In this episode, I chat to a man who has swam around the whole of Great Britain and managed to swim across the English Channel in less than 48 hours. He talks about how he did it, how he got there, and why he decided to do it. I hope you enjoy this episode and that it makes you want to try to swim around the entire UK! If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE on Apple Podcasts or wherever else you get your podcasts. I'll be picking one lucky winner at random who leave a review to win a FREE place on the next Shreddin8 program! I'll announce the lucky winner next Monday! Thanks to everyone who submitted their entries and we hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year! Peace, Blessings, Cheers. Cheers, EJ & Rory - The Oceans Project. Music: "Space Junk" by The Oasis Project, produced by Pond5 Records and "Goodbye Outer Space" by Fountains of Bologna, recorded in Adelaide, Australia Thank you so much for all your support, Rory, we really appreciate it. Love ya. - Rory, Ej and Rory - Thank you for all the support, bye. xoxo - Rory and EJ xo (Music: "The Oasis" by Ej & Rory - "Outer Space Project, courtesy of & "The Ocean Project" by Lizzie" by P. (feat. ) Logo by , produced by , edited by ) and . is a production of , in the Oasis on . . . and , and (the Oasis, by ). This episode is dedicated to all of our sponsors, & (and ) is a tribute to all the hard work done by our sponsors. , all the work done in this episode is by our good friend, , the amazing people in this podcast is by . Thank you to , thank you for making us out of our efforts, and all of the support and support is , we appreciate all the love and support we get back from all of your support and all the effort put in by you, thank you, thanks to you all for the support we receive, etc.
00:01:31.000So if there's any influence from tides or currents and it's pulling you in one direction, I mean, I was basically going to miss Martinique.
00:01:37.000So I don't know, I was heading to Cuba, you know, somewhere like that.
00:01:40.000And then on the way back down, you know, they turned to me again and they said, like, you're going to miss St. Lucia.
00:01:45.000You're going to end up in, I don't know, whatever's further south than St. Lucia.
00:01:50.000And I think I realised as physically fit as you are, the ocean just doesn't care.
00:02:20.000I can't remember what it was in there.
00:02:22.000I think it was 160 kilometers, something like that.
00:02:24.000And I finished and I had basically trench foot.
00:02:27.000So where your feet and your hands are so kind of, I've got so much water in that it's almost going moldy.
00:02:34.000Yeah, so I'm sort of sitting there nursing my feet and one of the officers, a good friend of mine, they came over and they just said, you know, real English Royal Marine, they said, you boy?
00:03:49.000But Captain Webb refused to listen and 1875 August crossed the English Channel, and this is the part I love, on a diet of beef broth and brandy in a woolen wetsuit.
00:03:59.000He swam, I think it was 23 hours, breaststroke with his head out the water because, and I quote, front crawl was ungentlemanly like.
00:04:08.000And there was that element that I just thought, that's amazing.
00:04:23.000Yeah, it was still being developed as a technique, whereas, you know, if you were a gentleman and you were a swimmer, You swim breaststroke.
00:05:14.000Me and Jamie were just talking now about football back in England, and it wasn't until...
00:05:18.000You know, too long ago, I think maybe a hundred years ago, they used to just keep brandy in the dressing room in case you needed to warm yourself up.
00:05:38.000And I think, you know, people don't understand that it's taken, you know, people like Captain Webb, maybe me to a smaller extent, to just raise the bar, push the boundaries.
00:05:51.000I think our generation have seen that with the UFC, with mixed martial arts that has evolved so fast.
00:05:57.000I always remember Forrest Griffin used to kind of liken himself to the basketball players just shooting three-pointers with the ball between the legs.
00:06:04.000And that always resonated with me because I was like, yeah, the evolution that we've seen and what sort of Bruce Lee had the foresight to predict.
00:06:14.000And I think in a much, much, much smaller way, again, to go back to sort of British athletes and adventurers, Roger Bannister, you know, first guy to run a four-minute mile.
00:06:31.000But no, he said, you know, Oxford laced up his trainers and ran a four-minute mile.
00:06:37.000Similar right now to what I think we're seeing with Kipchoge, you know, and the two-hour marathon.
00:06:42.000And so that's why, and again, in a much, much smaller way, when I had that conversation about swimming around Great Britain, everybody said, it can't be done.
00:06:51.000Yes, it's 2,000 miles, but there's giant whirlpools in Scotland called the Coriovecan, Penland Firth, renowned around the world.
00:06:58.000If you get that wrong, you're disappearing backwards at 10 knots.
00:07:02.000There's no way you're swimming against that.
00:07:46.000And when you get, but actually you made a good point in terms of when you get wind over tide, so if you've got 10 knots going this way, but you've even got a little bit of wind and waves going this way, It can get choppy.
00:07:58.000And again, sort of looking at West Scotland, wind over tide, you can get 40 knots coming straight down the barrel, but you're trying to swim with the tide.
00:08:21.000Yeah, I mean it's in completely in theory and this is what I realized when I when I sat down and we started Sort of plotting the great what is it called again?
00:08:29.000What is the the issue that'll push you back?
00:08:36.000Oh, so Penland Firth Pend in Firth at the Penland for Pendland Firth.
00:08:41.000Yeah, yeah, and that's that like I said renowned around the world, but but equally If you imagine the shape of Great Britain, there's all sorts of kind of compression where the water will just come rushing through.
00:08:53.000And as well as the Penland Firth, you can get, you know, six knots around Wales.
00:09:34.000We were just going over how you predicted you had to, and your team had to predict how the tide was coming, because if it went wrong, you'd get pushed backwards at like 10 miles an hour.
00:09:46.000And this is the thing, I think, with the Great British Swim, we were kind of taking swimming as most people understand it, and we were removing it and putting it in an arena that was so different.
00:09:58.000And I think that's why it did so well kind of online.
00:10:42.000Yeah, I mean, tides are so predictable.
00:10:44.000So in theory, they change every six hours.
00:10:46.000So in theory, when we sat down and we looked, we know that if you do six hours on, six hours off, For 157 days, you'll make it around the coast of Great Britain.
00:11:39.000You're going to basically zigzag all the way up the coast of Great Britain.
00:11:44.000So as predictable as tides are, we found there was so much stuff that when we were out there, we were like, oh, it wasn't meant to do that.
00:11:50.000Or a giant whirlpool wasn't meant to be there.
00:13:34.000So I took my goggles off, unpeeled this fat tentacle, threw it away.
00:13:40.000And then, like I said, I'll show you in a minute.
00:13:43.000There was a picture where my face sort of changed shape and the goggles wouldn't fit on my face anymore because my eye sockets were so swelled.
00:13:52.000But I knew that, again, for all of this happening, the Cori Ovec and the Giant Walpole was still to my left.
00:13:57.000So Matt was like, you still need to swim.
00:14:45.000Brutal lesson from nature that from a sports science background, I'm interested in, you know, rehab, rest, recovery, nutrition strategies, all of this.
00:14:54.000But with swimming around Great Britain, it very quickly became apparent that the sea just doesn't care.
00:15:00.000It just doesn't care that you need to rehab your shoulders.
00:15:04.000It doesn't care that the ligaments and tendons in your shoulders are hurting.
00:15:06.000You might get impingement from swimming too much.
00:15:11.000That's why it went from swimming as I understood it and how a lot of people understand it to something completely like surviving basically in the water.
00:15:20.000So your swimming schedule would be six hours on and then you would try to rest.
00:15:41.000Because again, going back to what we were talking about with the Pendulum Firth, you could get out and you could get on the boat, but sometimes in a really good tide, if you are just in the water, you could be making four knots.
00:15:53.000You don't have to swim, but if you get in the freezing cold water of Scotland and you are quite happy getting hit in the face by tentacles, you can still make four knots.
00:16:01.000And so that's why so often it became about...
00:16:12.000I always remember, actually, the first day of autumn, I got up, it was 2 o'clock, so it was a night swim, 2 o'clock in the morning, and I left my wetsuit out to dry, and I had to scrape just a thin layer of ice off the wetsuit before I could put it on.
00:16:27.000But if I didn't get in and I didn't scrape that wear seat, then that would have been 15 miles potentially that we would have missed out on.
00:16:36.000And if you miss those 15 miles, the window of opportunity to swim around Great Britain because of the British summer being notoriously unpredictable and quite short...
00:16:46.000We wouldn't have made it round because even towards the end, there was two storms, Storm Allum and Storm Allie and Callum, who kind of stopped us for those two days where we couldn't swim because you just couldn't swim in a storm.
00:17:49.000If someone said that guy's going to swim around Great Britain, I'd be like, that guy's going to swim for half an hour and he's going to have a fucking heart attack.
00:17:56.000Yeah, and I'd probably be inclined to agree with you.
00:17:58.000But what I find interesting is when you start looking at strength and stamina, for so often people believe the two couldn't coexist.
00:18:06.000And Robert Hickson and his sort of research around concurrent training, they're basically saying if you train for strength and stamina, You dilute the potency of the stimuli.
00:18:18.000So what I mean by that is if we went into the gym just now and me, you and Jamie walked into the gym and we were like, okay, let's go and see what we're doing in the squat rack.
