Episode 44: The World’s Fittest Podcast Episode with Ross Edgely

UK-based athletic adventurer Ross Edgely talks with Nick and Heather just days before undertaking an unbelievable feat: swimming all the way around Great Britain at a very muscular 220-plus pounds. This is a true deep-dive into the limits of human training and performance, philosophy, and "strongman swimming," all of which come together in Edgely's new best-seller The World's Fittest Book.

Highlights:

- His day today: An impromptu 30km swim, aka, "an eating competition with a little bit of swimming."
- On mental thresholds versus physical ones, and "craving" the insanity of extreme challenges
- His rule on training: "I have to be able to say in a single sentence what I'm training for."
- The push-and-pull relationship with muscle and endurance sports
- The unique advantage that muscle can provide in water
- The advantage and disadvantage of muscular weight for runners and other athletes
- Ross's "shapely hips" as a life-saver for swimming
- How he landed on the "treeathlon," and on swimming as the arena to push his limits
- The strange advantage that swimming while pulling a tree provides (it's mental)
- On swimming around Great Britain: "It could be as little 3,000km, or as much as 5-6,000km."
- "A successful swim will be a byproduct of efficient feeding strategies, prehab, rehab, sleeping correctly, taking care of any wounds, abrasions, chafing, salt mouth. The swim will be a byproduct of doing all of that right basically. So the swimming's not even the hard part in a weird way."
- The 10-year journey that resulted in The World's Fittest Book
- Why he tries to teach "methods" rather than programs
- His fitness utopia: "I would love it if ultrarunners are no longer scared to go and you know chat to the powerlifters and hang out in the squat rack. And equally, if powerlifters and bodybuilders won't be scared to go and run an ultramarathon, or even just a 5 or a 10k, in fear that their muscles'll waste away."
- On reading philosophy versus reading fitness books prior to his greatest challenges

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