The Red Bulletin November 2019 (UK)

Mike McCastle
If there’s one thing
that winds up Mike McCastle,
it’s when people say stuff
like, “You’re insane, dude,”
or, “That shit’s crazy!”
don’t see it that
way,” the 32-year-old
strongman says calmly.
He’s responding to the
question of whether
it was crazy to try to
“Ijust
break the record for the
most pull-ups in 24 hours, even though
it put him in hospital. Or whether it was
crazy that he set out to pull a two-tonne
truck for 35km through Death Valley, or
to repeatedly climb a 7m rope until he’d
ascended the height of Mount Everest.
He definitely didn’t think it was crazy
when a skinny-ass stranger named Colin
O’Brady asked for training to trek solo
across Antarctica, dragging a sled stocked
with more than twice his weight in food
and gear. Never mind that this task took
the life of British explorer Henry Worsley
in 2016 and was long thought impossible.
From the get-go, McCastle knew each
of these endeavours would bring extreme
suffering. They’re part of a mission the
1.9m tall, 102kg Las Vegas resident calls
the Twelve Labors Project – a homage to
the 12 Labours of Hercules, the ultimate
hero of Greco-Roman mythology. The
question is: why in the world would
anyone put themselves through all this?
“I’d heard stories about people doing
great things when another person’s life is
on the line,” McCastle says. “I wanted to
test how much I’d be willing to suffer
doing things for others.”
Sacrifice is ingrained in US military
service, and McCastle went into the
Navy after high school, spending the
next 11 years as an air traffic controller.
He also served as a mental and physical
conditioning trainer in a programme
created by the Navy SEALs after 9/11 to
help address a vexing problem: as many
as 80 per cent of trainees drop out before
earning their SEAL Trident. The physical
training is notoriously tough, but these
recruits are the fittest of the fit and they
really want to become SEALs, so why
were so many dropping out?
The reason is biological. In moments
of fear and stress, the area of the brain
called the amygdala takes over. Part of the
function of the amygdala – dubbed the
‘lizard brain’ due to its primitive nature – is
to identify threatening situations and get
you out. Physiologically, your body reacts
similarly whether you’re facing down a
tiger or engaging in high-intensity training:
your heart rate spikes, you get tunnel
vision and hearing loss; your conscious
brain, laser-focused on becoming a Navy
SEAL, shuts down. The lizard brain
doesn’t care about goals, it’s a survival
response. “It happens in a fraction of
a second and gives you no room for
conscious thought,” McCastle says.
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