00:18:28.000That's strength, your body's ability to generate force.
00:18:30.000And we trained that and then all of a sudden I was like, okay, no, no, no, now let's go over to the rowing machine or let's go for a swim.
00:18:35.000Let's go and swim 10K. Then all of a sudden our bodies are going to go, well, hang on, which one do you want us to adapt to?
00:18:41.000Looking at molecular biology, which one Do you want us to adapt to strength or stamina?
00:18:46.000And again, you dilute the potency of that stimuli.
00:18:48.000However, there's the theory that if you separate them within the laws...
00:18:53.000I'm going off on a little bit of a tangent here.
00:18:57.000Looking at Verkashansky, one of the greatest strength and conditioning coaches to ever exist, he talks about this idea of adaptive energy, saying that in any given day, you have a certain amount of adaptive energy.
00:19:22.000As much as is needed for optimal recovery.
00:19:24.000So yeah, if we did, and this is what I find fascinating about MMA, because you're essentially saying to an MMA athlete, I need you to be strong, fast, quick.
00:19:34.000I need you to be muscally endured, but I also need you to have plyometric speed strength.
00:19:38.000And their body's going, you want us to be all of those things.
00:19:41.000You know, and that's why quite often it's the athlete with a higher work capacity who can, you know, adapt to those.
00:19:47.000Looking at like, you know, the Diaz brothers who just do triathlons for fun.
00:19:51.000You know, they have this insane work capacity, you know, so that's kind of your body's ability to perform and positively tolerate training of a given intensity or duration.
00:20:01.000So if you have the Diaz brothers and you say, okay, we're going to now do weight training in the morning, but by the afternoon I also need to go and swim a 10K, their bodies could tolerate that.
00:20:20.000So that's essentially how I would approach anything like this.
00:20:26.000But what I found really interesting when you were talking with C.T. Fletcher was...
00:20:31.000When you look at strength and stamina, it's so specific.
00:20:35.000So, you know, said principle, specific adaptation to imposed demands, you know, you get good at whatever you continually practice.
00:20:41.000And when you look at endurance in weight-bearing sports, absolutely, you know, you can argue that running, for instance, is just, you know, power-to-weight ratio.
00:20:53.000And when you start looking at that, there's research that will show adding, and we did this with the Royal Marines back in England, when you just add one kilo of extra weight in a backpack, its effect on pulmonary ventilation, lactic threshold, time to fatigue, all of those things.
00:21:10.000And so that's why when you see Tour de France and people like Chris Froome, Bradley Wiggins, you know, from Team Sky, they are just looking at the body saying, okay, your VO2 is what it is, your power to weight ratio, that's what we need to improve.
00:21:21.000We need to treat you like a Formula One car.
00:21:23.000We need to take away anything, you know, so when you look at Chris Froome, you know, an unbelievable athlete, and they say, well, look, you don't need biceps, you don't need triceps, so they will remove those.
00:22:07.000And so looking at that, and sorry, going back to strength and stamina, when you look at running, you could argue that, you know, being jacked and being heavier, yes, absolutely, your power to weight ratio is going to impact you.
00:22:20.000So for instance, I like to run, but I don't stand a chance against some of my friends who are, you know, fell runners and they weigh, you know, 30 kilos less than me.
00:22:33.000Yeah, you look at an unbelievable specimen of a man.
00:22:36.000You go, yes, you were built for endurance.
00:22:38.000But as soon as you go in the water, things might start to change a little bit because now it's non-weight bearing.
00:22:43.000So the power to weight ratio is a little bit different.
00:22:45.000So then you could, and this is all theory for the moment, but looking at the body shape to swim around Great Britain, because no one's ever done it before.
00:22:53.000So you can say, okay, what does that body type look like?
00:22:58.000And when writing down a checklist, you say, we need someone who can swim in, you know, 40 knots of wind, wind over tide that we're talking about, so you're not going to break.
00:23:06.000On top of that as well, you can start to look at, all of a sudden, we need someone who's never going to take a day off.
00:23:12.000So I wasn't sick throughout those 157 days.
00:23:15.000So there you start looking at adaptive energy and work capacity that we just spoke about.
00:23:20.000And then all of a sudden, you can start getting real into the detail of looking at, okay, someone with a higher muscle mass, If they're able to effectively swim and their biomechanics are on point, so that's not, you know, this muscle mass isn't interfering with their biomechanics, could it be argued that that stored muscle glycogen can almost turn them into a human whale?
00:23:51.000But when it comes to something like swimming around in Great Britain, it's just an eating competition, you know, with a little bit of swimming involved.
00:23:58.000And you just need to make sure you don't break.
00:24:01.000And that goes back to the tides as well, your body working with tides.
00:24:04.000If you can just keep getting in the water for 157 days, 12 hours a day, and not break, you'll make it around Great Britain.
00:24:12.000So you think the muscle mass aids you in that way?
00:24:17.000I mean, this is purely anecdotal, and I'd love to actually do more research into this, but certainly with a lot of athletes that I train with, it's almost like a bell curve.
00:24:25.000So if you can imagine, you know, for those listening, like a bell curve like that, how would you describe that?
00:24:35.000So you can argue that here around endurance, so if you've got somebody who's, you know, to use Rich Roll as an example, an amazing swimmer, that over 10k, he's going to be amazing because his efficiency and everything.
00:24:45.000But then past this point, so when we start looking at the mileage that we were covering, so sort of English Channel Swimmers, 20 miles plus a day, At this point, this leaner swimmer is going to start running out of muscle glycogen.
00:24:57.000His biomechanics might break down because he doesn't have the strength to hold that position continually.
00:25:02.000All of those things, the waves start crashing and he's starting to swim into 40 knots of wind.
00:25:08.000Would you favour the leaner, quicker, more streamlined swimmer?
00:25:12.000Or would you argue that the guy with more muscle mass here is going to continue to swim?
00:25:16.000Not necessarily at the same pace, but would continue not to break.
00:25:20.000I think it depends on who the man with the muscle mass is, because a lot of guys with muscle mass, they got that muscle mass from doing very low reps, high weight.
00:25:30.000I mean, what kind of exercise do you do that gives you a build like that?
00:26:10.000And yes, it's shown to induce muscular hypertrophy, so to increase muscle mass, but arguably more functional than when you'd be looking at a bodybuilder, Mr. Olympia, something like that.
00:26:21.000And then you have muscle damage, which is more eccentric contraction, so more arguably sort of CrossFit.
00:26:28.000So, a bodybuilder, to achieve that physique, besides using steroids, they have to use lots of repetitions?
00:26:47.000Yeah, because you're not built like a bodybuilder, but you're built like someone who's very strong.
00:26:51.000Yeah, and I think that's it, where you start.
00:26:53.000And that's not to say, you know, when you look at, you know, to use you as an example, so if we had you in the sports lab, we would say, okay, what is your strength deficit?
00:27:01.000So your strength deficit is, you know, say we had you on, you know, the leg press, and we said, Joe, we want to look at how much force your legs can generate with you just using...
00:28:38.000So the difference between that, so all of a sudden they'll say, okay, this over here, your training strength, is what you could do, Joe, when I was just saying, okay, lift that.
00:29:22.000It means if there's a large deficit between the two, it means that you have muscle mass, but you're not fully using it.
00:29:33.000So you might see a large deficit between the two if you had a bodybuilder, for instance, because they've got a lot of muscle mass, but they're not using it.
00:30:50.000It's almost like you've got a Formula One car with a huge engine, but you're using it to its full extent.
00:30:57.000You know, and this is why, I'm going off on a slight tangent here, but this is why when you start looking at bodybuilding-centric work, so this idea of increasing muscular hypertrophy, it can be a good thing when you understand that strength deficit.
00:31:12.000So you might have an athlete who you go, okay, you have a small strength deficit, it's very small, so for the muscle mass that you have, you're using it to its absolute full potential.
00:31:21.000It's like you have a very small car, But you are just pushing down the accelerator so hard and it can't go anymore.
00:31:56.000When you go into the gym, are you training for strength, speed, stamina?
00:31:59.000Whereas horsepower programming, I almost borrowed from Soviet Union principles.
00:32:03.000You start looking at general physical preparedness, as it was known.
00:32:08.000And this is this just idea of you take an athlete, certainly a younger athlete, And you're trying to increase their work capacity by non-specific movements.
00:32:17.000So you'll get an athlete, you're handed, imagine, okay, you're a young kid just growing up and your parents hand you to me, I'm your coach.
00:32:26.000And I say, okay, I don't know if Joe's going to be big, strong.
00:32:30.000I don't know if he's going to be able to run far or fast.
00:32:33.000So what we're going to do is just increase your sort of neuromuscular efficiency and work capacity.
00:32:38.000And so by doing that, it's kind of jumps, throws, non-specific, these natural movement patterns.
00:32:45.000And we get you to do lots and lots of this.
00:32:47.000What that's doing is work capacity, your body's ability to positively tolerate training and give intensity or duration.
00:32:54.000And I think from the Great British Swim, when a lot of people will say, how was it that you were able to tolerate those 12 hours a day, the jellyfish stings and everything?
00:33:03.000For me, one of the biggest things was going back to, and this is going to sound so odd, but I ran a marathon pulling a car three years ago, I think now.
