In short · Summary by AI
Andrew Huberman talks with ultra-endurance swimmer Ross Edgley about the psychology and neuroscience of motivation and resilience, drawing on his long-distance swims around Great Britain, Iceland, and the Yukon River. They frame motivation as a balance of many drivers, including self-respect, love for family, defiance of doubters, and inner purpose, and discuss the anterior midcingulate cortex, prefrontal strategy-setting, and stress inoculation as ways to build persistence. The conversation closes with the Sisyphus myth and Edgley's view that the struggle itself can fulfill a person.
- Edgley explains his lifelong drive for challenge, from putting rocks in his backpack as a 10-year-old to choosing expeditions that others call impossible.
- He describes shifting motivation over time, from record-seeking and ego in his Great Britain swim to ocean conservation and eDNA sampling in Iceland.
- Huberman outlines the anterior midcingulate cortex as a region linked to tenacity and willpower, noting that its activity and size correlate with doing hard things, while stressing that its exact computations remain unknown.
- They discuss the tube test in mice, where prefrontal cortex activity predicted winning and persistence independent of hormone levels, and suggest prefrontal strategy-setting can be driven by anger, love, or purpose.
- Edgley describes using 'outsourced common sense' with his team and relying on loved ones, including his girlfriend and late father, as sources of purpose during the hardest moments.
- Huberman and Edgley discuss threat responses, stress inoculation through cold exposure, and the idea that negative emotions feel endless while positive ones seem to fade.
- The conversation covers training choices such as strength work to build connective tissue and strength reserve, and the caution that resilience from one practice may not transfer to every stressor.
- Edgley closes by identifying with Sisyphus, saying that the struggle alone can fill a man's heart.
Sisyphus and the Absurd Hero
0:00So, Cisphus was one of the the cleverest humans to ever exist in ancient mythology. Was able to outsmart the gods and he even chained up death at one point which made the gods really angry because basically people were fighting wars and there were no no one was dying. So, there was no souls going into the underworld.
0:13So, Hades was really pissed off. Anyway, eventually he dies and the gods are just livid. So, they're like, "Look, we're going to we're going to punish you and what we're going to do is we're going to make you roll a boulder up a hill for eternity and just as it gets to the top of the hill, it's going to roll back down and you're just going to do that for eternity."
0:26just this like absurd like completely thankless task. But then it was Albert Camu the philosopher who said he was able to outsmart the gods one more time and that's if you imagine that Seephus was smiling. And this is the part I love. He said because the struggle alone is enough to fill a man's heart.
0:43And I think for me they've even coined the phrase that that Seephus was the absurd hero. And I I I think for me swimming sometimes I'm like this is Seephus. This is my boulder. You know it's not going anywhere. But the struggle alone is enough to fill a man's heart. >> Welcome to the Hubberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science-based tools [music] for everyday life.
Introducing Ross Edgley and Motivation
1:09I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and opthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Ross Edgely. Ross Edgely is a British ultra endurance athlete who has accomplished such feats as swimming around Great Britain, which by the way is nearly 2,000 miles in distance, and it took him nearly 157 days.
1:26He also swam 317 mi of the Yukon River continuously, meaning non-stop for 56 hours. He's run a full marathon pulling a car, a full-size car by the way, and he's done 30 marathons in 30 days and much more. All of that is, of course, super impressive. But the reason Ross is a guest on this podcast in particular is because both he and I wanted to discuss brain circuits and the psychology that allow humans, any humans, to engage and build up their mindset for motivation.
1:58So today we explore and develop in real time what we really can say is a new model of motivation to do hard things. One that includes all the possible sources of drive to prove others wrong, to celebrate life out of love, out of anger, to honor those who can't. to fight mental stagnation and on and on.
2:17What's so special about Ross and again another reason why he's here on this podcast in particular is because not only has he accomplished all these incredible things, but he has the most incredible level of curiosity. He absolutely wants to understand the underlying neural machinery and psychology of motivation.
2:32What's allowed him to do hard things? What can allow you to do hard things in different contexts of life? And in doing that, Ross brings forward new ways of thinking about brain plasticity and how to reshape your brain in order to make yourself better. I should also mention that Ross has a new book out, one that I am personally excited to read and to listen to, and it's entitled How to Hero: Find Strength, Forge Resilience, and Fulfill Your Purpose.
2:56You can find a link to that in the show not caption. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is however part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public.
3:10In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors. And now for my conversation with Ross Edgely. Ross Edgely, welcome. >> Thank you so much. >> We're going to need a bigger chair. [laughter] This feels surreal. I mean, we were just talking off air, weren't we? That um so much of your teachings helped me across the Arctic Circle.
Childhood Drive and Early Challenges
3:29Just jellyfish bouncing off my face, tongue coming off. This feels very weird. Uh, I'm honored that you're here. I'm very curious about you and what you do and how we can uh hopefully translate some of that into actions that people can take, thoughts, thought patterns, control of their own thoughts that people can explore and perhaps adopt to have a better, more enriched life, which is obviously the purpose of it all.
3:57Take me back because I I've read about you. I've read about your accomplishments. I have smatterings of things that you've done and why. But you're 41 years old now, right? >> I am. >> Yep. >> Let's do this in snapshotish fashion. 10year-old Ross, what's he doing? What's he thinking? What's his strength?
4:16And where is he struggling? I think even as as far back as 10, I was aware that um I was just wired a little bit weirdly. You know, my dopamine kind of works a bit differently. My my family, we love going on hikes. And I never forget at 10 years old, uh, my dad he was taking me and my two brothers on this huge hike and it it just wasn't enough for me this hike.
4:35I was just like, ah, you know, I kind of want to make it harder. So dad caught me putting rocks in my backpack and just putting it on my back and then walking up cuz I just I needed more of a challenge. Otherwise, it just kind of wasn't fulfilling something inside of me. And I think even now looking ahead, fast forward, you know, 30 years and I'm still doing the same thing.
4:54When I come up with an idea for a swim, if I tell someone this idea and they go, "Oh, yeah, that that sounds quite good." I go, "That's terrible." You know, you're not shocked by it. But if I tell someone a swim and they go, "Well, that's impossible. That's ridiculous." Like swimming around Great Britain, swimming around Iceland, I'm like, "That's the one."
Intrinsic Versus Ego-Driven Motivation
5:12You know, if people are just like, "That's absurd." I'm like, "Then that's the idea." So, I think even as far back as 10, I was aware that my brain was wired slightly differently. if you don't mind me asking, was the idea of putting rocks in your backpack in part to show others that you could do more?
5:28Like, and and no um shame if it was. I mean, I think we all have an ego and we all um want to test ourselves, but the feedback that we get is often important too. So, as a calibration point, if nothing else. So, let's say you were hiking alone. Hopefully, you weren't hiking alone at 10, but if you could imagine you were, to the best of your abilities, do you think that you would have been loading those rocks in just for you?
5:56Yeah, I think I would. I think for for me, again, being so self analytical, it was always an intrinsic motivation. The process was its own reward. There wasn't really anything extrinsic. If anything, I was keeping the rocks secret. I didn't want my dad finding out. When he found them, he was just like, "Right, take them out.
6:12I'll give you some food or something that's actually functional." So, so I was actually hiding them from that. It was just something that that I wanted to do that when I got home I'd be like, "Right, I was able to do that." And I think um it's changed a lot though as well. I I think again sort of jumping a little bit to to swimming around Great Britain.
6:28I did that when I was 32 years old and and I spoke about it at the time that for me it was very much ego-driven. Uh I I talked about Captain Web 1875, first guy to swim across the English Channel. did it on beef broth and brandy and swam breaststroke because front crawl was on gentlemanly like so he just crushed it all the way across the English channel wasn't for charity wasn't for anything like that he just wanted to pioneer our understanding of swimming and human endurance and for me
Anterior Midcingulate Cortex and Tenacity
6:56swimming around great Britain was exactly that it was looking at Maslo's hierarchy of needs it was feelings of accomplishment prestige recognition it was all of those things ego driven after that that that then felt a little bit shallow I was a bit like ah you know to just do it for records that feels a bit fragile a bit shallow feels a bit strange and then and then it was the swim around Iceland where the University of Iceland said we want to do something to to raise awareness around our ocean
7:25conservation efforts uh but also as well if we could collect edna samples so environmental DNA samples that just basically pick up if there's been a whale in the water a seal a Ross edgely whatever it is um we could track the biodiversity in a level of detail around ISO that we've never seen before upon Upon hearing that I was like right that feels like a better reason.
7:44It's not just records that feels better and that I did when I was was 40. So it has been interesting. I think quite often sometimes it is intrinsically motivated but but then a little bit later it told my hands off it was ego driven. It was extrinsic. Um I wanted to be the guy the first person to swim around Great Britain.
8:02And then now for various things that changed in my life. I I think it's like almost moving up Maslo's hierarchy that I'm not going to quite say self-actualization, but we're looking for something a little bit more than records. I think >> staying with the 10 roughly 10year-old uh Ross Edgely. Were you always very expressive?
8:22You had a lot of spontaneous energy. you like and have you always woken up uh like ready to roll or are you kind of like a a a slow slow grind into the morning or is it let's go, you know, [laughter] >> just let's go. I've always just been like that. I I think as well like I I've kind of got a handle on it now, but like when I was young I was so competitive and and such a bad loser.
8:45There was um [laughter] my dad I remember he he was one of the very few people who actually understood how to to manage me and I I remember I did a a school cross country. I think I was about 13 years old and um the guy I came second the guy that beat me deserved to win. He was a better athlete. He beat me fair and square but I was livid and afterwards I just wouldn't speak to anyone and I stormed off.
9:09I refused to go and pick up my medal. I said, "Second place is the first loser." And I started to run home. And my dad just slowly got in the car and just followed me all the way home just to make sure I was safe. But he was like, "I'm just going to have to let it get it out of his system." I think it was 10 miles when I got back home.
9:23This was after the cross country. I had blisters. I was tired. I was exhausted. But by the time I got home, I was like, "Maybe I'd overreacted there, Dad. I'm I'm so sorry." [laughter] And he just let me realize that on my own. Like I said, I think I've got a bit more of a handle on it, but equally, and this is something I actually wanted to to quiz you about because I love your your work that you've been talking about um you know, broadcasting the the anterior mids singular cortex for me and this is a
9:52massive oversimplification. So I'm going to apologize on where I'm speaking to you, but as a coping mechanism upon hearing that and the the podcast that you did with David Gogggins, I thought about the anterior midsulate cortex almost like grit and quit, pain and purpose, like weighing scales constantly like this.
10:07And for anyone listening, I hope it helps as well that if you've got these weighing scales, pain and purpose, if it's really painful, if your tongue is falling off and swinging across the Arctic Circle 114 days at sea, then you need a lot of purpose to tip those scales. But equally, sometimes you can, you know, talk about ocean conservation, all the amazing things that we were doing it for.
10:28But equally, there can be um Carl Young talked about your shadow self, you know, a part of your psyche that you keep away from the public. Maybe you're aggressive, hyperco competitive, jealous, and you you kind of like tuck that away. Whereas Carl Young and Jordan Peterson talking about, you know, that is a monster.
10:45You know, it it can be useful. It's not bad having a monster inside of you. It's bad when you can't put him back in the cage. And so when swimming around Iceland, again, going back to that anterior mingul cortex pain and purpose. There was some people online who was just like, "This is stupid. He's never going to do it."
11:01I even had media partners as well just going, "Oh, Ross, this has been good, but maybe we wrap this up now." You know, I I don't think this is possible. And so then that 10year-old, that hyper competitive like side of me ended up coming out. I'm now just going to do this because people don't think I can.
11:20So it's really strange that you know I'll use different parts of motivation and I suppose my question to you that I've wanted to ask since crossing Iceland is does the anterior micular cortex does that respond sometimes to your shadow self? Can you have a darker form of energy? I know Gogggins for instance will speak to himself and be like man up you know who's going to carry the boats everything.
11:42Whereas me sometimes I try to do it through gratitude but but sometimes I do find that form of fuel >> useful for those that might not have uh heard me talk about it before or the David Gogggins episode just very briefly for our listeners. The anterior midsulate cortex is this brain region that my colleague at Stanford Joe Parvevesy discovered when he was stimulating in humans.
12:04He's a neurosurgeon when stimulated people report verbally because these experiments they literally have a piece of the skull removed. They're stimulating with an electrode. I've seen these sorts of experiments. Not those exact ones, but and they can talk. They're awake. Head is fixed in a stereotype, so they're not moving around, but and they'll say, "It feels as if there's a storm coming, but I am going to lean into it.
12:26I feel like there's a major challenge of some sort coming and but I'm going to fight this challenge." Okay, so it's tenacity, willpower, etc. And there's a lot more to it, but that's just in case um anyone hasn't heard us talk about it or others talk about it before. The anterids singulate cortex is a very interesting structure because it receives inputs and outputs from many many brain areas including the amygdala, including the memory centers, including the dopamine reward system, the nigriadal pathway and
12:55on and on. And so despite what we know about it, it enlarges when people do hard things. It shrinks when people tend to shy away from hard things. Its activity and size correlates with success in doing hard things. can build it up by doing hard things that you don't want to do, etc., etc. We still don't really know.
13:14No, I think it's fair to say we don't know the computations, the math that it's doing. We're not yet at the place in neuroscience where we can say, ah, the anterior midsulate cortex computes prior notion of self with goal, with purpose, with fear, with anger, with love. And this is the computation that leads to persistence versus quitting, deliberation versus assuredness.
13:39We don't know yet. >> So it's not a total black box as we say, but there's still a lot that's not known. And in fact, I think we can start to understand more about tenacity and willpower at least at this point in history by talking to people like you in particular to you about the anterior midsulate cortex.
13:59Then the anterior mids singulate cortex recordings can tell us about you. Does that make sense? >> It does. Yeah. >> So in the future at some point we will have the technologies to be able to unpack the the computations with a lot of precision. There are people developing those technologies but they're not there yet.
14:16So I want to be careful to not say things that we don't know. But here's what I was thinking coming into this podcast today. So we can find posts on Instagram, full podcasts, books and historical records and on and on of people that did very very hard things for just about every different reason. And so rather than a teeter totter that goes from quitting versus persistence, I have this mental model that I'm wondering if you'll be willing to entertain with me today through your
14:48story whereby let's imagine a a beam of wood balanced in the middle, but another beam of wood that's at a right angle to that. So it looks like a cross also balanced in the middle. And then another beam of wood and another beam of wood. So you can just imagine this as like spokes on a wheel and it's balancing.
15:06And as long as no side touches the ground for too long, you persist. >> And so what I came up with is a name assignment for each of those spokes. And so if you're willing, I thought it might be informative and fun for me to just call out each one of these one by one. >> This is awesome. Take the time you need to recall a time when if and only if you were calling on that particular emotion set that motivation and paint a picture for us.
15:37>> This is awesome. So you've taken my modeling and just literally like like two-dimensional. You made it like fourdimensional. This is um >> well threedimensional. You're going to add the fourth dimension. [laughter] >> So pressure no pressure. No pressure. Um, so this is a little bit like a qualifying exam and and no, it's not an exam.
15:55This is [laughter] this is for um informative and entertainment purposes. But the cool part here is it's not a movie. It's real. It's your life and the incredible things you've done. So, let's start with doing something because you said you would. No other reason. Just because you said you would, either to yourself or to the world.
16:15Forget what they're saying in response. Forget who it's for. But just why? Because you said you would. Have there ever been times when you've done something simply because you said you would. 100%. That that was Iceland. Yeah. That that I was just like, "You said you were going to do this. You, you know, or even and the Great British Swim, I think more so because I told sponsors and everybody I was going to do it."
16:41And it was my older brother as well. He's amazing in that he can just kind of like take a complex situation and just really simplify it. We broke the record as we went around Scotland. um for the longest uh stage C swim and everyone celebrated. They were like, "This is amazing." And Scott was just like, "Yeah, but it's going to count for nothing unless you actually finish it."
16:58And I was like, "Do you know what? You're right." And so I think, yeah, that so often it it just came down to that void of records and everything. It's like, you'll look like an idiot if you don't finish this. You said you were going to do it. It's important to yourself. And also as well, void of anything extrinsic, looking yourself in the mirror.
17:15I think um Einstein when he said adversity introduces you to you. I think you know you realize the most honest version of yourself when you're in an absolute hole. And I think um selfrespect that I would know if I had quit and I actually could have finished it. So yeah, I I yeah, I think probably all of them I've done it because I said I would, not because of how I'd be perceived publicly how I would think of myself when I looked in the mirror.
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19:45If you would like to try Lingo, Huberman Lab listeners in the US and UK can save 10% on a 4-week plan. Just visit hellingo.com/huberman for more information. Terms and conditions apply. Again, that's hellingo.com/huberman. on that swim or other times when you were pushing forward simply because you said you would.
20:07Is that looping in your head? I mean, I realize along these very long journeys and and and expeditions, whatever you want to call them, these super challenges, that your mind must go to all sorts of places, dark and light and everything in between. When you're getting into the water, is it cold? Does it feel cold?
20:26Or you like, I've been here before. This isn't cold. It gets easier the longer it goes on. By the end of Iceland, I think I just habituated that form of stress. Almost had stress inoculation training. At first, when you're trying to habituate like the the sleep deprivation, the cold, uh you wake up and if you've left your wets suit out, you have to crack the ice off the wet suit before you can even put it on and then get in it.
