384: Always Finding Ways to Get Stronger, Faster, and Fitter. With Dave Castro

Dave Castro and the SEAL Teams, health, fitness, and the proliferation of CrossFit. 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 384 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. I was studious by nature and I had read considerably about the war. I knew that the careless way in which we fired our guns and dropped bombs in France was hurting lots of people. The average time in which a British soldier was still able to fight after he landed in France was three months. Killed, wounded, gassed, captured, something put them out of action in an average of 90 days. So I enlisted with my eyes open, expecting to get killed, but hoping to have done more than my part before I got mine.

• 0:43Jocko Willink?

  I was young enough that I had a desire to be something great when I died, so that my parents would receive a posthumous reward of some sort of medal and know that Bob had died bravely. But I did have ideas about the way I was to die if I must, and none of these ways was with a bayonet or a knife in my ribs. I had an antithybe toward cold steel entering my body and trained hard to learn all I could about bayonet work. In fact, all through the war, I trained just as hard as I would for an important athletic contest. I often thought that might be out in no man's land or meeting some form of an attack where

• 1:26Jocko Willink?

  I would come upon hand-to-hand fighting with a German, and he might be one of the great old German strongmen of whom I had read. I knew that they would have much more strength than my slender frame possessed, and in order to remain among the living, I had to acquire skill to win such a battle. I not only worked hard during the training time, but I talked to every man I met who had experienced hand-to-hand work at the front, so that I could learn any tricks there were. These tricks did save my life later in the war. I must explain here that although I expected to die in the war, I knew that one army beat the other by greater courage or greater efficiency in fighting.

• 2:11Jocko Willink?

  The side that inflicts the greatest casualties on the other would ultimately win. Therefore, I intended to sell my life as dearly as possible and see how many of the enemy I could take with me or send before.

• 2:24Jocko Willink?

  I never got careless. I always had my gas mask. I always carried a shovel and pick with me throughout the war. Some men became tired and threw their entrenching tools away, but not I. I was the champion digger of the American Army. Every time we stopped, I dug a hole. We didn't know when we stopped, whether it would be five minutes, five hours, five days, or five weeks. And as long as we were there, I improved my little dugout. And I can tell of many cases in which this digging saved my life. I owe much of the fact that I am here to careful training and superb physical condition.

• 3:08Jocko Willink?

  And that right there is a little excerpt from the book, I Remember the Last World War, which was written by Bob Hoffman. It's a book we covered early in the podcast, podcast number 27. So that's like seven years ago. And he wrote another book called How to Be Strong, Healthy, and Happy. This is a guy that fought in the First World War. And he fought in the trenches in the First World War. And in those books, he explains over and over again, the importance of physical activity, of being strong, and being able to lift weights, and being able to do pull-ups, and being able to run. And in his books, he actually complains that men were getting weak.

• 3:51Jocko Willink?

  This was in the 1930s, by the way. He goes on tirades about how men spend too much time watching motion pictures. They eat too much bread, biscuits, pies, pastries, and donuts. That through physical training, you could condition yourself to obtain pleasure from overcoming and defeating problems and obstacles. And that this would give you greater confidence in your own abilities.

• 4:20Jocko Willink?

  By the way, like I said, these books are written in the 30s. Bob Hoffman spread the word as widely as he could in his life. He founded the York Barbell Company, which is still around today. He started the, he started a whole media arm, which in those days meant he started Muscular Development Magazine. He founded the York Oil Burner Athletic Club. That's where he was going. That's what he was doing. And we'd be in a much better place. I think if people actually listened to Bob Hoffman, but they didn't. And our health as a country has continued to decline, but

• 5:02Jocko Willink?

  in my old job in the Navy, we were always searching for ways to get stronger, get faster, get healthier, get better. And we tried, when I first got in the, we tried what our training was, which was calisthenics and traditional physical training, military physical training. We tried some weird combination of triathlons and bodybuilding. We played around with Olympic lifting and powerlifting, maybe even a little gymnastics. Some guys really pushed to see what worked and what didn't. What could get us ready for combat? That was, that was what we were looking for. What would get us ready for combat?

• 5:46Jocko Willink?

  And what that means is there's an infinite number of things that combat can bring. So what can we do to get ready for just about anything? And people were trying to figure that out. One of the people that was trying to figure that out was a guy named Dave Castro. He's a SEAL who deployed many times overseas, deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. He wanted to be strong, wanted to be fast, wanted to have endurance, wanted to have explosiveness. And he, over time, found a path for physical fitness. And he's led, kind of like Bob Hoffman, he's led many people down that path, including many SEALs, many special operations personnel, conventional soldiers.

• 6:32Jocko Willink?

  Marines, law enforcement, first responders, and on top of that, just like Bob Hoffman was trying to do, he's done that with everyday civilian human beings that just want to be better. And it's an honor to have him here with us tonight to talk about his experiences and lessons learned. Dave, thanks for coming down, man.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  Jaco, thanks a lot for having me. It's an honor. I'm excited to dive into all of these topics. That was a great intro, by the way. That's a powerful book. I definitely am going to pick that up and dive into it.

• 7:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's an awesome book. And his other book over here, which is called How to Be Strong, Healthy, and Happy, is, this one is just combat. It's literally combat. I was looking at it yesterday. It's combat till the last page. The last page, like people are getting killed, and then it ends. This book, though, How to Be Healthy, Strong, Happy and Healthy, is more of a manual. And it's very interesting. Some of the quotes I pulled out of both of those, but it's incredible that people have been trying to figure this out and trying to teach people about this for so long. And that's what made me bring, that's what made me think about those books, because this is what you've been trying to do for the last, I don't know what it's been. It's been 15 years? Something like that?

• 7:46Speaker 01

  More, almost 20.

• 7:47Jocko Willink?

  Almost 20 years you've been trying to do this. Let's start at the beginning.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  Let me, let me say this, before even the beginning, I want to talk about this and the path and his journey and how he was searching for the best way to get basically strong and fit and ready for combat. And exactly what you were saying, not a lot of guys acknowledge, well, honestly, prior to CrossFit, the way we were training, you hit it. There was triathletes, people biased towards that. There was guys who biased towards physical or just body weight stuff, pull-ups, push-ups. And then you had the bodybuilding type. And every one of those was sort of done in isolation and people, especially once you got to the teams, people gravitated towards what they wanted to do. I was a runner, and that's what I excelled at in BUDs. And as I went to different teams, that's what I was good at. So I kind of followed

• 8:34Speaker 01

  that. Stayed away from the heavyweights. I'm a smaller guy. And so, and you know what's interesting? I don't know if your experience is different, but mine on the East Coast, I hardly saw anyone doing Olympic lifts. Back squats and deadlifts, saw a number of guys who, especially football players or guys who are athletic, who did that. But the Olympic lifts, I don't think I saw many people doing those at all.

• 8:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I would, when I mentioned gymnastics, the only reason I got to throw that in there is because my commanding officer at SEAL Team One, when I was a brand new guy, he was a gymnast.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 9:07Jocko Willink?

  And so he, this is the first guy I ever saw doing muscle ups.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:10Jocko Willink?

  On the pull-up bar. Remember that little bar, pull-up bar at SEAL Team One? It was a really nice, heavy pull-up bar.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 9:14Jocko Willink?

  And I was a new guy and I'm out there watching him going, oh damn, like I need to up my game.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 9:19Jocko Willink?

  And he's another dude, like he was jacked.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 9:22Jocko Willink?

  And, and I used to think, this dude's getting his, uh, his khakis tailored. His uniform was tailored because he had the V body in his arm. His sleeves were real tight. He was jacked, but he was doing muscle ups. And I remember thinking, what is that?

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 9:36Jocko Willink?

  And then starting to try and figure out how to do it on a bar. Never thought of rings. Never, never would have thought of rings until, like until the CrossFit stuff started getting to the teams and I'm, I'm sure we'll get to that, but.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  So then I, so I started deploying and I went to Afghanistan and on my first trip to Afghanistan, um, we started doing combat ops. And in preparation for them, I was running because that's what I defaulted to. I was a runner. And you'd insert, hike over these mountain ranges or hike over these, uh, terrain features. You'd get to target. And then you'd go really hard and then you'd come out, insert or X fill out and go back. And I felt like on target and I wasn't, I didn't have enough power, enough kick. I didn't feel like I was fit enough. And so naturally I was like, okay, I need to run more. I need to increase, um, I need to increase the amount I run. And at Bagram,

• 10:30Speaker 01

  we had, uh, there was a loop around the entire base and we'd run it, you'd run it once. It was four or five miles. It's like naturally I need to do it twice. And so I started doing that more and I still didn't see much improvement at all on target. So I was intrigued by that and I was doing a lot of body weight stuff too. So combining them and thinking, how can I get the most out of fitness? Or how, how can I take this to the next level? Every one of us in the teams has a passion. It sounds like early on your passion, a passion almost even outside of the work, but related to the work. Sounds like you got into jujitsu.

• 11:05Jocko Willink?

  Yep, I did. Sure enough.

• 11:06Speaker 01

  Mine was rock climbing. So, early on, when I was in the teams, I got into climbing and I just went all in. And that's what I really enjoyed doing. On my off time, I'd go climbing as a lead climber. All types, ice climbing, rock climbing, bouldering, big walls in Yosemite. I just really went all in on that aspect of the job and on a personal level. Well, Mark Twight, he was this famous climber and he had this book called Extreme Alpinism. And he talked a lot about the way he trained and the alpinist's mindset towards going super light and super fast in their routes and in their climbing, that really resonated with me. I saw that and I was like, okay, that's similar to our mindset and what we're trying to do.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  We're always shaving ounces and trying to go as light as possible on our missions. And so, that aspect resonated with me, the way they approached their climbs and the way they tackled them once they were there.

• 12:05Jocko Willink?

  And this was specifically Mark Twight. This was a guy, these guys were radical, what they were doing.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  They were insane. They were climbing peaks that would take guys four or five days in 48 hours to 24 hours.

• 12:16Jocko Willink?

  Straight.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  Because of their philosophy of super light and super aggressive and fat. Light and fast, light and fast. They would, they would set the records on all these routes. And a lot of it, it wasn't just for the fact of doing it quickly, it was for safety too. The faster you get up and down the mountain, the safer you are ultimately. And I read this book he had, it was Extreme Alpinism, and he talks about his training. And it was long slow LSD, long slow distance stuff. Go out for three hour bike rides, go out for two hour runs. And that's how he prepped for all these endeavors. So that's, in my mind, I was like, I need to do more of that to prep for this stuff. Get back from a deployment and we were able to hire him out to do some training,

• 12:57Speaker 01

  him and his staff. And we went to Yosemite and on a training trip, we were doing some climbing with some of the other climbers on the team and a number of his world-class climbers. I said, "Hey Mark, so tell me, this is at dinner in the cabin after a full day of climbing. Tell me about your training. Tell me about the long, slow distance stuff." And he said, "I don't do that anymore." And I go, "What?" I was blown away because like I studied his books and he was an icon to me. And I'm like, "What do you mean you don't do that anymore?" He goes, "I do something different." He goes, "I do CrossFit. It's this program that's created by this guy in Santa Cruz named Greg Glassman." And I go, "Well, what is it?" And he's like, "It's body weight movements, it's pull-ups, it's running, it's cleans, it's deadlifts." And I was super skeptical because I'm a skeptical guy by nature.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  And when you look at Mark Twight, he's a, I'm a small guy. He's even smaller than I am. He's, he was probably 150, 5'9", 5'8". And I was like, "Okay, cool. This all sounds really cool, but coming from him, I don't know if, you know, this is the right thing for a SEAL who's deploying to Afghanistan." And I heard him, I listened, I started researching. I started looking into CrossFit. I started looking at all the, uh, the website, at all the journal articles. And it, it was incredibly intimidating, especially because I didn't grow up with, um, the Olympic lifts or powerlifting really, or any of those movements. So the movements, I was like, "Man, I don't even know if I can do any of those movements." I saw stuff like air squats. I'm like, "I can do that."

