiological adaptation what you described

there is just mental you know meant being mentally cathartic and that's equally as powerful but know that that's a session for just like cognitive clarity and just like you know nothing wrong with that but even that deserves a specific line you just mentioned mental well-being and that the the fact that sometimes people train and they go running or they go out in nature to improve the way they're feeling. When you are putting your body under pressure, when you're on that boat, when you're swimming, were there some days where, you know, because those are extreme conditions you're putting your body under. Did you feel down on some of those days? Yeah, I think only because you were asking so much of your body you know it was depleted of you know carbs there was just like i said adrenal fatigue that my

immune system was kind of going like what is this bacteria you've just ingested you know there was so much from it so i think what was interesting is is you know we now understand our bodies are these complex biochemical organisms that there was so much going on that sometimes when I was just feeling tired and down, it was the result of the cumulative effect of like not having a proper night's sleep of, you know, my tongue falling apart, like force feeding myself calories as well. So looking at absolutely like calorie density, we talk about trying to put 10,000, 15,000 calories away a day. But equally on top of that, you were trying to make sure it was nutrient dense at the same time you know because void of any nutrients and your immune system is going to start wondering hitting that 1.7 grams

per kg of body weight per day so finding a nice time in the day to actually digest enough protein you know and then on top of that even looking at like for everything when you talk about calorie density and nutrient density you also have to consider all of that's completely irrelevant if you're going through the moray firth and you're swimming in these huge swells and tailwinds when you're trying to out swim your own sick because you're basically being sick and at the same time it's being brushed along with you so yeah so then it's like okay calorie density nutrient density and you know what digestibility you know the third component and then even if you do all of that trying to look at also a palatability so parts of my tongue were falling apart as you know i mean so all of a sudden it's like i love granola i love fruit

yeah all that's brilliant but what are you gonna do when you've got no tongue left like so i had to identify i mean were there days where you thought i'm i'm not going in there i just can't do it. I just want to stay here. I want to sleep. I just can't get in the water. Yeah, absolutely. And that was, for me, every single tide, that idea of central governor theory, you know,

that we're more powerful than our own mind allows us to believe. My mind was playing all sorts of tricks on me, saying, stay in bed. Have a rest day today, Ross. So how did you motivate yourself? Was it you or was it someone, sometimes was it your team? Did some did some of them say come on rosh you can do this you've got this i mean how did that go down basically yeah i think for one of the things that always worked for me was the fact that i said i am not stepping foot on land until i have finished this and i i was absolutely like that is there's that's not negotiable. Naive enough to start, stubborn enough to finish.

Wrong, absolutely. So then when you have made that absolutely infallible law and you said, there, that's how this finishes. It finishes with me being pulled out of the water against my own will, or I walk onto Margate Beach successful. Then any question you ask yourself that when your mind starts playing tricks and goes

maybe you should have a rest day today maybe your tongue's falling apart maybe you should miss this tide uh maybe it's a little bit ropey outside we're swimming in 40 knots of wind is that safe the answers always swim always because ultimately you're not going to get back to margate otherwise you know so that that for me it was like every question that was thrown up was completely irrelevant when you think about it in cold hard logic and i think that's sometimes the same that again when you wake up in the morning on a sunday and you said oh i said i was gonna go in for a run today but i think oh my you know my knees are feeling a little oh yeah knees are bad oh maybe i should rest. I should have another rest day.

It's like, no, no, no, no, no. Again, this idea that I was fortunate enough to learn from the Royal Marines that they said, Ross, you know, when you are in a 30 mile yomp with like 50 kg on your backpack, you know, your cognitive clarity is that of a five year old. You know, so it goes back to that Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Yeah, that you, you know, if today back to that maslow's hierarchy of needs yeah that you you know if today for instance we're having a very eloquent conversation right now if i'd have asked you when you were hyperventilating and you see it and go oh wrong can you explain to

me uh about my immune system or what you'd have been like no like so it's this idea of again making peace with the fact that when you are sleep deprived tired had a hard week at work and all of a sudden someone's saying to you remember that session you said you're going to do on Sunday? Know that it's fine that you are functioning with the cognitive clarity of a five-year-old. You know, and this was one thing that always stuck me with the Royal Marines. As a sports scientist, they said, Ross, you're a sports scientist. So you are used to performing at your best when you feel at your best. We're Royal Marines.

