The Rich Roll Podcast - Ross Edgley Is A Human Poseidon: Lessons From The World’s Longest Non-Stop Swim

Episode Date: August 19, 2024

Ross Edgley is a world-renowned extreme adventurer, author, and the star of National Geographic’s “Shark vs. Ross Edgley” This conversation explores Ross’s superhuman feats of endurance, including his recent 510km non-stop swim down the Yukon River. We discuss his unique physiological abilities, training with the Hemsworth brothers, and his race against sharks. He shares his philosophy on finding purpose through struggle and reveals how he consumed 40,000 calories in 24 hours. Ross is a force of nature. And this conversation is an adventure. Enjoy! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors:  Bon Charge: Use code RICHROLL to save 15% OFF 👉 boncharge.com  LMNT: Get a FREE Sample Pack with any drink mix purchase  👉drinkLMNT.com/RICHROLL On: Enter RichRoll10 at the checkout to get 10% OFF your first order 👉on.com/richroll Whoop: Personalized insights that help you reach your goals 👉join.whoop.com/roll AG1: Get a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D3+K2 AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs 👉drinkAG1.com/richroll Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors 👉 richroll.com/sponsors Find out more about Voicing Change Media at voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange

I move in water but I'm doing it through rivers and oceans. With swimming how I do it it's more akin to like an expedition it's like climbing Everest versus running a marathon. I can't just do a swim you know it's got to be a really long one it's got to be a hot one it's got to be a cold one there's got to be some metrics that make me excited. No one's actually pushing the boundaries like this in chosen sports with cellulitis, hypothermia, hypothermia. If you're going to try to improve yourself in any sort of way in the water, just go and learn from the apex predator. There's probably clues.

Sharks taught me how to swim. That voice in your head knows all of your weaknesses. Every time it was going, stop, Ross, stop, pull that physiological handbrake. I went, no, no, no, let's keep going. Let's keep going. Look, get my goggles, I'm in. My guest today is Ross Edgley, a real life Aquaman of Poseidon-like gifts, who is redefining the limits of human endurance with his many world first feats of water bound adventure. Since we last spoke with Ross about his most notable record breaking swim, a 1,780 mile circumnavigation of Great Britain,

that was episode 408 in case you missed it. Ross has gone on to continue pushing even further into the realm of the superhuman. Most recently, he completed the world's longest river swim, a mind-bending achievement in not only endurance, but also sleep deprivation and cold tolerance in which he swam an astonishing 510 kilometers, that's 317 miles, nonstop down the Yukon River in just 62 hours, battling nine degrees Celsius water. That's 48 degrees Fahrenheit. Wildlife, hallucinations, forest fires, you name it, he faced it and overcame it. From attempting the world's longest pool swim in Mallorca to braving the icy waters of Loch Ness for 52 hours, Ross is a guy who just continually raises the bar

on human possibility. And he does it all with this beautiful trademark smile that is now on full display in his new Hulu Shark Week special, Shark versus Ross Edgley, where you can witness firsthand his childlike glee in action. I got a couple more things I would very much like to mention before we dig into this one. But first, let's acknowledge the awesome organizations that make this show possible. We're brought to you today by On.

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and I think you're gonna love them. So let's take the plunge. Enjoy. All right, so just a few days ago, five days ago? Yeah. Only five days ago, you finally successfully completed one of your attempts to do a series of the longest swims ever.

This was the world's longest river swim up in the Yukon where you swam 510 kilometers, 317 miles over 62 hours. For context, that is the equivalent of swimming the English Channel 15 times without stopping, without aid, without sleep, without touching land, without touching another human being or a boat. Yeah.

Get the fuck out of here. Yeah, it sounds good when you say it like that. Yeah. I mean, it's pretty incredible. Yeah, I think this one, because obviously the swim around Great Britain was a stage swim, but I've just been fascinated by this idea of a nonstop continuous swim. I think it just takes your mind and body to a completely different place. And when looking on a map, there's just not

many places you can do that. You need a fast river. You need the wildlife to be relatively friendly. Ideally, not so cold that, you know, it's tolerable. And basically, upon my research, I just kind of stumbled across the River Quest, which is where every single year people kayak and paddle and there's a canoe race and it's in the Yukon in Canada. And I just looked at it and I was just like, well, look, in theory, if you can kayak it, you can swim it, right? So I reached out to this team in Canada and they equally were just as curious as me. And they just said, yeah, yeah, in theory, you need a lot to go right. The glacial lakes, they're melting and everything like this, but in theory, it's possible. Were you looking at other rivers? What were the other places that were in contention?

Yeah, there was, I mean, there's loads of others. Even when you start looking at the Nile, but the Nile, you kind of get all sorts of bacteria, viruses, not necessarily fast-flowing enough as well. Amazon. You want that nice current. You do. This is exactly it. This makes a huge difference. Yeah, yeah. And I know I'm chatting to the right person here because you take swimming, but then you move it outside of the realms of conventional sort of swimming. And so it's less of a swim. It's more like the GB swim. It was a sailing exercise, you know, with a bit of swimming thrown in. You need to pick up ocean currents tides and everything it was the same with the river that yeah you have the the river flowing with you so everyone says oh that sounds

nice it's like yeah but then there's white water rapids if you go down the wrong route you're all sudden going into a log jam like there's all sorts of things that can go wrong so it was a very different so i've never actually done a river swim before so this was my first yeah we should or log jam. Like there's all sorts of things that can go wrong. So it was a very different swim. I've never actually done a river swim before. So this was my first. Yeah, we should mention that this comes on the heels of a couple attempts that you've made at setting some records that didn't go so well, right?

So it's not like all you do is go out and break world records. Like you had two attempts to break the record for the world's longest lake swim, which is basically, what do they call it? Like still water, non-current water or something like that? Exactly that, yeah. And you made some interesting choices around locations for that. The first being this lake in Italy where you show up and it's just boiling hot, right?

They had had a bunch of floods and they were in the midst of a heat wave. Yeah. And so that didn't go so well it didn't know and and this is kind of the first time i suppose publicly speaking about it in some ways but but you'll know that that when you organize an athletic adventure you fly people out we've got camera crews we've got boats booked in italy as well because of the different councils and districts and things you have to get permits to swim in that lake at a particular time so we got hit by a freak anti-cyclone sent from the sahara desert but it didn't matter like the italian

authorities were like no no you go on those days that you've paid for or you don't go at all and i was like but there's a heat wave like people were dying and they were like well no you you go so to be completely honest and transparent a lot of them were done for charity that was the primary reason so I knew that we had to attempt something but in Tres Amino for instance and Rich you'll know when you get into like even a pool 28 27 degrees and it's a bit fresh you know you get in and you go oh I best get moving I walked in and in the shallows it was 36 degrees that's that's almost a jacuzzi. I waded. It was a bath. There's no way you were going to be able to break the record in water that warm.

I went back and rewatched the video that you made about that experience. And even, you know, the night before, two nights before, you were pretty frank about the cards were not lighting up for success here. Like there were crew members who were stuck in Amsterdam. There was all kinds of, you know, sort of disasters brewing. But you still ended up, how far did you swim? You still swam 70 kilometers, right? Yeah, yeah. So 70, which was the route between two islands.

But when you added all this sort of wiggle room as well, it was upwards to 100. And weirdly, I think that's one that I'm quite proud of and genuinely we've literally just been speaking about this because this is so nice coming back after four or five years to see you again because at the grand old age of 38 I finally feel like I'm maturing a little bit but it was so interesting that I was so intrinsically motivated for that one so afterwards I, I think previously, I would have been absolutely gutted. It was very black and white for me. You either get a record or you don't.

Whereas for me, after Tresamino, it was so different. Afterwards, after I was sort of let go from hospital, I had pretty bad rhabdo, my creatine kinase, so enzyme in the blood basically from muscle breakdown, you know, it's sort of dangerous at 4,000. At 10,000, people are ringing an ambulance.

That's pretty serious. Mine was at 19,000. They were like, there's no way you're going to be at a hospital in two weeks. But amazingly, again, we have all the medical reports. It was brilliant that they just set me free about three days later and we're just eating pizza and gelato. It was amazing. You have a number of superpowers, but among them, I know you always talk about how like

you're not talented and you don't have, you know, like we're going to get into it, but there are a few highlighted superpowers that you have. Not the least of which is something about your bone marrow that's been tested that promotes incredibly rapid healing. Yeah. Yeah. This was strange. Yeah. So recently filmed a documentary, shark documentary that comes out on Disney Plus, all for Shark Fest on National Geographic. And it's called Shark vs. Ross Edgley. And they wanted to basically analyze my body compared to that of four specific sharks. And we'll get onto that in a minute. But what's really interesting is the MRI scan. When they scanned my body, they looked and my bone

marrow was essentially glowing on this report. And they said, Ross, we don't want you to panic. And I was like, right, that's not a good way to start a conversation. They said, but we only really see this in newborn babies and sometimes people with cancer as well, because the bone marrow is just hyperactive, basically just trying to produce stem cells, anything for rejuvenation, regrowth, anything. And so yours is glowing. And we don't know whether it's sort of nature versus nurture. We don't know if it's responding to how much stress you put on the body or it's something that you actually have. This is purely anecdotal, but I then spoke about my mom who had two hip surgeries. They said, you're going to be out for months. She was back playing tennis within the month, literally weeks later. So it's kind of weird in a way. I think when the superpowers

in inverted commas were handed out, it would have been nice to have had height, strength, speed. But the ability for your body to rapidly repair itself is a superpower in the athletic context, because it allows you to train very hard and bounce back. And it is in the moments between when you're stressing your body that you make those gains. And so to the extent that you can perform that physiological activity more quickly than the average athlete or average human, that's going to allow you to progress more quickly. I appreciate it. It's only just now that I'm sort of realizing that. I mean, a good mutual friend of ours, Chris Morgan, Olympic swim coach, absolute legend. And he was

with me in Mallorca, where again, we attempted a long swim, didn't quite go to plan with, again, heat stroke, various other things. But what was so interesting is immediately afterwards, Chris sort of identified this and we just started training biceps. We're in the gym the next day. And he was like, well, most athletes, there'd be a period of recovery. Whereas he was saying, because we're staring down the barrel of the Yukon, I think we lean into this. It's an adaptation. So in the end, we ended up turning it into just this mammoth training week. And what was so strange is in the Yukon, that theory and philosophy kind of proved right. I got out. And although I'm nursing injuries from the white water rapids and various things, my shoulders were absolutely fine. It was so strange. Yeah. And you just showed me

the injury behind your knee that you suffered in the Yukon that you shared on Instagram to everyone's aghast. And it's remarkable how much it has healed in just four or five days since then. So there's proof right in front of my eyes that you're pretty good at that part of it. But in any event, you have this semi-fiasco situation in Lake Trasimeno, and then you try again in Loch Ness. Oh, it was the other way around. Yeah, that was right. Yeah. Okay. Loch Ness, that was 2022? That was right. Yeah. Okay. Again, with this aim of swimming 100 miles and having to pull out at what, like 49 miles or something like that.

Yeah, again, very similar. And again, just to sort of be so honest and transparent, it's amazing how you need, you can be the best athlete in the world, but when it comes to anything adventure-based, you know, you just need the stars to align. I'm a huge fan of like Killian Jornet, for instance, and the way that he talks about almost like the spirituality of his sport and trail running in the mountains. I think

it's amazing, you know, that sometimes he just says, not today, it's not meant to be. And I think that's something again, at 38, I feel I'm maturing a little bit. But we were preparing for Loch Ness, everything was going amazing. It was all planned. Again, it was for ocean conservation. And then all of a sudden, the queen died actually that particular week so in england everything was just shut off they were like you you do not do anything it's a mourning period for the nation so absolutely respectfully i said we need to do that but but then a swim in loch ness where it's already freezing it's five degrees it's just above freezing it was just going into the british winter and then because of loch ness as well

it's just this kind of so as long as the long as the English Channel, it's this long funnel. So when the wind picks up as well, you're getting, you know, like five, 10 foot waves in a lake. So again, knowing that that would be the case, but knowing that it was for ocean conservation, I just said, the record will be nice, but you have to do something, Ross. You know, you've got to try something. So almost knowing that you were heading into what was going to be a really, really rough swim, I'd still probably do the same thing now. Yeah.