00:33:14.000And so that is almost the perfect embodiment of horsepower programming in that sheer stress on the body, but it's not a specific skill.
00:33:22.000When you say you ran a marathon behind a car, you mean pulling a car.
00:33:27.000So in front of a car, not behind a car.
00:34:08.000I've had this conversation with a few people because they said something similar.
00:34:11.000And I think it's, I mean, you know, to slightly go off on another tangent here, because I think we've covered the physical aspect and work capacity, which I've addressed.
00:34:20.000But I think, and this is one thing I genuinely just wanted to almost quiz you on and get your thoughts on this, is certainly throughout the Great British Swim, It subjected my body to a fatigue like I've never experienced before.
00:34:34.000It was just, yeah, sleep deprivation, just ligaments, tendons in my shoulders just wondering what was going on.
00:34:40.000And for me, you almost develop a split personality in that There's times when I'd quite often say you need to swim with a smile because it's 157 days.
00:34:52.000If you're stressed or it's like a marathon where you grit your teeth and you try and get through it, I think we're very aware that the body is this complex biochemical organism and if you're stressed, cortisol levels spike, inflammation, your immune system, everything's affected.
00:35:05.000So for me, I was treating it not like a marathon.
00:35:08.000I had to treat it Swim with a smile, you know, think this is life now.
00:35:32.000And a good friend of mine, back in England, SAS trained, and he said to me, Ross, you're a really nice guy and everything, but there's going to be times when you just need to, you know, no smiles and just get feral, which I... Thinking about it,
00:35:48.000and because I had 12 hours to think a day, I was mulling this over in my head.
00:35:53.000For me, it goes back to Tim Noakes' Central Governor Theory, looking at how fatigue is an emotionally driven state that we use to pull that physiological handbrake.
00:36:03.000So, you know, for those listening, sort of 16 miles into a marathon, you might be saying, no way, I can't keep putting one foot in front of the other.
00:36:10.000And then all of a sudden, 25 miles in, your family and friends are clapping you, and you get that second wind, and you start sprinting.
00:36:17.000And for me, looking at the sort of central governor theory, I found that in complete exhaustion, like when you absolutely have nothing left, you almost go into this feral state, you know, so like an injured dog,
00:36:33.000you know, where a lot of people will say, oh, you know, remember why you started, think of your family and friends.
00:36:38.000And I was like, no, no, no, I was at a level of fatigue where Where I wasn't thinking about, you know, family and friends.
00:36:44.000I was thinking almost, you know, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, where it starts with just food, shelter, oxygen.
00:36:52.000I was at that sort of level where there was sea ulcers.
00:36:57.000I mean, my neck's kind of healed now, but, you know, there was times when Chafing on my neck.
00:39:48.000I went to bed with this open wound from the wetsuit chafing, basically, and as I woke up, the bedsheet had fused to my neck, so I just had to rip it off.
00:40:25.000It was so strange because when we left in June, we came back obviously to the same point and we left in the British summer and everyone was on the beach and then I came back round, people were putting up Christmas decorations and I was like, I'd been gone for so long at sea.
00:41:56.000Because I was reading on the internet and I found out about it and I sent it to all my friends after Sober October to show what pussies we were.
00:42:02.000I was like, you guys think what we did was hard?
00:42:06.000I sent it to Tom and Bert and Ari and we were all just like, fuck!
00:42:11.000Because whenever you hear about someone doing something crazy, there's always someone who does something far crazier to just one-up the crazy person and it keeps going and going and going.
00:42:22.000There's a race that Courtney Dilwalter, who's been a guest on the show before, she won the Moab 240, which is a 238 mile race through the Moab Mountains.
00:42:44.000So she recently entered a race, and she came in second place.
00:42:47.000In this race, they would run for four miles in an hour, and then they would stop.
00:42:54.000When the hour was over, they would stop, and then when the next hour started, they would run another four miles, like four point something miles, and they would do it for six days.
00:45:15.000And this is what I find amazing because then it becomes about something completely different.
00:45:19.000I mean, we were just talking now about Kipchoge and the two-hour marathon, but it's like if you put Kipchoge into this, you know, who's going to win?
00:45:27.000It says they had an hour to complete the 4.1667 mile loop.
00:45:33.000And then they finish within 15 minutes to spare.
00:49:33.000But what you just said there, like, do you think...
00:49:36.000And this is, again, because I had 12 hours to think every day...
00:49:40.000Do you think it is unusual or do you think that we now think it's unusual because society has got real comfortable?
00:49:47.000You know, and I maintained that stuff that I was doing with Salt Tongue and everything, our ancestors, do you not think they would have just thought, you know, that's just Monday?
00:49:56.000I don't think anybody ever thought that was just Monday.
00:50:42.000Persistence hunting is, and you see it in a lot of these African men who go on to be phenomenal endurance runners.
00:50:51.000I mean, they win marathons left and right in these particular parts of Africa that produce incredible runners.
00:50:58.000And they think a lot, there was a really, there was a cut and run, is a fantastic episode of Radiolab that details these men from this one certain part in Africa, I forget where it is, but see if you can pull that up.
00:51:12.000But this episode detailed the horrific circumcision rituals that these men had to endure.
00:51:40.000Don't let those crazy guys cut your dick.
00:51:42.000The San are the oldest inhabitants of Southern Africa where they have lived for almost 20,000 years.
00:51:47.000The term San is commonly used to refer to a diverse group of hunter-gatherers living in South Africa who share historical linguistic connections.
00:51:56.000Many now accept the term Bushman or San.
00:52:15.000But they were arguing when they were discussing it, and one of the guys who was on it, who had actually been through it, and now I believe he lives...
00:53:44.000And this is why I'm a huge fan of Wim Hof because so often what he's doing when he's submerged in ice cold, it's like, well, I'm training my capillaries.
00:53:51.000And it's like, what do you mean you're training your capillaries?
00:53:53.000And it's these, we're atrophying these age-old inbuilt mechanisms.
00:54:04.000You're advocating tolerance, training tolerance.
00:54:07.000Yeah, and do you think that's maybe missing?
00:54:09.000I mean, again, looking at MMA, like maybe that you see, you know, whether it's, you know, Muay Thai and they're like kicking trees and stuff.
00:54:18.000Yeah, granted, that's, you know, making denser bones and stuff.
00:54:20.000But do you think there's that element as well?
00:54:27.000I've forgotten what it was now, but you just start looking at just putting people in high stress situations just to see how they're going to cope.
00:54:33.000Like John Fitch, he was like notorious for letting people almost try and submit him and then they'd tie themselves out.
00:54:52.000You know, Berkman's got a hell of a guillotine and John Fitz shot in on him and Berkman caught him in the guillotine and just put him to sleep in the first round.
00:59:34.000There's technical, which you've just...
00:59:36.000And again, I should point out, again, I'm a complete layman when it comes to all mixed martial arts, but I find it fascinating, this adversity training aspect.
00:59:43.000So you were just saying he was eating bombs before that.
00:59:46.000Would it have helped, you know, that if he wasn't?
00:59:54.000So, like, if that choke was applied during the first few seconds or minutes of the first round, I think he probably would have had a good chance to survive.
01:01:41.000So he's got his head and his arm trapped together, and Josh, who's an enormously powerful person, is really neck-cranking him as much as anything, and then Dean was forced to tap.
01:01:52.000But this is at the end of a long match, and it could have been exhaustion might have played a part in it.
01:02:00.000It most certainly was Josh's skill and his ability to apply that technique.
01:02:05.000But the point is, a guy like Dean Lister, you're not going to tap that guy easy.
01:02:10.000But this is, and again, with sort of holding my hands up saying I'm so sort of naive, a huge fan of MMA, but not necessarily any of the technical aspects.
01:02:19.000But what I love is when you look at someone like Nick Diaz or Michael Bisping.
01:02:23.000People don't understand his conditioning, and he will just wear people down.
01:02:29.000What Bisping has is just insane mental toughness.
01:02:33.000You know, Bisping basically has one eye.
01:02:35.000If you look at his eyes, one of his eyes actually, and I hope he can get surgery on it now because he is retired, he has oil Like, embedded in his eye to protect his retina.
01:03:26.000So to answer your question, there's this...
01:03:29.000And you could speak to this because...
01:03:32.000What you're talking about, the ability to overcome adversity, like some people, when you were talking about that fatigue is an emotionally driven thing, that there's this feeling that you get and you can give in to that feeling where you're like,
01:03:47.000oh my god, I fucking can't do this anymore.
01:03:50.000And some people are more susceptible to that than others.
01:04:39.000But through the motivation that you're getting from this music, the emotional stimulation, you're just like, fuck that, we're going to keep going.
01:05:04.000And that's true that I think people don't understand you are the alchemist of your own body that, you know, in terms of neurotransmitters, chemical signals in the brain, you can impact those.
01:05:13.000Sometimes, yeah, you need external influences.
01:05:17.000But when you start to control them, Yeah, it can be so powerful.
01:05:21.000Some people do it naturally, I suppose, and they've just got it inbuilt.
