Unlocking Persistent Motivation & Extreme Resilience | Ross Edgley
In a Nutshell
Ultra-endurance athlete Ross Edgley explains that persistence comes from multiple overlapping motivational sources rather than a single force, with the anterior midcingulate cortex functioning like scales that tip toward endurance when purpose outweighs pain. He describes how the brain reduces complex decisions to three choices—forward, stop, or retreat—with the prefrontal cortex enabling conscious strategy selection and the ability to switch between different motivational frameworks depending on the situation. The core takeaway is that sustained performance in extreme conditions requires building psychological flexibility through deliberate practice, team boundaries for self-preservation, and the recognition that different motivational "fuels" work at different times during prolonged challenges.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
The story of Sisyphus describes one of the cleverest humans in ancient mythology who outsmarted the gods, even chaining up death at one point, which angered the gods because people were fighting wars with no one dying and no souls entering the underworld. Eventually, the gods punished Sisyphus by making him roll a boulder up a hill for eternity, with the boulder rolling back down just as it reaches the top. Albert Camus suggested that Sisyphus outsmarted the gods one more time by imagining him smiling, because the struggle alone is enough to fill a man's heart. Sisyphus is described as the absurd hero, and the struggle itself provides fulfillment even when the task seems thankless.
Ross Edgley is a British ultra-endurance athlete who swam around Great Britain, covering nearly 2,000 miles in distance over nearly 157 days. He also swam 317 miles of the Yukon River continuously for 56 hours without stopping. He has run a full marathon pulling a full-size car and completed 30 marathons in 30 days. The discussion focuses on brain circuits and psychology that enable humans to build mindset for motivation and engage in hard tasks.
At age 10, Ross was aware his brain was wired differently regarding dopamine. During family hikes, he would put rocks in his backpack to increase difficulty because the standard hike wasn't challenging enough. He kept the rocks secret from his father, indicating this was purely intrinsic motivation. The process itself was the reward, not external validation. When his father discovered the rocks, he told Ross to remove them and offered functional items like food instead.
Even at age 10, Ross recognized that his motivation worked differently. When proposing swim ideas, if people respond with "that sounds quite good," he considers it a terrible idea because it lacks sufficient challenge. However, if people respond with "that's impossible" or "that's ridiculous," he recognizes it as the right challenge. This pattern has remained consistent throughout his life.
The Great British Swim at age 32 was ego-driven, focused on feelings of accomplishment, prestige, and recognition from Maslow's hierarchy of needs. After completing this swim, it felt shallow to pursue records alone. The swim around Iceland at age 40 was motivated by ocean conservation efforts and collecting environmental DNA samples to track biodiversity, representing a shift toward more meaningful purposes beyond personal achievement.
Ross has always woken up ready to go with spontaneous energy. As a child, he was extremely competitive and a poor loser. After coming second in a school cross country race at age 13, he refused to accept his medal, declaring "second place is the first loser," and ran 10 miles home. His father followed in the car to ensure safety but allowed him to process the disappointment independently.
The anterior midcingulate cortex is described as functioning like weighing scales between pain and purpose. When experiences are extremely painful, significant purpose is needed to tip the scales toward persistence. The anterior midcingulate cortex receives inputs from the amygdala, memory centers, and dopamine reward system. It enlarges when people do hard things and shrinks when people avoid challenges. Its activity correlates with success in difficult tasks.
Carl Jung's concept of the shadow self refers to parts of the psyche kept hidden, including aggression, hypercompetitiveness, and jealousy. Jordan Peterson notes that having a monster inside is not inherently bad, but failing to control it is problematic. During the Iceland swim, negative online comments and media partners suggesting he quit activated this competitive aspect, providing motivation through proving others wrong.
Rather than a simple teeter-totter between quitting and persistence, a more complex model involves multiple spokes on a wheel, each representing different sources of motivation. The model suggests that persistence occurs as long as no single side dominates for too long, with various emotional and psychological drivers contributing to sustained effort.
The Iceland swim was completed partly because Ross had said he would do it. His older brother emphasized that breaking records around Scotland would count for nothing unless the entire swim was finished. The motivation came from avoiding the self-knowledge that quitting was possible when completion was achievable, referencing Einstein's statement that adversity introduces you to yourself.
During the Iceland swim, Ross experienced stress inoculation training. Initially, cold water and sleep deprivation were difficult to manage. By the end, he had habituated to the stress, becoming numb to conditions like cracking ice off wetsuits before putting them on. The anterior midcingulate cortex still registers the stress, but emotional responses diminish through repeated exposure.
Fear of disappointing others, specifically missing the birth of his first child, provided powerful motivation during the Iceland swim. With 100 miles remaining and his child's birth due in one week, combined with hurricane Erin and a volcanic eruption creating poisonous gas, Ross pushed through to complete the final distance. This fear of letting down his girlfriend of 13 years and missing his son's birth outweighed other considerations.
