Jocko Responds to Rumors of Being on Steroids, TRT, and PEDs. Jocko DMZ 001

A response to an interesting evaluation and analysis from popular Youtube channel, "More Plates More Dates", about the question, "Is Jocko Willink 'natural' or not." 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 the Jocko DMZ Podcast, Episode 1, sitting here with Echo Charles. So I get a random text from you, Echo Charles, get a random text from Echo, and it says, "The whole world thinks you're on steroids." Which I, there's no context around it, and I wrote back, "Why is that?" Or something along those lines. And then you sent me the link to this YouTube video of More Plates, More Dates, which is the YouTube channel. And it's this video, and they're trying to decipher whether I'm on steroids or on TRT.

• 0:42Jocko Willink?

  So I laughed, it was funny, it was funny. And the, like, the subtitle of it is, "He trains three times a day, sleeps five hours, and is fucking huge." That's the, that's the title of it. And it's funny, it's, so I laughed, smiled a little bit, and it's, it's kind of funny for me to people to think I'm on steroids or on testosterone. It's a good compliment, because I'm not. And I don't have anything, I don't have anything against people that do steroids, unless you're like, competing in a sport where you're not supposed to, you do that kind of stuff. And then I don't really, yeah, then you shouldn't do it.

• 1:27Jocko Willink?

  But I know a lot of people that are on, either are on steroids, have been on steroids, I know a lot of people that have been on TRT, which interestingly, the fact, what I'm saying right now is one of the things that this guy, his name is Derek, and I've watched a bunch of his videos before, randomly, he's a well-educated guy, he's a smart guy, he's pretty funny, too. Yeah. But he, that's one of the things that he sort of mentioned when he makes his conclusion, which the, the conclusion of the video is, and I forgot, I've got the exact quote written down here somewhere, was kind of like, "Yeah, he's probably done steroids, and he's..."

• 2:09Jocko Willink?

  Almost definitely on TRT, which was his conclusion. Which was interesting because the guy does have a lot of knowledge about this kind of stuff. But it's weird because even as he was saying, coming to this conclusion. You got a lot of, he kept backpedaling a little bit, but then kind of moving forward, backpedaling, moving forward. Now, here's the deal. I don't really care what, I think it's kind of funny and whatever, there's always going to have stuff said about you on the internet. But here's where I was a little bit concerned. Is if you're a person that's, let's say you're an 18 year old kid and you think Jocko is cool. And you hear this thing, then maybe people are starting to think, oh, well, you know, Jocko uses steroids, just watch this video.

• 2:53Jocko Willink?

  Or if you're a person that's in the military or in law enforcement, where you're putting your job in jeopardy to use steroids or use these kinds of drugs, then that's bad. And I didn't want to have that out there where people are like, well, you know, Jocko uses them. Because that's the, the conclusion. So, um, yeah, I wanted to like go through it a little bit and see how we ended up in this situation where, where we're at.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  That's a good point there where I didn't really think about it in that depth where, yeah, who cares? Especially nowadays, we're, brah, take, take whatever you like, unless you're literally cheating on something, something official, whatever, brah, do your thing.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  But yeah, so if, if you're doing it and everyone else is doing it and it's so like normal in life or whatever, yeah, who's the, what's to, that'll influence younger people, less knowledgeable people to be like, oh, everyone does it, even Jocko? This pillar of integrity, you know, in their mind and all this stuff. And so that's how normal it is. And you know, it's some influence, it's like false influence, you know?

• 3:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So that made me feel like, oh, maybe we should, we should talk about it a little bit. Because that's not cool.

• 4:06Jocko Willink?

  The, so how that, let me just give my background a little bit, just kind of so people understand. Um, so when I was a kid, I was a hardcore kid. I was a straight edge kid. If you don't know what that means, that means I didn't drink, I didn't smoke, I didn't smoke pot, I didn't do anything like that. I was into hardcore music and I was what's called straight edge back in the day. So, so that's, that's the beginning. Now, if I was into other kind, if I was into a, a metal, which I was into metal, but I moved past the metal very quickly and into hardcore and got into that scene.

• 4:48Jocko Willink?

  And so I was in that scene, my friends were in that scene, there we are. And guess what? When you're in that scene, you're not drinking, you're not doing drugs. So there's my high school years. Yeah. You know, like they're, they're done. Then what do I do? Well, then I joined the military. So when you join the military, guess what? You can't do drugs. Uh, now I drank when I was in the military. I drank a lot, probably drank too much. Oh, yeah. But if you get caught doing drugs in the military, you get kicked out of the military. Even steroids. Even steroids, even steroids. Um, now again, when, look, people want to do drugs. I got all kinds of friends that do drugs. I got all kinds of friends that do drugs.

• 5:30Jocko Willink?

  I got friends that smoke pot all day long. Um, I got friends that drink a lot. I got friends that do mushrooms and acid and all kinds of crazy shit. And I don't, I'm, I'm, these are my legitimate friends. But I don't do that stuff. So I don't hold anything against them. And I got a lot of friends that have used steroids for sure and use steroids. For sure. People that I train with sometimes, people that are on TRT, I know all these kinds of people. I don't, I don't, I don't hold one single grudge against them. When someone beats the shit out of me on the mats. or roughs me up and I think well you know oh that guy is probably on steroids or is on steroids which by the way they they'll tell me yeah yeah I was you know I'm gonna psycho oh cool yeah I don't I don't have any

• 6:16Jocko Willink?

  animosity towards that person but in the Navy in the military you can't do that and there was a bunch of comments in these sections that were about everyone in the military is on steroids which was crazy for me to read it was crazy for me to read um but okay so I'm in the military if you use drugs if you use steroids you can get kicked out there was no way I was ever gonna sacrifice or put at risk my military career doing the job I loved cuz I wanted to be a little bit bigger and by the way I was pretty big you know like I wasn't I was good to go I wasn't in this situation where I was like oh no I hope I can

• 6:59Jocko Willink?

  you know be a little bit stronger I wasn't in that situation I wasn't in a situation where I was like oh I hope I can be a little bit more jacked I was as jacked as I thought I could needed to be to do my job

• 7:09Speaker 01

  do you know anyone that got in trouble I don't know kicked out whatever for steroids

• 7:14Jocko Willink?

  I know I know guys that got in trouble I don't know if anyone got kicked out um I know that it was quote hard to test for they'd say right they'd be like it's really hard to test um so what they would do is they would take this is alleged right this is this is what I'd hear and this is the kind of stuff that I just need to hear this one time and I'd be like okay cool what they do is it's really expensive to test for steroids so they would test a hundred samples they'd mix them all together and test for steroids and if it was in there then they'd do an individual test for each one of them to save money so I hear that and I'm like okay so they're testing I don't I'm not gonna do this yet um and and by the way like of all my close friends in the SEAL teams

• 8:01Jocko Willink?

  There's not one of them. I'm trying to think. I can't even think of any of them. That was like doing steroids.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  I knew a guy.

• 8:12Jocko Willink?

  I knew guys that were peripheral friends like, oh yeah, this guy. Oh yeah, yeah, dude, he's juicing. And quite frankly, these were the people that were.

• 8:22Jocko Willink?

  In some cases, it was like, oh yeah. Maybe if I was him, we'd get on the shit too. You know what I'm saying? Like if you were like, maybe you weren't as jacked. Or maybe you didn't like working out as much as I did. Or maybe you didn't, you know, you just were, didn't have the genetics to walk around at two ten, two twenty. Right? And if you don't have that, maybe you're like, bro. You know? And you're hanging around with a bunch of guys that are jacked? So, so occasionally, you said you knew a team guy?

• 8:51Speaker 01

  A team guy. Who got busted for steroids and got kicked out straight up.

• 8:56Jocko Willink?

  There you go. There you go.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  And I worked, he worked with me. He told me the whole story. He went down to, and it was weird. They didn't do it through a test though. And this is how I sort of found out, I guess. It's not like I was looking for the answer or nothing like that, but this is how I found out that yeah, steroids are a no go. Teams at least. Cause he went down to Mexico to get them. That's where he would always get them. And then. This, this is the story he told me where he'd go there. Inject them in Mexico. And then, um. He felt bad about throwing away all the needles and stuff. So he'd keep like the needles in the trash and stuff like in his like bag or in his pockets or whatever.

• 9:32Jocko Willink?

  The conscientious law breaker.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  So what he said.

• 9:36Jocko Willink?

  Bummer, yeah.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  Oh, and then, so he'd have like the used like needles or whatever. And then he, so when he came back, they caught, they caught him. They were like, oh, you came here for steroids? This was like a long time, like ninety something.

• 9:47Jocko Willink?

  They being the law enforcement or something?

• 9:49Speaker 01

  Law enforcement, yeah, the border guys or whatever. This, actually, this is like maybe two thousand two. Maybe this is when I, when I knew him and stuff, worked with him. And then, yeah, he said that and I was like, oh. The story was weird, like. That's a weird way to get caught, but whatever. And he got caught and then they reported it and all this stuff and he got kicked out.

• 10:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's.

• 10:10Jocko Willink?

  I would occasionally know of like Marines that were doing it. Occasionally, man, but it was not legal. I do know that like you if you got in trouble for it, you were getting kicked out. But is it the same now, though? Cause let's face it, that was a different day. Yes. It is the same now. It is the same now. Now, do guys have more knowledge, maybe where they can like know how to skirt the system or whatever? That is possible. But with me, my friends. Bro, like, and my friends were in good freaking shape, you know, we were lifting hard and whatever, like trying to be jacked and you know what else? We're young and you know, when you're 18 years old, you're basically on steroids anyways, because you have so much freaking testosterone in your system.