• 14:25Speaker 01

  I, I looked at a lot of things I could do and, and said, "Okay, it doesn't seem too bad." But I didn't buy it. And especially because his, he was the guy who, um, exposed me to it. So I sat on it for a while, researched it, actually ended up deploying again. And even on deployment, in the room where we had, um, internet, I was sitting at one of the computers. I'd sit at the computer every night and check out the workout of the day. Still not- What year is this? This is, uh, 34. Oh, 304. Oh, 304, cool. Still not having done it myself yet. We had a guy who was really fit on the team. And he came in and he sat down next to me and he said, what are you looking at? And I said, oh, this is CrossFit. You should check it out. He's like, oh, what is it? And I start telling him it's this workout that combines all these different

• 15:09Speaker 01

  features and elements and they're really fast and it gets you really fit. I kind of faked him out and gave him the impression that I was doing it. So he's like, awesome, I'm gonna dive in. He started doing it and I started from afar, just watching how it was affecting him and the results he got from it. And he fell in love with it and he saw a lot of results from it. And we came back from that deployment and I still hadn't made the plunge and decided to do it. So later, I ended up breaking my ankle in training. So that delayed the effort. Deployed to Iraq and on day one of being there, decided, alright, I'm going all in. And I started doing it. And the thing about, as you know,

• 15:53Speaker 01

  Iraq versus Afghanistan in terms of op tempo. In Afghanistan, missions took a little longer to develop. Once a week, maybe twice a week at the max. At the time, we were doing missions, Iraq, you're going out every night. And so, you have the potential to go out every night. And so, we were on one of those every night type of situations. Go out, come back, hit the workout of the day from crossfit.com. Go to bed, wake up at night, because we're in a nocturnal rotation and just repeat. And I started seeing great results and I fell in love with it. Interesting story there. One of the other guys I was with, he saw me doing it. And he's like, hey, I think I want to try it. I go, alright, when the next workout pops up, let's do it.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  And so, the next day, we were just following the workout of the day. The workout that popped up was a workout called Linda. Three bars of death. So it's 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Of deadlift like one and a half times your body weight, bench your body weight and clean three quarters of your body weight. And it's really one of the harder CrossFit workouts. And he did it and as his first CrossFit workout ever on deployment. And I think he even tried going RX. I had to scale because those weights at that time were too hard for me to do, even though I was developing strength. So, that was how I got into, into the fire. But I researched and watched for a long time before actually taking the plunge.

• 17:21Jocko Willink?

  Um, oh damn, you jumped right, right? You skipped the whole thing I was gonna start with, which is like, where were you born?

• 17:27Speaker 01

  I'll go there. We can go there right now.

• 17:29Jocko Willink?

  So, just to get us up there, where were you born?

• 17:32Speaker 01

  I was born in, um, San Jose, California, seventy-seven.

• 17:36Jocko Willink?

  And, and were your parents, what did your parents do?

• 17:39Speaker 01

  My dad, um, he ran a trucking company. And so, he had a truck yard in San Jose, and when I was, uh, in about eighty-four, eighty-five, we moved from San Jose to, uh, Aromas, where he bought a sixty-five acre property, and that's the, the home of the CrossFit Games many years later. But he moved us out there to consolidate basically his trucking operation and, um, the, the house. So it was all co-located. And, um, even now, so that's still in the family, both my parents have passed. My brother and I, we own that property, and, and that's where, again, the Games have been held multiple years, and I spend a lot of time there. It, the, the, the place means a lot to me.

• 18:23Jocko Willink?

  It's the CrossFit Ranch, right? Is that's what it's known as?

• 18:27Speaker 01

  Yep, yep.

• 18:28Jocko Willink?

  And was your dad in the military? Was your mom in the military?

• 18:31Speaker 01

  No, neither of them were in the military. None of, no, uh, actually, that's not true. My, um, grandfather from my mother's side, he was in the Korean War.

• 18:40Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, so he had military experience, and, you know, as a kid growing up, he had his M fourteen that he was able to, well, M one, yeah, and, um, put, um, underneath the bed, and we'd pull it out and look at it, and he had his ribbons on the wall. So, there was def, that was definitely influential, but in my inner circle, there were very little, uh, military influence or connection.

• 19:01Jocko Willink?

  And you mentioned that you, when you were growing up, or you mentioned that you were a runner? Was that what's the sport that you did when you were in high school and everything?

• 19:07Speaker 01

  Well, no, so the, the interesting thing, thing about the running is, um, I didn't discover that I was a decent runner until I decided I wanted to be a SEAL and started following the BUDS warning order. The BUDS warning order was this online packet that told you how to prepare for BUDS. And it had like, um, running and PT, a running and PT program that escalated in, in difficulty. And once I started doing that, and that was right after I graduated from high school, I realized I was a pretty decent runner. And I thought, I wish I would have ran in high school. Here's what I did in high school. I was on the football team for all four years. I might have started one game. I tried out for the basketball team. I didn't get picked.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  I, um, and I tried really hard at these things to make, to, to make it to the team. And like, I put a lot of effort into, uh, football. And I also tried, dabbled in wrestling. Uh, that I just didn't dig it. Was into martial arts, really into-

• 20:04Jocko Willink?

  What martial arts?

• 20:05Speaker 01

  I did, um, Eskima, so Filipino stick fighting. I did, uh, traditional karate, traditional taekwondo. Um, UFC was like, I remember watching the early, like, one and two and three. And those were coming up in those days. Into boxing as a youngster, just, um, training on my own. The, the martial arts formal training, the boxing on my own. The lack of success that I had in high school sports is a big part of why I decided I wanted to become a Navy SEAL.

• 20:35Jocko Willink?

  How'd you hear about the SEAL teams?

• 20:37Speaker 01

  So, the summer after I graduated from high school, 96, I went to the movies with my girlfriend at the time. We watched a movie with Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage called The Rock.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  And, um, you know the story, in that movie, a group of Marines take over El Catras. And then they call the baddest motherfuckers in to come save the island, to save the nation from the nuclear weapons they have. And these dudes, Michael Bean, like, that was like the third or fourth movie, he'd been a SEAL. And he comes in, he's the commander, and it's these guys in all black. And then they have all this cool gear, then they insert in the water with their little mini submarines. And the dude comes up out of the water with the MP5. And I'm like, man, these guys are badasses. And then they come through the sewer and come out of the shower, and the Marines waste them. Didn't matter, I was already heavily influenced by the black gear and how cool everyone was. So I left that theater.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  And I started researching everything I could about Navy SEALs. And I started watching all the movies, read all the books. And the thing that kept returning in what I was consuming was the fact that the training was the most difficult training in the military. And at this point, I had been accepted to Cal State University Monterey Bay, so I was going to college. And my parents really wanted me to go to college. But that notion of the toughest training in the military, something happened. I went, I wonder if I can do that. And that was fucking it. Once I said, I wonder if I can do that. I was like, I need to chase this and I need to figure it, find out if I have what it takes to go through this training and become a SEAL.

• 22:16Speaker 01

  And, and again, I had this burden of feeling like I didn't accomplish much, much athletically in high school. And I was, and, and here's the thing, and we know, I'm saying accomplish much athletic, athletically. Bud's is not athletic. You, you do have to be in shape, but Bud's is a hundred percent a mental test. I would learn that later. I didn't realize that at that point. But, um, so I told my parents I wanted to do it and they're like, no way, you gotta go to college. And so I said, okay. So I started school. About two months into it, I had this other realization. I thought, if I don't do this now, if I finish school, because they said, hey, finish school and then do it after that. I thought, I might not ever do this. Life will change. Life can change so much.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  If I don't do this right now, I said to myself, and it's pretty funny when I think back of it, even being 18, 19 at the time, that I was able to, whatever, that I thought this, I, I thought, I don't want to be 30 years old and looking back and saying, I wanted to be a Navy SEAL at one point. I'm like, I need to do this now. I dropped out of high school and, or college, sorry, and told my parents I'm enlisting and I enlisted. And I, and that, that for me, even that moment, that less, that life lesson, that, that's been something that's meant a lot to me. And I, I even advise people or help people with that, just like, hey, sometimes you have to chase the dream. Because if you don't, if you delay it, there can be so many other things that get in the way of it ever happening.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  And you don't want to have that regret. But here's the thing, you have to be really measured and realistic about that. Cause I think that especially with social media and a lot of the messaging, there's a lot of the chase your dream and all that shit. That's really surface level and shallow, but there's a big process you have to go through in your mind and in understanding what it represents to chase it, if the timing's right, if you should, rather than just recklessly chasing the dream.

• 24:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, cause the reality is of every, you know, guy that goes, so I, I'm gonna go for it. Eighty percent of them don't make it. It's probably more than that too. Like eighty percent of the people that actually make it to BUDs don't make it. So you don't have a really good chance of making it. Did you, uh, what kind of prep did you do? Like, so you're doing this BUDs warning order?

• 24:29Speaker 01

  Uh huh. But the BUDs warning order was an online, uh, program that, uh, NSW put out. So this was ninety six, ninety seven. Internet was obviously around then in the early stages and they had built out, maybe not the early stages, but it'd been around for a number of years. They had built out, um, a recommended training protocol for BUDs.

• 24:49Jocko Willink?

  And you did it, stuck to it?

• 24:50Speaker 01

  I stuck to it. I, I would, I'm that type of person, like if there's a training for an event or a training protocol that the events putting out, you probably should take a look at it and follow it, cause they're probably trying to set people up for success.

• 25:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I followed it at the time.

• 25:05Jocko Willink?

  So when you get to BUDs, or how was bootcamp? Was it a shock to your system? Were you like, no, this is what I signed up for, good to go? I'm down with folding underwear and whatever.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  Bootcamp was a massive shock, specifically culturally. Uh, I grew up in California and I remember going through the lines and I'm like, hey, what's this thing called grits? And like, I had never even heard of grits. And so like, I had never really left California or that area my entire life. And so it was, um, a big cultural shock for sure.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  One other interesting thing about that period too, especially once I went to BUDS. Growing up in California, growing up in that area, growing up Hispanic as a Mexican. When I was applying for colleges, the messaging and everything was about, hey, make sure you tell them you're Hispanic. It's gonna help you get in, it's gonna help you, it's gonna help you get admission, it's gonna help you advance. And I was like, okay, cool. I didn't know any better. I was a kid. Once I got to the Navy, to the military, once I got, especially once I got to BUDS, I saw that that didn't matter at all. It didn't matter what color you were. It didn't matter where you were from. What mattered was performance and the standards that they put out and that you met them and that you worked hard to accomplish those goals.

• 26:21Jocko Willink?

  So a little shock to the system and you get done with that, you check into BUDS. So what year is it when you get to BUDS?

• 26:28Speaker 01

  So, uh, late 97, graduated in 98.

• 26:33Jocko Willink?

  Okay. What was strengths and weaknesses going through BUDS?

• 26:37Speaker 01

  I think my strength was being, um, kind of middle of the road. Like I wasn't, I didn't excel at anything. Um, I was good at running, so that was definitely a strength.

• 26:48Jocko Willink?

  Like you never fell back on runs?

• 26:51Speaker 01

  Never fell back on runs. Uh, not good. A weakness was swimming, swimming for sure.

• 26:57Jocko Willink?

  How about just general comfort in the water?

• 26:59Speaker 01

  General comfort in the water. So even now at this stage, I'll say, hey, I'm not a fast swimmer, but like, especially because of the training and all the years, I'm really comfortable in chaotic environments in the water. So being comfortable in the water that was trained into me through, through the training. Um, I didn't know I was comfortable in the water prior to BUDS, but, um, oh, and I did sort of even back up. I swam a lot and the BUDS warning order had a swimming protocol. I swam a lot to get ready for BUDS because I wasn't a swimmer, um, through high school. And as you know, the difference between someone who has a swimming background and someone who does not, who goes to training like that, it's massive. It's ma- quick story on that. We were swimming, if you don't mind.