20:47it by the end you are just numb to it you know and and and whatever's happened there that habituation of the stress uh whether my anterior mids singular cortex has grown whatever it is it it by the end it still registers but you're you don't have an emotional response to it anymore. So, let's pick a different one.
21:07Not just because you said you would, but because you don't want to disappoint, which is different, right? You don't want to carry the shame of someone else mirroring to you that you said you would do something and you didn't. So, we could call this fear, fear of shame. And you know, no one likes to talk about these darker energies that can drive people, but >> we'd be lying if these weren't powerful motivators for people throughout history.
21:36So, um, do you recall a time, um, could be any time when fear of shame was a driving force? Absolutely. Iceland, this is the easiest one to answer. So, so towards the end we had a 100 miles to finish basically and I was basically uh the baby was due the first the birth of my first child was due in a week's time.
21:57We had 100 miles still to cover. We had hurricane Eron coming through the Atlantic. Over in Grindic on the West Coast, there was a volcano that went off that basically was spewing poisonous gas. So, we couldn't get close to that. And over here, we had one of Europe's largest glaciers that was just sending shards of ice as big as this table.
22:12And the team and everyone was just like, "Ross, I'm I'm so sorry. we're going to be here for 2 weeks in the harbor. And I was like, "No, no, no. I'm so sorry. We need to go out. I need to be back for the birth of my child." Not not only for my girlfriend, she's amazing. I've been with her 13 years. The the look on her face, the disappointment that was going through my head, but then also as well, just knowing that I wasn't going to be there to welcome my son into this world.
22:32So, that one 100% fear of failure, fear of letting people down Iceland. And I gunned it and finished the final 100 miles purely fueled on that. The the University of ICE and everything and the that was important. The Edna samples tracking biodiversity pad in comparison to you're not going to be there to welcome your son into the world.
22:54So I just gunned it. >> I notice you say we whenever you talk about these expeditions, not I. Is that just your nature or is it I realize these are probably team efforts, but that's a I think it's an important point. Do you know I'm glad you picked up on that just because I think especially with sea swims that they are such a team event and in no way am I you saying that's to self-deprecate it genuinely is in that if we read the tides wrong or the weather or whatever then then I'm
23:24going backwards. You can be the best swimmer in the world. You get the tides wrong in Iceland you're going backwards and it happened a few times >> actually backwards. >> Actually backwards. Yeah. Yeah. Up up up up at the Penland Fur on on the Great British swim for instance that's in the top of Scotland.
23:34Um, you can be traveling at 10 knots if you get it right. That is almost the cruising speed of a dolphin. But you get it wrong, you're going backwards at 10. You could you could be Michael Phelps [laughter] and you're still going backwards. So, it genuinely is just like such a team event or the Yukon for instance as well.
23:51It was a maze just kind of of these countercurrens, whirlpools, log jams. There was a time when I was swimming and a log came back the other way and the team in the Yukon were just amazing at just reading the river. So, so I I genu I say we because it's a team event. I'm just the one who has to get in the water.
24:12Genuinely. >> Yeah. Cuz you can't be thinking about whether or not you're headed into certain danger beyond what you're already in. I mean, you need to be able to concentrate on your stroke, your breathing, um your mental frame, like whether or not your toes are falling off. Have you been frostbitten on these?
24:29>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've picked up loads. This is strange from, you know, hypothermia, hypothermia, rabdomiolyis, cellulitis, you know, picked up a >> What's cellulitis? >> Ah, cellulitis sounds like infection. >> Exactly that. Yeah, a skin infection. But basically, I picked that up in Loch Ness cuz it was fresh water.
24:44Um, basically the the wet suit was chafing it got so deep it turned infected. Uh, and then if that gets in your lymph nodes or your bloodstream, it can be fatal. Uh, it was a really strange position to be in as well because it was a 56-hour non-stop swim. The water is about four degrees, barely above free.
25:02>> No stop for sleep. >> No, no, no. So, non-stop swim. You can't touch anybody. No one can touch you. You can't touch the boat. You just, you just swim 56 hours. And towards the end, it was so strange cuz I had hypothermia. So, my core temperature, I could feel just I was shaking from the inside. It was in my bones, but my skin was on fire from the cellulitis.
25:20So, it was this strange attack on my physiology. But yeah, to answer your question, picking up a fair few of those, it's really strange that it recalibrates your perception to pain. And swimming around Iceland, there were times when I was really cold and I was like, it's not as bad as Loch Ness. I'm still okay.
25:36I'd look at wounds around my neck and everything and I'll go, "Oh, that's that's not too bad. It doesn't it doesn't smell infected. We're good." >> Trophies um for a sicko like you. Um, do do you believe in the Loch Ness monster? >> Something touched my leg. Honestly, [laughter] I love all of it. It was so interesting.
25:56I got so sort of I was I don't want Yeah, it probably was. It was like a spiritual experience. And I think by, you know, that point was it nature who said, you know, whoever fights monsters should see to it that he doesn't become a monster himself. For if you gaze into the abyss too long, the abyss gazes back into you.
26:14And I think for me swimming through Loch Ness that was going through my head and I definitely stared into the abyss too long. Um it was going well up until 56 hours and then lit I just remember almost it was very gradual but you were like looking and your tunnel vision just got narrower and narrow. So you were looking through the the eye of a needle and then it just went black and I remember waking up and my girlfriend and my mom were at the head of my hospital bed and I just looked up and I just went
26:40ah [sighs] it's not gone well has it? and they were like, "No, Ross, [laughter] it's not gone well at all." So, I think learning from that, to go back to what you're saying about hypothermia thing, it's nice now knowing that with the Iceland swim, having graduated in Loch Ness, I was like, "Look, let's not let's not become a monster.
26:59Let's not stare into the abyss too long." Did you go back and do and do that one? >> Loch Ness, I want to I've got unfinished business there. I keep wondering since I was a kid, why don't they just drain Loch Ness and solve this Loch Ness monster thing once and for all. [laughter] >> I know, right? >> It's not good for the tourist trade though, you know?
27:14I mean, yeah. I always think if it's real, how cool is that? And if it's not, >> um, what a what a remarkable way to increase tourist traffic to a location, you create a a myth and a mystique, something that's dangerous, but not so dangerous that people are afraid to go. >> For sure. you know, you seed the world with a few photo like that's what they clearly one or the other happened, right?
27:37Or some combination. >> Yeah. But I I love that you brought that up as well because swimming around Iceland at the start, you know, I heard about, you know, elves and trolls and mountains were trolls that didn't make it back before sunset and sunrise. All of these stories. I was like, "Oh, that that's cool.
27:52That's a cool story." Swimming around it, there is something in the water. There were events. [clears throat] So, I I got a block ceremony. So basically, it's almost like a an ancient chief um a modern day form of of that. And he basically gave me a blot ceremony where he blessed the swim and it was just amazing speaking to him.
28:10He said like, "Ross, you know, I I think you'll die, you know, but um you know, it'll be a good saga, you know, that the Icelandic sense of humor." >> That was the send off. >> That was [laughter] the send off. >> Even at the start as well, I remember I did a swim >> and afterwards I'm looking up at the northern lights and I'm I'm sort of towling myself down.
28:27And I'm like, "This is unbelievable." And this old Icelandic fisherman just comes out of nowhere. And I just hear his voice. And the first thing he says to me is, "They're probably deciding if you're going to live or die." And I turned around. I went, "I'm I'm I'm sorry." And he goes, "The Valkyries."
28:43I said, "I'm sorry, you've lost me. Please explain." And he said, "Well, we believe that the Northern Lights are the Valkyries, Odin's warriors, female warriors, and they're riding through the sky, and the shimmering is their shields and their swords, and they're taking the fallen back to Valhalla." And I was like, that's deep.
28:58[laughter] Okay. Then, like I said, starting the swim on the blot ceremony, they again and and sorry if you know this, but they were talking about the Guardians of Iceland. >> I don't know anything about I I know very little about Iceland. >> Oh, this story was amazing. So, they we basically started on the West Coast and they said, Ross, you're aware that you're swimming in the Kingdom of the Bull.
29:16I said, what do you mean? And they said, well, the story goes that basically there was a king, a foreign king who sent a sorcerer dressed as a whale to come and invade Iceland. came over to the west coast and there was this massive bull and they said right you can't attack there and that represented strength and power went over to the north coast that was the kingdom of the eagle they turned up the eagle saw them from miles off the sorcerer was like you can't attack there went over to
29:42the east coast over the east coast that is the realm of the dragon mainly because there's loads of waterfalls and dragons like fast flowing water and then bang on the south coast the realm of the giant the whale the sorcerer came there and was like whoa you can't attack there either and and then disappeared.
29:55So when you look on the crest of Iceland, so often they have the bull, the eagle, the dragon, and the giant. And again, upon hearing that, I was like, well, that's that's a cool story, but it's a little bit deeper. And they're saying really, it's about respecting, you know, nature and everything. And and I think going around Iceland, you know, that was just a shot of adrenaline.
30:16And and I think what was weird and I wanted to quiz you on this actually because upon hearing stories of this I don't know and please correct me if I'm wrong. Is it is it the the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex that deals with strategy and it's almost the story that you're telling yourself? So when I'm swimming around I'm like this is the kingdom of the bull and I almost made it poetic in my head and that actually got me through a few swims and then even towards the end as well like I
30:42said about trying to make it back home the story of Odin. So you know in ancient Norse mythology they believe in fate. They believe that you know you're you you can't control your destiny and the only thing you control is your attitude towards it. So Odin basically Ragnarok being the the Norse apocalypse where the basically the the gods fight the giants this huge battle.
31:01And Odin basically had traded his eye for wisdom. So he knew spoiler alert that he was going to be eaten by a giant wolf. But he just charges into battle anyway. And I think what was really interesting upon hearing this certainly by the time I finished the swim after 114 days I was sat there thinking you need to finish you need to get back for the birth of your son.
31:23Uh but equally if the ancient Nordic gods are watching this is what they would want. Again nature what is it there I know of no greater life purpose than to perish in attempting the impossible. And all of that was going through my head. >> You asked about the dorsalateral prefrontal cortex. So there there is a a set of studies that since you have an interest in neuroscience and the anterior mids singlet cortex that I did return to I haven't talked about on the on my podcast ever
31:50>> but um that it's a it's a solid literature in in neuroscience and um has to do with an experiment called the tube test. Do you know about the tube test? You might like this. Some years ago people were interested in what drives persistence and winning in competition. And so they developed uh something called the tube test and it's done on mice.
32:08But then we'll talk about the human analog. And basically you put two male mice into a tube and they want to fight. It's just what male mice want to do. Female mice will do it too by the way. Uh female male pairings will do it too, but they tend to do this with males. Uh male male pairings. Put them in the tube.
32:25But these fights are not such that the tube is small enough so they can't really scratch or bite at each other. >> Got it? >> And one pushes the other one out of the territory. You know, space, who gets the most space is a is a very primitive but important feature of competition among animals, dogs, etc., right?
32:40You know, who gets space. So, you put two mice in and one tends to win and one tends to lose. And there's some interesting statistics that fall out whereby prior winning leads to future winning on average, right? So winners tend to be winners and losers tend to be losers over time in a way and this is where it gets interesting that's independent of testosterone levels independent of things like nutritional status I mean at the extremes these things fall away like one is starved or one is castrated okay
33:11right um body weight these sorts of things so there's something else there >> so a bunch of different laboratories have worked on this measured brain activity in a broadscale way and and pinpointed this region of the the prefrontal cortex which in mice you can't really say is like equivalent to our dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex but at least has components of it.
33:27And then they do the following experiment. You take a mouse that was consistently a winner and you silence this particular region of the brain or you quiet its its activity. You lessen its activity and it becomes the loser. You take the loser and you in real time increase the amount of activity in this particular brain region and now it wins every time.
33:51Here's what's wild. the amount of cortisol, the amount of testosterone, the amount like none of that stuff speaks to what could really be going on. It seems that this top down circuit from the prefrontal cortex to a bunch of other stuff. These are clearly circuits, not just one location in the brain is driving persistence to win under any realistic condition.
34:14>> Right? Again, you can't take a fetal mouse and have it beat an adult mouse, right? But all other things being more or less equal, activity in this area drives persistence and winning. And there are equivalent experiments in humans using virtual reality and brain scanners and this kind of thing. It's hard to do the experiment.
34:36You're clearly physically stronger than I am. I'm reasonably strong, but No, you absolutely are. Right. So there's no way that you're going to stimulate my prefrontal cortex and I'm going to beat you in a in a deadlift. I just know this. It's it's okay. We don't even have to like entertain the other possibility.
34:49But but there's a world where I if we are otherwise within, you know, 10 or 20% of each other's abilities in something [snorts] that whoever has the most activity in this brain region wins over and over and over again. And the converse is true, too. So, I find this amazing because the analog in human is that this is a brain area that's involved in conscious strategy setting.
35:14>> Conscious strategy setting. And the particular strategy could be anger, >> could be love, could be you want to get home to see your child born, could be you're hungry and you want to eat, you want others to eat so they can survive. You know, I the beauty of the prefrontal cortex is that it can learn lots of different strategies in lots of different contexts.
35:38>> It's a unique circuit in that uh component of the circuitry in that way. Oh, when people tell me, "Yeah, I'm in mile 200 of the of a race in the desert and I want to quit and I just have this thought and I push." Clearly, that's a prefrontal cortical top down type thing. That's a real thing. There's a physical substrate to it from mice and it's been shown in other species too, but it's clearly there in us.
36:02But what I love about what you said there and also as well for those losing then as well there was um someone recent was talking about Roger Federer and they said if you watched his matches and turned the sound off and couldn't see the score you wouldn't know if you won the point or lost the point. He was so stoic about it.
36:20So do you think it's the same as well if you're losing that if you don't react to it you'll maybe able to buck that trend. Does that make sense? >> Yeah. No, it totally makes sense. So, I think that the there are several big macros today that are going to emerge, but one of them that clearly will emerge is this notion of energy, >> right?
36:36The reason I asked about the 10-year-old Ross Edgely is I I had a sneaking suspicion that he had a lot of energy. >> You know, some people just have a lot of energy, right? Having a lot of energy is great. Energy management on a backdrop of having a lot of energy, that's where things start getting impressive, right?
36:54Poor energy management on a backdrop of a lot of energy is I think what leads to the 27 club. people who do incredible things and die >> whether by virtue of their particular activity or by virtue of I heard this in this wonderful documentary that everyone should see which is um the defiant ones which is about Dre and Jimmy Iene and development of like beats and the story of hiphop and and there was a guy in in NWA who we don't hear about much anymore who clearly was extremely talented but
37:25he had a really bad accident and you ask and he's talking about how it happened and involved called wildness and and you ask him uh you know they were like what do you think happened and he just goes the excesses. It was the excesses of all that energy pouring in money and drugs and >> fast cars and being famous and it and and it wasn't well managed in him and he's still alive but the excesses.
37:48So energy management is is clearly a piece of the ability to be the 10-year-old you and load more and more rocks, but you're not burning unnecessary energy. So the efficiency piece is, I think, where these stories that we tell ourselves, like I'm doing this for so and so, you're able to like separate out all the other possible motivations at least for some period of time.
38:13Like just being motivated is like a disregulated system. So motivated to do blank because blank that's a well-managed energy system. >> So most people would die for your levels of raw energy. But in keeping with this theme about how you regulate dynamically regulate your energy, have there ever been moments along any of your conquests when you thought that's it, I'm done.
38:41But you had told somebody don't let me quit. You outsourced the management. I'm really glad you asked that because it's almost the opposite. So, so looking at um Tim No central governor theory or psychobiological model of fatigue, you know, this idea how the brain and the body interact and will pull the physiological handbreak to stop you from going to complete exhaustion.
38:59Upon hearing this and studying this, this was before Loch Ness and also I did a swim in Lake Tresamino in Italy. We got caught in a freak heatwave. Uh temperatures over 40° C, water temperature up to 34°. It was bath water. It was rabdomiolyis waiting to happen. uh 37 hours in approaching 100 km exactly the same happened.
39:18Body just started to shut down. Uh I am just swimming. I'm so stubborn. And I think what's really strange is looking at that psychobiological model of fatigue. I know that as soon as my brain that's a hypochondric starts pulling the physiological handbrake, I just go no no no no. I just put my foot down on the gas.
39:38So I actually with my team we talk about um outsourcing common sense. I I say look, you know, and I don't and I don't say this proudly. It's a personality defect. I'm well aware of that. But I know I will swim till I put myself in hospital. And that's that's a bad thing, especially now as a dad. [laughter] So I have I outsource that to my team and I go, "Okay, guys, if you tell me that that you need to pull me out and you play that card, I I will listen because I can't keep putting
40:06myself in hospital." And I think that that's one thing. It's almost the opposite now that um I need to be saved from myself. Again, I don't say that proudly at all. Uh but I'm just very aware now uh from metrics they have with my blood work and various things. I'm like, look, I can't I can't do that again.
40:21Not now as a dad. I need to be more responsible. >> Yeah. And that that's trusting the team who are amazing as well because they are well aware that what we're trying to achieve is so ambitious. So they will allow me to sort of play with the boundaries of common sense and sports science. Um, Jerk Kennedy, great friend of mine, one of the greatest ice swimmers ever.