Tides and weather can completely override swimming ability. Even the world's best swimmers go backwards when misreading conditions in Iceland. During the Great British Swim at the Pentland Firth in northern Scotland, favorable conditions allow travel at 10 knots, matching dolphin cruising speed, but wrong conditions reverse progress at the same rate. Michael Phelps-level skill becomes irrelevant against powerful currents. The Yukon swim presented a complex maze of countercurrents, whirlpools, and log jams, with one incident where a log came back against the swimmer's direction.
Despite being the only person in the water, these expeditions are fundamentally team events. The swimmer cannot focus on external dangers while concentrating on stroke, breathing, mental state, and physical extremities like frostbite risk. The Yukon team demonstrated exceptional river-reading abilities that kept the swimmer safe through hazardous conditions.
Multiple medical conditions accumulated across expeditions including hypothermia, rhabdomyolysis, and cellulitis. Cellulitis is a skin infection that developed in Loch Ness due to freshwater chafing from the wetsuit, becoming deep enough to risk lymph node or bloodstream infection, which can be fatal. During the 56-hour non-stop Loch Ness swim in 4-degree water, the swimmer experienced simultaneous hypothermia with internal shaking while the skin burned from cellulitis, creating a dual physiological assault.
Extended exposure to extreme conditions recalibrates pain perception. After Loch Ness, subsequent challenges like Iceland felt manageable by comparison, with the swimmer assessing wounds by checking for infection signs rather than immediate pain levels.
Something touched the swimmer's leg during the Loch Ness attempt. The experience became spiritual, with Nietzsche's quote about fighting monsters and gazing into the abyss resonating during the swim. Tunnel vision progressively narrowed until the swimmer lost consciousness, waking in hospital to his girlfriend and mother at his bedside. The gradual nature of the deterioration highlighted the danger of pushing physiological limits too far.
The swimmer maintains unfinished business with Loch Ness and humorously suggests draining it to resolve the monster question, while acknowledging the tourist value of maintaining the mystery. Similar mythological elements appeared during the Iceland swim, including a blot ceremony performed by an ancient chief who blessed the swim with the characteristically Icelandic send-off that the swimmer would probably die, but it would make a good saga.
Northern Lights prompted an encounter with an Icelandic fisherman who explained the Valkyries as Odin's female warriors riding through the sky, their shields and swords creating the shimmering lights while collecting the fallen for Valhalla. The blot ceremony referenced the Guardians of Iceland: the bull representing the west coast kingdom of strength and power, the eagle for the north coast, the dragon for the east coast realm with its waterfalls, and the giant for the south coast. These mythological elements appear on Iceland's crest and emphasize respecting nature.
The swimmer used Icelandic mythology as strategic mental frameworks during the swim, making the journey poetic in his mind. The Kingdom of the Bull narrative provided motivation, while Norse mythology about Odin and Ragnarok offered perspective on fate and attitude. Ancient Nordic beliefs hold that destiny cannot be controlled, only one's attitude toward it, with Odin knowing he would be eaten by a giant wolf yet charging into battle regardless.
The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex handles strategy and conscious narrative construction. The tube test experiment demonstrates this brain region's role in persistence: two mice placed in a confined tube compete for space, with winners consistently winning and losers consistently losing independent of testosterone, nutrition, or body weight. Silencing this region in winning mice causes them to lose, while increasing activity in losing mice makes them win. Human analogs using virtual reality and brain scanners confirm this top-down circuit from prefrontal cortex drives persistence across species.
The prefrontal cortex enables conscious strategy setting where the specific strategy can be anger, love, family motivation, or survival needs. This brain area learns different strategies across contexts, with the ability to push through quitting thoughts at mile 200 of desert races representing real prefrontal cortical activity with physical neural substrates.
Roger Federer's stoic demeanor during matches, where observers couldn't determine win or loss from his reactions without audio or score visibility, exemplifies the value of not reacting to setbacks. Energy management becomes crucial when raw energy levels are high, as poor management leads to the "27 club" where talented individuals die from unmanaged excesses of money, drugs, and fame, as illustrated in the Defiant Ones documentary about N.W.A.
The psychobiological model of fatigue explains how the brain pulls a physiological handbrake before complete exhaustion. The swimmer's response is to push harder when recognizing this mechanism activating, leading to the practice of "outsourcing common sense" to team members who have authority to pull him from the water. This acknowledges the personality trait of swimming until hospitalization, which becomes problematic as a father requiring more responsible boundaries.
The team allows pushing boundaries of common sense and sports science while maintaining authority to intervene. Jerk Kennedy, an accomplished ice swimmer, provides hypothermia expertise and has been identified as someone who could recognize when the swimmer needs extraction. This system mirrors addiction recovery approaches where individuals assign others authority to prevent self-destructive persuasion.
The pursuit contains addiction-like elements where the next challenge provides necessary purpose. Victor Frankl's concept that the meaning of life is to give life meaning resonates, along with Jordan Peterson's view that life's purpose involves picking up the heaviest load. Without a training objective, the swimmer becomes restless, with his girlfriend noting he would be "terrible" if confined at home.