• 27:38Jocko Willink?

  We're here for it.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  We were swimming at, once I was at a team many years later, around, um, an island in Puerto Rico. We were for, we pushed Puerto Rico for a little, um, Outpost, I want to say deployment, but it's silly to say that we deployed to Puerto Rico. And so there was an island off our base, a few hundred yards away, and we'd swim around it. We'd launch from the shore, swim around it, and come back as a platoon. And I'd been swimming a lot at the time because I wasn't a good swimmer. And I was like, okay, I want to train and I want to get better and I want to represent myself well on these evolutions. We take off and as you know, in the teams, most of the swims, at least we were doing on the east coast, we're with fins. We're going around the island and I'm in front of everybody and I'm like, all right, cool.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  The training's paying off. And one of our officers, I forgot his name, he was on the other, on our sister platoon. He starts slowly passing me and I'm like, this is fucking awesome. I've, all my work's paying off because he swam in college and I'm in front of him. And as he passed me, he had no fins on. Yep, he had no fins on and I was like, all right, that's the difference right there. We all had fins on, he had no fins on and he, he came out and beat everybody on the, on the swim. Anyways, back to strengths and weaknesses. So I think it was this, my mindset, the way I approached it, I think really

• 29:08Speaker 01

  was a strength ultimately, obviously, because I made it through in just, it sounds so silly, even when I say it, but it is powerful in how to make it through. There was a point where I woke up and I said, I still have five months of this shit. I still have five months of all this bullshit we're going through and like, how am I going to survive this? And I stopped thinking about how much time we had left to go through it. And even in workouts or endurance stuff I do now, I'll still sometimes stop thinking about the, the total duration and just think about what's in front of you. So at that point forward, all I thought about was just make it to the next meal. And just make it to the next meal.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  And that, that was, I had to think, sitting in the cold, sitting in the surf. All right, the next meal is going to be in three or four hours. This isn't going to be that hard. One other interesting thing about when I got there, I was one of the younger guys in the class at 18, 19. I was paired, my roommate was a 32-year-old force recon gunny sergeant. Yeah, and so talk about opposite ends of this spectrum and talk about a culture shock and we became really good friends and spent time together and you had this guy who was hardcore marine ex force recon ex special four and I had just watched the rock a year earlier, so I knew everything about force recon and um so

• 30:32Speaker 01

  his presence was also really um seeing how he handled everything and how he's just quiet and professional and how he conducted himself was a huge influence and I I don't think it was by design that one of the younger guys in the class was put with someone like that through to be a roommate and um you know when I was not um

• 30:54Speaker 01

  let's say behaving professionally as a young sailor, he was there to straighten me out.

• 30:59Jocko Willink?

  I had a like an E5 roommate who same thing like he was just older, had been around and then he quit.

• 31:10Jocko Willink?

  That's what I thought you were going with that story.

• 31:12Speaker 01

  This guy, this guy stuck through, yeah. He made it through.

• 31:16Jocko Willink?

  Did you get rolled back for anything?

• 31:18Speaker 01

  No, I made it through my first time and um just again like the middle man just making it through every evolution, uh didn't get injured and didn't get performance world. If anything, I was very close at multiple times getting performance world for um swimming.

• 31:33Jocko Willink?

  How about like pool comp and stuff? Were you good to go?

• 31:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I made it. I mean, I might have failed once or twice, but never um like where you get to the the limits of how many times you can fail.

• 31:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it sounds like you were the same as me like I didn't, well, you sound like you were a better runner. Maybe I was a better swimmer. But I didn't win anything. Never ran, never came close to winning a run, never came close to winning a swim, never came close to winning an obstacle course. But I also never got rolled back for anything and I failed pool comp and then I passed it. So being that what they now call, I guess they call it the gray man now, which is like you're just there's a lot of people in that class and if you're kind of just blending in and you're getting the job done, it's kind of a nice place to be.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  You know, because as you have the loud mouths, you have the guys that stand out for being characters. You um have the guys that get a lot of attention for performing poorly at everything. I just tried avoiding those extremes. I just tried staying away from that like. I gotta, I gotta do my job. I, I don't want too much attention from the instructors, good or bad.

• 32:32Jocko Willink?

  Could you win the runs? Would you win a four mile time run?

• 32:34Speaker 01

  We had some fast guys.

• 32:35Jocko Willink?

  So you come in like fourth or third or something like that?

• 32:38Speaker 01

  I wouldn't, I couldn't win them. We had some really fast guys.

• 32:40Jocko Willink?

  Everything, I had to, I had to put out really hard to pass everything. Everything I did, I kinda had to put out hard. There was no crew, I had no crews, I don't think, other than life saving. Life saving, I was not worried about. I'm like, I'm gonna kill the whoever my instructor is, I'm gonna fight him. So I was kinda fired up.

• 32:55Speaker 01

  Were you big then?

• 32:56Jocko Willink?

  No, I was a hundred and seventy-four pounds when I checked into BUDs. I was a hundred and eighty-five pounds when I graduated. What about you? You remember where you were?

• 33:01Speaker 01

  I was in the fifties. Yeah, I was smaller than even.

• 33:05Jocko Willink?

  I was just hostile. You know, I was good at like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna fight this dude. I saw it as a fight. So I think that helped me.

• 33:15Jocko Willink?

  So you graduate from BUDs and then where you go?

• 33:18Speaker 01

  I go to the east coast and I spend all my time, um, pretty much on the east coast.

• 33:22Jocko Willink?

  What team did you start at?

• 33:25Speaker 01

  So this is funny and this is gonna be a good conversation. I've kind of drawn a line in the sand with myself as a SEAL professional or even on the outside now. Where like, I don't like talking about the numbers. I don't like talking about any of that stuff. Cause when I was working for CrossFit, it was, um, when I started working for CrossFit, I was still an active duty SEAL. And there was a couple of other SEALs around and I saw how Glassman and the media team kind of wanted to, I don't wanna say take advantage, but highlight, right? And I was like, hey, I don't want my identity to be built around me as a SEAL or my exploits or, so they, they really listened to that and they did a really good job of not highlighting.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  So I kind of, I told myself at that time, hey, that they, a lot of the experiences I had and the teams I went to and the things I did, I'm not gonna talk about. Especially as I started seeing, once social media came around, how met much guys did and how, how many lines guys cross now. So.

• 34:28Speaker 01

  The thing I'm trying to be at this point, I still meet people in CrossFit who come up to me and say, hey, I've been following you for 10 years and I just found out you're a Navy SEAL. And I'm like, fucking success.

• 34:39Jocko Willink?

  You did good.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm like, fucking success. And so at this point, I have a, some of the units I've been at, I still have guys, I still get invited back to the reunions or to the events. I have senior leaders say, hey, thank you for handling yourself the way you do in regards to all of that. And so even the question of what team I'm in, it's, anyone can talk about, it's not a big deal, but for me, it's just like a personal line that I'm really trying to stay with conviction of not diving too far and going into publicly. You know, I've had people online say, Dave Castro was never the SEAL that Jaco Goggins or whoever was.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  And they said someone else, and I don't know who was another public SEAL. And like, motherfucker, you're only saying that because you know some, and no, like no offense at all, but because of how, of the SEAL things they show and talk about.

• 35:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  And like, I don't want people to know what kind of SEAL I was, what level SEAL I was. And I don't, I don't want to be known as that guy and I want to, and forgive me for like, I'm not saying you're known as that guy.

• 35:50Jocko Willink?

  It's all good, man.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  But, and I also want to show an example to younger SEALs that, hey, you can kind of transition out or get out and do something and not lean on it so much. Because I think you'll agree with me here, there's some guys that are way, I don't want to say abusive with it, but over the top.

• 36:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I mean, for me, it's like, well, this is what I did for 20 years of my life. There's no like, well, hey, here's 20 years of my life, these are the lessons that I learned, this is where everything came from. That's the way it is. You know, the,

• 36:27Jocko Willink?

  To to your point of like, well, geez, Dave Castro must not have been as good of a SEAL as Jaco. That's just embarrassing.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:34Jocko Willink?

  Because both you and I know that there's SEALs that did 25 deployments.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:41Jocko Willink?

  And are the most heroic guys ever. I, you know, they're just outstanding and they're, no one knows who they are. No one knows who they are outside the community. And that's the way they want it. And that's the way they're gonna be. And so, so that's just like a terrible thing to even think about.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  There's this like pop iconic culture now, pop SEALs. There's like these icon SEALs who are, and you're one of them. And, and I, and you know, it's funny, and it's totally fine, and I respect it. And when I'd first have these conversations with people about you or Goggins, and I would say, hey, I don't have a problem with what they're doing. It's just not the way I want to do it. And, and in regards to even your situation, you're exactly right. It's your experiences. And I want to say something. I just, since you decided to ask me on the podcast, I decided to pick this up. And I decided to start reading it. And I'm 100 pages in, and it's fucking great. You did a really good job with it.

• 37:40Speaker 01

  And, but for years, any of these books, any of the other ones out there, I wouldn't touch or read or even acknowledge. The movies, I don't watch.

• 37:51Jocko Willink?

  Other than The Rock?

• 37:52Speaker 01

  Other than The Rock.

• 37:53Jocko Willink?

  Sounds legit.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  Oh, and let's talk about Active Valor in a second. I'm gonna write that down. Well, I'll talk about it now. Active Valor, I think was a breaking point for a lot of these SEALs out there, and a huge mistake of our leadership in sending the wrong message to our community. And here's why I say that. Even before Active Valor, especially after Vietnam and Marsekko era, there'd been a lot of SEALs who did books. SEALs even before modern era, more common than it felt like some of the other special forces, Delta, you name it. Then I felt like active valor was this moment where we were all taken advantage of.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  Meaning the Navy, the command, the leadership said, we're gonna take SEALs and we're gonna put you guys in a movie. And we're gonna utilize your likeness to profit off of essentially to recruit with. And you're not gonna get anything from it. And so you have all these guys at that time saying, well, the Navy did it with us. Why can't we do it? Why can't we do it when we get out? Why can't we capitalize on what we've done? And so I think active valor laid the foundation for opening up the floodgates for sending the message to a lot of guys. Hey, it's good. I'm gonna, I'm gonna get out there with it.

• 39:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I, I don't know much about the backstory.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  Neither do I.

• 39:17Jocko Willink?

  And I'd be curious of what the backstory is. I do know that, here's what I know about it. They were initially gonna make like some kind of a modern version of the be someone special video.

• 39:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:30Jocko Willink?

  Which was a video that I watched in 1989. That showed this really cheesy example of like what your job was in the SEAL teams.

• 39:39Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 39:40Jocko Willink?

  And from what I understand, they initially brought a company on board to make a 20 minute. You know, hey, this is what the SEAL teams is. And that company came on board and said, hey, we don't, you shouldn't just make a 20 minute video. You should make an actual feature film and we think we could do a great job with it. And for some reason, again, I don't know the backstory. Leadership said, yeah, that sounds like a good idea. I don't know why they did that. I don't know if we were having problems recruiting. I don't think we were having problems recruiting. But, so I, at some point, I'll dig and, and see what I can find out and see why the, why that decision got made. Because it certainly was a complete departure from.

• 40:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:23Jocko Willink?

  You know, the way, the way that I was certainly raising the SEAL teams. When I was raising the SEAL teams, it was like, you didn't talk about it. You definitely, like you, there was no stickers. There was no nothing, but that's just the way it was. And that was, you know, for me. Man, when, when I remember Leif and I, who wrote Extreme Ownership with me, like the, I wish I would have recorded like the first call we had with our publisher. I was such a jerk. You know, I was just like, listen, if this is gonna misrepresent this and all, I was just, it was, cause it was a huge like step, right? And it felt uncomfortable.

• 41:04Jocko Willink?

