In Senegal, wrestling is a sport in which athletes can make millions of dollars or nothing at all. Former wrestler Ìęhad all the promise to be an elite athlete. This film fromÌę chronicles Ngor’s ups and downs in his career, ultimately resulting in an acceptance of his own failure.

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is an AustralianÌęfreeskierÌęwho now resides in big mountain meccas of British Columbia and Alaska. Whether he's chasingÌęfreeride lines or tight singletrack, Tudor is always training for something. In this video, Training for Life, he explores his connection to cross training and how that can affect both mental and physical strength. In the offseason you can find him , practicing yoga, or all in an effort to be ready for next winter.Ìę

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Routines bring structure to our days so we can get the most out of them. In his book, , author Mason Currey examinesÌęthe routines of more than 150 great performers across diverse fields—artists, scientists, poets, mathematicians—and concluded that “a solid routine fosters a well-worn groove for one’s mental energies and helps to stave off the tyranny of moods.” Although there is no single best routine—the best routine is the one that works for you—learning from others is still instructive.

Here, we consider the daily routines of some of the top athletes, artists, authors, and adventurers.

The Night Owl Athlete: Sasha DiGiulian, World Champion Climber

Wake and Hydrate: The first thing I do every morning is drink warm water with lemon. I find this particular combo helps me rehydrate best.

Eat Often: I eat six times a day, with a heavy emphasis on protein and carbs. I also incorporate a lot of vegetables into my diet because they’re nourishing and I really like them.

Relax with Friends: I love to have friends over to my house. I don’t cook often, but I’ll always provide food. Ordering in is a specialty of mine.

Sleep: Sleep is really important for me, so I get a minimum of eight hours every night. But I go to bed late—1 a.m. late.

Read Something Every Night: I read a book—a real, paper book, not on a device—every night for about 30 minutes before going to bed. I like both fiction and nonfiction. The fiction is best to help me relax and escape to another world. The nonfiction is great for learning about why we do what we do and understanding other people.

The Tech-Free Entrepreneur: Dick Costolo, Former CEO of Twitter, Current CEO of Chorus

Fast Intermittently: I’m on intermittent fasting, which means I eat only between noon and 8 p.m. I stick to this seven days a week. By restricting the range of when I eat, I’m a lot more mindful of what I eat. This also allows me to indulge in big meals without overdoing it when I do sit down to eat.

Work Out Every Afternoon: At Twitter, I trained at 6:15 in the morning, but now that I have some flexibility in my schedule, I’ve shifted my daily workout to the afternoon. I’m a lot more mobile in the afternoon versus after just getting out of bed. I guess that’s what happens when you get old. [Costolo is 53.]

Schedule Time away from the Phone: I put my phone in airplane mode two hours before I go to bed, and I don’t turn it on until the next morning. This gives me the opportunity to read, think, and relax without the busyness of nonstop push notifications and emails. ±őłÙ’s also great for sleep, because I’m not getting wound up about something before bed.

Take Microadventures: I try to physically remove myself once in a while from the space I’m in daily. This doesn’t need to be expensive travel; it could be as simple as camping or driving to a different climate. I feel like when I come back from these breaks, when I get outside my predictable physical surroundings, I’m more thoughtful and creative. Many of my best ideas have followed these breaks.

The Early Morning șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűr: Conrad Anker, Legendary Climber

Coffee: I savor my mornings. I’m up very early, around 5 a.m. I have my best mental acuity in the morning, and few people are going to bother me then. ±őłÙ’s a great time to write or tackle important emails and the like. Before I sit down to think and work, I make a pour-over coffee. ±őłÙ’s the first thing I do every day.

Move Every Hour: I’ve been wearing a Fitbit and set it up so that it reminds me to move, even if only a little bit, every hour.

Prioritize Family and Pets: My wife and I walk our dogs every day. This is a really important part of my day.

Clean Yourself: On [climbing] objectives, it’s really hard to have routines because things aren’t always so predictable. I do make sure I wash my hands and feet really well every night—hands because I don’t want to get sick on the side of a mountain, and feet to prevent them from getting pitted (infected), which makes them more susceptible to frostbite.

The Artistic Olympian: Alexi Pappas, Filmmaker, Essayist, Olympic 10K Runner

Do Tomorrow Morning’s Work Today: One of the routines I’ve relied on since I can remember is each night, I lay my clothes out for the next day and set the automatic timer for my coffee. This helps me set the tone for the next day and conserve some of the precious willpower I will undoubtedly need for the day’s tasks ahead. When I wake up to the smell and sound of brewing coffee, with my outfit laid out before me, it is like my yesterday-self already decided I was able to win the day I’m in.

The Exercising Author: Ryan Holiday, Bestselling Author

Rise, Reflect, and Set Intentions: Every morning, I wake up very early on my farm [outside Austin, Texas], and I take great pains to not check email on my phone. I use the alarm on my phone to wake me up, but then I resist engaging with it any further. I take a shower, and then I walk upstairs to my office and write in a small journal. I usually do one to two pages—a reflection on the prior day and a few thoughts on the upcoming one. Only then am I allowed to work or think about what I have to do next.

Do the Most Important Thing(s) First: I try to front-load all my creative work as early in the day as possible. If I’ve written for two hours in the morning or logged serious time on a manuscript I need to edit, or if I’ve been locked into research, then whatever happens the rest of the day is a win. If I get called away to something important, if I have a bunch of meetings that go longer than expected, if I lose discipline and slack off, then it was still a successful day because I did my creative work in the morning. My routine never takes later for granted. I want to do what I can now.

Move Your Body to Move Your Mind: The other thing I do daily is some form of strenuous exercise. That could mean running between five and eight miles, swimming at least a mile, or, if the weather is bad, maybe lifting weights. The workout needs to come, for me, in the later afternoon. By then, I’ve reached the point of diminishing returns on my work. I want to take the focus off that for a bit and let my mind wander. I find problems tend to magically resolve themselves during my workouts. What I think about on my run or in my swim is setting me up for what I need to do tomorrow.

