Ross Edgley tests Chris Hemsworth’s fitness in adventure series, Limitless

Famous for pushing his own body to its limits, Ross Edgley has now turned his attention to testing our very own superhero, Chris Hemsworth.

Ross Edgley still laughs about the time his father caught him stuffing his backpack with rocks before a family hike in England’s Lake District.

“What are you doing son?” Edgley’s father asked in head-scratching confusion.

“I want to make my hike a bit more of a challenge,” the young Edgley replied.

It was an interaction Edgley senior would become accustomed to as his son would go on to complete a triathlon while pulling a 45kg tree – think of this as running, cycling and swimming with a 13-year-old on your back – climbing a rope repeatedly for 17 hours to the height of Everest, completing a marathon while towing a car, and swimming around Great Britain over 157 days straight.

Ross Edgley is the epitome of extreme adventurer and has made a career out of putting his body to the absolute test by following a simple mantra – a body is an instrument not an ornament.

Extreme adventurer Ross Edgley. Picture: James Appleton

And now the 35-year-old has turned his attention on our Thor, putting Chris Hemsworth through his paces in Byron Bay for the National Geographic ultimate adventure series, Limitless.

“Essentially Chris is almost this kind of sports science guinea pig where we are looking at optimising human health, looking at longevity and everything from strength to resilience and how these things dwindle with age and how we can improve them,” Edgley says of the project he was invited to join by Hemsworth and the actor’s long time personal trainer Luke Zocchi, who was responsible for his transformation into Thor.

“I always say make your body an instrument, not an ornament and as great as Chris looks, a lot of people, through this project, are going to see a new form of athleticism that you don’t really see with a lot of big actors.

“There are a lot of people who look great but they definitely can’t move like Chris. You won’t find guys at 105kg surfing and sprinting like he does.”

Got a news tip? Email [e-mail]

Edgley was the perfect choice to partner with on this six-part series which will push Hemsworth’s body to the absolute extreme over six gruelling experiments.

Chris Hemsworth underwent a body transformation for his role as Thor. Picture: Chris Hemsworth/Instagram

He is best known for swimming around Great Britain over 157 days in 2018 – that’s 12 hours a day without a break – a challenge Edgley says almost broke him.

In his new book, Blueprint, he reveals in detail the months of recovery that came after the happy embraces at the end of his epic ocean swim.

“It felt like I’d aged 20 years during my time at sea,” he writes in the book, and he had to have surgery to repair the trauma the repetitive action of swimming for six months straight caused.

“I wanted to be so honest about that because I think that was so important,” Edgley says about chronicling his rehab and recovery in the book.

“So many people remember the GB Swim and they remember me walking out of the water, hugging my family and there were all these celebrations. But nobody knew about the months afterwards; the doctor’s appointments, the sleep deprivation and the surgery.

“In this day and age that we live in with social media, it’s really easy to show your highlights but I wanted people to understand honestly and transparently what actually happens to your body after something like that. It’s not all sunshine and dolphins swimming around Great Britain, there was a period afterwards where you have to pay a physical penance almost.”

Blueprint is part memoir, part training manual, part philosophy book and part sports science text. It’s the third book Edgley has penned but, he thinks, his most important.

The cover announces it as a how-to book for those interested in building a bulletproof body for extreme adventure in 365 days. But it’s so much more than that.

Ross Edgley has been on many extreme adventures. Picture: Supplied

The cover of Edgley’s new book, out on September 8.

Edgley brings together his more than two decades studying sports science with the philosophies followed by the Spartan warrior society of ancient Greece and the Soviet Union principals of elite sports training.

While it may seem like a manual for an elite few, Edgley says it is a book that can be used and appreciated by anyone who wants to train right. Rather than those quick-fix eight-week programs so popular online these days, Edgley has outlined what you need to do for 365 days of the year; a training schedule that follows the seasons.

“After my first two books, I didn’t really feel like I was going to write another one,” Edgley says.

“And then I had shoulder surgery which was basically the real catalyst for it. What was missing from the other two books is that a lot of people said ‘Well, it’s all well and good swimming around Great Britain but I can’t relate to that, I’m not ever going to do that.’

“But now here I was starting from ground zero, after shoulder surgery I couldn’t lift the one kilo weights, I was absolutely back to square one. And I just thought this is such an interesting experiment, to rebuild the human body from the ground up, from the inside out. In this now, I’m a beginner again and it will allow me to really step into the shoes of a lot of people I have not really spoken to before.”

Ross Edgley made headlines after completing a 2864km swim around Britain in 2018. Picture: Alex Broadway/Red Bull

Whether you intend to build your ultimate body or not, the book is an entertaining read.

In it, Edgley recounts his 2008 experience hunting with the Ju-Wasi tribe of Namibia, considered one of the greatest hunter gatherer tribes in the world.

That same year, Edgley became an apprentice reindeer herder with the Evenki herdsmen of Siberia and crossed the Arctic Circle with them, with temperatures dropping to -40C. And there’s a hilarious chapter on the time he helped train the 2017 World’s Strongest Man, Eddie Hall, in the freezing waters off Manley Mere in England.

It’s clear a man like Edgley will always be looking for his next big adventure, which begs the question – what next?

“We actually had (an idea) but now it’s had to be postponed because of Covid,” he says. “All I can say is that it will be in Australian waters.”

Blueprint: Build a bulletproof body for extreme adventure in 365 days, by Ross Edgley, published by Harper Collins, RRP $34.99, is out on September 8