Latest news with #Edgley
Rhyl Journal
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Rhyl Journal
Ultra-swimmer inspired by Thor actor Chris Hemsworth to take on Iceland swim
Ross Edgley, 39, from Cheshire, joked the challenge will be 'the closest thing yet to swimming around Asgard' – the home of Thor – as he plans to swim 1,000 miles around the whole of Iceland in a challenge expected to take three months. Mr Edgley said the idea for his challenge was inspired by Marvel's Thor star Hemsworth, who introduced him to Nordic folklore after they met during the production of Thor: Love And Thunder. 'I was always just full of questions, just saying, 'why are you doing that? Why does Thor do this?' and we just got chatting,' the ultra-swimmer told the PA news agency. 'His (Hemsworth) knowledge of Nordic folklore is amazing. He's like an encyclopaedia of it. We got chatting about that and then he sort of explained (the folklore) to me.' 'I just thought Iceland, which inspired Tolkien and various other Nordic folklore, is the closest thing yet to swimming around Asgard.' The athlete will begin his journey, named the Great Icelandic Swim, on Friday, where he is expected to face choppy waves, killer whales and temperatures as low as 3C. His swimming pattern will consist of swimming for six hours and resting for six hours, which will be repeated every day for around three months. Mr Edgley is no stranger to difficult challenges after he swam more than 1,791 miles in 157 days around the coast of Great Britain and earned a Guinness World Record for the longest distance assisted adventure swim after covering 317 miles along the Yukon River in Canada. He said the Iceland challenge is likely to be 'twice as hard' despite it being almost 'half the distance of the Great Britain swim' because of the colder temperatures. 'Usually in England, when you get out of a frozen lake, you're running somewhere where there's a hot chocolate and you can get around the fire, but out there it's just Viking countries,' he said. 'The wind chill is a different sort of cold and that was a wake-up call for me.' The 39-year-old said he is aiming to get 'as fat as possible and as fit as possible' in order to combat the cold temperatures. 'Body fat is insulating, so the more of it you have the more insulated you are… you just kind of want to be almost seal-like,' he explained. The swim is also being completed in the name of science as he has teamed up with the University of Iceland and the Marine and Freshwater Research Institute of Iceland to take daily water samples. The samples are designed to help build a picture about the biodiversity around Iceland's coast and help towards researching the environmental DNA (eDNA) in the water. 'It allows us to take an incredible picture of the biodiversity all around Iceland,' Mr Edgley said. 'It would allow us to take eDNA samples all around the coast, so we would be able to map the biodiversity of Iceland in a level of detail that's never been seen before.' He hopes the public will follow and support his Great Icelandic Swim as he shares updates via social media. While he acknowledged his followers may tune in to 'see my tongue fall off because of the salt water', he also hopes the challenge will educate people about Iceland's biodiversity. 'Come along, see my tongue fall off, see killer whales and seals… but ultimately, it'll be brilliant to communicate the science as well,' he said.