The partner met the swimmer already engaged in these pursuits and demonstrates acceptance through practical support, such as throwing bananas during the Yukon swim. Her consistent response to concerned observers was that she had never seen him happier despite visible wounds and deterioration. The swimmer describes himself as "only partially domesticated" and arrived at the hospital for his son's birth still bearing Iceland wounds and appearing feral to medical staff.
Ross Edgley discusses how his wife's perception of danger changed after 13 years together, particularly through experiences like the Yukon swim. Black bears in Canada were skittish and less concerning, but brown bears presented differently - they were not skittish but looked at him as potentially edible. His support team responded with a cannon, indicating they would shoot the bear if it got too close, which allowed him to continue swimming.
Andrew Huberman shares his experience diving with great white sharks, noting that animals' perception of danger is often cryptic and local knowledge is more reliable than assumptions. He mentions that jellyfish, spiders, snakes, and bears may not match common perceptions of danger, and locals hold the key knowledge about what is actually threatening.
Ross describes diving with tiger sharks and great whites, noting they have ampullae of Lorenzini that detect electrical impulses. The sharks identified him as the weakest diver through his flinching, breathing, and heartbeat. His team instructed him to control his breathing and slow his heart rate. When the shark approached, he was told not to square up aggressively but also not to flinch or back away. The shark assessed him, determined he knew what he was doing, and left him alone.
The same principle applied to bears in the Yukon - if they detected weakness, they would have charged. This reflects the laws of the jungle where animals assess whether prey is moving forward, staying still, or retreating.
Huberman explains that predators assess whether targets are moving forward toward them, staying still, or retreating. The brain makes binary decisions with limited information. Lindsay Cle's research on threat assessment identified areas of the midline thalamus that make decisions among three choices: go forward, stay in place, or retreat. These are switches rather than a continuum.
The same circuitry applies to human encounters with mountain lions or other threats - decisions about fighting, running, or playing dead must be made when the animal gets close enough. Brain areas like the anterior midcingulate cortex and prefrontal cortex ramp up activity and cross thresholds that set circuits in motion.
Huberman identifies three fundamental choices that sophisticated psychological and neurobiological processes reduce to: go forward, stop, or retreat/quit. Thoughts like "I said I would" or "I want to see my kid born" or "I would feel shame if I didn't do this" are different paths into these three decisions.
Ross describes the "they said I couldn't" motivation, noting that when people achieve more success, they hear less doubt, which removes this source of fuel. During the swim around Great Britain, comments on early vlogs predicted he would give up after 100 kilometers or not even make it on the South Coast. Five years later, someone commented on these predictions saying "this didn't age very well," which felt satisfying.
After completing the Great Britain swim, people stopped doubting him, and he missed that external skepticism. When announcing the Iceland swim, responses were "I think he can do it this time," which lacked the motivational edge of being underestimated.
Huberman introduces the "f*** me" motivation as the polar opposite of "f*** you" - turning the anger inward at oneself for considering stopping. Ross applies this to body parts, getting angry at his right shoulder for failing and telling it he's taking it for a swim across the Arctic Circle.
Huberman explains that one of the most fundamental aspects of brain wiring is distinguishing between "us" and "not us." This extends from the individual to kin - one's own child or an adopted child that one has chosen to raise. Seeing an ultrasound of his unborn son gave Ross motivation that a picture of any random baby would not provide.
The hypothalamus contains primitive switches for forward/stop/retreat, mate/don't mate, fight/don't fight, quit/continue. A nature documentary example shows two lions that were previously fighting each other uniting to protect their testicles from a pack of hyenas - demonstrating the dynamic switch from individual self-protection to protecting the group.
Ross describes using his late father's memory during the Iceland swim. His father was his mentor and tennis coach. Ross imagined his father in heaven watching him swim around Iceland, telling others "that one's mine." This invoked a visceral, primitive response that got him through dark times. He framed the Iceland swim as both a tribute to his father's teachings and a letter to his future son.
Huberman notes that seeing one's own child at a finish line provides an immediate energy boost, unlike seeing someone else's child. The ability to pull on transgenerational understanding of "us" is described as the most potent fuel.
For people with complicated or difficult relationships with parents, Huberman suggests they must look elsewhere for affiliative motivation rather than being lone wolves. He mentions Jocko Willink serving as a figure who provides this for people who didn't play football or serve in the military. Other examples include David Goggins, Ross Edgley, Andy Stumpf, DJ Ship, Cam Haynes, and Rich Roll - figures who help people believe in themselves and develop an affiliative sense of drive.
Huberman references Josh Waitzkin's observation that the mindset changes from trying to become champion to defending the championship. Ross indicates he is currently searching for his next challenge, noting that his 21-year-old self would approach this differently than his current perspective.
At 21 years old, Ross Edgley prioritized feelings of accomplishment and prestige over financial gain. He would pursue record-breaking swims even when told he would not earn money from them, viewing the achievement itself as sufficient reward. He lost money on these early endeavors and made financially irresponsible decisions, including forgoing a house deposit to fund a boat crew for swimming around Great Britain.
