Ryan Stramrood is a powerful storyteller whose journey from “average Joe” to one of South Africa’s most extreme adventurers illuminates the hidden power of mindset. Based in Cape Town, Ryan runs a successful sales business, is a devoted single father, and juggles the demands of everyday life—all while pursuing ultra-extreme open water and ice swimming challenges in some of the planet’s harshest environments. ... Read more
Ryan Stramrood is an exception keynote presenter. Having set his ‘classroom’ as the world’s toughest and most deadly swimming challenges, he has become a master of the performance mindset and has set the bar of human endurance a notch higher in the most hostile of environments. He has also held 3 Guinness World Records to date.
Through his challenges, Ryan has developed a deep understanding of how the mind and body perform under extreme stress—and how all people can unlock extraordinary resilience. His keynotes go far beyond inspiration: combining gripping storytelling, powerful visuals, and tangible tools for mastering mindset, resilience, accountability, and performance under pressure.
Ryan’s signature themes include Push Past Impossible™, Beyond the Summit, Failing Forward, and Sink or Swim, which he tailors for organisations and teams seeking transformation and peak performance—whether in leadership, culture, or personal growth. Grounded, relatable, and often humorous, his sessions bridge the gap between extreme adventure and everyday life, showing how small shifts in mindset can lead to monumental results.
What makes Ryan distinctive is his authenticity: he’s not a full-time athlete, but a businessman and father who chose to embrace discomfort, face fear, and push beyond perceived limits. His message is clear—greatness isn’t reserved for the chosen few; it’s within reach of anyone willing to unlock a new way of thinking.
“Our Performance is equal to our Potential minus the Interference we bottle up (from Gallway): Every single one of us is impacted by a level of mental interference which detracts greatly from our potential and lowers our ability to perform at peak. It collects over the years and we have no idea it is even happening. Let’s explore!”.
Ryan will deliver unique value with practical take-outs and lasting impact.
This is Ryan’s signature keynote session, globally popular, highly inspirational and guaranteed to leave a profound impact on all. It is designed to deliver a unique and eye-opening level of awareness as to how the human mind works, particularly when the going gets tough – through transformation, adversity and change!...
This popular and impactful keynote session, speaks loudly to ones’ discipline, to the dangers of complacency (especially after success), to positive habits and addresses many pertinent challenges faced by every businesses and team member. It stands alone powerfully, but also acts as a brilliant follow on from the PushPastImpossible™ session.
“Failure is key to Growth”. This inspirational and enlightening session highlights the trap so many fall into believing the common narrative that failure is positive. It is NOT. Only failure with introspection, accountability, acknowledgement and vulnerability attached to it can be considered open the door to GROWTH. And only the...
This session addresses the all too often found reality where teams stall in performance when a business is undergoing transformation and change. It showcases the necessity of individual performance, accountability, patience and pro-activity during the toughest times of corporate change. Messages and learnings all beautifully and impactfully delivered in context...
A brilliant session showcasing key barriers facing every business and the dangers of getting caught up in the continuous loop of training, strategizing and planning. “The time comes when we just have to Jump In!” The parallels in the training regime of an extreme athlete prior to declaring oneself ready...
Ryan is a very popular guest speaker around World Oceans Day, World Earth Day and similar with a beautiful presentation of unique lessons learnt from the ocean. Combined with his own experience and insights around ocean pollution and harm.
With an endless wealth of ocean adventures and barriers pushed, Ryan will also create sessions from scratch to be 100% on point with unique business briefs.