• 10:55Jocko Willink?

  So we're, we're big. So, so that was my, um, so that was my Navy career. I'm not doing something that's going to put my whole life at risk. It's not going to happen. So then I retire and now when I retire, I got wife and kids and houses and businesses and all this stuff going on. I actually, that's pretty much when I stopped drinking, when I retired from the teams. Now all of a sudden I don't have any of that, that type of friendship directly all the time. And I'm just like, and plus I'm a little bit older and I'm looking around going, okay, what benefit am I getting out of this? And I'm, it's just a totally different scene. So I, I didn't like one, I didn't retire and go like, I'm never drinking again. I just looked up in a month and I had like, oh, you know, I had a couple of beers here. And then two months later, I had a few beers and a couple of drinks at this place or

• 11:39Jocko Willink?

  met a client, we had some whatever, whatever it was. But then after like probably another year, I just looked up and I was like, oh wait, it's been another four months. It's been six months. And then all of a sudden I wasn't drinking anymore. And, and so that was that. And I, and still was just like, I'm not doing any other drugs either.

• 12:01Jocko Willink?

  So that's what happened and that's, that's how my life has gotten to this point where I really, I, I haven't done, not only have I not done steroids, I've never done any drugs other than alcohol and caffeine. Right? Which caffeine, again, it's like, I, I use that at certain times. I don't just drink caffeine all the time. Um, but back to this video. It's, uh, it's interesting. It's an interesting video and it's, you can see this guy, his name is Derek. Seems like a good dude. Like I said, uh, I've watched some of his, his thing is natty or not. Cause natty means natural.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 12:39Jocko Willink?

  And not means you're, what do they keep saying other words for it like enhanced? And then they got all, then I called all these other slang words for, uh, it's pretty funny.

• 12:50Jocko Willink?

  And what, what's your experience with the sauce, with the gear?

• 12:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:55Jocko Willink?

  With the steroids?

• 12:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. Okay. So, so yeah, okay.

• 12:59Jocko Willink?

  So which by the way, I, I actually mentioned this to you too. It had to be a little bit of a bummer that this guy does this whole video about steroids and you're in the video and he didn't mention you once, bro. I was like, this is gonna hurt. Echo is gonna be crushed.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Whatever, man. Whatever. They mentioned in the comments. So.

• 13:13Jocko Willink?

  You made the comments. You made the comments. I think maybe you're up next for natty or not. Freaking Echo Charles.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Uh, what? So I don't know. You tell me if I've ever taken steroids. Cause it's one of those weird things. So, okay. So when I was 22, I'm 44, I'm about to be 44 by the way, right now. I was 22 years old. I was working as a valet. I remember this for, and I was lifting and I was big at this point. Like right now, I was 240 at that time. And we were lifting, you know, my boy Squatty Lewis, AKA Scotty Lewis, uh, Kona Police Department. I forget his position, but man, shout out. Yeah. Uh, he, it was me, him and this other guy, Rinda Brooks. We'd lift and we were lifting hard. That was like.

• 13:52Jocko Willink?

  Bro, you about to rat out Squatty Lewis for doing juice?

• 13:54Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no. He was, that, these are just my lifting partners. I'm saying, you need to confirm with him too. In fact, after the video, I called him up. I was like, bro, all right, my numbers, do I remember this correctly? He was like, bro, he squatted more than me, a little bit and.

• 14:06Jocko Willink?

  And squatty.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  Squatty Lewis all day. Um, he, uh, so anyway, so we'd lift a lot and.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  Um, so there are other guys, there was like a number of guys who would, who do steroids. Not that would lift with us, but and they were big and they were strong. And I remember I got to the two forty and you know, in Hawaii, everyone's kind of bigger, just in general. So I remember thinking, if I can get up to like two sixty, two fifty five, that'd be a solid like.

• 14:34Jocko Willink?

  Two sixty is big. Two sixty is a big human.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Bro, I have, I have the picture of, of me two forty and the thing is I don't look that big.

• 14:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Most I ever got to was two fifty.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:45Jocko Willink?

  I was a team two.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  The most I weighed in was two forty seven.

• 14:48Jocko Willink?

  I was a team two. We were trying to get our platoon weight average over two hundred pounds. And everyone was just squatting.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 14:55Jocko Willink?

  And just freaking eating. But you know what? Even then, we weren't juicing.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:00Jocko Willink?

  We weren't juicing.

• 15:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:02Jocko Willink?

  We were just lifting and eating. And I finally got to two fifty, did a four mile run and I about died and I was like, all right. Yeah, I was not, my frame is not meant for two fifty.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. And mine wasn't either.

• 15:13Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you're at two forty, you're lifting heavy.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, and you kind of cap out and um, and you know, when you kind of, when you get that kind of gain, because when I stopped playing football, I was like one eighty five, one ninety.

• 15:24Jocko Willink?

  So you put on sixty, fifty pounds.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  This is over like about a year.

• 15:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but there's no one that's complaining about fifty pounds again.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. All natural, all like for all that, I mean, you know, you get your, I remember there's a supplement called Betagen, you know, that I remember taking. Um, cause my friend recommended it, whatever.

• 15:42Jocko Willink?

  Oh, well, if we're gonna bring up, I remember when uh, when creatine came out.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:46Jocko Willink?

  I was on the creatine. Yeah, I think it did too. I was on the creatine, yep, trying to get chacked.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, fully. But here's the thing, like, okay, so the workout program that I was on is a very effective workout program. It's still like, I still do it today, even just for maintenance, but it is, it is hard.

• 16:01Jocko Willink?

  Bro, you know what? I just want to interject this thing. When guys are in SEAL training right now, they're not allowed to take um.

• 16:11Jocko Willink?

  They're not allowed to take supplements.

• 16:14Jocko Willink?

  Because I guess along the way, someone, you know, pop pause me like, well, I was taking this supplement over here. And, and so they just like, okay, guess what? No supplements. Yeah, dirty batch, that whole thing. So, so when you say like, are, is it less stringent? That to me indicates hell no.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Oh, right.

• 16:30Jocko Willink?

  You know? Right?

• 16:31Speaker 01

  They don't even need to do supplements.

• 16:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, can't even, we can take milk for crying out loud. You need to make a waiver for that.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  All right, so, long, long story short, I was like, hey, yeah, some other guys that I knew and respected, like, they were kind of doing it. Yeah, this is, this is in nineteen, I don't know, ninety nine or something like that. And I remember thinking, yeah, if they're doing it, you know, like, sure, all, you know? So I kind of hit them up or whatever. And, um, and so they got me, if I'm remembering the name correctly of it. Cause there's a bunch of different kinds of steroids, apparently. I did not know this. And it was like sus, just sus and something. And it was like, these little vials, and then you gotta get like needles. And they're like, hey, get the big needle, this, you know, the big needle, that's the good one. And I was like, when I was twelve, long story, when I was young, I got a traumatic experience with a bunch of blood tests.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  Cause they, they had to do a bunch of surgeries on my hand for some stuff. So they blood tested me a lot and they missed IV a lot. And so this is when I was twelve, so I did not like needles at this point. So I'm like, all right, I guess that's what we're doing. So, cool. So, um, so my friend, he would, he stuck me with the first one. Boom, puts it in or whatever. And I'm like, okay, cool. Like, it's worth it. It was no problem if someone else does it, you know, like, okay. So I'm like, cool. I think, I don't, Brad, I didn't do research on this kind of stuff. I just, I just seen the, the other guys doing it and how strong and big and, and I was like, of course it works or whatever. So boom, he sticks me with one. And I'm like, cool. To me, the next day, I'm going to be lifting way more than I was yesterday, like a hundred percent.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  So I go in there and I'm like, bro, I'm not even stronger. It's like the next day. So I'm like, all right, cool. So it was just one shot and then one, two, three days. And then the next week comes around, I'm not stronger at all. So I'm like, kind of disappointed, but then I'm like, oh, maybe it takes a little while to kick in, whatever, right? So the next week, I go again, I had another shot, boom. So I go, I'm working out my, cause I know the workout is very regimented. So I'm like, and each workout, you kinda, it's like you're going for a PR every single day. It's, it's for a certain amount of reps and stuff like that. That's just the nature of the workout. So I remember freaking not even exceeding my old PR, like all this, I like, I wasn't getting stronger at all. And I was like, super, and I'm freaking sticking, getting stuck with like needles and doing steroids at this point.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  So I'm like, oh freak. Alright, so the third week comes around and I get, uh, he does one more and I'm like, cool. And I go and still nothing. In fact, one day I had a bad day. I got a weekday and I was like, this, but these are not working. But I'm like, whatever. Maybe I just gotta do more. Maybe, maybe I gotta buy some more. Maybe it takes, um, takes longer than I thought then. So my friend, the next week, my friend is out of town. He went like somewhere. And I'm like, uh, I don't wanna tell anyone. I'm not gonna tell anyone, oh dude, can you do this? Can you stick this in my butt or whatever? And so I'm like, I gotta do it. I gotta do it. So like, so I'm sitting in my room like.

• 19:28Jocko Willink?