40:40Uh, so he just understands hypothermia, the cold, and there's so many times me and him have conversations and he's just like, he's still good. He's still coherent, but there's other times where, you know, I wish I'd had Jur there just to go, Ross, you're done. It's interesting the uh we'll talk a little bit about addiction later, but you know in um I have some friends couple who've been on this podcast who've talked openly about the fact that they were bad addicts and they needed to
41:07literally assign somebody the job of don't let them talk their way out of a you know an isolation or don't let them talk their way back to their phone or don't let them talk their way back to a casino and this kind of thing and um with huge cash rewards if the person doesn't allow them to do it. That's pretty much you have to create incentive on the other side too, right?
41:26Because um some of these folks are really persuasive and and it's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. [laughter] Exactly. So yeah, I mean we can be honest about who we're talking about here because he's talked about it openly. David Cho was on this podcast some years ago. Extremely talented artist, amazing human being.
41:40Blessed to call him a friend and he's had a gambling addiction many times over in his in his life. Certain fortunately he's he's uh not in it now and hopefully never will be again. But there were times when he had to offer his team tremendous amounts of money to not let him convince them to let him out of a like an an isolation cabin for a couple months while he was, you know, sobering up or give him his phone in which time he became viciously addicted to playing Angry Birds 23 hours a day.
42:12>> Good game. >> Yeah, exactly. [laughter] Or Pokemon or whatever, you know. So what you describe because it's a elected um endeavor and because uh provided you survive and make it home to your your girlfriend and uh child it's all good right but it has a component of addiction right I mean it's like if you didn't if you don't add the rocks if you don't have the next swim if you you know so how do you gauge what's too much I mean every high achiever has to answer at some point the question, how much money, how
42:49many miles, how much fame, how how many blanks before I'm satisfied. >> And the answer is clearly not concrete. It's it's like a dynamic thing. >> 100%. >> So, like, how close to dying do you have to get before you're like, you know what, I'm going to chill and paint or something? is such a good question because I'm I'm literally as of only the last year, so my son's now one year old and so he's really kind of forced me to ask those questions.
43:18Now when I'm proposed swims, the 21-year-old self, if somebody said, "Oh, you know, go do swim through a volcano down in Antarctica, I'll be like, "Yeah, hold my beard." Done. Whereas now, I've I've got to ask myself, you know, is is this worth it? Is it enough? Is it worth doing? Um I don't know. The only thing I know is with um you know Victor Frankle talking about you know the meaning of life is to give life meaning.
43:39Uh Jordan Peterson saying the purpose of life is to pick up the heaviest load and carry it. All of those things resonated so much with me that I I I do need purpose. And Victor Frankle says that over fame, money, just a human needs to wake up. What is your reason for getting up in the morning? And when I don't have a swim or something to train for, my girlfriend just says I'm just like a caged animal.
44:04She sees me at home and so so when people I mean she's amazing and when I left for Iceland she's you know pregnant quite heavily pregnant waving me off and they said how are you letting him do this and she goes a he would be terrible if he was still at home so I know he's happiest when he's out there even swimming around Great Britain as well so many people back on land when Hester would come and see me and I was a hundred days in I look like a sea yeti werewolf you know my tongue was falling
44:31off I was chafing all over and people would say how's he doing? I've seen the wounds. I've seen his neck. And Ha would just always reply, "I've never seen him so happy. Like, he's having the best time." And again, I don't say that necessarily in a proud way, but I just know I just need purpose. Whatever it is, give me something to train for.
44:49>> And she met you when you were already like this. Yeah. >> And doing this, that's important. It >> It's so You didn't like You didn't like spring this on her 3 years into a relationship? >> No, no, no, no, no. And she's incredible. Like the Yukon swim for instance. there. So that was 510 km non-stop, 56 hours, although the entire expedition was about 70 hours.
45:06So the entire team, including myself, didn't sleep for 70 hours cuz we had to actually get the boat to the starting point. And I just remember like just swimming and there's just the silhouette of my girlfriend and every 20 minutes she throws me a banana and I'm just like, "Thanks, babe." And she's just like, "No problem."
45:24>> [laughter] >> And I think it was that, you know, that that I feel so fortunate, you know, just swimming with gratitude, realizing that I'm just like, "Oh, thanks for accepting me. I know I'm a feral weird boyfriend." So, I really appreciate this. >> You seem as I would describe and sometimes describe myself um you know, only partially domesticated.
45:41So, >> absolutely. [laughter] That is so when I turned up as well, I mean, I was still I was hairy from Iceland. I had like jellyfish tacles. I was like just literally chafing wounds. And I arrived at the hospital. So I made it back by 3 days for the birth of my son. So as I arrived into the hospital, nurses and everyone was like, "Oh my god, who is that?"
45:59And Ha was like, "Oh, no, no, no." Unfortunately, that is the father of my child. [laughter] He's he's feral, but he's safe. >> Is she a worrier by nature? >> Yes. But she said since, you know, we've been together 13 years and she says now she just has to let go. And um I think it's really interesting because she >> now her barometer of of worrying is completely changed uh because when you have I mean the Yukon was a great example and I I wanted to actually this is great cuz I wanted to chat to you
46:29about this anyway but just uh your perceptions of danger. So there was so many times on the swim where you know black bears were fine you know in the Yukon in Canada they're a bit skittish and they look at you and I can almost feel my amydala or circuitry whatever it was was looking and going that's okay.
46:44When the brown bears appeared on the side, they are just looking. They are not skittish. They're just like looking at you going, "You're not a salmon, but you're not a bear. I wonder what you taste like." And I am just swimming. I turned to the guys in the Yukon. And they were amazing, the sport team.
46:57I said, "Guys, am I am I okay here? Cuz that that brown bear is is looking at me like I'm a dessert." And they pulled out Andrew. It wasn't even a gun. It was a cannon. And they went, "Ross, if it gets too close, it'll end up in my freezer." And I was like, "Right, that's the response I wanted. Great.
47:13Carried on swimming. >> Yeah. >> But but you experienced that as well with shark diving. >> Yeah. >> As well. That's changed that rewired you. Is it fair to say? >> Yeah. I I don't want to shift this to a story of any of my um adventures and and they're in no no way, shape or form as bold and and as enduring as as yours.
47:33So, but yeah, a few years back for my lab, we um decided to record these great white sharks in the wild, bring it to the VR lab. And a friend of mine, a a very accomplished photographer, videographer, Michael Mueller, um convinced me uh to get dive certified and exit the cage and swim towards the sharks.
47:51And there there's a skill to doing this. It's not like, you know, you're not just cowboying it, but but you know, I had an air failure not out of the cage on the hookah line the day before. And there's a whole story there. So, um, 2017 marked the end of the deliberate end of me taking risks with my physical, uh, life.
48:09Um, but what I learned there and what I've learned um from people like Cam Haynes and from spending time in Australia and from people who live in Montana like Andy Stumpf is that, you know, our our perception of what's dangerous in the wild is often a little bit cryptic and we can easily be misled like, oh, that little spider looks friendly and that's the deadly one or that bear looks very large and looming, but it turns out that's not the one that will actively hunt you.
48:40it's actually the somewhat smaller one that is uh just likes to hunt humans, you know, this kind of thing. And so the key takeaway being whether it's jellyfish, spiders, snakes, uh birds, or in some cases people for that matter, locals have the key knowledge and and our ideas about what's dangerous or not um are often wrong.
49:02So best to air on it's all dangerous. >> 100%. >> Right. And and I love what you said there as well because again diving with great whites and and also tiger sharks myself they they have um the ampulive Laurenini where they pick up electrical impulses and I think exactly to your point what was so strange is the first time I dived with them I'm always comfortable in the water but it was so strange how like the tigers and the great whites knew that I was the weakest diver and whether that was like I was
49:31flinching I acted like prey whether my heartbeat or whether I was breathing it knew and it was so interesting on the the audio, they were like, "Ross, control your breathing. Ross, slow your heart rate." And I was like, "How does it know?" And sure enough, they just all just came straight for me. And they were like, "Ross, I'm not saying square up to it, but I'm not saying flinch and back away as well."
49:51So, as it came towards me, there was that I was where can I help you? You know, and it sort of was like, it looked at me and there was a real >> form of communication that is obviously non-verbal and it sort of looked and was like, "All right, okay. You know what you're doing. I I'll leave you alone."
50:05You know, and it was it was so strange. Exactly the same with the bears in the Yukon that they were looking and if there was a weakness that is the laws of the jungle, you know, I would have been charged. >> Yeah. I mean, all animals have their own sophisticated forms of intelligence. What you learn with the great whites before you go down there is they're going to come looming in slowly.
50:28>> There a lot of tuna out there. There a lot of seals and and other things for them to eat. So, they're not actively trying to hunt you. But if you run swim away from them, they perceive you as prey. They're making a binary decision, right? And this is actually an important thing in terms of brain circuitry.
50:41Again, I had a student uh who then went off and did a postto. She now has her own laboratory in Switzerland. Uh Lindsay Cle who published some papers on um threat assessment and response. How um fear can turn to pausing can turn to aggression is very very interesting work. Uh and she really deserves the credit.
50:58We can put a link to those papers. But there are these areas of the midline phalamus like basically square in the middle of the brain that basically make the decision among three choices. You can go forward, you can stay in the same place or you can retreat. >> And predators are also assessing are they moving forward toward me?
51:15Are they staying still or are they retreating? You know the brain is very of all species is sophisticated in air quotes but it has to make these decisions often with limited amounts of information. So these are more like switches than a continuum. M >> and Lindsay has identified a number of those switches uh in the brain, she and others.
51:33And so the bears are probably paying attention to, you know, is he moving forward toward me or something else? Is he staying still or is he retreating from me? They have to know if it has something to do with them. And you have to do the same. You encounter a mountain lion along a trail. >> People will say, "Well, don't run.
51:49Get large." Okay? But at some point, if it gets close enough, you've got to make a decision. Are you going to fight it or are you going to run? Right? Or you could lay and play dead. So these are these are life lifealtering decisions so to speak and the computations are not super sophisticated and this is no doubt relevant to everything we've been talking about whether it's anterior midsulate cortex or prefrontal cortex is that brain areas will ramp up their activity and cross thresholds after
52:16which circuits are set in motion. >> Right? So there's this kind of buildup. There's there's names that don't matter right now for for this, but there's this kind of like buildup of chatter that exceeds a threshold and then in a certain action is taken or withheld. And so the thoughts about I just said I would, so I'm going to do it.
52:32I want to get back and see my kid being born. Gosh, I would feel such shame if I didn't do this. These are different paths into the same sets of do I go forward, do I stop, or do I ret or do I quit? retreating in this case would be quitting. And so there's not it's sometimes fun to break things that are somewhat sophisticated, the psychological and the neurobiological into ultimately you got three choices.
52:58You can go forward in life or at any moment you can stop or you can retreat or quit as a case may be and sometimes that's the lifesaving decision >> 100%. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor AG1. I'm excited to share that AG1 has just launched their newest formulation, AG1 Pro.
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54:12Again, go to drinka1.com/huberman to get a free bottle of omega-3 co-enzyme Q10 with your first AG1 subscription. Let's get back on the spokes for a moment and then we've done three spokes already, >> and then we'll plow forward. Yeah. So, I said I would. >> Mhm. >> Um, I don't want to disappoint. >> Yep.
54:32>> And I've got something I really want to be there for. So, that's sort of what we touched on so far. >> How about I'm going to do this. I'm going to continue to do this because you said I couldn't. Because they thought I couldn't. [laughter] >> You know, I find this one to be very prominent in the online space.
54:47But it's also one that as people get better and better and achieve more and more, they hear less and less. So it's, you know, this is the this is the great, you know, gift to the underdog, right? You have you have fuel. They're handing you fuel. >> But when you win, they're no longer you've obviously done it.
55:11Then it turns to, well, they had all the right resources or But what how about this? Has anyone ever said to you, "There's just no way." And that sparked something in you like now it absolutely they just handed you a blank check [laughter] is the best way to put it. Exactly that. And and I I love what you said there because throughout my career that's become less and less useful because less people doubt me.
55:36And I'm almost like, "Oh." So when the the swim around Great Britain was probably the biggest one and I love that because it went on YouTube, uh we were doing weekly vlogs. the very first vlog that we put out there, the comments and I read through all of them uh cuz I was so excited. I was like, "Oh, this is going to be brilliant."
55:51Comments were just like, "He's far too big to be a swimmer. I think he's going to give up after 100 km. He's not going to even make it on the South Coast." All of them. And I read them. What's what's actually interesting is I think it was like 5 years ago, I ended up going back and somebody had commented on all of these comments and gone, "Well, this didn't age very well, did it?"
56:06And [laughter] I was like, "That made me feel so good." But what's so interesting is once we swam around Great Britain, people stopped doubting me. And so I missed that. [laughter] When we said we were going to swim around Iceland, everyone was like, "I think he can do it this time." And I'm like, "Where are the where are the guys who were trolling me?
56:24I need them back." But yeah. Yeah. Certainly around Great Britain 100%. Going back to the spokes, that was a big one. So are you moving dynamically between these things because one sort of loses its potency to keep keep you going? That is exactly the word I use as well. I anything that stimulates you.
56:43It's almost like going through your head like when you're changing the TV channel and sometimes something can work and it becomes so potent and you're swimming and I'm swimming cuz people said I couldn't. This is amazing. But then the very next day you go I'm going to tap into that again. You go, well maybe maybe they've got a point.
56:56[laughter] Do do I need to finish this? You need something else. And I think it's just like I always say your reasons to continue need to be bigger than your reasons to stop. And I love this conversation because we're identifying those different categories, those different spokes. Um, and it's just knowing that what might work one day might not work the other, you know, and then and then sometimes, for instance, one of the most potent was um to my girlfriend, she ended up sending me a
57:23picture of the scan, you know, and it was one of the first scans that I ever saw of my son that I just woke up 2:00 in the morning, cracked ice off my wets suit, dived in, and I was like, "Oh, we're getting this done." So, it was different. and and knowing knowing which one to go. And I think as a coach as well, sometimes some of my friends who are amazing, like I said, Jer Kennedy, Chris Morgan, Olympic swimming coach as well, they'll know which buttons to push of mine in the right moments.
57:48I think all great coaches do that and then sometimes I have to do it myself as well. >> So, you've got a um FU. I'm going to do this. >> Yep. >> FU. You said I couldn't. >> Yep. >> I'm going to do it. Let's talk about the other one that Doggins talks about sometimes, but even he talks about a little bit differently than f me.
58:12>> Like f me, I'm going to do this. Like, so what I'm doing here is going to the polar opposite. F you is like you don't think I can do this, watch >> like I'll die trying. But then at some point if that potency runs down, wouldn't it be wonderful to run to our like move to our love for something as motivation?
58:28Sometimes f me like I am weak for even considering stopping. F me for even like so it's not a pleasant thought but >> does it have potency for you? Do you is that a source of >> continual pushing on the gas pedal? >> I think it is. And to take that some probably slightly further but slightly more specific.
58:51I don't know if it is this but but sometimes there'll even be a part of my body that is failing. So, it's not necessarily [ __ ] me. It'll be like [ __ ] you right shoulder. And I think so it's that that I'll get angry at my body failing me and I'm like no no no no no no. I'm taking you for a swim across the Arctic Circle.
59:09You're not stopping on me now. So So it's like not just me, but there will be parts of me that I get really angry at if it's failing me. Is that the same, do you think? >> Yeah. Well, no. And and you teed up beautifully what I was going to get to, which it it's going to sit in a kind of uncomfortable place for some people listening.
59:26I just want to give that warning, but it's reality cuz what you're talking about when you see a scan uh an ultrasound of your unborn son and you want to meet the newborn son that is him. >> Uh you're talking about somebody that's of you, half of you. Let's be fair, your wife did significantly more of the work.
59:48She just dated him, but you know, but but it's of the two of you and it's of you, right? I could imagine that if you saw a picture of uh your a family member's child that you told you would do this also, but at some point if I just show you a picture of a baby and I go do it for this baby, I imagine it's not going to do a whole lot.
1:00:08>> Okay? Unless there's some other story attached to that about you're raising charity for that child, etc., etc., right? Right. So this gets to a very important and I don't think dark but an important to acknowledge aspect of our wiring which is one of the most fundamental aspects of our brain and our biology is we have to know the difference between us and not us >> and us it starts with us as the individual then it extends to our kin.
1:00:35It extends to who we decide. You know, you can adopt, you can have friends, you can have a community, but it's the the ability to tap into motivation for us versus not us, even in the absence of competition, is extremely powerful. And it's rooted in the hypothalamus, like what this primitive brain structure that is essentially a set of switches.
1:00:58There's not a lot of thinking down there. It's it's forward, stop, or retreat. >> Okay? It's mate or don't mate. It's fight or don't fight. It's quit or okay. And and you got eat or don't eat, right? You don't really have a lot of options to kind of eat, right? So, so this is most visible, I think, in a we'll put put a link to this.
1:01:17There's a beautiful illustration of this that's very brutal, which is a nature documentary where there's a lion being attacked by a pack of hyenas. This is real. And they're trying to tear its testicles off. They have a an awareness that if they tear off its testicles, it's unlikely to mate in the future and potentially limit the lion population.
1:01:37And they're not doing the math into the future. They've just learned this from each other or it's hardwired. Okay. Um many animals do this, right? And there's another lion who comes along and enters the fight to protect its its other lion, right? To Yeah. But the amazing thing is and and they ward off these hyenas and it's brutal and they're getting shredded up and they protect their testicles as they're doing it.
