545: The Journey Through Pain, Purpose, and Resilience. With Mason Wright.

>Join Jocko Underground Full Episodes< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Mason Wright ("Buff Runner") went from childhood trauma, loss, and depression to completing a 1,000-mile run around a high school track. In this conversation, he shares how sports saved him, how he survived some of the darkest moments of his life, and why suffering can become a tool for growth. A powerful discussion on resilience, discipline, and refusing to quit. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 545 with Kerry Hilton and me, Jocko. Good evening Kerry. Good evening. At just day one, there were heat and stomach problems. Day three brought foot pain intense enough that he said he cried. And by day four, he had logged 150 miles on very little sleep. Later, he wrote about blisters, nerve pain, and the strange mental grind of repeating the same oval thousands of times. Still, Mason Wright kept connecting the suffering back to the reason he started. In one post, he wrote that single parents don't get to quit just because things are hard. Later, as the finish got closer, he said the run had become about resilience,

• 0:45Jocko Willink?

  pain, and discovering what he could handle. After finishing, Wright wrote in his final journey journal entry that he was still trying to process what he had done. Quote, mentally, I don't know how I am okay. I don't know how I kept moving. I don't know how I did this. And that's what makes me proud. End quote. And that is in a little excerpt from an article from Runners World and is an article about Mason Wright, who operates under the Instagram call sign Buff Runner, which is a bold claim, by the way. And this article

• 1:26Jocko Willink?

  is about the 1,000 mile run that Mason just completed in April around a, around a high school track. And Mason's done a bunch of other things in his life and he's having an impact beyond just running. And he's here tonight to share with us some of his experiences and lessons learned along the way. Buff Runner, that is a bold statement, right? Oh, yeah. What, what, what makes you classified as buff? What body weight do you have to be to be buff? Or is it just a, is it a body fat percentage? It's a mindset. Okay. It's a mindset. Okay.

• 1:59Jocko Willink?

  Mason, thanks for joining us. Um, let's, let's, we're going to get into all the kind of things you've been through in your life and let's just start at the beginning. So you're born where? Vegas?

• 2:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was born in Vegas.

• 2:12Jocko Willink?

  And then what was going on with your, with your entry into the world? What was happening? What, 1997?

• 2:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, 1997.

• 2:19Jocko Willink?

  So what's going on?

• 2:20Speaker 01

  Born in Las Vegas, uh, lived in, uh, Green Valley Henderson area. This is just like, what is it? North or whatever direction? I don't know what direction it is, but.

• 2:30Jocko Willink?

  We say outside.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's outside of Vegas. Whatever direction. Um, but it was, you know, it was a nicer, nicer area. You know, my, my dad, he owned a mobile wash company for a really long time and he did all the dealerships and, I mean, everything from all, all through California and Nevada and Arizona. So it was a massive operation. So we'd, we lived very well. Um, and that's, again, that's just like where my life started was in Vegas.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  And it, you know, it was normal as far as I know. I, you know, when I was four is when we left. And so there's, you know, there's very little memory. The memory that is there is broken. Um, and most of it's just from the traumatic things that happened. A lot of domestic violence, drugs.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  A lot of stuff like that that we were, that I was experiencing. So that's a lot of what my memories are. So it's a little broken.

• 3:24Jocko Willink?

  So your dad, at this point, he's got a successful, like, it sounds like a highly successful business. And yet there's drugs and domestic violence in the home.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, he basically took drugs to work more. That was like his, his addiction was work. And he used another addiction to feed the other addiction. And so he basically would, you know, whether it was crack or cocaine or whatever, he would use that and then go to the next, like just to drive from state to state, managing all of this, just so, and he would go days without sleeping, just doing drugs to stay awake. So the drugs in the home was, again, more of like his.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  Like there weren't like drugs, just like out and about. It wasn't a drug house. Again, we lived in a very nice area. That, you know, that stuff wasn't going on directly in the house, but I mean, it was, he was using it every day. And then of course, domestic violence, uh, which inevitably led to the, you know, moving.

• 4:25Jocko Willink?

  And, and what you, so your early memories of that, like, cause I, I try and think back of what I remember when I was a kid and you, I mean, I don't, quite honestly, I don't remember much, but you remember like some highlight of something that happened and it seemed like, it seems like domestic violence would be the kind of thing you would remember.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:43Jocko Willink?

  Is that accurate?

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's, uh, it's funny. I'm, I'm actually writing a book right now and part of it, you know, I'm obviously telling my story and I was actually writing about it today and I was writing about this. There's one specific memory that I have, you know, I remember a lot of shouting, a lot of screaming, a lot of things like that, but there's one memory I have where I, you know, our couch, who knows the layout of the actual house, you know, I was four years old, but I remember shouting and screaming in the kitchen, throwing things and I just stuck my head like in between the couch cushions. Just so I didn't like have to hear it. It's a weird, again, it's broken. A lot of these memories, I was four, you know, so it's how true is it? But I do remember, you know, I stuck my head in the couch cushions to like, just stop hearing it essentially.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  Um, so that's like, kind of what a lot of my memories are, is that type of stuff, right? Like trying to block out the screaming or the yelling or whatever it might, might've been.

• 5:37Jocko Willink?

  And so then this, the marriage falls apart, I'm assuming.

• 5:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. So there was, there's a lot and I, I tend to not share this part of the story publicly just because it's not my story to tell. I have my side of the story is the things that I experienced, but what happened that led my dad to go to prison is not my story to tell. So I just, for my mom's privacy, for my dad's privacy, uh, I leave that. I just don't share that part. But my dad ended up getting arrested and that's another memory I have is I remember him in handcuffs, like saying goodbye and then getting put in the back of the car. Again, a very broken memory. I don't actually know what he said. I don't know what I said to him, if we hugged, whatever. But him getting put into the back of a police car.

• 6:18Jocko Willink?

  And this is, it's wild that this is all happening while he has this successful business.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:23Jocko Willink?

  A nice home and this is all going on.

• 6:28Jocko Willink?

  In the, in the subsurface area and then it comes to the front because your dad's getting rolled up by the cops. And so then what happens?

• 6:37Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, then we move, um, we move back home or back home. We moved to Utah, which ended up, that's, that's home. And I was born in Vegas, but Utah's home. Um, so we ended up moving, uh, we ended up moving and kind of bounced around from with family members. My mom just got a job that she could get. She worked at a, uh, it was a Delta, but it wasn't for Delta. It was like their company they subcontract out for all their mechanic work. I don't know if that's how they still do it, but this is getting, this is 20 plus years ago. Um, but she ended up working as a receptionist for them and we bounced around families, houses, just trying to figure it out and then lived with my grandparents. Uh,

• 7:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's another, it's almost, you know, what is it? The higher you are, the harder you fall. So for your mom to go from like a pretty stable income and all this stuff to all of a sudden she's just like,

• 7:27Speaker 01

  Well, it was, I mean, it was, it was luxury. I mean, we lived the Vegas luxury, like the leopard print stuff all over the house, like very much nineties Vegas, like you, that was the house. The house was nineties Vegas. We had camel heads, like taxidermied camel heads on the wall.

• 7:41Jocko Willink?

  I've never actually even heard of that, but

• 7:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was great. Yeah, it was weird nineties Vegas style. We, we all know it. You can see it, like minus the gold. We didn't have the gold all over, but like, you know, so she lived, you know, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, all the things to nothing.

• 7:55Jocko Willink?

  And now she's working for a subcontractor for Delta at some menial task job.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, just like basically just trying to keep food on the table.

• 8:06Jocko Willink?

  Okay. And how long does that last for?

• 8:08Speaker 01

  Um, yeah. So we lived with my grandparents until I was seven.

• 8:12Jocko Willink?

  And this is her parents?

• 8:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is, yeah, this is her. Yeah. So my dad's, my dad's, uh, grandma Jeannie, she died when I was two, three. No, I was three. I, I have one memory of her and I don't even know if it's a real memory. So, um, yeah, she lung cancer. Um, he doesn't know his actual dad. He knows his stepdad. Uh, but yeah, we, I mean, no relationship with them. Um, so yeah, no, this is my, uh, my mom's, uh, parents.

• 8:40Jocko Willink?

  And they're up there in Utah?

• 8:41Speaker 01

  Yep. Just up in Bountiful, just north of Salt Lake City.

• 8:44Jocko Willink?

  And then what's what goes on your mom? How long does your mom stick in this situation? Cause I'm sure she's not super stoked to be living back at home.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  No, it was also like, what do you do?

• 8:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  I mean, what do you do? We lived there for it was it was safe. It was nice. I mean, my, my, that side of it, like, we don't come from money. My grandparents, so we, I grew up Mormon. My family has very deep ties in the Mormon church. My grandpa was in the seventy. I don't know how familiar you are with the Mormon church, but that's like an archbishop of the Mormon church. Essentially is like the best way to put it. So he's really high up, but it's still, it's still a service job. So there's not that we, again, there's not a lot of money, but it was safe. It was modest, uh, food from like my grandparents helping with that. I mean, my mom could barely afford anything. We had, I mean, we had, we had nothing. The state took a lot of what we had uh, in Vegas, cause there was a lot of,

• 9:39Speaker 01

  there's a, there's a lot of drug, there's, again, the, the prison side of things. It was more than just domestic violence. So the state took a lot of stuff, leaving my mom, like she didn't get money from the house, like nothing. All this stuff got seized, assets taken. So literally we had, we had nothing but the, her uh, two thousand two Corolla. And that was the, that was the only, that's all, basically we, you know, we got in that and came home or came to Utah. So, yeah, we're, uh, yeah, we're at my grandparents till I was seven. Uh, and she started dating my stepdad Chad. Um, and I mean, we loved him like out the gate. Uh, we loved him, obviously, cause he bought us a GameCube and you know, those types of things. I remember, I remember it's such a-

• 10:24Jocko Willink?

  Love as a low bar is at this juncture.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  At that, at that, at that age, at seven years old or six years old, I remember I came downstairs in my grandparents' house. And my mom and Chad had, I said, been dating about a year at that point. And he's just sitting on the floor, playing Super Mario Sunshine on the GameCube. And I'm like, oh, no way, like freaking out. You gotta say, it was like the coolest thing ever. Um, and I'd like just recently met him too, cause like my mom was just very private with her dating life and, and he was the coolest dude. Um, so yeah, they dated for a couple of years. Obviously there's still like a divorce that's ongoing because that doesn't just, you get, just cause my dad got arrested, doesn't mean the divorce has gone through. So, and it's a lot harder once he's in prison. Because there's other layers you have to go through. So it took a while for the divorce to go through.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  Just because of legal layers, it wasn't really anything.

• 11:14Jocko Willink?

  How long did he get sent to prison for?

• 11:16Speaker 01

  So he got sentenced for, he got sentenced for eight years, but served 4.9 basically. It was like four years and 10 months or something like that is what he served.

• 11:27Jocko Willink?

  And what did your stepdad do?

• 11:29Speaker 01

  My stepdad was a periodontist.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  So he, that's a gum, gum doctor. Yeah. So he, so that you have, yeah, I saw the face.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  But yeah, so he, so you have oral surgeons and you have periodontists. Oral surgeons are the bones. Periodontists are the tissues. So it's like an orthopedic surgeon versus a general surgeon, like bones versus tissues. It's the same, same thing, just the dentistry world. So he was a periodontist. And again, it was, it's just funny how it works. Like again, back, you know, so they get married just before I turned eight. And again, right back to that like lavish lifestyle. I mean, he's a periodontist. They make very, very good money. You know, we bought a house in Farmington and it was, it was, a life was wonderful again, you know, it was anything.

• 12:16Jocko Willink?

  Did you have brothers or sisters?

• 12:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I have, I have 10 siblings, but only one full sibling. So my dad, or sorry, I have nine siblings. There's 10 kids. Nine siblings, but only one full sibling, my little brother Graham.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  But yeah, so he was, he was with me this whole time, but he, when he was six months old is when my dad went to prison. So all of, he has zero recollection of anything, any trauma that he has from it is all just that subconscious trauma of like being held while domestic violence is going on, that type of stuff. But yeah, so he, yeah, he was there the whole time. But yeah, I have a bunch of half siblings that I actually have good relationships with.

• 12:53Jocko Willink?

  And these were from your stepdad?

• 12:55Speaker 01

  No, these are from my dad.

• 12:57Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  So my dad has, has, there are six baby mamas in the family. It's a, it's, it's, that's a whole other, that's a whole other story. But yeah, so I have, I have nine other siblings, eight that are alive, one passed away.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  But yeah, so they're, but again, all of them are halves except Graham.

• 13:17Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so now your, your mom gets married to your stepdad.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, Chad.

• 13:22Jocko Willink?

  And then you guys are now back into like a pretty nice lifestyle with the periodontist? Am I saying that right?

• 13:29Speaker 01

  Periodontist.

• 13:30Jocko Willink?

  Periodontist.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  Sounds like a dinosaur.

• 13:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it does.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, it, it does.

• 13:35Jocko Willink?

  So things are kind of, things are kind of-

• 13:36Speaker 01

  Periosaurus.

• 13:39Jocko Willink?

  Things are on the up and up. And, and so how old are you now? You're like-

• 13:43Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, so they got married ripe. It was, they got married in May. I turned eight in June. So a month later, I, you know, I turned eight. Yeah, and I mean, it was, it was, it was wonderful. I mean, it was like the perfect neighborhood for a kid. Typical white picket fence. All the homes are beautiful, kids running around. It's safe. It's in a, like tucked away in a corner in Farmington. Now that whole area is developed. It's pretty wild. But yeah, it was a brand new development in the area. It was one of the first developments that was built over there. And it was, it was great. And life was, life was fantastic over there.

• 14:19Jocko Willink?

  You're using past tense was. So what happened?

• 14:22Speaker 01

  So when I was 10, uh, he tragically passed away. It happened out of nowhere. So he had a heart condition. And he, he had to take his medication every day to keep his heart functioning. And they, basically he forgot that he took his meds. And it, it's not like, I mean, people forget to take their meds. He forgot that he had taken his meds. And so he took another dose, which with this medication, it's like, it could happen, it could not, but it ended up causing cardiac arrest. Um, and he died leaving work. He was the last person out of the office, but didn't make it out of the office.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  So it was one of those things that it was like, if it was 10 minutes earlier, he'd probably still be around. And it gets, it's pretty crazy. But yeah, he, uh, you know, he passed away, uh, when I was 10. Which was obviously really rough, but-

• 15:21Jocko Willink?

  And and so then what happens? Do you? Did he have insurance? Did you anything like that?

• 15:26Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 15:26Jocko Willink?

  Shaking your head? No.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  No, no. So it this. Yeah, it. I mean, the story like it was a crazy morning finding out like it's this is one of the most vivid memories of in my lifetime is I remember waking up. I didn't see him the night before. We High School Musical two came out that night and I remember my grandma, so his, his mom and his sister in law came over to the house at like nine PM, you know, and every Friday we'd go to Blockbuster. We'd rent a movie and we would get pizza from Pizza Hut because it was like the old fashioned. We're talking Pizza Hut.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  And we do this every Friday. It was a thing. Stuff crust pizza. You know, we'd get a movie from Blockbuster. And it was movie night on Fridays and he obviously didn't come home. And so we're just kind of like waiting. And so then my grandma and my aunt come over and I'm, I'm young enough still that I'm like, I kind of was like, what the hell? Like this is weird, but also young enough that it didn't really register. It was just like, oh, hey, grandma's coming over. I don't actually remember what my, how it was pitched to us. But how it was pitched to us is we get to stay up and watch the premiere of High School Musical at midnight. So we, you know, we stay up. Obviously Chad doesn't come home.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  Wake up the next morning and I'm like, where's Chad? Like, like where's dad? Like I want to, I want to see him. So I go into my mom's room and he's not in bed and I'm like, the hell? I go look out the window. I'm like, oh, maybe he left for work or like had to go to the office or something. So I go look out the window and his Lexus is sitting out front. I'm like,

• 17:08Speaker 01

  okay, maybe he's in his office. So I go downstairs and my uncle is just, this is my mom's brother's just sitting on the couch. And I'm like, it is seven AM. Why the hell are you sitting on my couch right now? Like this is, you know, and we don't like, we don't have the best relationship with him. So it was, I was really confused. And he was just like, why don't you just go upstairs and come back down in a little bit? And I don't know how much longer it was, but we went downstairs and my mom told us that he died. I remember that's, that's the word that she used. She's like, Chad died last night.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  It was, I mean, you can't.

• 17:45Jocko Willink?

  How old was he?

• 17:47Speaker 01

  He's forty two.

• 17:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, sudden cardiac arrest.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  So it was, it was instant for him, which is, which is a good, it's a comforting, you know, feeling to know that it wasn't suffering, but.

• 17:59Jocko Willink?

  So then, so then doesn't have insurance.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  No insurance.

• 18:03Jocko Willink?

  Or at least not enough to cover.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  No insurance, no will, and because it was a medication issue, the state of Utah basically deemed it a suicide. And so he, yeah, and in the state of Utah, just because of the, you know, there's a lot of influence with religion in the state of Utah. And so suicide, if you don't have a will,

• 18:28Speaker 01

  it basically the state gets everything. And so he would, my mom, again, everything got seized.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  And so it's one of those things again, where it gets back to zero or back literally, actually we're back to negative. Because my mom got all of his dental school debt because that school loans unforgiven. So everything gets taken like, oh, by the way, here is eighty thousand dollars. You have no degree. Good luck paying this. You have two hundred and fifty dollars a month of medical school loans that you're dental school.