South Wales Guardian
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- South Wales Guardian
Ultra-swimmer inspired by Thor actor Chris Hemsworth to take on Iceland swim
Ross Edgley, 39, from Cheshire, joked the challenge will be 'the closest thing yet to swimming around Asgard' – the home of Thor – as he plans to swim 1,000 miles around the whole of Iceland in a challenge expected to take three months. Mr Edgley said the idea for his challenge was inspired by Marvel's Thor star Hemsworth, who introduced him to Nordic folklore after they met during the production of Thor: Love And Thunder. 'I was always just full of questions, just saying, 'why are you doing that? Why does Thor do this?' and we just got chatting,' the ultra-swimmer told the PA news agency. 'His (Hemsworth) knowledge of Nordic folklore is amazing. He's like an encyclopaedia of it. We got chatting about that and then he sort of explained (the folklore) to me.' 'I just thought Iceland, which inspired Tolkien and various other Nordic folklore, is the closest thing yet to swimming around Asgard.' The athlete will begin his journey, named the Great Icelandic Swim, on Friday, where he is expected to face choppy waves, killer whales and temperatures as low as 3C. His swimming pattern will consist of swimming for six hours and resting for six hours, which will be repeated every day for around three months. Mr Edgley is no stranger to difficult challenges after he swam more than 1,791 miles in 157 days around the coast of Great Britain and earned a Guinness World Record for the longest distance assisted adventure swim after covering 317 miles along the Yukon River in Canada. He said the Iceland challenge is likely to be 'twice as hard' despite it being almost 'half the distance of the Great Britain swim' because of the colder temperatures. 'Usually in England, when you get out of a frozen lake, you're running somewhere where there's a hot chocolate and you can get around the fire, but out there it's just Viking countries,' he said. 'The wind chill is a different sort of cold and that was a wake-up call for me.' The 39-year-old said he is aiming to get 'as fat as possible and as fit as possible' in order to combat the cold temperatures. 'Body fat is insulating, so the more of it you have the more insulated you are… you just kind of want to be almost seal-like,' he explained. The swim is also being completed in the name of science as he has teamed up with the University of Iceland and the Marine and Freshwater Research Institute of Iceland to take daily water samples. The samples are designed to help build a picture about the biodiversity around Iceland's coast and help towards researching the environmental DNA (eDNA) in the water. 'It allows us to take an incredible picture of the biodiversity all around Iceland,' Mr Edgley said. 'It would allow us to take eDNA samples all around the coast, so we would be able to map the biodiversity of Iceland in a level of detail that's never been seen before.' He hopes the public will follow and support his Great Icelandic Swim as he shares updates via social media. While he acknowledged his followers may tune in to 'see my tongue fall off because of the salt water', he also hopes the challenge will educate people about Iceland's biodiversity. 'Come along, see my tongue fall off, see killer whales and seals… but ultimately, it'll be brilliant to communicate the science as well,' he said.
The Independent
02-05-2025
- Sport
- The Independent
I tried a two-move bodyweight workout from endurance swimmer Ross Edgley, and it was surprisingly fun
Ross Edgley is, objectively, one of the fittest people on the planet. Who else do you know with a CV that includes swimming around the entire UK, completing muscle-ups with a 20kg weight plate hanging from their waist, climbing ropes equivalent to the height of Mount Everest and finishing a triathlon with a 45kg tree attached to them? For this reason I was apprehensive when, in a recent interview, he agreed to give me a workout challenge to try. But the two-move test he provided was surprisingly fun, suitably challenging and accessible to most fitness levels. He calls it the 'Bear Crawl Battle'. It's simple in theory; I've found most of the best workouts are. You complete an ascending ladder of press-ups and bear crawls until your fatigued muscles force you to take a break. The idea is that this is a 'functional finisher', added to the end of your workouts to increase work capacity. As Myprotein athlete Edgley puts it: 'You're training to train.' So, after a particularly challenging Hyrox session which left my face resembling a ripe tomato, I headed to a nearby park to take the Bear Crawl Battle for a spin. Here's how it went. How to do Ross Edgley's workout: The Bear Crawl Battle Perform one press-up, immediately followed by a one-metre bear crawl. Stand up and walk back to the starting position. Rest for roughly 10 seconds. Repeat this sequence, adding one press-up and one metre to the bear crawl with each new round. Continue until you are unable to perform all components unbroken – your muscles are too tired to complete the press-ups or bear crawls without taking a break. Emulating Edgley's technique in his training videos, I opted for a more animalistic version of the bear crawl, keeping my hips higher rather than the stricter 'shins-and-back-parallel-to-the-ground' approach you may see elsewhere. I found this allowed me to move faster and more freely, maintaining the intensity of the challenge. However, both techniques will work, so the one you use can be down to personal preference. Benefits of the Bear Crawl Battle Edgley is currently training to become the first man to swim around Iceland – a challenge he has dubbed the Great Icelandic Swim. 