His agility also makes him perfect dancer material. Add jazz ballet to his achievements' portfolio.
"I did it for two or three years inspired by Natalie Wood in West Side Story."
He's also an actor of substance: lying on his office carpet demonstrating how he undertook some of the SAS's toughest recruitment challenges and a Himalayan helicopter body recovery operation are Oscar-winning performances.
How, then, did his high-octane lifestyle begin?
His childhood sport was running. At 18 he decided to run from Auckland to Wellington.
"I only got as far as Huntly, I found running down State Highway 1 a pretty lonely business."
That was before he enrolled in Auckland University's law faculty.
"I had no idea what I wanted to do ... closed my eyes and pointed to the [course] list. It took me seven years to graduate, it was the Woodstock era, I had very poor study habits, drank a lot of beer."
He also developed a love of mountaineering, his skills self-taught.
"In those days you couldn't join an alpine club until you proved you could climb."
To prove he could he took on Mt Aspiring in a blizzard and tackled Mt Cook five times before conquering the country's highest peak in 1986.
Everest had always been in his sights. The opportunity presented itself while he was in Malaysia umpiring an army jungle exercise.
"I heard about this British Army expedition [to Everest] and thought 'bugger it, I'll gate crash'."
He did, his arrival at base camp coinciding with tragedy; an officer lost his life stepping into a crevasse.
That's where his demo of the recovery operation came in.
Without a permit Chris couldn't tag along to the world's summit.
"I was there, I wanted to climb something." That "something" was Imja Tse (Island Peak) "20,500 feet [6189 metres] to Everest's 29,002 feet [8848 metres]."
"My Sherpa suddenly said he was ill, I guess it was because we didn't have a permit for that one either."
'Oh', we say, 'how sad you missed out on the mountain'. The look we receive would melt ice shelves.
"What do you think?" he demands. Well, yes, this is Chris McGuire and of course he climbed it ... alone, stranded without a snow jacket when a blizzard blew in.
Long before the Himalayas he'd become an army man, a Compulsory Military Training conscript.
As a territorial in the artillery the SAS appealed. "I wanted to see if I was good enough; 20 started, three finished."
It would be stating the obvious to say 1st Lieutenant McGuire was one of the select three.
The course was far tougher than even one of his prime fitness level anticipated. "They provoke and torment you all the way."
His first character test casualty was his 70s moustache. "They shaved half off, they want you to lose your rag."
Late on day one the 57kg McGuire was challenged to hoist a 73-plus kg colleague on to his shoulders and carry him to a hill top.
"We were loaded with packs and rifles; I tried to make a human bridge out of my back, as engineering geometry it failed." He did pass the test by substituting his unencumbered "chief tormentor".
After four sleepless days of "unrelenting torture" and virtually no food "we were walked past the mess and told to "smell our meal". Chris gained entree into the army's premier combat unit.
The missions he undertook remain classified.
As a freefall parachutist he's notched up 16 jumps with the SAS, 15 "for sport".
After two SAS years in the Territorials the army offered him a Singapore posting as a lawyer "prosecuting and defending courts martial, legal and matrimonial and work with the Brits, Aussies and Kiwis".
One matrimonial matter culminated with a Hong Kong Chinese woman pulling scissors on her estranged British husband in Chris' office. "Fortunately I was young, nimble, able to disarm her."
Before his Everest experience Chris ventured up the Mekong River, penetrating deep into the heart of the infamous Golden Triangle.
"The timing was lousy, just after Saigon fell to the Viet Cong, people didn't want to know a white face."
On the river's Laotian side he found himself eyeballed "by a Viet Cong guy cradling an AK47," unnerving even for this soldier.
"The way the boatmen got me out of there was an object lesson in the kindness of humankind."
Post army, Chris' fitness levels remained paramount. He's completed two Ironman New Zealand challenges in Taupo and two at Kona, Hawaii, placing fifth in his age group in the 2010 World Championships.
"That [Ironman] eclipses much of the other stuff because it's such a multi-layered thing, challenging this wonderful piece of equipment, the body."