• 19:00Jocko Willink?

  Forty years or whatever.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  So it was, I mean, like it was, we're, we're back to zero again. It was a, it was, I mean, I, this, this is where like my memories and understand, like when he passed, it completely changed my brain chemistry. It's, my wife's a therapist and so it's been cool to like talk about these things over the years and talk about just the mental side, like the, how trauma actually impacts the brain. And it's, it's, I mean, it completely rewired my brain. I went from, I mean, I was, you know, I was in the, I was in a smart kid program at school. I was reading at a college level in second grade and, or a fourth grade, sorry.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  And I mean, I mean, it was, it was just a star student. Like I was, I was very smart, athletic. Like it was, everything was. It was like a star, star student kind of thing. And I went to barely being able to read at a kindergarten level. I couldn't do basic math. I basically went from the special class to the special class. Okay, it flipped.

• 20:04Jocko Willink?

  The opposite ends of the spectrum.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, uh, it was, uh, it was really, uh, it was something that now that I'm an adult and I can think back on it. It really is, it's such an interesting thing to think about of how my brain chemistry legitimately just flipped over on itself.

• 20:20Jocko Willink?

  And is that what, like, wha- wha- what did your wife say? What is that?

• 20:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's a trauma response. Um, you know, whether you know from combat experience, when you experience these extreme traumas, seeing, seeing a death or whatever, whatever the trauma might be, it literally, you, you emit different hormones. Hormones change in the mind. The neuroplasticity that our minds have also rewires to essentially protect itself. And that protection can go positive or negative, but when you're young, you don't, a lot of the times there isn't that understanding of like the resiliency factor and these types of things. Naturally, humans are resilient, but it's still, you're, you're not developed enough. And so it just basically flips your brain over, um, when you're young.

• 21:07Jocko Willink?

  So it's almost, I mean, the, the way it sounds like some sort of protective measure that your brain is taking that it's not gonna become too attached to anything. It's not gonna overthink the thing. It's like, hey, just dumb this thing down right now.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:19Jocko Willink?

  We just gotta move forward and be able to do basic survival stuff.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 21:23Jocko Willink?

  You know, eat, sleep and whatever. And therefore we're gonna kind of tone down this other part of the brain that would be thinking about all this stuff.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:29Jocko Willink?

  Is that, am I even close?

• 21:31Speaker 01

  No, no, no, that, that's spot on. I think a, a good, like, a very acute version of this is I've seen in like buds or anything like this with like, hey, what's two plus two? What's your name? Or like if they're rescuing someone, those basic questions, you, you gotta just make sure their mind is there. And that's a very acute, like that thing, that fixes itself, but that can happen on a large scale with a severe trauma where you literally lose the ability to compute. Simple, simple things.

• 22:01Jocko Willink?

  So then what happened? So now your mom, she got to go back to work? Like, what's the deal?

• 22:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, yeah, so she wasn't working. She would basically just help at the, you know, the typical tax loophole, you know, working at the office, but she actually did do a lot of paperwork at the office.

• 22:19Speaker 01

  And yeah, she had to just find another job. She worked a couple of jobs at one point, but where she ended up, where she still is actually to this day, was at the hospital in Salt Lake, working as an MA at an orthopedic clinic. It was my uncle, his brother, so this is, this is like, like her brother-in-law.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  His brother is a spine surgeon and he was like, yeah, I need an MIA if she can come work for me. And she went and worked at this orthopedic clinic and now she's jumped around to a couple of different doctors over the years. And she's still there, but that's where she kind of ended up. And we got really, this is where, you know, I tell this story, but it's, you know, there's always someone who has it. There's always someone who has it, whereas I had it in, like in reality, I, it was not as bad as it could have been. We, we were able to go live in Bountiful, Utah after, instead of having to go to a women's shelter in Vegas. We were able to have support from family, which a lot of people don't have. We were, you know, we had,

• 23:24Speaker 01

  we had things that a lot of people don't get. And so it was able to put us in positions that have, you know, allowed me to be where I'm at and made it easier to be where I am. And, you know, this is a blessing, a blessing, a curse and a blessing in disguise all at the same time. My aunt, she had very severe rheumatoid arthritis. It's my mom's older sister and it ended up causing her kidneys to fail. And she passed. So she passed in May and then Chad passed in August. And my grandparents had to take care of her most of her life because like her hands were stuck in this position. She couldn't really take care of herself. And so basically she was taken care of, but she also was, she wasn't, like she wasn't mentally handicapped at all. So it.

• 24:09Speaker 01

  She could live a life. She just needed physical help. And so she had her own place. My grandparents owned it, but she had her own place. She'd just passed. And now there's this vacant condo. And so it was this blessing that there's now, instead of having to go to like low income housing, you know, out in in West Valley or whatever, out in Utah, we're now in a very affluent area, living in a, in a nice condo. It's a small condo. Uh, my brother and I had literally shared a bed until I was 16 years old. My mom couldn't afford to get bunk beds. We just used the bed that we had. Used the same mattress for 15 years. Like, it, you know, it was, we just, we did what we could. And,

• 24:50Speaker 01

  but that's, thankfully, we were able to end up there, um, and live there. My mom, actually, funny enough, so when my grandparents passed, uh, a couple of years ago, they, they owned the condo. And so the family was trying to figure out what to do. And my mom and her new husband actually bought the place. So they still live there. But yeah, that's where I ended up and stayed there in Centerville, just kitty cornered about a four.

• 25:14Jocko Willink?

  So did you start to get refocused over time, like in school and whatnot? Did you go from, you know, did you start to recover from the kind of mental lapse that you had?

• 25:23Speaker 01

  I really, the mental side of it? Yes and no. Um, it's, it's, it's, I always struggled with school. Um, and I didn't really get my, that confidence back. I think my mind came back. Guy, I mean, I mean, I barely, I, I mean, I, I never went to class in high school, but it was still graduated with like a three, three or three, four, whatever. Just like showing up and taking the tests and then not going to school for two weeks again, kind of thing. But,

• 25:53Speaker 01

  so like, I was still, like, I got that back as far as like, I was still, you know, smart enough to never go to class and still, you know, score high. Um, but I didn't get that confidence back until college. Uh, when I started doing really well and, you know,

• 26:07Jocko Willink?

  I mean, across the board confidence, are you talking about just like intellectual confidence?

• 26:10Speaker 01

  Intellectual confidence. Um, my, I, there, I've always kind of had a spark. There's, there's always been a little bit of a fire there. Um, even though, you know, obviously there was all the, all the things that, you know, we dealt with. Like, there was always that spark. I remember in eighth grade, obviously, I'm, I had behaviors. I had behavior issues. Obviously, I, you know, like domestic violence, drugs, death, a lot of things going on trauma wise. And so there's, I obviously had behaviors. You know, I was, I was loud, I was outspoken, I, what kid wouldn't be, you know? And so teachers obviously wasn't their favorite. But I had an eighth grade English teacher

• 26:54Speaker 01

  who in front of the whole class told me that I would be a failure and that I would amount to nothing. Her words, almost word for word, is what she said to me in front of everyone. This is, I mean, this is a full class with all my friends. And I just said, watch me. And then I left the class. And then I got suspended for leaving class. Or I got in school suspension for walking out of class in the middle of class. And this is the eighth grade? This is an eighth grade. So like, there's that fire, that, that, that fire's been there. That, you know, Goggins calls it the if factor, like that. I don't know if that's the if factor, but there's always been that little bit of fire that's been there that's, you know, fueled whatever's going on. But yeah, there's that intellectual confidence that I, I kind of, I really struggled with for a long, long time.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  And then what about sports? Because you were an athlete. Yeah, sports kept me from doing drugs and drinking and all the stuff. Sports are, and my girlfriend also kept me away from that stuff, too. She's like, if you ever do that, I'm gonna break up with you. I'm like, okay. She's not my wife, by the way. We've been dating since ninth grade. But, uh, yeah, so, but sports really kept me out of trouble because I loved football. Football was my entire life. I dedicated every waking moment of my life to that sport. And so if I'm doing drugs, now I never went to class, but I made sure I had good enough brains to keep playing football. And like, if I was drinking, doing drugs, if I was getting in trouble, like there, this is, that was my only shot out.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  Sports was my only opportunity to escape. I mean, you hear it all the time with NFL athletes. It was like, football was what got me out. Football's what saved me. And that's kind of how it was. Obviously not as extreme as some of these other situations, but it was a similar thing where it's like, football is what kept me from digging myself into a hole. And so I, you know, and I, I mean, I did pretty much every sport, but football, football, track and wrestling were my core three. I quit wrestling early on in high school just because of didn't get along with the coach. So I ended up not continuing past 10th grade, but uh yeah, sports kept me very much kept me out of trouble. And this is a reason I'm in the position I'm in now, honestly. It's taught me a lot.

• 29:09Jocko Willink?

  So you you were into football. So does this mean you were into football enough to be like you're lifting? You're trying to get strong. You're working on your speed. You're you're in the whole nine yards.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, I'd wake up at 4am in high school and go to the gym before school. And then I would go to football class and lift agility film, whatever it was that we were doing that day. And then if it's off season, I go, I'd go to the field and I would do drills. Or if it was in season, we'd have practice. If it was a winter, I would go to the gym again. And that I I did my senior year was very regimented like that. Um, and that kind of started in my junior year. My sophomore year is just figuring things out. Kind of thought I was hot shit, starting varsity as a sophomore and thought I could just, you know, do whatever. And then I quickly learned, oh yeah, that's not going to fly if I want to play college football. But yeah, I mean, I I I trained my ass off in high school.

• 29:58Jocko Willink?

  And your plan was to play college football?

• 30:00Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. Yeah. And I had the scholarships. I had all the scholarships.

• 30:04Jocko Willink?

  D1, D2, D3?

• 30:05Speaker 01

  All of it.

• 30:06Jocko Willink?

  Really?

• 30:06Speaker 01

  Yep. Um, University of Utah, all Utah schools. Um, and then a lot of like the D1 double A.

• 30:13Jocko Willink?

  What position did you play?

• 30:14Speaker 01

  Defensive end. I used to weigh 285 pounds.

• 30:16Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  I was a big boy. I I can show you really quick. I was a big, big boy.

• 30:21Jocko Willink?

  What what was your, what were your numbers like?

• 30:23Speaker 01

  I ran a 474. Um, yeah, I ran a 474. Um, I had a 38 inch vertical.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  No, yeah, I was a big boy. And then all my lifts, I mean, I had 450 pound bench. I could squat over 600. I power clean 315, like I was.

• 30:39Jocko Willink?

  Beast mode.

• 30:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I was a, I was a unit. So this, this is me at the All-Star game. Beast. Yeah, no, I was a big boy. I was a big boy. Um, but yeah, and it and I just, yeah, again, I had it all lined up. Defensive MVP, the All-Star game, like it was, I was, I was good. I was good. I was all state, the whole thing. And I ended up just being like, I don't want to play. I was going to go to Weber State. I was going to do track and football there. This is pre NIL. You want to get paid? You got to do two sports. Um, this is way before NIL. And yeah, and then I was just, I just, I quit day one because I was like, I don't want to, I'm not with my boys. I'm not, you know, I don't want to.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  And I also, and also school, like I can't dedicate my life to football and to school and like,

• 31:32Speaker 01

  I was good at football, but I also, I also understood the reality of sure, maybe my, you know, I could bench two, 25, 32 times at 17 years old. These are combine level stats, but I also understand there's a difference between combat combines stats and being good enough to play in the NFL. And I knew that I, I knew that I could, if I worked my ass off, I could probably get there, but did I want that? Like, was that the career trajectory I wanted to take and potentially damage my body, my mind? Or do we focus on school? And I, you know, I had conversations with a couple of people and I didn't have a lot of male role models growing up.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  Social media wasn't really around to find those people in that way. And also just like, there weren't a lot of men in my life. And so a lot of this was kind of figuring it out on my own, but the few people that were around, I have the conversations with them of like, what would you do? I don't know what to do. Um, and there was one in particular, it was like, he played, he played a one year of college football and was like, you either pick football or you pick school, but you can't pick both. And that was kind of the decision maker of like, I'm going to school or I'm going to focus on school.

• 32:43Jocko Willink?

  Was there something that you were super interested in?

• 32:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I actually got accepted to dental school in the end. So that was the, I was going to go to dental school. I was following in Chad's footsteps. We were going to go to VCU, which is where he went. You know, he was, you know, he was top of his class, periodontist at VCU. So it was, I'd like wanted, I want to be a periodontist. I want like the whole, like I wanted to, I wanted to follow those footsteps and I was, I was all in. I mean, I literally went the whole way until having to move and was like, I don't know if I actually want to do this. Because I was kind of doing it. There was a part of me that was doing it because I felt like I needed to follow in his footsteps, but also the financial piece where I, we never really had much.

• 33:28Speaker 01

  You know, my one point, my mom, we were on food stamps, like there's, we never really had a lot. And so in my mind, financial freedom was the only, the only path. Like I have to do it because of the money. And I realized like you can do anything you want. You have to, sometimes you're going to have to work a little bit harder. Like sure, I've had to work way harder now than I would have had to as a periodontist, because I would have just, I would have gotten my salary. It would have been easy to start a practice. Like there are those things that it's just, it's your doctor. It's, it's a little bit easier. You had to obviously go to dental medical school, but that, that business side of things, it becomes a little bit easier, but.

• 34:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's a definite well-worn path.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 34:12Jocko Willink?

  That's not an easy path, but it's well-worn and you can see where it's going to go. And if you stay on the path, you'll end up in this certain place.

• 34:17Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 34:17Jocko Willink?

  Whereas when you're, when you're doing something in the open ocean, you know, in the open ocean of the world, like there's a lot of things and there's no well-worn path and you can make a wrong turn and it can take you a while to recover from. So

• 34:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:29Jocko Willink?

  There's definitely some risk there.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. So that's, that's, but I just decided I'm like, nutrition is, I love nutrition. It's, I'm, I built my meal plan for my football team in high school. Like I, I loved it, but I always saw it as a hobby. I saw it as something that was like fun. And I was like, why can't I have fun for work? Why does that have to be so serious? And so I was like, I want to be a dietitian. I want to, I want to be a dietitian. And so I had to go back to school to just take a couple of prereqs. I had all the science and everything. I mean, you'd biochemistry, organic chemistry. I mean, All of the, the whole list of stuff. So I had, I think we had the whole science background and I just had to go take a couple of nutrition classes so that I could basically apply to these programs and went and became a dietitian.

• 35:14Jocko Willink?

  And then what's going on with your physical activities at this time? Cause you can't just be that addicted to athletics and then just say, okay, I'm out.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, you know, we go back, I stopped playing football and I,

• 35:31Speaker 01

  I didn't know what to do. I was just lifting heavy still in the gym. I naturally lost a little bit of weight because you're, when you're that heavy, you have to eat to stay that heavy. And so like, I naturally lost like 15, 20 pounds. I weighed like about two sixty five ish. Um, and was just like in the gym lifting. No real direction, not sure what to do with my life, not sure where to go. And my wife or my girlfriend at the time, now my wife, her family was running a Spartan race. Uh, it was the Las Vegas, uh, it was a, I think they do a sprint and super, but it was a sprint, which is a five K with 20 obstacles. And I was just like, all right, what the hell? Like, why not? Like, what, what do I gotta lose? You know?

• 36:13Speaker 01

  Um, and, but I was like, if I'm going to do this, and whenever I've done anything in my life, it's like you've, if I'm going to do it, you gotta do it. Can't just show up, go through the motions. You gotta do it. So I, I started training. Um, my first run was on a treadmill. I, for some reason cranked the, the mile, the miles per hour up, thinking I was fine and passed out after half a mile. Thinking that I was just like, could keep going. Um, that was my first run ever. That was nine years ago. Half a mile. And then like a week later, I went and ran one mile up the switchback. Uh, that was just near where my mom's house is and took me 40 minutes. Cause it, I just like couldn't, I'm just

• 36:55Speaker 01

  like trying to get up this hill and, uh, but I, I just kept at it. I just kept at it. I knew I needed to lose weight. So I focused a little bit more on what I was eating.

