Blueprint

Build a Bulletproof Body for Extreme Adventure in 365 Days

By: Ross Edgley

Narrated by: Luke Francis

From world-renowned adventurer and bestselling author of The Art of Resilience and The World’s Fittest Book, comes the ultimate blueprint to building a bulletproof body.

‘He’s an animal’ CHRIS HEMSWORTH

‘The inner workings of a sports science genius’ EDDIE HALL, former World’s Strongest Man

Ross Edgley has spent decades perfecting the principles and practice of extreme fitness to achieve the impossible. Following a career-threatening injury in 2018, Ross was forced to reassess his training and take the next steps in a lifelong journey of redefining what the human body is capable of. In Blueprint , Ross shares the cutting-edge training program that empowered him to rebuild his body from surgery and a doctor’s gloomy prognosis in just 365 days to complete a world record swim.

Whether it’s climbing a mountain, swimming the English Channel, or a gruelling triathlon, Blueprint will teach you the tried and tested principles of sports science that have been used for decades by Olympians, explorers and adventurers at the limits of peak physical endurance.

Blueprint is Ross Edgley's complete training journey that shows you how to:
• Divide a 365-day training plan into seasons (winter, spring, summer and autumn)
• Rebuild your body using evolutionary medicine
• Build a superhuman work capacity with forgotten Spartan-style training
• Gain bulletproof resilience through Soviet-inspired strength training
• Boost your aerobic base with Olympian techniques.

Blueprint applies the exact same principles that enabled Ross to complete extreme feats such as the World's Longest Sea Swim, World's Longest Rope Climb, World's Heaviest Triathlon and World's Strongest Marathon.

Ross is your elite guide to achieving the impossible in the gym and beyond. Featuring almost 30 tailored workouts for different phases of training, packed with digestible sports science to help you optimise your workouts, and interspersed with Ross' own daring adventures across the world, Blueprint is the ultimate guide to optimising your time and training to make the impossible possible.

Critic reviews

‘You understand how he built a level of endurance that verges on superhuman’ EDDIE HALL, The World’s Strongest Man in 2017

Another fantastic book!

Ross always delivers! From his funny and motivating stories, to his grit a determination! I hope he writes more books in the future.

Book Review: Blueprint: Build a Bulletproof Body for Extreme Adventure in 365 Days by Ross Edgley

Having previously read Ross Edgley’s The Art of Resilience, I came to Blueprint: Build a Bulletproof Body for Extreme Adventure in 365 Days already knowing that Edgley possesses an unusual combination of physical capability, intellectual curiosity, humility, and humor. What I did not anticipate was how much I would simply enjoy spending another book in his company.

Ross has a way of discussing extraordinary physical accomplishments without making himself insufferably extraordinary in the process. That is rarer than it should be. His sense of humor and overwhelmingly positive outlook on life have become two of the qualities I appreciate most about his writing. He takes training seriously without taking himself too seriously, and there is considerable wisdom in that distinction.

Blueprint is built around an ambitious premise: systematically developing a body capable of meeting extreme physical challenges over the course of 365 days. But beneath the exercises, physiology, training principles, and adventures lies something more important… the deliberate construction of a more capable human being.

That idea resonates deeply with me.

There is something admirable about refusing to accept unnecessary physical decline or self-imposed limitation. The human body possesses remarkable adaptive capacity, but adaptation requires a reason. Comfort rarely provides one. Difficulty does. We discover capacities within ourselves precisely because circumstances… or deliberate challenges… require those capacities to emerge.

Marcus Aurelius repeatedly returned to the principle that the obstacle confronting us can become the material through which virtue is developed. Edgley seems to arrive at a similar conclusion through sweat, cold water, heavy weights, exhaustion, experimentation, and occasionally wonderfully questionable adventures. The laboratory is different, but the lesson is surprisingly similar: we become stronger by intelligently engaging difficulty rather than organizing our lives around avoiding it.

What makes Blueprint particularly effective is that Edgley does not rely solely upon motivational rhetoric. He respects evidence. As in The Art of Resilience, I appreciated his willingness to combine scientific research with practical experience. He draws upon physiology, sports science, training methodology, and the accumulated knowledge of accomplished people, but then subjects those ideas to the unforgiving laboratory of actual experience.

That matters.

Theory that never encounters reality can become ideology. Experience without disciplined thought can become recklessness. Edgley generally succeeds because he allows the two to correct one another.

I also continue to appreciate his humility toward the people around him. Great accomplishments are easily transformed into monuments to the ego. Edgley seems remarkably resistant to that temptation. He recognizes coaches, researchers, athletes, friends, and fellow adventurers who contribute to his development. His accomplishments may belong to him, but he understands that the knowledge enabling those accomplishments was accumulated through generations of people asking similar questions about human performance.

There is something deeply civilized about acknowledging your debts.

The book also reinforced something I noticed while reading The Art of Resilience: Edgley appears genuinely interested in the world. He approaches unfamiliar people, cultures, methods, and ideas with curiosity rather than contempt. That openness makes him an enjoyable traveling companion through the pages of his books. His optimism does not strike me as naïveté so much as a deliberate disposition toward life: there is another challenge ahead, another lesson available, another person worth meeting, and probably another ridiculous situation worth laughing about afterward.

I admire that.

There is a great deal worth learning from Ross Edgley.

Perhaps the greatest lesson of Blueprint is contained in its title. A strong, resilient, useful body is not merely discovered. It is built. It is constructed through thousands of seemingly insignificant decisions repeated over time. One workout will not transform you. One difficult morning will not define you. One act of discipline will not make you disciplined. Character and capability emerge through repetition.

In that sense, the 365-day framework becomes a metaphor for something larger than fitness.

We are always building something.

Every habit lays another brick. Every excuse does too. Every time we voluntarily confront difficulty, we cast another piece of the foundation. Eventually, the structure becomes visible… and we discover that what we thought was merely training the body was also training the person inhabiting it.

I thoroughly enjoyed Blueprint. Ross Edgley has become an author whose combination of science, experience, humor, humility, and almost infectious enthusiasm for life I genuinely appreciate. He reminds us that serious pursuits need not produce grim people. There is room in the disciplined life for laughter, curiosity, friendship, adventure, and gratitude.

I highly recommend Blueprint to anyone interested in fitness, human performance, resilience, adventure, or simply discovering what might still be possible within themselves.

The body has limits, certainly. Wisdom requires that we respect them.

But perhaps we should be considerably more cautious about deciding where those limits are before we have actually gone looking for them.

Great Story with Practical and Tested Advice

Great story lots of information and knowledge science etc. I wish it would have been narrated by Ross himself. I’ve seen some of his interviews and feats and he has a way of delivering a story which would have helped elevate this even more. I am excited to look at some of the documents, restructure my training and put this information to use!

Love this guy!

Every time I listen to one of Ross’s stories it propels me to get outside and adventure!

Inspiring, entertaining & fun

Really like the story, the structure, the examples. Due audio nature, complex to follow the tables & graphs, but if you review the PDF in advance, is easier