The Art of Resilience: Strategies for an Unbreakable Mind and Body

Athlete Adventurers: Apply principles of sports science under uncontrollable, dangerous conditions. This means you have a greater degree of pain, stress and uncertainty to endure and therefore a greater need for cognitive clarity and resilience under extreme physical and mental exhaustion.

at night you had to enter the water knowing you were going to be stung probably up to a dozen times and would spend the rest of the night picking tentacles out of your face with a tweezer while generously applying a vinegar ointment to soothe the pain.

I was fuelled by a kind of ‘feral fortitude’.

The journey from Land’s End to John o’ Groats (known as LEJOG) is a sacred and famous one here in Britain, with cyclists, runners and walkers attempting the 874 mile (1,407 km) route like a modern version of an Okugake.

Keeping the heart rate at a sustainable level is essential for optimum performance in endurance events (Impeccable Pacing). If the heart rate is too high (or too low) this encourages the brain to send a signal to our bodies to shut down.

stoicism doesn’t concern itself with complicated theories about the world, but with helping us overcome destructive emotions and act on what can be acted upon.

prepare, compete, relax, recover and repeat.51 This was periodisation in its most basic form

it’s going to be like swimming in a washing machine …. in the dark,’

Each session basically operates in a complex system of interrelationships and the problem is too often sports science fails to acknowledge this.