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When I met triathlete Sarah Piampiano outside a coffee shop in Oakland, California, this past summer, she was wearing a necklace with an emblem that read,Ìę“Believe.” This fits the 35-year-old Piampiano well—her unwavering self-belief transformed her, in five years,Ìęfrom a chain-smoking investment bankerÌęto a top contender at this October’s in Kona, Hawaii. In advance of the big race, I sat down with Piampiano to learn how she ascended to the highest triathlon ranks.Ìę

Believe in Yourself

There is such a difference between asking yourself, “Oh gosh, can I do it?” and saying “I’m going to do this.” The former breeds self-doubt and almost always stifles performance. The latter sets you up to go all-in and have no regrets, even if things don’t pan out.

When I was looking for my first coach, well before I had any remarkable results, asked me what I wanted out of triathlon. I looked down and told him I wanted to be a world champion. He told me to look him in the eye and say it again, so I did. Matt’s coached me ever since and I haven’t veered from that mindset.

Pick a Favorite WorkoutÌę

On the bike: aÌęsix- or seven-hour ride,Ìęincluding four one-hour repeats of 45 minutes at Ironman effort and 15 minutes at half-Ironman effort. Running: aÌętwo-plus hour run with the last 40 minutes at slightly faster than IronmanÌępace. Swimming: I really dislike swimming.Ìę

Play to Your Strengths

I’m not a great swimmer. For a while, I tried really hard to close the gap and focused so much time and energy on improving in the water. But then my coach and I had a shift—instead we focused on buildingÌęmy strengths, becoming so strong on land that I could come out of the water last and still win big races.Ìę

Eat Well and Often

șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű of oatmeal in the morning, I don’t eat much starch or sugar, opting instead for lots of protein and fat. That said, during training and races I consume tons of carbs. I take an energy gel every 20 minutes during every workout that lasts an hour or more. Even during an easy 70-minute run, I’ll consume three energy gels. I also follow every workout with a high-carb recovery drink. ÌęMy diet is much more about when I eat certain things as opposed to what I eat. Needless to say, I perform well on lots of carbs.

Indulge Guilty Pleasures

I love iceÌęcream. That’s perhaps the best part of living in Northern California. There are plenty of great ice cream options.Ìę

Practice Like You Play

In training, it’s all about simply showing up and starting every workout. If my body doesn’t come around and start to feel good after a 20-minute warm-up, then I’ll scratch the intensity and keep everything easy. You’ve got to be willing to listen to your body and adapt.Ìę

In racing, I think the biggest cause of fatigue is poor fueling. That’s part of why I consume so many energy gels during training. Do I really need three gels during an hour run? Of course not. But I’m training my gut. You can’t just expect your stomach to work well on race day.Ìę

Train Self-Control

Being a professional triathlete is about pushing through pain in training and racing,Ìęand avoiding temptations like eatingÌęjunk food, going out, drinking.ÌęStill, you can only go so many days with such immense willpower. For me, that number is 90. Ninety days of complete focus. So I save it for when it matters, during my build up to the World Championships. Throughout the rest of the season, I’m not so rigid.Ìę

Nail the Little Things

Success is the sum of small efforts repeated day in and day out. Don’t get overwhelmed by big goals. Focus on nailing the little things.Ìę

·ĄłŸČú°ùČ賊±đÌ곧±đłÙČúČ賊°ìČő

Early in 2014, I sustained a hairline fracture in my femur. Because the injury occurred in a spot with lots of soft-tissue attachments, I couldn’t even cross-train for a month. I embraced the opportunity to live normally.ÌęI ate everything, went out late, and watched television. It was actually kind of nice.ÌęBut then the itch came back. I think rather than push, push, push, it’s okayÌęto back off after an injury and let the passion come back naturally,Ìęinstead of trying to force it.Ìę

Take RisksÌę

This wasn’t completely reckless. When I first started training for triathlons at the end of 2009, I was working 90-hour weeks as a Vice President at HSBC [an investment bank]. After about two years of seeing considerable improvement in my race times, I asked my boss if I could go down to 30- toÌę40-hour weeks. I’m very grateful that they were supportive.

Then, about a year later, after an incredible season that included being the top American amateur finisher at the Ironman World Championships, I decided, “I’m really going to do this.”ÌęWalking away from a stable,Ìęgood income wasn’t easy, but my belief was greater than my fear.

The Right Lifestyle MattersÌę

I went from having my own plush Manhattan apartment to living with three roommates. I quit smoking, something I'd tried to do many times before. I guess I never had a motivation as strong as being a world champion. Late nights at the office or out partying were replaced with early bed times to ensure 8 to 10 hours of sleep. Ninety-hour weeks at my desk were replaced with 30-hour training weeks.Ìę

…As Do Your GenesÌę

I was a national-class runner and ski racer in high school. But when I went to college [at Colby College, in Waterville, Maine] my focus shifted to academics. I still ran on the cross-country team and skied, but athletics were second to academics.Ìę

Fast forward sevenÌęyears: I finished my first triathlon—after having done nothing athletic since college and using a broken-down bike—in threeÌęhours. Not bad for the Olympic Distance race [swimming 1.2 miles, ridingÌę24.8 miles, running 6.2 miles]. So I guess you could say I’m blessed with good genetics.


And Hard Work

I had two older brothers growing up and they didn’t baby me. I had to fight to be involved in anything, there was no opportunity to show weakness. Looking back, I think that really shaped and solidified my drive to be the hardest worker I can be.Ìę

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Few runners have a portfolio as diverse as Sara Hall’s.

The 31-year-old was a seven-time All-American at Stanford University, competed in the 1,500 meters and 5,000 meters at the 2004 and 2008 Olympic Trials, and the 3,000-meter steeplechase at the 2012 Trials. She also won the . However, when it comes to longer-distance races, she’s primarily stayed on the sidelines and cheered for her husband, Olympic marathoner and U.S. half marathon record-holder .