  You know, I had one of, one of my friends who was an admiral was like, he said something that I was very appreciative of, which was, hey, we're, we're quiet professionals. That doesn't mean silent professionals. And if you have important things that should be shared, then they should be shared. And I was like, well, okay, now look, there's, you can, you can argue against that all day long. There's, there's an easy to say, yep, that's bullshit and you shouldn't share anything. And that's absolutely a valid opinion.

• 41:37Jocko Willink?

  But that's the, that's the direction that I went in like, hey, man, once I was working with these companies and these people were falling over themselves, saying this is such good information. Thank you so much. And then it's like, well, we could really help out a lot of people if we do this. So there you go. And it, and that's balanced against the fact that when you write a book, that's about you, about, you know, I wrote, you know, Leif and I wrote a 300 page book. That's about us and that's all, that's, that's all you need to say. Okay. So you're, you're tooting your own horn or whatever the case may be. Yep. Yeah, that's, there's, there's no denying it. And so you do the best you can. I did, I think we did the best we could to maintain like professionalism, humility.

• 42:20Jocko Willink?

  I mean, the, the things about, you know, um, as far as like classified material and stuff, that wasn't even, to me, that's just a non-starter, obviously.

• 42:32Jocko Willink?

  And you know, for us, the combat that we were in was in front of the world. It was in daytime. It was like, there was no, there was nothing secret about what we're doing at all. You know, like we had, when we had guys get killed, it was in the newspaper the next day. It wasn't some big secret, their names. Like it was, that's the way it was. So we kind of felt like we were a little bit exposed anyways. But yeah, it'd be interesting to find out and pull the thread on act of valor and see what the, what the thought process was behind that. Cause I don't know.

• 43:05Speaker 01

  Even the way, from what I've read, I think you guys are portraying in a great way and everything you're saying about like your experiences and what you're, you're helping the world and giving back and, and giving some great leadership lessons and insight to, at this point, millions of people, right? But there's other guys who are not. There's other guys who are just talking and telling their story and just like, some of these, some of these cats will say, I even look at,

• 43:34Speaker 01

  I look at what they're talking about and I look at where they're at in life. And I'm like, dude, that was 15 years ago. That was 20 years ago. That's another reason why I'm like, hey, I've done, but I, you know, this is a podcast. So of course we're going to talk about the past, but I'm like, hey, there's a lot I've done since then. And, and I don't, I kind of viewed it as like, I don't want to be defined solely by then. I want to be defined what I've done since then.

• 43:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, I definitely have talked to a lot of people about the fear of becoming Uncle Rico. Right? And being like, you know, the state championship, if I would have thrown it, if I would have been good to go, I would have won the state. I would have gotten recruited. Like, hey, man, these are, these are, I've learned some awesome lessons. We learned some awesome lessons, pass them on. But I mean, my life since I, I've been busier.

• 44:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:18Jocko Willink?

  Since I retired than I was when I was in.

• 44:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. But, and you have, you have a lot of, you've built a lot and you have a lot of stuff to talk about since then. I think some of these guys who are talking, and there's a lot of them are, they don't have that, that new experience even. You know, the other thing too, though, in my situation, I also. I was in a very, people even ask me for transition advice sometimes, other team guys. And I'm actually the worst person to give that because my situation was super unique. The last three years I was an instructor, um, before I got out to the, uh, my ninth year to basically 12th year. And I was working full time for CrossFit. And so here I was, I was. Which is another reason you keep that stuff on the down low because you would have gotten in all kinds of trouble. Yeah.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  Or maybe you had permission, you can't get permission. Informal permission, let's say, uh, my, my leadership knew, but it wasn't formally written. Um, I was doing the CrossFit thing on the weekends because I had a fixed schedule and, and working for CrossFit. I'm sorry, in the Navy as an instructor. So I had to make a decision to, uh, stay in. And if I stayed in, I'd go back and be operational and wouldn't be able to do the CrossFit thing. Or get out and work full time for CrossFit and, and leave the Navy. And that was a tough decision to make because I loved, if I didn't have that CrossFit opportunity, I would have stayed in for 20 for sure. I'd have been retiring around this period.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  But so where I'm going with that is it's easy for me to sit up here and talk all fucking bold and like, yeah, I, I, I'm not going to tell people what I did and where I was at. Because I had this nice transition. I had this huge buffer where I was able to get out and not, and I was getting out with a public persona and, and building a new, uh, working with a new company, building it up. My transition was one of a, it was super seamless and, and not to, people don't get that chance too often. A lot of other guys like yourself, like you, you got out at 20 and then kind of had to start your thing and chose the leadership route. And kind of had to build everything from there. And like you said, capitalize on and acknowledge what you did for the last 20 years.

• 46:24Speaker 01

  I can't say I would not have done the same if I had to get out and didn't have, um, Didn't have CrossFit.

• 46:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 46:32Speaker 01

  And so I do acknowledge that it was a unique situation for me. So I don't want to sound like I'm acting better than anyone else. It's just, and I don't, and honestly, like everyone, again, to the kind of the free speech thing, everyone's, they can pursue whatever they want, talk about it however they want, share, even though some of that stuff they shouldn't share, share what they've done. It's all, it's all good. I don't care too much. At the end of the day, it's just not the style I'm choosing.

• 47:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, and also there's just market saturation at this point. You know what I mean? Like, there's, there's so many incredible stories of things, guys that things, or things that guys have done from every branch of the service. And there's a lot of it. I mean, 20 years of war, you're going to get some incredible stories. You're going to get some incredible lessons learned. And that's, I think, I think that's almost like a, it's become a, just a free market control, is that, oh yeah, you can get out and talk about what you did in the Green Berets, or what you talked, what you did in the SEAL teams, or what you did in, in MARSOC, or, or whatever.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 47:39Jocko Willink?

  But if there's not something compelling there, that's, that brings something to the table for people, then the free market will just kind of say, hey, thanks, you know, appreciate, thanks for your service and, and move on.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  And I think that's happened with a number of these books, a number of these stories. There's so many SEAL books out there. Not all of them are hitting anymore. Like, you have to have, you have to have a compelling message. You have to have something with value that's going to make people really gravitate towards it and consume it.

• 48:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. No, I'd say there's no doubt about that. And we went down this little freaking tangent, because I was like, okay, so what teams you go to? So you go to an East Coast team. How's your, how's your, how you like being a new guy?

• 48:19Speaker 01

  Um, that's a great question. I, I mean, you don't, right? Like, being a new guy isn't a pleasurable experience, but even when I got to teams, I was kind of just staying in the middle, try to stay the, be the invisible man. But there, it's, you quickly realize you have to, you can't. You have to stand, you have to, because it's such a smaller group.

• 48:43Jocko Willink?

  Because it's like, new guys up.

• 48:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And you're, you're in the, you're in the spotlight, majority of the time. But.

• 48:53Speaker 01

  I was quiet and I was a really hard worker and I wanted um I wanted to prove myself even even now but even then I felt like I had something to prove. Even now, I still feel like I have something to prove. And so, working hard mattered and um and showing my leaders and not even my leaders, but the guy to the left and right of me, that I was a good contributor and ultimately a good warrior, meant a lot to me. And so, I I worked really hard and tried to um tried to excel at everything I did. Even though I wasn't winning everything I did, I tried to win everything I did.

• 49:28Jocko Willink?

  Well, people can tell when you're trying and it's hard to win stuff when you're a new guy. Now, look, you might win a run. You might win a swim because you're coming out of BUDs, you're in good shape, but it's it's tough to beat a guy in shooting. It's tough to beat a guy in in anything tactical. But they can tell when you're when you're working hard. So this is still pre nine eleven, right?

• 49:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, and on that note, it's still pre nine eleven and I I have a ton of respect for every SEAL, anyone in the military, who enlisted after nine eleven. I did not, you did not, we we basically enlisted in peace time. And um I I'd like to say, I mean, I think I would have, I I know I would have, but it's still, it takes a little more. Knowing that after nine eleven, if you enlisted and came into these career fields, you were probably going to war.

• 50:17Jocko Willink?

  Well, I did technically, I thought I was going to NOM when I enlisted. And and I remember one of my buddies who also came to the teams.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  So what year was that?

• 50:29Jocko Willink?

  Nineteen ninety was when with a guy that I went to MEPS with.

• 50:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:35Jocko Willink?

  And he ended up in the teams, ended up a Master Chief, just a freaking awesome guy. We were like riding the MEPS bus down to the airport and we're talking about, you know, he was a wrestler. And so, we're talking about, I was like, you know, he, I think he said to me like, are you trying for, you trying for BUDs? And I was like, yeah, are you? And he's like, yeah. And of course, there was, you know, a bunch of guys that were trying for BUDs, but but anyways, he had been to college.

• 51:02Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 51:02Jocko Willink?

  And I I was kind of like dumb and but he was telling me, hey, you know, the casualty rate of SEALs. I think it was him that told me this, the casualty rate of SEALs is like fifty percent. The chance of finishing a career at twenty years is like. It's almost nothing. And I was like, hell yeah, like we're going to war. I think he must have read that. And if again, if I'm putting this on this guy, I'm sorry, but some I heard that rumor in boot camp. I'm pretty sure it was him. That was like, hey, it's really hard to retire as a SEAL because chances are you're just going to get killed.

• 51:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:37Jocko Willink?

  And I remember being fired up about that. I was like, hell yeah. And then of course I got to, you know, SEAL Team One in 1991 and that's the first Gulf War and yeah, realized pretty quick I wasn't going to Vietnam. But yes, these guys that were coming in post nine 11 and especially once it was really obvious that this was going to be a long war. Like if you were enlisting in 2005, 2006, 2007, yeah, you knew what you were getting into. I remember Tim Kennedy saying that when he went to enlist on September 12th, like there's a line around the building. I remember I

• 52:15Jocko Willink?

  called the officer detailer and on September 12th, you know, and I was in the Navy had me in college at the time. And I was saying, hey, sir, you know, send me, send me your team right now, please. I'll graduate later. And he, he says, you know, hey, it's gonna be a long war. Don't worry. But I was actually talking to him a couple of years ago and he said, I was like, yeah, I remember calling you. He said, everybody called me. And I was like, that's actually awesome. You know, that's exactly how you want it. Everybody in the teams wanted to go and fight.

• 52:46Speaker 01

  Did you do Seaman Admiral or?

• 52:47Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 52:48Jocko Willink?

  So I did my first eight years at SEAL Team One and then I got picked up for the Seaman Admiral program. I was in the second class of Seaman Admiral program and then went from Team One to OCS, E5 at Team One, OCS for 13 weeks, Ensign at Team Two.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  Damn.

• 53:07Jocko Willink?

  It was freaking awesome. Yeah.

• 53:08Speaker 01

  I didn't realize you were on the East Coast.

• 53:09Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Yep. Went to Team Two.

• 53:14Jocko Willink?

  But that new guy experience that you had, I mean, I, you know, even though it's like, oh, there's nothing to, nothing to like about it, but damn, it's freaking awesome being a new guy in a SEAL platoon.

• 53:24Speaker 01

  Well, it's super formative. It's super like foundational to where you go and what you become and how you succeed or don't succeed in the community. And I think back to some of the mentors and the guys who really developed me at that point, they're tremendous in your life. They are super influential, again, in this notion of where you end up and what you become and what choices you decide to make. So I had some guys that I really respected that helped develop me and bring me along.

• 53:54Jocko Willink?

  So were you like a point man?

• 53:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Just like you'd guess you're a 60 gunner.

• 54:01Jocko Willink?

  I was actually a radio man. Yeah. That was, I signed up to be a radio man. I heard, an officer told me on quarter deck watch, he said, if you wanna, if you wanna go on every mission, you should be a radio man. And I was like, probably the only guy in the history of SEAL Team One that walked up to the radio room the next day and knocked on the door and said, I want to be a radio man. Like no one ever wanted to be a radio man, except for me. So it was great advice, though. So you, you end up a point man. And then you're going on, these are peacetime deployments, you're training people, you're doing exercises and all this kind of thing. September 11th comes, how long did it take for you to go from peacetime deployments to wartime deployments?