At age 32, Edgley faced the choice between buying a house or funding his swim around Great Britain. His girlfriend supported the swim, noting that at 80 years old with money, he could buy houses, but he would never again be 32 with the physical capability to attempt the swim. The decision proved financially costly as he lost money on the Great Britain swim.
His perspective on money has shifted significantly. Now he requires payment for swims, viewing them as a career rather than an expensive hobby. He references the Japanese concept of ikigai - the reason for being - which consists of four elements: what you love, what you're good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for. He emphasizes that all four must be present.
Edgley acknowledges that financial compensation now factors into his decision-making, particularly to support his son and future children. The host notes that money is not a dirty word when earned through honest endeavors serving family. Money serves as a tool to buffer stress and enable family members to pursue enriching activities.
Edgley identifies money as one spoke in his motivational wheel. When swimming around Iceland, the knowledge that completing the swim would generate income helped sustain him through difficult moments, though it ranked lower than other motivational factors.
The conversation explores the neurological difference between motivation driven by anger or frustration versus motivation driven by love and positive emotions. Research by neurosurgeon Robert Heath involved patients with brain electrodes who could self-stimulate different brain areas. Across patients, the area producing mild frustration and anger was most frequently stimulated, suggesting humans find this arousal state compelling.
This connects to broader human patterns of self-discipline for self-discovery found across cultures, including the Yamabushi monks of Japan who meditate under ice-cold waterfalls, drink green tea, and complete daily marathons in the mountains wearing wooden sandals.
At age 21, Edgley participated in an ayahuasca ceremony with the Jamanau tribe in the Amazon jungle for a documentary. The experience involved intense physical reactions including profuse sweating, tongue swelling, and projectile vomiting. Participants were required to bite the tongue of a live snake to gain its wisdom, then observe 48 hours of silence or face spiritual consequences.
Additional initiation tasks included climbing a tree while fire ants bit him and sitting near a hornet's nest being disturbed. Despite the extreme discomfort, the experience concluded with a cathartic feeling of accomplishment and initiation.
A study on why people choke under pressure examined brain activity during high-stakes performance. When stakes become extremely high, the motor cortex recruits excessive circuitry, causing performers to engage muscles and connective tissue that should remain excluded for precision. This results in deteriorated performance despite the ability to execute the skill.
Edgley applies this to his swims, noting that ultra-endurance events differ from precision tasks because imperfect strokes can be tolerated. However, during difficult periods, he consciously reduces mental focus on stakes, telling his crew not to report speeds and focusing only on enjoying the experience rather than performance metrics.
During the Iceland swim in summer with 24-hour daylight, Edgley experienced severely disrupted sleep patterns due to 6-hour on/off shifts aligned with tides. He observed direct correlation between sleep deprivation and motivation levels. When stormbound and able to sleep 8-10 hours, motivation returned dramatically the following day.
He learned not to trust his own brain between 2:00 and 5:00 AM, recognizing that neurotransmitters including serotonin and dopamine become depleted, creating chemically-induced lack of motivation. He developed a team rule against arguments during these low periods, recognizing that negative emotional states make problems feel permanent.
Trauma therapist Ryan Suave provided insight that negative emotions create the false impression they will continue indefinitely, while positive emotions feel temporary. The skill lies in recognizing that current emotional states will pass. Edgley learned to tell himself he cannot trust his own thoughts during dark periods, understanding that the brain tricks itself into believing present circumstances will persist forever.
Ross Edgley explains that while sports psychology has value under perfect conditions, stoicism proves more applicable in extreme situations. The philosophy of Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus emphasizes controlling the controllables and accepting the uncontrollables, which becomes essential when tendons in the shoulder are failing and physical deterioration occurs.
During the Great British Swim, after approximately one week, salt water exposure caused Ross's tongue to lose all moisture and begin falling off. The human body is not designed for prolonged salt water exposure. During a meal with his team, Ross discovered what appeared to be pork or chicken in his soup was actually his tongue. Coconut oil serves as a barrier to maintain moisture and allows regrowth.
Ross acknowledges being particularly messy and struggles with basic household chores like taking out the trash and washing up. He requires grand goals to motivate action - swimming around Iceland or completing the world's longest non-stop river swim appeal to him, but routine tasks lack appeal. He notes that if there were a record for taking out trash, he would be motivated to break it.
When motivation fails and physical limits are reached, Ross describes exiting his own perspective and addressing himself in third person. This technique involves transcending personal identity to push forward regardless of exhaustion, pain, or lack of purpose. During the Iceland swim, this approach became essential when no external motivation remained.
Ross drew inspiration from ancient Nordic berserkers, warriors who entered battle-frenzied states making them impervious to pain and fear. Wolf warriors embodied the spirit of the wolf, biting down on shields before charging into battle. These warriors achieved altered states through ritualistic chanting, breathing, or possibly hallucinogenic mushrooms. An Icelandic chief advised Ross to stop thinking like a swimmer and become a berserker instead.