Well, I appreciate that. Like you show up and you do it no matter what. Like that's what you're here to do, right? Yeah. The idea that I think is so powerful behind that speaks to the difference between being extrinsically motivated and intrinsically motivated. Like if you're doing it for the love and because this is who you are versus,

well, I'm not going to do it because there's too many variables that are pushing up against the possibility of breaking the record. That was exactly it. Yeah. And I think that was probably one of the biggest difference in the last few years. Because I have to say like the GB swim for me was very much 1875, Captain Webb, English Channel, first guy to swim across the English Channel. And we talked about it before,

but Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it was feelings of self-accomplishment, prestige, world records. It was very much there up the Maslow's hierarchy, whereas now records are nice. They absolutely are. I'd be lying to say if it wasn't. But a lot of the swims now

were just rooted in sports science. We're uncovering so much. So even after Tres Amino and Loch Ness, I was pretty beat up. But then my nutrition sponsors, PhD, turned around and James Morton, who is the nutritionist for Team Sky, he was like, this is fascinating. We've got so much data, you know, that no one's ever done before. No one's actually pushing the boundaries like this in chosen sports with cellulitis, hypothermia, hypothermia. So it was with that, I was like, wow, we are contributing something to sports science, as well as the charity element as well. So I think going forward, all swims, if it contributes something to sports science, ocean conservation, then I'll put my goggles on. Is there any important revelations that you've divined from this data dump? Like,

what has the data told you about your own relationship with performance and where you might improve or kind of what has gone sideways in the past? I think one of the biggest ones is challenging this idea of 120 Gs of carbs every hour on the hour. So for all the listeners, you know, there's this idea of 120 G's of carbs every hour on the hour. So for all the listeners, you know, there's this idea that, you know, previously it was like 80 grams of carbohydrates every hour on the hour for any endurance sport. They're pushing the upper limits. And there's even been studies done where they're looking at competitive eaters and there's an adaptation within their stomachs where they're saying, hang on, endurance athletes could actually

learn from competitive eaters here. Because so often as well, people listening, if you do an Ironman, an ultra marathon, it's not your lactic threshold VO2, running biomechanics, gait analysis, that's not what will stop you. It might be just gastrointestinal distress, something literally your stomach implodes. So it's this idea of training your stomach. So one thing that we were doing at Liverpool John Moores University with James Morton is that 120 Gs of carbs every hour on the hour. But on top of that, using MCTs as well, so medium-chain triglycerides, on top of that, so coconut oil essentially from MCTs, forcing that on top to seeing how many calories, how many energy substrate can you actually

force through the digestive system and not just tolerate, but assimilate at the same time. And that's been amazing, I think, that going back to that idea of a superpower is just my ability to eat. Yeah. This is on my list of Ross's superpowers. Your ability to intake enormous amounts of calories is unparalleled. Like you're taking in 15,000 calories a day when you're doing these events. And to your point, not just being able to shove them down your throat, but assimilating them, like without gastric distress. Yeah.

And that is the thing. I mean, it fells even the best of the Ironmans out there and the ultramarathoners. Like there's a point where you can no longer tolerate any calories without throwing up or all these sorts of things. And then that derails the performance. It's exactly that. And I think one, and this is strangely one of the experiments that I was sort of not necessarily proud. Yeah, proud of maybe. But again, we've got this shark

documentary, Shark vs. Ross Edgley. One of the things we were competing against four different sharks. And specifically, there was the tiger shark. This is my spirit animal. So tiger sharks, because of their unique shape of their mouths, they can just chow down on anything. Whale carcasses, turtle shells, just anything. And what's incredible is they'll just go miles and miles across these oceans, like just deserts, just barren wasteland, not eating anything. But then as soon as they get to something like a whale carcass,

they can just chow down and put away silly calories. So when we were in the Bahamas, we had this almost like half the size of this table. And it was like a giant lollipop. And we went down and we fed it to one of the tiger sharks, and they bit down on it and took out this huge chunk. And then we were able to measure that chunk with Mike Hightouse, one of the world leading experts when it comes to tiger sharks. And he said, right, if this was actually whale blubber, that would be 25,000 calories in one bite. So then they said, Ross, we want to replicate this to see how you could actually do this idea of famine and feast like a tiger shark.

So at Loughborough University, fasted for 24 hours, basically just stuck me in a heat chamber. I was exercising for 12 hours, just in saunas, dehydrating. So a lot of muscle glycogen and just dehydration, essentially. And then after that, they just said, Ross, eat. Just tiger shark bulk. We want to see how much you can put on. And in 24 hours, I put away 40,000 calories and put on 22 pounds. It was amazing. 40,000 calories. What do the world champion eating competition guys do? I don't know. I want to look into it. And genuinely, people are saying, Ross,

I seriously think you need to consider a creatine. Because people were losing their minds when Michael Phelps was sharing his diet when he was at the peak of his abilities. And I think it was 10,000 calories. Yeah. Right? So you just 4X that on one sitting.

And is this something you think that you're born with or that you've trained, you've created an adaptation for? I think it was a bit of both. Like my mom's an amazing cook. So like, and even actually for this event, so immediately afterwards, worth noting, it was all done under medical supervision. So I want to say, oh yeah, we had burgers and fries.

But no, no, no. Initially it was very much, okay, hydrate, electrolytes. Look at that. They were taking blood work to make sure everything was correct. But then after a certain point, and you'll know, to get those sorts of calories cleanly in inverted commas is impossible you can't put away 40 000 calories of you know broccoli and rice so it just got dirty and it was just oh i mean i think one of

the things i was most proud of eight liters of custard so you have like you know those you know those because custard for me it was like I was hungry, but I also needed something slightly hydrating. And then just double cream, seeing that off. Rich, it was amazing. And by the bed as well, you have those cinnamon loaves, which are meant for like families to share and tear. I just had four of those. So I just like I'd wake up and just dip that in custard, put a liter of custard away, and one cinnamon loaf, and then just fall back asleep. Oh my God.

It was amazing. When you're in the midst of these very long swims, how many calories are you able to take on when you're in that state of exertion? We were pushing that 120 Gs of carbs, but with about 10 to 15 grams of MCTs on top of that as well. We could tolerate more, but that was what I was assimilating. And that's what we found at Liverpool John Moores University when I was done on various tests.

They were like, this is what you're assimilating. We know you can eat more, Ross, but this is what your body's actually processing. So how many calories an hour would that translate to? Oh, that's a good question. So I think if there's 100, I can do some quick maths, 120 Gs of carbs, if there's four calories of carbs per gram and then nine per fat. Somebody can do the math.

But it's like in the realm of, I don't know, 500 or something like that. It is, yeah, it is. Where in endurance sports, it's often said, like, you should take in 200 to 250 an hour. Like, that's the max that the human body can actually tolerate and assimilate. But do you know what's really interesting about this as well? Is they also did tests on me where they look at, and any athlete, anybody listening,

you have a genetic predisposition to either use fats as carbs as a fuel source. And it was really interesting that they were like, Ross, you're so carb adapted. So you need to eat every 15 minutes. Otherwise your blood sugar, you just crash. You need to keep fueling up. It's almost like doing the Le Mans 24 hour race, but in NOS, in a car. You just go constantly like that. They're like, you need a big diesel engine. So you need to become more fat adapted. So for everything that

I've just said there, and it makes a good story, the 40,000 calories and everything like that. But what was really interesting is James Morton was saying to me, no, no, no, but Ross, you do need to become more fat adapted. So I was doing a lot of fasted sessions. And this goes back actually, like genuinely, I love yours and Chris Williams' podcast. It was amazing. And I know you said, Ross, you got to slim down, dude. You're swimming like a brick. So I genuinely did for Mallorca, for the Mallorca swim, I slimmed down. But so many fasted sessions. And I think what's so interesting, again, you know, for me, sort of late in my career now, but I'm still learning because I can eat, I can suffer, I can struggle, but they were like,

no, no, no, but we need you to become fat adapted. So a lot of fasted sessions where I was trying to encourage my body to use endogenous fat already stored on the body rather than being so reliant on carbohydrates. It's interesting because that's just one strategy for becoming more fat adapted. Another one, which is one that I've used over the years, is to just really double down on the zone one and the zone two. So you're in that aerobic state of exertion and your body, you know, the more hours that you spend training that way, the more fat adapted you become because your body is becoming more efficient at that lower exertion level, right?

But that's something you're doing all the time. I mean, when you're doing these swims, you're in zone one, zone two. Your heart rate can't be that elevated. No, no, it's exactly that. But for some reason, your burning glycogen is fuel. It's exactly that. James was saying, it's very interesting, Ross,

even at low, low intensities, you're carb adapted. You have to go so low to actually tap into that fat adaptation. So it was really interesting that for me, I was always training harder. That was my thing. And actually sometimes even during my zone two sessions, if I'm being honest, looking back, I was kind of redlining a little bit because for me, I was like, oh, just suffer. So it was, it wasn't zone two, it was zone three. So it was glycolytic, it was slightly anaerobic. And that's been one of the biggest things. Slow it down. Exactly. Slow it down and slim it down, dude. This is my thing. And I say this with love. You have an extraordinary physique. I suspect there's some level of attachment that you have to this physique. And certainly it creates a lot of intrigue and interest because it's world-class,

dude. But as somebody who comes from a swimming background, and I'm sure Chris Morgan has told you this as well, like, dude, somebody who is their own best guinea pig who, you know, you're studying sharks. Well, let's look at the best ultra distance swimmers in the world. Let's look at their physiques. Let's look at how they train. These people are incredibly lean. All of that added muscle on your shoulders and your arms and your lats creates a lot of power. You can generate a lot of power with that. But ultimately, when you're looking at doing multiple day swims, these things become liabilities, right? Do you know, and actually, interestingly on that, this was fascinating as well, that again, the MRI revealed actually that my slow twitch fibers have a slight tendency

to hypertrophy at the same time. So that was what was really interesting. They said that Ross, although it looks like you're big, strong and powerful, it's actually an element of your slow twitch fibers actually hypertrophy. You sort of see it in cyclists, you know, cyclists who are kind of got big legs, but they're endurance athletes. And it's that hypertrophy of slow twitch fibers. You see it again, German volume training, you know, so with a lot of the sort of bodybuilders of old, they have that muscle density and maturity. And it's because of the sheer volume that they've done, there is a slight hypertrophy of their slow twitch fibers. It's rare, it's not very common, but it does happen. And looking at my MRI, they said, that's kind of what it is, you look like it's maybe fast twitch fibers which are kind of bigger in diameter but it's not

it's a hypertrophy of slow twitch fibers but the real propellant is the level of mitochondrial density that comes with building a gigantic aerobic machine right so have you looked at like what that looks like for you i need to this is This is the next level. And this is what I mean. At 38, it's so interesting because there's still layers. Yeah, that's hopefully next swim. So you have these two lake attempts to, you know, break the world record for longest lake swim. Neither of them go to your liking. You find yourself more recently in Mallorca getting ready for this Yukon swim and you announce that you're going to go for the longest pool swim attempt, right? You make a big show of it on social media. We're going to circle back to that. But the goal here is to swim

360 kilometers, 223 miles. And you're in this pool in this beautiful part of the world. I don't know what the water temp is in that pool, but it's not as warm as the lake in Italy, but it's not as cold as Loch Ness either, but probably a little too warm for you to be able to be at your peak. Yeah, yeah. We discovered the hard way. Yeah, yeah, it was exactly that.