• 54:43Speaker 01

  Much longer than I thought it would. I think when it first went down, we were all like, oh shit, here we go. It's real. We're gonna go to, we're gonna go to war now. At that period, the, especially with the, the teams I was at, the, it wasn't, every SEAL team didn't push out. And everyone, even within a year afterwards, it was very clear to get into combat that I had to make a few career choices, career decisions, and, and basically put myself, put myself out on the line, kinda, to, to do that, that I had to take a different step. And so. I did that and then I went to a team where, okay, it's real, we're going to combat right away.

• 55:25Speaker 01

  And then did a few deployments, did multiple appointments and went through that phase. On that nine eleven, I remember I was in Montana and we were training the Blackfeet. We were training on the Blackfoot Reservation, Indian Reservation. And we were working with the BIA, the Bureau of Indian Affairs. And we had gone to their facility and I'll never forget this, it's so crazy. Few days before nine eleven, we're looking at the FBI top ten list and I was just skimming it and I saw Bin Laden. And it just stood out to me, I'm like, oh, look, Osama Bin Laden's on, and I knew of him from the coal bombing and that incident.

• 56:05Speaker 01

  And it's like that, I remember him and being on that FBI top ten list standing out. And then a few mornings later, we were staying at a resort hotel. I remember walking into the lobby and everyone huddled around the TVs and that had just happened. And seeing the planes hit the towers and at that point, you know, it was still, I think pretty quickly though. Within a week or two, they tied it to him, maybe even within a few days, they tied it to Bin Laden. I don't remember, do you?

• 56:36Jocko Willink?

  I don't remember when it got tied in, I mean, I remember the second plane hitting and it was like, then it was real obvious.

• 56:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:45Jocko Willink?

  And I also remember hearing, cause I was not drawn to the TV and I was going, I was actually going to college at the University of San Diego. And I show up there and I'm kind of listening to the radio and there's some little something, you know, they're saying there's some news break, oh, there's been a, a plane's hit the World Trade Center. I don't, you know, I figure a Cessna, you know what I mean? Like I just didn't, they didn't, they didn't make it sound like what it, as big as it was. And so I, I'm going to class, I just turn off the radio, go to class, like I thought it was just a Cessna hit the, hit the tower. Get done with class and I go to, I actually go train jiu-jitsu and when I get to jiu-jitsu. There, like no one at Jiu Jitsu watches TV. That's just like not happening. And I get to my Jiu Jitsu Academy and everyone's watching TV and I'm like, what is going on?

• 57:28Jocko Willink?

  And sure enough, the second tower had been hit. And yeah, uh, next thing you know, I'm calling my detail or trying to figure out how I can get back to a SEAL team.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  Well, much later in the whole, in, in the conflicts, um, it, the more, all teams are getting involved. I think in that first, um, like even, um, that first call it three to five, six period, oh, three, or I'm sorry, oh, one to maybe four or five, there was a small amounts of guys going out, especially once Iraq's, um, popped up too. Then it's like all the teams were getting a lot of action.

• 58:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So in oh, three, I went to Iraq and in oh, four, my whole team showed up. So I had one platoon in Iraq in oh, three.

• 58:14Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 58:15Jocko Willink?

  And then in oh, I was at team seven and then, and then the whole team showed up.

• 58:19Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 58:20Jocko Willink?

  And it was like, then that was it. From then on, the teams rotated through.

• 58:24Speaker 01

  Rotated.

• 58:24Jocko Willink?

  And that was like.

• 58:26Speaker 01

  In the beginning, when it was just Afghanistan, that definitely wasn't the case.

• 58:29Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, definitely not.

• 58:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:30Jocko Willink?

  Definitely not. Cause it was a rapid deployment.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  What, uh, period is this?

• 58:34Jocko Willink?

  Um, so most of the Battle Ramadi that we talk about in that book is two thousand and six.

• 58:39Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 58:40Jocko Willink?

  Two thousand and six from April until October, two thousand and six.

• 58:44Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 58:45Jocko Willink?

  And so I, we were, we were, um, anyways, over there with guys, I don't even know, were you over there at that time? Were you in Iraq at that time?

• 58:54Speaker 01

  Six, I was back. I was not deployed. Yep.

• 58:57Jocko Willink?

  Um, so you're, we kind of already talked about the fact that you were in Afghanistan doing missions and you're, you're feeling good on the patrol in, you're feeling okay on the patrol out, but maybe on target, you're feeling like maybe a little bit of lightweight.

• 59:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's interesting. So I'm doing a lot of training right now with, uh, we, we're working with General Donahue. He's a three star in charge of eighteenth Airborne Corps. Eighteenth Airborne Corps is hundreds of thousands, it's massive. And we, he's tasked us with, uh, he was in charge of eighty second airborne before this post, eighty second airborne. He's, um, tasked us to do CrossFit training with, um, third infantry, third ID in Fort Stewart. So we're conducting some training with their soldiers out there. And where I'm tying this into or why I brought that up is because. Same thing with here, train, um, he said he was like training for an athletic contest.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  And even you referenced to, and you hear a lot of the strength and conditioning coaches talk about how like, our training should be more like athletes and professional athletes in general. It's actually fascinating because as I've thought about it, it's

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  athletes and professional athletes specifically, the demands of their sport and their job are so clearly defined. I think we need to have a mental reset where no, we need to train like combat warriors and we need to be proud of that. And we need to be proud that it's different than being a professional athlete. Cause what we're training for, you have no idea what you're up against. And, and in this effort with the army, hearing some of the other fitness specialists or fitness professionals and other soldiers talk about training like a professional athlete or training like an athlete. It's, it's actually the wrong perspective. You should train like the, the combat warrior or soldier that you are and be proud of that.

• 1:00:54Speaker 01

  And that is a very different demand and requires very different skill sets than the clearly defined. I mean, even you take a fighter where they have great conditioning and they're, um, great athletes, they're pro athletes, some of them, they're, the, what they have to train for is in a box. They understand three minute rounds or five minute rounds, one minute rest. And within that, they have to be incredibly capable, obviously, but they don't need to train for five hours or they don't need to train for 48 hours out there.

• 1:01:27Speaker 01

  The demands of a soldier, the demands of a warrior are everything and anything.

• 1:01:32Jocko Willink?

  Yep. It could be everything from a 13 kilometer patrol, one day, rest for the day, another 10 kilometers the next night, you get on a target somewhere. Then you've got to kick open a door, then you've got to haul something, then you've got to grapple with someone. Then you've got to lift that person into a, like there's, there's such a unlimited variation that you can come up against that you really do have to. Train and prepare for that. Even though it's funny, I was, I have one of my training partners, a guy named Miha. He's a, you know, really good Jiu Jitsu black belt and for, I've been training with him for the last six months or so.

• 1:02:13Jocko Willink?

  And we have been training the entire time with five minute rounds. It's just like our standard, you know, you get to want to roll with a bunch of different people. So we do the five minute rounds and all good. And we went on a trip, we went on a trip and all of a sudden it's just me and him and we were doing no time limit rounds, just like we're training to submission. And he mentioned it, you know, he got done. He's like, it's a lot different. When we're going with no time limit. And I was like, I hadn't really thought about it, but I was like, oh yeah, there's a lot of, you know, all of a sudden it's not. The explosiveness is down, the endurance is up, like it's a different strategy. It's different tactics and it's different even from a physical conditioning perspective.

• 1:02:58Jocko Willink?

  So then you take, that's just one element of combat. Now you take that and multiply it times the infinite different things that you can face. And, and you realize, man, you gotta, you gotta condition yourself. Like you said, it's not. It's not a sport.

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, no.

• 1:03:13Jocko Willink?

  A sport has rules.

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  Yep. And then there's gotta be a mentality change and shift in a lot of the leaderships and soldiers who kind of say that. Cause it's easy to default to that and it's easy to think, oh, we need these, this guy who taught the Dallas Cowboys or the strength and conditioning coach from there. Like, yeah, those guys are well educated. They've trained professional athletes, but that doesn't translate necessarily to working with warriors. And that's something very special. I want to ask you this about striking, cause you, you brought it up in general or fighting, I should say. I'm a big believer that if I were to start someone from scratch now at this point to prepare for. Physical combat, I think striking is a good start to keep people away.

• 1:03:55Speaker 01

  And then actually before Jiu Jitsu, I think learning Judo and the skills of Judo, trying to get people off and keep them away with prior to going to the ground. Actually creates a well-rounded, capable fighter. What do you guys think about that?

• 1:04:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I heard some quote recently and I actually covered on the podcast, I can't remember exactly what it was. But it was something along the lines of if I have two hours to prepare you. Yep. We're not even gonna talk about grappling. Yeah. If I have two weeks to prepare you, I'm gonna start to address it. If I have two years to prepare you, that's where I'm gonna start. Okay. Because it does take a lot longer to learn and um, you know, I always recommend if you're gonna commit to something and you're gonna train, you should start with jiu-jitsu. The reason is because if you're, if we're in a striking combat, if we're in a fight and you boxed and I didn't, I can run away from you. Yeah. If you wanna kick me and you're a kick boxer, I can run away from you.

• 1:04:58Jocko Willink?

  I don't have to actually fight you until you grab a hold of me and then my kicking doesn't work, my punching doesn't work. What works is grappling, what works is jiu-jitsu. And if you wrestled and I didn't wrestle, you're gonna take me down. Like to this day, like I didn't wrestle in high school. Yep.

• 1:05:13Jocko Willink?

  If somebody wrestled in high school, they're gonna take me down. Yep. That's what's gonna happen. Like you, they spent four years. Yeah. You know, three hours. Swimming thing. Yeah, it's kinda like the swimming thing. So they're gonna get the takedown. So what I have to get good at is I have to get good at jiu-jitsu. I have to get good at, from a self-defense perspective, getting back up off the ground, getting away from them, breaking contact. So that's what, that's how I would answer that question. Uh, judo's great, judo's great. The throws in judo are great. They rely on the, the, the takedowns in wrestling comprehensively are more reliable. But if it's pure self-defense and you know a good judo throw, man, that's really good. People, you're dealing with somebody that's got clothes on, you can grab a hold of their clothes.

• 1:05:58Jocko Willink?

  There's no grabbing clothes in wrestling. That means also, if I have to grab clothes and the clothes aren't there, my, my moves don't work if I'm a wrestle, if I'm a judo player. So being well-rounded, it, it almost goes back to the same theory of fitness, which is being well-rounded and having an open mind and being.

• 1:06:21Jocko Willink?

  decent at a lot of different things is probably going to be better than being an expert in one thing and that was really proven out in the early UFC's which is this guy that's a pure boxer is losing to you know hoist Gracie this guy that's a pure taekwondo is losing to a wrestler you would see that these purists and then the pure wrestler is losing to the jujitsu guy the jujitsu guy was the most rounded at the time

• 1:06:46Speaker 01

  yep

• 1:06:47Jocko Willink?

  and if you take just pure one sport or one technique

• 1:06:56Jocko Willink?

  or one art versus one other art jujitsu clearly was the winner that's that's been proven so that being said nowadays you have to learn everything

• 1:07:08Speaker 01

  yeah

• 1:07:08Jocko Willink?

  and you want to learn everything so you know when when we were dealing with combatives and the SEAL teams one of the arguments that got I got told about certain systems was hey you know jujitsu takes too long to learn MMA takes too long to learn we only can train these guys for five days or seven days or two weeks so we have to give them something that's going to help them immediately and I said hey how long have you been in the teams for nine years 12 years seven years I go hey man you don't have two weeks to learn how to fight and you can't learn how to fight in two weeks you you have a career to learn how to fight so learn how to fight and then you'll be much much better off

• 1:07:50Speaker 01

  and to some degree combatives and the fight in general there's obviously a lot of skill that comes with it but there's a warrior mindset and like a perspective that this guy in front of me is not going to stop me and I'm going to fucking go through him or do whatever it takes and it might not express in perfect technique and the perfect form but there's an aggression that I saw that I think sometimes even trumps a lot of the traditional training you think of some of the guys that we fucking worked with guys bigger than you guys as big as you that weren't as well trained as you and combatives were still beasts and still able to muster up the fight and the aggression to take anyone out

• 1:08:33Jocko Willink?

  yeah no there's there's a level of just being aggressive that is going to be very very helpful

• 1:08:40Speaker 01

  yep

• 1:08:40Jocko Willink?

  in a combat situation

• 1:08:43Speaker 01

  especially with a lot of the people we would come across meaning probably not trained

• 1:08:47Jocko Willink?

  exactly like it's

• 1:08:50Jocko Willink?