Until now.

Hall will make her marathon debut at the this Sunday. And she’ll be in good company:ÌęAlong with Hall, about half the runners at the L.A. event will be running their first marathon.

Hall had originally planned to run her first marathon last fall, but a burst appendix pushed her plans back half a year. But she took the setback in stride. She had surgery, took two weeks off, then refocused on Los Angeles. And training has gone well. Since the incident, she’s PR’d in a 10K (32:13), 12K (38:48), and half-marathon (1:10:50), and ran to a fourth-place finish at the U.S. Half Marathon Championships in January.

We caught up with Hall while she was training at 9,000 feet in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to talk about making the jump to the marathon.Ìę

OUTSIDE: Why did you decide to run a marathon?
HALL: I’ve always wanted to run a full. I’ve watched a lot of Ryan’s races by now, and it looks amazing. It was just a matter of finding the right timing for me to do one. I thought 2014 was when I would run it, because there was a break from the Outdoor Championships on the track. And it would allow me enough time to train for the Olympic Trials if I thought I had a legitimate shot to make the team. But then my appendix burst and I had to push back my training.

What are some of the key differences you’ve noticed in training for the full versus the half marathon?
The biggest difference for me has been mental, actually. When I was doing more track stuff, and even training for the half, you’re kind of still training more like a 10K runner. I have an aggressive personality, and I like to start my intervals really hard and my tempos really fast, and I get off the line quickly. I also try to run courses in the direction that’s the fastest, like with the wind or downhill, and that’s kind of a track-runner mentality. So Ryan’s helped me adjust that, teaching me that it’s not about training to run fast, but rather learning how to tough it out and run up the hills and suffer through it. The L.A. Marathon is a challenging course, with quite a few hills.

Did you have to ease your way into the distance and increased weekly mileage?
It was gradual, but I did it a lot by feel. My coach would give me a bit less, but if I was feeling good, I had the green light to add on more mileage as I felt appropriate. The farthest I would go before was probably 80-some miles in one week, and now the highest was around 112.

I’ve been in a really good groove the last four months, where running has barely been a struggle, so I’ve been enjoying piling it on, and my body has absorbed it and handled it really well. If I ever feel like I’m starting to get run-down, then I’ll adjust my mileage. But I try to stack the most mileage and the most intensity on my hard days, so I’m recovering more on the other days.Ìę

With that added distance, would you say that you’ve needed to put a bigger emphasis on recovery between your workouts?
I’ve actually had to recover less. I think my body has responded better to the marathon training than it did to my track training: I would get more beat up from my track workouts. I can run 15 miles the day after a hard session, work out hard the next day, and be ready to go. Sometimes you hit periods where that’s not possible. But I still try to put two easy days between my biggest workouts that I’m really trying to hit, like a 15-mile tempo run, even if I don’t feel like I need it. Other than that, it’s just one recovery day per week.

The L.A. Marathon is a hilly race. How do you prepare yourself for that terrain?
I definitely haven’t been shying away from the hills in my training. I’ve been in Ethiopia for a good amount of my preparation, and everything is hilly there. I’m hoping that’s prepared me well. I’ve also been trying to work on the downhills, because those can actually be worse than the uphills—it creates a lot of pounding. I’ve tried to really build my quad strength, in the weight room and with other exercises, to try and get them ready.

What kind of role does nutrition play now that you’re running longer distances?
I try to pay attention to my nutrition, but I eat pretty normal and don’t feel like I’m ever depriving myself. I don’t eat gluten-free or raw or Paleo or anything like that. I’ve found that it’s all about timing. I eat pancakes before I work out—Ryan created the recipe. [Muscle Milk sponsors the Halls.] I also blend butter into my coffee, which I drink with the pancakes. ±őłÙ’s really filling and gives me energy.

Fortunately, I have an iron stomach, which is a blessing for the marathon. Right after you work out—within 30 minutes of finishing your run—is a great time to eat sugary things, so I’m always getting in those foods that I love, like cookies or pastries, then I’ll have some Muscle Milk for protein, which helps with recovery. And then within the next two hours, I’ll have an actual meal. ±őłÙ’s also important to practice what you’re going to do on race day while you’re training. On my long runs, I drink [also a sponsor], which contains a mix of different types of sugars, making it easier for your muscles to absorb the energy.

How has it been training for the same distance as Ryan? Do you guys work out together?
We have different coaches, but Ryan has been pretty instrumental in my preparation for this race and lending his advice because he knows more about the marathon than most people. ±őłÙ’s been a fun thing for us to work on together, and I can ask him questions all day long, especially about finding the right effort levels and what to prioritize, energy-wise. We’re doing a lot of warm-ups and cool-downs together. And every now and then his long-run pace will match up with my tempo pace, or something like that, and we’ll get to do that together, too.

A lot of couples have a difficult time running together. Any secrets on how to not drive each other crazy during the workout?
I think the main thing is that if one of you is feeling good, everyone has to be okay with that person going ahead. For example, if I’m feeling bouncier than Ryan one day because he had a really hard workout the day before, it’s often better for me to turn around and run in the opposite direction than to be two-stepping him on the run. So that can be a good way to avoid conflict, to be able to turn to your partner and say, “Go ahead, fly on.”

What about racing strategy? Are you planning on tackling this race the same way you would a half?
I haven’t nailed down an exact strategy yet, but I’m probably going to run by feel more than anything else, which is what I usually do. ±őłÙ’s a little different than the track, where you have to be on the group and don’t want to miss a break. ±őłÙ’s a little more relaxed than that. My main goal is just to finish the last six miles strong—I want to run the race in a way that allows me to do that.

What are you most looking forward to in L.A.?
I’m looking forward to crossing the line and officially being a marathoner. Hopefully, I’ll be running fast across the finish and not fading.