  It's gonna be a bad edit right there, that one.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  So I'm thinking that, so this was shot number four I'm on, right? I think the number was two fifty, sustus something two fifty. That's what this compound was. So I'm like, in my room, like trying to do it. I can't do it. I can't bring myself to do it. I need someone to do it, but I'm like, no, I'm gonna sat, you know, like I can lift, I'm strong, I was strong already. And I, so I think I'm like tough or whatever. And why is this needle defeating me? So I'm like, no, I'm gonna do it. And I, but I couldn't do it. It took me like one hour to just give up and be like, I, I can't, I can't do it to myself. And my friend was out of town for like three weeks. It was like for the, you know, for, for a long time. And so I just put it away. And then, you know, you kind of reflect like, what am I, I don't really get what I'm doing right now.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  When I kind of reflect and then, so I still had like three, four, or five more shots like left in the, in the little packages or whatever. Those are probably still hidden in the mattress. Hawaii somewhere or somebody found him or whatever, but yeah, never did. Did those three shots? No gains. In fact, had a fucking bad day. That's, that's what really made me sad. Like I'm like, bro, I can see if I maintain and it didn't kick in till later, but I had a bad day. I remember like thinking, are these making me weaker or something? It was probably because I didn't rest or didn't eat or whatever. They good, but no gains, no benefit, no nothing, no side effects, no nothing. I'm expecting to get right raging, you know, because I was like Cruz, I was pretty Cruz mellow of a person. So I'm thinking, oh, maybe I'll, I'll be more angry and that'll be cool. You know, like more and more, more like

• 21:01Speaker 01

  what do you call it? When you confront people more?

• 21:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  Confrontational, you know, that'll help my little personality or whatever. Nothing, nothing like no effects at all. Like if, if, if I found out later that those, that batch was like fake or not real, it'd be, oh, that makes sense to me because it didn't affect. So anyway, that was it. That was my whole steroid experience. Um, but technically Echo, have you ever taken steroids? Yeah, that's it. That is 100% of my steroid experience.

• 21:31Jocko Willink?

  So I had a similar assessment. So I was on my, I was on deployment and there was like guys in another platoon and they went on a trip somewhere. And again, like the reason I, I didn't bring this up when I talked about my close friends, like these guys were in a different platoon. I knew them. They were good guys and everything, but like a couple of them, when they went on this trip, they juiced, right? And they, and they came back and they're like, and the rumors like, hey, these guys are freaking doing steroids. And I was like, oh shit, you know, I'm thinking the same thing you are like, these guys are gonna freaking just get jacked.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, hell yeah.

• 22:07Jocko Willink?

  But they weren't, they weren't. I was kind of like, uh, really? That, that's like, so to me now, I talked about the risk earlier of getting caught. Now I'm going to risk getting caught and it's over nothing. So that was another thing. And then, and then there was a guy that was in the regular Navy and he was a freaking good dude. He was from, I want to say he was from American Samoa, Samoa. Super cool guy. We used to hang out and he was jacked and he was telling me, he was like, no man, like you should do a little bit. He was like saying you should do, because that's what he was like, look, man, I just do a little bit. And it, you know, gets me from, from, you know, two oh five to two twenty five.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  But to me, that's a lot.

• 22:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that is a lot, but that what he was saying, yeah, I just do, you know, and that keeps me like I'm ripped. And, but he was trying to convince me, he was like, one of the early of just like, just do a, a small dose and that. Well, what he was saying was a small dose, but again, I was just like, yeah, dude. Like, I'm already two fifteen. I need to squat more before I risk my whole career.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a big deal.

• 23:16Jocko Willink?

  To gain ten, that's freaking crazy to me. So, so that was that.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  Um, but it in, I'll, I'll say this too, back in the, um, back when, when I did that, I was already two forty. And the numbers, which I don't know if you're going to go into the video that Derek was referencing, but. And we went to some numbers. And I was already doing those numbers. Like, that's when I was reached my peak. And then I was like, okay, let me take something. Found it in myself to be like, yeah, let me take something to get more, you know? So I did it or whatever. And since then, literally, that was, I'm twenty two years old at the time. So since then. But just going, that's all I did was work valet and lift.

• 23:57Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  Um, so since then, but I, I got back, when I moved to the mainland, I cut all the way to where even before I moved, I cut all the way back down. In fact, I remember being under two hundred pounds here on purpose.

• 24:09Jocko Willink?

  Really?

• 24:09Speaker 01

  Just to be more cut up and just that was the look is, you know?

• 24:13Jocko Willink?

  Look at that guy.

• 24:17Jocko Willink?

  So, so, uh, I'm talking about what you just said, the video, right? So there's the, I forget what the name of it, I think the name of the video is how much can Jocko lift?

• 24:26Speaker 01

  Skinny.

• 24:26Jocko Willink?

  Which is, and it's skinny knees is kind of like what I call that video, which is how this video by Derek starts off. And it has this little clip.

• 24:38Jocko Willink?

  And just to give a little context around this clip, the whole way that thing started was me talking about squatting.

• 24:45Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 24:46Jocko Willink?

  The reason I came into work talking about squatting, because I was on a, on this, on the squat train.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  Here, well, here's before even that, this is important to know. Cause Derek does gets this wrong in the video. He refers to it as the podcast, like we were talking about this on the podcast. This was not the podcast. It wasn't, literally, this was the point before the podcast, before we start the podcast, we're just talking trash. And if you watch that whole video in the beginning, you're like saying, it's weird. I don't even feel like, um, putting on headphones today. That's how we start the video, like, well, this is not the podcast, this is before we're doing, and then we're talking about all this book and I'm drinking coffee. I'm getting things ready and all this stuff.

• 25:24Jocko Willink?

  Is that, is this one where you say like, do I look small? Is that the video?

• 25:28Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 25:29Jocko Willink?

  Cause isn't, isn't there another video or there was another time where I was talking to you about like, do you even squat? Or maybe it's the same video.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  The same video.

• 25:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, okay.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:37Jocko Willink?

  Because, okay, the reason I said squat train, and this is something I've talked about before. I go in, I go on different paths of working out, right? Like for a while, I'll just be like trying to do certain types of pull ups or certain numbers of pull ups. Then I'm trying to, you know, uh, do muscle ups. Then I'm trying to do a heavy deadlift, then I'm trying to squat, then I'm trying to sprint. Like I'll go through these little phases just to keep myself entertained, different challenges. And also, let's face it, you get to a certain point, you kind of reach your genetic capability or you, you get close to your genetic capability.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  Potential, that's what we call it.

• 26:14Jocko Willink?

  Potential, and then you're like, it's going to put you, you know, okay, you get to, you get to a deadlift of, you know, 495. And you're deadlifting 495 and you want to get to 500. All of a sudden you got about, okay, cool, I'm not running. I need to just eat, I need to gain 30 pounds. Like you're going to do some things that are going to compromise other aspects of your life. Your jujitsu game, your cardio game, you're running, so. I have, you know, I go on these different little uh uh trains, these different cycles of working out. And at that point, clearly, I was just like in a mode where I was trying to just get, get, get my squat on. So I was front squat, back squat, overhead squat, and I was talking that kind of shit to you.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 26:58Jocko Willink?

  And that's another funny thing is uh the dynamic of you and me talking. There's a dynamic there, right? And I'm trying to, you know, poke fun at you, make you feel insecure, have fun with the whole situation. That's why the whole video starts off with you saying like, do I look skinny? And I, without missing a beat, like without missing a beat, I'm just like, yeah, are you trying to cut weight right now? Without missing a beat.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:20Jocko Willink?

  Like this is clearly just me, like you, I can't tell if you gained or lost 10 pounds, you know what I mean? But in my mind, I'm like, oh, I got a little insecurity over here, I'm gonna pounce on that thing. And that's the same thing, why when you're like 405 for 10? And I'm like, that's good. I mean, it's the same thing. I'm kinda like, you know, talking a little bit of shit, making you feel like, oh damn. Just providing some uncomfort for you.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  It was for 12, by the way.

• 27:48Jocko Willink?

  Was it for 12?

• 27:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:50Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So, and again, you mentioned this to me, the, in the video, I'm like, yeah, I'm a little below there. And then Derek on the video goes, what's he talking? 375? And, and then later in the video.

• 28:05Speaker 01

  Oh, it was for 10 on the video.

• 28:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the video.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, I remember.

• 28:07Jocko Willink?

  Later in the video, I'm like, that would really hurt me.

• 28:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:10Jocko Willink?

  Cause I started thinking about it, cause the, the conversation went a little bit from me just talking shit and to you, into like a serious conversation where I'm like, hey, 375 for 10 would hurt me.

• 28:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:20Jocko Willink?

  Um, that being said, I went and checked, I was like, like going through some of my records and I found, cause I do, 10 reps for me is not something I would normally do. I do 20 reps. And I, I was looking at some of my old numbers and um 305 for 20. It was like something, something that I have done. 385 for 20. And there's a, that's a, that's a heavy freaking squat for 20. Oh, sorry, 285. What did I say? 385?

• 28:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:46Jocko Willink?

  No, I didn't do that.

• 28:47Speaker 01

  Well, and here's the thing, this is a good point too, that you, I, I think it's important to realize, it's subtle, but it's a big deal where. We were not, and this is why I mentioned, this wasn't part of the podcast. If this was part of the podcast, you better get your numbers right. But we're talking shit.

• 29:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, just talking shit.

• 29:03Speaker 01

  It literally, like whether that got recorded or didn't get recorded, there is no difference, given the importance of the, of the information that we're going back and forth. Just like literally when I said, when I'm like doing this and I'm like, do I look smaller? And you're like, yeah. Or you couldn't weigh weight, like all this stuff. See, you're totally lying. It's like, this is an unofficial, off the record conversation, 100%.

• 29:23Jocko Willink?