'Central to this Iceland swim, and also the GB swim, is the idea of work capacity: your body's ability to perform and positively tolerate training at a given intensity or duration,' he explains. 'I think it's so often overlooked. Most people nowadays will say, 'Spend 45 minutes in the gym, any more and you get catabolic [a state of muscle breakdown]'. But at some point you have to do more.' He recommends tagging the bear Crawl Battle on to the end of a workout which uses similar muscles and movement patterns, such as a chest session or push day. 'This idea of adding functional finishers at the end of your session for added volume and added sets is rooted in general physical preparedness,' says Edgley. 'The Bear Crawl Battle is fun, but also effective. If you do it for a few weeks and at the end of it you're able to tolerate more volume, you're going to be a better athlete, irrespective of your sport. 'It's this idea of training to train. Say I had two athletes with the same VO2 max, lactic threshold and PB for a marathon. If one had a higher work capacity and I had 12 weeks to train those two people, I could immediately flog the one with the higher work capacity like a horse. They would positively respond to high-volume workouts, double sessions, threshold work and more, whereas the other person with a lower capacity wouldn't.' To track your progress, record how many rounds you complete when you first try the Bear Crawl Battle. From here, repeat weekly, then see how much further you can go a couple of months down the line. 'I think it's really nice because it's a different metric of success,' Edgley says. 'People often go to the gym and ask, 'What are you benching?'. But it would be really nice if someone could turn around in eight weeks and go, 'My bench is relatively stable, but my work capacity means I can now tolerate 20m in the Bear Crawl Battle'. That would be amazing.' Trying Ross Edgley's workout The first round of this workout lulled me into a false sense of security; the last round brought me to my knees, both literally and figuratively. On Edgley's advice, I tackle it after my regular trip to the gym – a Hyrox workout including a heavy dose of running and wall balls, so my shoulders aren't fully cooked, but they're certainly medium rare. The initial press-up feels fine, as does the first bear crawl. I stand, stroll back to the start and glance at my watch to keep tabs on my 10-second rest. Given I was only working for a few seconds, this feels like overkill, and by the time it passes I'm raring to go. This theme continues for a few rounds. I'm moving fast and freely, and I start to settle into the rhythm of things. Then in round 10, something changes. The accumulated fatigue from my workout and the prior nine rounds hits me all at once. My chest starts to burn during the press-ups, and a dull ache settles into my shoulders during the bear crawls. The fact my dog, who came along for the ride, keeps insisting I throw his ball mid-bear crawl definitely doesn't help. Standing up at the end of each effort feels like sweet relief, and I'm grateful for the increasingly long walk back to the start as it gives me slightly longer to rest after each round. By round 14, I'm fighting the urge to slow my walk down and cheat my way to a bit of extra rest. And finally, on round 17, my arms give out beneath me in the final few metres of the crawl and I fall to my knees. Now, my shoulders are done. Verdict: The Bear Crawl Battle My favourite thing about this workout is its accessibility – you don't need any equipment, and if you can support yourself in a straight arm plank you can most likely give it a go. You can also swap to kneeling press-ups if needed. The Bear Crawl Battle challenges you to push as far as you can, providing a challenge for all-comers, and your body will self-regulate the length to suit your fitness level. Whatever round you reach, if you push yourself, the likelihood is your body will adapt positively and your work capacity will increase. It's also fun. When was the last time you crawled around a public park? Chances are, it's been a while, and having given it a go I must say I rather enjoyed it, in spite of funny looks from passersby. But, to me, that's the beauty of Edgley's training: it's not normal. To do what he does, a standard gym session isn't going to cut it, so he's constantly pioneering new ways to push the boundaries of sports science and expand his own physical horizons.