  You come up against a 160 pound, you know, 43 year old Iraqi dude like you're 227 pound freaking SEAL that can bench 380 like and his and he's hostile dude he's gonna bring it that dude that that Iraqi doesn't he's not gonna cause much of a problem now that being said I saw with my own eyes guys getting guys having problems controlling Iraqis I saw that with my own eyes I mean one of the very first like times I was out in Iraq 2003 and we were doing a vehicle interdiction and we we get this vehicle pulled over and

• 1:09:35Jocko Willink?

  I'm the ground force commander so I'm kind of like you know got my gun at high port I'm kind of observing the whole situation making sure everything's cool and all of a sudden I hear this guy calling for help like a SEAL and I'm like this is weird so I walk over and sure enough he's in a he's in hand to hand combat with like a 15 year old kid and he's not winning and so I go over and it takes me two seconds to get the guy under control and get get get it solved but he was panicked the 15 year old kid was panicked he doesn't know what the hell is going on so he's freaking out he's you get that pain like we used to hear pain compliance pain compliance also causes pain non-compliance

• 1:10:19Jocko Willink?

  because if you start torking on my wrist or torking on my shoulder I get I react to it and my reaction might seem like hostility to you so then you apply more pressure that makes me fight even harder and next thing you know we've escalated the situation the one of the good things about training combatives all the time jujitsu boxing Muay Thai wrestling all that stuff is that you are very used to physical confrontation It happens to me every single day, like an hour before you got here, I had a bunch of savage dudes trying to choke me, right? Grabbing my neck, grabbing my arm, trying to knock me down to the ground. But that's what I do every day.

• 1:10:56Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:10:56Jocko Willink?

  And when you get used to that, it just becomes very, very natural. Much like you already pointed out, the example of someone that swims, like this dude, no fins.

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:07Jocko Willink?

  And that guy passed pool comp easily and he's not freaking out. You take some kid from Iowa that didn't spend much time in the water, they get in the water, they freak out.

• 1:11:15Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:11:16Jocko Willink?

  So doing this stuff regularly is extremely important. You know, that's another thing with like parachuting, right? I would use the comparison, like who does better? Well, if you're getting, if you be, if you get into sport parachuting, right? You get really good at sport parachuting and then guess what? When you put on a ruck and a weapon, it's not like, oh, now you're all confused because you got a ruck and a weapon on. No, those people that are sky gods.

• 1:11:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:42Jocko Willink?

  And have 6,000 civilian jumps, they have 6,000 civilian jumps, you can put anything on them and they know how to handle it. They make it happen. It's not like they go, oh, no. Uh, same thing with.

• 1:11:54Speaker 01

  Well, same thing with sport shooting.

• 1:11:56Jocko Willink?

  I was about to say.

• 1:11:56Speaker 01

  And you know what? So I've, since I got out of the teams, I became an avid shooter and I shoot in a lot of different disciplines and that's, that's my passion now. So I spend a lot of my off time, um, competing in shooting sports. And in the teams, when I was, at least when I was coming up and especially on the East Coast, there was no culture for, for, uh, pursuing the shooting sports outside of, um, of being a team guy and, um, and the training that we did. The army guys, some of the army guys I saw, they, they actually had a pretty good culture of competing outside of, um, of work in some of these civilian competitions. And to this day, they still do. I've actually recently worked with, um, guys from one and a few other, uh, teams down here

• 1:12:38Speaker 01

  in trying to help them, expose them more to the civilian competition world. Because if you're shooting civilian competitions, you are way better than everyone else who's shooting, uh, just in the teams.

• 1:12:51Speaker 01

  Think that our operators aren't fighting enough. Like you said, they're not making that a premium and they're not shooting enough. And those two things pursuing it, but it's also like, it's so easy to say from the outside. But it's also like, hey, our time is so precious and asking someone to shoot on the weekend. You know, that's they're taking away from an already really or taking their time away from their family with an already really busy schedule. But because when I first got out, I, I mean, I accomplished a lot in the military. I've worked with some of the best units. I was a suit, a good shooter. And then I went and shot some civilian competitions. And I failed. I mean, I finished like at the very bottom and I saw how slow I was. So my eyes were opened.

• 1:13:34Speaker 01

  And I'm a huge believer. It's just like the sport parachuting aspect. Like you pursue that stuff a little bit on the side and you're going to make yourself a much better warrior and prepare for combat.

• 1:13:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, like you are a lead climber.

• 1:13:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:13:47Jocko Willink?

  So you're a lead climber. When you're out climbing, uh, LCAP, are you wearing all your gear for combat? No, but when you're now in combat and you got your gear on and you have to figure out some kind of a problem, you're going to be infinitely better. And some people used to say, we're going to get bad habits. Do you remember that? That was one of the things. You're going to get bad habits. You're going to get bad habits. And I was like, man, if you're that good at civilian shooting. Those bad habits that you have are just going to be nothing. They're going to be, they're, they're going to be good.

• 1:14:18Speaker 01

  I think we, uh, and I actually, it's interesting. I think you've learned skills to apply to different scenarios. Meaning what can be called a bad habit. Um, well, in the sport, let's say you're, um. You're drawing from the side and you're engaging and then you're holstering without sweeping left and right. And that'd be considered a bad habit. When you get to the environment or the training environment with the SEAL teams where you have to us look left and right, you'll know to do that. Like you're smart enough and trained enough to adapt to different situations with different skill sets from the same realm. Meaning there's a lot of different techniques. It's like, it's like, um, well, to go back to the climbing stuff too.

• 1:14:58Speaker 01

  For ascending a rope, there's, people would say, okay, so you use this Prusik knot, and then you tie here, and you create this system, and you ascend a line. And I would, I would, I learned early on, don't learn the knot, learn the system. Learn, okay, you need a friction knot here, not necessarily a Prusik. There's probably five different friction knots you can apply to this scenario. So even to these days, and the same probably, same with Jiu-Jitsu. There's a lot of different ways to tackle a single problem. Obviously, in the beginning, it might make sense to teach one, but then you have to educate conceptually, I need to build a toolbox in leadership, too. Same sort of principles.

• 1:15:38Jocko Willink?

  And so this is sort of the attitude that opened your mind to CrossFit.

• 1:15:45Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:15:46Jocko Willink?

  And for me, again, I was watching an old clip that we recorded on this podcast a long time about, about CrossFit. Somebody had asked me, like, what do you think of CrossFit? And I actually compared, oddly enough, I actually compared CrossFit with the Gracie family. Because if the Gracie family didn't exist, we would not have the UFC. We would not have mixed martial arts. We would not have this incredible progress and open-mindedness that has now become the core belief inside of mixed martial arts. Anyone that's a mixed martial artist right now,

• 1:16:28Jocko Willink?

  which pretty much if you train martial arts now, you're a mixed martial artist. Your premise is, there's going to be new things that work. There's going to be some things that don't work. If something works, it's good. If it doesn't work, it's bad. If it doesn't work, we don't throw it away, but we definitely are going to consider what the benefits are and when is the appropriate time for it. But the key component being my mind is open to, to what is happening. I looked at, you know, CrossFit. Now, I was a, uh, an odd person that had always kind of been into strong man, Olympic lifting. I do now, I never had an Olympic lifting coach. I wish I would have. They didn't exist.

• 1:17:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:06Jocko Willink?

  When I, you know, there's a, a magazine called Milo. I've been, I was a subscriber for Milo from like 1994, I think is when I have my first copies. I still have them. And in there, they had Olympic lifting. They had strong man. They had powerlifting. They had those things in there. And so I knew about them, but I, like me doing a clean and jerk, you know, was an embarrassment to the, to the world of technique. But I knew about it. I knew about it. No, there wasn't a, there wasn't a place to learn clean and jerk in San Diego. There wasn't an Olympic, there wasn't bumper plates.

• 1:17:45Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:17:45Jocko Willink?

  In San Diego. There wasn't bumper plates at the SEAL Teams.

• 1:17:50Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 1:17:51Jocko Willink?

  So, CrossFit came in and, and actually I remember is, the reason I asked you the date when you were researching it, you were researching about it. So I was on deployment in 2003. And remember I said my, my, the whole team showed up, including my commanding officer. And I'm pretty sure he's the guy that said to me, hey, have you heard of this stuff? And I was like, no. And I started looking at it. And I said to him, hey, news flash, if you pick up heavy stuff and you do it over and over again, you're going to get stronger and you're going to get in better shape. I acted like this was common sense.

• 1:18:30Jocko Willink?

  And it was a little bit of common sense to me, but I don't want to give myself too much credit. I'm not trying to say, I'm definitely not trying to say I, I had that, but like, like.

• 1:18:38Speaker 01

  But let me say one piece you're not saying, but you understood inherently. And, and what's one of the reasons why CrossFit is so effective is the intensity aspect of it.

• 1:18:47Jocko Willink?

  A hundred percent.

• 1:18:47Speaker 01

  And picking up heavy shit under intensity and intensity in CrossFit translates to the things being timed. Sorry to interrupt, but I just wanted to say this. Interestingly enough nowadays, especially with even some spec operators or some pro athletes, intensity is incredibly vulnerable. Intensity, you see it in fighting. I mean, you, you're, you have to be, um, if you don't have intensity, you're gonna get choked out. But in, in training, people are now doing the movements, but taking the intensity out because they don't want to be exposed. They don't want to be seen training under duress or a snot coming out, screaming, making, you know, shaking.

• 1:19:30Jocko Willink?

  No, you can't scream anymore. That's when you're really there is when there's no more noise to be made. You've got nothing left.

• 1:19:36Speaker 01

  So, so the intensity piece too is what you were talking about in the very beginning.

• 1:19:40Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Yeah. And that, so, so CrossFit comes in. So when did you, when did you, so it was 2003, 2004? That's when you actually started doing it?

• 1:19:50Speaker 01

  So, uh, probably four, five, I was doing it. And then in, in, um, six or seven, six, I was in Monterey and, uh, started working out with, or I knew CrossFit was based out of, um, Santa Cruz. And so I started going over there, met Glassman, started, introduced myself to him and just started, uh, training with them.

• 1:20:15Jocko Willink?

  Were you going to school in Monterey?

• 1:20:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, DLI.

• 1:20:17Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:20:17Speaker 01

  Yep. And so that's how I, um, that's how I was connected to Glassman. He'd always been super welcoming of, um, military guys, especially at that time. And so he found out I was in the Navy, let me train there for free, started inviting me to events, started, uh,

• 1:20:34Jocko Willink?

  Was this the actual Santa Cruz gym?

• 1:20:36Speaker 01

  Yes. Yep. That, that actual original gym started, um, offered me a spot at a level one seminar. I went to the level one seminar with a few other, um, SEALs. Then he asked for me to, um, attend some and help out. And so I started going to them and helping out as an instructor. And what's interesting at this point, so this is six, seven, there were a handful of other team guys that were from west coast that were in that same Glassman circle, kind of, um, Um, working with him and part of his little crew, I'll say, and

• 1:21:09Jocko Willink?

  And this is oh six, oh seven?

• 1:21:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so oh six for sure. And I, um,

• 1:21:14Jocko Willink?