We're used to performing at our best when you feel at your best we're raw marines we're used to performing at our best when we feel at our worst and that always stuck with me because i think throughout life now that right now yeah when you're hyperventilating you know all of a sudden i could go wrong you got the right footwear on have you got the right wetsuit you know it's like well no i'm not performing at my best and i don't feel at my best but be like a raw marine perform at your best when you feel at your worst you turned up you know with your goggles on thinking you're going for a sunday one so it doesn't matter you did it you perform at your best when you feel at your worst you turned up you know with your goggles on thinking you're going for a Sunday it doesn't matter you did it

you performed at your best when you were feeling at your worst and you were probably equipped with your worst as well I was well given that I was getting my wetsuit out of its wrapper this morning and the goggles out of its case

I was thinking Morgan you probably should have worn this once to check it fits you probably should have put the goggles on and wore it to check they're the right size for you and then on the bus I thought well too late now isn't it what am this once to check it fits. You probably should have put the goggles on and water checked they're the right size for you. And then on the bus, I thought, well, too late now, isn't it?

What am I going to do? It is. What am I going to do? Just not do it because I haven't prepared. Yeah. And that's even looking at volume. So, I mean, today was an event. But even if that was today, those same conversations would have gone over in your head if me and you were just turning up and training today.

And I think the reality is, is looking at, like, volume, you know, and adherence. It goes back to that, that was it an optimal session today could you have gone faster could you have you know was running biomechanics on point could you have swum with better technique yeah probably yes but you know so was it optimal no but was it a great session and what have you improved as a result yes yeah i would say progress not perfection progress not perfection absolutely just get started yeah and i think also we cover this within the book but you know i say so often we're trying to apply a simple mechanical solution to what's a complex biological reality and again i know that works within the medical profession but equally you saw that today that i could talk to you all you know oh you're six foot six and a half you've got amazing limbs like swimming biomechanics all of a sudden when i saw you out

of that island and then that rogue tide wow hang on we're not trying to apply a simple mechanical solution to what was a very complex biological reality and i think it's exactly the same throughout life that yeah i could sit down and i could write people programs i could write them the best diet plan in the world. All of that is completely useless if their taste buds disagree with it. All of a sudden they say like genetically, I'm actually just not very good. You know me, I'm never going to be an Olympic rower. You know, so it's just this idea of like, you know, working within your own physiology.

You can apply a simple mechanical solution to a complex biological reality. Sometimes, so often we can't yeah no incredible i mean man we could talk forever but i'm just to try and start to wrap this up a little bit um one thing that struck me today is you know we're sitting here in this wagon here and one of its three principles is about sustainability right so it's powered by solar panels it's made of wood it's got these beautiful plants in it do you think that one of the reasons why we're struggling with the environment as a society at the moment obviously there's a big push now to be more environmentally aware and everything we're doing do you think that comes from the fact that we've become disconnected from nature because

I was thinking today as I was running when I wasn't panicking when I was actually in those moments and looking and thinking is this really the UK this feels like the Maldives or something it's just absolutely incredible looking out I thought if people experience this regularly would that not automatically mean that they want to look after nature more look after the world a little bit more I mean have you thought that before yeah i it's weird i today i said the only way i can describe today is like um ethical athletics and what i mean by that is just this idea of it was quite sad there was those haunting images of the london marathon this year and afterwards you saw plastic bottles and energels and everything all around the streets and it was

like we were trying to shoehorn an event you you know, into an environment and it didn't work. Whereas what we've seen, you know, certainly this weekend is instead we've said this is the environment. Let's create an event around it. We've not changed the course. We've just swum around headlands. We've let the coastline dictate the course. And I think you're absolutely right. That for me, this idea of ethical athletics, it also again to sum up as a central theme to this

talk it's you know that's your okagaki that is what the yamabushi monks is a mounted religion that they believe that this idea of self-discipline uh self-discovery through self-discipline comes from the mountains and i think it's exactly the same here that what we've done today is an okagaki and i think more and more people can get back to that so when you are intrinsically motivated to find an event i love what you've added there try and make sure as a third that it's within an environment that resonates within you that it's like i can't explain it but devon is like this spiritual home then cool go there but other people friends of mine are like they they've never felt more alive when they are hurtling you know 20 miles per hour down a cliff face and they're fell running and they just love

the fells and they're like oh i feel the wind in your hair and i'm like oh god i'm cold you know but for them they get it and again it's an intangible but i hope people yeah empower themselves to ask reminds me i spoke to khalilunet just a few weeks ago on the podcast and it was just amazing to just hear his story and for him he just seems one of the most humble guys i've ever met he just he just does it it's it's it's his it's his pilgrimage you know it's his thing it's not doing it for anyone else he's doing it because it it makes him feel alive he learns about himself while he's doing it killian's an amazing example actually he is he is a running yamabushi whether he realizes you know he's that yamabian's an amazing example, actually. He is a running Yamabushi, whether he realizes, you know,

he is that Yamabushi monk. If you ask him and you say, you're going to do all this, but there's going to be no medals, he'll go, that's not what I'm doing. He's not what I'm doing. And really, that's what struck me. He had this single-minded dedication

to living the life that he wants to live. I thought, wow, we can all learn from that. Russell, we're going to have to wrap this up. You're writing a new book. Quick summary, what's it about? I am, wow, we can all learn from that. Russell, we're going to have to wrap this up. You're writing a new book. Quick summary. What's that about? I am, yeah. So we've got The Art of Resilience.