Ross lived with the San Bushmen in Namibia, covering a marathon daily with minimal water. One tribe member was part of the Kalenjin tribe from Kenya, known for producing elite marathon runners. The Kalenjin attribute their running success to generational pain tolerance developed through an initiation ritual where boys must stand before the tribe without flinching during circumcision performed with a bamboo shoot, with clay on their face. If the clay cracks, the boy is considered undesirable and will not pass on his genes.
The body releases specific chemicals during high-arousal painful stimuli: epinephrine (adrenaline), norepinephrine from the locus coeruleus, dopamine, and cortisol with prolonged stress, plus dynorphin (opposite of endorphin). Cold water exposure and other painful experiences trigger these same neurochemical responses regardless of the specific stressor.
Deliberate cold water exposure, done safely in showers or cold plunges, allows people to become familiar with adrenaline surges and mental disarray that occurs in the first 20-30 seconds. Practitioners learn to slow breathing, regain mental control, and develop strategies. The neurochemicals released remain the same, but familiarity prevents panic from amplifying adrenaline further. This represents stress inoculation training.
Cognitive behavioral therapy effectively treats specific phobias through progressive exposure, but this may not translate to other stressful circumstances if adrenaline stays below certain thresholds. Cold water swimmers may handle physical pain stoically but struggle during difficult conversations where feedback is unpleasant. People enter resilience training with genetic and experiential predispositions that affect outcomes.
Ross emphasizes strength training for ultra-distance swims because these events exceed conventional sport science boundaries. When caught in Arctic storms, technique details like kick patterns and breathing become irrelevant. Strength training strengthens not only muscles but connective tissue, ligaments, and tendons through mechanotransduction. Physical failure typically occurs through ligament or tendon breakdown rather than muscular fatigue or lactic threshold issues.
Endurance training historically viewed strength work negatively, but the concept of general physical preparedness recognizes the need to make the body robust before subjecting it to extreme volume or intensity. The principle involves training to train - ensuring no weak points in the kinetic chain before high training loads.
During a difficult hike while carrying extra water with a sinus infection, Andrew Huberman observed his mental cycles: initial resistance ("this sucks"), distraction through thinking of other things, and a liminal state. These cycles repeated on varying timescales. He now uses different mental approaches for different runs - sometimes distracting with music, sometimes concentrating on every step to maximize discomfort and build resilience for situations where distraction would be counterproductive.
Focusing on outcomes like remaining distance or time creates mental difficulty, while focusing on process makes outcomes inevitable. For swimming, this means concentrating on stroke efficiency, high elbow catch, and stroke completion rather than distance remaining. Sea swimming facilitates this by removing visual references to land, leaving only immersion in thoughts.
Ross describes needing to flick between mental states - sometimes wanting to be anywhere but present, other times being completely present and not wanting to be anywhere else. Under the northern lights with phosphorescent algae creating the sensation of swimming in a black hole while seeing the northern lights when breathing, presence becomes valuable. The key is psychological adaptability to use whichever mental approach serves the moment.
Animals with eyes on the sides of their heads tend to be prey animals.
Animals with eyes on the side have panoramic vision, while animals with eyes in front generate depth perception and stereopsis much better, making them predators. Some animals can translocate their eyes from panoramic to focused vision. When moving vision toward a particular target or virgin point, it raises arousal and the ability to recruit energy, both physical and mental. People in the fight game know this. Dilating gaze creates relaxation, coming off the gas pedal somewhat, and due to the link between vision and time perception, people can actually see more. Motion perception at the periphery improves because of the panoramic view rather than looking through a soda straw, but the ability to recruit a lot of energy to one location decreases.
The myth of the cyclops relates to a creature with only soda straw vision, making it constantly angry, which leads to its demise. It cannot see the big picture and can be defeated by something from the periphery.
People in martial arts use dynamic switching between tunnel vision and panoramic vision to slow or speed time perception to control aspects of a fight. Focusing just on the stroke in the moment represents the mental equivalent of soda straw view, but without keeping the big picture in mind, shoulder pain perception can grow to become disabling. There is utility in being able to dynamically switch back and forth.
During the Yukon swim, the world's longest non-stop river swim, there were times of taking everything in while eating a banana, which may have switched on the parasympathetic nervous system, creating relaxation. During the night when temperatures plummeted, the sympathetic nervous system activated for fight or flight, with full focus on staring at the bottom of the river and maintaining high elbow catch while ripping through the water, described as going full cyclops mode. People would ask if certain wildlife like moose or bears were seen, but the response was negative due to this focused state. Other times involved looking head above water while having a banana and taking in fjords in Iceland.
A friend from a military group overseas described close quarter combat training where the mental set required for life-or-death situations is recruited immediately in the presence of real threat. In training, they have recruits contract their gaze, and this change in autonomic tone was described as eerie. The feeling was explained as deliberately crossing over to a point where one is going to try to kill the person, representing a risky endeavor. This appears to be a hardwired aspect of animal and human visual systems.
Media attempts to recruit absolute focus and get people to forget everything else so they mindlessly trudge forward in anger. This mechanism is powerful and has led to self-protection of affiliate self.