I think what was so interesting about the meorca swim and genuinely i'll probably do it again it's just like you you wouldn't do it so we ended up doing 140 kilometers right which is like i mean you swam 140 kilometers in a pool yeah yeah it's like come on and the first day you were this was staged like you were going to sleep at night right but the first day you did 50 kilometers. Yeah, yeah. Which is insane. And speaking to Chris about this, it was so interesting because how do you train for something like the Yukon?

How do you train for a non-stop swim? It's so interesting that in terms of periodization, there's not much scientific literature on it. So you have to push the boundaries. Are you really playing with adaptation? That, you know, sort of stress adaptation. It's such a fine line. And I think we could have pushed on

after the 140 kilometers. We could have probably gone for the record. I definitely wouldn't have been in a state to do the Yukon afterwards. So that's why genuinely I say, I sit here before you four years later, Rich, mature with my kombucha. Well, there was a bigger goal at play, right?

You're not going to capsize or jeopardize the Yukon goal by pushing too hard in the pool in Mallorca. But what made it interesting for me was the fact that, okay, this is literally the third thing in a row that you've made a big to-do about where you fell a little bit short. And I'm wondering kind of what that did to your mental state going into the UConn,

because what made the UConn swim different is that there was no announcement really. There was no live streaming. There was no sharing of lots of Instagram stories about what was going on. It was this thing that just kind of happened. And then when it was done, then you kind of showed up again and said, this is what we did. So you had a different relationship to how you were kind of sharing this journey. And if I had to guess, I would imagine like, hey, listen, I was like talking a lot before. Now I need to like get to work, right? There was definitely an element of that. I think interestingly, we couldn't in the UConn because there was just literally no signal. So we couldn't have said we're going to do live updates because we just couldn't.

There was no signal. But with that said, even if there was signal, I think it was exactly what you're saying. If I'm being completely honest, I think when there's a camera, especially if it's for a charity or even not even if it's just social media, for me, for whatever reason, I feel an obligation, whatever, to talk, to address the camera, to do something. Well, you're good at it and you like it. You're a showman. You're a showman at heart.

Oh, I think there was an element of that. And I love that you said that because I think you hit the nail on the head better than I've been trying to articulate in my own head, that it was like, this needs to be done for different reasons. It needs to be very intrinsic. You know, you just need to be alone with your own thoughts with your team. No expectations, no ideas from the outside world. And as a result, if I'm being completely honest, it was a different kind of swim. It was amazing. It was so I was just so present. And there was never a camera on me. So whether the whole thing was filmed, but I was I never addressed the camera

not once. And I think going forward, it's really interesting that that approach now, although like you said, I am a little bit of a showman, I think I probably will probably do the Yukon approach a little bit more. Yeah. A couple of interesting factoids about this Yukon swim. The water temp was nine degrees Celsius, 48 Fahrenheit. I mean, that is cold water, man.

Chris told me it climbed up to 12.9, which is 55. Still really cold. You were 83 miles from the Arctic Circle. So there's no night, right? No. I mean, it gets dark a little bit, but you don't really get that blanket of darkness. No.

Which was strange. I think it really played with blanket of darkness. No, which was strange. I think it really played with your senses and your circadian rhythm as well. You know, at two o'clock in the morning, it is just bright. Again, Chris, absolute hero. He kayaked hundreds of miles with me by my side. There was a point on the second morning where the sun just was not coming up over the mountains. Hypothermia was setting in.

You don't shake in your hands. You're shaking from your core. I could feel it in my stomach. And I knew if I didn't do something then, it was basically just going to physiologically implode. The swim wasn't going to happen. So we'd done all of that, but the Yukon was still asking more of us. So I ended up punching like 600 milligrams of caffeine. And just from two o'clock till seven o'clock when the sun eventually came over the mountain, I can't wait to show you footage. My technique was ugly. I was just windmilling. And it wasn't necessarily for propulsion. It was just trying to keep myself warm. And then on top of that, I remember once that caffeine had sort of died down,

Chris turns to me and he's kayaking and he hadn't slept as well. And he just turns to me and he said, Ross, can I be completely honest with you? And I'm eating a banana on my break. I tell him, I said, yeah, yeah, Chris, what's up? And he goes, oh, I'm tripping out. I went, oh, good, me too. What are you seeing? And he goes, oh, the seven dwarves are over there just chopping wood. And I went, oh, cool. I mean, they friendly? He goes, yeah, yeah, they seem friendly. I was like, oh, cool. Goggles back on, we just goes, yeah, yeah, they seem friendly. I was like, oh, cool. Goggles back on, we just carried on. So it was knowing that you're in the trenches,

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By Chris, we mean Chris Morgan. We'll talk a little bit more about him in a minute, but this is a guy I've known for 30 years. He's the former Olympic coach for the Swiss Olympic swimming team, coach at Harvard, like amazing guy, but he's in your boat the entire time. So he's having his own sleep deprivation thing, right? Yeah. So it's not like he's trading off with someone else and people are taking shifts. Yeah, no, yeah, he is in the

trenches. But what he did in terms of kayaking would be considered a huge expedition alone. You know, it's just the fact that he did it in complete support of some strange Englishman swimming. But it was what he did was incredible. And yeah. By the rules of open water swimming, in case we didn't already make it clear or people don't truly appreciate or understand what we're talking about here,

you're not allowed to touch land, touch another human being, touch the boat. So you're not sleeping. It's not like you're crawling onto the shore and taking a nap and getting back in. Like you are swimming the entire time without touching anything except the water. You're fed by people throwing food at you or dangling it, you know, with a pole or something like that. You're completely on your own in freezing cold water. Your wetsuit, it feels like you finally, you had some wetsuit issues, but you finally really figured out the wetsuit thing. Oh, we did and we didn't. So again, full transparency.

It was amazing. The wetsuit was incredible. No chafing. Seven mil? Yeah, seven mil with greater mobility around the shoulders. And to this day, I don't know if my bum is in the wrong position or the toilet flap was in the wrong position. But basically just, I think we were like five hours in and I went to the toilet, unzipped

the flap. I was gonna ask how that works. Yeah, Rick. There was a flap for that. Not successfully is essentially the answer. Went to the toilet five hours in and I was like, that's just not evacuated what it needed to at all. So, for basically 56 hours, I was just... In the suit.

Baking in the sun. And then afterwards... That must have created a terrible rash. It was... But I've healed. I've got good bone marrow. Oh, my God. But But then honestly, afterwards, like the medics were amazing. Dr. Tom, one of the medics was just incredible. The entire team,

Chris as well. And they're cutting up the wetsuits to try and get it off me because the chafing is a little bit bad and my skin's a little bit raw. And as I'm just like, guys, full transparency, I'm so sorry for whatever you find in this wetsuit. And then what was so bad as well, we had like the team out there, these Canadians were just amazing, like big manly, like Canadian. And even some of them had to excuse themselves. They're like, that smell is just, I'm so sorry.

And I was like, oh God. Chris said when it was done, they took you to the hospital in Dawson City, which is just a small little town, right? So it's not like some giant hospital or anything like that. And Chris literally had to cut the wetsuit off of you with like medical scissors, revealing, you know, God knows what was inside there. Yeah, we are bonded now.

He has seen some things. But that's the reality. I think it's so good to talk about that as well, because I think sometimes people see the GB swim, the Yukon, and like, oh my God, that was incredible.

It's like, no, no, no. Like the reality of setting a record like that is swimming in your own excrement. Who had the record that you eclipsed? What was that record? This was interesting,

actually. So I believe it was in the Danube, but it gets a little bit strange because obviously there's dams and things there. So it wasn't necessarily sort of nonstop because you'd had to got out. You had to climb over the locks. Yeah, yeah, to get out. Because that's what it is.

Whereas with the Yukon, it was truly unbroken. You know, there was no dams. There was nothing, no bridges. We just, it was truly in the water. But if you have like an exceptional current then you're getting the benefit of that oh for sure yeah for sure and i think that that goes back to what we were talking about as well before that it's so nice to have this blueprint in many ways because now as i said before at the start the goal is different bodies of water so the river one's

nice to tick off but you've been very clear that this quest isn't to break the record for the world's longest swim it swims with an s right so so i don't know if you're ready to talk about that yet but you know we saw the pool attempt we saw two lake attempts we now have the river attempt i assume you'll try to go back and and best those pool and lake attempts uh but what we're still waiting for is the ocean attempt. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think what's really interesting is it's all weather windows. So with the Yukon, we had to go now

because that's when the river was basically at its fastest and things were melting and stuff. So there's a few different locations and we are just literally waiting and watching. And if Mother Nature, Poseididon whatever it is sort of goes here you go ross i'll go thank you but you're ready to jump when that moment arrives i really am i think what the uconn was amazing but like and i'm not sort of downplaying it but it was it was a training swim in in many ways so we've got we've got a few yeah but you're not gonna tell us what

that is yet oh no because there's literally there's so many options i'm not even being secret there's so many so if i was to say like one, but it might be superseded because we might get like a anti-cyclone from the Sahara Desert again and we'll jump in. So yeah, you'll be the first to know though. Yeah, I hope so. I hope so. Hallucinations, you suffered that like lesion on the back of your knee, but nothing like what happened to the back of your neck from the Great British Swim. So Chris told me it was a combination of an improved wetsuit, but nothing like what happened to the back of your neck from the Great British Swim. So Chris told me it was a combination of an improved wetsuit, but also like lanolin and desitin, right?

Which is like what babies use for their bums. Like a zinc oxide, right? That kept you from not chafing up too much. Which was fantastic. How's that neck look on the back there? It's not too bad. You still have a scar? Yeah, oh, you can see, that was Loch Ness though. That was the cellulitis. So that was what was weird because the chafing, I would say the chafing was worse on the GB swim,

but it was cellulitis in Loch Ness, which is just a bacterial infection. But if it gets in your lymph nodes or your bloodstream, it can be fatal. So that was basically what stopped Loch Ness. We still felt relatively fine, but they were like, oh, that's cellulitis. You don't play with that. So I'm becoming a bit of an expert in all these weird. These weird disease, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Well, it's good that you weren't doing this in the Amazon or something like that. You pick up some parasite or some crazy bug. How long do you think that you were hypothermic during this swim? Oh, I don't know. We were just playing with the boundaries. I don't know, because obviously no one can touch me. And this was what was so interesting with our medics on board, that they were like, wow, usually we can diagnose, we can test, we'd put a thermometer in your mouth.

And it was just purely kind of communication. And even on that note, though, as well, and he was amazing, Dr. Tom, but he's a friend and also an amazing medic but he was sort of going between the two because there was times when he wanted to to chat but i was like but no one can get me out of this mess other than me so if i stop and just start describing my symptoms cold's just going to start getting in so there's sometimes where i was just like i just have to get myself out of this. Exactly. But were you shivering? Like, what was your experience of the cold? Yeah. I mean, hypothermia, essentially, you're not generating enough heat, you know, your body's losing more heat than it can generate. And I think shivering in your hands and your arms, that's fine. It's when it's in your core, like your body actually is shivering. So at that point, again, the support team was just incredible. So

often I say, like, it's such a team sport. And I think people sometimes think I'm sort of body actually is shivering so at that point again the support team was just incredible so often i say like it's such a team sport and i think people sometimes think i'm sort of self-deprecating and stuff it absolutely isn't at those particular points it could not have been done without the team we had there and when i was shouting out we then changed feeding strategies to every 15 minutes and more regularly and we went from energels and various things like that to just like i'm talking scalding hot porridge oats like this is a a dilemma and a situation i hope nobody listening finds themselves in but when you're so cold when you're so sleep deprived after 50 hours they were saying how hot do you want the porridge and i was like oh i mean as hot as possible and they were handing me

it was literally scalding you You could see it just piping. But I was just faced with the dilemma. It's like, do you scold your taste buds in your throat, but it will warm you up from the inside? And when you've made peace with the fact, you're like, I'm not stopping. So there are your two options. Pick one.