1:02:01>> But the amazing thing is just prior to this scene, those two lions were fighting. They were trying to kill each other and rip off each other's testicles. So there's a switch in the brain from me just guarding the self to us versus them. And and it's very dynamic. You can expand this out. Humans have this ability to say, you know, my country, my team, my whatever, you know, um, and it can transcend all sorts of boundaries and you can make it purely cognitive.
1:02:29But when you get down to the real like hardwired stuff, it's your DNA. >> It's your child or it's a child that you chose to adopt and raise and so therefore it's your kid and you would die before you would quit. >> [snorts] >> And so the strength of motivation I would argue is not we have this mental model of these spokes on balance on a balance.
1:02:51But the the interesting thing about your example of your shoulder is you're like uh-uh you're not going to quit on me. In fact, you're not really of me right now, but you're enough of me that I'm going to keep you. You're not going to saw off your shoulder. You're like you're kind of like f you. I'm going and you're coming with me.
1:03:08And your language, I'm not capturing it exactly right. actually encapsulates this this idea that the dynamic and it is dynamic concept of me versus us versus them is kind of what allows us to push through anything whether it's a PhD thesis in neuroscience which is >> not as you describe but is it's long in a different way it lasts years it's uncertain >> probably won't kill you as long as you have good lab technique but it can it you know it can do its damage psychologically and it's it's a pick any
1:03:40effort medical school parenting Whatever it is, the us not versus them, but us with a little bit of not us. >> That is the stuff that drove human evolution, exploration, technology development. >> And this is true for men and for women. I don't want to cast this in a purely Y chromosome framework. So anyway, those are some thoughts and reflections.
1:03:59And I think your description of your shoulder is like, "Fuck you. You're coming with me." is pretty telling >> for sure. I, you know, I I love what you said there as well. Do do you find it's also the other way that the reason I bring that up is you know I lost my dad four years ago and then the Iceland swim existed in this strange world of you know it wasn't just my dad he was my mentor he was my coach and then so I've lost my dad and then I'm becoming a dad myself and on the Iceland swim as well
1:04:28as well as trying to get back for the birth of my son I I said when I when I wrote my book about Iceland I said I want this to be almost a tribute to everything that my dad taught me and a letter to my future son and certainly swimming as well. Not to get too deep or spiritual or religious, but I was in my head this got me through so many dark times.
1:04:47I just imagine that dad was sitting up there. He was a tennis coach, so he's playing tennis on the tennis court in the sky up in heaven and he's looking down and and then me it was just I would get goosebumps. It would invoke something visceral inside of me, primitive that I would imagine my dad up in heaven just looking down and just to everyone else up there just go and be like, "Yeah, that that that one right there swimming around Iceland, that one's mine."
1:05:09Yeah. And that just Oh, I just even now I could just swim for another 100 miles thinking of that. So that was something I I used as well. So would you say with that exact Yeah, exactly. >> I mean for those just listening I am nodding with big nods. I mean, I've heard you describe on uh other podcasts, you know, you're you're running, running, running.
1:05:29You're exhausted, exhausted. You see your son at the finish line, no caffeine, no injection of saline, and all of a sudden you've got a jetpack on. >> Another cute baby at the finish line. Probably not the same effect. [laughter] >> Probably not the same effect. But what you're talking about here is the ability for humans to pull on this transgenerational understanding of of us is so it's like the mei piece is important, but the us that really is an an affiliative us is again it's it's the
1:06:04the most potent fuel in the universe. Now the the sad side of this and I it sounds like you had a good uh relationship to your father on balance. you you light up when you when you when you talk about him. You know, the the the sad thing and actually I think there's been some remedy in the um online sphere is that a lot of people have a very complicated relationship with their parents and or even a horrible relationship with one or both of their parents.
1:06:33And under those conditions, they have to look elsewhere to not just be a lone wolf. It's important to be able to be a lone wolf, but it doesn't take you the full distance. And I know there are a number of sayings about this, like you know, and people will be like, there's no eye in team and these kinds of things.
1:06:48Yeah, that's and those phrases are important, but what we're talking about here is very primitive circuitry. Like if you think about the driving force of evolution, right? It's like every species is trying to make more of itself and protect its young. In particular, it's young, >> you're young, >> and once that's okay, then you can focus on other things.
1:07:07So yeah, this is the this is the deep reality of the primate brain of which of which we are. Perhaps you a little bit more than the rest. I'm just kid. I'm just kidding, man. [laughter] You earned that joke by being so damn fit >> in the endurance and strength stuff. So I can I can jab a tiny bit. But there's another piece of this, right?
1:07:26Which is if people don't have that transgenerational um pride and excitement and love to pull on, they have to look elsewhere. And you know, for a long while I've thought that, you know, Jaco Willink has kind of been the football coach to a lot of guys that didn't play football. >> Great, right? >> The military commander.
1:07:47I mean, dude is, first of all, he's a good friend of mine and he's every bit as kind and driven and cool as he comes across, even more so in person. Um, but he does not disappoint. But not everyone was in the military or played football. And yet he's there for you, encouraging you to be at your best through discipline and other things.
1:08:05and and there are other examples and Gogggins and you and and and on and on and I think that it's really helped a generation of of men and women >> uh to like believe in themselves and have an affiliative sense of drive, >> not just be a lone wolf >> and and for that I think we we owe a debt of gratitude to to all those folks.
1:08:28Andy Stump, DJ Ship, there are too many names to to rattle off and I forgive me because I'm missing a bunch of them. Cam Haynes and Rich Roll, you know, and on and on. But I really think that deep in our brains below our our unconscious, it's like we're trying to check off these boxes of be okay. Once we're okay, who close to us or that we consider close to us, can we bring along?
1:08:52In your case, it was your shoulder and then and then layer up from there. Yeah. So these days you're sitting uh at a pretty high apex of what you do and Josh Whiteskin who has been on this podcast, Brazilian jiu-jitsu guy, you know, incredible chess champion at performance coach for the Boston Celtics, he said, you know, when they're trying to become the champion, you're trying to become the champion, but when you're a champion, you're trying to defend the championship.
1:09:19And the mindset is completely different. So, where are you at right now? What what's like the next peak or do you feel like you're defending something or do you feel like you're looking for the next big challenge that will raise you up? What's the next rock to put in your backpack? I I'm searching for it at the moment and it's just it's got to tick a a few different boxes.
1:09:42I I think cuz it it does feel like that. I think my my 21-year-old self, like I said, Mazo's hierarchy, I just needed feelings of accomplishment, prestige. Even if someone said, "You're not going to earn any money from this, Ross." At 21, I'd just go, "Yeah, yeah, but I get the record, right?" And they go, "Yeah."
1:09:58I'm like, "Well, that's enough. That's all I need." I actually lost money. Looking back, really irresponsible. I I didn't have a house and I had, you know, enough money to put down for a deposit on a house. And the opportunity to to swim around Great Britain came up, but the the boat crew were like, "Look, we need a deposit on the boat.
1:10:15We need the crew and everything." And I remember I turned to Ha. I mean, again, this is how lucky I am. And I said, "Look, I should probably do the responsible thing, right? Uh, I'm 32 years old. Get a house, get a mortgage. That would be the smart thing to do, or do I take that money, put it on a boat and a crew, and I try and swim around, go Britain?"
1:10:31And she looked at me and she just sort of went, "Ah, I hate to say it, but you know, you might be old, 80 years old with loads of money and everything. You can buy loads of houses, but you're not going to be 31, 32 with the ability to swim around Great Britain. So, I think you need to put it on the boat."
1:10:45That was my girlfriend. I was just like, "Thank you. I think you're right. So, we did. It paid off, but I lost money swimming around Go Britain. Whereas now, not to sound like a commercial mercenary, but I'm like, you want me to do a swim, I need to be paid. I can't just keep doing this, otherwise it's a very expensive hobby.
1:11:01And I think now it is so lucky that I have got to a point where you could call it a career in inverted commas. And I think that's interesting as well because I think sometimes the idea of talking about money with these sorts of events, it's almost it's a bit, you know, of a dirty word. Whereas I I always like um you know your guy that the Japanese concept saying you know your guy is your reason for being why did you get up in the morning made up of four things what you love what
1:11:26you're good at what the world needs and what you can be paid for but it needs to be all four and I think so often people will do these and they forget that what you can be paid for and you almost become um like a martyr as well you know and you're not making any money whereas with me I'm really really fortunate so to answer your question as well just to be so so honest you if someone came along went do this swim and here's a check I'm like right going back to the us then I'm like amazing that helps my
1:11:55my son and any future kids that we want to have as well so money >> it's it sounds bad [laughter] but that's become a thing as well >> yeah I mean I don't think money is a dirty word especially not in the context that you're talking about earned honestly through incredible endeavors and it to serve your family and um >> having lived in Los Angeles for a few years now it's an interesting place you know there are a lot of success stories here there a lot of broken dreams here too.
1:12:18And it's not uncommon to encounter somebody who's still so driven to make it and has not made it that they've essentially cashed in everything else. And you know, I have tremendous respect for the endurance community and also for the strength training community, but one of the saddest things I ever ever saw was I love this movie about Westside Barbell, but there's this one scene where a guy who was doing the uh who was training with with Louiesie and those guys talks about missing something of
1:12:49like a his son's event because it was bench press night and the regret that he still lives lives with. I don't know if his son I can't remember if his son passed or if they're out of touch. I don't know. But in any case, he was so driven by this particular goal that he missed some critical moment in his child's life and it still haunts him.
1:13:12>> And no one wants to be that guy or gal. >> Nobody wants to be that. >> And nobody wants to be that. And I think that, you know, it money is a tool to, you know, to allow, if I may, your son to be able to pursue what he finds most enriching. Something tells me he may be swimming with you at some point, but you'd hate for him to h feel the pressure.
1:13:35>> Yeah. >> My dad's a scientist and I loved science as a kid and then when we had some friction, I resisted becoming a scientist. And then at one point I'm like, this is ridiculous. I'm like, I'm gonna destroy my life for all the wrong reasons. I decide to become a scientist. Now, we we have a great relationship and we talk about science all the time, but the core component that we're talking about here is our our biological understanding of us.
1:13:57And once we are well enough, then we can take care of others that are in our closest spheres and then it can radiate out. Like, so if you can check the box of being okay and then some, you can do more and more and more for more and more and more people. >> 100%. Yeah. Right. like martyring oneself for everybody and not being able to take care of your family or yourself.
1:14:18That's not good. No. So, I don't think you should feel any shame about your desire to make money. >> Okay. >> So, that that can be a spoke on the thing. >> The more you make, the more people you'll be able to be able to take care of. Well, there's this implicit assumption that with more money, you're just going to buy more stuff for you.
1:14:33But what about you can do more stuff for the rest of the world. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. So, I would put that down as one of the spokes certainly swimming around Iceland. It was like, look, you complete this, you make money. So sometimes that got me through a few swims. Not as much as the other spokes that we've been talking about, but it was there to identify.
1:14:48It was like, you finish this, that's another world record. You can monetize that. So yeah, that was Let's put that down as one spoke as well. >> Great. I've said this before and I'll say it again that money cannot buy happiness. It's true. But it can certainly buffer certain kinds of stress and anyone who says different probably has a lot of it.
1:15:07So, you know, that's just reality and and depending on where one lives and what their basic needs are and extravagant needs are, etc. that those numbers differ, but it can certainly buffer certain kinds of stress. Um, end of story. And that's always been true. It will always be true. Um, you should be paid for the work you love and that serves the world.
1:15:28That's that's the goal. You've talked before and I'm very interested in this notion of dark energy versus light energy. You know, f you energy is powerful, but there's this assumption that it drains us more quickly than I love you energy. And I think that's true because of the relationship to dopamine and and other chemicals to love and positive like generative things versus just fu energy.
1:15:52These are some of my favorite experiments, but they're their outcome is kind of dark but telling about human nature. Robert Heath was a neurosurgeon. Um, and he had patients with electrodes embedded in many different places in their brain and they could self- stimulate and some stimulation areas would lead to feelings of drunkenness, others sexual arousal, others would make them giddy, others would make them tired.
1:16:16And so he let them basically self- stimulate at will. And it wasn't a ton of patients that had this as you can imagine, but across all of them, the area of the brain that they preferred to stimulate the most by a pretty impressive margin was the area of the brain turns out to be the midline phalamus where they would experience mild frustration and anger.
1:16:39They found it to be incredibly arousing, incredibly motivating, incredibly useful in a way that sitting in the chair with their head in a stereotax was totally useless, except they just really liked it. [snorts] And it's telling, a little dark, but telling because it it speaks to humans desire to have an me versus them kind of feeling, >> like [clears throat] frustration.
1:17:04That arousal again drives all sorts of things whereby maybe otherwise we would become complacent. That's fascinating. See, I love what you said there because I think when you look at the the anthropology of humans, the history of as humans, it's it's so interesting that people sometimes go to me, why why do you do these swims?
1:17:24Like why just put yourself through that? And I go, well, I think humans have always had this idea of kind of self-discipline for self-discovery. You look across different cultures, whether it was the Yamabushi monks of Japan, for instance. I actually lived with them for a little bit. We went on a it's called an Okugaki.
1:17:40It's a p a pilgrimage. You meditate under ice cold waterfalls, drink uh green tea, and basically do a marathon a day in the mountains. The mountains was their church and it was brutal blisters and yet you wear basically these like sort of wooden sandals as well. It was horrible. You look at the Aborigines going walk about.
1:17:58You know, there's the Masai tribe there. There's we've always been doing something. So I think that's so strange that were they just hitting the button, you know, on frustration and stuff like this. So do you think that is do you think that's tapping into exactly the same experiment? I do. I mean I I picked a hard career for me, you know, uh you know, science is hard, it's slow, it's grueling, and then you have breakthrough and you know, like so I got very accustomed to that.
1:18:24But I think that we all kind of crave that but shy away from it too. It's exhausting if there isn't some sort of reward loop in there to kind of re-up us. And so I think all cultures have it. All careers have it. My friends who are visual artists, they certainly have it. Their torment is part of their fuel.
1:18:45And they run this dial that we're talking about. This uh the spokes on this thing that we haven't yet named that maybe we'll name at the end. Um that you'll name at the end. I think it's what we're talking about is is tapping into drive and motivation but with a purpose >> and the purp the purpose can vary in in time and I think all cultures have understood this.
1:19:09I mean to some extent we're all sort of neuroscientists. It's just that some people look with a like with a with more precise tools right and and give things names. But I consider you a neuroscientist from the perspective of like your level of self analysis as you you do these things. On that note, very quickly as well, there was another one and I wanted to to get your opinion on this because I again, this is going to sound so strange, but I lived with the Jamanau tribe in in the
1:19:34Amazon jungle for a while. >> We did Irawaska uh for an entire week. It was this ceremony. Um I was 21 at the time. Uh just finished kind of professional sports and never touched drugs, psyched anything like that. Um very much a dear to the Wilder Band substance list. And then for this documentary, they dropped me in the middle of the Amazon jungle and they were like, "Here go this is I Wasa."
1:19:54didn't even know what it was and I was like what? So it's kind of like makes me giddy. Is it like alcohol? And they were like a bit stronger than that. I take it basically throughout the entire week as well. My my first was like the the worst trip like ever. I did everything wrong. And and it was actually explained to me my friend for instance um Ruben he works at Glastenbury so he's done all sorts of drugs.
1:20:17And I remember I was sitting there first of all I was sweating it like somebody had thrown a bucket of water over me. And I was sweating that lap. Then my tongue swelled. So it was bigger than my mouth. I was speaking like this. And then you projectile vomit. So it just purges my system. At this point I'm like, "Right, I need out of this."
1:20:34So I turn and I look at Reuben to my right. He's found a feather on the floor and he's licking it to taste the colors. I was like I was like, "You can't help me, can you?" [laughter] It went so wrong. That was the first night. It was then it was later explained to me. It's like getting on a roller coaster, Ross.
1:20:49You can't get off, you know? There's no You can't fight it. just you've got to just sit it out. Fast forward through the entire week and then basically it was this again sort of self-discipline through self-discovery. So there was various tasks that we had to do. We basically had to we we caught a snake.
1:21:05This is going to sound so weird. I'm so sorry. I apologize now. You had to bite the tongue of the snake out of its mouth. They then explained to us that you have now got the wisdom of the snake, but you cannot speak. If you speak, the spirit of the snake will hunt you for the rest of your life. So the next 48 hours, you cannot >> Live snake.
1:21:25>> Yeah. Yeah. Live snake. Yeah. They open its mouth and you just you basically just tongue it. >> I [laughter] hate snakes, but I I but I respect them and their right to live, but I do not like again I'm not proud of this. But then when you taken this vow of of silence, you then have to go through various different tasks.
1:21:40So I had to climb a tree. I'm holding on to this tree maybe 4 m in the air and they just smack the bottom of the tree and then fire ants just disappear up the tree and they just start biting you. So you've done a week of Iawaska, you bitten the tongue out of a snake and then you're holding onto a tree as fire ants are biting you.
1:21:59You get down, they immediately take you to another tree. There's a hornets's nest. You see where this is going? Bang. Hit the hornets's nest. You just have to sit there and just take the stings and not make a sound. But what was so strange, so strange, and I love that you brought up this study is having completed all of that and been initiated with the Jamanau tribe, the feeling that I had afterwards, whether it was Iaskar induced, whether it was the pain, I don't know, but it was just cathartic.