  So my, I'm pretty sure my assistant platoon commander, who was with me when my CO said like, hey, what do you think of this stuff? And I was like, hey, lift stuff, go hard, you're going to get in better shape. Like he was my workout buddy. We were doing all kinds of stuff like he, he was doing the 20 rep squats with me like, like he's a freaking, you know, a badass athlete. And we, we, we were, we were getting after it. And then when we got back,

• 1:21:42Jocko Willink?

  he, I think he went to Bud's as an instructor. And so that's why he had time to go and start to get engaged with CrossFit.

• 1:21:54Speaker 01

  Well, we ended up having lunch, uh, maybe in eight or nine with Glassman and Nicole Carroll.

• 1:22:01Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:22:01Speaker 01

  So we had lunch at, um, Coronado Brewing Company.

• 1:22:05Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:22:05Speaker 01

  And I think that's the first time I met you and I'd known of you. I was still an instructor at that point. And, uh, yeah, the four of us sat down. I remember that lunch for some reason. I don't remember what we talked about, but we hung out.

• 1:22:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yep. Um, and that's why, so I was going to ask you this. So I went to a level one certification for the teams.

• 1:22:27Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:22:28Jocko Willink?

  I think it might've been the first one that you guys put on.

• 1:22:30Speaker 01

  It was pre me for sure.

• 1:22:32Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:22:32Speaker 01

  So I was great. They were doing seminars before I was coming around.

• 1:22:35Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 1:22:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. So they were doing those, uh, level ones before I was coming around and then I got involved. And what's interesting in that, the, the, the life lesson and the, the thing I talk to people about from my experience in my engagement with CrossFit at that stage. I'd accomplished a lot in the military. I had, you know, done a full spectrum of things. I was at the top of the tip of the spear, call it for who we were. And, um, here I was kinda introduced to a new community, introduced to a new, um, almost opportunity, job opportunity. And

• 1:23:14Speaker 01

  There was a couple of different paths to go. One was sitting there and being like, well, I'm a SEAL. I've done this. I'm, I'm good. Just like ramp me up to the front of the line. And or just fucking buckling down and getting to work. And I, I took this perspective of everything I, every, and I tell guys this now. Everything you did in the past is significant and it's foundational and it's, it's, it's, um, it's very, it's why you are who you are and it's taken you to multiple levels. But once, and it'll open a lot of doors for you. But once those doors are opened, you have got to start over.

• 1:23:54Speaker 01

  You've got to prove value and show who you are here and now, and stop leaning on the past. Stop living in the past. And so that's kind of was my, uh, my way of operating when I first got involved in CrossFit. I was fucking taking the trash out and I was setting up chairs. And here I was, I'd been in the Navy for nine, 10 years at that point. And again, uh, accomplished an immense amount of things where I, I could be proud of everything and not, uh, not take trash out ever again, or not set up chairs. But I started from the bottom and just went in with like, okay, I'm the new guy. I'm a new guy again.

• 1:24:33Speaker 01

  And, um, that attitude was really for me in getting through and call it advancing and getting more opportunities with CrossFit was, um, significant. And it was very powerful and, and it's something that I like to tell guys, hey, man, don't just be super humble, regardless of what you've done in the past.

• 1:24:55Jocko Willink?

  Two things. Number one, my first, uh, seminar. I knew, I feel like I kind of knew what was up a little bit. I was heads up. So kind of was talking to me like, hey, no, I remember had the old school, um, uh, PVC homemade

• 1:25:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:15Jocko Willink?

  rings.

• 1:25:16Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:25:16Jocko Willink?

  And he goes, he's like, oh, you gotta try a muscle up. And I was like, what is it? He goes, oh, it's like this. And I, and I remember thinking to myself, I gotta do this right. Like it's just me and him, me and him are hanging out. And the first try, got it. And I was like, God, totally bad technique. But what I realized was like, oh, there's, there's things going on here. So I remember I was at that. That level one.

• 1:25:37Speaker 01

  Was it in Ramona?

• 1:25:39Jocko Willink?

  No, it was at the teams.

• 1:25:40Speaker 01

  Okay, okay, they did one for you there.

• 1:25:43Jocko Willink?

  Yep, yep, yep. So.

• 1:25:44Speaker 01

  What year?

• 1:25:45Jocko Willink?

  I don't know.

• 1:25:46Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:25:46Jocko Willink?

  It's around this timeframe. It's around when.

• 1:25:49Speaker 01

  I might have been involved with that one.

• 1:25:52Jocko Willink?

  You, it might have been, I, it seems like maybe that's why we were at lunch.

• 1:25:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that might have been, because we did a few seminars at the teams there.

• 1:25:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:00Speaker 01

  Um, by the time I was coming around.

• 1:26:02Jocko Willink?

  Yep. So, I remember thinking, this is a trick. Not, not in a bad way, but I remember at the first UFC, it was 1993, I already knew jiu jitsu. I, I knew Hoist Grace, who was gonna win that thing. They start saying like, hey, who wants to do, you know, whatever? Who wants to, who thinks they can lift 95 pounds? It's like, I see a couple of team guys raising their hand, I'm like, this is a setup dude. You're getting set up. Who wants to go against Nicole with this? And I'm like, dude, you guys are getting set up. You guys are, you guys are getting smoked. You're gonna get crushed right now. So I kinda knew what was up. I knew to keep my freaking mouth shut. Uh, because if you don't train in those modalities, you're gonna be, you're gonna get caught totally off guard.

• 1:26:41Speaker 01

  Well, and a lot of the movements, um, especially the ones they put guys up against Nicole, specifically the overhead squat. The flexibility demand, they're not there for, for a lot of guys. Unless you've been training like this, unless you're Olympic weightlifting and or cross fitting, your shoulder mobility probably isn't there to have the bar in a optimal position to do high reps.

• 1:27:03Jocko Willink?

  To do 27 reps.

• 1:27:04Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:27:05Jocko Willink?

  And while you're face to face with Nicole, right? Which is what, which is what you're getting yourself into.

• 1:27:10Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:27:10Jocko Willink?

  And this was, honestly, it was like, uh, it was like the first UFC because people just didn't know. People just didn't know and they were like, oh, I got, I can squat 380. What? This girl's gonna beat me? No way. Give me that, 95 pounds? Are you kidding me? And I was like, dude, this is, you're about to get choked out. Choked out physically, uh, in the, in the physical realm. But, but what, what an eye opener, right? What an eye opener to say, oh, there's a little bit of a, there's more to this than just how much can you squat? You know, what's your shoulder mobility? What's your hip mobility? What's your ankle mobility? Where are you at? And do you have it? And by the way, if you can't do that, what else can't you do? Where else are you falling short?

• 1:27:54Jocko Willink?

  And a muscle up is another great example. Like, isn't it a very important skill to be able to take yourself, your body weight and pull yourself up?

• 1:28:05Jocko Willink?

  Not just up to the bar, but above the bar.

• 1:28:07Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:28:08Jocko Willink?

  That seems like, it doesn't take a genius to go, that seems like it might be a really good skill to have. I should be able to do that. And there's some technique to it, and there's some strength to it, and there's some flexibility to it. And I don't have those things, and I better figure them out right now. Cause I'll tell you what, I did that one, well, the first time I ever did a muscle up, I did one, thank God, I didn't get asked to do another one. Cause who knows what would have happened. So, that's what I saw.

• 1:28:33Jocko Willink?

  So as you go up to Santa Cruz, and you're just getting annihilated in workouts, you know, and you're just thinking, what is going on?

• 1:28:41Speaker 01

  Well, they got me, actually with Nicole, early on, one of my first sessions ever, yeah, they got me, they got me. One of my first sessions ever at the CrossFit Santa Cruz, I went to an evening class and they get us in a big circle and they're warming us up. And they warmed us up for the push jerk. And I didn't have, I had been doing CrossFit now for probably eight or nine months, but I didn't, never coached. And so didn't, still doing a lot of these movements poorly. And they're like, all right, now we're going to break up into groups and we're going to do this for, I think it was a one rep max load. And so they had four platforms out in the gym, it's a small gym. And they go, okay, this, this platform's going to have the ladies, they're going to gravitate towards that group. This platform's going to have the stronger ladies of the class.

• 1:29:26Speaker 01

  This platform's going to have the men, this platform's going to have the stronger men. And I go, okay, cool. I start walking over to the stronger men platform. And the guy goes, no, no, no, you're going to go to this fifth platform that was, no one was at yet. And I was like, oh, don't you think I should lift with the dudes? And they're like, no, no, go to this platform. And then I see, and then I see this 130 pound year old female putting a bar on there and she's like tiny. And I go, hey, man, I don't know about this. I shouldn't be lifting with a female. I should be lifting with the guys. And trainer's like, no, no, no, lift with her. I'm like, all right, maybe they just want, you know, her to have someone to show her how it's done. And so we start barbell, warm up a couple of reps, the 25s go on, do some at 95.

• 1:30:09Speaker 01

  Then the thirty five, uh, forty five's going on, we're on one thirty five. And I look around and like all the other groups, the men, one group of men are at one forty five, the others not, the women are not even close to that. And we're knocking out one, uh, some reps at one thirty five. And then she's adding more weight and more weight and her form is impeccable the entire time. We get to one sixty five, one seventy five. And again, that's not a lot, but I wasn't, I'm not a big guy. And at that time I was new to these movements. I hit whatever, one seventy five and I'm like, oh, that was tough. And then she hits it, no problem. And I'm like, ah, I was like, this was a fucking setup. And then we go to one eighty five and I miss it. And she gets under it and nails it. And we didn't talk to each other a single moment.

• 1:30:50Jocko Willink?

  And was this Nicole?

• 1:30:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, this was the same, the one they set up.

• 1:30:53Jocko Willink?

  Shut down.

• 1:30:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, uh, she crushed me. And, uh, I left that gym calling guys back on the east coast saying, I fucking should turn in my trident. I just got destroyed by a, by a female on a barbell movement, but that, that's CrossFit.

• 1:31:09Jocko Willink?

  And just like jujitsu, just like jujitsu, there's people that get choked out by the hundred and fifty pound girl and they never come back. And their ego is so destroyed that they think, oh, this is a, if this was a real fight, I would have done this. And you think, you know, well, if this was a real situation, I'd just pick her up and throw her to the ground. Instead of going, damn, I got some weaknesses I need to work on. And that's the difference. It's, it's very, it's a humbling experience, just like jujitsu is a humbling experience. CrossFit is a very humbling experience. And you'll see people doing movements that they've, that they've trained in.

• 1:31:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:45Jocko Willink?

  That's why they, it's also similar to jujitsu is like, oh, the reason the hundred and fifty pound woman choked you out isn't because she's a better human being than you. It's because she's trained for that.

• 1:31:56Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:31:56Jocko Willink?

  The reason that Nicole beat you in clean and press or whatever it was movement you were doing, isn't because she's a better human being than you. It's because she's trained in it.

• 1:32:07Speaker 01

  Well, you know, to that same note, I would hear guys talking about the shooting stuff again, be like, like we'd hire external experts, shooting experts to, um, to work with us. And like, oh, those guys shoot all the time. That's why they're good. Exactly, but like, yeah, like that's not an insult, like, but people would say it as an insult. Like, he shoots all the time, so he's really good. Well, yes, you, you guys roll all the time, so you're really good. That's part of being really good.

• 1:32:33Jocko Willink?

  I, I tapped a guy out one time, who was a team guy, and I was bigger than him and stronger than him. And I tap him out, and he goes, "You never would have got that if you weren't so strong." And I said, "That's why I lift, motherfucker."

• 1:32:49Jocko Willink?

  I also wanted to say this, like, uh, you said it a while ago, you were talking about the fact that we don't shoot enough. They shoot a lot more now in the teams. They're, they're doing way better and they, and they do more combatives, way more.

• 1:33:00Speaker 01

  Good.

• 1:33:01Jocko Willink?

  It, across the board, they're just gonna be better. They're gonna be better SEALs than we were, cuz they're just, they got it. They got it on tap.

