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Biography

Adam Walker was born and grew up in Nottingham, UK with his parents Peter and Margaret Walker and older brother Mark. Adam and Mark enjoyed their sports and they followed their fathers footsteps playing Rugby and Cricket. In his teens Adam had to retire from these sports due to knee and back injuries. This encouraged him to swim and he competed at County level 50m Backstroke.

When Adam left University, he again followed the family trade into sales. Adam worked his way up the ladder, working for major blue chip companies. By his mid-twenties and fuelled by a competitive nature, Adam excelled in meeting targets and held well paid National Sales positions. But something was missing from his life.

In 2006 he boarded a plane for a family holiday to Australia and he watched an in-flight movie called "On A Clear Day", about a man who swims the English Channel. This movie inspired Adam to do just that! He wasted no time in training and set the date to swim the Channel. Over the following months Adam put himself through a rigorous training plan, his first experience of open water taught him his biggest lesson. After 45 minutes in 9 degrees Celsius he became severely hypothermic, but rather than putting Adam off he took that as a lesson learned and waited a few months until the water temperature was up and acclimatised his body properly.

In 2008 Adam swam the English Channel, it wasn't without hardships, but he completed his challenge and immediately wanted something else to aim for. He decided to swim the Gibraltar Straits next, this would be warmer and it was a shorter distance. Although if he could build up his speed he had the opportunity to swim both ways! Adam became the first British person to achieve a 2 Way Gibraltar Strait crossing.

Just as he completed Gibraltar the Oceans 7 Challenge was born, and Adam had already swam two of the channels on the list, so he decided that this was to be his ultimate challenge. Adam had ruptured a bicep tendon swimming the English Channel, which required 3 operations in total in an attempt to re-attach the fibers. Unfortunately the damage was done and he was advised not to swim anymore. This took Adam on a path of discovery to find a better way of swimming, which would enable him to carry on and became known as the Ocean Walker Technique.

Adam took a total of 7 years to swim all the 7 channels of the Oceans 7, he was stung by a Portuguese Man O War in Hawaii, followed by Sharks, swam with Dolphins and tested to the max from huge swells to strong currents. He did all of this holding a high pressure full time National Salesman position, and had to keep his mind on track when dealing with the general ups and downs of life and the loss of his beloved dog Boo. The dedication that drove Adam into his swims changed his life in so many ways having funded his swims out of his own pocket, with the occasional sponsorship.

Adam is no longer a salesman. He runs his own business Ocean Walker Ltd with his girlfriend and Co-Founder of Ocean Walker Gemma Clarke, coaching swimmers to help improve their stroke technique and giving them solid advice based on his own experiences. Adam is also an incredible Motivational Speaker, talking about his amazing story and overcoming the obstacles that life throws at you.
He is proud to be the Ambassador for the RLSS and for Zoggs UK, and has written a book about his incredible journey from kettle and toaster salesman to swimming the toughest ocean swims in the world called Man Vs. Ocean. His book, launched in January 2016 in hardback, paperback and e-book, was best selling sports autobiography on Amazon and was later released in other countries.

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