Joe Rogan Experience #1200 - Ross Edgley

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   Four, three, two, one.…

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:03

      Four, three, two, one. (hands smack) Dude.

   2. RERoss Edgley0:12

      (laughs)

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:13

      (laughs) First of all, what possessed you to wanna swim around the entire UK? How many thousands of miles is that?

   4. RERoss Edgley0:20

      Yeah, uh, 2,000 miles-

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:22

      Jesus.

   6. RERoss Edgley0:22

      ... altogether. Yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:24

      2,000 miles of swimming?

   8. RERoss Edgley0:26

      Yeah, yeah. It, it seemed like a good idea at the time. And then, (laughs) halfway around, I realized how big Great Britain was. (laughs)

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:31

      But you, you've done some long swims before, but not, like, nothing even remotely. Like, what's the longest swim you did before this?

   10. RERoss Edgley0:41

       Yeah, I did, um... Oh, this is a bit of a strange story. I did, um... I tried to swim between Saint Lucia and Martinique, uh, two Caribbean islands. Um, it's only 40 kilometers from point to point. Um, and, and for charity, I was trying to swim, uh, from point to point with a, with a 100-pound tree attached to my trunks. Um, so I was pulling the 100-pound (laughs) tree, uh, six-foot waves crashing down. And, and I actually didn't make it from point to point. I was, like, five kilometers from the end. And, um, when I didn't make it, I decided to swim back the other way. So, I ended up swimming over 100 kilometers with a 100-pound (laughs) tree. It took me 32 hours, um, but still didn't make it. So, so it's-

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:17

       Why... What, what went wrong where you didn't make it?

   12. RERoss Edgley1:20

       Tides, currents, you know. And, and I-

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:22

       Oh, you just got swept away?

   14. RERoss Edgley1:23

       Yeah, yeah. And espe-

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:24

       Especially attached to a tree, right?

   16. RERoss Edgley1:26

       (laughs) Exactly.

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:26

       How big was this tree?

   18. RERoss Edgley1:28

       Uh, so 100 pounds. But it, I mean, it floats, but it was more the drag.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:31

       Right.

   20. RERoss Edgley1:31

       S- so if, if there's any influence from tides or currents, and it's pulling you in one direction, I mean, I was basically gonna miss Martinique. So I, I don't know, I was, I was heading to Cuba, you know, or somewhere like that.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:40

       Ugh.

   22. RERoss Edgley1:40

       And then on the way back down, you know, I was g- uh, they turned to me again, and they said, like, "You're gonna miss Saint Lucia. You're, you're, you're gonna end up in..." I don't know, whatever's further south than Saint Lucia. (laughs) Um, and I think I realized, as, as physically fit as you are, um, the ocean just, just doesn't care. You know?

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:57

       Yeah.

   24. RERoss Edgley1:57

       It just doesn't care. And so, after that... This was last year, this was November last year. Um, kind of felt I had unfinished business with, with the ocean, um-

   25. JRJoe Rogan2:06

       (laughs)

   26. RERoss Edgley2:06

       ... came b- came back to England, uh, rung up, um, friends of mine at the Royal Marines. I said, "Guys, look, this is gonna sound so, so strange." I said, "But I just, I need to get it out my system. I just need to see how far I can swim in 48 hours." So, I swam 48 hours. Um, I can't remember what it was in the end. I think it was 160 kilometers, something, something like that. And I finished, and, and I had basically drenched foot. So, where your, your, your feet and your hands are, are so kind of... They've got so much water in, it's almost going moldy, you know?

   27. JRJoe Rogan2:34

       Mm-hmm.