  So more than that, a shit talking. If you were like, hey Jocko, I want to improve my squat. What should I do? I wouldn't be like, bro, you need to, you know, here, oh, if you can't do 405 for 10, you're weak. I wouldn't say that. I'd be like, well, where are you at right now? Hey, if you're getting this, that's freaking legit, blah, blah, blah.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:39Jocko Willink?

  So it's a shit talking, um, evolution anyways. But, um, I also say in that, and he plays this part where I'm like, I'm not strong. Right? I say that. I said, I'm not strong. And then we talk about CrossFit. I'm like talking about what the CrossFitters can do. And yeah, so

• 30:05Jocko Willink?

  there's, yeah, so I'm not strong. Just to make that point.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:10Jocko Willink?

  I'm not super strong. And even you, you'll be like, I think you're strong. Somebody made fun of that.

• 30:17Jocko Willink?

  And you know why you think I'm strong? Cause you do jiu-jitsu with me. And I have technique in jiu-jitsu. And I also have medium twitch muscles. I have medium twitch muscles. So I can hold a lot of pressure for a long time.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  Okay, that makes sense.

• 30:34Jocko Willink?

  Not, not explosive. Would you say I'm explosive?

• 30:37Speaker 01

  I would not say explosive.

• 30:38Jocko Willink?

  Would you say I'm strong?

• 30:39Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 30:39Jocko Willink?

  Yes, that's it. Cause I have me, and I remember, I don't quote me on this, but the, the, the theory or the discovery of medium twitch muscles came out in like the 90s. And before that, I would be a guy, oddly enough, I wouldn't win a long distance race. And I also wouldn't win a sprint in my platoon. But if you put a 40 pound or a 60 pound rucksack on me, I would win. Or I would be in much closer to the front.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 31:10Jocko Willink?

  Why is that? Medium twitch, not super strong, not super endurance, somewhere in the middle. Which is, which means I don't really have the genetic capability to be

• 31:24Jocko Willink?

  Snatching double body weight or whatever like that's just it's very hard for me to do that. Um, so. So there you have it. Um, there's some funny, he reads, the dude Derek reads a, a bunch of the little quotes. From inside, there's a Reddit thread on this as well. A hundred grams of mill, a hundred milligrams of accountability. Efficacious dose of discipline, scoop of getting after it, ownership deployed, HGH for that huge head.

• 31:57Jocko Willink?

  And he says all kinds of funny, alpha as fuck composure, bro.

• 32:05Jocko Willink?

  So there's that, um, he, so then he talks about the fact that I work out three times a day.

• 32:12Jocko Willink?

  And then puts the own spin on it of working out hardcore three times a day. Which is a lot different than me saying, ah, I work out, I lift. I run or surf and I do jujitsu and I do that every day. That's, that's, that's, that's an accurate thing. This isn't like, hey, I'm blasting legs and squats in the morning. And then I'm doing freaking deadlifts at noon and then I'm doing power cleans in the evening and I'm doing all those for max reps. Or psycho med cons, I'm not doing that. So that's misleading. And if that's somebody that took me saying, hey, you know, I, I guess it's wrong for me to say, I work out three times a day.

• 32:57Jocko Willink?

  What would be good is like, ah, I exercise three times a day or something like that.

• 33:04Jocko Willink?

  So I feel like I missed, I might've misled Derek on that one, but it's also the title, you know, that's the title of this. Reddit thread that he's talking about. Um, it says five hours of sleep a night. And I, look, I don't need to sleep a lot. That is, that is a fact. Um, it's not even a good fact. It's just the reality of the situation. The, the other day. Like if I go to bed early, I wake up early. You know, it's not like I go to bed and if I go to bed at at nine, I wake up at four thirty. Or I go to bed at eight and I wake up at four thirty. I don't. My body doesn't need that much sleep.

• 33:45Jocko Willink?

  Um, you know, there's all kinds of little funny stories from when I was in the teams about me not sleeping. Uh, I know sleep is good for you. I I I usually sleep more than five hours a night. I usually go to bed around ten and I wake up at four thirty. So what is that? That's six and a half hours of sleep, bro. So again, do I sometimes go to bed at eleven? Yes, I do. Yes, I do. I do. I sometimes I have a hard time falling asleep. So I don't sleep a lot. I've never slept a lot. Uh, two out of my four kids don't need a lot of sleep genetically. My wife won't get out of bed until like there's an emergency.

• 34:28Jocko Willink?

  Cause she's genetically different, right? Um, so that's a genetic thing. This isn't, this isn't a chemically induced thing.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  But that's rare though, and a lot of people don't know that. It's called fast sleepers. There's like this, it's kind of an anomaly or whatever where, yeah, you just essentially you go through your cycles of sleep just quicker. Yeah. And it's from what I understand.

• 34:50Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And yeah, so, so the sleep thing, again, if you're taking that as an indication of like, oh, he must be on the sauce. Like, that's probably why he got that feeling. Hey, well, if this guy doesn't sleep much. So there's already a couple of things that are not accurate. And again, I can understand totally how these conclusions can be made. If you kind of look surface, oh, it works out three times a day. Oh, that means he's doing deadlifts, squats, and freaking power cleans. No, I'm not doing that. And if I did that, I would be wrecked, right? I mean, I would be wrecked just like a normal human. Um, and what's the other thing? So there's that. Oh, yeah. And then there's the numbers.

• 35:30Jocko Willink?

  If I'm on that path, these are realistic numbers, you know?

• 35:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's it. I think he took the numbers that we were talking about, which were really what they were, were like estimated like predictions, almost like a, they weren't hard and fast numbers. Like even when you were like, when I said, if you can do four wheels for 10, that's good, good. That's literally what I said. And here's the thing, and I was explaining to Kerry too, when we were talking about that. Might have been Squatty Lewis's Italian, or both, whatever.

• 35:59Jocko Willink?

  You went deep, you went back on witnesses.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  Well, I had to.

• 36:02Jocko Willink?

  Squatty Lewis is coming to the stand.

• 36:03Speaker 01

  I had to. The thing was on record at this point, you know? So I'm like, shoot, let me confirm, you know? So I'm thinking back to when I was 22 years old, squatting hardcore. I think we're doing two or three sessions a week of squats. One high rep, one medium, one low rep. And it was like, and it was a hardcore workout. I was 240 at the time, so I'm thinking, let me base on when I was really into the numbers on squat. Let me base it on that, right? Because if you remember in the video, I say, what do you weigh? What do you walk around at, what your weight? And you said 230. So I'm thinking, okay, 230.

• 36:36Jocko Willink?

  By the way, I weighed 231 this morning.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  Okay, there you go. Not considering these three things, which I did consider in later on in the video, if you watch it, where first off, you're older than 22 years old. Two, you go all the way down.

• 36:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  I was going parallel squat, which was an issue that we were laughing at or whatever.

• 36:53Jocko Willink?

  Which is also something that you now have adjusted your mindset towards. Because going in the hole, as we used to call it back in the day, which is below parallel. And that's another thing you just reminded me. Derek in the video says like, hey, if you're just walking around and just bang out 405 like it's nothing at 45 years old, that's, that's an indicator. And I can't do that. Now, if I was like, hey, you know what? Oh, it's, it's squat season.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:23Jocko Willink?

  Which squat season for me is in the, is in the kind of spring time, right? Because in the summer, I'm getting ready to go hunting.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:31Jocko Willink?

  In the mountains, right? At least that's been the last few years. So that means I'm running, I'm rucking. And then that carries into, well, this particular year, I've been doing these step ups with the 45 pound, five pound plate. Getting ready to do that Chad 1000. Uh, which just extended that type of workout a little bit into November. And then all of a sudden, we're like getting ready for the winter time in the mountains, which means front squats and uh plyometrics and stuff. And then in the springtime, it's like, oh, you know, it's squat season. So. I it's misleading again. I'm sorry if I misled uh Derek to think, hey,

• 38:12Jocko Willink?

  Jocko is just gonna walk up cold to a squat rack and just put on four oh five and just knock it out of the park. You know, ten, twelve reps, whatever.

• 38:21Speaker 01

  And well, and it I think, and I think this is important where when you watch that video. And you really watch it and say, okay, what are we saying right here? When I said. Um, and my standard was was kind of off, which I realized later in the video, the where if I say, if you can do four oh five. Um, for ten, that's good, good, right? At two thirty, because I'm making a reference to a twenty two year old me.

• 38:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 38:43Speaker 01

  At two forty. Um, then after and then you're like. I think I'm there, if not about there, right? So, okay, so when I could, when you said that, I think that's what people latched on to. But when you said that, you were like, that was just like estimate. It was obvious. You had never done that. You had never like. That was a projection, given what you know you have done, and then you made an estimation, and then you're like, no, about there. So, no, I probably couldn't get it. But maybe like under there, if I had a good day in squat during squat season, I maybe could get it. That's that's how what I got from it.

• 39:17Jocko Willink?

  And then I said, later, I said, that would freaking hurt.

• 39:19Speaker 01

  Exactly right. The more you think about it, then same with me, the same with me. I was like in, I was like four oh five. Then I was like, wait a second, I was twenty two years old. I wasn't going all the way down.

• 39:28Jocko Willink?

  Let's just put it on the record, four oh five for ten is savage.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  All the way down?

• 39:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you're if you're going ass to grass, four oh five for ten is savage.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  Is savage, exactly right. And then, so then, right after, I was like, well, if you can do three wheels. For ten, that's good. That's good.