1:22:28It felt good that at the end of the ceremony, there was a I not euphoria, but I was like, "Wow, you know, we did it." And it's so strange. I'm not [laughter] I'm not advocating or recommending it to anyone, but it was weird that maybe I was just pushing that button in the brain listening to that study.
1:22:47There are so many times in my life when I was pushing the button. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, all in the correct ratios, but no sugar.
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1:23:42I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes. Element has a bunch of great tasting flavors. In fact, I love them all. I love the watermelon, the raspberry, the citrus, and I really love the lemonade flavor.
1:23:58So, if you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com/huberman to claim a free Element sample pack with any purchase. Again, that's drinkelement.com/huberman to claim a free sample pack. I mean, I think a lot of people are more or less addicted to social media because of its ability to tap into mild anger and frustration provoking >> circuitry, >> drama, >> us them.
1:24:25I mean it's you know that not to be you know ultra repetitive but this us them thing is is like it's at our core of our circuitry >> and the more you can tap into it the more engagement you can get from the brain >> it's very very powerful I I mean and it can be used to benevolent ends you know fighting evil you know uh this kind of thing but it's interesting because the the psychedelics I've never done IA but certainly psilocybin and others like The ego dissolution that's supposed to occur with those is supposed
1:24:59to make you feel less of self versus other boundary, you know, connected to [clears throat] other beings, the universe, etc. It's supposed to dissolve these, you know, the the me us versus them >> boundary, including >> humans to animals, humans to plants. I mean, that's a lot of the the theory anyway.
1:25:17>> Maybe I just need to do more psychedelics. [laughter] And maybe not. These are powerful tools. Um, >> I want to talk about something. um for a moment which is steaks, not beef steaks, although those are wonderful, too. So, there's a really cool study that came out in the last couple of years about why we choke.
1:25:38>> Why we choke? It's a study in a non-human primate, but it certainly has relevance to humans because there's been an analog study done in humans. So, here's the idea. Let's say you're throwing darts and we bet two pounds per round of darts. I don't actually know the details of the game darts, so forgive me, but let's let's or billiards.
1:25:59Let's make it simpler. Let's say billiards. And we say two pounds. Okay, you'll perform your best, I'll perform my best. Depending on how competitive we are, depending on your our skill level, relative skill level, somebody will win, somebody will not win, etc. Okay, now we bet £100,000. >> Okay. Well, now we're paying a lot more attention to how we're playing.
1:26:19>> It will likely bring out your best and my best. We'll see who wins. >> But let's say we bet 2 million pounds. >> At some point, what happens? And they've done the brain recordings to support what I'm about to say. At some point, when the stakes are extremely high, the motor cortex starts to recruit too much circuitry and we can't perform well.
1:26:42It's not that we can't do the thing. It's that too many commands are being sent into the system >> and we start incorporating musculature and a connective tissue that normally needs to be excluded in order to have the precision of the the shot. >> When you're doing these long endurance events, it's slightly different because you can afford to have an imperfect stroke now and again or pretty often and you'll still continue.
1:27:04But how much attention are you paying to a your form and your desire to do things quote unquote perfectly in a moment? And how much attention are you paying to the stakes? Like what's at stake here? Your reputation, your ego, your family, your whatever. >> How much in mind are the stakes? What's so interesting about what you said, I think for me, like on the Yukon swim for instance, it's almost um anticlimactic when you start it.
1:27:34It was the same with the Iceland one as well actually in that it's not a heroic start. There's no like dive. It's not there's no fine motor skills. It's not like a 50 m swim where everything has to be completely dialed in and if something goes wrong because the stakes are too high and you're hyperaroused.
1:27:50It's not like that. It's kind of knowing this isn't going to be over quickly. You know, even if I have a bad start, it's fine. I got 100 days, you know. So, for me, when it's ultra endurance, less so. However, with that said, there's definitely times where the stakes are high. There's all these reasons, both negative and positive, and things aren't going well.
1:28:12And there's times where I've gone, do you know what? Just swim for the enjoyment of it, Ross. You know, let's let's just remove everything else. And I and only now speaking to you, I realize that's maybe because it was just bubbling away, bubbling away, you know, and and we were getting close to that threshold where I would start to just recruit more and it would become deteriorating in terms of my technique.
1:28:34There was times when I just went, I'm I'm not even looking at my watch. I'd say to the crew, don't even tell me what speeds I'm doing. Just I'm just going to swim. I'm just going to enjoy being out here because it is a privilege to be swimming over the Arctic Circle with dolphins, you know, chasing me and stuff.
1:28:49And and that's where I'd go, Ross, stop caring. Just, you know, we'll care tomorrow, but now just stop caring. Yeah. So, it's reduce the stakes in your head. Interesting. These swims um are very long and as you said, can can continue 50 plus hours. Do you notice that your motivation, your energy waxes and waines according to your circadian rhythm?
1:29:13>> So much so. Certainly at the start of the Iceland swim because it was in the summer, we had almost 24 hours of daylight and it was crazy how I just I never got that deep restorative sleep. Also, as well, we were doing 6 hours on, 6 hours off. So, you you're working with the tide as well. So, it doesn't matter if it's 2:00 in the morning, 2 in the afternoon.
1:29:31When the tide changes, you get in. And I think um just understanding that motivation was so closely linked to my circadian rhythm and whether I just wasn't getting that deep restorative sleep. Sometimes if we got stormbbound, I had the privilege of sleeping for 8 hours, you know, 10 hours. And the next day it was like somebody just dialed up the brightness on the world again.
1:29:52And I was like, "Things aren't things aren't so bad." You know, this is okay. I can do this. But but sometimes, again, if you're not sleeping, circadian room, 24 hours of daylight, tied on, tied off. I was so aware that I couldn't trust my own brain. And that that neurotransmitters, chemical signals, they were all against me.
1:30:09Depleting serotonin, dopamine, and that was just you now have no motivation hormonally, chemically, biochemistry. It was it was something else. Maybe it was the anterior mids singular cause. I I don't know. But it's like it's discipline motiv. You have no motivation today, Ross. This is disgusting. Your tongue's falling off.
1:30:29It's gray. I'm getting smashed by jellyfish. And then there was the odd time where it was nice to swim. I mean, you'd wake up, there would be, you know, a rainbow, the fjord, frozen fjord, and I a this is, you know, the northern lights, swimming under the northern lights, looking up at the Valkyries.
1:30:45This is amazing. But 90% of the time it wasn't. As well, >> they should have told us all in the third grade the don't believe any of your thoughts that occur between 2 and 5 a.m. is one I tell myself all the time. Just don't believe it. I now I don't believe anything my brain tells me between 2 and 5 a.m.
1:31:04And I think they also should have told us that one of the great reasons to get to a point with something anything physical, cognitive, emotional, etc. where you feel like what's the point is so that you can experience the point coming back into your mind and you realize oh there are going to be moments in life where I just think like what's the point but there will be this moment ahead of it that the the the logic of it the the positive emotions associate come back and then you realize the brain it tricks itself
1:31:35into thinking that what's happening right now is going to go on forever. >> Yeah. >> And and that to me was like the the like the biggest insight. It came not from me but from my friend Ryan Suave who's um this incredible trauma therapist and he helps addicts and he's been on this podcast before and he said if you can tolerate a certain amount of emotional discomfort for one second then you can tolerate it for 10 seconds and if you can tolerate it for 10 seconds you can do it for a minute and so on and so on.
1:32:02He said but the problem is negative emotions make us feel for some reason like they're going to go on forever. Positive emotions don't have the same effect. We tend to think this is going to stop at some point and then we lose it's like grasping fog and it goes away. >> I don't know what that is. I don't have an explanation for it.
1:32:17But it is a diabolical feature of our wiring. >> It is and and and it's that is such a skill in that moment when the dark clouds are over you to be like I can't trust myself. And also even as a team as well there was times where you know we're caught in a storm. I didn't swim as far as I needed to that day.
1:32:33I'm angry at the team cuz they put me in against the tide. All sorts of things. And we almost like had a rule that exactly to your point between those periods you don't argue. You don't try and have a we just go you know what I'm going to sleep I'll see you in the morning you know there's just there's no point arguing about it now because we can't trust ourselves.
1:32:52And so I think that was just to be really logical rational. I talk a lot about stoicism because I found on my swim sports psychology can only take you so far. But when I started reading about Marcus Aurelius, Senica, Epictitus, I was like, well, this is this is more applicable, you know, control the controllables, except the uncontrollables.
1:33:11This this feels better, you know, because with sports psychology, it's prehab, rehab conditions are perfect, and that's easy. But what are you doing when your tendons in your shoulder are falling off? Your tongue's falling off. And I'm like, stoicism helps me a little bit more. >> You said your tongue's falling off.
1:33:29What are you referring to? Your actual tongue falling off. >> Yeah. Yeah. shouldn't have bit that snake, dude. [laughter] >> Think that's what it is. No, so it's salt water exposure. Basically, you know, the human body is not meant to be in salt water for that long. So, it extracts all the moisture from your tongue.
1:33:45Um, on the the GB swim, for instance, we sat it was about a week in and I remember they made this amazing soup. It was just this rich vegetable soup. All the team are tucking into it. It was amazing. So full of vegetables, nutrients. But I looked over and I noticed that mine had I didn't know if it was pork or chicken.
1:34:02So I turned to the captain. I said, "Why why haven't you got any pork or chicken? It's only in mine." And he just lent over and he went, "Ross, that's not pork or chicken. That's your tongue." [laughter] >> And it was falling off >> in the soup. >> Oh, brutal. >> I know. But coconut oil, for those for anyone listening, if you find yourself in a similar situation, coconut oil acts as a barrier, maintains the moisture, you keep yourself, and it grows back.
1:34:22It did grow back as well. So, >> all right, let's get real honest here, Ross. Um, is there anything in everyday life that you have to absolutely scruff yourself and and and you know badger yourself into doing that is absolutely trivial in somebody else's eyes? Oh, >> and if the answer is no, that's fine.
1:34:39If you if you just like show up to do you brush your teeth twice a day? They're nice and white. So, you know, [laughter] do you ever feel like I don't want to do this again or you just do you just do you ever think I don't want to do this like and you can't tell why? >> Yeah. Yeah. I'm Yeah, I think certainly if you spoke to my girlfriend, you know, house chores and things like that, I'm terri I'm so messy.
1:35:00>> No, I'm kidding. [laughter] >> I'm so bad. I'm so bad. I'm really messy. And And for me, again, maybe it's related to doping, but I just need those big grand goals. So, it's just Yeah. swim around Iceland. Swim world's longest non-stop river swim. Yeah. Take out the trash. Do the do the washing up.
1:35:18>> Is it because it's too easy or it's too hard? I'm not sure. I'm just really bad at like admin and basic stuff. It goes goes back to what I said. If someone said, "Oh, swim the English Channel." I'm it's been done, you know? It doesn't doesn't really [clears throat] appeal. So, and I think it's the same in in life.
1:35:34If you said there's a record for taking out the trash, no one's ever taken two tons of trash so that I'll be like, "Oh, [laughter] hold my beer." So, my girlfriend knows this. You know, she knows how to push my buttons, so she might do that. >> That's so good. If there was a competition, [laughter] >> significant others everywhere are taking note.
1:35:56>> A few minutes ago, you mentioned something >> that told me that there are times when you can no longer advocate for yourself as like, let's do this. I've got this. Okay. Like your arm gives out. Let's go. Come on. You're going to bring the arm along like a member of your team. But in the moments where you're really down in the pit, it sounded as if, and I don't want to put words or thoughts into your mind, but it sounded as if you get outside of yourself and you're like, "We're going
1:36:21because this is the middle of the night and you know you don't like this, but you now become you sort of third person yourself and now you bring you along." And I think that's such an important tool for the times when there's no coach, there's no team, there's no goal in mind. It hurts like hell. You don't see the point.
1:36:43You've run out of [ __ ] You've run out of [ __ ] me. You know, you've just run out. >> And you just have to transcend or exit yourself and just go, >> let's go. 100%. Yeah. And and and I love that you asked that as well because again certainly on the Iceland swim, I took such inspiration from the berserkers, you know.
1:37:04So, so for those who don't know, you know, the berserkers, it literally means bare shirts. They would be wearing sort of these bare shirts. These ancient Nordic warriors who would enter into a battle frenzied state where they were impervious to pain and fear. There was even as well uh wolf warriors as well.
1:37:21So there was the berserkers but the wolf warriors uh embodied the spirit of the wolf. They would bite down on their shields when run into battle as well. Now historians some think they might have been using you know hallucinogenic mushrooms. Others think it was maybe uh ritualistic chanting, breathing to get into this state, but whatever it was, they were no longer themselves.
1:37:40They were the spirit of that particular animal that they were embodying. And I think certainly towards the end of of the Iceland swim, I was lucky enough to to speak to this again, sort of like a an old uh chief, and he said, "Ross, you need to stop thinking like a swimmer. You need to become a berserker.
1:37:57You need to just get in there and just think entirely differently." Again, it's um Samuel Johnson, 17th century English writer, uh whoever makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man. And I think for me, certainly on that South Coast, I was like, got to get rid of pain of being a man, just become a beast.
1:38:16And I think it was that as well, just no longer thinking of becoming that third person, but but also just becoming wolf warrior, berserker. >> Amazing. >> Do you like to read? It just seems like you know a lot about these um ancient traditions and tribes and >> I loved it. Yeah. I think um cuz this is going to sound really strange as well.
1:38:36So I lived in Namibia with the Sam Bushman for a while. Amazing endurance athletes. We were covering a marathon a day, barely any water for an entire week. I remember all we had we shared a porcupine between us as well. Just amazing athletes. But there was there was one particular guy in the the tribe and he he was part Namibian but he's also part of the the Kurigin tribe which I hope I'm I'm getting this right but it's basically an ethnic group that's that's specific to Kenya and they
1:39:02produce more marathon runners just elite marathon runners than than anywhere else. And he turned to me and was sitting around this fireplace at one point and he said Ross do you know why people from the Curigen tribe are so good? Do you know why we're such great runners? And I was like, "Yeah, like you know, altitude training."
1:39:18I went, "Nope." I was like, "Your diet?" And he goes, "Nope." And I was like, "Barefoot [clears throat] running, beautiful biomechanics, and you drill that from an early age." And he went, "No." And I was like, "Right, go on then. Tell me." He says, "It's our pain tolerance." So we have a tradition that when a boy is basically going into adulthood, we have him in front of the entire tribe, we take some mud, like clay, we put it on his face, and then he has to stand in front of the entire tribe.
1:39:43The chief comes out, takes his tackle in his hand, circumcises him, which is essentially with like a bamboo shoot, you know, >> his penis. >> His penis circumcises him in front of the entire tribe. He cannot flinch, cannot flinch, make any sounds. If the mud cracks on his face, then all of a sudden everyone in the tribe will be like, he's not desirable.
1:40:06So he doesn't pass on his genes. So it's this idea that he said that just generation after generation knowing that those where the mud doesn't crack are then considered desirable then mate then pass on their genes and their offspring do exactly the same exactly the same exactly the same and what you're left with is just this incredible group of people with their pain tolerance.
1:40:28I mean with that as we were sat around the fire he pulled out a knife and was like Ross do you want to run faster? I was like I'm good. [laughter] I'm good. [gasps] But I I think I'm fascinated to answer your question. I love looking back through history and just will take inspiration from anywhere and everywhere.
1:40:44Even that if that is ritualistic circumcision, I've not done it with mud on my face, but I do find that stuff fascinating. Wow. [laughter] The the uh the alternate response would have been, "Look, I totally respect your tradition. I spent a lot of time in cold water. I need all the insulation I can get.
1:41:03[laughter] But but hey uh you know your reply is up to you. Wow. Is there anything like that that you found with pain tolerance as well? Are there studies around that? >> Yeah. So I mean on my list of things to discuss with you is the generalizability of of resilience training. You know this is a fascinating and and still somewhat opaque area of science.
1:41:23I mean you know let me put this way. On the one hand we know that there's a very limited and well- definfined list of chemicals. Epinephrine adrenaline released in the body. Norepinephrine released in the brain from the locus ceruius. We can even get specific about locations and circuits, dopamine and if the stress is long enough cortisol that are associated with uh a high arousal painful stimulus and other things too, right?
1:41:47Dinorphine which is sort of the opposite of endorphin. In any case, you'll experience a a rise in those whether you're getting into uncomfortably cold water, you're getting stung by hornets or god forbid you're uh you're experiencing a public um circumcision and and you can't flinch. It's true, right?
1:42:06I mean, among other things, right? There are many many other molecules and things happening there, but those but those undoubtedly are involved. So then the question becomes can our memory system our prefrontal cortex and our memory system apply a set of rules whereby in a different stressor this thing this ar this like negative arousal pain pain can it is it familiar to us and can we then walk ourselves through it in a way that we understand okay this pain makes it feel like it's
1:42:35going to go on forever but this too shall pass right and to some [clears throat] extent the data say yes in particular about deliberate cold water exposure. But that's a unique one because first of all, unless the water is very, very cold and god forbid people don't jump into an ice hole. I'm so tired of seeing people either do hyperventilation and then go into cold water and die, water of any kind, and die or videos of people jumping into ice holes and getting swept under.