I think the world's fittest book was amazing. I called it that. I probably should point out that, you know, that is not me saying I'm the world's fittest man or anything. It was more a testament to this melting pot of geniuses. So, you know, Linford Christie helped me write the speed chapter. Jeff Capes, two-time world's strongest man. Andy Bolton, first guy to deadlift a thousand pounds, you know, all of these guys, the Cambridge rowing team. So it was, I called it the world's fittest

book because I believe, you know, some of the world's fittest people who I was just fortunate enough to learn from helped me write it. Um, that deals a lot with the physicality of, of training, how you could basically like a, basically like an almost like operating system for the body to say, okay, hang on, right. How are we going to get from A to B? How are we going to become faster, stronger, leaner, quicker? But I think the new book, The Art of Resilience has really come around because a lot of people wanted me to talk about the mental aspect, mental fortitude, you know, resilience, the intangibles that we've covered, you know, on this podcast, really, that I really now want to make sense of so i am this has been nice this has been

like therapy but for me as well so i've deconstructed and reverse engineered the great british swim i've locked myself in a room for what's been months now and i tried to make yeah i know that feeling just you're right to try and fuse whatever how how did i do it and it's looking at theories in sports science and fusing it with philosophies of stoic ancient philosophy wow i can't wait to read it when's it when's it due out uh may yeah so may next year may 2020 that's right yeah yeah well maybe maybe depending how this one goes if you're interested we could maybe have another conversation about that and put it out when when the new book is out but ross look i can't thank you enough for making some time to talk to me today i think you're an incredibly inspirational guy i think there are so many take-homes to people

from this podcast it's called feel better live more i believe that when people feel better in themselves they get more out of their lives we've covered a lot of take-home tips today but i wonder if you could just summarize at the end three or four of your top tips for the listeners to inspire them to believe that they can be the architects of their own health yeah i love that i think i've loved how this is centered around i hope that people can take away to find their own okigaki that they will be intrinsically motivated to pursue and like i said i would love it if in a few weeks months a year it doesn't matter if people messages on social media and say do you know what guys i did it intrinsically motivated to pursue. And like I said, I would love it if in a few weeks, months, a year, it doesn't matter if people messages on social media and say, do you know what guys, I did it intrinsically motivated. And it just for cathartic reasons for this idea of

sporting spirituality that people will go, I did it. I ran, swam, cycled, rode, doesn't matter what it is, but do that for your own Okugaki, your own sort of self-discipline for self-discovery. That will be amazing. Wow. Inspiring way to finish the podcast. Ross, thank you so much. And we'll see you next time. Bless you. Thank you so much, mate. That concludes today's episode of the Feel Better Live More podcast.

So what did you think has this conversation inspired you to push yourself outside your own zone of comfort do you let ross and i know on social media your thoughts let us know what you might have been inspired to try and as always do use the hashtag fblm so that i can easily see your comments. And whilst I was down in Devon, my children also took the opportunity to interview Ross. They only asked a couple of questions each, but if you want to hear what they asked him and what his responses were, you can listen to their short conversation with the man himself right at the end of this podcast. It really is worth a listen if you have an extra few minutes.

And if you do manage to take a listen, let me know on social media what you thought. Don't forget, I have started my own closed Facebook community so that you can discuss the podcast each week with other listeners. It is called Dr. Chastity Four Pillar Community Tribe. There is a really supportive community on there that is helping people to

make lifestyle change people are sharing their own stories as well as their own tips that they have found useful when making changes themselves it's a great place to go and get some inspiration and motivation and in just over six weeks there are already nearly 4 000 members just head over to facebook look up dr chastity Fort Pillock Community Tribe to get involved. Now this season, I have decided to try and video as many of these episodes as I can. Many of you have asked me to do this. I know that some of you are more visually inclined, but also some of you have friends or family who you feel would benefit from the information, some of you have friends or family who you feel would benefit from the information but do not get on so well with audio podcasts this can sometimes be the case with people who are a little bit older

my mother for example prefers watching conversations on youtube so if you know someone who may benefit please do let them know my youtube page can be found at drchatterjee.com forward slash YouTube. A quick reminder that my latest book, The Stress Solution, Four Steps to a Calmer, Happier You is available to buy all over the world now. In it, I have tried really hard to explain clearly what exactly stress is, where it lives and importantly, what you can actually do about it. It really is full of practical tools

for those of you who feel overwhelmed, stressed or even struggle with your mental health. This time of year can be super stressful for many, re-entering your normal routine after the summer. So if you think you might benefit, you can pick it up in paperback, ebook or as an audiobook that I am narrating. My very first book, The Four Pillar Plan is also available to buy in all the usual places. If you enjoy my weekly shows, please do consider supporting them