• 39:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 39:42Speaker 01

  And then you were like, well, there's a big difference.

• 39:45Jocko Willink?

  And there is a big difference.

• 39:46Speaker 01

  And I was like, yeah, yeah, I get it. I was like, but you're going all the way down and and I'm considering all these things that I'm that come up in my mind like that. It's like, bro, that's a bad comparison. What I said, and then you started thinking even more about it and you're like, you're like. Ten would hurt me. Ten would like, kind of you concluded, no, I can't get the ten. Like, maybe it seemed like I could when I thought about it at first, but after a while, it's like, no, that would hurt me. Like, I couldn't get the ten. Um, and then you're like, oh, I'm not even that strong or whatever. Then you went through that. But, um, put it this way, there's a difference between really how we said it. And what was going on there. There's a difference between that and then you saying, you know what? Yes, I could get the four oh five for ten. Or actually, not the four oh five, right under the four oh five, I could get that for ten officially, like we were saying it on a podcast.

• 40:30Speaker 01

  It's way different. And, and if there was no difference, then you could be like, oh, well, Jocko can or can't. Let's say Jocko can't do that. Oh, he just lied on his podcast. That's not true. That is literally not true. It was a whole different thing, you know? It's kind of like, hey, like, if you ask me how quick I could do a mile right now. And I was like, oh, I've been running a mile for years before time, you know, like to know. And then I was like, oh, let me estimate, given what I ran it last time I ran. And then after you think about it and all this stuff, and then then let's say the next day I ran the mile and I freaking couldn't get it at all. Oh, you lied, you know, kind of a thing. Uh, I didn't lie. That's for that was the conclusion. I made my flimsy conclusion. Not to say your conclusion was flimsy, but I'm saying it was based on other factors rather than the actual numbers.

• 41:15Jocko Willink?

  And one more factor that was based on is me just trying to make you feel weak by being like, yeah, that's not bad.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then you're like, you like right away when I was like, oh, I did, um, whatever I did. And then you're like, how deep? Like, first thing, and even when we were talking about forty time, you were like, what kind of time?

• 41:34Jocko Willink?

  I was on a roll.

• 41:37Jocko Willink?

  So we get through with those three sort of misleading things. And again, when I say misleading, I'm saying I'm misleading. Uh, it's misleading if you do a surface study of me and you see it works out three times a day, gets five hours of sleep a night, and can freaking lift four oh five for ten, squat, ass to grass, all those things which Derek, you know, heard. And correctly heard them. That's what that's what was being said and is, or that's what he saw. And he was like, all those things together, this dude's, that's one of the things that made him lean towards. And again, to his credit, the whole time, he, every time he'd say like, mm, yeah, then he'd kind of back off a little bit as well.

• 42:13Speaker 01

  Could be wrong.

• 42:15Jocko Willink?

  Uh, there's a bunch of other comments in here that were interesting. Uh, probably natty now, but no doubt he was cycling when he was active duty. Totally wrong. Uh, spec ops love gear, meaning the guys in special operations all juice or love juice. No, not true. And this is from a quote former infantry guy that knew lots of Rangers on the stuff. I haven't worked with Rangers enough to do that assessment, but from my perspective, if you're willing to put your military career at risk, mm, there's not a lot of guys that are willing to do that. This guy says, hell, it was unusual to have guys not on the sauce when I was in Cav Scout for five years.

• 42:57Jocko Willink?

  Again, maybe these are guys that were going on deployment and there wasn't really strict and there was more people doing juice. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna say, um, I don't know. I don't know. I know that when I worked with the army, huh, these were not people that were on juice. Like, and I'm, and I'm more talking about conventional army forces. These are not guys that are on juice. So, uh, yeah. Some of that too is like, you're in the military and you see, you see a freaking jacked guy that's in the SEAL teams. Guess what the guy in the SEAL teams is doing for his job? Working. Lifting, eating correctly, getting better food.

• 43:36Jocko Willink?

  Another guy says same shit as everyone else gets. They were saying that, this guy was saying that like people in special operations get even better steroids. Like this is how just off the rails this is. Uh, and then this guy says same shit as everyone else gets. We aren't allowed to use gear whatsoever. People do it and everyone knows it. I mean, I didn't, didn't know it.

• 43:55Jocko Willink?

  Could it be that, cause I was end up becoming an officer that people like hid it from me and I didn't know it? I guess, I guess it could be that way, but I'll tell you, man, when you're working out with guys and training with them and all of a sudden they just like get super strong, I would be suspect. I was very rarely suspect.

• 44:15Jocko Willink?

  He talks about what I looked like over the years. And here his conclusion is like, dude, the guy's just always been kind of a bigger dude. Which is true. I weighed 174 when I showed up to BUDS. I was 19 years old. I weighed 200 at the end of my, oh, I gained 15 pounds or whatever, 11 pounds. I graduated BUDS at 185. Got my first platoon. I got up, we were lifting. Our goal was to be bigger.

• 44:46Jocko Willink?

  I got up to 200, my first platoon. I got up to like 215, my second platoon.

• 44:55Jocko Willink?

  I got up to like 220, my third platoon. And you know, these are like ages I'm getting big. I'm just getting bigger and stronger. It's like, you know, you went from 180 to 240. Right? These are prime years to get jacked. When I was competing in jiu-jitsu now, we're talking like 96, 97, 98. I would always be around 220 and I'd cut down to 213. So I could do the weight category and then the absolute. So that was my weight back then. But again, these are not, you know, crazy numbers. I was at SEAL Team 2, got up to 250. How? Squatting, eating, deadlifting, more eating.

• 45:30Jocko Willink?

  And that's, so he kind of says that. He kind of says that. That, well, you know, he's, I forget the terms he uses. There's no, you know, time where he's just, you know, goes from being 128 pounds to 220 pounds. There's no time like that. And it's true. It was a steady, slow progression as I got older, got bigger until I reached about 225, 230, which is where I am right now.

• 45:54Jocko Willink?

  He couldn't find me talking about TRT.

• 45:58Jocko Willink?

  And then he found one tweet where the tweet had been deleted, but I had said, haven't tried it. Somebody probably asked me, have you ever done TRT?

• 46:07Speaker 01

  Do you remember that tweet?

• 46:09Jocko Willink?

  I don't really remember it, but I saw it. He put a clip on there and it's definitely me. And I'm sure somebody said, hey, have you ever done TRT? And I was like, yeah, I never tried it. Cause there was a tweet below it that said something like, oh, I'd hate to see Jock go on more, you know, testosterone. Something like that. So he figured it out and yes. And then he said, that was the only quote horse's mouth of me saying anything about TRT, which is not that weird because I don't talk about it because I have no experience with it. I don't, that's not something that comes up.

• 46:38Jocko Willink?

  And, and look, I'm not even against it. I'm 50 years old. If I get to a certain point where I'm like, yeah, you know, I feel like shit. But my doctor says to me, hey, Jocko, this is gonna make you perform better and do better. Maybe I'd be like, hmm, that sounds like a good idea. What I, what I don't like about it is I know that when you do that stuff, you're on it for the rest of your life, which to me is bad. I don't want to be relying on anything. I don't want, I would rather be able to make my own testosterone at a lower level, than go on fake, go on other testosterone and then have to be on it for the rest of my life. Like, I don't like that idea. To me, that's sort of a dependency, which I don't like.

• 47:19Jocko Willink?

  So, but, but again, when I'm 60 and all of a sudden I'm really weak or whatever, I have issues. I'm, you know, I'll be like, hey, guys, I'm going on TRT right now. I want to be stronger, which would be fine. Uh, so that's why maybe he hasn't found a lot about me talking about it. And, and again, I got friends that do TRT, that talk about TRT. I've just never done it. If I did, I wouldn't be ashamed of it. I'd be like, hey, this is the situation I was in and this is what I did. You know, and when you start going down this path, it's like, hmm. I mean, if I'm trying to like stay young, maybe I should start by dying my hair black, which my hair is gray. I don't give a shit.

• 48:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I don't give a shit. Doesn't matter to me.

• 48:07Speaker 01

  You're here to win.

• 48:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Um, then he finds a, a picture of me, or there's a picture of me on like the Reddit thing and it's me and Ted, uh, Tim Kennedy. And we're sitting there talking or whatever, and we just got done with a workout. And there was, there was some funny comments. It says, looking solid dude. Another guy says, alpha head, bro. Fucking sick cranium.

• 48:32Jocko Willink?

  Which is, you know, funny. And somebody says, look at his jawline. He never needed juice. He's a natural granola. He's got gorilla. He's got Shrek genetics. Somebody says, big, not abnormally ripped, which is totally true. I remember that that magazine article came out about me in Success Magazine. And they said I was a ripped 225 pounds of muscle. And I went and did a fact check publicly about that article and said, I'm not a ripped 225. I'm a well-marbled 230, which is the truth.

• 49:08Jocko Willink?

  Somebody said, just by his head. I don't know what's up with my head.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 49:12Jocko Willink?

  Somebody said, just by his head, you could tell he's alpha as fuck.

• 49:19Jocko Willink?

  But see, some people are pretty, like, these people are saying, hey, this, if you look at the, they had a picture of me when I'm probably 25 and a picture of me now. And people are like, yeah, look at him when he's 25. He's, he's, his head, his jawline, because you know, when people do steroids, their jaw gets bigger, their cranium gets, or their, uh, their brow, like, what is this, their forehead or their, their eyebrow bone or whatever that is. Gets like bigger and more prominent. This is just the way I look. And I've, I've looked that way since I was, you know, in my twenties, in my early twenties.

