Ray Goggins: It's not about being big or strong, it's about your mindset

Ultimate Hell Week's chief instructor says, resilience, self-belief and commitment are the key traits needed to get through TV's toughest reality show 

Ray Goggins of Ultimate Hell Week: "funny, egoless, incredibly interesting"

For the uninitiated, RTÉ's Ultimate Hell Week is when 28 extremely fit civilians spend a week undergoing a version of Special Forces military training where they are smashed to pieces physically, psychologically, and emotionally, so that they coalesce as a team while accessing an inner core of resilience they didn’t know they had. There’s a lot of crying, shaking, puking, and a 90% failure rate.

You can see why. Contestants are subjected to extreme sleep deprivation, hunger, cold water immersion, relentless physical exertion, and psychological pressure by Ray Goggins and his team. “Cross-fit wankers!” yells one of the trainers as he orders the new recruits to do press-ups on gravel as he kicks mud in their faces minutes after they arrive. Humiliation is used to further destabilise their sense of self, some of it funny: “You’re 48 and you’re wearing skinny jeans?”