Any other tips on how to successfully make the transition from a half to a full marathon?
I started by trying to run my long runs harder, not even trying to run them farther, which made me want to run longer and got me excited about marathon training. I also would say to find a good physical therapist, just to make sure you’re avoiding injury. I’m thankful to have a great team. And make sure you get your shoes fitted (like get a gait analysis at your local running store), so you’re putting in all of those miles in the right kind of shoes for you.

Sara Hall is dedicating her race at the L.A. Marathon to raising money for , in an effort to bring clean water to people in Ethiopia.

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When Alison Tetrick entered the in 2010, she was at the top of her game as a professional cyclist. Despite being relatively new to competitive racing, she was racking up podium spots. That season alone she had already taken first place in the . The previous year she had won second place in the Cascade Classic, and now she was gunning for first.

That all changed as she was barreling down a descent during the race. One cyclist near her crashed, creating a ricochet effect in a group already riding in tight formation. Another racer took out Tetrick’s front wheel, and Tetrick went down. Hard.

“When it first happened, I was going in and out,” Tetrick said. “I was thinking, I can still race again today.” With adrenaline pumping, she threw one leg over her bike and tried to get back on, but passed out again. She ultimately had to be airlifted off the course.

Tetrick was out cold for the next 24 hours, her body racked with seizures. First she was diagnosed with a broken pelvis, and later came the diagnosis of a traumatic brain injury. She didn’t realize how serious her condition was until she woke up in the hospital and saw the look on her dad’s face. That’s when she knew her season was over, and that she would face a long, painful recovery. What she didn’t expect, however, was the mental recovery would be harder than the physical.

“I was scared to death,” she says, of getting back on the bike. “I was terrified I was going to crash again.”

Fear, researchers are finding, plays an enormous role in an athlete’s recovery. In fact, it can determine whether or not an athlete ever makes a full recovery—and that fact is often overlooked, says Dr. Aaron Gray, a physician for athletes at the University of Missouri. Some athletes, he says, “almost have post-traumatic stress back to” the moment they got injured.

Addressing the fear, alongside the physical injuries, is critical for recovery, a recent study published in the found.

The study’s authors looked at a set of patients recovering from ACL reconstruction. Over the course of the patients’ recovery, the intensity of their knee pain was measured, along with the strength of the muscles around the knee, the knee’s functional range of movement, and the patient’s level of physical activity. Researchers also measured levels of kinesiophobia—pain-related fear of movement. Among the study participants, the most common reason for not having a full recovery was fear of getting hurt again. These athletes didn’t have higher levels of pain than other people in the study; they were just scared.

“Our results indicate physical impairments may contribute to initial functional deficits, whereas psychological factors may contribute to longer term functional deficits in patients who report fear of reinjury or lack of confidence as a barrier to sports participation,” wrote the study’s authors.

Tetrick’s fear was still alive and well at her first her big comeback race: the 2012 in Monterrey, California. Nevertheless, she jumped onto her saddle and rode. She didn’t place, but she knew it was a huge accomplishment to have recovered enough to be racing competitively again. The next year she went back and won the women’s division of the time trial for the Sea Otter Classic, and she’s been back on the bike ever since.

How did she crush her fear? One thing that helped: She decided to take ownership of the risks she faces while racing. Each time she races, “she’s 100 percent in.” She also took the extra time she had post-injury to focus on areas of her life outside of cycling. Now she’s a graduate student in neuropsychology—with a particular interest in brain injuries. She’s also volunteering with , a cancer awareness group. “I needed to separate my identity from the sport,” Tetrick says. “I’m so much more than a cyclist.”

If you’re struggling with fear and a lack of confidence post-injury, Tetrick and Dr. Gray have some tips to help you bounce back.Ìę

Take It Slow

Work with a trained physical therapist or sports physician to develop a gradual return-to-sport plan. This will let your body heal and helps your mind, too. Each day you do a little more, and gradually you’ll start to build the confidence to get back out there.

If You’re Feeling Blue, Get Help

For Tetrick, getting back meant working with a psychologist. ±őłÙ’s normal to feel blue when you can’t maintain your usual activity levels, but don’t be afraid to ask for help to deal with it. “People need to be aware of the potential tendency to feel down in the dumps as you’re recovering because you’re not able to exercise and release those endorphins that you usually do,” Dr. Gray says.

Track Your Recovery

Sometimes, even though you’re improving, it’s hard to see those gains because you’re so focused on performing at your pre-injury levels. Tetrick kept a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to track the activities she did and her mood levels each day. “If you keep track of your recovery you can see, ‘Hey, I could only walk up half the stairs last week, but this week I did all the stairs,’” she says.

Practice Positive Visualization

We usually hear about positive visualization as a useful tool for uninjured athletes. To perform well at the race, the ski racer imagines herself floating down it elegantly and winning. The same technique can be applied to athletes coming back from an injury. If you’re afraid of running after an ACL tear, for example, imagine yourself running fluidly with perfect form before you lace up your shoes and head out.

Get Your Movement Analyzed

Make sure you have good form to avoid reinjury. If you’re a skier, take a private lesson and have your technique analyzed by the instructor. If you’re a runner, get your gait assessed. If there’s a deficit in your technique, you can correct it, and if there isn’t, you can get out there with the confidence that you have perfect form.

Embrace Relaxation Exercises

When Tetrick is stressed before a race, she’ll do deep breathing exercises to calm herself down. She also comes up with little mantras to keep herself psyched. If you’re thinking a negative thought, try turning it around into a positive. “I’ll be thinking during the race, I feel awful!” she says. “And then I’ll think to myself, no, I feel awesome!”