01:05:25.000But when you start to train, and I think it's only now that we're going down that route and looking at that as a, you know, until previously, it was one of those intangibles, you know, that you kind of underappreciate it in any sport.
01:05:37.000And now we're going, oh, okay, yeah, you know, that person over there is, you know, that mental fortitude or what you're talking about there is maybe their ability to alter their own chemistry, biochemical reactions to the body.
01:05:47.000Yeah, there's something real that happens, right?
01:05:50.000Like when you hear a song and you get excited, like whatever that, yeah, whatever that burst is, it seems like a real, like if that was a pill and you took it, you'd be like, oh, this works.
01:06:02.000And the thing is, is it's been around years.
01:06:04.000When you look at like, you know, Marcus Aurelius' meditations or Stoic philosophy, and they're talking about, you know, dialogue being both external and internal.
01:06:12.000So the conversations that go on inside your own head are just as important as the conversations you have with other people.
01:06:19.000But it's only just now that we're trying to kind of apply a little bit of science to it, looking at the psychology and this mind-body connection.
01:06:27.000But the fact is, yeah, some of the greatest ancient Stoics, they were trying to figure out as well.
01:08:35.000You're basically saying to your body, recruit every single muscle fiber possible and work in conjunctions with ligaments and tensors and let's get half a ton off the floor.
01:08:47.000But when you look, and certainly with Andy Bolton's 1,000 pound lift, he had his friend in his face and he's there going, come on, come on.
01:08:57.000When we were talking earlier about, again, strength deficit is that sort of deficit between what you can voluntarily contract and involuntary contract.
01:09:07.000That was him obviously voluntarily contract.
01:09:09.000No one was electrocuting him in that particular one.
01:09:11.000But they're there and you do anything that you can before you actually step out onto that platform.
01:09:17.000And now, I mean, he would have just been, you know, completely written off after that, that sort of adrenal dump afterwards and fatigue, you know, emotionally.
01:10:04.000So, you know, I mean, this goes back to sell you sort of 1936, a Hungarian physician who found, you know, you give, you know, took some lab rats, give them a lethal dose of poison, they kill over and die.
01:10:14.000But he found by giving them a little bit of poison, a little bit more, a little bit more, that they built up this intolerance to it.
01:10:19.000That was the general adaptation syndrome.
01:10:21.000But it was from that that we discovered stress and stimuli is the key to any adaptation.
01:10:27.000And it wasn't until the strength and conditioning community caught on to that and we started to think, okay, how can we apply stress and stimuli to the body to bring about a desired result?
01:10:36.000Certainly now, I think that's kind of overlooked in sport, but certainly the wider fitness industry that, you know, it's easy now and very sort of marketing driven to say, get fit in, you know, five easy steps or, you know, whereas the reality is, you know,
01:10:51.000it's get fit in eight months after a lot of stress and stimuli.
01:10:55.000Yeah, but that get fit in five easy steps is really just for, it's just a gimmick to get people who don't actually work out to get involved.
01:11:04.000It is, and that's why I love what you broadcast.
01:11:06.000And even with the Sober October and stuff, I mean, I'm a huge fan of Bert, but people, and I know he's so funny, and everyone loves Bert, but he's a beast as well.
01:11:15.000I mean, to rock up and just do a marathon, and again, going back to power-to-weight ratio, what he did was amazing.
01:11:49.000And he still, he is a beast, because he, despite the fact that he doesn't look like Rich Roll, he still can keep going.
01:11:57.000And people, and I know he was very entertaining when he did the marathon and stuff, but I was actually watching that as the sports scientist in me was like, that's amazing, and no one's talking about that.
01:12:06.000His power to weight ratio, and he's still running that marathon.
01:12:09.000Something that, and yeah, so for as funny and as entertaining as it was to watch, I honestly was like, Bert, that's amazing.
01:12:15.000What's more amazing is Ari, honestly, because Ari really didn't work out.
01:15:27.000But what's interesting, to go back to what we were talking about there, you've just perfectly described that idea of giving a clear cellular signal to the body.
01:15:34.000So polarised training, you're familiar with that 80-20 that you do, 80% of your work, your training in that aerobic realm where you can keep doing that.
01:15:58.000So there, you're working technique, but you're fresh.
01:16:00.000So you're drilling motor patterns that are completely fresh and not fatigued because you're doing this 80% on an elliptical trainer while watching a movie.
01:16:08.000So you're keeping the two completely separate, but considering the body in its entirety, that when it comes together, you've created a more powerful version of yourself.
01:16:19.000And I think it was interesting what you just said there about recovery between bouts as well.
01:16:24.000So when you start looking at strongman training, you know, Some of the strongest guys, and one of these strongest guys in the world, all understood the benefits of cardiorespiratory training.
01:16:35.000You look at, again, Jeff Capes, two-time World's Strongest Man, was running fell races and marathons at 25 stone.
01:16:42.000A fell race is, yeah, it's quite specific to England, so it's kind of trail running, but we call them fell running because you're kind of going through bogs and marshes and...
01:16:59.000When you look at Bill Kazmaier, again, well, strongest man, a powerlifter, but understood the benefits of cardiorespiratory training to improve his recovery between sets.
01:17:07.000Brian Shaw as well, one of the sort of...
01:17:11.000You know, the newest sort of strongman and former basketball player.
01:17:14.000You know, so he had that cardiorespiratory endurance, that base, that aerobic base.
01:17:19.000And then he built this incredible strength on top of that aerobic foundation.
01:17:27.000Whether, you know, they knew it or not, they were almost creating an athlete like they were creating athletes back in the sort of Soviet Union era when they were taking athletes going, right, you're giving me a kid and I don't know if he's strong, quick, good at running, running fast or running far, I don't know.
01:17:42.000So we're going to build this aerobic neuromuscular base and when they show any sort of genetic potential to be strong, quick, whatever, we're going to hone in on that and that's only when we're going to get specific.
01:18:15.000But I mean, even now, I tell you what, Jamie, if it's possible, actually, I mean, Brian Shaw, he accidentally, you must have seen this clip, set the indoor rowing record.
01:20:56.000So it's that base that I think so often I've heard you speak about, and certainly Eddie as well, talking about break dancers making great, you know, BJJ. And again, whether you know it or not, they had that neuromuscular foundation.
01:21:08.000They understood proprioception, where their ligaments, tensors, everything should work.
01:21:13.000Whereas if you had someone with a similar work capacity or someone of the same age, everything was the same, but they didn't have that neuromuscular efficiency.
01:21:20.000You'd say, okay, and again, this is me so naively, again, I certainly don't claim to know anything about BJJ, but you go, okay, this is an arm bar, and they kind of go, okay, let me try and figure this out, and you can see them, it's like a Rubik's Cube, they're trying to piece it together, but you get someone, again, like Brian,
01:21:36.000and you go, okay, this is BJJ, or something quite complex that requires you, and he, I'm not saying, well, he wouldn't even fight, he's too heavy.
01:21:44.000They'd have to open up the super heavyweight division.
01:21:47.000But he's doing a similar movement to deadlifts, which is very common.
01:22:23.000And I think it was Thor or Brian Shaw went in and just instead of a clean and jerk and Joe, honestly, he just basically upright rose the whole thing.
01:23:38.000But there's like, again, if you put in, you know, Thor versus CrossFit, then it will probably come up and you get to see an amazing crisp technique.
01:23:48.000And then equally, Thor is basically doing what Brian was doing just there.
01:23:54.000So this is, they keep putting on weight until one of them, I believe the competition here is you keep putting on, yeah, there you go, CrossFit versus the mountain.
01:24:00.000It's an amazing technique, disappears under the bar.
01:24:34.000Like that kind of person, the kind of person that can do that.
01:24:37.000When you think about him deadlifting a thousand pounds or any of these guys that can deadlift in insane numbers, just the whole machine can generate so much force.
01:24:56.000And then you say, here's a new movement.
01:24:58.000And you can see them look at, you know, like for that example, okay, so that's a cleaning jerk.
01:25:02.000Okay, I can't figure that out, but I think I've found a way.
01:25:05.000It also lends credence to the concept that deadlifts is like the mother of all exercises because it really does work all your muscle groups.
01:25:13.000And if you can get really strong at deadlifts, I mean, it really does enhance almost any single athletic endeavor you participate in.
01:25:21.000And I think, again, that's sort of been lost a little bit along the way that, you know, getting the joints, ligaments, muscles, everything to work cohesively.
01:25:29.000And when you do that through your training, you can pretty much apply to anything.
01:25:32.000So I think that's why, I mean, again, I used to swim ages, ages ago, way back in the day, but I was never going to make sort of an elite standard.
01:25:40.000I'm You know, 5'9 on a good day, maybe.
01:25:43.000I'm built like a hobbit, so everyone else is just great.
01:25:49.000So I ended up, again, almost accidentally going into strength training.
01:25:53.000I played water polo in the end to a fairly good level.
01:25:57.000So I was doing that, but again, I just got beaten up.
01:25:59.000I was 16 playing in the seniors league and, you know, just big guys with beards just beating me up.
01:26:05.000You know, it's interesting what you were talking about earlier in terms of mental fortitude and your ability to adapt and your ability to overcome.