Then we obviously chose the scalding throat. How did the tongue do this time? I mean, it's not salt water. Good. So it's not like, you know, falling apart into your vegetable soup like it was. Do you know what? On this one, the tongue was fine.

The tongue didn't- Didn't disintegrate. Exactly. So talk to me about the mindset. Like when you're on hour 50, this is a 62 hour swim, no sleep. So the mere kind of just drudgery of putting one arm in front of the other, I assume there wasn't a lot of visibility in the river either, right? When

you're looking down and you're swimming, there's not a lot of stimulus there. So how are you occupying your mind? Like what's going through the noggin? It's so strange because it's almost like a TV channel, you know, like a streaming channel where you just literally flick in the channel and anything from minute to minute to hour to hour that you can tell yourself to get through, you do. I mean, I think it was interesting, like there was about five kilometers where this huge eagle was just tracking me. And I turned to the guys on the boat and I was like, what is going on? And it was just hopping from tree to tree. And they said, look, I think it knows you're too small to be a bear. You're too big to be a salmon. But what happens with the salmon is they kind of wait for them to just

stop flapping around because they're exhausted and then it will come down and it will just start eating. I was like, oh, okay. So I'm just swimming and this eagle... I cannot stop. Eagle's going to swoop down and yeah, wow. And I was speaking to the Canadian media they were amazing so supportive we were like oh we heard you had some motivation in a visitor I was like oh I don't know if it was motivation but certainly having this massive and they are huge I'd never seen one before in real life it's a pterodactyl it's massive and just having this thing look at you like your breakfast i was like oh this isn't good is it and then the same as well chafing wounds and then all of a sudden it was

really weird how it completely coincided with you know the chafing of wounds and stuff with the increase in seeing you know a lot of black bears no grizzlies but a lot of black bears and people and a couple moose right chris told me that uh maybe it was on the third dawn where two moose crossed right in front of you it was amazing yeah the wildlife and then it's the same chris went to the toilet at one point took a bucket uh into the woods and then all of a sudden just saw these giant wolf prints as well and heard noises so he said it was the quickest time he's ever gone to the toilet when you're out there i I get our research so much about the Yukon, being there in person, it is different. It is the Wild West out there. You've talked a lot about how we're also much more capable than we allow ourselves to

believe, the 40% rule of the special forces. And you're certainly, you know, out there pioneering the outer edges of human capability and going to battle with that inner resistance. But you must have those moments where you think, I can't go any further, like I've gone as far as I can. So what is it specifically that you tell yourself or that you do to get you over that hump and keep moving? This was actually a slight issue, actually, because we spoke to experts at Loughborough University and Liverpool John Moore's University back in the UK. Because talking about central governor theory, this idea that, you know, or psychobiological model of fatigue as well, this idea that your brain is a hypochondriac and it's going to pull that physiological handbrake. So when you are 40 hours in,

all of a sudden the brain's picking up on all these cues, your carb depleted, your sleep deprived, neurotransmitters are completely like fried, adrenal fatigue, everything. So it's getting you to quit, pull that physiological handbrake. And it's so interesting speaking to other athletes how that voice in your head

knows like all of your weaknesses. So we go on a hundred miler right now and that voice will be going, oh, Ross, you know, remember the chafing in your back of your legs? That's pretty bad. Could be cellulitis again. Remember what happened in Loch Ness? And he's asking things the same, which are rich. How's that ankle? Oh God, you know, how'd you know about the ankle so it's so weird but i for whatever reason and i don't say this proudly but that the experts were saying you you have an ability to turn that off but not in a good way because with loch ness and tres amino you knew you were never going to do it so you just switched it off every time it was going stop ross stop

pull that physiological handbrake i went no no no let's keep going let's keep going and they were like in most people we would say no you are more powerful than your own mind allows you to believe but when you end up with heat stroke rhabdo hypothermia the same ross actually pay attention to those voices a little bit more which is something that i think i'm a lot better at, genuinely. Because even in the Yukon, we got to that 510, we turned to the team and we just sort of said, that feels good. Do you want more? Yeah, maybe, yeah. Could we push more?

That, for me, it was the perfect swim. I didn't serve three days in hospital. As a team, we enjoyed ourselves. It was perfect. Why want more? It was dumb. Other than the conditions and the preparation that you put into it, as a team we enjoyed ourselves it was perfect why why want more it was it was done other than the conditions and the preparation that you put into it was there something else different about this that allowed you to finally eclipse a record oh i think the team yeah as a team we have been

through so much my girlfriend my, my brother, signing Chris, Jer Kennedy, one of the world's greatest ice swimmers. He was expedition leader on this as well. He'd been moved in Tresamino. I love Jer. He's amazing. And the amount of times sometimes in Tresamino when I was swimming with heat stroke, I look back at videos.

I was like, that's not swimming. I'm just flapping my arms. But Jer just knows exactly what to say when he's there just go, oh, Ross, you're doing great. Split time's looking brilliant. I was like, no, it wasn't. No matter what.

Yeah. But he knows when to push and pull. So I think it was the perfect coming together of, and I don't want to sound too deep, but like even the Yukon, if things had gone wrong, if the sun hadn't risen on that second morning, it wouldn't have been done. It's quite simple.

If it was overcast, it wouldn't have been done. The way that the sun, I spoke to Chris about this, but Maslow's hierarchy of needs and at the base of that pyramid of human needs, just food, warmth, and sleep. And I was there. It was so primitive. You could have offered me a fancy car, a million pounds. I was like, I just want the sun. That's all I want. That was what was so interesting that to answer your question, it was just the, it was the kind of coming together.

We would have done Loch Ness and we would have done Tres Amino had the conditions been right. But, you know, that's the nature of adventure. Yeah, it came together. At hour 60 though, wasn't there a forest fire out of the blue all of a sudden?

Oh, yeah. Like right at the very end. We thought we'd seen everything. Yeah, the Yukon had thrown everything at us. And blue all of a sudden oh yeah like right at the very end we thought we'd seen everything yeah the yukon had thrown everything at us and then all of a sudden yeah right at the very end fire which we managed literally just gets back white to white horse and then roads and everything closed it was it was that bad it was getting that big and again it was just uh maybe a signal the yukon going ross you are are done. Take the win. Chris told me that had the water been a little bit warmer or had you been not as cold as you were, he thinks that you could have swum all the way to Alaska. He's like, this guy is a freak of nature. I seriously believe that he could have

very easily kept going. That's nice of him. Do you know what? It's interesting. The conditions are so variable in the Yukon. I said it's almost like a Rubik's cube in a minefield set inside a maze. It just changes. And the team that we had out there, they were incredible. They do the river quest every year, which is the kayak race. And so the way that they read the river, they're able to go, we need you left we need you right no not down that one that's a log jam we need you right just navigating me through and it was so interesting that immediately i was like as i got out hospital i caught up with the team we're all at a bar and the first thing that liam one of the captains one of the drivers said i said liam i gave him a big hug i said thank you so much he

looked me dead in the eye and he went oh we, we can go further. And I went, oh, I know. My girlfriend's like, no, no. So yeah. Poor Hester, the secret sauce in all of this. This poor woman. She's had to live through all, like you're never home. Like you guys must have quite an amazing relationship. I mean, she was on the team. She was there through this whole thing. Oh, Rich. I mean, yeah, she's incredible. Yeah. I think what's interesting is you have to outsource common sense. So you can't trust your own thoughts. When you're completely sleep deprived, you need to look at someone on the boat and know that they're making decisions for you and they're the right decisions. Even though you're thinking logically, you're not. And then on top of that as well, she's just almost like a compass of common sense.

well she's just almost like that like a a compass of common sense i i sort of look at and she knows and if i'm not acting right she she will pick up on it and i think the other thing about that as well is for anyone listening if you're doing something similar it's knowing the right people that you can be vulnerable around as well like there were so many times where i was just in pieces like tongues coming off like next one off like gb swim lock ness and there's those people around who you can just be vulnerable with and that's okay you know that they they are completely there for you and supporting and uh yeah I've been with Hester oh I should get this right I think 12 years and yeah she's amazing the other thing Chris told me was that if if all three team members H Hester, Chris, and Dr. Tom agreed

that you needed to stop, that they were going to pull you out. Yeah, yeah. At the end, it was getting like that. Yeah, all three of them, I can still see their faces now if I shut my eyes. And they were very closely looking at me and monitoring me. And I think there's an element, you'll know that when you are in the hurt locker, but beyond that, you're trying to convince yourself, but those who really know you are looking at you going, it's not got much more. We're playing with the boundaries of common sense and hypothermia here. What does it mean to you? What does all this mean? Do you know what's interesting is trying to get a bit philosophical with it, because I asked myself

the same question, like, it's like, why do I continue to do these things? And I think when you look at the myth of Sisyphus, you were of Greek mythology, and Sisyphus was one of the most intelligent men to ever live. And he kind of outsmarted the gods, and the gods were really annoyed about this. So what they did is they said, okay, Sisyphus, what we're going to do is we're going to doom you to basically roll a boulder up a hill for eternity. And as soon as the boulder gets up to the top of the hill, it just rolls back down. So for eternity, you're just doomed to just struggle. But it was Albert Camus, the French philosopher who said, but this is interesting because if you imagine Sisyphus was able to outsmart the gods one more time, and he was able to do this,

if you imagine him smiling. So as he's rolling the boulder up a hill and back down, he's enjoying it. He's taking control over it, this eternal struggle. And what I love here, Albert Camus said, the struggle alone is enough to fill a man's heart. And that really struck a chord with me. And I think kind of that thread goes through philosophy and psychology. Jordan Peterson, you know, the meaning of life is to pick up the heaviest load you can and carry it. Viktor Frankl, the meaning of life is to give life meaning. And so when you start looking at that, for me, the pursuit of a nonstop swim, it might be impossible. It might be never ending.

But in many ways, it's my boulder. It's the struggle alone is enough to fill my heart. And the carrying of it gives you meaning. And if you had to define that meaning, what would that look like? How do you put words to what that meaning is? I think it's just the relentless pursuit of sports science. So even though you're rolling the boulder, you're just collecting data the whole time. So I think it's that, that when all is said and done, we're probably going to end up with the most comprehensive study of ultra

endurance in swimming than anywhere else. And I think that'll be a pretty cool legacy to leave behind. Yeah. You mentioned Sisyphus with a smile on his face, which brings us to your third superpower, which is your ability to smile throughout these experiences. You're somebody, at least as far as I can tell, who's pretty good at equanimity. Like in the midst of these incredibly challenging situations, you're always kind. You always have a smile on your face. You're always present with the fact that you're the one who volunteered for this and recruited all these people to join you and you treat them with respect and with grace. And that's not an easy thing to do when you're as depleted and as exhausted and in as much pain as you are. And I think that's a real credit to your character. And I think it's also

something that keeps you afloat when you're ready to quit, right? To be able to smile in those situations is an indicator of like gratitude, I think on some level, and also not taking yourself or what you're doing all that seriously. I think that's fair. I appreciate you saying that because I think so often athletes will talk about sort of manning up and gritting your teeth. And I think that's fine. It definitely works for some people. I found that it's not quite sustainable for three days. You can grit your teeth for maybe 12 hours, certainly a marathon, but when it starts going over three hours, I found it doesn't quite work. You have to just swim with gratitude, you know, because even not only sort of psychologically,

spirituality and stuff, I think it's just in terms of like your biochemistry as well, to grit your teeth for three days during sleep deprivation when you're swimming through bacteria and all sorts, it's just your biochemistry. It's just not going to work. So I think there's kind of how I was raised, but also there's probably some sports science in it that I've tried in the past

to go, oh yeah, that'd be cool. Just grit your teeth. And then I'm like, oh, it doesn't work. Yeah, it's not really your disposition I know that training for something like this goes through phases and it's periodized but if you can you know kind of describe or characterize like what a typical day of training looks like for you for you know getting ready for something like this or a cycle, maybe? Yeah, it got really boring towards the end. We were swimming for 10 to 16 hours a day. I was

just literally turning up at a pool with a picnic on the side. I mean, 10 to 16 hours of swimming a day, that's got to be like 30 kilometers, right? 30,000 meters. Yeah, yeah. Just literally just up and down. And sometimes at Loughborough University, it was always so funny. Like, good friend of mine, and here, like, Adam Peaty going for his next Olympics. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That guy's a beast. He's unbelievable. You look at him, and I joke so often. Does he train at Loughborough? Yeah. He does. Yeah, it's so funny because...