• 49:51Jocko Willink?

  This guy says, not necessarily cranked looking.

• 49:55Jocko Willink?

  Oh, no, this is what, this is what Derek says. Not necessarily, he's, he's like, oh, he's not necessarily cranked looking, but a very fucking built dude, a solid human who would be very tough to move, if that makes any fucking sense.

• 50:07Speaker 01

  Yes, it does.

• 50:08Jocko Willink?

  He looks tough as El Tito Ortiz's superior older brother. Which is, I've, I've trained with Tito. I'm not superior to Tito. Tito is a jacked dude. Like, what did Tito fight at? 205. I was gonna say either 185 or 205. Tito fought at 205. Tito was a freaking monster. Tito's 6'2" and huge. He's a monster, bro. And so, yeah, I'm just saying, I'm not genetically or physically superior to Tito Ortiz. And he, Tito Ortiz also had like the explosive type muscle, right? I have the freaking slow, uh, slow, the medium twitch, the medium twitch.

• 50:48Jocko Willink?

  But all these things, I, I thought that might, that section was kind of leaning towards like, hey, this is just a kind of a big dude. That, that literally eats steak, drinks milk.

• 51:01Jocko Willink?

  And lifts weights. That's what I, that's what I've been doing for a freaking long time.

• 51:05Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 51:06Jocko Willink?

  This is, I'm not a guy that like goes on, hey, I'm gonna work out for, I'm not that guy. I'm not a guy that goes, hey, I'm gonna work out for a little while and then I'm gonna, you know, uh, get into painting.

• 51:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 51:15Jocko Willink?

  No, I've been lifting, you know, whether it's calisthenics, whether it's plyometrics, whether it's squatting, whether it's cleans, whether it's doing pull-ups, like, that's all in the, that's all in the freaking, in the element, you know? Um, then he goes in this weird tangent into jujitsu. Uh, he got it, got a thing with me and going against Jeff Monson. And Jeff Monson, he calls him all kinds of, calls him all kinds of funny names. And, and Jeff Monson is an incredible grappler. He's a monstrous guy who's pop positive for steroids before.

• 51:56Speaker 01

  I'm not sure.

• 51:57Jocko Willink?

  I'm, I shouldn't say that. I'm quite, I'm quite confident that he has utilized steroids in his life. Not, yeah, so, so he sees me going against him. And what's interesting about that video, there's a video of me versus Jeff Monson. Unfortunately, the video is two minutes and 30 seconds long. That was a triple overtime match. So I forget what the first, it was like a seven minutes and then two minute, two minute, two minute overtime. And it got edited down. We had a pretty good scrap. And Jeff Monson's a better grappler than me and he's stronger than me and he beat me. Like, that's what happened.

• 52:31Speaker 01

  He mentioned how like, um, he's a, he goes, oh, he's a UFC champ. Or he goes, no, no, no, he's, he's not a UFC champ. He's just an AD. I don't think he said a just an ADCC or he goes, he's ADCC champ. Kinda like, oh, he's only an ADC. That's more significant by the way than US, UFC. Exactly right. If you're ADCC Abu Dhabi Combat Club Champion, that means in grappling, no punches, no kicking, in what you guys were doing, he's the best guy in the world, straight up. And if you're the champion, which he was.

• 53:03Jocko Willink?

  And I will say the two minutes and 30 seconds of that video, I look horrible. Like I see me now and I'm like, God, I sucked. And that's where we always, the goal is always to be bet, to be able to beat you six months ago. That's always the goal. And that's a 15-year-old video. And I look at it and go, God, what kind of shot was that? Oh my God, you look like crap. Why didn't you do this? That's just what it feels like when you watch old videos of yourself. So, um.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  I was in that tournament, by the way, that's my first tournament I ever did.

• 53:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I lost to Jeff Monson.

• 53:31Jocko Willink?

  But what's interesting is he's, he makes this argument that like, if you're gonna compete, if you're competing in this stuff, which I was, why would you not do steroids? Like, everyone's in, he makes this whole thing about how jujitsu, there's no testing for steroids, and I don't know if they do now, but back then, there sure as hell wasn't any testing for steroids. But he also says, "My physique's not that much different." And I probably weighed in at that tournament at 220, because I was, probably only did heavyweight at that tournament, I probably weighed 220. And he said, "There's no indication of the deployment of anabolic's."

• 54:07Jocko Willink?

  And then he, but then he can't, like, he doesn't want to believe that, he says, "Well, it leads you to believe that maybe he's just using it for recovery." I wanted to use so hard. And then he says, "Or he's never used it." So, again, I think he's a little bit conflicted.

• 54:21Jocko Willink?

  But he says, "Look, if, if there's, if there's so much juice in the jujitsu world, why wouldn't you do it?" And here's one thing, I wasn't really a competitor. You know? I would, if there was a tournament, well, when I was going to college,

• 54:37Jocko Willink?

  from like, 2000, 2003, we competed all the time. And, and actually, before that, when I was at Fabio Santos, man, we, Dean and I competed all the time. We were going to every tournament we could go to, we were competing all the time. But, you know, by the time 2000, but once the war started, actually, is when I started competing less and less, because I wanted to be, like, ready to go to war. But for him, it didn't make any sense to be competing at that level, which I was competing at a very high level, you know, I did the ADCC trials. For him, and he used the words, he's like, "I'm highly skeptical that, that I wouldn't, that Jago wouldn't try it," you know? Which, again, this whole time, I'm active duty in the military, by the way. I have a job. I have a job that I love.

• 55:20Jocko Willink?

  I have guys that I'm supposed to be leading and taking care of, and if I get shit canned from the teams, because I wanted to be a little bit bigger.

• 55:30Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, I was already pretty big. I wasn't like 158, like, God, I'm, I wish I had more presence. I was freaking 220, 225.

• 55:43Speaker 01

  Also with jujitsu, I think it's, it's fair to know this where just because you compete in jujitsu doesn't mean you're, you're a competitor pursuing champion.

• 55:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 55:54Speaker 01

  Level like even if you can, you can compete on that, especially back then, even, I mean, now it's really like there are competitors and then there's everybody else, no matter if you're a black belt, high level, whatever, you know? So a guy like in your position, you have a job, you're active duty, military.

• 56:09Jocko Willink?

  Loved jujitsu.

• 56:10Speaker 01

  Loved it.

• 56:11Jocko Willink?

  But it's not even the number one thing on my priority list.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 56:14Jocko Willink?

  Not even by long shot.

• 56:15Speaker 01

  No.

• 56:15Jocko Willink?

  I'm in the fucking teams, bro.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  If you, if you wrote out your goals, even, even if you narrowed it down to your jujitsu goals, it probably wouldn't be to be world champion. It's usually not that now there, there's a larger group of guys that that is their goal. Then you might start seeing, okay, this guy's on steroids, this guy's on steroids. Cause he's pursuing a very specific goal and he has to go hard as hard as he possibly can.

• 56:36Jocko Willink?

  And he's going against guys that are not testing.

• 56:39Speaker 01

  Exactly. He's going against guys in the same boat. Exactly, exactly right. But the fact is a lot of us, even high, super high level guys, they're not in that boat. Until you shift your goal to be champion, champion. It's just a different type of jujitsu person.

• 56:56Jocko Willink?

  I was a hobbyist in jujitsu.

• 56:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:59Jocko Willink?

  That was my hobby. I was very passionate about my hobby and believe me, you're not going, I'm not going to the competition saying, I don't care if I win or lose. No, I'm freaking trying to win.

• 57:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:06Jocko Willink?

  But I'm not missing a block of training with my platoon. Because I'm gonna go and train more. That wasn't happening.

• 57:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 57:16Jocko Willink?

  It wasn't even close.

• 57:17Speaker 01

  I'm just saying, if you're not in the, in the, the jujitsu world, it, it might, you might not know the nuance, you know? You might not know the difference between, even when you say hobbyist, that kind of from the outside might sound like, oh, you just do it on the weekends and whatever. Like you can be a hardcore hobbyist.

• 57:33Jocko Willink?

  Hobbyist is every day it's physically possible to get it done.

• 57:35Speaker 01

  Oh, heck yeah. And, um, and then you have guys who are just competitors where it's like, I have jujitsu and I'm gonna do as good as I can possibly do in jujitsu. Hopefully become champion and, and everything else is secondary. That's like, no matter how good or junk they are, that's like, that's the two pursuits, you know?

• 57:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 57:55Jocko Willink?

  So he goes through the jujitsu thing and again, that to him makes him lean towards, I must have at least tried it so I could compete with these guys. But like you just said, I'm not trying to win the world championship. I'm trying to win, but I'm not, that's not the number one priority in my life. And then he goes on this thing about some guy named Dave Bolzerian.

• 58:11Speaker 01

  Dan Bolzerian.