   28. RERoss Edgley2:34

       It's kind of... Yeah, so I had drenched foot. And I'm sort of sitting there nursing, nursing my feet. And, uh, one of the, one of the officers, uh, uh, a good friend of mine, and they came over, and they just said, uh, they went, you know, real English, Royal Marine. They said, "You, boy." And I said, "Yes." And they said, "Oh, what are you, what are you training for?" And I said, uh, "Oh, I'm, I'm training for, uh, potentially attempting the world's longest current neutral swim." And he just paused, and he, he, he sipped his cup of tea. And he looked me up and down, and he just goes, (smacks lips) "That just sounds a bit lame." (laughs) I was like, "Okay, what-"

   29. JRJoe Rogan3:05

       (laughs)

   30. RERoss Edgley3:05

       "... what do you want me to do?" And he pauses, and he says, "You just need to man up. You need to man up and swim around Great Britain." And I was like, (sighs) "Whoa." And I can't, I can't just... I, I couldn't say no. Once the idea-
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   So your swimming schedule…

   1. RERoss Edgley15:00

      It just doesn't care that, that you need to rehab your shoulders. It doesn't care that the ligaments and tendons in your shoulders are hurting, you might get impingement from swimming too much. You know, none of this. And, um, that'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.

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:20

      So your swimming schedule would be six hours on, and then you would try to rest. When would you eat?

   3. RERoss Edgley15:26

      Uh, during the swims or, or, or between? And-

   4. JRJoe Rogan15:29

      During the swims?

   5. RERoss Edgley15:30

      Yeah. Yeah, so quite often just, you know, throwing bananas at me and, and just-

   6. JRJoe Rogan15:34

      Wow.

   7. RERoss Edgley15:35

      ... uh, you know-

   8. JRJoe Rogan15:35

      Salty bananas?

   9. RERoss Edgley15:36

      (laughs) Basically, yeah. Yeah, just salty bana- and-

   10. JRJoe Rogan15:39

       And you would eat them while you were in the water?

   11. RERoss Edgley15:40

       Yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan15:41

       Wow.

   13. RERoss Edgley15:41

       Yeah, 'cause, 'cause again, going back to what we were talking about with the Pendle 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. You 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. And so that's why so often it became about, uh, something different than swimming. It was just, it was just mental fortitude, it was physical fortitude, it was, um, basically... And, and I always remember actually, uh, first day of autumn, um, I got up, it was two o'clock, so it was a night swim, two o'clock in the morning, and I left my wetsuit out to, to dry. And, um, I had to scrape just a thin layer of ice off the wetsuit before I could put it on.

   14. JRJoe Rogan16:27

       (laughs)

   15. RERoss Edgley16:27

       (laughs) But if I didn't, if I didn't get in and I didn't scrape that, that, that wetsuit, then that would've been, you know, 15 miles potentially that we would've missed out on. And if-

   16. JRJoe Rogan16:36

       Mm.

   17. RERoss Edgley16:36

       ... you miss those 15 miles, the, the window of opportunity to swim around Great Britain because of the British summer being notoriously unpredictable and quite short, um, we wouldn't have made it round. Because even towards the end, there was two storms, uh, Storm Alan and Storm Callie, uh, uh, Ali and Calum, who kind of stopped us for those two days where we couldn't swim 'cause you, you just couldn't swim in a storm. It wasn't safe.

   18. JRJoe Rogan17:00

       So when you were swimming, this was all during the summer?

   19. RERoss Edgley17:03

       Yeah, yeah, uh, through the autumn, and then we finished November the 4th, which was going into the winter-

   20. JRJoe Rogan17:07

       Oh.

   21. RERoss Edgley17:08

       ... as well. (laughs)

   22. JRJoe Rogan17:08

       And you started what month?

   23. RERoss Edgley17:10

       Uh, June the 1st. (laughs)

   24. JRJoe Rogan17:11

       So for, since June, you've been swimming?

   25. RERoss Edgley17:14

       Yeah, basically. (laughs)

   26. JRJoe Rogan17:15

       God damn, man.

   27. RERoss Edgley17:17

       (laughs)

   28. JRJoe Rogan17:17

       That's so crazy.