• 37:05Speaker 01

  And dove into the whole Spartan world, uh, and really, really.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  I fell in love with it. So how many, how many like races were you doing a year or whatever? Yeah. So I was, I mean, I'm still in college and still a poor college student. So I was doing, I was just trying to get the three, the trifecta.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  And so that's, that's what I was doing is basically I was doing three a year. So that's a thing for them? Yeah. You get a trifecta. If you do the sprint, super and beast in one calendar year. How big is the beast? It's a half marathon and with 30 obstacles. And then the super is a 10K with 25 obstacles. If you do all three in a year, you get the trifecta. You get a trifecta. It's like the medal, you have a medal and then there's like a, like a, not a quarter. It's a third of a medal. And then at the end of the year, all three of them connect into one bigger medal. And so, yes, I got really into those. And it helped, I mean, running, running, there's running and my wife saved my life. Cause I mean, at this time I have no,

• 38:09Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't know what I'm doing with my life. And the one thing I dedicated my whole life to is now gone. And I thought I had no purpose in life. And yeah, I mean, there was a point in time that, you know, I had the plan. I was staring at the gun at the top of the closet. I was ready to go. But you know, it was my wife, I was just thinking about her, again, my girlfriend at the time. And I was like, I can't leave her. That's not fair to her. And then right after that, she invited me to run this race and it, it completely changed the trajectory. Damn dude, wait, that's like a little bit of a excursion you just took from, hey, we were working out, doing Spartan races. I quit football.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. This goes back to like right before Spartan races, but yeah, no, I mean, it was, it was, I didn't, I didn't know what I was doing with my life. It was, it, I think it's something that a lot of young men go through. You, you have this transition in life where you go from high school to having to figure out how to be a man. And if you don't have those figures in your life, if you, you know, if you're too caught up in social media, if, whatever it might be, if you're not exercising, if you're not doing these important key things and you don't have these key things around you. And we see it, it's one of the most unfortunate statistics. And what is it? It's like a couple hundred men a day. And it's a very, it's a very real problem that we have. And it's, you know, it's something that

• 39:31Speaker 01

  I'm weirdly enough grateful that I actually experienced that and went through that because it's, I think it's, it's helped me through a lot of these big things that I've now done in my life. How long were you in that mindset for? Quite a while. Like weeks, like months? It was a lot. It was months, like almost a year. And this is while you're going to college? Yeah. So it was, I can tell you, my breaking point was, I had a professor at Weber State. And I was in anatomy. I was in the class with my buddy. It was just me and my buddy living in this shit apartment. I mean, we were paying, we were paying 600 bucks a month for rent total. It was, I mean, someone got murdered, like right out our front door. I mean, it was,

• 40:11Speaker 01

  it was a hellhole. And it was just like, like the walls were peeling, horrible, horrible place. So like, living in that environment was terrible. But we had this, and we had this anatomy teacher that it was just really unfortunate timing for us. He was a medical school anatomy teacher at Yale. Wife gets her dream job, so he moves out here. Couldn't get a job at the U because the U has like a world renowned anatomist who ended up taking anatomy from later. And so he's just like, well, I don't like, where can I get a job? Ends up at Weber State, wife cheats on him, leaves him, and he's now stuck in Ogden, Utah, after having his dream job, hated life, and just took it out on us.

• 40:49Speaker 01

  And so it was a, it just, we were doing like 60 hours of homework a week on top of like everything else we had to do. And it just, I mean, it broke, it broke us. And then on top of the fact of just like the, you know, again, it's all of the stuff of trying to find purpose in life, not feeling like I'm good enough. I also now, you know, I'm dealing with the anxiety and depression of all the traumas that I've experienced that I've never processed. All coming up at this time. And so it was this, it was the perfect storm that led me to this very, very dark place where every day I thought about it. Every day I thought about ending my life. And then there was the one night, thankfully has only been one time, that I had a plan.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  The gun was loaded, but I, I like, you know, I, I think it was that thought of like leaving my wife that, or again, my girlfriend behind that stopped it, but I don't. It's hard to know what it really was. I don't know if it was my own fire that stopped it. I don't know if it was a mix of them, but something stopped it and I'm very, very obviously grateful that I'm still here.

• 41:55Jocko Willink?

  So do you, the, you know, the next day, do you then wake up in the morning and you're like, that's behind me? Did you get that kind of a eureka moment?

• 42:05Speaker 01

  Yes and no. The, the depression, it even now, you know, I'm, I'm the happiest I've ever been in my life. I'm so at peace with myself. I've, I'm in the best place mentally I've ever been. But those thoughts, those depressive thoughts are something that kind of stay with you for, forever in a way. Uh, they don't, they don't take hold. They don't own you anymore, but it's one of those things. It's just kind of, it, it kind of is almost always there. Um, and so the next morning it was, a good way to put it is kind of like,

• 42:42Speaker 01

  it's kind of like after you finish a race or you do something really hard and you just wake up exhausted. That's kind of what it was where I just woke up and I was just like, oh my God. And like, I'm just mentally a blur. I'm just really tired. Uh, it's exhausted. That's kind of how it felt the next morning. Um, but it's, it, it's, you know, we were talking about it when we were doing some interviews earlier. The mindset of, uh, like never make a decision in the dark is what I say. And this darkness is not just physically in the dark, like in a, in a hundred miler. It's the middle of the night. It sucks. It's really easy to want to quit when it's pitch black, freezing cold and you're in pain. But don't make that decision in the dark, but then you also have the mental darkness.

• 43:26Speaker 01

  Don't make those decisions when it's dark and because you're going to wake up the next morning and you're going to have that clarity again. It might not be perfectly crystal clear, but you're going to feel better. There is always light at the end. The sun always comes back up. And so that's kind of, you know, again, it was a weird, it was a weird day. Um, but it was, it was almost like it's another day. Like let's just focus on today now. And that's kind of where my mind started to go was like, okay, let's just focus on getting through today. And then we'll deal with tomorrow.

• 43:59Jocko Willink?

  Man, so did you start to kind of see a path for yourself? Now you're starting the Spartan races, you get the, the dietitian goal. Is that, do you kind of start to see like, oh, I can be a productive human being with value to the world?

• 44:15Speaker 01

  Yes, it was running. It was running where it was like, it started to give me that, that purpose again. That feeling of like, I can be someone, I can, like, I can build a life. I can be what I want to be. I can do the things that I want to do. And the understanding that it's, you're gonna have to work for it. And that was something that I think I was struggling with at the time was, I went from not having a lot to having even less, living in this POS apartment. And it just felt like this was gonna be my life forever. I'm, this is, this is my life forever. I'm just always gonna be poor. I'm always gonna have nothing. This is my life and I didn't want to live that life.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  But then it's, you know, now I'm starting to see, hey, I'm actually pretty damn good at this Spartan thing. Well, let's see where this goes. Like, we'll, we'll, we'll at least see where this goes and then we can, you know, we can figure it out later. And that's kind of the mindset that you, you almost have to have when you're navigating those suicidal thoughts is, like, well, let's just, let's, let's figure this thing out. And then, you know, we'll, we'll revisit this later. And then all of a sudden it's like, oh, well, there's also this, oh, I'm pretty good at this. And then it kind of starts, and this is how, that's at least how it worked for me. Where now Spartan, it's like, oh, I'm good at this. Let's see where this goes. And it, I mean, it, little did my wife knew that she'd opened Pandora's box when she invited me to run that race. But it really was like, it, it's what set that trajectory of understanding like,

• 45:40Speaker 01

  I can do difficult things, not just running, but in life. It gets, you know, things are gonna get hard, but you can, you can do hard things and you're good at it.

• 45:53Jocko Willink?

  Did you share any of these thoughts with your, with your girlfriend at the time?

• 45:56Speaker 01

  No, no one actually knew that I was dealing with this, um, which she's gotta talk about it. It's just something like it's, no one's gonna judge you. It's, it's the hardest part of it is saying something because you don't, I get it. I've been there. It, you, you feel weak. Like I wanted to say something, but I felt like I'd be weak. If I said something and so I'm not, I'm not gonna say anything. Whereas if, if I just said something, we would have never had that night. Because I would have been able to talk about it. I would have had, been able to talk to people about it where I just held it to myself. I didn't tell them for years, years. I think it was like three or four years later that I told my, uh, I told my wife.

• 46:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And I think one of the big things that, that comes out is people go, oh yeah, you're, oh, the world's a big place and it can be scary sometimes. Oh yeah, yeah. That's the way, that's pretty normal.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:47Jocko Willink?

  That's, oh, you're not sure what you're gonna do? Yeah, that's pretty normal. Oh, you feel like you're not doing a great job right now? Yeah, that's normal. Oh, you've, the pressure that feels like it's so much, like all those things that people feel at some juncture. That can be a crushing burden on your soul.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:05Jocko Willink?

  But like the, everyone that you're walking by on the street, almost everyone's been there at some point and said, yeah, yeah. I had, I had this happen. I had that happen. I had another thing happen. People just go through this life. You know, people go through some heavy things and sometimes it definitely seems like, oh, this is, this doesn't seem like it's gonna end.

• 47:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 47:25Jocko Willink?

  This pressure or this weight doesn't seem like it's ever gonna be lifted. And if you have that feeling and you don't tell anyone that goes, oh yeah, well, let me tell you what happened to me. Let me tell you what happened to my brother. Let me tell you what happened to my sister. Let me tell you what happened to my dad. Let me tell you what happened to my buddy. And everyone goes through these challenges and tribulations and it's like, yeah, you're, you're gonna get through it.

• 47:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:46Jocko Willink?

  And you're gonna come out the other side and that's, that's an important message, but if you don't tell anyone and you think it's just you. That's I think very isolating and problematic.

• 47:57Speaker 01

  Well, and I think this is, you know, something that a lot of young men experience in particular where, and you know, in my situation, there weren't a lot of male role, role models in my life. So I had, the only visual I had because of where I grew up was these super successful men, but they were successful. The, the way that I visualize that success was because like they had the family and they had, so I never, I was like, oh, I can't do that. Like, how am I ever gonna get there? How do I, how, I don't, I barely even know what a hundred bucks in my pocket feels like, let alone a $2 million house. And so there's also that factor of like, I felt like I was genuinely alone because there wasn't, I didn't, I felt like I didn't have anybody to talk to.

• 48:41Speaker 01

  When you, you obviously do, it's, you know, but I think with young men, it feels like you have to have a man that you can talk to. And you might have male role models in your life, but they might not be the right ones who are people you can actually talk to about this, who are just like, well, suck it up, don't be a bitch. You know, like, and that's, that's not what you need to hear in those situations. And so it's, it, it's, it's a problem. I mean, we, you, you know, we all know it, like that this is an epidemic that, you know, that we're dealing with in the United States and across the world, quite frankly, but yeah, it's, uh, you just gotta talk. And we're all going through it. We've all been there. Yeah, yeah. Life's, life's rough, man. Yeah, life's rough. Dude, it's something that like, it's funny, it's a quote I just heard recently that I

• 49:23Speaker 01

  think is so helpful for just younger adults and just people in general, we're, we're dealing with stuff our whole life. And is this something that would have really helped me because I felt like even at 18 years old, that I was so far behind because we had so little. And so I just felt like I was never, ever gonna get there. Never, ever gonna be the person sitting at this table right now. And it's that the compass was invented before the clock. Because people back then didn't care how long it took, they just cared that they got there. And I love it. It, it's so powerful because it's, it's true, you're not behind. The, life's gonna take you where it wants to take you.

• 50:05Speaker 01

  You know, if, life is like water, it's gonna go where it wants to go. But if you just keep moving forward, you don't give up, you don't quit, and just focus on following true north. Do everything in your power to follow that line, you're gonna get there, you're not behind. Again, the compass was invented before the clock.

• 50:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's part of the gig too. It's part of the, it's part of the deal, you know? I remember I, I, I drove a 1997 Dodge Grand Caravan with the window taped shut on the driver's side because it was broken and I didn't get it fixed.

• 50:36Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 50:37Jocko Willink?

  And then my wife and I, we lived in a really small house and when you walked through the front door of the house, on the right-hand side was the, was the couch with the TV on the left-hand side, when you walked through the front door was our bed. And, cause I had three kids at the time, two girls and what is it, two-bedroom house, two girls in one bed, the boy in another bedroom. And my wife and I were living in the living room. And the thing is, what, what's crazy is I look back at like, I did not give a shit. I was like, hey, this is what we're doing. This is how we're rolling. This is what's up. This is kind of the, this is kind of the lore of life.

• 51:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:12Jocko Willink?

  Like the lore of, hey, this is what we're gonna do. We're gonna make things happen. I don't know. I never really was too focused on, like I knew that, I knew that there was the right path to be on, like this is what you gotta do. You know, I wanted to buy a house. I wanted to own a house. It was 934 square feet. You got a, what's that, a five-person family? This is what we're doing.

• 51:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:31Jocko Willink?

  Like this is how we're rolling. And I never even felt frustrated about it. Now that I think back, I mean, I'm, I'm just thinking back right now for the first time, kind of from this perspective of being in a spot where it's like, oh, this, it kind of, if, if I look at it right now, I can admit that it kind of sucks.

• 51:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:52Jocko Willink?

  If you'd have asked me at the time, I wouldn't have thought it sucked at all. I would have been like, oh no, dude, we, look at this. All my kids are gonna come out into my bed in the morning. All three of them are gonna pile into this bed, which is on the floor in the living room. And that's what we're gonna do and it's gonna be fun. So I, I think that framing things up right.

• 52:09Speaker 01

  Perspective.

• 52:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. I, and again, now it's like, whoa, you know, I have my own room. And it's I have a, you know, my room right now in my house is on the second floor. And it's got a little office and my own bathroom with my, my wife. We have our own freaking wing, basically, right? You know, and it's like now he's like, oh, I can't imagine living in the living room. It's like, bro, at the time I didn't care at all. So I think you gotta look to, hey, where you are right now is not necessarily where you're gonna be forever. And especially if you're thinking strategic about, hey, this little sacrifices I'm making right now, it's gonna be okay. We'll make sacrifices now and they'll pay off in the future.

• 52:50Speaker 01

  You gotta do hard things. Things have to suck before they get better. That's, that's just life. It has to suck before it gets better. If it doesn't suck, it's never gonna get better.

• 52:59Jocko Willink?

  So what was the transition from, from Spartan races to ultra running?

• 53:05Speaker 01

  It was, it was COVID.

• 53:06Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 53:07Speaker 01

  COVID hits. I'm, you know, I get invited to be on Team USA. You know, I'm running as a pro. I just ran in Spartan World Championship. They're about to like roll out like this whole, you know, like world tour. I'm gonna be one of the athletes.

• 53:19Jocko Willink?

  For the Spartan race?

• 53:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. I'm gonna be on Team USA. Like this is, this is sick. And then COVID. And what else is there to do but to go run in nature? So I, I actually was, I actually was running the Grand Canyon right before everything shut down. So I went and ran the Grand Canyon right before everything shut down.

• 53:39Speaker 01

  Like everything was kinda up in the air and uh, that was like my introduction to ultra running was the Grand Canyon. Quite the introduction. Um, but then again, COVID hits and I'm like, I don't know what else the hell to do. Well, let's just go run to the top of this mountain. Um, let's go, you know, just run far and see what happens. So, you know, I ran the tallest peak in Utah. Uh, it was about thirty, thirty-four miles or whatever. And then twenty twenty-one, some ultra races started to come back. I now had a taste for it. I'm like, Well, let's just go run an ultra like I had some friends that were running this 100K or it's actually a 90K. I got lost and it turned into 100K. So my belt buckle says, my belt buckle says what 92, 90, whatever it is, but I ran 100.

• 54:25Jocko Willink?

  Dude, an eight click excursion.

• 54:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. It was, it was rough. Um, but, uh, yeah. So I just signed up for this race zero, no idea what I'm doing. Uh, and mile 20, I actually tore my posterior Tib, ran 40 miles on it and finished the race. Um, I got, I've got second to last place with 30 seconds to spare to get my buckle.

• 54:46Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 54:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, it was sweet.

• 54:48Jocko Willink?

  How many hours is that?

• 54:49Speaker 01

  It was 16 hours, basically.

• 54:51Jocko Willink?

  16 hours and that's was your first 100, that was 100K?

• 54:54Speaker 01

  100K. So that was like my first legitimate ultra. And you know, you'd think I tore my posterior Tib. I couldn't run for six months and, but I had this itch. I was like, that was awesome. I want to do that again, even though it sucked so bad. Um, but I get back into Spartan because I, I did have a injury that I had three doctors tell me I'd never run again. So, and I'm like, fuck you. Like I'm gonna go run again. Like go to hell. You don't, you can't tell me what to do. You're freaking sitting there, just sitting behind a desk. Like you don't know what you're talking about.

• 55:25Jocko Willink?

  Eat it nerd.

• 55:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Eat it nerd. Um, so I'm like, you know, so I do the physical therapy. I do all this stuff and I'm like, okay, we need to, I need to get my mojo back. Spartan. It's 2022. Spartan's back. Like let's go. So I signed up for a few races, podium. Cool. Mojo's back. Let's get the hell out of here. Um, cause I want to go back to ultra. Um, 2023, I have a whole list.

• 55:50Jocko Willink?

  Did you feel like you had a more of a, um, capability in ultra or did you just like it more?

• 55:56Speaker 01

  I wanted more. Spartan was great. It was fun, but it was fun. And you know, when there's a kind of a pattern in my life where it's like, yeah, it's fun. Can we go a little bit, can we do a little bit more? Like, can we go a little bit further? Like what else can we do? Um, and ultra running also was fun, but it was like. I had to earn that shit. Like running a Spartan race is quick. It's a couple hours at most. That that type of suffering, it's suffering, but it's it's not suffering. It's acute. It's a it's acute pain for a minute. And but like, I was like, I want to, I want to feel that. And it goes back to a lot of the trauma of everything. And, you know, there's a part of it that's running away, but

• 56:41Speaker 01

  there's also a part of me that's chasing it. And we can kind of talk about that in a minute. But it, I just, I wanted, I wanted that suffering. And so, but I needed my mojo back. I needed to make sure I could even run again, again, go party podium, a few races and like, okay, cool. Ultras, let's go.

• 57:02Jocko Willink?

  And you're not built like an ultra runner.

• 57:04Speaker 01

  No, no, I wait. Yeah, I wait. Right now, I think I'm back about like 202. Last time I weighed, I'm probably 202, 205, somewhere.

• 57:13Jocko Willink?

  What's what's the official like Clydesdale weight class?

• 57:16Speaker 01

  I think it's 200.