The post Injured? Fear Is Your Biggest Enemy. appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Marathon swimmer Diana Nyad captured the nation’s imagination in 2013 by finally accomplishing a dream she'd been trying to achieve for 35 years: to free swim across the Florida Straits. Nyad fans and theater lovers alike saw her perseverance rendered onstage last weekend in her one-woman show, Onward! The Diana Nyad Story.Ìę

Nyad is used to the spotlight.ÌęShe was already a world-record distance swimmer when she became a star (and friends with Woody Allen) at age 26, in 1975, for swimming around Manhattan. Making the rounds on talk showsÌęthat year, her charisma dazzled. Longtime friend Bonnie Stoll, a former pro racquetball player who became Nyad’s de facto coach, remembers the charming 26-year-old, “walked on to Johnny Carson’s show as if it were her show—no fear whatsoever,” according to an article inÌę.ÌęLoud, funny and magnetic, Nyad parlayed her growing celebrity into a 35-year career—appearing on shows, hosting her own, and doing motivational speaking—as she set her sights on a life goal: free swimming from Florida to Cuba. What began as an encore to her Manhattan feat turned into an odyssey.

Her first attempt, in 1978, was foiled by highly venomous box jellyfish and bad weather. In 2013, afterÌętwo more attempts in 2011 and 2012, NyadÌęaccomplished her goal at age 64. Now, sheÌęis showcasing her life story onstage. Her sold-out one-woman show at of Key West, which had a capacity of about 160 people, was adapted from her upcoming memoir, to be published by Knopf this year. Josh Ravetch, who helped turn Carrie Fisher’s Wishful Drinking into a hit play, directed it. “I think of myself as an animated story-teller,” Nyad told șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű. “When you go out to dinner, you always have that friend who tells stories. I’m the one who tells the story that people will laugh at or cry at.”

ThroughÌęvisual and audio effects, Nyad takes viewers into her swim, steeping them in darkness, isolation and bouts with killer jellyfish. She rests on a concealed sawhorse to give the illusion that she’s swimming.Ìę“I literally swim through intermission,” she said. Between intermittent darkness, all you can see is a small red strobe—which was visible enough for her team to locate her during her actual swim and dim enough as not to attract sharks—blinking on her head. “All they hear is the auditory slap of my arms,” she said. “And that red strobe. ±őłÙ’s very effective.”ÌęShe wears the prosthetic jellyfish mask she had on during her swim.Ìę“I put on the jellyfish mask again,” she said. “±őłÙ’s part humor, but it’s part science fiction. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. If I’m walking outside on a windy day, if a wisp of something crosses my lips—a human hair, or a piece of palm frond—I shudder. Like a post-traumatic stress memory.”

From that primary action, she brings her audience into her own mind and past, shares memories of her Greek father and French mother, and sings Neil Young, Janis Joplin, and the Beatles to keep herself going. She uses a variety of voices with different accents to portray her parents, her navigator, her team, and her childhood swim coach.Ìę“In those 90 minutes, I step back to my father reading my name out of the dictionary,Ìęnaiad, that it means a swimming champion,” she said. “My French mom on the beach, telling me in her French accent that Cuba is so close you could swim there.” Bits and pieces of the more than 400 hours of footage taken of the swim, including Stoll pushing her to continue, are projected on a jumbo screen. At the end, the screen shows the faces of her team, with a ukelele playing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

“This play, like [my memoir], has that narrative, that action narrative,” said Nyad. “We literally create the action of me swimming, the jellyfish stings, what the mind goes through with that sensory deprivation. That story, a 64-year-old woman chasing a 35-year-old dream.”

The message, Nyad believes, is that simple. “Here is a woman who wouldn't give up. I think everyone can use that message.” But the method of Nyad's show is to simulate the environment she endured for 53 hours in 2013. Her goal was to make the audience feel it. At times, they sang along to the Beverly Hillbillies theme song, as Nyad demonstrated how she deals with the monotony. They learned of the sexual abuse she suffered in childhood. Some people in the audience cried, she added. “Here you have a chance to show what it feels like with sensual effects and video,” she said. “±őłÙ’s rough out there and choppy and you see that with the pantyhose on my head. It has an effect on you. You think, that is really a wilderness out there.”

Though Nyad is proud of her sold-out show, she admits that it's only a first attempt at expressing her journey through art. She wants to continue to develop it, and maybe make a more immersive and “palpable” simulation for the audience, which would be around her 360 degrees. One day, she hopes, after “nailing” her show, she'll take it to Broadway.

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For 19-year-old college student , the light-bulb moment came during a phone call from his dad. It was March 14, 2004, four days after Ferguson’s arrest for allegedlyÌęÌęColumbia Tribune sports columnist Kent Heitholt. “I know you’re innocent, but while you’re in there, I can’t protect you,” his dad’s said. “You have toÌędo everything you canÌęto make yourself stronger, faster, and smarter to survive.”Ìę

Ferguson hung up the phone and headed back to his cell at the Boone County Jail, an austere brick building just 15 minutes north of where he graduated from high school in Columbia, Missouri, the year prior. Now he was suddenly living among men who were at least theoretically predatory in nature. He knew he didn’t belong there. He also knew his dad was right. He started with push-ups.

“You’re reminded every day of how weak you are as a human being and if anything did happen, help would be too late,” Ferguson says of life in prison. He would spend nearly a decade behind bars before his conviction was vacated, the legal term for voiding a previous judgment, due to recanted witness testimony, admissions of perjury, accusations of prosecutorial misconduct, and the absence of physical evidence matching Ferguson to the crime scene. “My goal became to get as big as I could as fast as I could to show people not to mess with me—I’m not a fighter, but I wanted to make sure I could survive a few rounds if I had to—it was either that or potentially ceasing to exist.”

So the scrawny college freshman became a student of health and fitness. Push-ups and sit-ups in his cell—sometimes as many as 1,000 a day—kicked off a calisthenics program he regularly performed. Like an anxious zoo animal, he paced the length of his 50-foot cage, doing 25 push-ups, walking back, doing another 25 push-ups, and so forth. He huffed out dips on a cinderblock half wall and pull-ups on the back of a staircase. He jury-rigged a hefty, plastic coffee jug by filling it with water in the showers and wrapping a laundry bag through the handles to do curls.