World record holder on the 100 breaststroke. Yeah, and just, like, the greatest breaststroke the world's ever seen. He's just amazing. And Melly's coach as well, but she was an amazing swimmer as well, just an incredible coach.

But you look at Adam, and he is a mako shark. He is lean, he's just tall, he's broad. And then I'm just in the lane next to him eating sandwiches and croissants, and it's just such a contrast. But Adam, yeah, he is amazing. But being at Loughborough, it is so interesting to train there with some incredible swimmers all going to the Olympics. Whereas I am, yeah, I am a basking shark, a whale shark at best compared to them.

And what do you learn from them? What does PD tell you? One of the biggest things I've done, I think, in the last, I want to say like two years, is really just fell in love with swimming. Because with swimming, how I do it, it's more akin to like an expedition. It's like climbing Everest versus running a marathon. So when people sort of say, oh, you're a swimmer, I'm like, oh, I am. But I just mean, I move in water. But I'm doing it through rivers and oceans. You can't compare me to a portmanteau.ima they're incredible but trying to learn from them

i think it's made me so much more efficient it's almost like comparing kip chogey to edmund hillary you know they're so different yeah they're both on feet but they're so different and i think um but learning and falling in love with swimming as a sport is a huge fan as well i love uh brett hawke you know his podcast i love that we've just been talking about i'm obsessed with the 50 freestyle as well uh can't wait to see like ben proud mannadoo cam mackable i can't wait to see what happens there so i've really fallen in love with sport of swimming in a pool and it it's kind of made me better as a result even even though swimming it's not the determining factor. It's like we said, resilience, mental, feeding strategies, but trying to become a better swimmer.

You made a video a while back where you got in a flume and, you know, kind of teed up against a great European sprinter. He's amazing. He just broke the... Oh, don't quote me on this. I think he just broke three Masters records at the Nationals, I think. Oh, wow. He's incredible.

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from me. Back to you, Rich. All of which brings us to sharks, because the greatest swimmers are the most efficient swimmers, and there's no swimmer more efficient than the shark. Maybe the dolphin, but sharks are pretty good, right? So walk me through how you got involved in this whole Shark Week thing. Oh, this is amazing. So yeah, Sharkfest National Geographic. Basically, some of the chiefs there, Janet and Tracy, just amazing. We were chatting about the GB swim when I swam around Great Britain. And there was a period where we were going around the top of Scotland. And I was just kept company by a basking shark. This basking shark was looking at me kind of going, Oh, you're not a shark. You're not a seal. Not quite sure what you are. But you know, nothing really swims around the top a seal. Not quite sure what you are, but you know,

nothing really swims around the top of Scotland. So it ended up keeping me company for essentially two days. Then the basking shark ended up going, I assumed to Iceland and I went around the top of Scotland and back down the other side. And it was just this encounter that when I was swimming with the basking shark, it looked at me and was like, what are you doing? Like, you're taking 20 strokes to my one tail flip. You know, I was so clumsy as a result. And it was just this idea of if you could follow in the footsteps of shark, try and biomimic them, learn from them, what could we uncover? So speaking to Janet and Tracy at National Geographic, and we basically just said, wouldn't it be amazing to try and pitch you against sharks? You're almost doomed to fail. It's not going to work. But the spectacle alone will serve as a Trojan horse to bring shark science to a completely new audience.

I said, look, I'm in. Get my goggles, I'm in. So we tried to swim as fast as a mako shark, world's fastest shark, polaris out the water like a white shark the ones of south africa that just jump out of what propels seals try to eat as much as a tiger shark and then finally a hammerhead shark because of its unique shape of its head is able to just turn on a dime and just withstand like so many g-forces so they put me up in an raf fighter pilot plane to see if i could withstand as many g-forces as a hammerhead shark. And it's all in this documentary that comes out on Disney Plus for Shark Fest. It's amazing. And what did you learn? Like, I don't want to spoil it for anybody, but what did you take away from this experience? Did you figure out the shark's secret? And can that secret be incorporated into your

life and performance, Ross? Genuinely. Yeah. No, genuinely. Are you becoming a shark? It genuinely can. So Alison Towner, one of the world-leading experts in white shark, she's amazing. And the Polaris, for instance, which I wanted to chat to you about. Yeah, we're going to talk about it.

I know you have a lot of input on this, but go ahead. So you have experience with monofins. Now, this was completely new to me. I'd never used a monofin before in my life. And I remember my first ever session, I put it on and it was completely different. The locomotion, understanding hydrodynamics, how to move. It was completely different. And I pull Iris out the water and I managed to kind of get out to my, like my trunks. And I turned to Alison and I said, how was that? And she's

studied white sharks off South Africa. And this always stuck with me. She goes, that's not bad for a naked shaven ape. And I said do you mean and she goes you've got this clumsy skeletal system and you are like 40 45 muscle at best whereas she said white sharks they're 65 upwards of 65 muscle they have this flexible cartilage and these propulsive forces that all go through the tail so they are just launching themselves out so it was trying to understand that and take this clumsy skeletal system, this naked shaven ape, and trying to jam my feet into a monothin and become a shark. It didn't obviously go as well as a white shark, but it sort of changed my understanding. I've sort of said since

sharks taught me how to swim, but they really did. And I mean, same question, monothin, it's so different isn't it which which you sort of pioneered with chris yeah yeah so the monofin for people that don't know is a is a gigantic flipper you insert both of your feet into it they're locked in and these fins come in a variety of stiffnesses and materials etc and it's fascinating when you put one on and you swim because you can generate so much torque and propulsion underwater. And it allows you to swim at speeds like you just can't even imagine before.

But it's also very tiring. Like it uses your entire body. It's something that will quickly exhaust you. And you would think like, oh, well, somebody who has really strong legs is gonna be really good at this. But all the force is generated from the core and the back, right?

So it's about like pressing your chest down as much as it is about bringing your feet up or pushing them down. When you're trying to go as fast as possible, it almost creates like an invisible line through the water where the undulation is so subtle because the torque down and up is quite rapid. So the range of motion becomes very narrow.

And when you look at a shark or a dolphin, I mean, a shark, the fin goes side to side, the dolphin, it goes up and down, but they're varieties of the same thing, right? You watch them swim through the water, they're unbelievably efficient and you can't understand how they're going so fast because it doesn't look like very many things are moving, right? You watch them swim through the water, they're unbelievably efficient and you can't understand how they're going so fast because it doesn't look like very many things are moving, right? And what you learn from that is that it's efficiency of motion and making the water work

for you in the most hydrodynamic way possible that's going to create the most amount of acceleration and speed. And the monofin is a great way to test that because anything that is out of whack, well, you'll quickly know right away, like this is not working for me. Like it brings everything into focus. Like you can't get away with anything when you're wearing one.

It's so true. But on that note as well, I love that you touched upon there that you're reducing drag forces as well. So when you look at a shark, especially a mako, they are so streamlined. So not only have they got these propulsive forces at the same time, they've just reduced drag so much. And it was at Loughborough University where they did a 3D model

scan of my body and compared it to that of a mako. I knew I was bad, but it was horrendous. And when they even, not only that, they said, look, if you were traveling at the speed of a mako this would be your energy expenditure as well because i just had like when you look at it there was just red lines all around my head my shoulders even my bum as well it was just like it was terrible where you're where you're just losing energy or energy is being expended that's not moving you forward exactly exactly and to go back to your point actually previously which was like yeah there's probably certain an element in my youth where it's like, oh, I kind of like, you know, benching, bicep curling, big weights. Whereas looking at that, I was like, oh, God, that is terrible. And certainly that's one thing for the Yukon that I really tried to focus on,

that it was just like the Yukon and long swims do not care if you've got big biceps and chiseled abs, you know, you need to be fat, Ross, and hydrodynamic. So this Polaris jump, basically you get, you shared it on Instagram, like you're underwater with this monofin on and you propel yourself upward and see how much you can breach your body above the surface of the water, right? Yep.

You're pretty good. Oh, you're kind. You're pretty good. I have seen fin swimmers completely breach, like get their entire body out of the water, including're kind. I have seen fin swimmers completely breach, like get their entire body out of the water, including the fin. That's what's possible. I think people can get up to like three meters out of the water. Yeah, I want to say, I think the world record.

I think he's an Egyptian guy and it's incredible. But again, watching, it's not human. The fin swimmers, they completely change their biomechanics. It's just- It's a whole different thing. Completely. And it's a sport, which I did not know. I guess like a short history lesson,

working my way up to like how I got introduced to this. I came up as a swimmer in the late 80s, arrived at Stanford at the very early days of when swimmers for the very first time were pioneering and experimenting the underwater dolphin kick. And swimmers were beginning to realize that they could actually go much faster underwater in a streamlined position on their back doing a dolphin kick. They could swim much faster this way than they could on the surface, swimming freestyle or any other discipline. And there were a handful of athletes

who realized they were quite good at this and really doubled down on it. The most famous example being this guy, Dave Berkoff at Harvard. It's still called the Berkoff blast because nobody was better underwater than this guy with his underwater dolphin kick. He was a hundred backstroke specialist.

And at the time, there were no rules around what you could or couldn't do with this underwater dolphin kick. So he went to the Olympics in Seoul and swam the entire 100 backstroke underwater. You know, he came up to take a breath and flip turn at the 50 meters and swam all the way back underwater.

Not only him, basically the entire heat of the finals of the 100 meter backstroke. I'm sure you can find it on YouTube. The Seoul Olympics, like 100 meter backstroke. And world records were broken. It was crazy. So they ended up having to change the rule. Like, well, we can't have this.

We can't just have swimmers seeing how long they can stay underwater. So they changed it so that you have to surface at 15 meters. But to this day, it's set in motion, you know, a new way of swimming, which prioritize the dolphin kick. So now it's all about power off the walls. How quickly can you generate force with that dolphin kick

and, you know, get up to speed before you have to break the surface. And there are athletes that are extraordinary at this. And the ones that are the best tend to be, you know, the ones that find themselves atop the podium. So this is something that was kind of happening when I was still competing. And then after I was done competing, done with college, you know, in law school, graduated law school, I'm in California, I'm in Northern California, I'm studying for the bar exam and I'm doing it also with Pablo Morales,

who I'd swam with, multiple world record holder, NCAA champion, like one of the most decorated swimmers of all time, right? And Pablo was friends with this guy called John Mix. John Mix was a former, I think he was a water polo player. And he had recently spent time in Europe and he was traveling all around Europe. And he discovered this thing that he had no idea existed,

which was called competitive fin swimming. So apparently, especially in Eastern European countries, in China and in Russia, at a very early age, when a young athlete shows prowess in the water, they make a determination. Is this person going to be a competitive swimmer or a water polo player? Or are they going to go into this thing called fin swimming, which is competition in a swimming pool wearing a monofin at all distances you would see in a typical swim meet from 50 meters all the way up to the 1500 meters. And there's all kinds of varieties here. There's the apnea, like the 50 meters where you're just underwater the whole way. There's plenty of them where you have a center mount snorkel so you can breathe while you're under, you're just beneath the surface. And then

there's ones where they actually have a small oxygen tube where they swim the 1500 meters entirely underwater holding an oxygen tube in front of themselves. So like his mind's blown, right? And he realizes like nobody in America has ever heard of this thing. And he comes back and he creates a prototype for a monofin. And this becomes the very first product at a swim apparel company called Finisse.