01:26:14.000I wonder if we're ever going to figure out a way to measure that, like to measure mental endurance or measure mental capacity or mental stimulation.
01:26:24.000You know, you can measure your VO2 max and you know what the body's capable of.
01:26:30.000But I wonder if there's a way, like, when someone does hear a great song and it kicks in, whether it's through fMRI or any other type of detection device, where they can figure out a way, oh, this part of your brain is firing, let's concentrate on building up the activation of that part of that brain,
01:26:52.000Think of that endurance or think of that motivation as like maybe even a mantra that you can call upon because you call upon it all the time and you can recreate that state.
01:27:04.000I mean, I think on that point, certainly over in Britain at the moment, so basically women for the first time can actually apply and be in the special forces.
01:27:13.000So at the moment, it's really, really interesting because speaking to certainly the Royal Marines, they were saying, We've got hundreds of years that if you hand us 500 young fit men, we can say they need to be this weight, this tall, and if you give us them,
01:27:29.000we've got years and years of experience of putting them through this training system of mental and physical fortitude, everything down in Limstone, it's the training centre of the Royal Marines.
01:27:38.000We go on this endurance course, we go on a 30-mile yomp with a backpack, everything, and by the end of 32 weeks, that's what it takes to be a Royal Marine, to get your Green Beret, after 32 weeks we can take you from being Completely, not sedentary, but unfit to being a Royal Marine.
01:27:53.000And that's one thing they pride themselves on.
01:27:55.000But now, what they're saying is obviously, you know, females can now apply to the Special Forces.
01:28:00.000And what they find so interesting is, and I certainly do as well, is what does that look like for a female Royal Marine?
01:28:07.000You know, what does that look like for a female?
01:28:09.000And again, to go back, I mean, I wrote an article ages ago, Run Like a Girl.
01:28:15.000And I was saying, I want to run like a girl.
01:28:17.000You know, some of my best training partners are female and their perception to fatigue is unbelievable.
01:28:23.000That's purely anecdotal, but also as well, when you look at the top tier of ultramarathon runners and swimming as well, Diana Naid first to go from Cuba to Florida, you know, incredible.
01:28:34.000Like she was getting stung by Portuguese manawars and just unbelievable.
01:28:38.000So it's purely outdated, but now they're saying, you know, why is it that certain female athletes have a greater tolerancy to pain?
01:28:46.000And I think, to your point, if we can start to quantify that, because there are biological differences.
01:28:52.000If you take men, you know, high testosterone can have an impact on high hemoglobin, generate muscle force, all of these things.
01:28:58.000But I think if we could quantify why it is that certain female athletes are dominating the top 10% of ultramarathons and open water swimming, what is it that they're doing?
01:29:12.000I think the ability to endure pain, and this is not my thought, honestly, I should just say this has been theorized before, has to do with their ability to endure the pain of childbirth.
01:29:48.000I mean, obviously I haven't given birth, but it's supposed to be unbelievably painful.
01:29:53.000And women are biologically suited to this.
01:29:56.000So I think their ability to endure that pain is just, it's probably just, there's an evolutionary advantage to having this higher capacity.
01:30:07.000But I also think one of the things that I learned from teaching martial arts is that women, they learn technique better many times than men do.
01:32:15.000Do you think that's changing again, to bring it back to the UFC, I suppose, because now, I mean, with what Cormier's doing, and, you know, Jon Jones coming back, you know, the lightweights are all moving up to heavyweight.
01:32:25.000Do you think, you know, gone are the days of the huge dude who was just a physical phenom, and now the smaller technical dude?
01:32:33.000Well, there's a thought with the 265-pound weight class, and the consensus thought seems to be that somewhere around 240 pounds is the magic number.
01:32:46.000They think that 240 pounds is the amount of weight that you have where you're strong enough that you can knock out any man, but you have more endurance than a man that maybe weighs 265 or heavier and cuts down to 265. Now,
01:34:44.000But that's also probably what led to him having this insane endurance is the same kind of mental toughness.
01:34:52.000I'm sure there's some genetic advantages as well because they would talk about how he would take months off and come back in and still fuck everybody up because he's just that good.
01:35:00.000But that also could be attributed to the cardio base that he had from competing for many, many, many, many years at a high level and being known for that insane endurance.
01:35:12.000Going back to what you said, if you could quantify that, you'd put Kane up there with one of those people and you'd go, he has that in abundance.
01:35:32.000But on top of that, what they both have is tremendous wrestling technique.
01:35:36.000The wrestling technique, as well as the endurance, Everything plays a factor.
01:35:41.000Jon Jones fits into that camp as well.
01:35:43.000Jon Jones has tremendous wrestling technique as well, striking technique, massive physical skills, but also mental toughness.
01:35:50.000His mental toughness is unchallengeable.
01:35:53.000You absolutely have to give it up to him.
01:35:56.000He's had his arm fucked up by Vitor Belfort, completely hyperextended, refused to tap, and then wound up tapping Vitor with an Americana, I believe it was, the next round.
01:36:22.000I mean, if he wound up going into the next round, if he didn't stop Chael Sonnen, and his toe was that fucked up, and he wound up losing to Chael Sonnen because his toe was bad, that's insane.
01:36:33.000He also went through that fight with Alexander Gustafson, where he wasn't really training very hard for that fight, and Gustafson won the first couple rounds, and then Jon Jones won the last two to take it away.
01:36:46.000And I watched that back, obviously, with all the promotion at the moment, and I think it was Winkle John Jackson when he started shouting, heart, heart, you know, shout out, and that was the deciding factor, that you come out and you...
01:37:09.000I think that is a factor, because I think that there's mental toughness that comes from being around that kind of combat in the household all the time.
01:37:47.000And I think they've developed it over a long period of time, and once they finally got to, whether it's wrestling or jiu-jitsu or MMA, they already had it, and then they accentuated it and added on to it, and then it got stronger, and then they become known for it.
01:38:05.000But I think that mental strength comes from many life experiences and probably...
01:38:10.000Probably the guidance of their parents or some other role model in their life that also showed them incredible endurance and incredible discipline and this mental fortitude.
01:38:47.000And I can't wait to catch up with Dan about that and sort of exchange notes on this idea of mental fortitude because how he survived that, I mean, it was...
01:40:21.000No, he's a sweetheart until you're locked in a cage with him and he's going to fuck you up.
01:40:26.000The difference between him and Dan Hardy, though, is that he's a world-class wrestler.
01:40:31.000I mean, he was a two-time Olympic team member and just one of the best wrestlers to ever compete in MMA. And you really see that in a lot of his fights, like the Derrick Lewis fight.
01:40:43.000You know, and Derrick just knocked out Alexander Volkov, who, in a lot of people's eyes, including mine, was one of the dark horses in the heavyweight division.
01:40:50.000But Derek just did not belong in there with Cormier, who was the light heavyweight champion.
01:40:54.000I mean, he carries a lot of fat on him.
01:40:56.000And I think if he wanted to, if Daniel Cormier really dedicated himself, he could drop down to 185 pounds.
01:41:22.000But I find that with wrestling, and this is on a complete tangent here, but when you talk about that mind-body connection, like, so often they're seen as separate.
01:41:30.000You're either an intellect or you're just a physical phenom.
01:41:33.000Like, it's rare that you see the two, but when, again, ancient Greek philosophy, you look at Plato, like, Plato was an accomplished, celebrated wrestler.
01:41:49.000And I think, and again, this is coming from, you know, sort of my limited background, because obviously in Britain we don't have wrestling like over here and stuff, but there's something about wrestling, it seems, or I suppose my question to you is like that it just teaches that mental fortitude.
01:42:06.000You know, yeah, physically, yeah, neuromuscular efficiency and stuff, but...
01:42:10.000It seems to have just produced this breed of humans that, you know, did you think?
01:42:17.000There's something about being face down in a mat as somebody's just trying to contort your limbs, you know, so that to go back to stress and stimuli, you know, it's also building up.
01:42:28.000That progressive overload in your own head.
01:42:51.000I think there's the strength that they have, the intellectual strength, and when I say intellectual strength, they're actually solving puzzles.
01:43:01.000Whether people understand it or not, you look at wrestling and you think it's always brute force and strength and endurance, but they're solving puzzles.
01:43:08.000They're setting traps, they're trying to set up techniques, and they're doing this under heavy workload.
01:43:14.000They're exhausted, their heart's pounding, and they're resisting 100% with another person who's resisting 100%.
01:43:21.000When you see guys tie up and they're throwing each other around and they're fucking digging their toes into the mat and they're yanking and wrenching, that is a tremendous amount of force that they have to keep up for minutes and minutes at a time.
01:43:33.000And I think a lot of that has to do with your ability to maintain intensity.
01:43:37.000And a lot of that has to do with your ability to tolerate being exhausted and tolerate fatigue and to force yourself into a highly aggressive and efficient mindset.
01:43:49.000And to be able to maintain proper technique under fatigue.
01:44:14.000And I think, certainly going back to the swim, there's times where I said to the team, I was like, please, when I'm six hours into a swim through the night, I need just really clear instructions.
01:44:25.000Just like, Ross swim this way, Ross swim that direction.
01:44:28.000And again, purely anecdotal for the moment, but I love Cowboy Cerrone and there's times when he's just in his corner and he's just having a full-on conversation.