   29. RERoss Edgley17:20

       Yeah.

   30. JRJoe Rogan17:20

       You know what's interesting too? You're not built like a guy I'd expect to be doing this.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   So, that's metabolic stress.…

   1. JRJoe Rogan30:00

      uh, causing hypertrophy?

   2. RERoss Edgley30:02

      So, that's metabolic stress.

   3. JRJoe Rogan30:03

      Metabolic stress?

   4. RERoss Edgley30:04

      Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan30:04

      So, just a sheer number of sets-

   6. RERoss Edgley30:07

      Yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan30:07

      ... just constant repetitions over and over and over again with not that high a weight.

   8. RERoss Edgley30:12

      Yes. Yeah, and that's metabolic. But then mechanical tension is when, um, it's more powerlifting-esque.

   9. JRJoe Rogan30:17

      Right.

   10. RERoss Edgley30:18

       So there's your difference between the two.

   11. JRJoe Rogan30:20

       Mm-hmm.

   12. RERoss Edgley30:20

       So, the reason being is meta- but- so when you start looking at mechanical tension, that might produce an athlete who has a smaller strength deficit.

   13. JRJoe Rogan30:29

       Right.

   14. RERoss Edgley30:29

       So, when, again, using you as an example, if there was a smaller strength deficit between what you could voluntarily leg press, you know, leg extension, hamstring extension, and then involuntary, there's a smaller deficit. It would like, it w- I would liken it to, "Okay, Joe. You have this much muscle mass, but you're using a lot of your potential. You're using it already."

   15. JRJoe Rogan30:50

       Mm-hmm.

   16. RERoss Edgley30:50

       It's almost like you've got a- a Formula One car with a huge engine, but you're using it to its full extent, you know? And- 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. So, 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." It's like you have a very small car, but you are just pushing down the accelerator so hard-

   17. JRJoe Rogan31:26

       Mm-hmm.

   18. RERoss Edgley31:26

       ... and it can't go anymore.

   19. JRJoe Rogan31:27

       It's just red-lined.

   20. RERoss Edgley31:29

       Exactly. So the option that we have is to increase the size of the car. The option we have is to increase the size of your muscle mass.

   21. JRJoe Rogan31:34

       Mm-hmm.

   22. RERoss Edgley31:35

       Does that make sense?

   23. JRJoe Rogan31:35

       It does.

   24. RERoss Edgley31:36

       Yeah.

   25. JRJoe Rogan31:36

       It does. Um, what kind of training were you doing to increase your capacity for work while maintaining the mass?

   26. RERoss Edgley31:45

       Yeah. And this- this goes (laughs) , it's a bit of a strange story. So this goes back to something I almost call, um, you know, horsepower programming, which I think is- is so often lost now. I think training is very specific. When you go into the gym, are you training for strength, speed, stamina? Whereas horsepower programming, I- I almost borrowed from, um, Soviet Union principles. So you start looking at, uh, general physical preparedness as it was- as it was known. And 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. So, you'll get, uh, you know, an athlete, you're handed... I- imagine, okay, you're- you're a young, uh, kid just growing up and- and your parents hand you to me. I'm your coach. And I say, "Okay. I don't know if Joe's gonna be big, strong. I don't know if he's gonna be able to run far or fast. I don't know. So what we're gonna do is just cre- increase your sort of neuromuscular efficiency and work capacity." And so by doing that, it's kind of jumps, throws, non-specific, these natural movement patterns. And we get you to do lots and lots of this. What that's doing is- is work capacity, your body's ability to- to positively tolerate training and given its intensity or duration. And 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?" It, for me, one of the biggest things was going back to, and this is gonna sound so odd, but I, um, I ran a marathon pulling a car, uh, three, three years ago, I think now. Um, and so that is almost the perfect embodiment of horsepower programming, in that that sheer stress on the body, but it's not a specific skill.