The Independent
28-04-2025
- The Independent
Ross Edgley aims to be ‘as fat as possible but as fit as possible' for huge Icelandic swimming challenge
Athlete-adventurer Ross Edgley prefaces a lot of his anecdotes with: 'And this is really interesting'. Usually people follow this phrase with something unbearably banal. But as the first and only person to swim around Great Britain, Edgley's brilliantly barmy anecdotes live up to their billing. On the day of our conversation, he's fresh from spending six hours face down in a Scottish loch in preparation for his next challenge: circumnavigating Iceland as a swimmer. After we wrap up our interview, the Myprotein athlete will head back out for another six-hour stint. But this next expedition is more than just a physical test, he tells me. 'The Great British swim was very much done for records, like Captain Webb being the first to swim the English Channel in 1875,' Edgley says. 'For this challenge we're working with the University of Iceland and various scientists to collect environmental DNA samples, so that's more of the focus. Although it is still a world record. I'm just the first person stupid enough to swim around Iceland,' he jokes, before segueing back to the science. 'It was amazing speaking to scientists because they said if someone is stupid and stubborn enough to swim around Iceland and collect samples, that would be incredible for creating this entire picture of biodiversity. I was like, 'Hold my beer'.' The swim will see Edgley cover more than 30km per day as he chips away at the 1,610km total. And the journey is unlikely to be plain sailing. Between 100ft waves, 100mph winds, sub-zero temperatures and sharing the water with orcas (an animal unnervingly nicknamed 'the killer whale'), Edgley has more to contend with than exhaustion. 'I'm told the wildlife will be friendly,' he says. 'There's never been a reported case of an orca attacking a human, they're that intelligent, so I think they'll just come over and go, 'What are you doing in the Arctic Circle? You're not a seal, so we'll just leave you alone'.' 'I think the main challenge will be how bleak and beautiful the landscape is. It's interesting because around Great Britain you pretty much always had a harbour, but around certain parts of Iceland there are just sheer cliff faces. If a storm rolls, I'm hiding in a tiny crack in a mountain and hoping for it to pass.' As far as sports science is concerned, this is uncharted territory, so how does one train to swim 1,000 miles while surviving the elements and evading would-be predators? With great grit, effort and attention to detail, it transpires. A typical week ahead of the Big Icelandic Swim Training: 'I want to be as fat as possible but as fit as possible, very much like an orca' The overarching goal of Edgley's training for the Big Icelandic Swim was to get 'fatter and fitter'. 'It's basic physiology – body fat is insulating and muscle mass is thermic,' he says. 'It sounds really counterintuitive for a swimmer to want to be as big as possible, but I'm taking swimming and moving outside the realms of conventional sports science.' 'That's why I want to be as fat as possible but as fit as possible, very much like an orca. They're these huge animals, then they're just poetic in the water.' To do this, Edgley inhaled food (more on this below). He also headed up to Ullapool in Scotland for a cold-weather training camp, and spent a large chunk of it partially submerged. 'The training is really simple in theory but brutal in reality,' Edgley explains. 'In Iceland I'll be working with the tide for six hours, resting, going with the tide for another six hours, then resting again. It's a biphasic sleep pattern, and you're looking at a total of 12 hours of swimming per day, so that's what we've built up to in training.' He also did roughly three strength training sessions each week to support his efforts in the water. But the focus wasn't on mirror muscles. 'So often people think about strength training as something you do to build muscles, but I'm looking more at the ligaments, tendons and connective tissue,' says Edgley. 'When you're swimming, particularly in waves, your whole body is contorting and your ligaments, tendons and connective tissues are all straining.' 'But there have been so many studies recently showing the benefits of strength training for endurance sports. It's called mechanotransduction; the idea that by applying stress and stimuli to a joint, it [the composite tissues] actually responds as well.' Edgley uses strength training to bulletproof his joints so they can handle Icelandic seas. This involves a lot of work with Therabands and cables, as well as exercises hanging from a pull-up bar. He also uses compound moves to strengthen the muscles in his back largely responsible for propelling him through the water. His workouts are efficient too – they have to be. 