You know Finisse, right? Of course, yeah, yeah. So this is how Finisse started. John mixed, started Finisse, and it started with a monofin. And he started giving out these monofins to competitive swimmers for them to train with, because as you know, nothing will develop your core like swimming with a fin. Like it's unbelievable. It's so stiff, right? And John decides that he wants to put together for the very first time a team to travel to Hungary to compete in the world championships of fin swimming. And, you know, Pablo, he was an equity partner

in Finis from the very beginning. So he goes to Pablo, it comes to me and we kind of cobbled together a small group, like a ragtag Bad News Bears team to go to this world championships and compete with this monofin, right? And I hadn't swum in years, but in addition to Pablo, we had Jenny Thompson,

who was like this unbelievably, she was the most decorated female Olympian of all time, like multiple world records, et cetera. Misty Hyman, who won gold in the 200 meter butterfly in Sydney, she was on the team. It was like 12 of us or whatever. And Chris Morgan, this guy that we've been talking about was one of those guys, right?

So this is how I met Chris. And for a brief period of time, I think we only had like a month to get ready for this thing. And none of us had ever worn one of these fins. So we're training, we're trying to figure out how all of this works. And we show up with no idea like how to do this,

except like these people have Olympic gold medals, you know, it's crazy. And we just got our asses completely kicked. Oh. But it was amazing to go to this meet You know, it's crazy. And we just got our asses completely kicked. But it was amazing to go to this meet and see like the 50 meters, the 50 meter apnea. These guys dive in. I mean, I don't know what the world record is offhand, but it's some crazy number.

And they dive in and it creates this wave that goes down the pool. And all the timers who are standing at the other end of the pool just get drenched. It's like a tsunami that slowly moves down the pool and then just hits the wall on the other side and creates this big splash. Like it is wild.

And these people have like a level of expertise with this thing that, you know, was really quite stunning. Yeah, as a spectacle, it's incredible, isn't it? Yeah, it's exactly that. It was the first time, again, because of the shark documentary actually tuning in and looking at them, it's incredible isn't it that yeah it's exactly that it was the first time again because of the documentary actually tuning in and and looking at them it's insane like that again we humans as

naked apes can can do that it was incredible is it you or chris who has the american record still oh it's definitely not me i don't even know chris would know if chris had an american record he'd be aware of that i guess i don't know and what is, I mean, we had a great time. There's crazy stories from that experience. But it's not like we came back and then that created a foothold upon which something meaningful could build. I mean, Finisse then became this huge corporation that to this day is one of the biggest swimwear companies in the world for competitive swimmers. But it didn't instigate like an interest in fin swimming. You know, I don't know what it's like in the UK,

but still I think a lot of swimmers train with these things, you know, versions of these things. But we went and like, there would be these handmade fins made out of fiberglass that were tapered just right. And each event has a different type of fin with a different level of stiffness. Like it gets really intricate and complicated and complex,

like in a really fascinating way. It really does. Because it was exactly that, that when I started sort of exploring this idea of polarising out the water, I just sort of rung up a few companies and just went, I need a monothin. And they said, ah, okay, brilliant.

Okay, so what sort of stiffness, what sort of texture, what sort of materials? I was like, just a monothin? So it was exactly that. And I actually went for one of the stiffest ones just straight off the bat because I was like, i just the monofin so it was exactly that and i actually went for one of the stiffest ones just straight off the bat because i was like i just need the most powerful and oh my god that's almost like going into the gym for the first time and saying i want to squat and them just saying okay cool put 250 on the bar and see how you do my god the next day just

ached in places that i never have before i think that's what's so interesting as well. I mean, I spoke about it before, but I love Brett Hawke and what he's doing for sprinting, specifically in swimming. I think we're still uncovering things right now. It's like just the strength and conditioning of swimming. And that again, this is what the shark documentary sort of taught me that mother nature did a pretty good job.

So if you're going to try to improve yourself in any sort of way in the water, just go and learn from the apex predator. There's probably clues. a pretty good job. So if you're going to try to improve yourself in any sort of way in the water, just go and learn from the apex predator. There's probably clues. So they pit you with a Mako. Yeah. The Mako swims something

like 80 miles an hour, right? You're not going to win this race. So what is it? How does that work? This is it. So I was at Loughborough University. I don't care what monofin you're wearing. You're not going as fast as the Mako.

No, no. And that was it. So immediately upon hearing this this this was so interesting because i just thought like an athlete like a sports scientist so the very first port of call was i'm going to loughborough university i turned up at loughborough university i start speaking to all the experts from british swimming and i'm like look i need to swim as fast as a mako shark and it was so interesting that they treated me like a human swimmer obviously that's as they should they should. So I'm drilling months and months and I'm trying to go from long distance swimming to being a sprinter. You know, everything, even in the gym, there's a strong correlation between your pull-up strength and your swim speed as well. So I'm like, I think I worked up to 75 to 80 kilos, one rep max pull-up. And I'm working, working up and this is months and months and

months. And I am shaving off like tenths of a second until I actually just sat there. And there was almost this epiphany that it was like, what am I doing? Like, I'm so far from this. I need to think like a shark, not just swim. I need to think like a shark. And the way that sharks on long migrations will look at tides, currents, water columns, their physiology will pick up oceanic cues like changes in temperature, salinity. I was like, that's what I need to do. So there was this amazing tide just off Wales in the United Kingdom. And you get this crazy compression of the tide. So from six hours a day, it comes through, six hours goes back.

So if you could time it perfectly at peak tide on a spring tide, you could essentially have 10 knots going with you. I was like, that's what I need to do. So I took all of that training from the British English Institute of Sport. And then I went to Wales, like I said, and we timed it perfectly. And Rich, you'll understand this

as an amazing pool swimmer yourself. You understand when you're swimming the tiles and the lane ropes going past, and you're like, oh, that's quick. But when you're swimming in 10 knots on a spring tide, oh my, you feel like Poseidon every stroke i was pulling i was overtaking like five houses i was like i am amazing i'm invisible but then obviously the tide changes and you're going backwards so it's so humbling but there was this idea of not just swimming like a shark but thinking like a shark at the same time as well so we i think in the end, we got a quarter Mako,

but that was with every single technological advancement and help from the ocean I could. Still woefully bad. The meta message really is making the water work for you. As a very muscled guy, it's easy to follow the illusion that the way to get better is to get stronger and to just force your way through the water, which is a cross purposes with the speed that's otherwise accessible. The people who really know how to feel it and where they're fine, you know, where,

because when you're, when you're entering your arm, you're looking for the still water. If you pull shallow, that water's already moving. Like it's not going to propel you forward. It's like, but there's an other worldliness to like trying to find that eddy that you can grab onto that's gonna move you forward the best. And it's not about how strong you are. It's like, how much can you extend your shoulder and how much can you like rotate your hips

and like corkscrew it so that you're creating your own eddy that's pushing the water behind you. And these are things that have nothing to do with how many pull-ups you can do. Yeah. Yeah. It's so true. And I think, especially in swimming, because it's so kinesthetic, it's proprioception, that feel of the water. If I'm out for a week, I get back in and I'm like, it's like I've forgotten how to swim, you know, but it's true of any sport. I think when people say running, it's like, we've been able to run since we were infants, right? It's like, no, but it's a skill, like it's energy efficiency, like just drilling that. So it's true of any sport. I think when people say running, it's like we've been able to run since we were infants, right? It's like, no, but it's a skill. Like it's energy efficiency, like just drilling that.

So it's amazing the amount of times where people don't actually drill the skill of what they're doing. Because I run. I've been doing it since I was an infant. It's like, well, you might be over striding, forefoot striking, heel strike. There's so many variables. And with swimming, that's been one of the biggest things. Again, like I said, I'm such a fan of swimming now. I'm such a sort of student of it and like cam mcavoy some of his underwaters uh for

those listening australian uh 50 meter amazing the way he's sort of changed his career around but his catch phase he just catches like an impossible angles or ben proud as well uh james gibson uh his coach who was an amazing swimmer himself but ben pratt some of his clips just go crazy viral because his attention to detail i think with cam mcavoy as well he'll do i hope i'm not i'm getting this right so i apologize if i'm not but he might do like three kilometers in an entire week that's it which for swimmers you're like three that's crazy that's such low mileage it's like no but you don't understand those three kilometers, it's so crazy purposeful at speed, race pace. And I think that's what's so exciting at the minute for swimming where we're at.

Yeah, it's pretty cool. Are you going to be in Paris to watch some swimming? I would love to. I think Yukon was the main thing. Now I'm recovered and not in hospital. I would love to go. For the 50 freestyle men's and women's, oh my God, I'd love to be there.

It would be amazing. The Shark Week thing isn't your first outing with National Geographic. You were a member of the Limitless crew that went on some crazy adventures, which brings up like your relationship with Chris Hemsworth and his brother Liam and the training that you guys did together.

But before we get into that, like how did the Limitless thing come together? Was that just Chris saying like, you gotta be part of this? Yeah. Yeah. Chris, essentially, I think when you're doing athletic adventures that are a little bit out there, whether it's ice swimming, climbing a rope, dangling from the Blue Mountains, that there's probably not many people whose name comes up who could probably help. So me and Chris were just sort of chatting. He sort of reached out and it was just, I think what's amazing about the Hemsworth gene pool is from Luke, Liam and Chris. And then even actually when you look at Chris's kids, Luke's kids,

it's obscene that the gene pool needs to be studied. It's just ridiculous. And with Chris, I think, especially with the rope climb, because he was Thor-sized, because he was getting big for Thor. So his training made absolutely no sense. Because on the one hand, you had Marvel and everyone saying, right, you need to look like the God of Thunder. And he's like, cool, got it. But then for Limitless, it's like, right,

we need to dangle you 100 foot from the Blue Mountains and we need you to climb a 50 foot rope. And it's like, those two don't work together. Like, that's not going to work. So what he did specifically on the rope climb was just incredible. And then not only that, again, you know, body fat being insulating. You need body fat. Some of the greatest ice swimmers have an abundance of it.

It's amazing. Chris had none because he was the god of thunder. So we took him from the heat of the Australian summer and just went, here you go, here's the Arctic Circle. This is ice swimming. And I think it was just, it was a testament to his physiology, his psychology, but that was one of the best things I've ever been part of because I'm so often just involved in myself and an event and to be there for somebody else, but also to see Chris just apply it. It was really really quite special we all speak as a team like what happened in norway for the ice swim it just hasn't been done before you don't take

someone from australia and throw them in the arctic so you just don't do it and to get to do it with darren aronofsky at the hell one of our you know most brilliant living directors do you know what the thing is about darren he's a beast as well. So people don't understand, his ice swimming as well, he'd done a little bit before Norway, but we were on a lunch break in Norway and it was Aaron, one of our friends, it was his birthday.

And I was like, guys, we've got to go swimming. And everyone's like, I've not got any swim stuff. I'm like, we just strip down to our underwear, we go run in and we just go and smash some waves. And Darren was literally the first to volunteer. He was like, I'm in. Darren's a beast as well.

Yeah, I trained with him in New York as well. Oh, you did? He's a specimen. Yeah, I know. Because you don't think of him as being an athlete. Oh, yeah. It's just this huge brain with like this unreal facility for creativity.