Sharks exhibit similar behavior when about to attack, rolling back their eyes for protection. With great whites, there was behavior where everything seemed okay, then more experienced divers would warn about tiger sharks. Every other behavior becomes excluded in favor of predation.
Cuttlefish represent the most dramatic example of this visual system phenomenon. Cuttlefish are cephalopods like octopuses that swim with eyes on the sides of their heads in a benevolent but paranoid state with near 360-degree vision. As prey animals with no skeleton to protect them, they have only a cuttlebone to allow floating but are essentially a protein snack. When they see something they want to eat, their eyes translocate to the front, completely changing their patterns. Their chromophores shift from camouflage to depth perception dependent hunting patterns. This transformation from a sweet little cephalopod in a benevolent state to a vicious killer occurs with eye translocation happening first, recruiting all sorts of machinery in the brain and body while shutting down everything else.
Nature leaves clues, with success leaving clues through biomimicry. The idea involves switching on this capability like the cuttlefish. On the next swim, there will be experimentation with this approach. All variables are controlled during swims, including lane, distance, and water temperature. Caffeine was used during the Yukon swim, getting into the grams toward the end, which enabled being much happier doing the mundane task of looking at the bottom of the sea. Without it, there would be struggling with dark clouds and hurting shoulders. Four hundred milligrams of caffeine taken fifteen minutes later would change the experience to ripping through the water.
Stimulants like caffeine are incredibly powerful. There is a high caffeine tolerance, allowing this approach. Nicotine has been experimented with but creates very quick dependence with a quick up and down. It is not considered a great tool for this individual, though some people do not mind that pattern. Occasionally a milligram or two might be taken in a workout, but post-workout tiredness becomes noticeable in a way that does not occur without it. Nicotine is preferred as an oral form using lozenges as an occasional tool rather than an everyday tool, avoiding smoking, vaping, dipping, or snuffing. Caffeine serves as an everyday thing unless carrying a respiratory infection, in which case it would be cut out, which is probably half the misery experienced during such infections. Coming back to caffeine after cutting it makes things much better.
Alpha-GPC serves as a milder alternative to nicotine. The advantage is that if working out late in the day and needing to sleep a few hours later, it has a stimulant effect but can increase the amount of REM sleep obtained rather than messing with sleep like many stimulants. However, if taken too early in the day, a late afternoon crash becomes noticeable, creating a quick up and quick down pattern. Modafinil is too stimulating and keeps one up for days. There are other things that seem to work better, including a prescription drug called senosci in small amounts. Using any of these regularly besides caffeine creates more problems than solutions, so they are kept as when-really-needed tools.
Creatine has good studies around it. There is fascination with the idea that discipline and motivation can be supplemented with the right amounts. Studies show creatine with sleep deprivation. The best evidence indicates creatine puts water in muscles and makes one stronger as a consequence. It has been taken since age 17 with occasional week-long washouts, at 10 grams a day for many years. Beyond strength-increasing effects due to water volume in muscles, if mildly or severely sleep deprived, taking 10 or even 20 grams of creatine the next morning can partially rescue some cognitive function and possibly some physical vigor. It is not a replacement for sleep. There is no evidence it makes hair fall out, it is inexpensive, and seems safe, so there is no reason not to take it.
Creatine was not taken on the Yukon swim, and the study came out much later. For the next non-stop swim, creatine will be considered along with tunnel vision approaches. The Yukon swim covered 510 kilometers, done mainly on caffeine. Alpha-GPC and cognizin also work well, providing nicer focus without jitteriness. Tyrosine serves as a precursor to dopamine in the catecholaminergic pathway.
It is important to find what can be done with just great behaviors first: best possible sleep, nutrition, training, social connection, and sunlight. Then experimenting with caffeine and no caffeine becomes relevant. Creatine might be tried for the first time in a long time, perhaps only as a tool to use later when wanting to level up. Figuring out what can be done without supplements can be very useful. With performance-enhancing drugs, honesty is important. Until age 45, no exogenous hormones were touched. At a certain point, experimentation began with a true microdose plus taking hCG to maintain fertility, which has been great without needing to increase the dose much. Lower doses work better. People getting on gear at ages 20, 30, or 40 without clinical need will never really know what they can do without it. Setting aside drug-tested sport with clear rules, confidence in one's ability to train requires figuring out what can be done with just behaviors.
At 41 years old, there is awareness of being a strange swimmer. Swimming started early, at age 13 or 14 at the English Institute of Sport. They look at parents and determine there will not be more growth based on genetics. Parents were not very tall, and at 41, there is still waiting for a growth spurt. It was determined competitive pool swimming would not work, leading to water polo for England School Boys at the international level. Water polo allowed using swimming skills while providing the ability to do something about losing, including getting into fights and scratching with toenails.
A famous event called Blood in the Water occurred during Hungary versus the Soviet Union at the Melbourne Olympics in the semi-final. The water turned red from brutality, with Hungary winning 4-0. Water polo provided stress inoculation training.