1:42:59It's really, it happens and it's awful. But deliberate cold exposure with a shower or a cold plunge done safely. >> People can get familiar with the experience of being flooded with adrenaline and the fact that the mind is in complete disarray for the first 20 or 30 seconds and then they can slow their breathing and grab hold of their mind and create a strategy to get through it or get out of it, whatever.
1:43:21This is this is stress inoculation training, right? the neurochemicals that are released don't change >> but the inoculation piece is the familiarity and the ability to not further increase adrenaline through panic. So in that sense yes but it's also true that if you look at the cognitive behavioral therapies around phobias for instance public speaking phobia people can use cognitive behavioral therapy or a beta blocker for that matter to successfully overcome that >> progressive exposure to the thing with
1:43:58you know which basically means like not that much adrenaline okay that's too much let's repeat this a few times and just can let them move through that but it doesn't seem to translate to other stressful circumstances perhaps because the adrenaline is kept be beneath a certain threshold. >> So I believe and based on my limited amount of work with but certainly conversations with the you know the tier one uh operator community and the the use of cold water in all military branches at least in the US as a as a
1:44:29tool for building up stress tolerance that yeah it translates pain tolerance translates but people are coming in with a with a sort of set um probably genetic and experiential um predisposition >> and and we see this, you know, I knew kids growing up whose pain tolerance was too high and they did really dumb stuff and they're missing fingers or they're dead, right?
1:44:51Or they needed extreme consequences before they adjusted their behavior. Other people, they were around the corner when the discussion of a firecracker came up and they probably experienced too much anxiety in too many different domains of life. it. I'm not trying to dodge the question, but I think we should be very careful about the idea that any one particular type of training makes us tough.
1:45:14>> The the cold water swimmer might have a hard time listening in a hard conversation where the feedback they're getting is not pleasant, but they might be completely stoic and just think, "This sucks. This sucks. This sucks. But I can calm myself through this. I can do this." If they can understand that the same underlying mechanisms are taking place.
1:45:34I see. >> Is that I don't know if that's satisfactory. >> No, that sounds but if I were to answer any other way, it wouldn't be um true to the data. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense, >> you know, and I think cold water is a great training tool >> if done safely. I want to ask you about your training, your physical training.
1:45:51One thing that's peculiar about you, at least to me, is that you're you're pretty heavily muscled for a guy that's supposed to float in the water. So, um like uh what's that about? I mean, you do strength stuff, too. What does your training look like now when you're in between >> sort of um these super events?
1:46:09>> A lot of strength training cuz I think it's so interesting that when doing the sort of swims that I do, these ultramarathons, you know, around countries, it's you're taking swimming and conventional sport science and you're just moving outside of those realms. For instance, a lot of friends of mine who are amazing swimmers, Olympians, sometimes I'll ask questions like, "Oh, around Iceland, was it a two beat leg kick, a four beat leg kick?
1:46:31Are you bilaterally breathing? What's your V2? What's your lactic threshold? I'm like, no, no, no, no. When you're caught in an Arctic storm and you are just windmilling, none of that matters. Strength training, especially with mechano transduction, this idea that people think of strength training is just improving the strength of the muscles, but actually connective tissue, ligaments, tendons, they all get stronger as well.
1:46:50For me, that's why I strength train so much because on my swims, it's not my lactic threshold V2 technique. It will be a ligament or a tendon, something that gives up that will stop the swim physically. >> Got it. The chassis. >> Exactly. Exactly. >> Can't have the chassis breakdown. >> Exactly that.
1:47:07So, it's almost um I joke that friends of mine from L University, Adam Py, the greatest breaststroke the world has ever seen. He is amazing. He is poetic in the water. He is a makeo shark. It's just beautiful to watch him. I am a chubby whale at best, you know. I am just there, you know, and just migrating basically that that is what I'm doing.
1:47:28I'm not poetic in the water, but I just I won't stop. So, I think strength training and it's only now cuz for so long in endurance it was a dirty word, you know, strength training. Whereas now, we're understanding that certainly the idea of general physical preparedness or in your pre-season making the body physically robust enough to then endure the the intensity or the volume that you subject it to later.
1:47:52friend of mine at the English institute of sport had a great saying it was like sometimes you need to train to train you know before I can subject you to 150 km in the pool a week we need to make sure the connective tissue and everything there's no weak part of that kinetic chain so I think at the moment that that's kind of where we're at that general physical preparedness >> I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor eightle makes smart mattress covers with cooling
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1:49:21If you would like to try eight, go to eight.com/huberman to get up to $200 off their new Pod 6. Eight ships to many countries worldwide, including Mexico and the UAE. Again, that's 8.com/huberman to save up to $200. I don't have anything even close to your uh physical abilities, but a few years ago, I decided that I would do two kinds of training.
1:49:45I'd love your thoughts on how I can improve this. Um, in addition to doing strength and endurance training and some sprints and the same kind of thing, it is more about the mental side. >> I was on a camping trip with my girlfriend for a birthday and we we did a a hike up Clouds Rest, which is one of my favorite hikes in Yeuse.
1:49:59about 14 mi up and back and and most anyone can do it with some level of endurance and physical ability. It's not grueling, but I had a sinus infection and it was her birthday and I've been there before. She hadn't been there before and I wanted to like really show her a great time and she's really physically robust and and she was just motoring up and I was carrying a lot of water, granted, but I was struggling that day and I decided at some point that I would I knew I was going to get to the top cuz the the hike
1:50:26is actually not that awesome along the way, but at the top it's just majestic. you're above half dome. It's so awesome. Uh you could run it. Uh I've run it in the past and I highly recommend it. It's just a fantastic fantastic hike for anybody. But along the way, I realized I was really struggling. So I decided I would just watch I this thing where I like I'm just going to watch the process and see what the what the cycles are.
1:50:49And I noticed the cycles went from something like f this this really sucks. I'm going to just push against that to I would distract myself. I would think about something else. And then I would just sort of go into this kind of like liinal state and then it would repeat. It would go back to f this. And sometimes the time scale of those would be minutes and sometimes it would be like tens of minutes and so on.
1:51:08I thought this is kind of interesting. It's like three things. It's not 20. It's not it's not like all the spokes. It's like three and they're on repeat. >> I was like this is pretty useful. Like I'm going to try and do this. And so I you know I in other areas. So now when I run my longer runs, I think, okay, I'm either going to listen to something and distract myself, music, etc., pay attention to what's around.
1:51:31Or there are some runs now that I do where I try and concentrate on every step and just try and make it as painful as possible to just try and like build a resilience for each >> cuz in a hard conversation, distracting yourself is actually not useful. So, this is maybe where the translatability or non-transatability of of stress inoculation needs more of a fine point.
1:51:54The reason I bring this up here like this is I I I feel like the sports performance and the psychological performance community needs like more refined tools. So, maybe it should be go out, do the thing, and really just concentrate on just how much it sucks for as many seconds as possible. And every time you forget it sucks, you failed right for a moment.
1:52:12And then the other one would be learn how to distract yourself because there are conditions that are stressful where you want to distract yourself and then like I've got a friend who's a neurosurgeon and distracting himself during a stressful moment is like the exact wrong thing to do. Does that make sense?
1:52:25It >> makes complete sense. >> Okay. All right. Cool. So maybe my hope is that people listen to you around performance and they should listen to you because you actually do the stuff. my runs are trivial for you and for most people, but I feel like >> more specific tools with more aimed at specific outcomes, I feel like it's kind of what the general public needs.
1:52:49>> So to become a better listener, learn to concentrate on the pain for long periods of time and not flinch. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. But I but I love what you said there as well because this is something with the the Royal Marines, a friend of mine who's a psychologist there and he was just saying and everyone listening will understand this but when you're focusing on the outcome if you're looking at the clock if you're like how much further have I got to walk oh my god is it you know we still got 10
1:53:13hours of walking and stuff you're thinking of the outcome and he said you have to just focus on the process for you Ross when you're swimming it's putting one arm in front of the other as efficiently as possible. Is it a high elbow catch? Are you finishing your stroke? And if you focus on that, the outcome becomes inevitable.
1:53:27But by focusing on the outcome, you're not focusing on the process. And I think for me, when my mind drifts, sometimes I come straight back to focus on the process as well. But I love what you said there because sometimes I just tune out and I want to be anywhere but there. And I'll be thinking of some the weirdest things like my I'll do my shopping list for my Christmas shopping in my head, you know, and I'll just go somewhere completely different.
1:53:50But sometimes I do really find just drilling back. Don't watch the clock. Don't look at the outcome. Don't ask how far you've got. I don't want to know. And that's that's quite easy to do sometimes when sea swimming because you have no point of reference. You can't see land. So, you are just swimming immersed in your own thoughts.
1:54:05And some of the weirdest swims I did um under the northern lights and you also get this uh phosphorescent algae. So, as you're swimming, the only way I can describe it is like you're swimming in a black hole. Like you turn to breathe, you see the northern lights, the Valkyries, their shimmering shields, and then you pull.
1:54:21And as you pull, this phosphorescent algae just lights up in your face. And there's moments like that where I'm like, I don't want to be anywhere. I want to be so present. This is amazing. And then other times where I'm just, I want to be anywhere but here. And and it's and it's having that sort of, you know, psychological adaptability.
1:54:38Just flick between all of them. Use whichever one you need at that moment in time. >> The spokes >> just go to whichever one's going to get you through it. And you need loads of different ones. We don't yet have a name for it, but maybe we're sort of veering towards something kind of akin to sort of like the the different spokes on the tire of resilience or something like that.
1:54:58[clears throat] Exactly. Something like that. I'm not trying to be poetic here. I'm not a Brit nor am I Scottish, so I can't seem to nail the nail the nomenclature, but um I want to talk about uh vision and share with you something. Again, I came in like really excited to be able to share some of my favorite studies that hopefully uh would be of interest uh and perhaps of use to you and the listeners.
1:55:18So, be familiar with the myth of the cyclops? >> No. >> Like the the guy with the one one eye in the middle of his head. Yeah. So, there's this wild thing where um animals with the um with their eyes on the side of their head tend to be prey animals and they have panoramic vision >> and uh animals with their eyes in the front can generate depth perception much better stereopsis and so on and they tend to be the predators and there are some animals that can transllocate their eyes to go from kind of panoramic to
1:55:46like more focused vision. Um there are a lot of ideas about the myth of the cyclops but when we move our vision even though our eyes are fixed in our head towards a particular uh virgin point like a target it raises our arousal and our ability to recruit energy physical energy and mental energy. People in the fight game know this.
1:56:05When we dilate our gaze we relax. We we come off the gas pedal a little bit. We can still do things, but we are actually the because of the way that vision and time perception are linked, we can actually see more. >> Motion perception at the periphery gets better obviously because you're not looking through a soda straw.
1:56:23You're looking through in kind of panorama, but >> you are less able to recruit a lot of energy to one one location. There are a lot of examples of this in the animal world that I could spell out. And this was an area I focused on for a long time, but we we won't go there. The myth of the cyclops is in in part, okay, is in part about a creature who only has soda straw vision and therefore is constantly angry and that anger is actually what leads to its demise.
1:56:50It can't see the big picture and so it can be defeated by something from the periphery. >> I love this. >> And so, yeah, I thought you might like this. I thought [laughter] you might like this. So, what I'd like to know is even with your head underwater, but maybe even the in the routines of daily life, do you ever find yourself thinking about big picture, [clears throat] soda straw view, tunnel vision versus kind of dialing as a dynamic process?
1:57:14Because people in martial arts use this as a way to um slow time perception down in order to or speed it up in order to control aspects of the fight. you're somewhat limited underwater into what you can see. But like you said that focusing just on the stroke in the moment is sort of the mental equivalent of the soda straw view.
1:57:33But if you don't keep the big picture in mind, that pain in your shoulder and the perception of it can grow to the point where it can become disabling. So there's some utility in being able to dynamically switch back and forth. Now that you said that, I've never thought about it like that. I love the Cycl Smith.
1:57:49I love I'm using that. That's amazing. But I I absolutely do that. So on the Yukon swim for instance, so that was the uh the world's longest non-stop river swim just down the Yukon. And there were times where I just wanted to take everything in and I sat there and I'm eating a banana. I'm like wow. And I don't know whether that's switching on the parasympathetic nervous system.
1:58:07You are relaxed. You're enjoying it. This is all amazing. And then there was other times like for instance like during the night and the temperature just plummeted. I was like that is sympathetic nervous. That is fight or flight. And I am not taking in anything like these amazing scenes. People would go to me, "Oh my god, Ross, did you see the moose?
1:58:26Did you see the bear?" You know, so I'm just like, "No, I am just staring at the bottom of the river." And at best out of my peripheral vision, I'm just making sure that I've got a high elbow catch and I'm ripping through the water. I've just gone full Cyclops mode. Like that is what I'm doing. And I've never thought about it, but that's exactly what I was doing.
1:58:45Yeah. And I don't know. I'm trying to think of another example where I've done that. But certainly swimming that is exactly what I do. You know that there's times when I look head above the water having a banana taking it all in in Iceland looking at the fjords and then there's times where it's just like no no no no it is just you are dialed in cyclops mode.
1:59:03>> Yeah. A friend of mine who's from a military group overseas, I won't say which, told me that part of the training that they receive in uh close quarter combat where they encounter somebody and they realize that it's it's going to be close quarter combat and it's life or death on the line is that the mental [clears throat] set that's required to do that is recruited immediately, right, in the presence of a real threat.
1:59:25But in training it, they have them actually d like contract their gaze. And he he showed me. It was actually really eerie. Like he stared right at me and he brought his eyes into and you could see his you could feel his entire autonomic tone change. And then he stopped and he said, "I don't like that feeling."
1:59:42I'm like, "Why?" He's like, "Because it's he" He said, "I I'm not going to kill you, but it's it's this moment where you you you cross you've deliberately crossed over to a point where like you're going to you're you're going to try and kill this person." And so it has a you know, it's it's a risky endeavor to go into these trenches, right?
1:59:56But this seems to be a hardwired aspect of animal visual systems, human visual systems. I often think about how media is trying to recruit our absolute focus and get us to forget everything else so that we like mindlessly trudge forward and anger and and how to overcome that. It's uh but then again this is powerful.
2:00:17It's led to self and protection of affiliate >> self. But it is that it's the same with sharks as well when just about to attack and then they roll back their eyes protecting. But it's the I suppose similar in that their physiology when they're dialed in you can see certainly with the great whites there was behavior where you were like we're okay and then there was times where the the much more experienced divers were like Ross head on a swivel I don't like that tiger shark what do you mean every other
2:00:44behavior is excluded in favor of of just predation >> I mean the most the most dramatic and and in my opinion cool example of this is a in a species that >> you no doubt swam with millions of them in the English Channel which are the cuttlefish. Cuttlefish are sephopods like octopuses. I used to have these in my lab and they swim around with their eyes on the sides of their heads >> in this kind of like benevolent but a little bit paranoid state where they have near 360°ree vision.
2:01:11They can see very far back because they are a prey animal. They have no skeleton to protect them, right? They have their cuddle bone to allow them to float, but they're basically a protein snack. But if they see something that they want to eat, their eyes transllocate to the front. They completely change in their patterns on of of it's not not even camouflage any longer.
2:01:32They're chromophores and they become depth perception dependent hunters. I used to study this in my lab in San Diego and and it's just a remarkable thing to see this like sweet little hufflepod of an underwater little benevolent monkey turn into a like a vicious killer. And the transllocation of the eyes happens first.
2:01:48And so this is it's a real thing. >> Yeah. >> It's it recruits all sorts of machinery in the brain and body and it also just shuts down like nope. This is not time to do anything else except I love that. Yeah. I what I love about this is that it's again it's the berserker. It's this idea of like nature leaves clues and you know success leaves clues.
2:02:07Biomimicry and just going right we but we've lost that. I think you know we humans have lost certain things but this is amazing just to go I'm going to switch this on like you know the catfish. That's what I'm going to do. Yeah. I love that. I'm actually I'm going to next time I swim I'm going to I'll message you.
2:02:21I'm going to purposely do that as well. I always control all the variables on my swim. So I know exactly, you know, I've got my lane, I know the distance, I know the water temp, everything. And I'm just going to start experimenting with this maybe as well. I loved like for me and this is a whole other discussion but even playing with uh like caffeine on the Yukon swim.
2:02:39We were getting into the grams towards the end, you know, of the swim. And that again, it just enabled me to just be so much happier doing such a mundane task and looking at the bottom of the sea. But if I punch like just dark clouds, I'm struggling. My shoulders are hurting. 400 milligrams of caffeine, 15 minutes later, that life's not so bad.
2:02:59This is I'm just ripping through the water. Do Do you find that that you can almost Yeah, you can biohack. You can Yeah. Okay. There are stimulants like caffeine that are incredibly powerful um in that way. I love caffeine. I have a high caffeine tolerance. So, I can do that. You know, things like nicotine, which I've experimented with.
2:03:17The problem I have is that it really sets up a very quick dependence. >> Like, I start to crave it and it's a quick up and down for me. Some people don't mind that. For me, it's it's not a great tool. >> Faster than caffeine. So, short half. Much faster. And And maybe it's the way I'm doing it or the way I metabolize it and so on.
2:03:35Occasionally I'll take like a a milligram or two in a workout, but then I notice I get very tired post-workout in a way that I don't if I don't take it. So I I prefer to keep nicotine as a oral nicotine, you know, so not smoking or vaping, dipping or snuffing, but you know, like the the the lozenes or something or uh as an every once in a everyone in a great while tool as opposed to an everyday tool.
