Ross Edgely is an extreme adventurer, ultra-marathon sea swimmer and author.

In 2018 he swam around Great Britain.

157 days.

2,884 km.

Storms.

Shipping lanes.

Sharks.

Salt erosion of his tongue.

Stung by over 100 jellyfish.

Just him, the ocean, a small team and a 16m support boat...

It’s tough to get your head around how insane this actually is.

He’d swim with the tides for 6 hours at a time. Twice a day. Averaging 18km a day.

Pushing the limits of mind and body.

So how’d he do it?

In his book The Art of Resilience, he breaks down the tools he used to get through it.

He calls it Stoic Sports Science.

Which he says requires a:

• 💪 Strong body
• 🧠  Stoic mind
• 🗺 Strategic plan

It’s a boiling pot of sports science, Greek philosophy and smarts.

“Stoic Sports Science is related to your physical capacity and mental clarity to apply proven principles of sports science and psychology, under conditions of extreme exhaustion, stress and adversity. It’s essentially sports science and philosophy that’s been forged in battle.”

Let's break 'em down...

1.  Strong body

Our bodies determine our physical potential.

Like our lung capacity, strength, and coordination.

Which determines things like how fast we can run, how far we can swim and how much we can lift.

Built with the help of sports science. Things like physical preparation and training, periodisation, specificity, pacing, fueling and sleep.

"Too many coaches place too much emphasis on minimalism, specificity and recovery. We seem to forget that eventually you just have to do more work. It’s that simple."

2. 🧠 Stoic mind

But a strong body won’t realise its potential without the brain.

The brain has to be trained too.

Edgley combines sports science with stoicism to build an unbreakable mind.

But what is stoicism?

It’s a philosophy that reminds us how unpredictable the world is.

It says:

• 🌧  We can't control outside events, only how we respond to them
• 👀 Our attitudes and perceptions determine how we see the world
• 😡 Poor performance and unhappiness often come from reacting emotionally rather than logically‍

With that in mind, Edgley developed a mental toolbox that included:

• 📍 Identifying what he could and couldn’t control. Accepting the things he couldn’t (storms, currents, animals). And focusing on the things he could (effort, habits, thoughts).‍
• 📆 The habituation of stress (getting used to repeatedly doing hard things)‍
• 😂 Adaptive coping strategies (healthy ways to deal with stressful situations like humour, positive chat and problem-solving)‍
• 🙊 Feral fear theory (overriding our animalistic responses to stress, thinking logically)
  

"I needed to study mental fortitude and physical fortitude in equal amounts, if I was to do battle with the obstacles in front of me."

3. 🗺 Strategic plan

His strategic plan involved researching and understanding limitations like pain, fatigue, and discomfort.

Staying on top of the tides, the currents, the conditions.

Allocating roles within the team (support crew) and executing them.

It was a matter of putting all the lessons in sports science and stoicism into a plan of attack.

Using all these tools at the right times.

"Ultimately, as I made my way around the coastline of Great Britain, this is how I ensured my body wouldn’t break and my mind wouldn’t quit, as Stoic Sports Science served as a mental map that segmented limitations and systematically looked to offer possible solutions."

And nearly 6 months later, he swam back into Margate Beach.

Physically, mentally and emotionally cooked.

But successfully.

So if you’re training for a big effort like an ultra marathon or ironman, or planning (what Edgley calls) a big adventure... Stoic Sports Science and the lessons in his book are going to be helpful.

Get it in ya here.