• 57:16Jocko Willink?

  200.

• 57:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so. It might be 225. I forget. They they they've changed it a few times. But yeah, it's basically like 200. And so, but this is how much I weighed during the time. It was funny. I have a I have a picture on one of the podiums. I'm as tall as the dude standing on the first place podium. I got second place. And I was tall, like I'm I'm tall, like I'm I was just like, these dudes are like a buck, you know, about 40, buck 50, and I'm 200 pounds, almost a foot taller, just like, you know, crushing it in these races. And but again, I just like, and I was kind of, I was kind of, because this is still like, ultra running hasn't, because right now, it's

• 57:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's on fire.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  It's on fire. Still relatively new at the time. Goggins was starting to really take a foothold from like a social media perspective at this time. And so like, it's kind of starting to like, get its thing here. But I kind of was pushed out of the ultra community a little bit because I didn't fit the narrative. I didn't, I'm a, I'm a.

• 58:16Jocko Willink?

  You're a buff runner.

• 58:17Speaker 01

  I'm a hybrid athlete, you know, like it's, it's that whole hybrid athlete thing. And I just, I didn't fit this narrative of.

• 58:22Jocko Willink?

  Were you still lifting?

• 58:23Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I, I even training for these thousand miles, I was lifting the whole time. Um, you, yeah. Oh, you.

• 58:31Jocko Willink?

  Respect.

• 58:31Speaker 01

  The gym is, the gym, as much as I love running, the gym is my safe place. There's a reason I own a gym. Um, it's like, I, I love the gym. I love lifting all day. Um, but yeah, it's, you know, a- again, I'm, again, we're getting into the ultra space. I wanted that. I wanted more. So 2023 comes around. And I have a whole list of ultras and I'm going to go around getting ready for all of them. Um, and June was my first one and I actually suffered a pretty severe cardiac event. Um, I was just training so much and opposite. So I was full blown powerlifting and full blown ultra training.

• 59:16Speaker 01

  You can lift weights and you can run. You can power lift and you can run, but you, you can't do the extreme because you have extreme aerobic and extreme anaerobic happening. The heart just can't do that cross that many times. So eventually, so basically what I was diagnosed with, what I was diagnosed with was a unspecified major cardiac event where basically it happens in triathletes where your heart essentially just like tries to stop. It's just like, I'm tired, bro. Peace. Um, and then it obviously can't. So it, it stops and then starts again and it ends up causing heart attack like symptoms and in the hospital for a couple of days and doing a whole bunch of tests. So I actually didn't run and I ran a couple of like, there's Cirque Series in Utah.

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  Uh, it's like, they're actually all over the place, but.

• 1:00:02Jocko Willink?

  Did they put you on some kind of protocol? Or are they like, hey, this is what we're going to monitor? This is what we're going to look for like?

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I did a bunch of tests.

• 1:00:10Jocko Willink?

  Why are you deadlifting 500 pounds and running 500 miles?

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. So they, it was actually really funny. They couldn't do the test. They couldn't do stress testing in the hospital. They didn't have the equipment for it. So they gave me this special heart rate strap. And like a couple of like notes and said, hey, we need you to go trail running three days after you just had this freaking like a heart attack. So I'm having a panic attack, running up this mountain because my heart rate's spiking. And I also just like had a heart attack, basically. And so I'm panicking. And that was actually a really big mental piece for me that really flipped my, my mentality of I can do, you can, you can own yourself, you can own your mind. That's what I was, I was on this run and I'm panicking. I'm just like, I'm gonna have another heart attack.

• 1:00:59Speaker 01

  Especially after what happened to Chad. Yeah. This has gotta be in your brain somewhere. Yeah. And it's, you know, I'm, I'm scared I'm gonna have a heart attack. I'm in the mountains. Like, what if something happens? I'm really starting to panic that. I used to have panic attacks. I think I would have been running laps around a hospital. Never mind the trail. Yeah, it was, it was, it was a weird protocol that like I'm, I'm just, I was panicking and I used to have these panic attacks when I was, you know, suffering from, you know, dealing with all the depression. I would literally curl up in a ball in the corner and just shake. My panic attacks were so bad. This happened every day for months on end. That also added into the whole depressive thing, but I, you know, I, so this panic starts, I haven't had a panic attack in

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  years. And I'm like, oh my God, like what, what is happening? And I just took a deep breath and I said, own yourself. Stop being a bitch. Own yourself. Own yourself, own your mind. And I actually started just repeating, own yourself, own yourself. And I like, my pace got faster. I got more steady. My heart rate dropped. And it changed. It really changed my mentality of you can, you can do, you have control over everything. I mean, my shirt, it says, pain is a mindset. Because it's all a mindset. And that was where I'm like, we got, we got more in this tank. Let's

• 1:02:22Speaker 01

  figure this heart shit out. Let's, we'll, we'll, we'll go from here, but we gotta get this settled. And then we'll go from here. But yeah, it was, I just own yourself, own yourself. I just repeated that to myself that day.

• 1:02:35Jocko Willink?

  So you get kind of back on track and you end up going to Missouri.

• 1:02:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, St. Louis.

• 1:02:40Jocko Willink?

  And that's to get your degree in what nutrition?

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the actual degree is called applied nutrition and dietetics. So I have a masters in that, but it was I had to go do clinical rotations. So to be a dietitian, it is a medical, it I'm like, you know, you become a licensed medical practitioner. It's a different type of medicine. You have nurses, you have doctors, you have dietitians, they all fall into that scope. And so you have to do rotations, just like a nurse, a doctor.

• 1:03:07Jocko Willink?

  My daughter went to college, my middle daughter went to college and she did nutrition science and some of her friends carried on to become diet. So I've kind of watched her friends go through that cycle of doing the working in the hospital and the whole nine years.

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, so yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:20Jocko Willink?

  So that's what you were doing.

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I was in Missouri and that was a, that was a time I, it's funny. I was actually in a worse mental place there than I was in Ogden, but I just understood where I was and I knew that the pain is temporary, the pain is mindset, like this is where that that whole mantra started to exist that come to put you that pain is a mindset. It's all temporary and it sucked. Missouri is a hellhole. St. Louis is terrible. Most of my rotations were in like north of Ferguson. I mean, we all know the Ferguson riots. This is where most of my rotations were. So we're in the, I mean, literally the most dangerous place in America. That it was number, it's it jumps between one and three at this point.

• 1:04:04Speaker 01

  But when we were there, it for three years straight, it was number one. So I know I not only have that stress for myself, but I also brought my wife here with me. I didn't want to bring her. Obviously I wanted to bring her, but like I didn't want to bring her to St. Louis. Like, I don't want to put her in this situation. And so there were a lot, I had a lot going through my head. And so ultra running was my escape where it was like. Let's go run an ultra. Let's go do that. It's like, whatever. Like, I ditched a couple of my rotations where I called in sick and I went and ran ultras, just like on a Tuesday. Just by yourself? Yeah. I, one of the times I was running with someone who was running across America. Another time was also with someone running across America that I would just go run by myself. There was one day.

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  I just worked like 60 hours that week and I'm sitting there. It's Friday. It's like 10pm. I'm like, fuck you, man. I said this to myself. Like, you're such a bitch. I packed a lunchbox, woke up at 5am and I went and ran a 50k around the park. Just because I need to feel something. I just had, and this is where like this like other side of ultra, because I was just doing it. I wasn't signing up for races. I was just going to the park, running a 50k. I ran, this is when I, and this also is at this time, I was actually planning on running across America.

• 1:05:26Speaker 01

  And it was, it was something that had been on my mind for a couple of years, but it's like, this needs, there needs to be a bigger purpose. Not just for the sake of the running of like, I need a, I need a better why to get me out of bed. I need to have, there's, this is already a selfish endeavor. So there needs to be a better, there needs to be a bigger purpose. And it needs to be something I'm genuinely passionate about. I can't just be like, well, I'm going to go run for cancer because, you know, cancer's a problem. It needed to be something that came from like the heart. And so I was like, if it comes, great. We're going to cross America. We'll do the thing. If not, whatever. But there has to be a genuine purpose to what I'm doing. And then one day, popped into my head, I'm going to run for single parents.

• 1:06:07Speaker 01

  This is my life. My life stems from that. And there's so many single parents that did not have what we had and are doing it alone. So I'm like, I'm going to run for single parents. So I found an organization. They just happened to be in Utah and I kind of kicked off this project to run from Seattle to Miami, but I knew some things needed to happen. I knew I needed to practice. So run across Utah, fell into the project. I wanted to kick off the project with something. So I did 24 hours around a track. And I, you know, I start, so I did that while I was in school. I actually flew back home. Did this, you know, or did this 24 hours around a track, flew back, continued. It was running these random ultras at the park and just like down the road or whatever when I was out there.

• 1:06:49Jocko Willink?

  How far did you run in 24 hours around the track?

• 1:06:51Speaker 01

  Um, I only made it 70. I had some pretty serious stomach problems. I over consumed electrolytes because the temperature flipped on me. Uh, it was just un- it was uncontrolled variable. Shit happens. It's an ultra marathon. Still made it 70, but I should have been able to clear 100. Um, but, uh.

• 1:07:09Jocko Willink?

  And how long were you out in Missouri for?

• 1:07:11Speaker 01

  A year. We were in it. We, we got there and we left. Like it was, we lost, we bought a house because we were like, you know, we can buy a house. They're cheap. We could turn it into a rental property and we said, nope. We lost, we lost five grand on the house and said, we're getting, get this the hell out of here. We bought an RV actually, cause it was, dude, six grand to move back home. And so we're like, fuck it. So we went and bought an RV for 10 grand, put all of our stuff in it, drove back to Utah. Dropped our stuff off in a storage unit and then went and lived on the California coast for four months. And after in our RV, it was amazing. It was like some of the best months of my life.

• 1:07:49Jocko Willink?

  You could get some good running in on the California coast.

• 1:07:51Speaker 01

  Amazing. Yeah. We drove from, uh, just north of the San Francisco Bay, all the way to Oregon. And just like stayed in different places over a couple of months on the way there.

• 1:08:02Jocko Willink?

  California.

• 1:08:03Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:08:03Jocko Willink?

  Somebody hit me up on social media the other day and said, when are you, uh, you know, when are you going to move to Texas or Florida and get out of the failing state of California?

• 1:08:12Speaker 01

  I love California.

• 1:08:13Jocko Willink?

  And I wrote, I'm not leaving.

• 1:08:17Jocko Willink?

  We're going to fight for it.

• 1:08:18Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:08:19Jocko Willink?

  I'm going to try and keep it real out here in California.

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  I love it. I'm Northern California. I honestly think California should be, this is a whole separate discussion, but I think California should be split into two states. Cause Northern and Southern California are completely different places.

• 1:08:31Jocko Willink?

  Well, it's pretty awesome that they're one big giant state and they'd not only have, you have the coast, you have the Pacific Ocean, you have the desert. Incredible.

• 1:08:40Speaker 01

  You have the redwoods.

• 1:08:41Jocko Willink?

  You have the redwoods. You got Yosemite.

• 1:08:43Speaker 01

  Unbelievable. Sierra Nevadas.

• 1:08:45Jocko Willink?

  You've got the Sierra Nevadas, which is incredible. Like Lake Tahoe. It's just, it's.

• 1:08:50Speaker 01

  Wonderful.

• 1:08:50Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's, it's an epic place. And yeah, we've got some interesting things to deal with that we'll, we'll sort out, but I'm not leaving. I'm not leaving. They, they think they want, they want me to leave, right? They're trying to put pressure. They want, they want you to leave, but I'm staying.

• 1:09:09Speaker 01

  I'm not fucking leaving.

• 1:09:11Jocko Willink?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 1:09:14Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, Wolf of Wall Street.

• 1:09:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the Wolf of Wall Street.

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  What were we, I forgot, losing there.

• 1:09:18Jocko Willink?

  Well, because you went, you went and lived in your RV on the California.

• 1:09:21Speaker 01

  Oh, yes.

• 1:09:21Jocko Willink?

  Good runs.

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I've got some beautiful runs and it was amazing. It was a good time to just decompress.

• 1:09:27Speaker 01

  You know, so much of my life and shout out to my wife. I mean,

• 1:09:30Jocko Willink?

  When did you guys get married?

• 1:09:31Speaker 01

  We got married in 2018. We were young.

• 1:09:33Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:09:33Speaker 01

  We got, we were young, we were 20.

• 1:09:35Jocko Willink?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:09:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were young.

• 1:09:36Jocko Willink?

  So this was during college?

• 1:09:37Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:09:38Jocko Willink?

  Nice.

• 1:09:38Speaker 01

  It was honestly like we'd lived together for some time and we were just like, we can get a fat tax return if we get married.

• 1:09:48Speaker 01

  So we got, that was the tipping. We were, we were gonna get married, but it was just like, you can give the taxes, why not? So yeah, we got married in 2018. But, um, I forgot what we were talking about.

• 1:10:02Jocko Willink?

  So then you did the trip to California.

• 1:10:03Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:10:04Jocko Willink?

  You're running beautiful runs.

• 1:10:06Speaker 01

  Beautiful runs in California. Um, and it was just a time to decompress because this whole, this is what I was gonna talk about. You know, again, the shout out to my wife for just being along for this ride because at any point she could have just been like, dude, you're insane. I'm out of here. She could have and I would have, I would have never held it against her because there was, there's always been that part of me. It's like, just like, almost like just wait, like we're, we're gonna, like, if we're gonna get there.

• 1:10:31Jocko Willink?

  Normal stuff will happen.

• 1:10:32Speaker 01

  Yes, we're gonna get there. We're gonna get there. Like I, I probably, like, you know, I have, I had my, I had my shit that I dealt with. It's not like I just magically got better. Now there was no, no abuse, none of that, but like, I mean, I was, I was an angry guy. I, I had, you know, I would, I would have these outbursts, not towards her, but just like in general in the house. It's not, that's not healthy to be around. And, you know, I had, I had issues and.

• 1:10:58Jocko Willink?

  What, what, what would make you mad?

• 1:11:00Speaker 01

  Stupid shit, man. I'd stub my toe and I'd throw something at the wall or stupid things, just like unprocessed trauma that just led to stupid behaviors. And, uh, I love my wife. She is my world and my lights and none, like never ever was any of it towards her. Even if like something she did upset me, that was the one thing that for some reason never. Triggered something. But yeah, so I had I had my issues and it was I was just like, just wait till we're just I promise when school's over like I'm gonna make it better and like, you know, there was always like this. And she stuck around. I don't know why she stuck around. Thank God she did because she is my life.

• 1:11:42Speaker 01

  But I we went together, we did it to kind of decompress and we both just went through hell. We watched people get shot in Missouri like it was, I mean, we it was a war zone there. Genuinely, so much gang violence. So so I mean, it was, we're looking at. It it was, yeah, it was, it was a war zone in St. Louis, gunshots constantly. You're just, you're constantly on edge because you don't know. You piss off the wrong person at the grocery store, you're gonna get shot. It just and so it was, we just needed this time to decompress and. It again, it I. It was, it's not an I'm right, but it was like, I knew.

• 1:12:23Speaker 01

  There was a light at the end of the tunnel and we just had to get to the end of this, end of this path. And that light was there.

• 1:12:30Jocko Willink?

  So what was your plan for like financial? Life after you got done with college?

• 1:12:36Speaker 01

  So it was building, building my private practice, where I was in the process of, I actually started building my gym while I was in Missouri in Utah. We started the whole process of that. I have my partners in that.

• 1:12:50Speaker 01

  And, you know, social media as well, like I've, you know, I've I've started to build something with social media. That's why I'm sitting here with you guys right now and. Uh, you know, there's that side of it. And then I also own a demolition subcontracting, some contracting company as well. And so, you know, building all of this and. That was also something, again, shout out to my wife for just like, understanding that. Just because we graduated school does not mean that all of a sudden. Everything is fine and dandy like there's, you know, we're and she's also building her own. So she's building her private practice. She's a therapist and. Uh, we found a really good flow and shit's great now and it was great then. It it's, you know, it's, I look back and it's always been great.

• 1:13:35Speaker 01

  It's just, you know, you just got, it's a perspective shift that we talked about, but. At this point now, it's, you know, I run across America is still priority. You know, this is like, I want to do this. I understood the social media side of things. It's like, I need. If I want people to, if I wanted this to be possible, if I wanna, I wanna be a professional athlete. If I wanna, you know, to make a career out of this, social media's gotta be a part of this. So we start, I start getting into the whole social media side of things. And I'm like, okay, now I need to do something that will get me ready to run across America. Let's start prepping to run across Utah. So I started that training in California. Best way, best way to train. So I did, you know, the first half of that training block, living out of the RV.

• 1:14:17Speaker 01

  Great mental training because I would, my wife is a therapist. There's HIPAA. We're living in a 50 square foot RV with two dogs. I can't be there when she's doing therapy. So I would basically just go run all day and just go do stuff. Cause I'm like, I have no job. I have a couple, you know, I've picked up a couple of clients at this point, but I basically have no job. So I was just like running and running and training for this race. We moved back to Utah in November. I kept training and went and ran across the state of Utah, April of last year. And run across America is not actually gonna happen.

• 1:14:56Speaker 01

  But because of what I discovered running across Utah, just like, I don't actually think I wanna run across America now. It's a logistical nightmare, dude. But.

• 1:15:06Jocko Willink?

  One of my buddies did it, Rob Jones.