Playing for England School Boys under 18 at age 13 meant being on the wrong side of puberty and getting beaten up. The coach indicated the need to get bigger and stronger, leading to weight training starting at age 13. A period with friends competing in World's Strongest Man provided the opportunity to get crazy strong. Training occurred with the Staltman brothers, including Tom Staltman, three times World's Strongest Man, and Eddie Hall, the first guy to lift half a ton as World's Strongest Man. Years of strength training and hypertrophy preceded returning to swimming much later, explaining the strange physique that confuses people expecting a typical swimmer build.
Strength training involves pure strength work in the one to four rep range, going close to failure without going to failure, with lots of volume and frequent sessions. Cam McAvoy, the current 50-meter freestyle world record holder from London 2012 who was Australia's golden boy of swimming, fell out of love with swimming after not performing as wanted. During COVID, he started calisthenics and rock climbing, getting really strong. There is a direct correlation between one-rep max on pull-ups and swim sprint speed. He was doing speed reps with 80 kilos between his legs and holding front levers. Someone suggested he dust off the goggles for a joke, and he ripped a personal best. He completely changed his training with huge emphasis on strength, speed, and power. Now a 50-meter specialist who has gone into the 100-meter as well.
The concept of strength reserve comes from this approach. Drilling one-rep max on pull-ups means that when swimming, which is essentially a unilateral form of lat pulldown with each arm, every stroke generates force that represents a smaller percentage of capability because of the larger one-rep max on pull-ups. Eddie Hall demonstrated strength reserve in a CrossFit competition with 60 kilos on the bar for a clean to chest and push press. Because Eddie is so strong, it was more akin to a front delt raise or upright row, and he just picked up the bar and completed the movement easily because 60 kilos was so light relative to his strength.
Strength training continues for the strength reserve concept, inspired by Eddie Hall and Cam McAvoy. When training, mechanotransduction makes connective tissue really strong. The one-rep max on pull-ups being strong means every stroke is a smaller percentage of capability.
Lifting in the middle rep range of six to 12 repetitions close to or to failure causes runs to suffer and recovery to suffer. Pure strength training and endurance training might actually fit well together. Michael Johnson had amazing running technique that, despite potentially shortening stride, increased force generation through each foot, which is now understood as a greater predictor of speed. Drilling down into strength helps generate more force per stroke and hold efficient biomechanics. Strength and endurance complement each other really well.
Strength sessions occur five days a week with quite similar lifts and muscle groups on multiple days, almost trying to do Bulgarian training method for swimming with one-rep max on pull-ups. The Bulgarian training method broke more champions than it made, with heavy lifting 365 days a year for seven hours a day, breaking kids. Those who could tolerate it became world champions and world record holders. High work capacity exists, with the body responding well to being worked with volume. Long aerobic swimming sessions occur alongside Bulgarian-inspired strength training.
Strength sessions last 45 minutes because they focus on pure strength and the body's ability to generate force. With plyometrics, not a lot should be done. Lyford Christie, believed to be the oldest 100-meter champion, would send people home when they started drilling bad technique during speed and plyometric work. Strength sessions ensure everything is dialed in and perfect, lasting 45 minutes because longer sessions result in drilling bad
Strength sessions are kept to exactly 45 minutes. Any longer and bad technique gets drilled in rather than building actual strength, speed, or power. Before heavier lifts like pull-ups with 60 kilos, supra isometric maximal holds are used for neural priming. This involves holding 80-90-100 kilos in an active hang for only 3 seconds to switch on the central nervous system, then jumping down, removing the weight, adding 60 kilos, waiting 2 minutes, and then performing the lift. This approach has produced significantly stronger pulls without fatigue.
Five 45-minute workouts per week are performed, but leg day is skipped because the frequent swimming provides sufficient leg work. The philosophy is to make the body an instrument rather than an ornament. Tree trunk legs developed from years of previous leg training, including work with Dorian Yates.
Pull-up work happens 5 days a week but with varying stimuli: some days focus on heavy 1-rep max or 2-3 rep max, other days incorporate medicine ball slams for neural priming followed by speed pull-ups, and other sessions emphasize higher volume. The movements and biomechanics remain consistent, but the training stimulus changes.
A high-risk, high-consequence lifestyle creates a defined focus for a partner's worry. When such pursuits aren't present, anxiety may transfer to other concerns. Jordan Peterson's perspective is referenced that life involves suffering, so one might as well choose meaningful suffering. The comparison to Sisyphus suggests embracing the chosen burden rather than avoiding hardship.
During the 157-day swim around Great Britain, daily life reduced to two questions: what the tide is doing and what's for breakfast. Every 20 minutes someone throws a banana from the boat. This simplicity eliminates typical daily stressors like mortgage payments, car taxes, and emails. The marine tracker allowed checking if the boat was moving during the Iceland swim, providing reassurance during the night.