   27. JRJoe Rogan33:22

       When you say you ran a marathon behind a car...

   28. RERoss Edgley33:25

       Uh, pulling a car.

   29. JRJoe Rogan33:26

       You mean pulling a car.

   30. RERoss Edgley33:27

       Uh, pulling a car.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Guys. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan45:00

   2. RERoss Edgley45:00

      Guys.

   3. JVJamie Vernon45:00

      Well, this is, uh-

   4. RERoss Edgley45:00

      So bad.

   5. JVJamie Vernon45:01

      ... a version of the article.

   6. RERoss Edgley45:02

      Nice.

   7. JVJamie Vernon45:02

      I don't know if it's the exact one you had.

   8. JRJoe Rogan45:04

      Yeah, that's exactly it. So, if you scroll down, you'll see the, the, the specifications.

   9. RERoss Edgley45:10

      Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan45:11

       Yeah.

   11. RERoss Edgley45:12

       And yeah. And this is what I find amazing because then it becomes about something completely different. I mean, we were just talking now about Kipchoge and the two-hour marathon, but it's like if you put Kip- put Kipchoge into this, you know, who's gonna win?

   12. JRJoe Rogan45:27

       Mm-hmm. Yeah, it says they had an hour to complete the 4.1667-mile loop, and then they finish within 15 minutes to spare. The bell clangs again at 7:40 AM and they run it again. And then at 8:40 AM they run it again. At 9:40 they run it again. So, every hour you run this 4.1667-mile loop and then it, the bell just keeps clanging forever.

   13. RERoss Edgley45:55

       So bad. That is so bad.

   14. JRJoe Rogan45:56

       (laughs)

   15. RERoss Edgley45:56

       Why do you ... Why do you think there's more people doing these events now as well?

   16. JRJoe Rogan46:01

       Well, I think it's the same thing as everything else. Uh, the same thing as if you, you buy a car today, you want it to accelerate from zero to 60 in two and a half seconds.

   17. RERoss Edgley46:11

       Right.

   18. JRJoe Rogan46:11

       Yeah. A few years ago, that was unheard of.

   19. RERoss Edgley46:13

       Mm.

   20. JRJoe Rogan46:14

       If you buy a computer today, you want it to be 3.8 gigahertz and (sniffs) five-terabyte hard drive and that's ... It's the same every year. We want improvements.

   21. RERoss Edgley46:25

       Right.

   22. JRJoe Rogan46:26

       And I think when you hear someone's gonna run a 100-mile race, you go, "Oh, yeah, that's cute, uh, but I'm gonna run 200 miles." And they're like, "That's not even possible." It's the same as the four-minute mile.

   23. RERoss Edgley46:35

       Right.

   24. JRJoe Rogan46:36

       Someone runs the 200 miles, you're like, "Holy shit, I can't believe a guy ran ... for three days, he ran 200 miles."

   25. RERoss Edgley46:41

       Yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan46:41

       And then someone like Courtney comes along and goes, "I'm gonna do it in two days."

   27. RERoss Edgley46:44

       Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   28. JRJoe Rogan46:44

       And they're like, "What?"

   29. RERoss Edgley46:45

       Yeah.

   30. JRJoe Rogan46:45

       And then she runs, she runs it in two days. And then someone ... They're talking about now doing a 500-mile ultra-marathon.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:08:18

   Okay. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:00:00

      of the first round-

   2. RERoss Edgley1:00:01

      Okay.

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:00:01

      ... I think he probably would've had a good chance to survive.

   4. RERoss Edgley1:00:04

      Okay, okay. What's going on?

   5. JVJamie Vernon1:00:06

      Dean put on Dean Lister. It's an Ezekiel choke, and he's not, it's not being done well apparently.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:00:09

      Oh, but this is a diff- this is not an Ezekiel choke.