• 1:15:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:09Jocko Willink?

  And he is a double above the knee amputee. And he ran across America like a badass.

• 1:15:15Speaker 01

  That's unbelievable. How long did it take him?

• 1:15:19Jocko Willink?

  I forget the actual time, but it was, it was not crazy. Like, I mean, he was running, he was running massive amounts. He was impressive. Oh no, sorry, he biked across America. He biked across America.

• 1:15:32Speaker 01

  Still insane.

• 1:15:33Jocko Willink?

  But he did 31 marathons in 31 days. In 31. In different cities in America.

• 1:15:38Speaker 01

  Wow. So that's unbelievable. Oh no, okay, I do know who this is. Yep, uh huh, yep.

• 1:15:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, he biked across America, which was a total gut check. And again, he's above the knee amputee. It's crazy. And he's on a, he's not on a hand bike, he's on a bike.

• 1:15:54Speaker 01

  How do you do that? That's insane.

• 1:15:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's freaking, because he's just like the

• 1:15:59Speaker 01

  Built different.

• 1:15:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he's just a mentally tough as dude. And then, yeah, and he ran thirty one marathons in thirty one days. So you you do this, and you've got a documentary on YouTube. It's called Worn Legs.

• 1:16:11Speaker 01

  Yep. And the title of the book that will be coming out.

• 1:16:14Jocko Willink?

  Okay, check. Uh, four hundred and twenty one miles. And it's, man, I watched the the documentary.

• 1:16:23Jocko Willink?

  It's a problem, dude. It's it's rough.

• 1:16:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I can, you know, I've done things in my life where I was really, really hurting. And, you know, you have that moment where you know you have to keep going, but you've taken a break of some kind. And when you get back up to get back into it, there's that moment where your mind hasn't shut off the pain yet. And it's usually like four minutes, you know, like literally standing up, getting your shoes on or doing whatever you gotta do, and you're in such agony, and you just, you just have to push through that. Am I?

• 1:16:59Speaker 01

  Oh, you're you're nailing it on the head.

• 1:17:01Jocko Willink?

  Like, this is what I kept seeing, like, each day, I was like, oh, there it is again. Oh, he doesn't want to get up. Oh, that hurts, doesn't it? And it's funny, there's a, each day, you kind of spray paint a mark on the ground of of where you were, like a line, hey, this was day three, day four, day five, day six, like, starting, like, day six or day seven. You're just like, so hurting, even when you bend down to spray paint, I'm like, oh, he's, he does not want to be doing this. But not wanting to do it has nothing to do with actually doing it.

• 1:17:31Speaker 01

  That's why I did put, that's why I do pushups.

• 1:17:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you do pushups every day at the end.

• 1:17:35Speaker 01

  Every day, and same thing with a thousand, every day, ten pushups, you can always do a little bit more. Always go a little bit further. That was the whole premise. The day might be over, it's not over. I might have to go to bed, but it's not over. We're gonna do 10 pushups.

• 1:17:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Uh, day six of that run, you're like in, you can't, you can't, I'm watching the video, you can't put any weight on your ankle.

• 1:17:59Speaker 01

  No, you do saw how swollen it was.

• 1:18:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's just total disaster. So you just tape it up. Tape it up, day seven.

• 1:18:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, that's, so that's where the never make a decision in the dark. That's where that, that's where that saying essentially came from. Uh, my buddy, he is a badass. He is kind of an under, unknown ultra runner. He's beat Goggins, he's beat McKnight, he's beat these guys in their prime. In these 200 mile races. This is, this is back in the day and, and he's a, he's badass. Nate Williams. He is a, like, I have a, I have my list of people who have inspired me to do these things, you know, you, David Goggins. Nate is on this list, a couple of other people who fall in that list and he, he was there. They came and ran like roughly two days with me. It was like a day and a half.

• 1:18:48Speaker 01

  And he's there. He's the one that, that, that when they picked me up and drove me 20 feet because I couldn't hobble back to the van, that was him. He's the one that drove me over and I'm sitting there. I'm like, I don't know if I can do this, man. Like, none of this is on video. And I'm like, I don't, I don't think I can do this, dude. I don't, how am I gonna get up? I can't put any weight on my foot. And I'm like, I'm ready to quit. My crew actually had fully prepped to go home. They didn't do any of the prep for the next day. They prepped to go home because

• 1:19:16Jocko Willink?

  They thought they had a quitter on their hands.

• 1:19:19Speaker 01

  They just thought it was over. My leg was swollen and Nate goes, never make a decision in the dark. That's all he had to say. And I said, I'm gonna let's do it again tomorrow. And I went to bed. And it's, uh, and I woke up and we, I just, you, you saw the video. It fucking hurt. It hurt, but you just, I was like, I, I, when I woke up that morning, I told myself, this is going to day seven. I told myself, you, you give this 100%. I don't care if you only make it five miles today.

• 1:19:54Speaker 01

  You cannot go home without, and this was the mindset every day. Every day I had to give a hundred percent of whatever I had, but this day was you give one hundred percent of everything. Because you don't know if you're going home. And so it was, I just, I went, I went as hard as I could, given the, you know, the situation I was in this day. Now we've got forty mile per hour headwinds that have started. That we're running into and it sucked and it hurt. And, you know, I just, I set the goal. It was like, if we're going to keep going, you have to run forty miles in your time limit. Cause I had a time limit because of sunsets and different things. And so there was this, basically I'm like, you either, you give it your all.

• 1:20:36Speaker 01

  And you only make it five miles, whatever. But if we get past that five mile point, because that's, I was essentially giving myself five miles to make sure that I didn't have a broken leg. Cause that, you know, if the bone's broken, not much you can do.

• 1:20:49Speaker 01

  And then after that, it was like, can you go to forty? And then you do not, you give everything, everything to get to that forty. And we get close to the end of the day that day and I have twenty eight minutes left and I have a five K and I'm like, I'm not gonna fucking make it. No way. I gotta run a sub ten minute mile and I'm two hundred and eighty miles in. And it's two hundred and eighty two, I think was the exact mileage at that point and or two hundred and eighty one.

• 1:21:15Jocko Willink?

  So what's driving the cutoff time?

• 1:21:17Speaker 01

  Sunset.

• 1:21:18Jocko Willink?

  But is that, is that like a safety?

• 1:21:20Speaker 01

  Yes, because I'm on the, it's, I'm running on state highway.

• 1:21:23Jocko Willink?

  Cause there's no rules. Is there rules?

• 1:21:25Speaker 01

  No, there's no rules, but it's, it's, I'm running on state highways. If it's dark, I already got, dude, I got hit by a car. I got hit by a car on day, what, three, four, whatever it was. And that was in the middle of the day. It was broad daylight. So if it's nighttime, like I'm, there's no way. So I, we had this cutoff just for safety reasons. And yes, I had twenty eight minutes left before, you know, sunset and I have a five K and I just said, fuck it. I said I was gonna give, I said I was gonna give a hundred percent, we're going. So I had poles, cuz I just, I had to take the body weight off. I knew the poles were gonna slow me down, so I clicked them up. I just, I just went full send, ran as hard as I could.

• 1:22:09Speaker 01

  And my crew, like, they'd stop every mile, or mile and a half, and like, give me water. And I just blasted past the van, and they're like, what the, and then followed me, and I just put my hand out. They handed me the water, I drank it, I threw it back in the van. Like, I'm, I'm, all this is happening while I'm running, cuz I'm like, I'm not, I'm not stopping. I have twenty eight minutes. I'm hitting this, I told myself, we're doing this in the thirteen hour limit. You're not stopping. And so I just kept going, and I kept going, and ended up being twenty four minutes.

• 1:22:42Speaker 01

  Twenty four minutes, it was an absolute burner at two hundred and eighty miles in. And we just, you see in the documentary, and I've posted about it a couple of times on social media, it, we, it was silent. You just hear my cameraman in the video, you're, from my cameraman, cuz my cameraman chased me for like a half mile, but he like, was struggling to keep up. Cuz I was, these guys know, these guys know, like, they know from the thousand miles, like, I don't, they're just a switch flipped. And I just stood there and just stared off into the sunset, into the road, and was just like, holy, it just soaked it in of what. And I just, it, it was another one of those moments in life, it's like, again, there's so much in the tank, always.

• 1:23:25Speaker 01

  There's all, and I was like, alright, we're gonna finish this shit. There's nothing that can stop me. If I can do this, there's nothing, there's nothing that can stop me. And we just kinda, all, we drove home, drove home, we drove to the campsite in silence, just in a van, cuz we all were just like, holy shit, what just happened? It was epic.

• 1:23:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, the, the documentary is great. And it's, it's probably like, it's probably like forty five minutes long, or something like that.

• 1:23:51Speaker 01

  It's fifty three or something like that.

• 1:23:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's not like a, not like a two hour documentary, but it's, it's badass, man. I was watching it, again, you know, I've, I've done things that have required a lot of physical exertion before. And I remember just going, oh yeah, here it is again, here it is again, here it is again, here it is again. Yeah, over and over again, until you get it done with the fastest known time.

• 1:24:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, it did get broken. By one of your buddies? Yep, yep. My buddy Adam, Adam Byrne, shout out. Um, he, Adam and I are really good friends now and uh, I, you know, I helped him with his run. Records are going to be broken and I wanted to help him break it. How much did he beat it by? Um, seven hours, 11 hours? Barely. Barely. It was, it was a close one. I think, I think if I had run it a day faster, I still think he would have broken it. I think he had gas in the tank. He had a number. Yes, he was like, hey, I just have to do this and I'll break it. And I think if, I think he had more gas in the tank. I think he could have done it a little bit faster. Um, but it was, it's that mind, like you can very much set, set those limitations on your mind and like your, your mind will stop you. It's pretty crazy. What made you, you know, you mentioned that during that run, you kind of figured out you didn't want to run across America.

• 1:25:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was just the logistics of, I don't, I just, it's, they're tough, man. The logistics of these runs are tough. You're, you're, it's, it's no joke. There's plan, like planning the route, knowing where the campsites are. Of running across America, you gotta know where laundromats are. You gotta know where grocery stores are. You have to know how to refuel, restock, all of this, the whole way across America, not just a state. We're talking 13 states, you know, and it's places I've never been before. And for the most part, it's the middle of nowhere for 90% of the run. You cross through a couple of cities and you try to avoid the cities because of traffic. And so you gotta, like the logistics of it are just such a nightmare. I'm like, I don't want to do that. If someone was like, hey, I got the logistics.

• 1:25:44Speaker 01

  If someone, this is, this is where I'm at now. Now that I've done what I've done. I don't want to be away from my wife that long. The, the thousand miles was, you know, it was long and I was home. I was just 20 minutes up the road and I only saw my wife three times and it was very difficult. So there's that. I don't want to be away from my wife. Someone would have to pay me a pretty significant amount of money. And the logistics would need to be, what I would basically do, there's a buddy of mine, his name is Rob. Crew chief Rob is like his, his thing. He's done a couple of runs across America. You know the relay, do you guys, I don't know if you guys, any of you have seen the relay across America that's happening right now.

• 1:26:23Speaker 01

  Wyatt Moss is another influencer, another running influencer. He put together this relay to celebrate, to celebrate 250 years. It's a run across America. And there's like a thousand people across like the entire country where people have like signed up for segments and Rob is doing the, the crew chief for this whole thing. So I would essentially pay Rob to do it for me. And then again, someone would need to pay me. That's the only way I'm going to do it. Is that I would need to get paid so that my wife could be there, not need to work. And then I would do it.

• 1:26:57Jocko Willink?

  Did you enjoy, I mean, did you enjoy the running part of it?

• 1:27:03Jocko Willink?

  Or at a certain point are you like, hey, I can't feel my legs and I don't think this is healthy.

• 1:27:10Speaker 01

  When you're doing it, when you set the goal to do these things, you understand what you're getting into. You understand there's, you know, and we can talk about it now, but like when I was, when I was getting ready for the thousand miles. My mindset, I would have these, I would sit down and I would manifest, I would do manifestation and visualization. And I would visualize myself running in circles and crossing the finish line and I would manifest success. But part of that manifestation, I would repeat to myself. Nothing will stop you. If this is the last thing you do, this is the last thing you do. Permanent injury will not be the reason that you quit. I would repeat that to myself because I knew that was my only out, was going to be the thought of, well, this is doing permanent damage. I can't do this to myself.

• 1:27:55Speaker 01

  So I knew that I had to tell myself on repeat, if this is the last thing I do, this is the last thing I do. And you kind of have to have that mindset with this type of stuff. So.

• 1:28:03Jocko Willink?

  Because any little, any little discomfort can be.

• 1:28:09Jocko Willink?

  In your mind manufactured into permanently disabling yourself.

• 1:28:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:13Jocko Willink?

  And there's obviously a chance that you really could.

• 1:28:15Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. And so it you kind of have that mindset. So there's, yeah, there's a couple of things in it with that, but it's again, the run across America. It would basically need to be almost hand just because it's the logistics, the running, I'll do it. I'll do the running, though it's the logistics, it's it's such a nightmare. Plan. I mean, this thousand miles, I didn't even have a track until the Friday before. Because it was so hard to find a track to do this on. It's just these logistics are a nightmare. When it comes to doing this stuff. And so it's just something that's like, I love doing hard things, but I am done planning logistics for these runs. They take so much of my time and energy.

• 1:28:55Jocko Willink?

  So then, so then what point did you decide you're going to do the thousand miles? And why the thousand miles around a track?

• 1:29:01Speaker 01

  So, running across Utah, I realized I don't want to run across America. And so I didn't know what I was going to do next. Trying to figure it out, trying to figure out just what's next? What's the next big thing I'm going to do? And I actually was planning a run across the UK, John O'Grady to Land's End, 1100 miles.

• 1:29:20Speaker 01

  Had it all ready to go. I had the route. I was ready to go. You know, I was kind of thinking like, oh, I have an opportunity to explore the world a little bit with this. And we can go run across Italy, run across the UK, like these shorter distances. My wife gets to go to Italy, my wife gets to travel the world with me. You know, she gets to explore the world while I get to run. It's like, what a life, you know? And so I'm planning this round, I'm like, I can run 1100 miles. I can run, I can run across the UK, I can run 45 miles a day.

• 1:29:53Speaker 01

  You know, I did 42 running across Utah and my training was a mess for that run. I was super injured going through training. I had to swim for a month. I swam to train to run across Utah, like that's, that's ridiculous. So like, there's those things that I knew I could have run. And there's limitations because of parliament and different things running across the UK. So there's, there's some legal things, I just didn't want to jump through those hoops. So I was just like, you know, it was my 45 miles a day. And I was like, I can do that. I want to do something I can't do. Cause I wanna, I want something that I can fail. I don't want something, cause again, I don't want something I know I can do. That's not the point.

• 1:30:32Speaker 01

  I want something that when I, when I set out for this, there's the very realistic possibility that I never crossed the finish line. And so that was, I was like, well, I want to run a thousand miles. And so I was like, a track. Who in their right mind would do that shit? Sure enough, there's only been two other people who were dumb enough to do it. And I mean, to get two other people who didn't almost died. Ned Brockman's, even I was messaging him, like he's, he is a dog. Like he was, he was not okay. He's still to this day says he still has problems. And so, but I don't know why I just, I wanted that.

• 1:31:14Speaker 01

  I wanted to prove that I can accomplish a pop, that not myself, I wanted to prove to others that you can accomplish impossible things. It's all here. It's all in your head. It's all something that you, if you set those limitations, then you're not going to get there. And you can truly accomplish things that are genuinely impossible. And that's, again, that's why I picked it because I wanted to do something that I would fail. I would have to dedicate so much time and energy and effort and a whole piece of myself towards something that might amount to nothing.

• 1:31:52Jocko Willink?

  How much, when you're looking at doing a thousand miles, if I said to you, all right, I want you to do a thousand miles, but I want you to do it in a really healthy way. And I don't care really how long it takes. Could you, would you run like 18 miles a day, 20 miles a day, 22 miles a day? And what drives you to say, hey, I gotta do it, you know, you end up doing it in what 18 days? What, what is the, what is the goal? What is the bar set at that, that you say, hey, I'm going to do whatever, 45 miles a day?

• 1:32:23Speaker 01

  I'm gonna give it a hundred percent.

• 1:32:26Jocko Willink?

  So that's like max, that's like in the red.

• 1:32:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:29Jocko Willink?

  You're 45 miles a day is in the red.

• 1:32:32Speaker 01

  So I was doing 50, I was doing 54 a day out there.

• 1:32:34Jocko Willink?

  54 a day is, that's, that's in the red, that's.

• 1:32:36Speaker 01

  Pretty much. And it was, I could, this is, this was something that was really interesting about this run in particulars. I actually, my original goal was 66 a day. I actually think I could have done it. But I had some pretty severe nerve damage really early on that physically prevented me from moving fast enough. And maybe it was something, maybe it was to learn, something I needed to learn. I don't, maybe I could have. You know, you never know, but for me, this was, that was my max effort. That was my max effort was that 54 day. And so that was the whole point was we're going all, we're going max effort. We're going all out. It wasn't like, I'm not, I'm not here to pussy foot around. I'm not here to, I'm not here to go through the motions.