Is exactly it. And it's so weird. I mean, you're so right. I've never felt so dumb as when I speak to Darren. Because he just speaks on a level with like fear and philosophy. I just sit there. I'm like, oh my God, I just float for a living. Whereas when we train, he is a specimen. You know, there's this, there's no quitting him. Some of the drop sets, we did blood restriction training as well. Some of the drop sets, he just won't give up. He's a beast. Yeah. The blood restriction training, are you talking about Katsu? That takes us back to Chris Morgan again. This is his whole thing,

you know, which is a very interesting, I mean, he is like an evangelist of this. And I know that you've played around with it. What is it? So I started using it first for my rehab after my shoulder surgery, because essentially you're not lifting any heavy weights. There's no mechanical tension. So after shoulder surgery, I had to completely rest and wait for the cartilage to repair and regrow. So as a result, I needed a new training stimulus, something that wasn't mechanical tension. I couldn't be lifting weight or even metabolic stress. So lots of high volume. I couldn't do that either. So that kind of led me down the route of looking at different rehab tools. And one of the things was blood restriction training, which is just this idea of, it's got many applications, but what I used it for is say you are attaching it to your bicep and we start doing bicep curls. You do 20 reps,

10 seconds rest in between for five sets. What's interesting is the body sort of goes, hang on, if you're restricting the blood, there's no blood coming to the biceps. So if there's no blood coming to the biceps, there's no oxygen. If there's no oxygen, we're going to have to turn off the slow twitch fibers and only target the fast twitch fibers. So as a result, you just get this crazy burning sensation in the fast twitch fibers, which also increases your body's ability to just accumulate and tolerate lactic acid, which also spikes hormones at the same time, growth hormones specifically. So it's weird how it kind of targets muscle fibers, but at the same time, it's almost altering your biochemistry in a way. And it's a completely different training adaptation to just shifting heavyweight.

Yeah, you're essentially putting these straps around different appendages, right? That's right. Tightening them up. And this is a tradition that's not new. It's rooted in Japan, right? There was a pioneer of this who believed in it and evangelized it. And Katsu is the sort of brand that I guess Chris and Steve Munitona's now are at the helm of, right? Yeah. Yeah, that was exactly it. So it's funny.

It's a tool. You know, people say, do you use it all day, every day? I'm like, no, no, no. It's just a have in your back pocket. It's the same way that slow, low intensity training, high intensity training, German volume training, these are all tools. You just need to know when to use them.

Yeah. How did you first get connected with the Hemsworth brothers? I think it was just because, like I said, with Limitless, there's not many people who you approach who have experienced ice swimming and climbing a rope the height of Everest. So it was kind of, Chris just reached out. We ended up speaking.

I was a massive fan for ages. He just reached out. He's like, what are you doing? I need to understand. Like, kind of, kind of, yeah. And then I was out in Byron for so long. And yeah, we just have these just training camps sort of out there. Like Luke Zocchi, his actual strength and conditioning coach

and one of his best friends is amazing. And then like I said, it's so strange. And like I said, they genuinely, that gene pool needs to be studied because Luke, you know, the oldest Hemsworth and Liam, they, what's interesting about them, I think it's their work capacity is one of the biggest things. That we will catch up and train. And I'll go, hey, guys, have you trained today?

Or do you feel okay? And they'll go, no, no, no, we've not trained today. I'll go, okay, cool. Okay, so we'll do like an hour, two hour session. They're like, yeah. And then as we're training, I'll find out that we've just been surfing for six hours. But they don't class that as training. I'm like, oh, my God.

So it's just, just yeah they are just i think craig and leone so they're parents i think they've got i hope i'm writing this but danish netherlands you know they've got some viking dna somewhere because they all just well something's going on because all three of those guys are absolute animals and i know luke a little bit i've spent a ton of time in that area in Byron. So I know all those characters, right? Yeah. I know Ben at the Ginny.

We have a lot of friend overlap from my time spent there. I keep waiting for our visits to overlap. I think you're due for a return. I did, and I just missed you last time. I love Benny, by the way. When were you there? Last year for Luke and Chris's 40th. Oh, Chris's 40th, Luke's 39th.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I had the pleasure of going over to Luke's house and having him put me through a workout, which was a whole experience. Yeah. So Luke is Chris's official trainer. That's right.

Or maybe he trains all three of them. I don't know. Yeah. But then when you get introduced, how did that work between you and Luke? And, you know, was your input like on an official level or were you just a friend, like they're training with those guys

or what was the nature of that relationship? Because there's been a lot written about like, you know, Ross Edgley, you know, helped Chris get ready for Thor. And, you know, we saw what, you know, what Chris's physique looked like. Yeah, yeah. In the lead up to playing that role.

Yeah, well, I think that's very much Luke Zocchi and also just Hemsworth genetics. Like, it's literally like, I mean, I actually arrived because I had shoulder surgery as well. So I actually arrived quite late onto the set of Thor. So when I arrived... But in Byron, in the lead up to Thor though, also, you were there for a long time and you guys were training together like daily. We were, yeah, but specifically rope climbs.

And I think that's what's so amazing. Like as a team, like there's just no egos. So if it's like, okay, today is rope specific stuff, then everybody goes, cool, listen to Ross. You know, but equally if they say, okay, today is body weight conditioning. That's something Zocky is so good at, just general physical preparedness. Like he's an absolute beast. So I'm like, okay, cool. You take the session. And I think that's what's so

interesting. And then if we go surfing, I'm like, right, I know nothing. So it's amazing that, and you'll know this because of the nature of people in Bayern, there's just no egos. And so whoever is taking that session, someone will have a speciality. And then equally, if we're on a tennis court out there with Pat Ra will have a speciality and then equally if we're on the tennis court out there with pat rafter everybody shuts up and we do as we told and pat rafter just rains down aces on us you know so it's interesting how if it's ice swimming swimming or rope climbing you're the guy yeah if there's anything out of that or burgers or cheesecake anything out of that no no that's not my domain speaking of cheesecake what are we doing

about your diet ross come on i know that there's a certain pride in all the donuts that you eat and all this garbage but i'm telling you you know you're on the cusp of 40 and there will be a moment where your metabolism is gonna you know turn on you a little bit and i want to get you ready for that so that you don't have to suffer the downside consequences of that. And maybe you might be a little bit better at fat adaptation if you weren't like, you know, eating such awful stuff all the time.

I know, I know. Genuinely, I am. Because I do think there's definitely an element of, no, no, no. But I also think I am a little bit better. Maybe it's my fault. But, you know, when I'm swimming, I'll post the tray of donuts and things like that but honestly since four or five years ago since you introduced me to kombucha i do have more vegetables genuinely i do i'm not honestly

benny always again mutual friend of mine riches but benny always has me in stitches when i go over to ben gordon yeah yeah yeah they he will constantly just be there just going um oh ross this is this is called broccoli yeah um here's a carrot ben gordon we should say is an unbelievable drummer for a metal band called parkway drive and they tour the world they have a huge fan base but he also happens to be the proprietor of the byron general store which is which is basically where you gotta go if you wanna eat healthy food. Like it's just, you know, all the best stuff, right? So it's kind of like the must,

like breakfast stop in every single day. And that was grown out of like his own kind of journey into wellbeing from a place where he was like riddled with anxiety, performance anxiety, like going to these huge venues and part of his drumming, I know you know this, right? Like he has this massive drum kit, like imagine Neil Peart from Rush, right? And the stage elevates it and it's in this like, it's in this like structure, like this scaffold, that's the word I'm looking for. And then it elevates up and then

it rotates 360 degrees and he's playing his drum solo upside down. And he does this in front of gigantic crowds. And apparently there was a time in which this produced a lot of anxiety for him. And he went on this like kind of journey to figure out how to live his life in a more kind of like stable and balanced way, which led him to meditation and to healthy eating and all these things. And the general store is really his expression, like his offering to everybody else as a reflection of that. Yeah, that's exactly, I never thought about it like that, but that's exactly what it is. I love hanging out with Benny because he's just got such a calming sort of, he just, he's the best.

And then, yeah. And then now he's a dad. He is as well, yeah. But, oh, and the waffle fries as well. I know I just said I'm going to eat healthily, but the waffle fries at the general store and the muffins, oh my God, they're amazing. When you were there, you were also doing a lot of swimming though.

You were putting in the time for a swimming adventure that wasn't meant to be, right? Like I know what it is. I don't know if you want to say what it was, but like that kind of got deferred, right? Yeah, yeah yeah i have a sense that maybe we're going to be seeing that i think we might so i'll keep it under wraps because it might yeah it might come full circle but yeah i get it was just a training camp out in barren i get chris was just amazing because the amount of times i'll just be like chris i just need a pool to swim in and he'll be like

just knock yourself out so i would just be swimming up and down in his pool. And then Elsa as well, his wife, she's amazing. Sometimes if they were having family dinner, you know, they'll have this amazing casserole or pasta dish. And they just basically just take a bowl out and leave it on the side of the pool. For me, it's like swimming. So as I'd pop my head up every 1K,

I'll be like, oh, thanks guys. And I'll just keep swimming as they're having family dinner incredible stuff incredible yeah what are we supposed to learn from you Ross what do we take away from from these things that you've done that that that would be helpful in our own civilian lives I'm still trying to figure that out myself but I think um like I said coming back to that idea of of purpose I think that's the biggest thing. And actually, we were chatting to the team just earlier. And I just think it's this idea of like, everybody's got something that they could do. And when you look at the history of us humans, the anthropology of us humans, we've always been sort of going on these journeys of self-discipline for self-discovery, you know, whether it's

the Japanese monks going on an Okugaki, the Amabushi monks of Japan, whether it's Aborigines going on walkabout. We've always been doing something. And I think, you know, recently, I'm a huge fan of Ned Brockman. I loved it. It wasn't what he did. It's how he did it across Australia. Russ, equally across Africa.

Russ Cook, the hardest geezer. Oh my God. It wasn't, again, it wasn't what they did. It's how they did it that I just love. And then Ned's going for the record at the moment for a thousand miles. Yeah, I think he's gonna be the fastest person to run a thousand miles on a track.

That was it, yes. But it's centrally located. So that way, you know, people can come and join him and it can be like a participatory kind of thing. I think it's amazing. And when I hear stories about that and I look at people like that, I'm like, yes, we're essentially doing exactly the same.

There's a common theme throughout all of it that as a tribe, if we were sitting there, there'd always be one in that tribe dating back to caveman times who would just say, what's over the horizon? Like, what is it? That wanderlust gene. There'll be something that that person that would go,

do you know what? We're going to stay here. We're going to make a family, but you, you disappear over that mountain. And I think that's it. I think looking at guys like Russ and Ned, I'm just sort of trying to do my own sort of aquatic version.

But anybody listening, I just think it could be anything as long as it resonates with you, whether it's rowing, cycling, just pick a route, something. And yeah, that idea of self-discipline for self-discovery. What is the weakness that shows up

that you really need to work on in your life? Not in your swimming per se. Cheesecake. Yeah, we have your diet. We talked about that. I'm talking emotionally. I guess where this is coming from is I hear that and I believe you and I think that's laudable

and beautiful and inspirational in all the best ways. But this goes back to your relationship to all of these events and kind of what they mean, right? And I've seen too many people who use events like this to run away from certain things in their life rather than towards some greater level of self-actualization at the tippy top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? So if we're being really honest,

like I can admit that I can use like endurance sports to hide from certain things that are uncomfortable and be celebrated for that. When I know when my head hits the pillow that maybe there's some other things in my life that could use a little bit more attention or maybe things are out of balance a little bit. And I'm just curious about like how you think about that equation. I think one of the biggest things like to be completely honest and

transparent about that, I think one of the biggest things was, it's become an amazing job, like in reality, and I love the Japanese philosophy, the ikigai. So your ikigai, your reason for being why you get up in the morning, your purpose, again, coming back to purpose, but that made up of four things, what you love, what you're good at, what the world needs. But the fourth one, what you can be paid for. And I think that's what's so interesting, because I know exactly what you're saying that I think sometimes talking about philanthropy and charity and various other things, that's absolutely right. But you also need to be paid for it as well at the same time. So to be completely honest, there is a commercial aspect as well in that everything that I've done, it does work as a business, a very, very strange

business granted, but it is a business. And it's something that I really enjoy. So if I was running away from anything, it would probably be an office job. Whereas like in terms of business, I love the marketing of it, I think as well, which comes back to what you said, that the showmanship as well, but it's just putting something out into the world. I suppose very similar to the heroic age of Antarctic exploration,

when Adminson, Shackleton, Robert Falcon Scott, everyone was going to the South Pole to uncover something. But when they came back home, they were publishing their books and contributing to geology and science. There's an element of that as well, which is just this idea of, it is a strange business, but it is a business as well. And I think too often, people probably don't want to say that because it's commercial. You know, you don't want to say it. But the reality is, it has become my strange job to just float very far.