• 58:13Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So this guy apparently went to BUDS at some point and he, this guy who went to BUDS, said he did steroids and said a bunch of people, a lot of, a lot of people did it. Which again, this is weird. This is a, this guy just went to BUDS and he got, didn't make it. So you don't even know what kind of person this is. I don't know why this, he's even brought into the fold here, other than, you know, he's like, oh, this guy Dave Bolzerian said he did it. It's like, okay, well, this guy didn't, wasn't a SEAL, made it, didn't make it through training. He did say, it seems that he, you, you could get kicked out. This guy, this guy that went to BUDS mentioned that, oh, you would

• 58:58Jocko Willink?

  get kicked out if you got caught. So right there, what kind of freaking, you know, that's like, like right there. That's all you need to know. Anybody that knows me, like, oh, you want to be in the SEAL teams? And there's a risk you get kicked out for doing steroids. By the way, when I was going through SEAL training, I was passing the evolutions. You know, it wasn't like, hey, I got a, I got a freaking 2720 on the run. I want to get that down to 2640 and I'm willing to risk getting kicked out of the Navy to shave 20 seconds off my runtime or 40 seconds. You're never going to do that. I would never do that. It's a stupid thing to do. So again, and then, and then the same guy

• 59:42Jocko Willink?

  says that, said that a third of the people were juicing, which again, that's not possible. I could understand if more people than I think are on steroids. I can understand that. But to say one third of people in special operations are on steroid, that is not, that is, that cannot be true. Cause I would have known a lot of them. I spent my entire adult life in special operations.

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. It seems like you would know more so than Dan Bolzerian and. You you don't know Bill Zarian that much, but he's kind of known for just his whole thing being just real wishy washy, real sus, as they say, as far as his stories and claims go.

• 1:00:24Jocko Willink?

  Check. Derek says that when I was in trading, he goes on this rant about how when I was in trading, it was less scrutinized, like steroids were less scrutinized than I was like, and he starts bringing up Arnold Schwarzenegger. I was like, bro, like I didn't go through SEAL training in the freaking 70s when steroids weren't even, you know, we're just on the open market. So I don't know what that point was. And I guess he tied some connection. I guess there was some big steroid Olympic thing that got a lot of scrutiny brought on it. But again, I didn't really, I don't really know much about that. I, if anyone in my actual SEAL training class did steroids, I'd be totally shocked. No, I never even heard anyone

• 1:01:02Jocko Willink?

  talk about it at all. So then he goes on this thing about how my life is about stress, resiliency and grit through adversity and a lack of sleep. And he's even talking about lack of food, fasting sometimes. And then he says, whilst, and I like that he used this word, he says, whilst, maintaining a high level of performance. That's what sort of my life is like. And he says that it's like, that, that I would benefit highly from

• 1:01:44Jocko Willink?

  exogenous androgens, which, yeah, so he gets this thing about how, you know, I'm all about being strong, but going through adversity and having stress resilience. And then he says, would, this guy would benefit highly from exogenous androgens, obviously pretty telling in my opinion. That's what he says. So he's like, this guy like is all about the stress and getting through this stuff. That's pretty telling in my opinion. That's what he says. So again, it's not a. It's not a, it's not a, it's one of those things that makes him lean a little bit more in that direction. And then he goes on this thing about how I was going against sauce fiends back in their primes.

• 1:02:24Speaker 01

  Oh, talking about Monson.

• 1:02:25Jocko Willink?

  And not using shit. When even the Gracies were using shit. And he talks about the fact that Hoist Gracie tested positive for anabolic, which I, I think Hoist tested positive for for steroids when he was.

• 1:02:38Speaker 01

  Like in the UFC or something, right?

• 1:02:40Jocko Willink?

  I don't know. But I, no, I think it was, I think it was later. I think it was one of these sort of older Hoist fights.

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:02:46Jocko Willink?

  In some different, who I don't think was in the UFC.

• 1:02:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Um, and so he, he said, so then Derek says, it's hard to imagine this guy's not dabbled before. To go into, to go into matches with literal houses and not thought, maybe I should get a bit of help. It's obviously crossed his mind a couple of times, I would imagine. And again, oddly enough, getting kicked out of the SEAL teams, all I needed to hear was, you know, that one story when I was younger about, hey, they take all the batches, they test them. And if you pop, if they, if they find any one of those batch, test positive, they test them all individually, you'll get kicked out. Cool. Done. So this wasn't this, this wasn't this temptation that was on the back of my, you know, on my shoulder all the

• 1:03:31Jocko Willink?

  time. You should get a little bit stronger. And by the way, I wasn't getting out muscled on the jujitsu mats.

• 1:03:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:03:37Jocko Willink?

  Monson wasn't tossing me around.

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:42Jocko Willink?

  No, at no time did I feel like a little bit more strength would make me better. I was to be contended with.

• 1:03:50Speaker 01

  Also too, with the steroids in jujitsu, a lot of times, sure, the guys are a little bit bigger, a little bit stronger. But like how you kind of alluded to, that's less of a factor. Like the fact, the real factor with steroids guy versus no steroids guy is the guy can just turn up the pace and keep it going and wear out the guy way quicker and where the guy's just less effective because there's way less energy. More so than, and he wasn't doing that either. Like he didn't like turn up the pace where you couldn't keep up. And that wasn't going on either. It was, it was just simply a jujitsu match that he ended up winning. Not, not by a lot, like, you know, in the overtime or whatever. But it was, it was clearly not a match between steroids versus not steroids. It wasn't that.

• 1:04:28Jocko Willink?

  He didn't beat me because. Of strength. He beat, now, if I'd have been 10 times or 3 times stronger than him, sure. But he beat me because he's a better grappler than me. He wrestled. He's the ADCC champion of the world. That's why I got beat.

• 1:04:48Jocko Willink?

  And, let's see. He, he goes,

• 1:04:53Jocko Willink?

  he goes back to the, he goes back to the skinny knees video. Sure. And starts kind of breaking that down a little bit. He says that I'm 5'11", 230, which is what we kind of discuss on that. And then he says this interesting thing. He says, he says that I, Jocko, was built like this the, the whole time, the entirety of his historical data represents. When he looks at me and sees pictures of me when I'm younger, I always kind of look this way. He says, "There's no massive aberration in body composition. Always been a husky, mild house of a dude." Which is, I would say a factually accurate statement. Yeah, I agree. Goes, goes, we already talked about the 405 for 10. He kind of does a little bit of a deeper dive than that.

• 1:05:36Jocko Willink?

  And we kind of already just talked through that. That's a shit talking combined with an assessment.

• 1:05:45Jocko Willink?

  Estimation. An estimation. And, that was that.

• 1:05:51Jocko Willink?

  Well. He, he also says, he says, "I can't imagine this is legit," when he says, "I haven't tried it." I would probably call bullshit on it. So many times, he would have benefited from it so much more than 99% of other humans. It's hard to believe you would just grit through it with your fucking natural crashed hormones, which ultimately will be, with the amount of stress you are undergoing, with the amount of sheer environmental factors that he has imposed upon himself.

• 1:06:23Jocko Willink?

  So he's saying that just the life I've lived has been stressful and hard on my mental status, hard on my hormones and my hormones are all jacked up. So why would, why would I try and grit through this with my own, what does he call it? Fucking natural crashed hormones and uh, what is, what is this one? Yeah. So, so that's what he's made, that's what it makes him think. And he thinks there's just no way that it makes sense for me to not do that. Um, he, then he finds a video of me

• 1:07:08Jocko Willink?

  shooting an arrow. He says, he's like, oh yeah. And here's, here's a video of him with no shirt on and it's, he's shooting an arrow with his alpha fucking head.

• 1:07:24Jocko Willink?

  So that was kind of fun, funny. Um, some, he reads through some more comments that I'm a genetic outlier. That it's TRT. One person says sauced out of his mind.

• 1:07:36Jocko Willink?

  Another guy says he's 50, definitely some exonajist exit, how do you say that? Exogenous? Exogenous compounds in play. Someone else says steroids take Jocko. Someone says this Jocko wouldn't risk his career. That's an accurate statement. That's, that's the most, that, that probably is the root for me of never doing steroids or any other drugs, at least for the 20 years that I was in the, in the SEAL teams. I'm not risking that. And then I get out and who, what am I doing? Am I getting beat up on the jujitsu mat? No. Am I weak? No. Am I having a hard time getting

• 1:08:17Jocko Willink?

  out of bed? No, I feel freaking great. So why am I all of a sudden thinking, you know, you and I, you and I were training hardcore. Were you ever, were you ever thinking to yourself, well, you know, I could just kind of power out of this if Jocko gets, you know what I mean? I didn't feel, oh, I better get stronger so I can do better against Echo. Um, so that's kind of, kind of what he, what he says. So I think this is my, um,

• 1:08:47Jocko Willink?

  He says, he says something like his, that odds are,

• 1:08:55Jocko Willink?

  he, Derek,

• 1:08:58Jocko Willink?

  ends up saying that he thinks I'm, you know, used steroids in the past and he only uses the word dabbles, but, and is on TRT right now. I think he says, good. And I, and I think the reason why he, I think he was leaning towards, I think throughout the video, he kept saying things like, well, you know, he's always been this big and he's not ripped. He's saying all these things that kind of make him think, no. But then I think that, that the people that he interacts with all the time, like who's his friends and his group? It didn't even make sense to him that I would compete in jujitsu and not, do steroids or at least consider them. That didn't even make sense to him.

• 1:09:37Jocko Willink?

  So for him to look at me and look at the training that I do and the fact that I'm 50 years old and think, yeah, this guy's got to be on TRT or whatever, or, or is likely on TRT. I think that's just the group of people that he talks to, that he's around. That's what his experience has been and it's just, it's just a separate world than mine. And that's what he thought. And the fact of the matter is I ain't, not, I've never, I've never done any drugs. And you know what I'm on? Mulk. I'm on joint warfare. I'm on steak. I mean elk. Elk has been delivered to the house. The elk is going down.