• 1:33:16Speaker 01

  I'm here to do something that is feels and sounds and is impossible. To not just represent single parents and their choice to not get to quit every day. And when I wake up in the morning and I'm in agonizing, excruciating pain, so are they. So I still gotta get, I still gotta get up and I gotta go run my miles. And so, and then also just again, it's that factor of how far can I actually push? Because again, I know I can run 20 miles a day. I know I can run a marathon a day. I know I can run 45 miles a day. How, and I know I can run through a beautiful country.

• 1:33:56Speaker 01

  But what about running in a circle?

• 1:33:59Speaker 01

  And I, I had, I mean, the mountains were beautiful, you know, right there against the track. And it was a beautiful track, but I also saw the same thing 4,000 times or whatever it was like. Lane, good old lane eight, you know, so it was a little less than 4,000 because it was lane eight, but.

• 1:34:14Jocko Willink?

  When you're prepping, how many miles a week were you doing in prep?

• 1:34:16Speaker 01

  So my training is a little bit different because of how much I weigh. I'm not Matt Johnson. I'm not these guys who are, you know, about 40, about 50. I, I can't run 130, 140 miles a week. So I did, I did a hundred mile a week. And then the rest were 70s and 80s. And then a lot of, you know, lifting, building durability versus volume was my approach. Because I understood if I go for the volume and training, I'm going to end up costing myself in the run. So we're going to focus on building durability so that I can then put on volume in the actual run. That was the approach.

• 1:34:50Jocko Willink?

  Have you ever seen, there's a show on TV, I think it's called Alone. And it's people that go out, they get dropped off alone in the wilderness and they just have to survive. Have you ever seen, heard of this program? Well, one of the things that's happened in this program is like, people just try and bulk up with fat. They try and get as fat as they can, because essentially what the contest becomes in many cases is just a starvation contest. And so you're just like, you eat as much as you can, you get out there, you're not really preparing for what you're gonna do out there, you're just getting as fat as you possibly can. So it seems like for you, being 200 plus pounds, in preparation, you can't break yourself before

• 1:35:35Jocko Willink?

  you enter the race.

• 1:35:37Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:35:37Jocko Willink?

  You kind of are doing like, you know, it's gonna, you know, every day is gonna cause wear and tear. That's eventually gonna stop you from running.

• 1:35:44Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:35:45Jocko Willink?

  I mean, eventually you're gonna get there. So you have to try and enter this thing with as much conditioning as possible, but also as healthy as you possibly can.

• 1:35:52Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah, that was a huge approach and it was, I was actually interested. So I actually try and put on weight is what I try and do for these runs. I had, I gotta give a huge shout out to Muscle Drive right now. That is sponsored, but not sponsored, but like kind of sponsored.

• 1:36:08Jocko Willink?

  Jocko Fuel Muscle Drive, yes.

• 1:36:09Speaker 01

  Jocko Fuel Muscle Drive. I, so I did 10 grams of creatine and Muscle Drive, the two scoops.

• 1:36:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:15Speaker 01

  Every day. I, during this training block, I gained, I gained about five pounds.

• 1:36:22Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome.

• 1:36:22Speaker 01

  But I lost 3% body fat.

• 1:36:25Jocko Willink?

  That's Muscle Drive all day.

• 1:36:26Speaker 01

  It was on, and I'm running, I ran 1,200 miles in five, five and a half months.

• 1:36:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's sick.

• 1:36:32Speaker 01

  And I put on a couple pounds of muscle.

• 1:36:34Jocko Willink?

  The Muscle Drive has been, you know, we designed it for fighters in mind that are cutting weight. Also, there's a lot of people right now that are taking, what are those drugs called?

• 1:36:42Speaker 01

  GLP-1s.

• 1:36:43Jocko Willink?

  GLP-1. No, GLP-1, is that a peptide?

• 1:36:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is a peptide.

• 1:36:47Jocko Willink?

  Okay. That stuff that's making people skinny, right? But it also, when they get skinny, they're losing a lot of muscle mass, which is obviously horrible.

• 1:36:54Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:36:55Jocko Willink?

  And so that in mind, and now like someone like you who's trying to maintain their muscle mass as they're doing something. You know, this is the same thing with like fasting. Actually, one of the-

• 1:37:07Jocko Willink?

  One of the names that was proposed for muscle drive was muscle fast.

• 1:37:11Speaker 02

  And I actually like that more.

• 1:37:12Jocko Willink?

  But, uh, but anyways, cause it, cause a lot of people, myself included, like I fast sometimes. And when you fast it, you're gonna eventually, you know, after a day or two, you're gonna start losing some muscle mass. But if that's really protective, that's what we designed it for.

• 1:37:27Speaker 01

  Gluconeogenesis, that's the fancy term for muscle converted to glucose.

• 1:37:32Jocko Willink?

  We like that. Well, we don't like that, but we like the scientific terms.

• 1:37:37Speaker 02

  And just the stress, like when you're, when you're putting the muscle under that much stress, you know, we talked about this, the HMB and the muscle drive and everything and how that, you know, it's just great for preserving that muscle when you're just demanding so much from it.

• 1:37:49Jocko Willink?

  Kind of have the dilution too.

• 1:37:50Speaker 02

  Hundred percent.

• 1:37:52Jocko Willink?

  So you're actually gaining weight and you're trying to condition yourself and be as healthy as possible going into it.

• 1:38:00Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:38:01Jocko Willink?

  So you said 70 mile weeks?

• 1:38:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, 70, 80, kind of jumping back and forth. I had one little blip of an injury, very normal in these things. Um, where I dropped off, but I just went right back up. Um, it was a week off.

• 1:38:13Jocko Willink?

  I was, yeah, you know, I've trained a lot of jujitsu in my life. I don't think I've ever been more nervous training jujitsu with someone than I was when I trained with you. Because I, I, you know, here you are, you are, I don't know, a few weeks away from starting the, the thousand miles. And these guys are like, oh, we're gonna bring, you know, we're gonna Mason in, he's gonna, you know, he's running a thousand miles. I'm like, oh yeah, I know. I'm like, he, he, he wanna train jujitsu with him. And I go, I, you know, and I figured we'll talk through some moves and, you know, I'll show you a couple of moves. And of course Kerry's like, hey, you, you, he's trying to be all cool about it. He's, he's always using the, uh, the leadership techniques from echelon front. One of the, one, one of which is the indirect approach. And he's all like, hey, you know, you think you might wanna, you know, just get a, you know, just a couple, maybe get a couple of live rounds.

• 1:38:57Jocko Willink?

  And I was kind of like, not really, but I'll show him some moves. He's like, hey, you know, it'd look, look really good if you did the, uh, you know, just went live a couple of times. And the whole time I'm thinking, bro, like all, all I need to do is just some weird movement or you do some weird movement and you hurt your ankle, hurt your knee, hurt whatever. And I'm gonna be feel so bad. So I was so nervous, but I did do it. Cause Kerry's like, You know, it really would look good. You know, if you really want to see people. And I'm like, okay, fine. So.

• 1:39:23Speaker 02

  I had zero regard for Mason's. I was so freaking nervous.

• 1:39:27Speaker 01

  I knew I was gonna be fine. I knew I was gonna be fine. Um, I know I'm a durable guy.

• 1:39:33Speaker 02

  A hundred percent. That wrestling.

• 1:39:34Speaker 01

  I'm not built like you, but I'm a durable guy.

• 1:39:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but gosh, all it takes is one little slip.

• 1:39:39Speaker 01

  It's true. Ligaments are only so strong.

• 1:39:41Jocko Willink?

  So I was, I was nervous, but.

• 1:39:43Speaker 01

  Dude, I had fun with that. That was a lot.

• 1:39:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it was definitely fun and good times, but I mean, I'm glad that you didn't get hurt.

• 1:39:50Speaker 01

  You kicked my ass, bro.

• 1:39:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I mean, I trained Jiu Jitsu. We didn't, you know, if we, we did a running contest, I don't think I would fare too well in that. Uh, and we did talk about, you know, focusing on, you know, hey, sometimes you focus on the long term. And sometimes you gotta focus on what's right.

• 1:40:04Speaker 01

  I have talked about front sight focus with not just during the run, but with so many people now. I use that. I'm like, when I, one, one time I got to sit down with Jocko and we talked about front sight focus and I, I love that analogy of, you know, sometimes that object in the distance gets blurry. And you have to focus on your front sight. And then when that gets blurry, you gotta focus back in the distance. And it's, it's, oh, I love, and it was so helpful in these thousand miles because it's true. Like, I was talking with these guys earlier. You know, what did it feel like after that first lap? Well, I wasn't worried about the thousand. I was worried about the next lap. I was worried about getting to the first marathon. I was worried about finishing the first day. Like it was, that's what,

• 1:40:44Speaker 01

  it was, you know, and then sometimes you do have to think about the thousand and it's that back and forth. And I was thinking about that the whole time. It helped that. Huge.

• 1:40:52Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's good to hear.

• 1:40:53Speaker 01

  Huge.

• 1:40:54Jocko Willink?

  Good to hear.

• 1:40:55Speaker 01

  Life changing.

• 1:40:56Jocko Willink?

  And you've got the new, uh, speaking of Jocko Field, got the new endurance product that we got coming. We got you the advanced copy. And I, I loved it because.

• 1:41:04Speaker 01

  My little secret black bags.

• 1:41:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. As soon as you look at the ingredients, cause you're a nutrition scientist and all that, you were like, oh, this is freaking good to go.

• 1:41:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:12Jocko Willink?

  So super stoked that that.

• 1:41:14Speaker 01

  Well, and it, it's a, it really helped. I had some digestive issues that just it, because of day one, um, you know, it was a hundred degrees. I couldn't heat train because it was just winter and I was able to, I had some, some very severe muscle. Uh, not muscle. I had some very severe stomach problems. And so I actually on day two, had to completely overhaul my nutrition strategy that I had been training because you have to train your nutrition. You don't just train. You don't just train for the one thing you train your nutrition as well as the running. And so I spent months training my nutrition and it's like, oh, day one, out the window. So I had to completely overhaul overnight of what we're going to do. And I had a chef.

• 1:41:59Speaker 01

  This guy was amazing. They came and cooked all my meals for me. I'm like, hey, we need to, you know, so I'm a snacker when I run. I like to eat throughout the day. And I go, okay, we're going to do big meals, six times a day. Six meals a day or six to eight.

• 1:42:15Jocko Willink?

  How many calories are you taking in a day?

• 1:42:17Speaker 01

  10 to 15,000.

• 1:42:18Jocko Willink?

  Nice.

• 1:42:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was a lot. The first day I was in a 7,500 calorie deficit. Yeah, it was, uh, it was really rough. I was in a hole. And so I was like, I know I've got to fix this because if we go another day like this, I'm screwed. It's over. I, you can, there are, I, you can do impossible things, but you can also very much your body can just say, no.

• 1:42:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's, there's impossible things. And then there's the laws of physics.

• 1:42:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:42:45Jocko Willink?

  This is, this is kind of, if you ever hear me say this, like, hey, you can't break the laws of physics. Whatever we're talking about is not possible.

• 1:42:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:51Jocko Willink?

  Like, and I mean, if you're gonna, you can't break the laws of physics. You can't do it.

• 1:42:56Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:42:56Jocko Willink?

  You can do all kinds, human beings can do all kinds of things, except for change the laws of physics.

• 1:43:01Speaker 01

  Exactly. So, yeah, but I, so I had to completely overhaul my nutrition strategy. I'm still just constantly having stomach issues. And, you know, I had a limited supply of this stuff. It was, you know, we were just like doing some testing on it and flavor and different things. And, but it ended up becoming for a couple of those days, it actually became a huge part of it. It helped. It helped me a ton reset my stomach because it just, you know, I got the carbs, I got the electrolytes, I got what I needed. It really, it was a, it was a game changer there for a couple of days. And then I saved, I saved one pack. So that I could have it towards the end in case anything went wrong later on. Cause I only had a couple of bags.

• 1:43:41Speaker 01

  But no, it was a, it was a game changer. And again, I was having so many completely uncontrolled variables. Again, control your controllables. Sometimes most of what's going to get thrown at you is going to be uncontrollable. And this was just one of those things. And so I took the few things I can control, changing what I was doing, implementing little things like, like this new product's coming out. And it's, uh, yeah, it was, it was big.

• 1:44:06Jocko Willink?

  So what physically is happening to you? This is 18 days, 13 hours and 11 minutes. Like, you're, you're acquiring injuries as you go.

• 1:44:18Speaker 01

  I like the term acquiring.

• 1:44:19Jocko Willink?

  Right? I mean, you're, you're acquiring injuries.

• 1:44:21Speaker 01

  I'm earning them.

• 1:44:22Jocko Willink?

  And they're, because they're, they're, like I said, like little nagging pain eventually becomes a legitimate pain, which eventually becomes an injury. And then that injury just escalates. So what were you dealing with as far as acquiring injuries as you did this?

• 1:44:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. So out the gate, my shoes just failed. I don't know what happened. I don't know why my shoes failed. I've been running in these shoes for years. Not the same pair, obviously, but like the same style of shoe. And I don't say what shoe it is because they're a great company. They make great shoes. I, I don't want people to think they're bad shoes. It just was an unfortunate, I think I maybe got a bad pair from manufacturing. I don't know. This is an extreme event. Not every, you know, you don't ever, you never know what's gonna happen. So I ended up destroying my feet on day one. And

• 1:45:09Jocko Willink?

  Did you not, how many pairs of shoes did you have?

• 1:45:11Speaker 01

  I had, what, six pairs with me? But I had to scrap them all. They were all the same. And so day one, my shoes fail.

• 1:45:18Jocko Willink?

  How does a shoe fail?

• 1:45:20Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:45:21Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:45:21Speaker 01

  Basically.

• 1:45:22Jocko Willink?

  You're saying like blow out this?

• 1:45:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. So basically what, basically what it was is it felt like the padding just disappeared. And I was just running on the ground. I don't know why it happened. I don't know how it happened. I don't know if I got a bad pair. Either way, I did very severe nerve damage to my feet.

• 1:45:39Jocko Willink?

  Day one?

• 1:45:40Speaker 01

  Day one. Yep. Day one. And so I'm now trying to navigate this. I had another pair that was a little bit more cushioned. They were old. Uh, but I brought them just in case. Um, it's like an emergency. Well, we had an emergency on day one. So day two, I put these shoes on and I'm just in so much pain. Excruciating. I could feel foot pain in my quad.

• 1:46:03Speaker 01

  Unless you've experienced it, that's the best way I can explain it. I had pain so severe. You had trained with these shoes. So these were, this was just a shocker. Yeah, it really, there's so much happened on day one. We had extreme heat that I couldn't train for. We had stomach issues because of the extreme heat, which you just deal with. But you know, now I'm in a 7,500 calorie deficit. My shoes have failed on me that I've been training in for months. It felt like on day one, everything was over. So I'm just like, what the hell? Day one, what am I, like, where do we go from here? What do we do? How do I navigate? All of these variables at the exact, because you can't take one at a time. You have to attack all of them at the exact same time.

• 1:46:47Speaker 01

  You know this, different type of attack, but you know this, it gets, you have to attack all of these things at the exact same time. You can't take them one by one, or else everything else will fall apart. And so we're tackling all this at the same time, trying to figure out shoes. I get through, I'm like, okay, maybe these shoes will work. Maybe it's just like, because these, you have weird pains that pop up. So I'm like, maybe it's just, I just gotta get to the second day. So it's just deal, let's use these shoes, get through the second day. The company that sent me the other shoes, they sent me more of the shoe, these cushion shoes. Like, maybe these will work. Day three, I wake up, it's even worse than it was the day before. And I'm in so much pain, I'm crying a good chunk of the day.

• 1:47:27Speaker 01

  And I just, so the nerve pain, I can't, I've never in my life experienced pain this extreme. I don't know how I can experience more pain, to be completely honest. It, I feel like the next level is like near death. Pretty much, or death, which I guess there's no pain with that. But like, like there's really, I don't know how you could genuinely experience. More than, it was, it was pain so extreme that pain in my feet was radiating into other parts of my body, like from like nerve sensations. It was, it was, because it's nerve pain. And this is only day three? This is day three. So I call my, I'm at mile 45 on day three, and Jeffrey, I have a video.

• 1:48:13Speaker 01

  Jeffrey just like held the phone like this at his hip, this is my crew chief, and just recorded me just like crying. I was like, I can't fucking do this, man. What like, what, what are we gonna do? And he's like, dude, it's fine. Like, just keep moving. You know what you're doing. You've done this before. Like, you know, he's, he's very, he's, he's very soft. He's very soft spoken. He's very kind, a very different approach than, you know, which is interesting for me because I am a very like, you would be a great crew chief for me. Just very direct, very like, just, you know, do the shit. But for some reason, coming from Jeffrey, it works. And he's just like, just go, just keep moving. You got five miles left today. You can go, you can go for five miles. Like, suck it up. Go, you know, we got five miles. I'll walk with you.

• 1:48:58Speaker 01

  And still just bawling my eyes out. I call my buddy, he does shoe reviews. It's like his social media thing. And I'm like, this is the only person I know that can help me. So I call Eric, bawling my, he's like at dinner with his family. And he's like, oh, hey, man, what's up? I'm like, I need help, man. Just like bawling my eyes out. And he's like, oh, oh, oh, just so caught off guard. Like, I need the Max cushion. I need the shoe with the most cushion. What is it? He's like, well, there's two shoes. There's like the Asics Superflies or the Brooks Glycerin Max 2, which I actually have on my feet right now. And he's like, those, the ones have plates. The, the Brooks don't. He's like, I would go with the Brooks unless you want a plate, like a carbon fiber plate they put in shoes in.