01:46:13.000But you mentioned there as well with Cerrone talking about his son.
01:46:16.000It was such an emotional post that he posted on Instagram and I loved it.
01:46:19.000And going back to what you said about finding something that alters your biochemistry, you know, and now that he's fighting for something and he's got his kid.
01:47:32.000It was like, I think, the best performance of his career.
01:47:35.000And, you know, maybe Mike Perry is not as good as Darren Till or as Rafael dos Anjos or some of the other people that he's fought in the past, but he's fucking dangerous and he's a legit welterweight, where Donald's not.
01:48:30.000We really don't know and we will not know until they fight.
01:48:33.000But I do have to say that Khabib in the training camp at AKA, this is coming straight from Cormier and a bunch of other people that train with him, say that he trains with Olympic caliber wrestlers and fucks them up.
01:48:48.000Khabib is, he's so goddamned good on the ground.
01:48:53.000When he gets a hold of guys, they look perplexed.
01:48:56.000And I always bring up the Edson-Barboza fight, because the moment in the Barboza fight in the first round, where he had that thousand-yard stare, where Khabib had taken him down, and he was mauling him, and he looked over in the distance like, how the fuck am I going to get through three rounds of this shit?
01:49:46.000I think what you did by forcing yourself to do that shit for six hours a day, take a break, six hours again, to do 12 hours of swimming every day for five fucking months, that kind of mental fortitude, if someone just taught you I mean,
01:50:01.000obviously you're very physically strong and fit.
01:50:03.000If someone just taught you technique and taught you how to grapple and taught you kickboxing, you would be a motherfucker at it because your mind is so strong.
01:50:14.000There's a different mindset to have that same kind of mind strength with the adversity of another human being trying to kill you.
01:52:11.000So I almost, but then even intrinsically or something, my body's used to working hard for 12 hours a day and just getting battered by waves.
01:52:20.000So at the moment, you know, I'm sort of sitting here and, you know, I've been doing media all week and it's been amazing, but there's an element of me just kind of going, I need to use this work capacity.
01:52:29.000And so I am sort of training at the moment.
01:52:31.000The first session I did, I was in there for like six hours, and they were like, the gym's shutting, Ross.
01:52:42.000One of the things that we all talked about after Sober October was that none of us had ever done anything like this before, but we're worried now that we're going to go back to our sedentary ways, and then we're going to lose all this work that we put in.
01:52:52.000Because at the end of the month, Ari, who had never worked out before, ran 15 miles, rode 5 kilometers, and then got on the bike for a while.
01:53:00.000I forget what he did on the bike, but I think he did at least a mile on the bike.
01:53:04.000And this was a 4 plus hour workout, but he had never done anything before.
01:53:41.000And then, so when you do shift that, and it's all relative, because, you know, it can be, you know, Swimming for 12 hours a day and stuff, but it's relative.
01:53:49.000And I think when you do shift that, it is hard.
01:53:54.000And I think you have to be so conscious of that.
01:53:57.000So even now, for instance, my legs at the moment shrunk, but not just my legs.
01:54:03.000I mean, I essentially skipped leg day for 157 days.
01:54:11.000So we went into the gym the other day and because of ligaments, tendons, but not only just generating force like a bench press, but if you imagine like 40 knots of wind, you know, wind over tide that we're talking, my shoulders are used to being contorted in ways that they shouldn't.
01:54:28.000So your shoulders are resisting the wind as it's coming towards me.
01:54:31.000So you're pushing with your shoulders.
01:54:34.000Yeah, and the amount of times I would take a stroke and then a wind.
01:54:36.000I mean, there's times when the waves hit me so hard, I thought I've just hit a boat.
01:54:41.000You know, I hit something and that would be poor.
01:54:45.000So on the bench press, it was just kind of like took, you know, 160. You know, I'm not saying it's necessary just as a sort of sports science experiment.
01:54:54.000I kind of unlifted and then just took 160 kilos just for a ride.
01:55:55.000So your load capacity, your ability to hold your body weight up is diminished.
01:56:01.000Yeah, I almost entered into this small group of people, like astronauts, where you've been in a non-weight-bearing environment for so long.
01:56:10.000So I joke, and when we watched that video back, and I was saying, try not to fall over there.
01:56:16.000Genuinely, I was thinking, please don't just fall over with all the characters I'm clapping.
01:56:22.000Another thing that intrigues me is you're a young guy.
01:56:25.000A lot of these endurance guys are old, angry people.
01:56:30.000They get older and they develop this ability to just fucking fuck the world and push through things.
01:56:38.000Yeah, 33. Yeah, that's very young to do what you did, isn't it?
01:56:43.000Yeah, and I think you're right, actually.
01:56:45.000And that would be a really sort of good point to make there.
01:56:48.000I always think when people say, I'm too old now to train and stuff, I'm like, absolutely not.
01:56:52.000Yes, granted, when you're younger, elasticity in your ligaments, yeah, higher testosterone, muscle mass, ability to increase muscle mass and stuff.
01:57:03.000And to your point there, Joe, when you look at these, you know, back in England, fell running, which we were talking about, you get these guys who just look like they live in the mountains, you know, weathered faces, you know, their calves are just like this, just thick calves.
01:57:19.000Capillary density, that like mitochondrial efficiency, movement efficiency.
01:57:24.000So their cardiorespiratory endurance has just been built up from years and years.
01:57:29.000And these sorts of people as well, they almost, they love the mountains and running so much that they don't care that they're overtraining or like they need a rest.
01:58:22.000But actually, to this point, I mean, if it's possible, James, it's called the Bob Graham.
01:58:29.000So there's a famous fell race, going back to sort of the Barclay Mountains, there's a famous fell race back in England called the Bob Graham.
01:58:35.000And, you know, legend has it, there was a guy, Bob Graham, and he sort of said, you know, I think I can do 44 peaks in the Lake District in under 24 hours.
01:58:44.000And they were like, no, no, no, that's not possible.
01:59:17.000There's that real solidarity that, you know, like, good luck, good luck.
01:59:21.000And then you have to do it in 24 hours.
01:59:24.000And Billy Bland, who was the one who set the record, which has only just been beaten by Killian Jornet, who recently ran up Everest.
01:59:32.000as well but i think he um yeah so many savages out there it's so this and what i love about this is um oh there you go is that yeah yeah there you go killian jornette so the guy behind in the blue um set the record and it says there i needed to suffer says killian jornette after breaking the record that has stood for 36 years 36 years wow i needed to suffer but but these guys and it and it goes back to you know Too often it's sports science,
02:01:38.000So, yeah, the Bob Graham is something completely different, and that goes back to what we were talking about, about power-to-weight ratio in a weight-bearing sport.
02:02:21.000You know, so when you are lining up on a start line, I mean, if you're racing against Killian, you look over and you've got a guy like that.
02:02:31.000You can't beat that guy, but he is built for that.
02:02:37.000But you don't think that guy's built for swimming.
02:02:39.000If that guy had to do what you did swimming-wise, he would be at a disadvantage.
02:02:44.000Over a certain difference, going back to the belt That somebody like that and in my experience when I've raced or swum with you know guys who are doing you know 10 kilometre they will be quicker than me over 10 kilometres but then it gets to a point when we're like you know 30 kilometres in where their biomechanics just because of muscular endurance that starts to break down maybe as well and this is so often overlooked actually but you've got to train your digestive system so Again,
02:03:12.000this is mainly anecdotal, but in strength-based sports, a lot of guys won't think anything about putting away 15,000 calories a day, which is what I was doing.
02:03:22.000You were doing that while you were swimming?
02:03:33.000It was so intuitive, so it was kind of strange because the diet was calorie dense, so you have to make up your calorie requirements of the day.
02:03:40.000Also looking at nutrient dense, because you've got to care for your immune system, but equally palatability, so when my tongue was falling apart, you know, I needed to look at that.
02:03:47.000And even seasickness, which we've not really spoke about as well, which is kind of like you need something that hits those four points.
02:04:40.000Like, even the mass, because the giant jellyfish of Scotland, and there'll be a picture on there somewhere, they're kind of like six feet long.
02:04:46.000So when you're swimming at night and you can't see them, the tentacles, they'll just kind of, they'll get you.
02:04:52.000And so I got, like, they go in your mouth and your ear.
02:05:01.000That, yeah, they're trying to find and adapt the same way with the mass, but nutritionally as well.
02:05:06.000But also looking at, as a framework, you're having your protein, which is pretty stable, you know, 1.7 grams per kg of body weight per day.
02:05:14.000You know, that kind of stays the same.
02:05:15.000So then for the rest of the 15,000 calories, you basically need to make it up with your two energy-yielding macronutrients, so carbs and fats.
02:05:23.000And so for me, it was very carb-dependent because when you are swimming through a giant whirlpool, you can't say, can I have some fats, which the body has to go a certain process, it's going to take longer.
02:05:32.000No, you just need fast-acting carbohydrates.
02:05:34.000But then equally, looking at MCTs, so median chain triglycerides as well, which are a fat, so they have the calorie density of a fat.
02:05:45.000But they're treated more like a carbohydrate rather than long-chain triglycerides.
