Guinness Record Holder Ryan Stramrood Has Redefined Human Endurance and Resilience
By Chris Tompkins – The Motivational Speakers Agency
Ryan Stramrood is a three-time Guinness World Record holder, ultra-extreme open-water and ice swimmer, and one of South Africa’s most inspirational endurance athletes. Renowned for testing the very limits of human capability, he has undertaken over 120 crossings between Robben Island and the South African mainland, completed the 33-kilometer False Bay swim, and conquered the first official “Ice Mile” south of the Antarctic Circle at –1 °C.
As a founding member of the International Ice Swimming Association and author of Push Past Impossible, Ryan has become an international authority on resilience, courage, and mental resilience. His story embodies what it means to push through discomfort and reframe fear as opportunity – lessons that have inspired audiences across the globe.
In this exclusive interview with The High Performance Speakers Agency, Ryan shares the mindset behind his record-breaking swims, revealing how businesses can build resilience, embrace change, and turn challenges into catalysts for success.
Q: What key lessons can businesses take from your world record-breaking swims?
Ryan Stramrood: There are so many lessons that businesses learn from my swims. I know sometimes it’s a stretch of the imagination to think, “What can I learn from an ultra-extreme open water and ice swimmer?” But it’s all about mindset.
We all know that everybody functions on a mind. We’re all steered by this very powerful tool of ours. Through the stories I tell and the adventures I’ve had in some of the most hostile places, I’ve pushed barriers—first my own, and then eventually the barriers of humankind.
Over the years, I’ve learned lessons about how our minds are controlling us, how we make decisions, and why we make decisions—particularly in hostile or uncomfortable situations. I’ve become a bit of a master of understanding that, and I relay that to all businesses.
You can draw the parallels yourselves in those meetings very easily, like: “Hang on. Maybe that’s why I was thinking like that, or why I’m turning away from a difficult decision, or why I’ve gone in a certain direction.” It’s all very eye-opening.
Q: How do limiting beliefs affect our ability to reach our full potential?
Ryan: We don’t even know that we can challenge ourselves sometimes. This mind of ours is the gateway to absolute greatness. It is super powerful—and no one ever argues when I say that, because it really is.
But where I do get a bit of pushback, and wide eyes I suppose, is when I say that this gateway to greatness—this mind of ours—is our biggest limitation. It’s designed to keep us safe. It’s designed to keep you right inside that comfort zone so that we don’t fail, don’t face humiliation, consequence, or embarrassment.
That is absolutely normal and absolutely human. And even when we don’t know this is happening subconsciously, we also don’t know that we can challenge certain decisions in difficult situations.
That is where I really excel—putting that across to people. You’ll be sitting there in your office or in the audience and gobsmacked, thinking, “Hang on, I now understand why I’m making the decisions I’m making.” That really comes across very loudly.
Q: Why do you believe that failure, particularly in leadership, can be such a powerful driver of growth?
Ryan: Failure is a topic that so many speakers talk about, and I do talk about it a lot. In my challenges across my career, I’ve had many failures and I have learnt the lessons that come with them.
But more importantly, I think everyone knows the narrative: every successful entrepreneur has had as many—if not more—failures than successes. And it’s absolutely true.
However, there are two kinds of failure: the good kind and the bad kind. The bad kind is very simple—it’s the failure that you don’t learn from. If you don’t go introspective, if you don’t acknowledge your role in it.
As humans, we become excuse magnets when we fail. We suck in excuses—why it wasn’t our fault, why we can keep our chin up, avoid the humiliation. And that’s the bad kind of failure because it’s just going to repeat itself. We sweep it neatly under the rug and continue.
In my case, I failed in a very big challenge. It put me in hospital and nearly killed me. I came out beating my chest and set a bigger goal. I was embarrassed by it. I did the training, got the team together. It was a harder challenge than the one I failed, and it took me three years before I actually set off.
I couldn’t understand why—everything was in place, except my head. Eventually, through a fascinating story that I tell, I clicked. I realised I had not processed that failure, which was trying to swim from Ireland to Scotland on a bad day. I was advised not to go, but I felt a little too bulletproof. I learnt some valuable lessons.
The day I acknowledged that—stopped blaming the weather, everyone else, and said, “What could I have done differently?”—that’s when it changed. Within weeks, I was standing on the shore of a much more daunting body of water, ready to give it a go.
Q: You’ve already touched on this, but why is adaptability such an essential quality in both sport and business?
Ryan: In business, everyone listening to this knows that curveballs and change are always going to happen.
I work with a formula in my life—it’s the base of my keynotes—from Gallwey: your performance is directly equal to your potential minus interference. I spend a lot of time unpacking that interference.
The more interference we can cut out, the closer we get to realising our full potential—which directly relates to our performance. The thing synonymous with interference is change. Change is the one constant in all our lives.
It impacts alignment—alignment as a team, alignment to thinking. Some things are easy to realign with when we’re experienced, but the toughest part of alignment is mindset.
Suddenly, we’re in a new team, there’s new organisational structure or leadership. All these things disrupt us—and sometimes we don’t even realise it. We’re in a team with highly skilled, capable individuals, but until you understand that mindset alignment and how change has challenged you, performance will suffer.
It’s a bit of a convoluted answer, which I explain better in my keynotes. But yes—we unpack interference, and we reduce it.
This exclusive interview with Ryan Stramrood was conducted by Chris Tompkins of The Motivational Speakers Agency.