• 1:49:42Speaker 01

  I'm like, okay, I'm gonna find these Glycerin Max 2s. Brand new pair, brand new shoes, like just came out. And we find, I'm, I need big, I could, my feet are swelling now. You know, your feet swell when you do these things. So I now need a size 15, already hard to find. Thank God they make 15s in these shoes. We find one pair in the state of Utah at the Shields in Sandy. Oh, yeah. Shields, shout out. Yeah. I'll go for you all day. Yeah. I call my wife, again, still crying. I cried for like four hours straight. And I'm like, I need you to go to Shields. I need you to get these shoes. And I'm gonna have Max, who's my chef, meet you in Salt Lake. And he's gonna bring me the shoes tomorrow.

• 1:50:25Speaker 01

  So she, minutes before they close, gets there, gets the shoes, meets my, meets my chef. He gets the shoes, he brings them the next morning. And then we ordered, Brooks ended up actually sending me a pair like, thank you, guys. Yeah, they sent me a pair of Salt Lake Running Company, which is a local running store. They sent me a pair of shoes. And then we also bought a couple of pairs of shoes. Spent $750 in shoes like that. And because they're, they're expensive shoes. But they they they saved the day and I was able to run in these. You guys now have a pair in the office.

• 1:50:57Jocko Willink?

  No break in period for these shoes. You just get in them and go.

• 1:51:00Speaker 01

  Just get in and go. I have insoles. I have high arches, so I put my insoles in. I mean, at this point, it's like, what? How it can't get any worse. Yeah, there's not like it. Worst cases is ends because so it's like, I've got to do everything in my power to make this happen. So it's like, we're just going to put on the shoes and go. See what happens. And it ended up obviously working out. But it was a It was it was a rough couple of days. It's just like not. There was so much unknown. I didn't know. I didn't know if I was going to get the shoes. I didn't know. And then we didn't. None of the shoes that got delivered, all of it got delayed because we had a massive storm, the third largest rainstorm in the last 25 years. So all the shoes got delayed. So that's this is day seven or whatever, and all the shoes are delayed.

• 1:51:42Speaker 01

  I have one singular pair of shoes running with trench foot. My foot split open because it was raining so much. I can't change my shoes. Because I have one pair. They already have 250 or 270 miles on them. I need another pair of shoes. It was. It was a rough week. That first week was hell because so much went wrong and all. It made it look like I didn't prepare for this run. It really did. Like from an outside perspective, I wouldn't be surprised if some of these guys came back and were like, what the fuck is this guy doing? Who is this guy? Like, what does he think he's gonna do this? And I I get why a lot of people I'd so you guys were some of the only people who believed in me from day one. I couldn't tell you the amount of brands, people.

• 1:52:26Speaker 01

  Whatever that straight up tracks. Yes, I had. I had track facilities tell me, we don't want to be associated with you failing. I had brands tell me they didn't want to be associated with a failure.

• 1:52:37Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 1:52:37Speaker 01

  Like I had people tell me this. And I mean, it just gave me fuel, fuel the fire. But I, from an outside perspective, especially in that first week, I can totally understand why people, why someone would say that because I looked like a mess.

• 1:52:49Jocko Willink?

  Were you able to recover at all? Like, once you got the shoes that were working well? Did you feel recovery or did you just steady state of pain?

• 1:52:57Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:52:58Jocko Willink?

  But it didn't get worse.

• 1:52:59Speaker 01

  It got worse. Yeah. So this, this is where things get really interesting with these runs is the pain did get worse. Doesn't, it doesn't get better. You did, it's not gonna get better until you stop. It's just like if you hurt yourself, you gotta stop. It's like you get it. We all know, you know, plantar fasciitis, it's a really common thing. The only way to get rid of it is you stop running. It's how all of this was. And so like I had stress fractures develop

• 1:53:27Speaker 01

  at mile about 600. I had stress, so I ran about 400 miles with stress fractures.

• 1:53:31Jocko Willink?

  Where were the stress fractures?

• 1:53:32Speaker 01

  My fibula in my foot and my right leg. So I have stress fractures, the nerve pain is continuing to get worse because it's now damaging other nerves and it's going up the leg. So I'm dealing with

• 1:53:47Speaker 01

  just continue to get worse, but this is where these, again, these runs get interesting where you adapt. You all of a sudden, this switch kind of flips and on day nine is where this switch kind of flipped. Where I'm now, this pain is, the pain is basically, it's there. It's getting worse, but your mind's kind of like, well, I guess we're fucking doing this. So we'll, we'll figure it out. Even though it's, it's such an interesting feeling because you feel all of the pain, but you're able to just kind of like exist with it. It's a very interesting, unless you've done things like this, it's something that you can't,

• 1:54:27Speaker 01

  it's something that's really hard to understand unless you've experienced some sort of long-term hardship where you're physically or mentally brutalizing yourself on a daily basis. And then all of a sudden, I'm sure you experienced this, you know, in combat with these, like it's weeks on end of stuff. And then all of a sudden, there's like a day where it's not better, but it just all of a sudden is better.

• 1:54:50Jocko Willink?

  It's just acceptance.

• 1:54:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a type of acceptance, but then there's also the physical, the physical adaptation or the mental adaptation to what's going on. Yeah, it's a really interesting feeling, a really interesting experience where, again, the pain, it got worse every single day, but you just kind of figure it out and deal with it.

• 1:55:09Jocko Willink?

  It's a, you've heard of the Baton Death March before, right?

• 1:55:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:13Jocko Willink?

  But one thing that's crazy when you read people that were, that went through that is Like the Japanese were just gonna kill you if you stopped walking. And you know, the thing of like, oh, you can always take another step. Well, it's like, actually, no. There's points that people get to where the guys, you know, I've read, read books where the Japanese are going to kill you if you stop. And guys would just be like, I'm stopping. I, I, I can't do anymore. I can't take another step. And then we just get executed on the side of the road.

• 1:55:46Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:55:46Jocko Willink?

  So it's like getting to that point of where you just cannot go any further. And this guy, one book in particular, I read was like, your will to live had to just be so strong that you would just not gonna stop. No matter what. So that's what I was kind of thinking about when you were saying, if I permanently injure myself, it doesn't matter. I'm gonna keep going.

• 1:56:11Speaker 01

  This is the last thing I do. It's the last thing I do.

• 1:56:15Speaker 02

  It was, it was pretty awesome to seeing it from the outside and just getting reports from the field where like, oh, Mason only got like 25 miles, you know, this morning or today or something like in those early days where you were having all that trouble. And we were like, damn dude, like he's going through it. And then about the time that switch flips for you and we were, you know, we weren't there for the whole run. We were there for a kind of beginning and, and the end and stuff. But, you know, getting those reports like, oh, no, he, he just clocked a 55 mile day. Oh, and another one, and another one, you know, and we just watched it picks, pick up steam again. It was like, he's, he's got this.

• 1:56:54Speaker 01

  Fifty-six, fifty-seven.

• 1:56:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's gonna get it like he's going and it was, it was just super awesome to watch, man. But yeah, those early days were gnarly.

• 1:57:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, they, dude, they were. They were, were, it was hell. I went through hell.

• 1:57:06Jocko Willink?

  Was there any moment where you said, hey, look, it's only the first day. I'm off to a bad start. Let me, let me recover for two weeks and then take another crack at this.

• 1:57:14Speaker 01

  No, absolutely not.

• 1:57:15Jocko Willink?

  And that's what, why? Because you had all the logistics in place. You just, what you said you were gonna do.

• 1:57:21Speaker 01

  That's quitting.

• 1:57:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:23Speaker 01

  That's quitting. If I, if I stopped on day one to start again, that's quitting. I quit because it was hard. That's what that would have been. If at any point I, unless it was weather. Even then, if at any point I had to take a day off, I would have not claimed any of the claims that I've claimed.

• 1:57:41Jocko Willink?

  Is that what the, is that kind of the rules?

• 1:57:44Speaker 01

  I would say so.

• 1:57:45Jocko Willink?

  You know, cause I've had some. You make up, right?

• 1:57:47Speaker 01

  Yes, there's, there's kind of an unspoken rule with this where it's, it's essentially a continuous effort. You can't leave the track. Like it's, you know, there's obviously you have to sleep, so it's not continuous, but there's.

• 1:58:00Jocko Willink?

  But you sleep in an RV or something?

• 1:58:01Speaker 01

  I slept on the side of the track in a, in a trailer. I get, you know, there's, there's kind of that, you know, Ned Brockman slept, uh, like in the building, like that was like attached to the track. Um, I don't know what Yanis did, but, um, like there's, you know, you, you stay there. You do not leave. You live and breathe that track. I did not step foot off of that track for, I lived there for a month, basically, or three weeks. Like I, I did, I did not go anywhere except about a hundred feet to the trailer and back. And then the, the 20 feet to the bathroom. Cause I did that a lot.

• 1:58:40Jocko Willink?

  So you end up raising $50,000 for the single parent project?

• 1:58:43Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:58:44Jocko Willink?

  Uh, you're the first American to do this challenge. You're the third person in history to do it. You just mentioned the other two gentlemen. When did they do it?

• 1:58:52Speaker 01

  So Yanis did it in the eighties, if I'm not mistaken. And then Ned Brockman did it in 2021.

• 1:58:58Jocko Willink?

  Do you know Ned?

• 1:58:59Speaker 01

  No, we've messaged a little bit on Instagram. Um, I, I messaged him and was like, hey, you have any pointers? He's like, good luck. And I'm like, no, do you have any pointers? And he was like, look, man, I'm fucked up. Like, you know, he, uh, again, this is, I, I have to preface this. What happened out there? I am dealing with stuff still. I still have nerve issues that will probably take me a couple of years, if not lifelong. They're minimal at this point, but like there's stuff I might permanently be dealing with for the rest of my life. My body was able to ma, was able to manage this because of my weight. My body was able to manage this because of how I trained. This is not something that

• 1:59:40Speaker 01

  people should go do. I have to preface this because Ned, Ned, he legitimately, his, his shoulder muscles literally deteriorated to the point they had to tape his arms into place because his body was eating itself alive. Like this is, this is something that is so, because you don't, when you run across America, there's terrain changes, there's visual changes, there's different things where the body actually is experiencing change almost every step. With this, it's the same plane, it's the same direction. I also, I did switch directions, but still,

• 2:00:19Speaker 01

  all the exact same muscles, mentally you're in the exact same place, mentally it takes significantly more of a toll and physically, despite what you would think, you'd think maybe the hills would maybe harder, you're using the exact same muscles, non-stop, that never changes. It doesn't, because there's no elevation change. So at no point do your muscles, you use any different muscles. So this is something that it, it should be taken, I've had a couple of, you know, kids, a lot of younger, you know, younger men reach out to me like, I'm gonna do this. I'm like, I'm like, I will support you, I will be in your corner, I will help you, but I'm, I'm warning you,

• 2:01:00Speaker 01

  this is not something that should be taken lightly, because it is something that, again, I might be dealing with lifelong repercussions because of. So it's just, I have to preface this because I feel like people saw what I did and were like, and this is, that's the whole point of this, is to, you know, achieve those impossible things and go for those big things, but I also just want to make sure that people understand, it comes at a cost. They always, and this, this is a big cost that might not be worth it, just so you can post on Instagram or something, or flex or whatever, whatever your reason is.

• 2:01:31Jocko Willink?

  So it's like one out of 10 do not recommend.

• 2:01:34Speaker 01

  Honestly, yes, I, my whole, so kind of the thing that I've come up with out of this is find your thousand. Find your thousand. It doesn't legitimately have to be a thousand miles. Find that thing in your life where you go for something, you dedicate six months to like three years of your life, dedicated to one sole thing. You give every ounce of yourself, your soul, your mind, your body to this thing. In the know, with the knowledge that you will likely fail getting for that. And that I technically failed. My goal was 66 miles a day, 15 days.

• 2:02:15Speaker 01

  I technically failed my original goal. What was Ned's? Ned's was 13 days. Damn dude. They fucking, he's a, he's a dog like, I'm insane.

• 2:02:27Speaker 01

  But I, but you dedicate all this time to this one thing. Whatever it is, it doesn't, it can be a business. It can be a thousand miles around a track. It can be, you just need to find your thousand. Find that thing that is impossible, that sounds impossible. Dedicate everything that you have to that one thing. Knowing that it will likely fail and it might not work out. And that you just did all of this one time in your life. It's not, it's not a misog. You know, you have the misog where you, you know, you do that one big thing every year. This is once, one time in your life. Pick that thing that alters the fabric of your reality. With the knowledge that you're probably going to fail.

• 2:03:12Speaker 01

  So that's what I think people should do. Instead of, instead of destroying your body, which maybe that's, maybe that's a thousand. Maybe it is what I, maybe it is a thousand miles around a track. There's, there's a, you have to, you have to look at your risks. You know, pros, cons, whatever you want to word that. You got to look at your risk and make sure it's worth it. But then go for that thing. Once in your life. Cause it, it might change your life. It probably will, it's going to change your life no matter what you do. And it's going to change your life for the better. No matter if you fail or succeed. Failure is not the opposite of success. We all know this. So it's one of those things that it will change your life and it will change your life for the better. I am a new man. I'm a new person. I, I feel so, again, I'm so at peace with myself.

• 2:03:57Speaker 01

  I found myself on that track. I found a version of Mason that I didn't know could ever exist. I didn't think it could exist. And we talked about all the shit that I dealt with and, you know, and all the things I went through and the mental stuff and all of it. And I did not think this version of myself could exist. And I just, I'm a, I'm a new person and it's the best. Even if I had failed, I know that I would still be this new person because I gave everything to this goal and it changed me. I think everybody should, everybody should strive for that one thing.

• 2:04:31Jocko Willink?

  So where do you go from here? So that, you know, it's to do the one thing in your life and now you're like, okay, now I gotta do some, something else, right?

• 2:04:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:43Jocko Willink?

  Maybe it won't be as big. You, do you set your sights a little bit lower now or set your, like, what's next?

• 2:04:49Speaker 01

  No, so just, you know, there's, there's a couple of things I have in the works. You know, the big thing that I'm really focusing on right now is my life. I, people don't realize with these things, I have to, so much gets sacrificed. Time, money, energy, people. I'm giving that, now I'm giving that back. My wife, giving that time back to my wife, focusing on building my businesses to, to build my family and focusing on that side of my life, using, taking what I've learned, taking that ultra mindset into life and applying it to these things. Doesn't mean I'm, I'm, I'm not done running, but I'm not, probably not going to do something this big. I don't know if I'll do something this big ever again.

• 2:05:31Speaker 01

  It, just because of the, the financial, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual toll that it takes on everyone. It's not just me, cause I'll go do it. If it didn't impact anyone else, fuck yeah, I'll go do it again. Like, let's run it back, but it impacts, it impacts so many people. And I just don't want to put people through that again. And, but, so next, next thing, um, next year, the next big, big things we're going to go for is I'm going to start focusing on trying to win some 200 mile races. Still very big goals, still very big races. It's just a different, it's just a different animal, it's in a different realm. So that's like the next, that's, that's my next, like, you know, the next

• 2:06:14Speaker 01

  years of my life essentially that I'll dedicate as far as like the sport goes. Next is in a couple of weeks, as insane as it sounds, as I'm talking about nerve damage and stuff, uh, we're going to be going for a world record to celebrate 250 years of America. Um, I'm going to be, uh, I will set the world record, running the most miles and laps around the Washington Monument, a point one mile loop. And we're gonna go set the record.

• 2:06:40Jocko Willink?

  Dang. Glutton, you're glutton for punishment.

• 2:06:43Speaker 01

  I guess.

• 2:06:44Jocko Willink?

  And what's the, you were telling, you mentioned something about the, there's like a charity involved, Never Surrender USA?

• 2:06:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, Never Surrender USA. So their whole, uh, they invited me out, um, and they were invited to be a part of this big celebration that's happening over there. And their whole thing is basically promoting healthy, healthy lifestyles for young adults and especially young men, as well as promoting patriotism in America. Doesn't matter what your political party is, we can still love America, but be in different political spectrums. Uh, there's an example, like I love this example because you know, LeBron takes a lot of heat for his political stance. But when he represents Team USA in the Olympics, he represents Team USA. He holds the flag, like he, you know, he is very patriotic in those moments. And I think that's a great example of someone who's, you know, a little extreme on one end of

• 2:07:34Speaker 01

  the spectrum, you can still be patriotic no matter where you sit. And so that's like, you know, their, their focus is the patriotism alongside the healthy living and young adults and young men. And they've invited me out to do this crazy thing to bring awareness to what they're doing and bring awareness that again, you can do, you can do hard things. You can push the boundaries. Uh, you can do cool things. It's, it's gonna be a lot of fun. There's a couple of people going out. Um, there's a guy, you guys have maybe seen his name's Iron Snad on Instagram. Um, he just did a hundred miles on a treadmill. Uh, or no, he did 24 hours, he did like a hundred and thirty miles or something like that on the treadmill. So he's gonna go see how many miles he can run in 30 hours on a treadmill. Um, there's some dude who's gonna see how many pull-ups and push-ups, like two different guys in 24 hours. I'm gonna set the world record running around the Washington Monument. So there's

• 2:08:19Speaker 01

  some cool stuff that's gonna be happening. Um, it's, it's gonna be a lot of fun. Uh, it's, it's, it's gonna be, and it's celebrate 250 years. I mean, that's not very many, uh, not very many countries or empires, whatever you wanna call it lasts that long, so.

