Getting fit used to be simple: you signed up to the nearest gym, paid your subscription, forgot about it, and wasted away on the couch. Now though, there’s a new way to feel bad about your impending dad bod: fitness influencers!
With the number of wannabe personal trainers out there, one could be forgiven for writing off this entire genre of protein-shake worshippers. However, a select few exist which truly motivate, inform and inspire.
Fortunately, Ross Edgley is one of them, posting about everything from his latest adventures to practical advice the average guy can apply to his own humble workout.
View this post on Instagram
But first: his background. Edgley is a British adventurer, inspired by the likes of Captain Webb, a legendary English swimmer who, Edgley revealed on a podcast called the Joe Rogan Experience, he looks up to hugely.
“We’ve got this real history and heritage (in Britain) of eccentric explorers, and for me growing up there was this story of Captain Webb, the first guy to swim across the English Channel… And he did it on a diet of beef broth and brandy.”
“In a wollen wetsuit,” Edgley continues, “He swam 23 hours, breaststroke, with his head out of the water, because ‘front crawl was ungentlemanly-like.'”
Could it get any more British?
Eccentricities aside, Edgley has some razor sharp workout advice, innovative workout ideas, and divulges smart mental tricks and tips to keep you performing at your best.
View this post on Instagram
And—unlike many other self-promoted fitness celebrities—Edgley has the qualifications to back up his claims—he’s the author of The World’s Fittest Book, a graduate from the world renowned Loughborough University School of Sport and Exercise Science, and is a longtime strength and conditioning coach and performance nutritionist.
He also puts his money (well, his entire body actually) where his mouth is, completing such feats as running 30 marathons in 30 days, and swimming around the entirety of Great Britain in 157 days, all while maintaining a physique that puts the hulk to shame, in order to prove that cardiovascular fitness and muscle building are not mutually exclusive endeavours.
He has also climbed a rope the length of Everest, swum 100km tied to a small tree, and run a marathon while pulling a mini. Suffice to say: Edgley’s bloody fit.
Whether he’s out running in the fells…
View this post on Instagram
Testing his “neurological efficiency” in different settings…
View this post on Instagram
Or preparing for the Oxford vs. Cambridge boat race…
View this post on Instagram
You’ll never be short of workout inspiration (or sneaky, free excerpts from his bestselling book) if you give him a cheeky follow.
Oh and if the physical tips weren’t enough, he also demonstrates how to be humble in both victory and defeat, explaining how he reacted to “failing” one of the first big challenges he ever set himself.
Talking about a mission which involved swimming from St. Lucia to Martinique, two Carribean islands—a 40km journey which he was trying to swim for charity—Edgley ran into a few issues (and three-metre waves) with a 100-pound tree attached to his legs for good measure.
“I actually didn’t make it from point to point,” he explained on the JRE podcast, “I was 5km from the end, and when I didn’t make it (because of the tide and currents), I decided to swim back the other way.”
Sure: anyone can tell you: ‘never give up’, but this guy really does it…
“So I ended up swimming over 100km, with a 100-pound tree, in 32 hours, but still didn’t make it… as physically fit as you are, the ocean just doesn’t care.”
This was November 2017. Then, as Edgley explains, he had “unfinished business” with the ocean, which—combined with an experience he had once he got back to England—inspired him to come up with an even crazier challenge for himself.
As he told Joe Rogan, he was nursing his sodden feet at the end of a marathon swim session when a British Special Forces officer, a good friend of his, came over and said, “You, boy: what are you training for?”
“Oh, well, uh, I’m training for—potentially—the world’s longest current neutral swim.”
“He (the officer) paused,” Edgley tells us (on the JRE Experience), “Sipped his cup of tea, looked me up and down and just goes: ‘that just sounds a bit lame.'”
The guy then suggested he swim round Great Britain and Edgley, in typical British fashion recounts how; “I couldn’t say no; once I heard the idea.”
View this post on Instagram
Of course, the crazy bugger goes and does it, documenting the journey both via a Redbull Documentary called The Great British Swim and via his Tinderlicious Instagram page.