2:03:56Caffeine is an everyday thing, unless I'm carrying some sort of like respiratory infection or something, which case I'd cut it out, which is probably half of the misery I experience while on that respiratory infection. It just makes it so much better when you come back. >> Caffeine is a beautiful thing.
2:04:10I I [laughter] I I back it and it backs me. So, >> I agree. Anything else? I think I've heard you talk about alpha GPC as well. >> Yeah, as a as a milder alternative to uh nicotine. The one advantage of alpha GPC is it is if you're going to work out late in the day >> and you [clears throat] need to sleep a few hours later, it does have a sort of quoteunquote stimulant effect, but it actually can increase the amount of REM sleep you get as opposed to >> mess with your sleep like a lot of
2:04:39stimulants. >> But if I do it too early in the day, >> then I notice I get that late afternoon crash. And so it's kind of quick up, quick down. I mean, I've played around with all the various things. Modafanil is too stimulating for me. It keeps me up for days. There's some other things that seem to work better.
2:04:53There's this prescription drug senosci in small amounts. But again, these are >> it I find that if I use any of these regularly besides caffeine, >> it creates more problems than solutions. So I I keep them as when really needed tools. >> Yeah. And and some good studies as well around, you know, creatine.
2:05:11It's this I've become fascinated with this idea of almost um discipline and motivation is something you can supplement almost if you know what to do with the right amounts. And I think with creatine, there's some good studies with sleep deprivation at the moment. Do you back those? >> The best evidence says that creatine puts water in your muscles, makes you stronger as a consequence.
2:05:30I've been taking it since I was like 17 with the occasional wash out of a week or so for whatever reason and then and then back on it 10 grams a day, you know, for so many years now. But in addition to those strength increasing effects due to water volume in the muscles, at least my understanding is that if you're mildly or severely sleepd deprived, you can partially partially rescue some cognitive function and some maybe even some physical vigor by taking 10 or even 20 grams of creatine the next morning.
2:06:02But of course, you need to sleep at some point and and it's not a replacement for sleep. But yeah, I think creatine is great. I I don't think there's evidence that it um you know makes hair fall out or anything like that. Um and it's inexpensive and seems safe. So I don't see any reason not to. You take do you take it?
2:06:18>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Although I didn't on the the Yukon swim and then the study came out. Well, I certainly read it much later. And so that's why I'm even fascinated now with you know the next um non-stop swim. I just I think we can go further. you know, we we did [laughter] >> 5 510 kilometers and I'm like, "Oh, there's things now that I've learned that um whether it's the tunnel vision as well with 20 milligrams of cat with creatine."
2:06:39I think there's there's a bit of me that is just fascinated. I like to think of myself as like a human guinea pig and and now like I said, we didn't do creatine on the Yukon. Not to say I raw dogged it, but you know, I certainly there are things that I could do in addition because we mainly did it on on caffeine.
2:06:55I think you know alpha GPC cognizin as well acetylcholine like I think I I I get on really well with that. I find it's um a nicer focus not just kind of getting all jittery. Tyroine elyroine >> as a precursor to dopamine hooperine and the cononergic pathway. You're clearly illustrating a very important point which is one that has been hard for me to get out into the world because people tend to just grab on to whatever is going to satisfy their like desire to do or feel something.
2:07:23And and here's what I mean. I think it's important and wonderful to find what one can do with just great behaviors, right? Just great behaviors. Trying to get the best sleep you can. Nutrition, training, social, all social connection, sunlight, all the things that now are kind of common place out there and people know.
2:07:42Then perhaps one experiments with caffeine and no caffeine. I tried caffeine. I'm never going back. Okay. Maybe creatine first time in forever. maybe only as a tool to use later when you want to level up. I mean, figuring out what you can do without these supper supplements, I think can be very useful.
2:08:02And then at some point, and this is also true for peeds, right? For just being really honest, you know, I've been honest about this for years, although some people argue I've only been coming clean about this recently, but since since I started the podcast and I had a podcast with Derek from More Plates, More Dates, I've said, "Yeah, until age 45, I didn't touch any any uh exogenous hormones whatsoever."
2:08:23And I got to a certain point and felt great, but then I wanted to experiment. So, I started with what is for me a true micro dose plus taking hCG to maintain fertility and it's been great and I haven't had to increase that dose much. I've played around with it a little bit, but I found that lower is better for me.
2:08:39Okay, to each their own, work with a doctor. But when I hear about people immediately getting on gear at age 20, 30, 40 in the absence of a clinical need, >> I'm like, you'll never really know what you can do without it. you know, setting aside drug tested sport where there are clear rules and regulations people should abide by.
2:08:57Like I just feel like to really have confidence in one's ability to train to do things, you need to figure out what you what you can do with just behaviors. >> You're pretty heavily muscled. So people are going to default to that. >> They're going to assume that it came about through >> gear. And that's just it's an unfortunate thing that people do that.
2:09:19So you want to talk about that for a moment? What's your response to that? >> Yeah. Yeah, it's actually we can go through my blood work as well. I'd actually whether we do it on air or off, it would be amazing to get your opinion on it. Um, but I think for me, I I'm just well aware that I'm a really strange swimmer.
2:09:32So, I started swimming really early on. I think at the age of like 13, 14 at the English Institute of Sport, they look at your parents and they just sort of go, you're not going to grow anymore. You know, >> they look at your parents. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. >> So, they believe in genetics. >> For sure.
2:09:47Yeah. My my parents weren't very tall. Uh, and I'm 41 now. I'm still waiting for my growth spurt. And so they were like, "Look, Ross, it's it's not going to happen for you as a competitive swimmer, competitive pool swimmer." I was like, "Okay, fine." So, I ended up playing water polo. I played for England School Boys.
2:10:01I played internationally. Loved that as well because it allowed me to use swimming. Uh, but also, not to say I like to fight, but it was just it was nice that in swimming, if I lost, I'd just be like, "Oh, well done. You beat me." Whereas in water polo, you can do something about it. You can get into a fight.
2:10:16You can kind of scratch each other with your toenails. I heard they do that. >> Oh, yeah. I mean famously it was Hungary versus the Soviet Union. I want to say Melbourne Olympics and uh famous uh event. It was called Blood in the Water and they were basically at war. Drew each other in the semi-final and honestly Andrew like some of the pictures just people coming out covered in blood.
2:10:40The water turned red cuz they just went in there. Uh Hungary won I believe it was 4-0. Uh but just brutal. >> Oh, nowadays they'd probably stop it because it would um offend people's sensibilities. >> Yeah, it's I mean it's still bad. It's Yeah, but I loved it. Again, that's stress inoculation training.
2:10:59But but to go back to the examples, then I played water polo and I remember I was playing for uh England school boys under 18 at the age of 13. So I was the wrong side of puberty. So I just got beaten up. Coach was just like, "Look, you need to get bigger, Ross. You need to get stronger." So I've been weight training since I was 13.
2:11:15And I think um that coupled with a period as well where I was fortunate so many of my friends compete in World's Strongest Man. So I went through a period as well of just getting crazy strong looking into that. I was lifting with the Staltman brothers, World's Strongest Brothers, Tom Saltman, three times World's Strongest Man, Eddie Hall, first guy to lift, you know, half a ton, World's Strongest Man.
2:11:34So it was really interesting how I then went through years and years of strength training, hypertrophy, but then came back into swimming so much later. So, I think that is partly why I've got the strange physique that I do. And it confuses lots of people because they're like, "You're not built like I'm swimmer."
2:11:50I'm like, "No, no, I'm not, but I'm 41." And if you look back over my sporting career, my strange resume, there's a reason for my strange physique. And so, you do a fair amount of strength training. Does that mean pure strength? Like training in the, you know, one to four rep range, not trying to grow your muscles, not going to failure, but going close to it, lot of volume.
2:12:09This is how I understand sort of optimal strength training protocols, frequent sessions and so on. >> Exactly that as well. And I'm a huge fan of Cam Makavoy. So he's the current 50 m freestyle world record holder. It was London 2012. He was the the golden boy of Australian swimming. Didn't quite perform how he wanted to.
2:12:26So fell out of love with swimming. Then COVID happened and he was just like, "Ah, you know, I don't think I'm going to go back to swimming, but I like calisthenics. I like rock climbing." And he started doing that. Got really strong as well. And now we know there's a direct correlation between your one rep max on pull-ups and your swim sprint speed as well.
2:12:44So Cam now he was drilling technique and doing honestly Andrew like speed reps with 80 kilos between his legs. And he just got crazy strong even holding like a front lever as well cuz he was like that's kind of the same as swimming. So he taught himself this basically coming out of COVID. Somebody then joked and went ah there's a local swim guy like you should you should dust off the goggles and the speeders just get in and see how good you are.
2:13:07And so for a joke he was like, "Ah, look, I'm going to turn up and see if I still got it." He got in and ripped a personal best. Everyone was like, "Oh." So he basically completely changed his training where there was a huge emphasis on strength, speed, and power. Now he's a 50 m specialist, recently gone into the 100 as well.
2:13:26But I think the one thing that I have taken from that is that idea of your strength reserve. So now I'm drilling my one rep max on pull-ups, knowing that as that improves, then all of a sudden when I'm swimming, swimming almost being a unilateral form of a lat pull down with each arm, every single stroke and the force that I generate is a smaller percentage of what I'm capable of because I have a larger one rep max on pull-ups as well.
2:13:50Got it. One of the best examples of strength reserve, I was talking about earlier, but but Eddie Hall. So Eddie went into a CrossFit competition. I forget the name of the word, but there was a record and it was basically 60 kilos on the bar. When you look at CrossFit as a poetic technique, sort of clean to the chest and then it was a push press, but because Eddie is Eddie Hall and because he's so strong, it was more akin to just a front delt raise, [laughter] maybe an upright row, but he just like picked up
2:14:20the bar and just went one, two, just did it like that. And again, it was because he just had a crazy strength reserve. 60 kilos for him was so light because he was so strong. So that's the reason I still strength train now. It's this idea very much inspired by, you know, Eddie Hall, Cam Makavoy, the strength reserve.
2:14:37When I'm training mechano transduction, my connective tissue is really, really strong. But also because my one rep max on pull-ups is so strong, every single stroke is a smaller percentage of what I'm capable of. >> Interesting. Um, I love to run and I love to lift and I find that if I'm lifting in sort of middle rep range, so six to 12 repetitions, uh, close to or to failure, I find that my runs suffer, >> um, recovery suffers, but I'm playing with the idea that pure strength
2:15:09training and endurance training might actually fit pretty well together. Is that your experience, or am I going to am I setting myself up for additional frustration? I personally think yes. Like absolutely. I I think even when you're looking now um at like Michael Johnson, can you remember he had that amazing running technique, but we now understand that even though that was potentially shortening his stride, it was increasing the amount of force he could generate through each foot.
2:15:34And we now know that's a greater predictor of of speed as well. So I think that's so interesting that drilling down into your strength. I think one will help you generate more force per stroke, but but also as well even hold efficient biomechanics. I think that's overlooked as well. >> Yeah. So, I personally think they complement each other really well.
2:15:54>> How many days a week are you doing? Are you lifting >> at the moment? Because I'm sort of offse uh pretty much like 5 days a week. >> Okay. And um are you doing the same lifts on multiple days? So, or same muscle groups on multiple days. >> Quite similar. Yeah. Yeah. So, I'm almost trying to do uh like the Bulgarian training method, but for swimming with with one rep max on pull-ups, if that makes sense.
2:16:16So, I I'm very aware that the Bulgarian training method, you know, they broke more champions than they made. You know, they were like, you were going to lift heavy 365 days of the year, 7 hours a day, you know, and they were just breaking kids and go, "Right, that one's broken. That one's broken." But the one who could tolerate it was a world champion, was a world record holder.
2:16:35I through so many years now I I am quite lucky that I do have quite a high work capacity. So work capacity your your body's ability to perform and positively tolerate training of a given intensity or duration. And so I just respond really well to just being flogged with volume. And so I'm almost doing these still long aerobic sessions when swimming, but also almost spamming it with a Bulgarian inspired training method of of strength training as well.
2:17:01How long are those workouts in the gym from when you walk in until you walk out? >> The strength session itself can be 45 minutes long because it is just pure strength. Your body's ability to generate force. And even when we're doing plyometrics, you don't want to be doing a lot. Great friend of mine, Lyford Christie, uh, I still believe he's the oldest 100 meter champion.
2:17:17Um, it took me a while when learning about speed and plyometrics because I always thought more was better as is my nature. And Lymphford would be like, "Go home, Ross. you're actually drilling bad technique now. You're done. And so in very much inspired by that on my strength sessions, I'm making sure that everything is dialed in and they're perfect.
2:17:38They're 45 minutes long. Any longer and you're just drilling bad technique. You're not actually training strength anymore. Certainly not speed and power as well. And I think one of the biggest things that um I found recently as well is is uh supra isometric maximal holds as well. So before my heavier lifts, let's take pull-ups for example.
2:17:56I'm doing about 60 kilos at the moment clean. And so what I'll do is sometimes put anywhere between 80 90 100 kilos on the weight. Hold in an active hang only 3 seconds. So you're not trying to fatigue yourself. You're trying to switch on the central nervous system. Neural [clears throat] priming. >> Then jump down, take off the weight, put 60 kilos on, wait 2 minutes.
2:18:18So you're not fatigued, you're just switched on. And what I found is then when I rip, I will just pull through 60 kilos. And that's been one of the biggest things that I've found has has has really helped. And I'm lucky because I can train at home. So I'm able to do that. I think doing at a commercial gym, they're like, "Why has he got all that weight and he's dangling and then waiting 2 minutes and then doing?"
2:18:39But I'm very fortunate that I can do that cuz I can train at home. >> Yeah. I feel like the the Russians and the Eastern Europeans uh certainly were aware of the importance of the nervous system for training. But I think it's only in recent years that people like Paul Satsulin and others have really brought to the United States and to Western Europe and Australia etc.
2:18:55that this idea that the neural piece is so important. We think strength, we think muscles, we might think connective tissue, but the neural piece uh being so vital. Do you mind if I ask um if your split is uh such that on those five 45minut um workouts per week right now anyway are you doing pull-up work every day of those five are you pressing every day are you squatting every day so bad I do skip leg day I just I just don't need them for my swims that I'm doing so often I say you know make your body an
2:19:29instrument not an ornament and you know sometimes people like oh he skips leg day I'm like yeah I do I I don't need them >> but you have you have tree trunk legs so you don't you and Dorian I mean obviously trained them for years. You've trained them before. >> Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's really frustrating to those of us that actually have to train our our legs, but um any direct grip work or not so much.
2:19:48>> Yeah. Yeah. And I think also what's really important for me is when people understand they go, "Oh, so you train >> pull-ups 5 days a week." And it's like, yeah, but we're changing the stimulus as well. So some days it'll be really heavy. The goal is to do a a heavy one rep max or, you know, two to three rep max on pull-ups.
2:20:05That is the goal. And then equally the next day we'll do medicine ball slams, neural priming, and then speed pull-ups for instance. And then equally we might do slightly bigger volume. So it's never just drilling the same thing. You're just playing around with the different stimulus. The movements, the biomechanics are the same, but you're requiring a different training stimulus.
2:20:26>> I have a question about your significant other. It's interesting and wonderful that she supports you in these arguably somewhat or very much dangerous endeavors and you guys have a child together so she's vested uh clearly. But a friend of mine who is had a very high-risisk high consequence uh job for many years said that um his wife who's been his wife throughout all of that and now into the current phase of his life which is a lot less high-risisk high consequence um said that if she didn't
2:20:57have to worry about him she'd have to worry about a lot of other things. So I you can't answer for her. Uh but I wonder whether when you don't have one of these dangerous pursuits uh does her anxiety tend to subside or does it tend to then like wick out to other things because the brain I say this for ask for multiple reasons because the brain likes to if we need to worry we need to worry about something and if we need to worry about something it's we can't worry about a lot of other things.
2:21:24So I could imagine it would there's a certain advantageous piece to this. I think there is and cuz I I love the work of Jordan Peterson when he's just like life is suffering life is going to be horrible so you might as well pick your suffering you know with Sisphus pick up the boulder do you know what I mean that that that I think is is absolutely true and I don't I don't want to see that I'm you know I'm a pleasant headache for her [laughter] but I do think certainly for me as well on the swims
2:21:52people are like oh you know it sounds brutal you know 157 days at sea swimming around Great Britain But I'm like, but you got to understand, I think I'm living like humans were always meant to live. Like in that I'm not spiking cortisol throughout the entire day. I'm not thinking, have I paid the mortgage?
2:22:08Have I taxed the car? I've got an email. Oh god. You know, none of that. I wake up and life is so simple. I just wake up and I've got two questions. What is the tide doing? And what's for breakfast? That is it. And then I get in and every 20 minutes someone throws a banana over the boat and I eat it.
2:22:22Life is so good. So I do think sometimes for me, yeah, it's it's really nice. And may maybe maybe for Ha as well in that she wakes up and just go, "Okay, he's still afloat." She looks on the marine tracker like when I was going around Iceland cuz she couldn't come out to the boat. Obviously, she was heavily pregnant.
2:22:37So she would just see the on the marine tracker that the boat was moving. So she'd wake up in the middle of the night and go, "Okay, he's moving." And then she'd go back to sleep. God bless her. God bless her indeed. >> [laughter] >> So, we've got different spokes on the on the wheel of motivation, tenacity, and throughput.