• 2:08:34Jocko Willink?

  Check. And in the meantime, you also have your, your online, like you do nutrition, you do coaching online, you do race fuel planning and, and even a race day package.

• 2:08:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. So I, uh, you know, so I, I do nutrition coaching, uh, helping you get ready for whatever races it might be, as well as like life, you know, not life coaching, but just like coaching or nutrition for life and stuff. Um, but a big focus of mine is, you know, the endurance community, half marathon, marathon, ultra marathon, so on, um, helping you just through that process, training for your fueling. But then I also help with the actual race where, you know, I, I basically, especially if you're 50 miles plus, 50 miles, because below that, these, it's just not worth the money. I don't want to, I don't want to take people's money unless you're type A. This isn't something that's worth it below 50 miles, but I'll make a full spreadsheet, mile by mile, aid station by

• 2:09:27Speaker 01

  aid station, breaking down what to eat, what to pack, when to eat, how much to eat, grocery list, everything for them and their crew. So their crew can just be like, cool, here you go. They don't even have to think about it. It's just a spreadsheet that's ready to go, locked and loaded. Then I can take it a step further where you can now have a nutritionist basically on your crew. Um, like I'm going, I'm crewing a dude who's running across the state of Indiana, uh, coming up here. Uh, his name's Marcus Wind. He's doing it in a, uh, September. He's running across the entire state of Indiana, I guess the length of Indiana. Um, he'll be, I think the first person to have ever run the length of Indiana, if I'm not mistaken. Um, so yeah, he's going to be doing that coming up here in September and I'm going to be crewing him, uh, out there with him, doing all of his nutrition.

• 2:10:10Speaker 01

  So I'm doing that whole nutrition plan and then being on site with him. Um, I've done this for a couple of people. I crewed someone doing the Arizona Monster 300. Um, you know, I've done a couple of these things. It's really fun. I have a lot of fun doing it, but I do that as well. Um, it's, it's fun. It's a lot of fun.

• 2:10:25Jocko Willink?

  And that's, that's what Mason's getting after right now. Does that get us up to speed?

• 2:10:31Speaker 01

  I think so. Yeah. I mean, you know, we've got a couple of other businesses always going, but you know, whatever.

• 2:10:36Jocko Willink?

  What are the other businesses?

• 2:10:37Speaker 01

  Well, so I own a demolition company.

• 2:10:38Jocko Willink?

  The demo, what's that called?

• 2:10:40Speaker 01

  Wright Brothers Demolition.

• 2:10:41Jocko Willink?

  Wright Brothers Demolition.

• 2:10:42Speaker 01

  Me and my little brother own it. And then I have my gym, which is called Gym Gain Your Movement. It's, it's fun.

• 2:10:49Jocko Willink?

  Gain Your Movement.

• 2:10:50Speaker 01

  And then I consider social media. It's, it's a, it's a job.

• 2:10:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:54Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:10:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know.

• 2:10:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. It's a real thing. What, what kind of gym is it?

• 2:10:58Speaker 01

  It's a functional training gym. So we're actually partnered with a physical therapy clinic.

• 2:11:02Jocko Willink?

  Nice.

• 2:11:03Speaker 01

  And so a lot of, you know, a lot of our clients are older adults or those, you know, who are just rehabbing, who are basically post rehab from an injury, trying to get back to things and also a gym, you know? I work out there every day.

• 2:11:15Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 2:11:16Speaker 01

  But our whole focus is functional fitness.

• 2:11:19Jocko Willink?

  Gain your movement.

• 2:11:21Speaker 01

  Gym.

• 2:11:22Jocko Willink?

  In, in what, what city is it in?

• 2:11:24Speaker 01

  Bountiful, Utah.

• 2:11:25Jocko Willink?

  Bountiful, Utah.

• 2:11:26Speaker 01

  Oh, Bountiful.

• 2:11:26Jocko Willink?

  And people can find you at buffrunner.com. You have a YouTube channel. You have an Instagram. The, both of those are at buffrunner.

• 2:11:34Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:11:35Jocko Willink?

  And then Strava, which I don't, I don't have Strava.

• 2:11:37Speaker 01

  I'm also buffrunner on Strava.

• 2:11:39Jocko Willink?

  At buffrunner on Strava. If people want to check in with you. Kerry, do you got any questions?

• 2:11:44Speaker 02

  I am curious, just because we got to spend a lot of time with you in prep before the thousand mile run. And, you know, now we're on the other side of it. It's been a little while. What's, what's one of the big things or what, what's maybe the biggest thing that you've taken away from? You know, that the completion of that thousand mile run since, you know, since before for prep, now coming out the other side of it, what, what's that big lesson?

• 2:12:10Speaker 01

  I think, I think the lesson comes back to that, you know, you can accomplish so much more than you think. There, there's, there really are no limits. And I think one of the, I will say, you know, there's, there's no limits, you know, I found myself. I discovered who I was, truly who I was. But there's this other level to it where, you know, we, we've kind of talked about this at different points. The reason you aren't going further is because you've set that limitation on yourself. At some point in time, let's talk, let's just put it into running's perspective. You run that marathon, you get done with that marathon and you're, you're done. You're like, oh my gosh, marathon was so hard. Go run, if you tell yourself you're going to run 10 miles that day, you're going to get to 10 miles and you're going to be like, oh my gosh, that 10 miles was so hard.

• 2:12:56Speaker 01

  It's, it's a, you're setting these mental and physical limits on yourself. Because you tell yourself, well, I'm, I'm going to do this. And then you get there. Well, you got there, now what? And so you can, you know, and there's, there's a mindset where you can continue past, you can continue on, but most people stop because they said they were going to do it. They got there and then their mind tells them, oh, I'm there, I'm done. And when I finished a thousand miles, a thousand percent I could have run 55 more miles the next day. I just did it the day before. Why couldn't I do it the next day? And, but because I fit, I hit, I hit that thousand miles, my body was like, okay, we're done. And I shut down, my body shut down. Because I told myself a thousand miles, and I remember that next morning, sitting there thinking,

• 2:13:42Speaker 01

  I, I was like, this is crazy. I could have done it, but because I told myself a thousand miles, we're done. I actually ran a thousand and one, by the way, you gotta give myself credit. But uh, uh, it's, again, it's, it's, I set that limit on myself. That limit was a thousand miles. Sure, that limit's massive, but it's still a limit that was placed. And when I hit it, my mind said, stop. If I set it for 2,000, we would have run 2,000 miles. If I set it for 3,000, we would have run 3,000 miles. That's, it's, again, it's, it comes back to, you're just setting limits on yourself. And I, it hit me like a truck when I finished where I was like, holy shit. It really is just a mental limit that we place on ourselves. And so when I go,

• 2:14:28Speaker 01

  do anything now, that I just don't, yeah, sure, I might have a physical time limit in the day where it's like, oh, I can only work out for this long or run for this long or, whatever, again, can't, can't change the laws of physics, but there's, you know, with the biz, like my business side of my life. I basically, the other day I was sitting there and I, I'd worked, it was like a 16 hour day. My wife's like, are you tired? I'm like, no, I don't get tired anymore.

• 2:14:53Speaker 01

  Because I'm just, that's where I'm at. I don't get tired anymore.

• 2:14:57Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome, bro.

• 2:14:57Speaker 01

  Cause I'm not putting that limit on myself. I'm not gonna let myself, sure, I'll get sleepy, but I'm not gonna get tired anymore. Because it's a physical limit we place on ourselves.

• 2:15:08Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes those, uh, physical limits need to get smashed and the mental limits need to get smashed.

• 2:15:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:13Jocko Willink?

  And you know what? We have a little something for you.

• 2:15:16Speaker 01

  I know, I heard, I heard you shuffle.

• 2:15:18Jocko Willink?

  We got a little something for you. Um, this right here.

• 2:15:25Speaker 01

  That is so cool.

• 2:15:26Jocko Willink?

  The hammer of discipline. The hammer of discipline is right here. This is hand forged in America, of course.

• 2:15:33Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 2:15:33Jocko Willink?

  A guy named Carl Dunn, uh, who was in that show. I think the show is called Forged in Fire.

• 2:15:39Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:15:39Jocko Willink?

  He was like one of those guys on that, that forged stuff. And he, down at Taylor's Mill in South Carolina, he forged this hammer of discipline as a recognition for you hammering through all limitations.

• 2:15:55Speaker 01

  That is so cool.

• 2:15:56Jocko Willink?

  And getting after it.

• 2:15:57Speaker 01

  Oh, and a thousand, one thousand and one point six.

• 2:16:01Jocko Willink?

  Of course, man. We got it. We don't play around. Details matter.

• 2:16:04Speaker 01

  Details do matter. Oh, this is, this is so cool. I have, I, this, late in high school gave me like a cool plaque.

• 2:16:13Jocko Willink?

  Nice.

• 2:16:13Speaker 01

  Got my name on it. It says a thousand miles.

• 2:16:15Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:16:16Speaker 01

  I love you guys, but this might be cooler.

• 2:16:20Speaker 01

  This is sweet.

• 2:16:21Jocko Willink?

  Well, right old man.

• 2:16:22Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:16:23Jocko Willink?

  Well earned. Obviously you worked your ass off for that and you suffered for it. You got any, uh, final thoughts before we close it out?

• 2:16:29Speaker 01

  Go do hard shit. Don't place those limits on yourself.

• 2:16:33Jocko Willink?

  Check. Great advice, man. Thanks for joining us. Uh, thanks for talking us through that.

• 2:16:37Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me.

• 2:16:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, it's.

• 2:16:39Speaker 01

  It's an honor.

• 2:16:39Jocko Willink?

  It's been great. It's been great to watch the whole process. You know, we kinda, at Jocko Feu, we got involved with you. These guys kinda told me who you were and what you were doing. And I was like, oh, hell yeah. Hell yeah. Let's go. And so thanks for sharing that. Thanks for sharing the lessons that you've learned along the way. And, and you know, thanks for what you're doing to raise money and awareness, you know, for, for all the single parents out there, which is awesome. And now you've got this thing going with this other organization to help with, uh, people being on the right path, which is obviously what we're into. People being on the right path. And you have certainly set out a right path for all of us.

• 2:17:15Speaker 01

  I just hope someone sees this and knows that they can change their life.

• 2:17:18Jocko Willink?

  Absolutely, brother. I think that is a fact. So, thank you. Thank you.

• 2:17:24Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Mason Wright has left the building. Clearly, he's been getting after it. He's gonna be getting after it some more. And he's running mostly, but he lifts all the time. Running, lifting, training. Just and working, running. He was showing me some pictures when he left, before he left. He's on a job site demoing shit. Representing, by the way. Yeah, he's representing, but it's like, this dude is, this dude is fully getting after it. He is. So, awesome. When you're fully getting after it like that, you need the right fuel. And as you heard, we, you, me, and Mason Wright, we all recommend Jocko Fuel.

• 2:18:09Jocko Willink?

  Check out JacoFuel.com. We got everything that you need. We got energy, we got hydration, we got protein. Lots of protein. We got that new raspberry gelato, which I had before I came to train today. Well, after I got done working out, I had a little time before training and I had the raspberry gelato. And dang, it tastes good. It's a little sweetness. It tastes very refreshing.

• 2:18:35Jocko Willink?

  So, get in there. JacoFuel.com. You can get pretty much everything that you need and you can get it around the country right now. We're in over 50,000 stores at this time. That's probably includes your retailer, you know, where you buy your groceries and whatnot. If they don't have it, ask for it. We'll get you. We'll get you taken care of. But we got everything that you need to stay strong and stay fueled. So, check out JacoFuel.com. Also, OriginUSA.com. We're making American-made goods. We're making American-made jujitsu gear. We're making American-made jeans, American-made boots, American-made t-shirts. We're making American-made gear.

• 2:19:17Jocko Willink?

  And we're not just making it here in America. We're making it with 100% American-made materials. So, the cotton, the zipper.

• 2:19:28Jocko Willink?

  The twill, it's all from America. So get yourself some 100% communist free. No communism. It's 100% communist free. It's heavily tested for communism. There's no communism. OriginUSA.com. Get some.

• 2:19:49Speaker 02

  We've also got JacoStore.com where you can get your gear to represent on the path.

• 2:19:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, look at you, dude. Just, just, just, just jacking your boys.

• 2:20:00Speaker 02

  Like I never left, man. Yeah. So we've got the Discipline Equals Freedom shirts. We've got the good shirts. You know, these are items we can wear when we're representing. We've also, I, I got a sneak peek today of some new gear that we're, we got going up on the store. Is that, are the, the 250s shirts, is that Shirt Locker or is that Jocko Store?

• 2:20:20Jocko Willink?

  That's Jocko Store.

• 2:20:21Speaker 02

  Jocko Store.

• 2:20:21Jocko Willink?

  We always make a little Independence Day.

• 2:20:23Speaker 02

  Oh, of course.

• 2:20:23Jocko Willink?

  T-shirt to represent. So yeah, that's, that should be live here shortly.

• 2:20:29Speaker 02

  Right on. So keep an eye out for that new Independence Day Jocko Store Defcore. Standard issue? Not quite standard issue.

• 2:20:38Jocko Willink?

  It's not standard.

• 2:20:39Speaker 02

  It's just a little hitter. Right on.

• 2:20:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So check out JacoStore.com and check out the subscription scenario.

• 2:20:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. Shirt Locker. So if you like cool designs that are Defcore adjacent, uh, yeah, check out that.

• 2:20:56Jocko Willink?

  Why are they Defcore adjacent? Aren't they just straight Defcore in many scenarios?

• 2:21:00Speaker 02

  They are straight Defcore, but the designs are a little more varied than, than people may expect from just a regular Jocko Store shirt. But, uh, people love the, the Shirt Locker designs. I love the Shirt Locker designs. Subscription, new shirt every month. Definitely worth getting involved in.

• 2:21:17Jocko Willink?

  Right on. Get involved.

• 2:21:18Speaker 02

  Get involved.

• 2:21:20Jocko Willink?

  Uh, books. We got a bunch of books. Apparently Mason Wright's writing a book, which we'll look forward to that. Uh, Put Your Legs On by Rob Jones, Need to Lead by Dave Burke. We got a bunch of books that I've written, including kids books. Those warrior kids out there, get them on the path. Take care of your kids. Take care of the neighbors' kids. Let them read a book that's going to help them in so many different ways. WarriorKid.com, check that out. Also, if you need steak, ColoradoCraftBeef.com, get yourself some good steak and some tallow. You know what tallow is? Beef tallow. Beef tallow. Yeah, hell yeah. Okay, so this is, you cook with it. Well, this one, I cook with it. Yeah.

• 2:22:02Jocko Willink?

  Just throw it in the pan and it, it greases up that pan proper with that beef tallow. And it's not, it's not some formulated chemical thing. It's beef tallow. And those beef sticks are pretty legit. So, check out ColoradoCraftBeef.com. We got the muster for Echelon Front coming July 8th through the 10th in San Diego. So if you need leadership in your world, which you do, if you have issues in your world, which you do, those issues will be solved by leadership and through leadership. So, check out EchelonFront.com. We have an entire leadership consultancy. That's what we do.

• 2:22:44Jocko Willink?

  And like I said, we also have an event in San Diego, July 8th through the 10th. Come and check that out. We have an online training academy, ExtremeOwnership.com. We teach the skills of leadership online. There's interactive courses and there's live events that we do all the time. So, check that out as well. If you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, want to help Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee, and her incredible charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org. Check out HeroesAndHorses.org. Check out Jimmy May's organization, BeyondTheBrotherhood.org. Check out WarriorsInNeed.org.

• 2:23:29Jocko Willink?

  So we had Ben Ingram on the podcast and he's taking service members from all the services that worked in aviation and kind of fast-tracking them into jobs in civilian aviation. And there's like 30,000 job openings.

• 2:23:48Jocko Willink?

  And if you want to get one of those jobs, check out warriorsinneed.org. It's cool. After he came on the podcast, a bunch of the big airline companies are reaching out to him. They need people. So check out warriorsinneed.org if you want to help that out. And then strongholdrescue.org, another good one. And finally, singleparentproject.org. That's what Mason was trying to support and supported in his thousand mile run. So check that out as well. If you want to connect with Mason on the interwebs, check out buffrunner.com. And then on YouTube and on Instagram and social media, including Strava,

• 2:24:29Jocko Willink?

  he's at buffrunner. And for us, you can check out jocko.com and then on social media, I'm at jocko willink. Carrie is at Carrie Hilton.

• 2:24:39Jocko Willink?

  Just be careful because there is an algorithm which is looking to ruin your life. Don't let it. Thanks to all the Americans right now that are stationed around the world in uniform, protecting freedom and defending our way of life. We could not do any of the things that we're doing right now without your service and sacrifice, and we thank you for it. Also, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, as well as all other first responders. Thank you for defending us here on the home front.

• 2:25:11Jocko Willink?

  And everyone else out there, the path is hard and there will be obstacles and there'll be challenges and there'll be headwinds and there'll be injuries and there'll be pain and it will be uphill, always uphill. There will be fatigue.

• 2:25:32Jocko Willink?

  But if you can just take one more step,

• 2:25:36Jocko Willink?

  if you can just take one more step, you can overcome and you can achieve that goal. So go out there and get after it. And that's all we've got for tonight. Until next time, this is Carrie and Jocko out.