• 1:10:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  So you had your, uh, like the record. So, and cause this was a significant part too, about the claim of the numbers of squatting or whatever. So consider this. So now you know, right? Cause you went back to your actual records. You did 305 for 20, right? So I guess the question is, and, and I'm not saying for you to answer, I'm saying for us to kind of consider as far as claims go. If you can do, if someone, anyone, anybody, no matter how big or small, if they can do 305, full rep squats for 20, do you think they could do 405 for 10?

• 1:10:52Jocko Willink?

  You know, there's a little chart. Do you know there's a little charts that they make for this kind of thing?

• 1:10:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:57Jocko Willink?

  And I don't know what the, how that would work out.

• 1:10:59Speaker 01

  Those aren't that accurate, though, because you need a certain type of muscle performance for higher reps versus low.

• 1:11:04Jocko Willink?

  I don't know.

• 1:11:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. So that's, of course not. Neither do I. No, we don't. But if you estimate, you know, like especially back when I used to do, I never really got into consistent 20 reps for any exercise.

• 1:11:16Jocko Willink?

  405 is heavy.

• 1:11:19Jocko Willink?

  I would say 375 is in the game.

• 1:11:22Speaker 01

  You think?

• 1:11:23Jocko Willink?

  I think, I think that's a, yeah, but even that's not, I wouldn't bet money on it. I wouldn't bet a lot of money on it.

• 1:11:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:11:29Jocko Willink?

  You know?

• 1:11:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, but if, let's say, if me and you were like, you know what, we're gonna do this, we're not gonna film, maybe we are, we will film, I don't know, whatever. And we're gonna be like, hey, we're gonna do today, we're gonna do our PR for 10. What are you gonna go for? You got one shot. What are you gonna go for? And if you think, fuck it, I'm putting on 405, because I think I can get, you know, like, you're not gonna put on 450 if you don't think you can get it. If you think I can get it, and you say, I think I can get that, then, yeah, that's within the, the claim of not being like BS or whatever.

• 1:12:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:01Speaker 01

  It's an estimation.

• 1:12:02Jocko Willink?

  Not crazy.

• 1:12:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's not crazy. It's not crazy.

• 1:12:04Jocko Willink?

  Right on. All right, well, that's it. Um. Speaking of Mulk, speaking of joint warfare, speaking of krill oil, speaking of discipline, jockofuel.com. We talked a lot about jiu-jitsu. You should train jiu-jitsu.

• 1:12:19Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 1:12:19Jocko Willink?

  Not about strength. Strength is not, uh, it's not out of the equation. It's in the equation.

• 1:12:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:28Jocko Willink?

  But it's not the total equation. Technique is a more powerful part of the equation.

• 1:12:34Speaker 01

  You made a good point, though, about like the circles that you kind of hang with, the people that you hang around the community area and whatever, where,

• 1:12:43Speaker 01

  like, if you're used to seeing people on steroids or whatever, it starts to become more and more like, it feels more likely that, of course, they are, of course, they are. You can just take one or two little things, even if it's kind of out of context, it's like, okay, I'm not gonna be surprised if that person is. But it's the same on the other side, too, where, and I was like this when I was young, like, especially with, with other drugs, like cocaine. I never tried cocaine ever. When I was living in Hawaii, I never even seen cocaine before. I came to the mainland and still really I haven't really seen that much cocaine. One time I saw a guy and I worked at the nightclub by the way, but it just in my brain I hadn't been around it. So I'm thinking, of course, no one's here doing cocaine. That's crazy. That's the stuff you see on the movies.

• 1:13:26Speaker 01

  One time I saw a guy get out of his car and he had like cocaine on his nose still. And I was like baffled like, oh my gosh, it's such a big deal. Meanwhile, my friend's like, oh, yeah, I wouldn't like, what's the big deal kind of a thing. And I'm like, okay, and it kind of dawns on you if you're not used to it. Or if you're really used to it, you're, yeah, it's just a foregone conclusion like, okay, yeah, okay. It's almost surprising if you don't see it kind of a thing.

• 1:13:49Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:13:50Speaker 01

  So that makes it, that totally makes sense to me.

• 1:13:52Jocko Willink?

  And even now that you bring this up, even in the SEAL teams, like I mentioned, there was a, I had a sister platoon one time. That was some of the guys in there that had a clique of guys in there that were into that, that did juice. And so if one of my friends would have been like, bro, I'm going to go on the sauce, I'd be, I'd be very surprised by that.

• 1:14:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:10Jocko Willink?

  But if one of those guys was going on the sauce, I'd think, oh, well, that's their crew. So, and it's the same thing with TRT, right? There's a lot of people that go on to TRT, a lot of them, and I know a lot of them.

• 1:14:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:25Jocko Willink?

  And, and so to think, oh, well, if you're, if that guy's already assuming that a bunch of the people that I hang around with are on TRT. Well, why wouldn't I be on TRT too? And well, the fact of the matter is, I'm not.

• 1:14:40Speaker 01

  And it goes for lifting weights, like the numbers that guys put up. Like, okay, so in Hawaii, people are just bigger, just nor, and it's part of the culture, by the way. But I've seen guys, you know, bench five wheels and, and a lot of them too. Like four, four oh five was like, if you can do four oh five, you're like, yeah, okay, you can, they can do four or five. It's good, but everyone's seen that before.

• 1:15:00Jocko Willink?

  And in the SEAL teams, there's not too many guys that number one, bench press very much, not branch press very often. And certainly anyone that's bench pressing five plates in the SEAL teams is the, a freaking super strong dude. Everyone knows that dude.

• 1:15:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:16Jocko Willink?

  Everyone goes, oh dude, he can bench freaking 500. Everybody knows that.

• 1:15:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:19Jocko Willink?

  It's so rare. So, yeah, same thing. If someone says, oh yeah, that guy can bench 500 and it's, it's talking about a guy in a platoon. That would be a lot harder for me to believe unless I knew the guy.

• 1:15:32Speaker 01

  Right. And what if you've never seen and think about who I was hanging with from the year nineteen ninety five all the way up until two thousand and one when I left.

• 1:15:40Jocko Willink?

  Jacked football players.

• 1:15:41Speaker 01

  Players. Exactly. These big Samoans and stuff and whatever. I'm thinking back to the numbers. My friend Jeff Ulbrich, who's like, he played for the forty niners. He was like, he was one of my friends and he was a big, strong guy. And I remember like later on after he moved away or whatever and after I lived here for a while and I remember thinking back, wait, Jeff ran a four, five. He was two hundred fifty five pounds and six one. That's huge. That's an animal. Around a four, four, five, forty.

• 1:16:10Jocko Willink?

  A four?

• 1:16:11Speaker 01

  Four, five. Yes, sir.

• 1:16:12Jocko Willink?

  A four, five, forty. And how much did he weigh?

• 1:16:15Speaker 01

  Two fifty five.

• 1:16:16Jocko Willink?

  This is a mutant. Yeah.

• 1:16:18Speaker 01

  And he's six one. Here's the thing. When I remember Jeff, yeah, he was big and strong and an animal or whatever, but not that. When I'm thinking about that now, I'm thinking that's an animal. But when you're in that community, when guys are like six, three, three oh five, rolling around and when they hit you, you just fucking die. You know, and that's the norm. And guys go in the weight room and like they don't even warm up and they put two wheels on there and they're just like awkwardly doing it. Like they've never benched before, but they can do it because they're just so natural. And that's kind of the norm. Compare that to if you've never seen anyone bench four or five before. You see four plates on that thing. You're like, oh my gosh, I can't believe that I did that. Like, give me a better explanation to how that's possible, you know?

• 1:16:55Jocko Willink?

  I had a, I had a CB chief that was with me in Ramadi and he was jerked monster guy. His name was Biggie.

• 1:17:03Speaker 01

  That makes sense.

• 1:17:04Jocko Willink?

  But yeah, he was, he was throwing up three fifteen on the bench. Honestly, it looked like if I put, if I had the bar.

• 1:17:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:14Jocko Willink?

  Like that's what he looked like. Jacking three fifteen for his warm up.

• 1:17:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:18Jocko Willink?

  So, and, and because again, in the SEAL teams, guys aren't doing that kind of weight. The guys can't, and, and everybody. That rumors or that word spread, bro, Biggie was freaking benching 405 for reps. Everyone shocked.

• 1:17:33Speaker 01

  Derek was inquiring kind of how much you benched. Do you remember your best bench?

• 1:17:38Jocko Willink?

  350 was like my best bench ever. And my bench, my bench is weak. That was always the weakest thing that I had.

• 1:17:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, your squat is your gem. What's your best exercise? Deadlift, squat?

• 1:17:49Jocko Willink?

  I don't know, man.

• 1:17:51Speaker 01

  I benched uh 405. I talked to Squatty Lewis. He said that he remembers me doing more than 405. I feel like I did more than 405. I remember specifically doing 405 for the first time. Did 315 12 times. My best. Um 285 on the incline, 285 15 times.

• 1:18:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:15Speaker 01

  That was my best.

• 1:18:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for me, 350 was like a goal. It was, hey, this is what I'm working towards. But I was, I was never good at bench. I was always had stronger pull muscles, right?

• 1:18:26Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:18:26Jocko Willink?

  Deadlift or whatever. I was always seemed stronger in that area.

• 1:18:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, my shoulder press was always my best one.

• 1:18:34Jocko Willink?

  Check. Alright dude, that's it. That's it for the DMZ. Appreciate y'all hanging out here in the DMZ with the demilitarized zone.

• 1:18:47Jocko Willink?

  Appreciate it, y'all. Check it out. JacoFuel.com, OriginUSA.com. Just go to Jaco.com and get after it. We'll talk to y'all later. Out.