2:22:57We've got because I said I would. Simply because I said I would. We've got for others, in particular, for others that you affiliate with strongly first. And once that box is checked, you can think about the other others. We've got in out of love, the pure joy of doing the thing. >> Yep. Maybe also the love of your your people life, you know, we could extend that in any way.
2:23:22F you like anger. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Because you or they said I couldn't. We covered that one. You sometimes hear that people can be very motivated to do something >> because others can't, >> right? you you often see this on social media in fact and it's a it's a it's a very um moving thing to see somebody who's you know climbing a mountain because their child is sick and they just you know running the doing the triathlon because somebody is impaired in some way and they want to there's
2:23:57something there is that one that you've touched into I would say that's probably >> less so out of the space but it is there yeah it is definitely there um that you can do it because others can't. That's that's the sentiment. Yeah, it is. Yeah. [clears throat] I think um on on that note, I remember and and maybe this is tied to us as well and I I can talk about it now without uh getting upset I think.
2:24:23Touch words. But my dad, like I said, um four or five years ago now when we lost him, it was uh stage four cancer. So it was um uh melanoma, skin melanoma. And I remember he had been diagnosed and he was an amazing tennis coach. He he basically built tennis centers up and down the UK. Uh he taught uh wheelchair tennis, uh visually impaired tennis.
2:24:44Sometimes he would take to the tennis court and blindfold himself so he could play visually impaired tennis. And when he was diagnosed with with cancer, it spread so much in his legs um that it was basically stopping him from running and and and coaching. And I got a phone call and they were said, you know, dad's dad's fallen over.
2:25:04He's taking a really bad fall. Come to the hospital. So I ran to the hospital and he was there, blood all down his face. I am, you know, choking back the tears trying to be strong. And I was like, "Dad, what have you done?" And he goes, "No, no, don't be upset. I won the point." >> [laughter] >> And I was like, "Right, okay.
2:25:19Amazing." An hour later, they then said, "Look, I'm so sorry, Richard. The the the tumors have spread. Um, you now you can't coach. We don't want you out on the tennis court on your feet for 12 hours a day coaching. You can't." And he literally like did not skip a beat. He just looked the doctor straight in the eye and he just went, "That's not a problem at all.
2:25:41We've got a great wheelchair tennis coaching system down there. I'll just get one of the wheelchairs." Wow. >> And the very next day just bandaged up his tumors and then just took to the court and just played and continued to coach in a wheelchair. >> My goodness. >> And I so I think to answer your question that having stories and examples and mentors and heroes like that, it was swimming going there will be a time maybe where I'm not able to do this but like my dad you will find a way to keep
2:26:05going. So I don't I don't know if that's one of the spokes, but that that was always a really really powerful story that I I always take with me, you know, that that no matter how bad things are, like my dad just took to the tennis court just in a wheelchair, just didn't skip a beat. >> Yeah. So based on what you said and it's a beautiful example for those who can't is really about gratitude.
2:26:26>> It's the beneath that >> parenthetically it's >> I can and therefore I will. It's like a gratitude for what we can do. M >> because if uh we're dead, we can't do these things. >> 100%. Yeah. I love what you said about gratitude as well. So, when we did the Yukon swim, for instance, the river team that we had in the Yukon, basically there's a there's a famous uh kayak race that goes down the Yukon um Riverquest it's called.
2:26:50And I upon hearing about this, that's when I reached out to the team who do the safety for this particular thing. And I said, "Look, if you can kayak it, you can swim it, right?" And this team, just amazing Canadians, were just like, "Yeah, in the if you can escape the rapids, the bears, the wolves. Yeah, in theory."
2:27:05So anyway, I was like, "Right, okay. Let's put together a team." They put together a team, but they were missing a few boats. And there was one guy, Larry, who was amazing. He basically turned around and said, "Look, um, I'll come, but but you can have my boat, but I'm going to be on it." And they said, "Look, you are terminally ill.
2:27:22This is a terrible idea. The doctors have said, you know, you've literally got weeks to live." Um, and he said, "No, no, no, no. I've I've lived on this river for years." He said, "You can have my boat, but I'm going to be on it. I'm going to be steering the boat." So, everyone reluctantly was like, "Fine."
2:27:37Again, Larry had weeks to live. He then jumped on the boat. I was told this story. He's on the boat with his son, and for the next 70 hours was swimming down the Yukon. I am swimming, hurting, shoulders are hurting, hypothermia seeping into my bones, everything. And every time I look, I just see the silhouette of Larry and he's just cheering me on, just going, "Let's go."
2:27:56And I look over, I was just like, oh, like, how can I stop when I got Larry out here? We finished the swim, broke the record, we celebrated, and then it was it was a few we put the documentary out on YouTube. Um, his son messaged me and was just like, just so you're aware, Larry's in in in hospital. Uh, every single doctor and nurse has been made to watch the documentary on YouTube.
2:28:19He's so proud. And I was just like, oh, I had tears in my eyes, like a lump in my throat, goosebump. I was just like that. and they just said you you don't know you gave him you know the last great adventure of his career um and you passed away shortly afterwards and again I suppose it's that particular spoke that when I was swimming I was like you know I'm doing how can I how can I stop when Larry's over there and like he was he was oh just an absolute legend yeah >> he's not genetically related to you but
2:28:48he becomes of you like you guys are a team >> and this is like the anyway I don't have a like a really well-developed framework for this, but I'm going to try and take some notes and diagram this and we can kick it back and forth after this and come up with something [laughter] cuz I feel like you're this uh this shining example of all these different moments of of accessing the different spokes on this wheel of resilience.
2:29:10Um I put a big question mark on one spoke. Like I kind of wonder just for entertainment purposes, is there ever a moment where like I actually don't know why I'm doing this right now, but I'm just going to keep going. Like like I don't have an answer. Everything is great or everything's like just the absurdity of it all.
2:29:29Like if you really step back like what you do, Ross, with all due respect, is pretty absurd. It's absurd. You don't have to do it. You could do any number of different things, but you feel compelled to do it. And it's a beautiful, inspiring, and and I'll even say an important thing that you do what what you in particular do.
2:29:46It really is. But do you ever step back and just go like I have no idea, but I'm just going to keep pedaling here. Do you know I love what you said there because um kind of I I don't know if this answers your question, but you're aware of the myth of Seisphus. >> Yeah. So, so for those listening who don't, so so Copus was one of the the cleverest humans to ever exist in ancient mythology.
2:30:08Was able to outsmart the gods and he even chained up death at one point which made the gods really angry because basically people were fighting wars and there were no no one was dying. So there was no souls going to the underworld. So Hades was really pissed off. Anyway, eventually he dies and the gods are just livid.
2:30:22So they're like, "Look, we're going to we're going to punish you and what we're going to do is we're going to make you roll a boulder up a hill for eternity and just as it gets to the top of the hill, it's going to roll back down and you're just going to do that for eternity. just this like absurd like completely thankless task.
2:30:36But then it was Albert Camu the philosopher who said he was able to outsmart the gods one more time and that's if you imagine that Seisphus was smiling. And this is the part I love. He said because the struggle alone is enough to fill a man's heart. And I think for me they've even coined the phrase that that Seephus was the absurd hero.
2:30:54And I I I think for me swimming sometimes I'm like this is Seisphus. This is my boulder. You know it's not going anywhere. But the struggle alone is enough to fill a man's heart. Does that answer the question as one of the spokes? >> Perfectly, [laughter] right? Sisphus. Swimming Seisphus. [laughter] >> So, you identify with Seisphus.
2:31:14It makes perfect sense. Um, what about your animal spirit? Uh, not to get woo here, but uh, you smile a lot. I don't know if that was always the case. I mean, you've you've had some dark moments in your life. >> Oh, for sure. Yeah. I just I I think I love what you said earlier, although it's made me rethink it with the studies that you mentioned, but I just think you know the science of a smile.
2:31:35There was one particular study where they had cyclists cycle to complete exhaustion and then they showed them these cues and they were almost sub subliminal as well because they were so quick of people smiling or frowning. >> I'm not familiar with that study. >> And they they basically found that those who were shown people of of pictures of people smiling were able to go to exhaustion so much longer.
2:31:52So, I think upon hearing that, you know, I was like, I try to swim with a smile as much as possible because otherwise I just find it's just like I said, I think Chris Williamson, you know, a mutual friend of ours, like he he said it best because I'm a huge fan of Gogggins and I've heard his stuff and I've tried it.
2:32:08So, when I'm swimming, I'm like, ah, you're a little [ __ ] Ross. You know, man up, what you doing? But after like 114 days, I'm like, oh, [laughter] don't be so mean. So, I've tried and Chris Williamson said it's almost like, you know, what are you putting in your car? Both work. Is it diesel or is it petrol?
2:32:28Which one? And so, I've tried that and I still do use some of that goggines motivation, but but sometimes I just need something that's a bit gentler. >> Yeah, I've known David a while. I don't know him very well, but I've known him since before his book, the first book. And so, I can tell you he's always been exactly the same outwardly.
2:32:46very kind, unbelievably driven. You know, he sat in that very chair and >> you know, he shared a bit of what his inner process is, but you know, it's a it's a bit of a mystery what drives him internally or anyone for that matter in the moment to moment, right? But clearly the >> uh he talked about the [ __ ] me, but also the [ __ ] you being a a powerful tool.
2:33:08Uh Dorian Yates talked about [ __ ] you motivation being powerful and um he's in a very different place in his life now. But >> that's a great example when they talked about he was saying and and I know he's a great friend of yours so please correct me if I'm wrong here but it was certainly during the period was it like the 1980s 1990s when it was gold's beach stringed vests sunglasses on and these bodys whereas he was in Birmingham trudging through the snow and he was just like oh if I've got to do this I'm
2:33:36going to make sure that I win. Is is that the case? There was that. I don't want to speak for him. There was that. But but I think he learned to tap into it um much earlier. I mean, he he had a a less than perfect childhood, so to speak. I mean, his dad died early. He had uh ended up in a youth detention center, wrong place, wrong time kind of thing.
2:33:53And he was like, I don't want to be like the rest of the people in here who seem to accept this fate. >> Um and he had a big, you know, strong like, [ __ ] you >> energy to people who told him he wasn't going to be anything. just the whole notion of these oppressive forces, real or imagined, it sounds like they were very real in many cases.
2:34:10Um, and he just decided like that's the fuel and he, you know, became a six-time Mr. Olympia and and and equally importantly a happy person post Olympia, mobile and healthy and all the rest. He's a wonderful person and >> almost two different people. When you look at is it blood and guts is DVD? The amount of times I used to watch that before I went training.
2:34:32Oh my god, his training partners, the intensity, it was, you know, it was anim animalistic. It was incredible, you know, but but now he is >> almost like a shaman. He's just like spiritually like it's just amazing seeing the two different people. >> He's definitely got it in balance. I will tell you, he's still got some [ __ ] you energy.
2:34:50Oh yeah. Yeah. You just need to [laughter] hit the right topic. He's still got it. He's still got it. Believe me, it's still very alive in him. Sometimes it's like what makes a great champion can make a bad human, you know? And I say that sometimes with some of my swims. I'm like, look, I I know it's bad for my health, but it's good for my soul.
2:35:08And I think sometimes as well, but looking at some champions, I think it was Brendan Shaw when he was talking about Jon Jones, and he was just like, Jon Jones is incredible. Like, he's unbelievable, but there's not enough money to fill that void, you know, in in his life. But but that also driven to to greatness.
2:35:25It's so strange, isn't it? >> Yeah. Yeah, I mean I don't know John and I not famili I'm not that um versed in in MMA but certainly Dorian has >> the past victories plus life imbalance. It really it's it's a felt thing. It's not just a spoken thing. It's really a felt thing and I've spent a decent amount of time with him and in the context of his everyday life and he's he's definitely winning the whole picture as they say and he works at it.
2:35:50He works at it's not like a default, right? resisting negative forces and still keeping some [ __ ] you energy in there. >> Yeah. You know, I grew up in the South Bay where is like every, you know, it was like Stanford's right there and Silicon Valley is right there and you see this in the in the realm of um, you know, science, entrepreneurship, technology.
2:36:08You see it in every domain. >> You see it in every domain. You see it in dance. We had Twilight Tharp on here, the great choreographer. You see it that you she'll tell you stories of people that were incredible dancers and not balanced as humans. You'll see people who are both and you'll see the people who quit because it was just too hard and they wanted balance.
2:36:28>> It's like uh you you smile a lot. Well, what's your spirit animal, man? >> Or do you have five of them? Let's do this. I like this game. I like this game. I'm not into astrology, but I like this game. If you're willing, what aerial, terrestrial, and aquatic animal do you do you do you just like and admire?
2:36:46You don't have to be like them. Don't worry. If you say you like the minnow, it's okay. You know, we No one's going to think you less the man no matter what the answer. >> People often say I'm like a Labrador on amphetamans. [laughter] So that that >> you do seem very cheerful. Okay. So that's your terrestrial land.
2:37:02Well, let's just say the Labrador. You don't need the amphetamines. >> Yeah. Yeah. I think uh orcas, especially when I bulk up for a swim, cuz orcas are so big and chunky, but also mildly athletic as well. >> So, an orca in the water >> and in the air. >> Oh, that's a great one. I I think crows are misunderstood.
2:37:24And again, ancient Nordic mythology. When Faky found Iceland as well using crows, he would send them off and then all of a sudden if they came back, there was no land. He'd send another crow off. It came back. There was no land. Sent another one. It doesn't come back. There's land that way. The crows.
2:37:38Yeah. Beautiful. These these are great examples. And and that the speed of your response tells me that this is true. I I often think about this with people in my life. I need to spend a lot of time with them before I I go that's their terrestrial animal. And and and always always always people want to know.
2:37:55And if it's an animal that they don't want to look like >> for whatever reason or that isn't like tough enough if they're a guy or, you know, graceful enough if they're a woman is often the the response, then they're like, "Oh, no. I wanted to be like a damsel [laughter] fish." And I'm like, "No, but but don't you understand like the parrot fish?"
2:38:14And they're like, "I look like a parrot." I'm like, "No, you have you ever seen the parrot, you know?" So, you can you can really get yourself into trouble with this one. So, always best to let them answer. I think you're spot on. And I I do claim authority on this. I've been doing this since I was a kid.
2:38:26So, [laughter] Ross Edgely, you are a remarkable human for certainly the physical feats that you've accomplished. I will ask you in a moment what's next, but equally important for the teachings that you provide the world. Not just by example, but you you're a real intellectual. An intellectual is by definition someone who can parse and communicate things at multiple levels of granularity.
2:38:53That's an intellectual. You're an intellectual. love your um your command of literature and philosophy and and just ideas and the natural world and the brain. I I mean this is I will go on record saying this is one of the most delightful and um awesome for me conversations I've ever had on this podcast because you are so full of life.
2:39:13No surprise there. You are like mitochondria in action and it's infectious. [laughter] And I drank a little caffeine here and this morning, but man, like [ __ ] caffeine nicotine. Get yourself some Ross Edgely people. And um and here today you've given us that. I this is a conversation I'm going to return to many times over and I'd love to um roll out the the uh the opportunity to maybe like >> create some visuals.
2:39:39We've never done this before, but create some visuals that maybe could accompany some of the social posts and and on the podcast because it like you you get the credit for doing all these things, but I really appreciate your abil ability and willingness to kind of like meet in the middle on these things and uh and then run with these ideas.
2:39:56You are one hell of a human being. God bless your parents. God bless your wife, Esther. Your son's a lucky kid. And uh and I'm guessing that he moves a lot and and uh and the the future is bright. Uh what's next? What are you going to do and not swim in the Amazon? [laughter] >> Yeah. So for those listening, we've been we've been talking about various other swims.
2:40:18I was running them by Andrew and we've identified I believe we called it dick eating bacteria. >> No. So these bacteria go in through the urethra. So that's the the entry point and then they live. No, they're not bacteria. They're parasites and they live and they'll eat your nervous system and every one of your organs.
2:40:35Please don't do a swim down the Amazon. Paul Rosalie is going to kill me for saying this. Sorry, Paul. He's not going. [laughter] He's not going. >> Pen penis eating parasite. >> Yeah, the penis will go first, but then all the rest and you won't be sitting there stoic with mud on your face. [laughter] You'll be wondering why the heck you did this and apologizing to everybody.
2:40:54[clears throat] >> We've got we've got a few. I think it's so interesting. I'm almost like a a mercenary, a hired mercenary for an amazing cause. So, so we've got so many different swims all over the world and as soon as somebody says we need to raise awareness, ocean conservation, raise money, then I'm like, look, hold my beer.
2:41:11I know a guy. So, so I think, you know, you'll be the first to know. But we got a few a few different ones and as soon as they say let's go, then then I put my goggles on, you know, load up on caffeine and we're going to go and do it. >> I love it. Well, we had uh Greek mythology and now we've got Ross Edgely.
2:41:28So, thanks for expanding my consciousness and uh awareness of what's possible. You're the man, Ross. Come back. >> Thank you so much. This has been awesome. Thank you. Thank you. >> Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Ross Edgley to learn more about him and to find a link to his new book, How to Hero, Find Strength, Forge Resilience, and Fulfill Your Purpose.
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2:43:18Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Ross Edgley. And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in [music] science.
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