Smash Notes

Back to Unlocking Persistent Motivation & Extreme Resilience | Ross Edgley, with Ross Edgley.

Why Did Ross Edgley Rush the Iceland Swim?

Ross Edgley rushed the finish in Iceland because his first child was due in a week's time and he feared missing the birth. Andrew Huberman asked whether fear of shame had ever driven him, and Ross Edgley called Iceland the easiest answer.

Towards the end, 100 miles were still left to cover. Hurricane Erin was coming through the Atlantic. Over in Grindavik on the west coast, a volcano had gone off and was spewing poisonous gas, so the swim could not get close. One of Europe's largest glaciers was sending shards of ice as big as the table. The team told him they were sorry and expected to stay in the harbour for two weeks. Ross Edgley said he was sorry too, but they needed to go out so he could be back for the birth. He had been with his girlfriend for 13 years, and the look of disappointment on her face was running through his head. He also knew he would not be there to welcome his son. He called the push 100 percent fear of failure and fear of letting people down, and he finished the final 100 miles on that fuel alone.

Work with the University of Iceland, including eDNA samples tracking biodiversity, still mattered to him, and it paled next to missing his son's arrival. He gunned the last of the swim so he would be there for the birth.

Grokipedia·Ross Edgley·Iceland

Transcript

Unlocking Persistent Motivation & Extreme Resilience | Ross Edgley ·

Huberman Lab

Watch this moment

More from this episode

  1. Why Did Ross Edgley Hide Rocks in His Backpack?Ross Edgley hid rocks in his backpack at ten because a huge hike with his dad and two brothers was not enough of a challenge, and he wanted the harder version…
  2. Why Does the Anterior Midcingulate Cortex Grow?Andrew Huberman says the anterior midcingulate cortex enlarges when people do hard things. It shrinks when people tend to shy away from hard things.
  3. Why Did Ross Edgley Finish the Great British Swim?Ross Edgley finished the Great British Swim because he had said he would, and because he would know he had quit a swim he was still able to finish.
  4. What Happened on Ross Edgley's Loch Ness Swim?Ross Edgley picked up cellulitis on a 56-hour nonstop swim of Loch Ness. The water was about four degrees, barely above freezing. He did not stop for sleep.
  5. Why Does Prefrontal Activity Turn a Loser Into a Winner?Andrew Huberman says activity in a top-down circuit from the prefrontal cortex drives persistence and winning when other factors stay roughly equal.
  6. Why Did Brown Bears Worry Ross Edgley on the Yukon?Ross Edgley says black bears on the Yukon in Canada were skittish and felt fine, while brown bears were not skittish and looked at him as if they were…
  7. Why Did Andrew Huberman Swim Toward Great White Sharks?Andrew Huberman says his lab recorded great white sharks in the wild to bring into a VR lab.
  8. Why Did Doubt Stop Helping Ross Edgley?Ross Edgley says outside doubt became less and less useful across his career because fewer people doubted him.
  9. Why Did Ross Edgley Picture His Dad in Heaven?Ross Edgley fueled the swim around Iceland by picturing his dad in heaven, a tennis coach looking down and telling everyone else that the swimmer circling…
  10. What Four Things Make Up a Japanese Reason for Being?Ross Edgley says a Japanese idea of a reason for being is why you get up in the morning, made of four things that all have to be there: what you love, what…
  11. Why Does Mild Anger Feel Motivating?Andrew Huberman says neurosurgeon Robert Heath let patients with electrodes in the brain stimulate themselves.
  12. What Does a Yaminawa Initiation Feel Like?Ross Edgley says initiation with the Yaminawa tribe felt cathartic. The ceremony ended with a good feeling, short of euphoria, and a sense of wow, we did it.
  13. What Is Deliberate Cold Exposure?Andrew Huberman says deliberate cold exposure, done as a shower or a cold plunge and done safely, lets a person get familiar with a flood of adrenaline.
  14. Why Does Ross Edgley Strength Train for Swims?Ross Edgley strength trains heavily between country-length swims because a ligament or a tendon is what stops the swim, not lactic threshold, VO2, or technique.
  15. Why Does Tunnel Vision Raise Energy?Andrew Huberman says aiming vision at one target raises arousal and the ability to recruit physical energy and mental energy.
  16. How Do Cuttlefish Eyes Change When They Hunt?When a cuttlefish sees something it wants to eat, the eyes move from the sides of the head to the front, and the animal becomes a depth-perception hunter.
  17. How Do Caffeine, Nicotine, and alpha-GPC Differ?Ross Edgley says that toward the end of the Yukon swim they were getting into grams of caffeine, and that 400 milligrams made a hurting, mundane stretch feel…
  18. Can Creatine Help After Lost Sleep?Andrew Huberman says that if someone is mildly or severely sleep deprived, 10 or even 20 grams of creatine the next morning can partially rescue some…
  19. What Is a Strength Reserve?Ross Edgley says a strength reserve is why he still strength trains.
  20. How Do Heavy Hangs Prime Pull-ups?Ross Edgley primes a heavy pull-up with a short maximal hang so the nervous system is already switched on.
  21. How Did Ross Edgley's Dad Keep Coaching With Cancer?Ross Edgley's dad kept coaching tennis after stage four skin melanoma spread through his legs and stopped him from running.
  22. Why Did a Dying Man Steer the Yukon Swim?Ross Edgley says a terminally ill man insisted on steering the boat for the Yukon River swim after doctors told him he had weeks to live.
  23. Can What Makes a Champion Make a Bad Human?Ross Edgley says what makes a great champion can make a bad human. He says he knows some of his swims are bad for his health, but they are good for his soul.

People

More answers like this

More with Andrew Huberman

Related episodes

Plays from this note through the rest of the episode.

Note

Weekly highlights

One letter a week.

The notes worth hearing, with the minute they were said.