When he wasn’t working out, he was reading everything he could get his hands on—from books like Viktor Frankl’s , to self-help guides like by Eckhart Tolle, to any sports and fitness magazines available. “I had this intense fear of knowing I was very alone in there and that I was surrounded by a lot of bad people who didn’t care about anything,” says Ferguson. “I was the guy who was in incredibly good shape who read all day, so people thought, ‘He’s not normal; I don’t want to mess with him.’ It was important to my survival both mentally and physically.”

While his fitness quest began as an act of self-preservation, it evolved into a routine Ferguson hoped would prepare him for the outside world, even though he didn’t know when, or if, he’d be released. “I began asking myself, ‘Do I want to be the same person when all this started and view the time I spent in prison as lost years because I didn’t want to put in that daily effort?'” he says.

He was released on November 12, 2013, at the age of 29. Since then, he has earned his NASM personal trainer certification and thrown himself into Spartan races, competing at the in Vermont this past September. “If you’re going to run, run like you’re a kid in the woods,” he says of the freedom he feels running in wide-open spaces and over obstacle-laden terrain.Ìę

The fitness and life lessons Ferguson learned in prison are packed into his new book, , out from Penguin books on January 2.

Below, Ferguson shares his four most important fitness revelations:

Set Goals

“One reality in life is that we have to constantly fight for ourselves, which makes it easy to lose that inner peace and willpower,” Ferguson says. “That’s why you need to set goals for yourself and write them down in order to achieve that balance.”

Check Yourself

“You need to ask yourself, ‘How do I want to feel? How do I want to look?’ And then admit: ‘Here’s what I’ve been doing and it’s not enough,'” Ferguson says. “Living a healthy lifestyle is going to make you a better person in other parts of your life, so it’s all about understanding what you need to be happy.”

Be Consistent

Ferguson admits sticking to a regular diet and exercise routine was easier in prison than it is now that he’s free. “The reality is that there are a lot of distractions,” he says. He has ten years of catching up to do with family and friends, not to mention the fact that he spent a decade craving a good cheeseburger, which he can now have whenever he wants.Ìę

“This last year I’ve moved four times and have traveled a lot, but even though my workout program is less regular than it was in prison, every day I make sure to do things like push ups, lunges, and squats,” he says. “When I’m with family all day, I try to encourage everyone to at least get out for a walk to be active and enjoy nature together.”

Attitude Is Everything (Not Just an Inspirational Poster)

“I learned the importance of not being a victim to your circumstances,” he says. “We all have our own tragedies—a lot of people think my struggle has been worse, but life is full of terrible situations. You have to keep pushing and you’ll eventually come through the other end.”

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The doctor delivers your death sentence: You’re sick, you’re incurable, you’ve got just a few months to live. What’s your next move?

Head to the racetrack, naturally. That was Percy Cerutty’s attitude. Back in 1938, Percy was a binge-drinking, chain-smoking, chronically coughing, 43-year-old Australian postal worker who was bedridden with fainting spells, blinding headaches, and a mysterious pain arcing through his legs and back. Doctors were called to his bedside, where they found him smoking four packs a day despite wheezing with pneumonia. The only debate was how much time to give him.

Mr. Cerutty, they began, pronouncing it Ser-ootee.

±őłÙ’s SIR-itee, Perce spat. Like “sincerity,” without the “sin.”

Well, that was debatable. The doctors agreed on six months.

So Percy decided to spend it watching ponies. He hauled himself to the track and there, sitting in the sun and making his peace with the world, he saw something he’d never had the patience to notice before: all horses—fast or slow, colt or stallion, lean or lumpy—move the same way. They flywheel their legs, keeping their hooves low and landing always under their center of gravity. Weird. It should have been obvious, but Percy had never heard anyone mention it before. The particulars of the technique didn’t jolt Percy so much as the fact that there was a technique. This was muscular logic at work, a law of locomotion that defined the species. And what was true for horses, Percy figured, must also hold true for people. If you could zero in on the One True Way, then hallelujah; you’d be hailed as a god of fitness. Because there was no reason the human animal should be exempt from this law of nature, right?

Too bad he’d never find out, Percy mused. He’d probably be dead by Christmas. Even if he survived, who’d take health tips from a wreck like him? The irony was excruciating; with the clock running out on his miserable life, he’d suddenly found a reason to live. Percy shuffled down to the nearby beach and waded into the freezing sea. Maybe he could, sort of, shock his body back into functioning. Every day from then on, Percy returned for an icy wade. He quit smoking cold turkey, and cut out all fried and packaged foods. He began feeling a little better and resumed his visits to the track, this time early in the morning when the jockeys were working out the horses. He stripped off his shoes and shuffled along, barefoot and . The jockeys didn’t care; the sight of a bony old white-haired freak cantering along behind them was pretty hilarious.

But amazingly, it worked. Percy bounced back from the grave in spectacular fashion. With his bonus time, he began to jog, then run, then fly: by age 50, he could run a mile in 4:54, a marathon in 2:58, and 100 miles (yup, the dead man was now doing ultras) in 23:45. He created his own nature-based lifestyle philosophy and called himself a “Stotan”—half Spartan, half Stoic.

Which means—what, exactly?

“A is one who hardens, strengthens, toughens and beautifies the body by consistent habits and regular exercises,” Percy preached. “My philosophy is based on communication with nature, this communication takes place when the person sleeps under the stars at night, hears the birds in the morning, feels the sand between his toes, smells the flowers, hears the surf. Nature can bring the mind and body into perfect harmony and balance with the universe. This is one of the factors that allows the athlete to reach new levels of excellence.”