02:05:49.000So there was a certain amount of science to it.
02:05:51.000A lot of people would say, you know, 15,000 calories, does that mean pizza and everything?
02:05:55.000It was like, well, you know, yes, to an extent, but then place too much emphasis on that and you're not caring for your immune system as well.
02:06:04.000To get 15,000 calories, I think, yeah, I always point out that it's using things like MCTs, which you'll find in coconut oil, and certainly, again, not to get too much on the science, but capric and caprylic acid, which are converted to ATP, adenosine triphosphate, it's the molecular energy of the muscles.
02:06:19.000When you understand how to use MCTs like that, It can be quite easy to make up 15,000 calories, but you try and make up 15,000 calories of vegetables, right?
02:06:48.000And that's the thing that it goes back to, again, this bell curve that I've spoke about, but, you know, quite often a lot of endurance athletes that I've trained with who are amazing, they're unbelievable, they're sub-three-hour marathoners, they're incredible, you know, they're the guys that will go and run the Bob Graham...
02:07:04.000But quite often they say, but Ross can just eat.
02:07:07.000And it's just like, yeah, that's often overlooked.
02:07:11.000You know, that my body, you know, I didn't have a sick day throughout the whole swim.
02:07:47.000I know I'm asking you to swim for 12 hours a day.
02:07:50.000I know there's going to be jellyfish, toxins.
02:07:52.000I mean, I've stung like 20 times in one night in a single tide.
02:07:56.000So it got to the point where I talked about my face sort of changing shape, but equally the toxins in your body, your heart would start beating faster.
02:08:05.000So there was just this idea that just eat just to look after the body.
02:08:09.000So when it comes to nutrition, were you taking any supplements?
02:08:26.000Everything from super green shakes, you know, to multivitamins, to protein shakes, just to make sure that you were supplementing that calorie density.
02:08:35.000I think it's so often overlooked, the higher turnover of...
02:08:54.000For instance, after training as well, you can have...
02:08:57.000All the protein in the world, but if it has a low biological value, so I'm going to try and keep this quite short, but if you look at, you know, immediately after a workout, you know, your body's basically saying, look, we need protein to repair and regrow.
02:09:11.000But if you don't have a high concentration of leucine specifically, so branched chain amino acids, leucine within that is what will trigger to your motor receptors to basically repair and regrow.
02:09:21.000So quite often you can have all the protein in the world, but if it's of a low biological value, if it's not very Good quality protein.
02:09:29.000Your body's not going to assimilate it.
02:10:20.000Yeah, when we could stop in a harbour, you know, the team would go out.
02:10:22.000I never touched land, but they could go and quickly provision from land and bring it back.
02:10:26.000But ultimately, yeah, it was trying to find a way that was sustainable as possible, but within the parameters that we had, you know, and that was what was tricky.
02:10:40.000I would imagine repetitive stress of swimming would wreak havoc on your shoulders.
02:10:46.000Yeah, and that's why this goes back to...
02:10:50.000I suppose this goes back, and I was trying to rich roll about this actually, where once you developed that sort of horsepower program, that work capacity that I was talking about before from when I ran the marathon pulling a car, it was...
02:11:03.000This is such a strange story, but I then, again, to raise money for the Teenage Cancer Trust, I climbed a rope.
02:11:10.000I think it was a 10-meter rope, but I repeatedly climbed it until I climbed the height of Everest.
02:11:18.000And it was that that actually taught me that movement efficiency plays such an important role in terms of endurance, because you could have the best muscular endurance in the world, cardio-spiritual endurance, but if you can imagine with a rope climb, If you're solely relying on your muscles,
02:11:35.000your arms, like your bicep tendon is just, you know, and then you can be the fittest guy in the world, but within that kinetic chain, something's going to give, like the weakest part.
02:11:45.000So you're right, from that, I had the work capacity from the marathon, then from the rope climb, I certainly understood movement efficiency, and so sort of transferring those skills over to swimming, I knew that You couldn't swim like a conventional swimmer.
02:12:00.000Everything that I taught you, especially in waves and everything.
02:12:02.000So I ended up developing quite a weird technique that looked really slow and cumbersome.
02:12:07.000I almost looked asleep, but, you know, it was really rolling.
02:12:10.000And that's why I asked you about swimming.
02:12:12.000And even looking at Bert, again, to use him as a...
02:12:17.000But for everything that is taught about swimming, it's probably for someone who looks like, you know, Michael Phelps or, you know, an amazing specimen at swimming.
02:13:56.000But it would be the same with you, that if we were looking at your swimming technique, there'd be certain everything that you'd probably learned probably wouldn't be applicable to you because of how broad you are, how things that you could actually use.
02:14:06.000So I was basically really engaging the lats, the traps, the larger muscles of the back.
02:14:10.000Going back to the video with Brian Shaw, when he was just ripping that...
02:14:30.000So everything that I'd learned, and certainly, you know, great friends of mine who are, you know, Liam Tank got 50-meter world record, backstroke, you know, Kerryon Payne, double world champion, 10K. These were amazing athletes.
02:15:00.000I mean, you had to, at any given time, any tide, you had to think of something that was going to be more powerful than the thought of stopping or fatigue or sea ulcers, like getting deeper into your skin.
02:15:12.000And so sometimes it was real easy because you were swimming with dolphins, minke whales.
02:15:22.000Yeah, there was a video of it ages ago with the Minky Whale.
02:15:26.000I was swimming 12 hours across the Bristol Channel, so that's kind of England to Wales.
02:15:30.000This was, without doubt, for all the hardship that I spoke about, I just want to say that there were some amazing moments.
02:15:36.000This one particular moment, swimming across the Bristol Channel, and all of a sudden, Minky Whale, kind of about as big as this table, breaches right next to me.
02:17:39.000And so, to your point about asking what you think about...
02:17:43.000It's very easy to swim when, you know, there's dolphins and everything, but there's times when you are lost in this moving meditation, but then you see something like that and you very quickly got to get your wits about you.
02:17:55.000Because there were killer whales as well up, you know, coming from sort of Iceland around the top of Scotland.
02:18:41.000So they just said, look, all you need to do is make sure that you don't look like a seal because they might mistake you for a seal, but they might bite you.
02:18:49.000But then they will go, oh, well, they're that intelligent.
02:18:51.000They'll be like, oh, that doesn't taste like a seal.
02:18:53.000So they might, you know, so I was just trying my best not to look like a seal.
02:18:57.000Well, I think when they've attacked people in the wild, though, or in captivity, it's always been trainers.
02:19:21.000So there was that element, but I think having swum with the minky whale around the Bristol Channel, I was very aware that in the hierarchy of the sea, I was very low down the pecking order.
02:19:33.000And if it's comforting in any strange way, I was like, look, if I was going to be eaten, I'll be eaten in the day just as much as I'll be eaten at night.
02:19:47.000Like the Moray Firth, for instance, we were like 40 miles away from land and this kind of cutting across this huge bay across the top of Scotland and it was clouded over so there was not, you couldn't even see anything because there was no moonlight or no stars and everything.
02:20:03.000It was you, in that complete sensory deprivation, you can hear everything.
02:20:09.000And it's just, if you hear a noise, a ripple, you're like, I really hope that's not a killer whale.
02:20:14.000But then you've then got six hours to contemplate.
02:20:18.000So it's this, and again, like I said, Marcus Aurelius, meditation, stoic philosophy, that the conversations you have in your own head are just as powerful as other people.
02:20:26.000And I certainly found that all the way around, that you just...
02:20:30.000There was times when you were just like, what am I doing out here?
02:20:34.000And that comes from, I think, you know, this idea of you have to be doing it for the right reasons.
02:20:41.000And again, to bring it back to MMA, I suppose, it's really fascinated me.
02:20:45.000You know, some fighters, you know, Liddell coming out of retirement with Ortiz and certainly, you know, You know, McGregor's made so much money.
02:20:52.000You know, what would get him back out of retirement to come and fight?
02:20:56.000And, you know, again, I've been out at sea, so I didn't quite understand what was going on there with his kind of going over towards Japan and fighting.
02:22:23.000So I'm catching up on all this, like I said.
02:22:25.000So I've missed all of this for 157 days.
02:22:27.000Like I said, I even missed the McGregor and Kapiba fight and stuff.
02:22:30.000Go to Striking Breakdowns on Instagram.
02:22:33.000Lawrence Kenshin, he's done a bunch of breakdowns, as has Brandon Dorman's done a bunch of breakdowns, too, on Tension.
02:22:41.000But Lawrence Kenshin has this really fascinating video of him fighting this world Muay Thai champion, and he wheel kicks him in the head.
02:22:51.000It was more like a jump, spinning back kick to the chin, but the way he did it, It was like a really weird angle and you could see him setting it up.
02:26:33.000You know, you can forget cardiorespiratory endurance, strength, everything that we talked about there, the metric saying, you know, heavyweight, you've got to be 2-4-5, you know, whatever the matter.
02:27:30.000So if you said, if at the start of the, you know, Barbosa and Etten fight, you said, you know, knock out by timing or creativity, you'd say like, what?