'People think of workouts as an hour in the gym, but I have to habituate 12 hours of swimming a day,' he says. 'I don't often have time for a full hour, so sometimes I'll be in and out [of the gym] in 30 minutes. 'I do a lot of stuff that is very specific, hammering pull-ups and bent-over rows. Then there's a lot of Theraband work, isometrics, eccentric work and putting the shoulder joint in weird places where it might experience those stress stimuli out at sea. 'There's a lot of hanging work and cables as well. It looks so odd; I would almost have to demonstrate them to you. I train in my garage because I swear if I did half of this stuff in a commercial gym I would get kicked out.' Diet: 'Essentially you have a calzone pizza baguette – it's amazing' Putting on weight when you're swimming in a nippy Scottish loch for most of your waking hours is no mean feat. The key is consuming roughly 10,000 calories per day. 'People say never eat and swim, but that's all I do'; my training is like an eating competition with a bit of swimming,' Edgley laughs. 'It's really cool how we're challenging long-held beliefs of sports nutrition.' 'I'm swimming for 12 hours per day, trying to hit 120g of carbs every hour, on the hour, because that's the upper limit of what the human digestive system can absorb, assimilate and use. 'And I have my tow float that's just full of MyPro energy gels and electrofuel, so I'm constantly chugging those as people in nearby cruise ships watch on.' Edgley also aims for 1.7g of protein per kilogram of bodyweight per day, ('That's the International Olympic Committee consensus on sports nutrition, which I've always found works really well') and supplements his diet with the likes of medium chain triglycerides and Myprotein green superfoods to fill his micronutrient needs. However, it's at this point that things get a little bit weird. 'I'm trying to make up the calories as cleanly as possible,' Edgley says. 'But it's incredibly difficult to eat 10,000 calories cleanly. At some point you just have to start making it up [with foods that are] a little bit dirtier. And if I don't, because of my high calorie expenditure, I'll lose weight. 'I have weight gain shakes. Then a particular favourite meal of mine, which I've refined since the Great British swim, is a 12in baguette rolled up inside a pizza. Essentially you have a calzone pizza baguette – it's amazing.' To aid the bulking up process, Edgley also enlisted help of a couple of experts: elite strongman athletes Luke and Tom Stoltman. 'Tom is 175kg at the moment, which he says is very lean and svelte for him,' Edgley says. 'It's been awesome taking principles of strongman and applying them to swimming – two sports you think would never actually meet.' 'I went for a swim with them, and I'm pretty decent in the cold, but I ended up getting out and reaching for my woolly hat and DryRobe. I asked if they wanted to get in the car and have some gloves, and they were just walking around in their trunks going, 'Nah, nah, we're fine'. Steam was coming off them, like bison in the winter. It's amazing witnessing how resilient they are to the cold because of their physiology, so that's something I've been trying to replicate.' The heavyweight trio went out for a meal during their time together and, needless to say, their table drew a few confused looks. 'We each sat there with burgers [plural], milkshakes and fries with cheese, then we also had our multivitamins, supergreens and glutamine,' Edgley says. 'People think that looks like such an oxymoron of a diet, but under very unique circumstances, when you want to get fatter and fitter, it is actually the optimal diet for what I'm trying to achieve. I wouldn't recommend it for 99.99 per cent of people, but for me it's working.' Recovery: 'My body will wonder what I'm doing' Edgley enjoys pushing the boundaries of sports science, but he also stresses the importance of nailing the basics when attempting any physical feat. For this reason, sleep remains his go-to recovery tool. 'Through my challenges, sleeping is something I've become so good at,' he says. 'What's going to be especially interesting is the biphasic sleep – sleeping twice per day – and getting into that routine.' Cycling six-hour stints in the water and in bed is sure to discombobulate his circadian rhythm – our internal 24-hour body clock which tells us to be alert in the day and wind back at night. Edgley is using supplements in an attempt to combat this messaging. 