   7. JVJamie Vernon1:00:12

      (laughs)

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:00:13

      This is, this is, uh, what this is, is, uh, I mean, it's kind of an Ezekiel, but see where his hand is? You gotta really get underneath. See his left hand? That left hand's gotta go not just there, it's gotta go under the chin. That's not good enough for a guy like Dean. You got, okay, now it's pretty fucking tight.... now it's tight and he's gotta get further and further in. The further that left arm gets into Dean's neck-

   9. RERoss Edgley1:00:37

      Mm-hmm.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:00:38

       ... the more, more there's gonna be a possibility of him choking. But Dean has been fucking choked his whole life, which is ... But I do have to say that Josh Barnett made him tap. And Josh Barnett is, like, one of the few guys that's made Dean Lister tap. And I think the first time he tapped in a decade.

   11. RERoss Edgley1:00:57

       Wow.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:00:57

       And Josh Barnett got him in a scarf hold, um, and I th- that was in Metamoris. And Josh Barnett, who is, uh, he's a catch wrestling specialist. Yeah, go to the very end of it here. Josh Barnett gets ahold of Dean's h- he gets a ... See, in this position right here, he's in side control, which is just impressive enough that Josh is able to do this with a guy like Dean Lister. But then he gets him in what's, uh, I don't ... He m- he probably has a different name for it, but it's, uh ... We, we used to call it judo side control. It's quite a bit further down on this. You gotta keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going.

   13. RERoss Edgley1:01:34

       All right.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:01:34

       All the way to the end. So he gets ahold of his ar- he's got a head and arm choke. Here it is. Here it is. So 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. But this was at the end of a long match and, you know, it could've been exhaustion might've played a part in it. It most certainly was Josh's skill and his, his ability to apply that technique. B- but the point is, is a guy like Dean Lister, y- you're not gonna tap that guy easy.

   15. RERoss Edgley1:02:10

       But this is ... And, and ag- again, it, it with sort of holding my hands up saying I'm so, sort of naïve, a huge fan of, of MMA but not necessarily, uh, any of the technical aspects. But what I love is when you look at someone like, you know, Nick Diaz or Michael Bisping.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:02:23

       Mm-hmm.

   17. RERoss Edgley1:02:23

       You know, people don't understand his conditioning and he will just wear people down.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:02:27

       Massive mental toughness too. What, what Bisping has is just insane mental toughness. You know, Bisping basically has one eye.

   19. RERoss Edgley1:02:35

       Wow.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:02:36

       M- if you look at his eyes, his, one of his eye actually ... And I hope he can get surgery on it now because he is retired. He has oil, like, im- embedded in his eye-

   21. RERoss Edgley1:02:48

       Wow.

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:02:48

       ... to protect his retina, because it's been torn so many times.

   23. RERoss Edgley1:02:51

       Wow.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:02:51

       It's been torn, he had surgery on it, he had it repaired, torn again. His right eye is fucked up, man.

   25. RERoss Edgley1:02:57

       Right.

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:02:58

       And one of the reasons why he retired is he started to see some irregularities in his vision in his left eye, so his good eye was fucking up too. But I mean, Michael Bisping is a fucking animal. I mean, he is, he is about as tough as it gets. And he's not, like, a spectacularly physically talented guy like a Jon Jones or Yoel Romero who's just this unbelievable specimen.

   27. RERoss Edgley1:03:20

       Mm-hmm.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:03:20

       Michael's a, you know, a s- a really good athlete, unquestionably, but he's just tough.

   29. RERoss Edgley1:03:25

       Yeah.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:03:25

       Just fucking tough. So, to answer your question, there is, there is this ... And you could speak to this, because what you're talking about, uh, the, the ability to overcome adversity. Like, some people when you were s- talking about that fatigue is an emotionally driven thing, that there's this feeling that you get and you can give into that feeling where you're like, "Oh my God, I'm fuck- I fucking can't do this anymore." And some people are more susceptible to that than others, and they give into it quickly.

Episode duration: 2:52:15