Say howdy, in other words, to the world’s first Paleo CrossFitting locavore, a role he fit right down to the box: In 1946, Percy bought himself a half-acre of no-man’s-land on Australia’s rugged southern coast and hauled a shipping crate down there to use as the bunkhouse for his “International Training Center.” He began crafting his own system of natural-movement exercises, with lots of outdoor weightlifting, sand dune sprints, and open-water swims. He was a purist about running form, but a total savage with the steel: the best way to hoist a weight, Percy felt, was whatever way you hoisted the weight. He would awkwardly wobble around under a heavy bar while straining through snatches and shoulder presses and “cheat curls,” but that, Percy insisted, was the whole damn point. Did you think Mother Nature let your ancestors be sniffy about the big-game carcasses they hauled home and the logs they had to lift? Weight lifting should be intense, so intense that five reps should blow you out. True fitness was all about unsteadiness, uncertainty, and fear; you fought for balance and recruited every single fiber in your body every single time.

“Civilization has ruined youth in the activities that his fathers and forefathers had that kept the upper body strong. No longer do they chop wood, have to do manual labor,” the Stotan Warrior groused—which is fine if your chief goal is to keep the damn kids off your lawn but not too tactful if you’re hoping teenage track stars will leave their suburban homes and come follow you into the barrens to live in a packing crate with no phone, no electricity, and no indoor plumbing.

But the young hopefuls came anyway—and were transformed.

“He was not speaking theory. This guy based what he had to say to you in the practice of his own life. He knew that it worked,” recalled Ìęin a later interviews with Australian media. Eliot joined Percy as a young man and became an Olympic champion and world-record holder who only lost one race—when he was 14 years old. “He started to study the great people of history and the challenges that they had. He started to read philosophy. He became incredibly well self-educated, and it was out of that that he grew into the person that he was.”

Each morning, Percy would rouse his Stotans and—since he always said, “You can only teach it if you can do it yourself”—he’d lead them into the dunes for a day like this:

7 a.m. — A five-mile run before breakfast in any direction our whim took us, followed by a dip in the ocean.
8 a.m. — Breakfast of uncooked rolled oats (without milk) sprinkled with wheat germ, walnuts, sultanas, raisins, and sliced banana. Perhaps a few potato chips to follow.
9 a.m. — Swimming and surfing or outdoor chores like chopping wood, painting and carpentry.
Noon — Training and lectures, followed by another swim.
2 p.m. — Lunch: fish and fresh fruit.
3 p.m. — Siesta
4 p.m. — Weight lifting
5 p.m. — Ten-mile run along dirt roads ending once more at the beach.
7 p.m. — Tea and a general discussion led by Percy
11p.m. — Lights out

The sweltering box on the beach became the white-hot center of an Australian distance dynasty. , another future superstar, came to train with Percy, as did the great , although both eventually got tired of Percy’s guff and moved on. For decades, Percy was an unstoppable tribal chief of natural movement. At the 1952 Olympics, he banged on ’s door and spent so much time praising the Czech champion for his own Stotan-like lifestyle that Zatopek finally left to go sleep under a tree. At the 1960 Games, Percy charged past soldiers guarding the track and shinnied over a spiked fence so he could wave Herb Elliott on to a new world record and a 1,500-meters gold medal. “All I saw was Percy’s towel swirling through the air,” Herb would later recall in a television interview, “and this V of gendarmes heading toward him.”

And then the lights went out. At age 80, Percy suddenly died of motor neurone disease without even being aware he was sick. His hut was boarded up, his athletes drifted away, and the mighty old Stotan was all but forgotten.

The reason I know so many details of Percy’s life? I’ve been gathering info on the fitness iconoclast for years (and shelling out painfully to Alibris for his out-of-print books with such perfectly-Percy titles as and ). That’s where I unearthed so many of these amazing anecdotes. I wanted to write about him in Born to Run and then again in my upcoming book, Natural Born Heroes, but both times he was a flavor too strong for the stew; Percy tales were so rich, they overpowered all other narratives.ÌęLuckily, the long backburnering turned out to be an advantage. Lately, there’s been a quiet but growing Percy revival and it’s turned up priceless material. Graeme Sims’ excellent biography, Why Die?, is now available in the U.S., and for the first time in 50 years, several of Percy’s own books are in re-issue. Australia media has rediscovered its forgotten national hero, airing fresh interviews with Percy’s surviving athletes and, best of all, unearthing fantastic archival footage of the Loinclothed Legend himself in action (for 10 seconds of pure joy, check out “” as Percy demonstrates his run-like-a-horse breathing exercise) Just this past July, a terrific Percy resource was launched by David Cavall on his “” blog.

But the greatest validation of all has come from current elites who are now looking back and wondering if they shouldn’t have been paying more attention to Percy all along.

“It’'s a shame, as most of his training ideas and advice have been lost or ignored since the time of his athletes,” writes on “,” his blog about vintage fitness wisdom. Magness is the author of and an elite-level coach who worked with the Nike guru Alberto Salazar. “The main reason his methods aren’t widely praised or known is that Cerutty was seen as eccentric or crazy by the public.”

Percy was really on to something, Magness is convinced. And now, bit by bit, others are starting to notice. Bet you have, too. Ever been to a CrossFit box? by “” innovator ? Churned through a we’re-all-in-this-together Tough Mudder, or seethed because 50-year-old pretty boy Laird Hamilton is still ? Tick any one of those categories and you have been face-to-face with the spirit of the Stotans. Percy’s creed came straight from the heroic ideal of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and it was all about three things: strength, skill, and awareness.

In practice, it looks like this:

Go Wild: The worst mistake you can make is believing you’re anything except one thing—an animal. You’re not a runner, or a lifter, or a yoga pretzel. You’re a beast, and beasts aren’t specialists. They don’t limit their movements. They don’t stay inside when it’s icky, or wait for race day. All-around athleticism is the key to perpetual improvement, Percy taught, and you achieve it through natural challenges. Wet roads, leafy trails, hot sun, foot-sucking sand—everything a gym was designed to help you avoid, basically, is exactly the fiber-firing wildness your body needs to develop agility, balance, core strength, deep lungs, and poise in the face of the unpredictable.