'That could mean looking at zinc, magnesium and cherry extract to try to boost the body's production of melatonin [to aid sleep]. Anything that can almost biohack my circadian rhythm. My body will wonder what I'm doing because I'm swimming when I should be asleep, so I'm saying, 'Here, have some ZMA, stay alert'.'| 'I know I'm going to ask my body for so much, so any supplement support that can make the process a bit kinder is something I'm going to try to use.' What's next: 'Storms of snow and sand and volcanic ash' Final preparations aside, the next thing on Edgley's agenda is to hop in the Icelandic water and start swimming. 'We're looking at May 16 as the start date,' he says. 'I'm doing it with Clipper Ventures. Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, the first guy to go solo around the world, it's his company – he's a legend. They've told me, 'On May 16 we'll look out at Reykjavik, and barring an absolutely wild storm we'll set sail and gun it around clockwise'.' But with Iceland's climate, adverse weather isn't out of the question, and Edgley will be hoping for amenable conditions. 'It's obviously called the land of fire and ice, and people have been talking about these storms of snow and sand and volcanic ash – that's nuts,' he says with another characteristic grin. Edgley gives the distinct impression that he's a foreigner to fear and nervousness. Both appear to have been displaced by a generous helping of enthusiasm. And it's this keenness for adventure, twinned with sports science principles – and a 12in baguette wrapped in a pizza – that stands to help him expand his impressive (if bizarre) list of achievements in Iceland.
.jpg%3Ftrim%3D85%2C0%2C85%2C0%26width%3D1200%26height%3D800%26crop%3D1200%3A800&w=3840&q=100)
The Independent
23-04-2025
- The Independent
First man to swim around Great Britain announces his next challenge – and it might be his biggest test yet
Ross Edgley isn't your average athlete. Adventurer is more apt, but this term still doesn't quite cover it. In 2016 he pulled a car 26.2 miles, climbed ropes equivalent to the height of Everest and completed a triathlon with a 45kg tree attached to him. His crowning achievement came in 2018 when he became the first and only person to swim around Great Britain, then in 2024 he swam 317 miles along the Yukon River in Canada to claim the longest non-stop river swim record. Now, in 2025, he has his sights set on a new world first: swimming around Iceland's entire coastline. Sponsored by BMW and starting on May 16, the challenge will see him cover more than 1,000 miles, facing down towering waves, strong winds and sub-zero temperatures while sharing the water with killer whales. to successfully complete it, he needs to cover more than 30km per day – roughly the span of the English Channel. 'Iceland has an amazing history of sailing and adventure,' Edgley says. 'I grew up with my grandad telling me stories of great explorers navigating every fjord, bay and beach for the first time in the late ninth century. Now I'm a little older, I would love to follow in their footsteps, but since I'm not much of a sailor, swimming around it seemed like the next logical choice.' Not only will Edgley tackle this mammoth swim, but along the way he aims to aid conservation research by collecting water samples. He is collaborating with researchers from the University of Iceland and the University of Victoria in Canada, supported by Future Oceans International, to analyse and map microplastic distribution in the waters around Iceland. He is also joining forces with the Marine and Freshwater Research Institute of Iceland, as part of a mission to map biodiversity and identify what marine creatures are present in Iceland's waters. 'Iceland is one of nature's great masterpieces, and swimming around it represents a unique opportunity to fuse sport, adventure and science,' Edgley says. 'We're working with some incredible researchers from the University of Iceland and the Marine and Freshwater Research Institute to conduct pioneering research that will help preserve and protect our oceans.' Christophe Pampoulie, research director of the Marine and Freshwater Research Institute of Iceland, adds: 'Coastal areas are rarely studied in Iceland due to the lack of small research boats. The collection of environmental DNA by Ross and his team will drastically improve our knowledge on species distribution and biodiversity.' Ahead of the challenge Edgley will be training to build strength, endurance and a unique set of skills to see him safely around the coastline, setting a new record this spring.