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That is it for today. I hope you have a fabulous week. Make sure that you have pressed subscribe and I will be back in one week's time with my latest episode. Remember, you are the architects of your own health. Making lifestyle changes always worth it because when you feel better, you live more. Now, to end today's show, I leave you with my two children in conversation with Ross Edgley. Hi, I'm Jayna and I'm at Bantham Beach. I'm interviewing Ross Edgley.

Howard, thanks for having me. Thank you. How are you doing? Good. Yeah? It was good today, wasn't it? It was warm. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you swam around the UK. I did, yep. What inspired you to do it?

Oh, good question. I think, do you know the story of Captain Webb? Er, no. Right, okay, so Captain Webb, it was 1875, so ages ago now. And he was a captain in the Royal Navy. And they said, so the English Channel, so just out there, they said you cannot swim across the English Channel. They said you can't be done. It's too cold and the tides are too strong. The waves are too big.

But Captain Webb, on a diet of beef broth and brandy, swam breaststroke all the way across and he proved everybody wrong. And so for me, when people said you can't swim around Great Britain I was like that's kind of like Captain Webb so that was the inspiration I was like you know like when Captain Webb swam all the way across I'm gonna do the same okay that was why and what was the hardest bit oh okay uh I think probably a Scotland because it has a place called the Corrie of Echin, which is a giant whirlpool. So if we were on the boat right now, the boat was basically being sucked down into the whirlpool. And when I was swimming through there, I basically got a tentacle, so a jellyfish tentacle, that threaded into my goggle and was stinging my face.

And when I took my goggles off, my face had changed shape because I'd been stung so badly by jellyfish. So it was there, and I think it was about eight degrees. yeah the giant uh whirlpool in the korea vecan that was probably the worst but a few miles later i got battered mars bars in stonehaven they're amazing what was the biggest animal i think the biggest one was probably a minke whale which was like about as big as this so it was about three yeah about three meters long and and it circled me and kept me company all the way through the Bristol channel and I said what's going on and I turned to the captain Matt I said am I okay am I safe and he said oh no no don't panic he said I think it's a female and I think that she thinks that you're an

injured seal and she was guiding me all the way to Bristol so she stayed with me for 12 hours right next to you yeah right next to me blowing bubbles in my face as well so I was swimming like that she swam underneath me I was blowing bubbles in my face and she was just guarding me and then as we got to uh to Wales and and it got a little bit shallower you could see on the boat that the marine tracker that it got a little bit shallow the water and the whale like breached one more time like that and it turned to me as if to say you are safe now you keep going

and I've never seen the whale since thank you for answering my questions oh no thank you for asking though I'm Anushka

how you doing? good good have you got have you got a good question what are you thinking? were you scared when you saw the sharks that is a good question i at the time i was so they're basking sharks

so they're about three meters long quite big and they've got these massive mouths um but they don't eat uh they don't eat people um and and they're kind of friendly i think they're vegetarian or they eat like small fish and plankton so i wasn't scared but it just had a really really big mouth um but i was i was more scared on the uh east coast of scotland um because i had killer whales up there that come from iceland um and they they said to me basically make sure you don't look like a seal because they eat seals but but they're really, really intelligent. So if they look at you and they think that's not a seal, then they won't eat you.

So I was trying, I was a little bit more scared of the killer whales than I was the basking shark because the basking shark was friendly. Did you enjoy it? Do you know what? I did, especially on the East Coast as well because we had, do you know what? Because I had to eat, I had to eat 10,000 calories, 15,000 calories a day. So what if you had to do that?

What would you eat? Like ice cream, like chocolate, fish and chips. What would you, if you had to eat 10,000 calories, what would you eat? Pizza. You wouldn't eat any of that. I had battered Mars bars in the end. What? Yeah, so you have a Mars bar and you put it in like batter

like fish yeah that was good I had five of those but then I felt a bit sick I had too many what did you learn from it what from the battered Mars bars or the swim no no no when you did it I think I've just been chatting to your dad about this

I think I learnt that if you're able to step outside of your comfort zone then good things happen because i was able to swim through the bristol channel i saw minky whales and seals used to come and swim with me so i think that was the nicest thing if you do things out of your comfort zone uh you get to see minky whales and eat battered mars bars that's what i learned okay thank you thank you they were good questions they were the real questions that people wanted to know