02:27:40.000You know, but if you could foresee that the same way that you could quantify that sort of mental fortitude, I think you start opening the door in sports performance into something that's just this whole other realm that you don't talk about weight as a metric strength, cardiorespiratory endurance,
02:27:59.000Yeah, with creativity, especially in regards to striking technique, yeah, that's a crazy intangible, because you're essentially deciding when to move and what to do, right?
02:28:10.000Like, you can throw a jab, you can throw a front kick, you can throw a roundhouse kick, you can throw a wheel kick.
02:29:14.000But if you enter into that realm and even start applying more, so again, we talked about that sort of strength deficit as well, that if you get someone, you know, trying to, like John Jones, who's going to move up to heavyweight, is it going to be, will it benefit him when he was strength training, for instance?
02:29:30.000I can't remember his deadlift, but it was pretty Pretty impressive.
02:31:09.000He came in very heavy against Donald Cerrone.
02:31:11.000He's a big motherfucker, is what he is.
02:31:13.000You know, he's so big for welterweight.
02:31:16.000I think he'll be way better off at 185 pounds, but I think many of them will.
02:31:20.000I think there's a point of diminishing returns where they're significantly depleting themselves to make that weight, and then when they don't have to do that, they have more energy.
02:32:34.000Back in the day, it was a different thing.
02:32:35.000I mean, they kind of made an agreement to stand with each other, and then he was like, psh, bitch, and he took him down, and he won by decision.
02:32:41.000But that was a different Rumble Johnson.
02:32:43.000I think the Rumble Johnson at 170, he had no fucking energy.
02:33:13.000No, and I think there's just that element now that I think...
02:33:18.000As much as MMA has evolved, and again, this is someone who doesn't understand the technical aspects, but as someone who loves sports history, and I've watched it, and I'm just like, that is amazing, but it's still got so far to go.
02:33:32.000Again, we were talking earlier about football or soccer, as known here back in England, and the warming up of the brandy in the changing rooms.
02:33:41.000I think even now, it's crazy when you have someone so gifted like that, but they are...
02:33:47.000You know, rehydrating and re-carb loading on cupcakes.
02:34:20.000It was, he got in, it was like he sent, he'd weigh in, and then it would be like he sent his older brother in, like, they were unrecognisable.
02:34:28.000And I think it's really interesting that that physiological puppetry, if you know how to do it intelligently, it can be so powerful, but you do it for the wrong reasons.
02:34:37.000But even if you know how to do it intelligently, there's still a demand that it places on your organs.
02:34:47.000And this was the thought behind Max Holloway's last weight-cutting fail, is that when he was trying to cut down on short notice to fight Khabib Nurmagomedov, he was cutting down only to 155 and he couldn't make it.
02:35:08.000And they think that when he was getting ready for Ortega, what was going on was his body was reacting to the fact that he was trying to cut weight again, and it was like, fuck you.
02:35:43.000Frankie, although was the 155-pound champion, and now competes at 145 pounds, really, he should be fighting at 135. And 135 is where he could be at his best.
02:35:58.000Especially people that know weight cutting, and they look at what he walks around at, and they're like, look, 20 pounds from 55 ain't shit.
02:36:07.000Especially, you get a guy like a George Lockhart who really knows how to do it and put that weight back on you and how to do it correctly, scientifically.
02:36:16.000But we're seeing that now across all sports, I think, this evolution that we're understanding.
02:36:34.000So they just said, hey, Carlin, here's a rugby ball.
02:36:38.000And again, Jamie, it'll be on YouTube some ways, like, you know, widely regarded as the fastest rugby player.
02:36:43.000They just handed him, you know, a ball.
02:36:45.000And now, there's one of my favourite clips, because he, it was one of his first games or something, and I think it was an Australian commentator, and he just ran, like, rings around everybody.
02:36:56.000Like, scored a try, and then the commentator was like, oh my god, he goes, I cannot believe this.
02:38:28.000I think you spoke about this not too long ago, but I think you might have mentioned LeBron James saying if someone like that was taught MMA... Oh my God.
02:38:37.000And I think we're seeing that now, that sports, now there's more money in MMA and it's evolved to what it is now.
02:38:44.000It's amazing that if you get some unbelievable phenom as a kid, you go into MMA. Yeah, but it's not as popular as basketball, and it doesn't pay as much money as LeBron James makes.
02:38:56.000LeBron James, what does he make, like $100 million a year?
02:38:59.000Just from basketball, it's like $35 million or so.
02:39:02.000$35 million just from basketball, and then sponsorships.
02:39:06.000Unless you're Conor McGregor or Floyd Mayweather, you're not going to make that much money from fighting.
02:39:11.000They can make that much money from fighting, but they're so rare.
02:39:14.000And then Conor could only make that much money from fighting if he boxed Floyd.
02:39:18.000Even though the fight with Khabib was the number one MMA pay-per-view of all time, the number two pay-per-view in the history of pay-per-views, just behind Floyd Mayweather versus...
02:41:09.000But with that amount of money, it's so interesting that...
02:41:16.000You know, with that thrown around, this kind of extrinsic motivation, money, media, fame, versus intrinsic motivation.
02:41:23.000And in a strange way with the swim, you know, when we got around John O'Groats at the top, everyone was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you just set the Land's End to John O'Groats record.
02:42:12.000So that's the current, the last time they talked about someone fighting for the title again.
02:42:18.000But it was a while ago now, again, it might have been UFC Embedded, when, and I think it was when Khabib, years ago now, met George St. Pierre.
02:42:25.000And Khabib, you know, said, oh, lovely to meet you.
02:42:28.000And then Khabib was smiling and he said, oh...
02:42:31.000You know, my dad has always said that he'd love to see me fight, you know, George St. Pierre.
02:42:34.000And for me, that was really interesting because Khabib's motivation seems to be intrinsic and putting his skills against the best people in the world.
02:42:43.000You could offer him all the money in the world, but he just wants to do something.
02:42:46.000And when he talks about his dad, his family, it's a different beast.
02:42:50.000And that's what I find really interesting.
02:42:53.000But I'm not saying different as in better, worse, good or bad, because ultimately Mayweather's never lost.
02:42:59.000But when you see someone like Mayweather, you think, is he just extrinsically motivated when he's saying, you know, if it doesn't make money, it doesn't make sense?
02:43:06.000You kind of look at him going, well, you're extrinsically motivated, arguably, and I don't know, I've never met the guy and stuff, but you're extrinsically motivated, but you've never lost.
02:43:26.000There has to be some deep emotional connection to his work.
02:43:31.000There's got to be some connection to his legacy, what he's been able to do, the way he's been able to retire undefeated as a professional boxer, which is almost unheard of.
02:43:40.000Right, because I want to believe that, and I hope that's true, because you're almost taught, like, intrinsic motivation.
02:43:46.000Do it for the love, you know, and sort of, you know, the sweet science.
02:43:49.000I want to believe that Mayweather's there and he's studying, you know, but maybe he doesn't want you to see that side.
02:44:02.000The way he's artistically taking guys apart, like, you go to the Canelo Alvarez fight, the way he was, like, Slipping away from Canelo's big shots and then popping him with the jabs.
02:44:42.000You know, he's playing with everybody's head.
02:44:45.000You talk about, like, psychological warfare, you know, the art of war and everything like that.
02:44:49.000And he's doing it on a mass scale like we've probably never experienced before.
02:44:53.000Well, what was fascinating was Connor was doing it to him.
02:44:56.000He was screaming in his face with a hard-on, by the way, at the weigh-ins.
02:44:59.000I don't know how he generated a hard-on.
02:45:02.000But, you know, he must have played with his dick before he got out there or took some Viagra or something.
02:45:07.000I really think that might have been part of the psychological motivation.
02:45:10.000Just screaming in his face, I'm gonna fucking kill you, you little puke, you piece of shit.
02:45:15.000And Floyd was just like this, just dead face, staring at him, didn't scream back, dead face, stayed calm, was like, tomorrow I'm gonna fuck you up.
02:45:25.000And there ain't a goddamn thing in the world that's going to change there.
02:45:34.000There was a different element of danger there because there was a greed upon rule set where Conor wasn't going to kick, wasn't going to take him down, wasn't going to strangle him.
02:46:08.000He would probe him with front kicks, kick his legs.
02:46:12.000Floyd would start to limp, Conor would step in, tie him up, elbow him, take him down, smash his face into a bloody pulp, do whatever he wanted to him.
02:46:21.000Strangle him, rip his knees apart with leg locks, do whatever he wanted to him.
02:47:09.000And Georges St-Pierre was like, of course, yeah, I won't be.
02:47:11.000And then he was talking so much that Georges St-Pierre even said it just invoked, again, actually, going back to what we were talking about, you know, our bodies, as much as we like to think about it as black and white, the consequences.
02:47:24.000I'm not saying that the Diaz brothers necessarily think like that, but they're like, I'm going to talk to you and I'm going to mess with your biomechanics.
02:47:31.000The chemical reactions within your body, neurotransmitters making you...
02:47:46.000I remember the first time he did that to Robbie Lawler.
02:47:49.000Robbie was like 20, 21 years old, and Nick was young, too, and they moved into the cage, and they closed it, and Nick Diaz just started saying, Stockton, motherfucker!