But that's a really beautiful thing to celebrate, that you can marry how you make a living with those prongs of ikigai. Like this thing that brings you joy, this thing that has meaning for other people. There is a self-serving aspect to it, but there's a service aspect to it as well. And we live in a capitalist society. We all have to make a living. And, you know, it's not something I'm unfamiliar with because I feel, you know, so blessed to be able to do this thing

and to support my family in doing it. It's an absolute joy that marries like a passion that I have with something that is giving back to other people, but also, you know, supports me economically. So I get that completely. But I guess in saying that, it then begs the question of the challenge that scares you most, like what's lingering out there on the horizon? Maybe it's in the far future, doesn't necessarily

have to be in the near future. That is like, yeah, I'm not ready for that one. I don't, yeah, I don't know. Are we talking professionally or personally? No, I'm talking about, yeah, like in your endurance endeavors, your athletic endeavors. I'm not sure. I'm still yet to find it.

I think that's what it is. Yeah, I think I will. But I think one thing that the Loch Ness and Tress Amino has taught me is you're kind of bulletproof if you're okay with the outcome. So even if it doesn't go well, there's nothing to be fearful of because what's the worst that can happen? You know, you've got an amazing team around you. So I think that was one of the biggest things that, yeah, we finished. And certainly when I was like 21, it was black and white.

If I failed, I failed. You couldn't speak to me. I'd have been in a terrible mood. Whereas with this one, we finished and my entire team around me just went, we're getting pizza. I went, yeah, let's get pizza. And it was actually, it was interesting.

Friends of mine at the Royal Marines, one of the psychologists there, he was amazing. He was talking about when he'd speak to some of the guys going through Limston through their 32 weeks training. And some of the young recruits would be like, I have to make it through training. Like this, I have to make it if I don't, I'll be a failure. I'll go home, I can't look at my mom and dad in

the eyes. The psychologist there said, Yeah, in so many ways, it is the most important thing in the world. Like when you're in it, you have to make it through. There's no such thing as failure, you have to make it it's so important. Don't even think of failure. But when it happens, it's not that bad. And I think that's the thing with Loch Ness and Tres Amino. When we were in it, I was like, nothing else matters. I have to make it to the finish line. We have to raise loads for ocean conservation, for records. We have to achieve everything. It needs to do in crazy numbers in terms of visually for the charity. That is success. But then when it didn't happen, immediately you just flip a switch and go, ah, it was just a swim. That's a healthy relationship with it. Because it's about the doing, not about the result. It's about detaching from the result, which is

of stoic virtue. But it also speaks to this thing that I've heard you talk about before, this idea of eudaimonia. Can you explain what that is? Absolutely, yeah. So again, when I was searching for reasons why I tried to do what I do, I came across Aristotle and he coined this phrase, which was eudaimonia. And he said that happiness was kind of a bad word because it sort of gave the impression that you should just be happy. There should be no struggling or suffering. And he said, well, that's kind of wrong because you should have to sacrifice, struggle and suffer in order to actually fulfill something, this sense of accomplishment. He said, in many ways, it's almost like if I gave you a million pounds, you'd be happy. Of course you would, it's a million pounds. Whereas if you wrote a book,

started a business, ran an event, won a million pounds, earned it, that's not happiness, that's eudaimonia. It's very different. And I think one thing that the GB swim taught me, and I didn't realize it at the time, but walking onto land for the first time in 157 days, that was eudaimonia. I wasn't happy. It was eudaimonia. It was happiness with fulfillment. And I think ever since, the Yukon was similar. I was like, oh, that's not happiness. That is eudaimonia. That is years and years of training that have manifested itself in a particular event. So yeah, happiness is the activity. Happiness is an activity. It's this way of doing things rather than the product of having done it. Exactly. Yeah. While addressing that idea of

sacrifice and struggle, you know, rather than just being happy without any of that. Aristotle was like, no, no, no, you have to struggle. You have to suffer. That's what will produce eudaimonia. Won't produce happiness, it will produce eudaimonia. What are some of the other Stoic principles or Greek ideas that swim around in your head when you're in the Yukon?

I think there's a fair few, not necessarily even principles, but the story of Marcus Aurelius. I mean, what I love about Marcus Aurelius is what he wrote was never meant to be a bestselling book. It was just his diary. It was just his musings, you know, and he had gone through wars like assassination attempts. He wasn't, according to his written accounts, a very well man, but he just lived to just an incredible age, outlived so many people, a lot of his enemies and it was just his outlook on life and i think that was one of the biggest things that certainly when swimming through the yukon with you know your leg bleeding and neck falling off while still nursing

the your own toilet in your wetsuit it was just this idea do you know what what would marcus aurelius do so it wasn't necessarily principles it was It was the story of Marcus Aurelius that I think, yeah, when you know about that, that's really quite impressive. What do you think people don't fully understand when they hear your story or they try to imagine these things that you've done or you read the press that gets written about these adventures that you've been on. Is there anything where you're like, they don't really get it or they're missing this piece or what people don't see is this? Yeah, I think I literally haven't done a podcast in like three years, really, you know.

So I think a lot of people, especially after Loch Ness and Tres Amino, because I was in hospital after both of those. So on social media. But not as long as you were supposed to be. No, no, no. especially after Loch Ness and Tresemino, because I was in hospital after both of those. So on social media- But not as long as you were supposed to be. No, no. But there was, I don't want to say speculation, but people were sort of saying, you know,

what went wrong? And there was ideas that were going around. Whereas it's nice to actually just speak about it so freely now, which was just like, the conditions weren't right, but we tried our very best. And I think- And also it's an example,

sorry, I don't mean to step on your words, but it's like, it's a way of modeling that failure is the path to success. You have to be willing to fail. And then it's your relationship with that, that dictates how you move forward. And to, you know, look in the rear view mirror and learn from it rather than say, well, you know, oh, I can't do it or to flog yourself. Like I've seen you try these really hard things, they don't work out. And then you just move forward onto the next thing with a smile on your face. And I think that's powerful for people to see.

Yeah. Do you know, I really appreciate that because I think one of the biggest things that those swims taught me as well is no event exists in a vacuum. You have to consider it in its relationship to other events as well. So if I'd have stopped after Loch well. So if I'd have stopped after Loch Ness, if I'd have stopped after Tres Amino, if I'd have stopped after Mallorca, you could have called them a failure. But because of the Yukon, because I kept going, they all became lessons. I think that's what's so interesting. Anybody thinking about any particular

event in their life, if they think it's a failure, no, it doesn't exist in a vacuum. It depends what you do next that will determine what that actually was. I think you're pretty good in the cold. I think you might have a little issue with heat adaptation though. So whatever you do next, probably stay away from the warm water.

That's good advice. But maybe not as cold as the Yukon. Can you just find like, maybe just 60 degrees Fahrenheit, something like that, you know? No, genuinely. I know my girlfriend will be so happy that you said that. I think that's the other thing though as well. It's just this idea of just daring to be great, you know, every single time. And this is probably, it's certainly a personality defect, but I can't just do a swim. You know, it's got to be a

really long one. It's got to be a hot one. It's got to be a cold one. There's got to be some metrics that make me excited. And maybe as I mature, I might stop doing that. But for me, again, even the shark shows, it's like, if you're going to swim against a shark, it has to be a white shark. You've got to swim as fast as a mako. You've got to eat as much as a tiger shark. Right. But this will run its course at some point, right? Because you'll reach that place where it's like, you can't continue to always top what you've done before. And if you're using these to fill a God-sized hole in your soul,

you're going to face an existential reckoning, my friend. Yeah, no, no, no. No, no, no. I completely, no, no. I agree. But unfortunately, I do think I'll be sitting here.

We'll be doing this podcast at 100 years old and I'll be going rich. Good. You're a very happy-go-lucky guy. It's not like I'm worried about you. I almost feel like just a little bit of a big brotherly kind of like. Yeah, which I appreciate. For those people listening, they won't know, but like after the GB swim, I was just swept away with media and everything like that. And it was amazing.

And I don't regret anything. It was brilliant. But genuinely, you were one of the first to, if not the only person who actually after the whole podcast, I'll never forget this. And I want to say this publicly, but as a big brother, you just took me to one side and we went for kombucha. You took me out for a vegan meal. And you said, Ross, oh, as a bit of a big brother, I feel a little bit protective. And I just want to say, a lot of people will ask you what's next and pull you in all directions. Take time for yourself, like deconstruct, write a book. And that was some of the best advice I've ever got. So publicly, I've said it, but publicly, I want to say thank you so much because it was a whirlwind and you were a big brother and a voice

of reason at a time that was particularly crazy. So thank you. That's very sweet of you to say. I appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah, I love you, buddy. I think what you're doing is really powerful and inspirational. And in addition to, or maybe more important than what it is that you're doing, I think it's the way that you do it. Like you talked about Ned and Russ and the way that they kind of comport themselves while they do these crazy things. I think that's of equal importance, if not more important than the actual feats themselves. And I think to see you, you know,

do it with a smile on your face and treat your team members with, you know, respect and grace and to invite, you know, people like ourselves to join along and to feel welcome, you know, and to provide us a window into, you know, kind of what's happening has been really fun to watch unfold. And so I'm your biggest fan, dude.

And if there's anything I can do to put wind in your sails, I'm right there for you. Oh, thank you. Next shark swim, you can come along. Monofin. I would love to do that. I'd love to strap a monofin back on. Yeah.

Done. I had one. It's so funny. I had one that I got that was Russian made. I had it forever. And I used to let my kids play around with it in the pool. I think it got cracked at some point. I don't think I have it anymore.

But I'm going to dig into my photo albums and try to pick out some pictures of Chris and I from back in the day and send them to you. That would be amazing. It's cool. And Chris is, he's like a full-on team member for you now, right? Like he's been instrumental in helping you. What he did in the Yukon was, like I said,

people would consider how far he kayaks and everything, an expedition in itself, like an extreme one at that, sleep deprivation, everything. And he just did it selflessly in support of the swim. And so that's why I love platforms like this because I get to actually shine a light on the team. It's such a team event.

So yeah, time and again, unfortunately, he has adopted a small English brother. I love the way the universe works too that this guy that I've known for so long has now found his way to you and has become this really important team member and guy supporting you. It's really cool.

Yeah, it is cool. Yeah. We did it, dude. How do you feel you it's really cool yeah it is cool yeah we did it dude how do you feel that's really good do we do okay it took four or five years to come back no I know

I check in with you when are we gonna do this when are we gonna do this are you gonna be in Byron I know I really wanna hook up when we're in Byron I love that place

I do too it's a very special place it's become like my favorite place to go I really it's a really special place. It's become like my favorite place to go. It's a really unique, cool place. It's weird because I was chatting to Benny about that because again, not to sound too deep, but like the spirituality of Byron

because it was a place where women would go to give birth, isn't it? Because obviously Byron Bay. So people saying like there's a powerful like Aboriginal energy and- It feels like a vortex. Yeah, it really does. Yeah.

And it's, yeah, honestly, I go and I just leave, like, recharged, just think, it's just, yeah, the people there, it's pretty amazing.

All right, well, cheers. We'll share a kombucha and Byron at some point. Done. Next podcast. All right, buddy. Love you.

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