Get Raw: Percy was both ahead of his time and way behind it when he sneered at exercise machines. Machines were created for one purpose: to make work easier. They isolate, they cushion, they stabilize. Well, forget that noise. You want to recruit, toughen, and adapt. Down in Percy’s box, the Stotans relied on gear that any Roman centurion would recognize: chin-up bars, climbing ropes, parallel bars, vaulting horses, Roman rings, and trampoline. “He emphasized doing everything the natural way,” Magness writes. “Primitive and uninhibited.”

Train Your Gut, Then Trust It: “Nothing must be dictated, fixed, or regimented,” Percy instructed. “When an athlete goes out to train, his body should dictate his needs and he runs according to its capacities and demands.” That sounds a little chamomile for a guy so leathery that he once ordered his runners to keep going after one of them passed out in the sand. (“Leave him be,” Percy commanded. “He’s not dead.”) But it’s true; ultimately, you’re wasting your time trying to persuade people to do want they don’t want to. The greatest thing you can do for anyone, athlete or not, is light a fire within and get out of the way.

“He would just inspire you and then leave you pretty much to your own devices,” Herb Elliot explained. “He’d check on the sort of intelligence of your training, to make sure that it made sense, but he just seemed to know that you were committed or you weren’t committed. And if you were committed, he walked away from it at that point.”

To the Stotan chief goes the final word:

“We train as we feel, but rarely feel lazy.”

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If you think heroism is an accident, you don’t know the Clown.

That was one of George Psychoundakis’ code names. Another was the Changeling, after those magical trolls who swap bodies. Yet another was “The Cretan Runner.” It's this last name I kept coming across a decade ago while researching —a mysterious Greek shepherd-turned-ultrarunner who become one of Word War II's unsung heroes. Years later, I finally had the chance to examine Psychoundakis' story in detail; I was so fascinated by what I found that I eventually travelled to Crete, researching his exploits for my next book project, .

When World War II broke out, the Clown was a young and semi-goofy shepherd on the Greek island of Crete. Nobody thought of him as tough or especially brave; he was actually small and kind of skinny. If he was known for anything, it was for writing cornball poems, like his “Ode to an Inkspot on a Schoolteacher’s Skirt.” As with everyone else on Crete, he’d been lucky; the horrors sweeping across Europe hadn’t touched the island, leaving the Clown free to mosey along each day behind his flock. Until, early one morning, the sky went dark and an odd rumble cut through the coppery clong of the sheep bells. The Clown looked up and stared in awe as an airborne armada blocked out the sun. Hitler had decided he needed Crete and needed it bad; it was the perfect transit spot for his do-or-die assault on the Soviet Union, so he’d unleashed his elite airborne unit to conquer the island and crush even the thought of resistance.

And so, standing alone in a meadow, the Clown faced a choice: He could keep his mouth shut and put up his hands, or—with no warning, no training, and no weapons—go to war against the deadliest fighting force in human history. No one else in Europe had any trouble making that decision; after Hitler blasted through nine armies in a matter of weeks, not one country offered any spontaneous civilian resistance. None, that is, until Crete. While the Germans were still dropping from the clouds, Cretans were pouring out of their homes with axes and knives and ancient hunting rifles, banding with a ragtag crew of Allied soldiers to repel the invaders with such determination that they nearly delivered the FĂŒhrer his first defeat. Once the battle was lost, the Clown took off for the wilderness and became a runner for the resistance, carrying messages some 50 miles back and forth between mountain hideouts.

Wait—was the Clown actually running on these missions? Yup. “I felt as if I were flying,” he’d say. “Running all the way from the top of the White Mountains to Mount Ida. So light and easy—just like drinking a cup of coffee.” A British undercover operative described what it was like to have the Clown appear at a hideout late at night after one of his 50-mile scampers. “The job of a war-time runner in the Resistance Movement was the most exhausting and one of the most consistently dangerous,” he explained. The Clown would deliver his message, throw back a shot of moonshine—“A little petrol for the engine!”—and set right back off for his return journey. “We could see his small figure a mile away, moving across the next moonlit fold of the foothills of the White Mountains, bound for another fifty-mile journey,” the Brit recalled.

How is that even possible? How do you hammer out serial ultramarathons on a starvation diet, night after night, while dodging German patrols? For four years? The Clown wasn’t the only one, either. The island was crawling with these superathletes, I discovered—Cretans and Brits alike, all of them bounding across the peaks and bedeviling the Germans with ultra-endurance derring-do. So what did they know that the rest of us don’t? How could average people suddenly become unbreakable and thrive under challenges that would humble an Olympic athlete?

The answer was right there on Crete. For centuries, the island had been the quiet custodian of high-performance secrets of the ancient Greeks.

The Greeks didn’t just sit around hoping for heroes to appear—they built their own. They believed heroism was an art, not an accident, so they developed skills that were passed from parent to child and teacher to student. The art of the hero wasn’t about being brave; it was about being so competent that bravery wasn’t an issue. They learned to unleash the tremendous sources of strength, endurance, and agility that many people don’t realize they already have. Simply to survive, early humans had to be able to flow across the landscape: bending their bodies over and around any obstacle in their path, leaping without fear, and landing with precision. Heroes learned to tap into remarkable stores of reserved energy, all of it in their bodies—and yours—and waiting to be uncorked.

For thousands of years, the Greeks perfected the three pillars of the heroic arts—paidea (skill), arete (strength), and xenia (compassion)—and then they were gone. Luckily, their techniques still exist, scattered in bits and pieces around the world, some hidden right in front of us. Take performance fuel: As a professional ballerina, was taught by her canny Greek grandmother that the best energy food in the world wasn’t just free; it was growing right under her feet. Likewise for : Brazilian jiu-jitsu fighters would travel to his small Philly gym for training advice because Maxwell was a student of sacred Hindu wrestlers and Golden Age boxers. “You never go wrong if you rely on the mighty men of yore,” Maxwell believes.

That’s the mission of Natural Born Heroes: to track down these custodians of the lost arts and revive the skills that can turn even a Clown into a hero.

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