Several spokes on the wheel of motivation, tenacity, and throughput include:
- Commitment because "I said I would"
- Motivation for others, particularly those strongly affiliated with
- Pure joy and love of doing the thing
- Love of one's people and life
- Anger when told "you or they can't"
- Doing something because others can't
Father was diagnosed with stage four melanoma that spread to his legs, preventing running and coaching. After a fall resulting in blood on his face, he responded "Don't be upset. I won the point." When told he could no longer coach standing for 12 hours daily, he immediately suggested using wheelchair tennis coaching, bandaged his tumors the next day, and continued coaching from a wheelchair. This demonstrated finding alternative ways to continue meaningful work despite physical limitations.
The ability to do challenging activities stems from gratitude for what one can do, recognizing that death ends all possibilities. This connects to the "I can and therefore I will" mindset.
During the Yukon swim, Larry, who was terminally ill with weeks to live according to doctors, insisted on joining the safety team in his boat despite medical advice against it. He had lived on the river for years and wanted to participate. Larry spent 70 hours on the boat with his son, cheering throughout the swim. After the record-breaking swim and documentary release, Larry watched it repeatedly in hospital and passed away shortly afterward, having experienced what his son described as his last great adventure.
The myth of Sisyphus involves rolling a boulder up a hill for eternity, only for it to roll back down. Albert Camus suggested Sisyphus outsmarted the gods one final time by smiling, because the struggle alone is enough to fill a man's heart. This concept resonates with swimming as an absurd but meaningful task where the struggle itself provides purpose.
A study on cyclists cycling to exhaustion found that those shown subliminal images of smiling faces were able to continue significantly longer. This led to swimming with a smile as much as possible. Different motivational approaches work at different times - Goggins-style internal confrontation works initially but becomes less effective after extended periods like 114 days. Chris Williamson's analogy compares motivation styles to fuel types - both diesel and petrol work, but different approaches suit different situations.
Dorian Yates overcame a difficult childhood including his father's early death and time in youth detention. He developed powerful "fuck you" energy toward those who said he wouldn't amount to anything. His training intensity was animalistic, as seen in the Blood and Guts DVD. Post-Olympia, he transformed into what appears almost shaman-like spiritually. He maintains some "fuck you" energy while achieving overall life balance, working actively at this equilibrium rather than achieving it by default.
Exceptional performance appears across all domains including science, entrepreneurship, technology, and dance. Some achieve greatness without balance as humans, while others achieve both excellence and balance. Some quit when the difficulty exceeds their desire for balance.
Three animals were identified:
- Terrestrial: Labrador (cheerful, energetic)
- Aquatic: Orca (big, chunky, but athletic when bulked up for swimming)
- Aerial: Crow (misunderstood, referencing ancient Nordic mythology where crows helped find Iceland by being sent out repeatedly until one didn't return, indicating land)
An intellectual is defined as someone who can parse and communicate ideas at multiple levels of granularity. The conversation covered literature, philosophy, natural world understanding, and brain function. The energy was compared to mitochondria in action - infectious and full of life.
Ross Edgley warns against swimming in the Amazon due to parasites that enter through the urethra. These parasites are not bacteria but organisms that live and consume the nervous system and every organ in the body. He jokes that Paul Rosalie will kill him for making this statement and clarifies that Paul is not going to do such a swim. The discussion includes humorous references to a "penis eating parasite" that would affect the penis first before spreading to the rest of the body, leaving someone wondering why they attempted the swim and apologizing to others.
Ross describes himself as a mercenary hired for amazing causes, ready to take on swims around the world whenever someone needs to raise awareness for ocean conservation or raise money. He mentions having several different swims planned globally and states that as soon as someone says "let's go," he puts on his goggles, loads up on caffeine, and proceeds with the swim. He indicates viewers will be the first to know about upcoming projects.
The host thanks Ross Edgley for expanding consciousness and awareness of what's possible, referencing Greek mythology earlier in the conversation. Ross expresses gratitude for the discussion. The host directs listeners to find more information about Ross and his new book "How to Hero: Find Strength, Forge Resilience, and Fulfill Your Purpose" through the show notes caption links.
The host encourages subscribing to the YouTube channel as a zero-cost way to support the podcast. Listeners are asked to follow the podcast on both Spotify and Apple platforms and leave up to five-star reviews. Comments can now be left at both Spotify and Apple. The host requests checking out the sponsors mentioned throughout the episode as another way to support the podcast.
Questions and comments about the podcast, guests, or topics can be submitted in the YouTube comment section, which the host reads. The host directs listeners to follow Huberman Lab on all social media platforms including Instagram, X, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn, where science and science-related tools are discussed, some overlapping with podcast content and much of it distinct.
The host promotes the Neural Network Newsletter, a zero-cost monthly newsletter available at hubermanlab.com that includes podcast summaries and protocols in the form of 1 to 3 page PDFs covering topics like sleep optimization, dopamine optimization, deliberate cold exposure, and a foundational fitness protocol covering cardiovascular and resistance training. The newsletter signup is accessible through the menu tab in the top right corner, scrolling down to newsletter, and entering an email address. The host emphasizes that email addresses are not shared with anyone.
The host concludes by thanking listeners for joining the discussion with Ross Edgley and for their interest in science.
Keep Andrew Huberman in your library
Save the videos and channels worth coming back to, and find them again in one place.