• 1:33:10Speaker 01

  The shooting and the fitness, um, less so with the combatives, but you might, you might argue with this, or you might have an answer that I'm not thinking of. But it needs to be measured. And what I mean by the standards, like, shooting, there needs to be time and everything, if you're, unless, and same with fitness. Unless you're putting it out there and competing and actually, okay, what's your draw from a holster with retention? If you guys are just going through the motions and not actually measuring it and pushing it and trying to get faster, it's still great, right? Don't get me wrong, but that's the thing that takes it to the next level. Same thing with CrossFit, the fittest guys and the fittest people are doing it under a stopwatch and actually,

• 1:33:50Speaker 01

  there's a ceiling for intensity that we're all capable of, and they're actually training there and pushing it and hitting on that ceiling. And you keep hitting it and you raise it. If you don't train with intensity and hit that ceiling at all, you're never gonna raise that ceiling. So the question then from that is back to the combatives part, how do you measure and how do you, um?

• 1:34:09Jocko Willink?

  You do what the US Army does. You have a massive combatives tournament. You have combatives tournaments on basis. You have people trained. And you can make it like, hey, you will compete in this, and that way you know who's training and who's not training. And I think that's a great way that they do that to get people to train, cuz. If you're training, you're gonna know.

• 1:34:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:28Jocko Willink?

  If you're not training, you're gonna get crushed. So it's very cool, the way the army sets that up. I don't know if the Marine Corps has those. I don't know why I'm looking at you, Echo. But I don't know if the Marine Corps has the, has those combative tournaments the way the army does. The army has legit.

• 1:34:43Speaker 01

  Well, the Marine Corps has the Marine Corps. What's it called?

• 1:34:45Jocko Willink?

  McMap.

• 1:34:45Speaker 01

  McMap.

• 1:34:46Jocko Willink?

  And you advance through that system. So you get like belts in their system.

• 1:34:50Speaker 01

  What do you think of that?

• 1:34:51Jocko Willink?

  I'm happy that people are training. I'm overjoyed that people are training. If you take a Marine that knows McMap compared to a Marine that doesn't, that Marine that knows McMap is gonna win 10, 10, nine times out of 10. If not, 99 times out of 100. So I'm glad that they're training. You know, and look, belts to me and that kind of stuff. I've never really, I've never really been that super into them. I know why little kids, why it's cool. Little kids like belts. You know, little kids wanna get stripes on their belts and they wanna get that next color belt. I get it. And, and adults too. You know, there's some adults that that, they get some, some goal accomplishment, right? Which is fine. So I think if it helps people train, good.

• 1:35:33Speaker 01

  But that's easy coming from the super black belt over here. Easy for him to say at this point.

• 1:35:38Jocko Willink?

  I can say I never, even when I wasn't a black belt.

• 1:35:41Speaker 01

  How long did it take you to get the black belt?

• 1:35:43Jocko Willink?

  10 years.

• 1:35:43Speaker 01

  Damn.

• 1:35:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:44Speaker 01

  Hey, I respect the shit out of Jiu Jitsu and their path towards excellence and how they give away, they give belts or not give away, how you earn a belt.

• 1:35:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:53Speaker 01

  Cause it takes a tremendous amount of effort and commitment. And, and I, especially in the traditional martial arts, that's not there. I mean, you get people getting belts in Taekwondo in a few years.

• 1:36:04Jocko Willink?

  When they're nine.

• 1:36:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:36:06Jocko Willink?

  Which is, which is unfortunate. Um, at this point, so, so when did you actually leave the Navy? What year was that?

• 1:36:16Speaker 01

  Um, oh nine. And so I had, um, Been working for CrossFit for about three years at that point and an instructor at Bud's and that's where I had to make-

• 1:36:26Jocko Willink?

  Were you a Bud's instructor or SQT instructor?

• 1:36:28Speaker 01

  SQT.

• 1:36:28Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:36:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it was under Bud's at that time, that's why I say that. I had to make a decision and stay in. Again, if I was gonna stay in, I was gonna end up going back to being operational and I wouldn't have been able to do the work I was doing for CrossFit or get out and work full-time for CrossFit. And you gotta understand, at that point in oh nine, CrossFit was already like blowing up. Like the Games had been around for three years, our number of seminars were exploding, the number of affiliates were exploding. I was already becoming like a figure in the community and so, and honestly, financially, I was able to take care of my family much better if I pursued the CrossFit route and didn't do the Navy thing.

• 1:37:11Speaker 01

  So it was a tough decision and, and I will say this about the time, being, saying I don't talk a lot about stuff, I will acknowledge this story. Shortly before getting out, I called one of my old team leaders from the East Coast and I said, "Hey, are you guys pumping out anytime soon?" And he said, "Yeah, we are." I'm like, "I wanna come with you." And so I asked the leadership, I'm like, "Hey, can I go on a, on a little deployment?" And they said, "Yep." And so I hadn't signaled to the Navy or anyone at this point that I was getting out, but a few months before I got out, I was fortunate enough to push over with my, with my old group and do a last deployment to Afghanistan.

• 1:37:49Speaker 01

  That was pretty fucking cool and it was unique because, and this is a unique piece that really nobody knows. I was overseas planning the CrossFit Games and planning seminars for CrossFit from Afghanistan. From internet, we had hijacked from some local Brits. And so, then I came and it was honestly, again, I couldn't signal or tell anyone I was doing that because they probably would have not let me, they wouldn't have let me do that. But I came back and was like, "Okay, now I'm done." Like I, I have it out of my-

• 1:38:25Jocko Willink?

  You got it out of your system.

• 1:38:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I needed that one last touch point to know I could walk away from it. Now, ten years later, no, fourteen years later-

• 1:38:35Speaker 01

  I made the right decision, but sometimes I'm like, man, I wish I would have stayed in like, and especially as the year, as the years have passed, I really like appreciated what I did and who I worked with and wish I would have done it longer, but the outcome would have never, that was the right choice at the right time. I actually say Glassman saved my life because I do think, especially, you know, the deal, doing the stuff we do and the number of times you go overseas, it's ultimately becomes a numbers game. And so by giving me the opportunity to get out and do this, I feel like, I do say that honestly, like he saved my life.

• 1:39:14Speaker 01

  But I loved it and I miss it. And again, as time has gone on, I really wish I would have stayed in longer. When I got, I got fired a year and a half ago, two years ago, whenever it was, when I got fired, the first thing I did is I texted one of my buddies on the East Coast and said, hey, you guys need a shooter?

• 1:39:30Speaker 01

  And he thought I was joking. I was actually kind of serious, but.

• 1:39:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So timing wise, I was looking at the, the history. Two thousand, in the year two thousand, CrossFit was, was incorporated in two thousand and one, the first gym opened. In two thousand and five, there was thirteen CrossFit gyms.

• 1:39:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, nuts.

• 1:39:52Jocko Willink?

  Victory, which is my gym, we started our CrossFit affiliate in two thousand and seven. I want to find out what number we are.

• 1:39:59Speaker 01

  Oh, we can find that out for sure.

• 1:40:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I mean, that's pretty good to go. And then there was.

• 1:40:05Speaker 01

  Top, probably top two or three hundred for sure.

• 1:40:07Jocko Willink?

  It might've been. And again, this is like for probably right after we're doing these things. Yeah. It was late two thousand and seven because we opened, our doors opened here, January 2nd, two thousand and eight. But we had everything.

• 1:40:24Speaker 01

  Maybe higher than two hundred.

• 1:40:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I think it is higher than two hundred.

• 1:40:29Jocko Willink?

  By 2013, there's 8,000 gyms. There's over 10,000 gyms right now. So, so in 2009, this thing is blowing up. CrossFit's totally blowing up. You decide to get out and you're, you, what was your job?

• 1:40:45Speaker 01

  Well, at that point, I was running the seminar department, the training department, actually with Nicole Carroll, and I was running the CrossFit Games. So I had created the CrossFit Games. The first three games, seven, eight, and nine, were on the family ranch that I grew up on, the CrossFit Ranch. And they, after that, we ended up, 2010, we had to move them out because the county kicked us out. But so I was in charge of the Games and in charge of the seminar department. Two of the, there was three large sectors or departments at the time of CrossFit. It was training, affiliates, and then the Games. And so two of the three, I was in charge of, which was, and again, that's a super unique opportunity.

• 1:41:25Speaker 01

  And, and especially both of them, it's kind of like, I just, a lot of the hard work I put in and a lot of, I laid the foundation to do that. I laid the foundation, worked hard and kind of, I want to say,

• 1:41:43Speaker 01

  well, again, I think I mentioned this earlier. Being a SEAL though, I acknowledge and respect, opened the door and opened the opportunity to be close to the leadership crew there. And then, once that happened, I had to capitalize on it. And essentially did.

• 1:42:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know, that's something I, when we were talking about this earlier, the, the, being a SEAL, people, people respect that.

• 1:42:09Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:42:09Jocko Willink?

  And they say, oh, you were a SEAL. That means you're a hard worker. That means you're disciplined. That means you've been in pressure situations. I would more, I'm, come, come work for me.

• 1:42:18Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:42:19Jocko Willink?

  So that door was open.

• 1:42:20Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:42:20Jocko Willink?

  Now. All those things that I just said about being a SEAL have various varying degrees of being true, right? You might not necessarily be a hard worker. You might not necessarily be disciplined. You might be a terrible leader. There's terrible leaders in the SEAL teams. There's people that have terrible judgment and they were SEALs. So the door, there's a lot of doors that absolutely get opened up, but once you get inside, you you're gonna have to prove yourself. And that goes back to what you said earlier, just being humble and working hard and keeping an open mind is going to be the way to be successful. If you think you can ride being a SEAL, the, the, the, the, what is

• 1:43:04Jocko Willink?

  it on the movie Elf? The Santa Claus meter? You're not tracking me over here? The spirit meter? The spirit meter for being a SEAL only lasts so long that it burns out and people like, hey, you actually have a job. Are you gonna be able to do this? And if you can't, you're not, you're not gonna go very far. You obviously proved yourself. You're working hard. You end up running these two big portions of it and CrossFit starts to go Richter. Now with popularity comes heat-seeking missiles from all directions. And so CrossFit was the target of a lot of criticism.

• 1:43:43Speaker 01

  Like, early on and right away. And what's crazy about that, people ask me like how I deal with some of the stuff now at this point, some of the public stuff. And I'm like, man, I've been dealing with this for over 15 years. And like, early eight, nine timeframe, like, you're already seeing personal, I'm already seeing personal attacks. I'm already seeing people online trashing and destroying CrossFit, trashing and destroying me. And then as it just got larger, that just scaled up.

• 1:44:13Jocko Willink?

  So it just scaled. You know, I, I find that a lot of times when people are being critical of things, my general attitude is to say, they're, they're probably right about something here. Like, if somebody says that I, like, am doing something that doesn't seem to make sense, my initial reaction isn't, no, they're wrong. My initial reaction, okay, well, what am I doing that's not making sense? And it seems like that attitude is a good attitude to have, as opposed to getting super defensive and saying, no, I'm actually perfect. And why are you questioning everything that I do?

• 1:44:46Speaker 01

  Do people come at you at all?

• 1:44:49Speaker 01

  They're all afraid of you.

• 1:44:51Jocko Willink?

  It's an odd thing. No, I think it's because I would say I'm more, I think because I am open minded about things, that I'm not probably not the funnest target to attack. You know, if you say, "I'm not a great SEAL," I'd be like, "Yeah, I definitely wish I was a better SEAL." If you say, "I'm not that good at Jiu-Jitsu," I would say, "Yeah, I definitely am not that good at Jiu-Jitsu." If you say, "I'm not that strong," I would say, "I'm certainly not that strong." If you say, "I'm not that smart," I'd say, "You're right. I wish I was smarter." So it's probably not that fun to come at me because I don't, you're probably right. If you're finding fault with me, I'm going to say you're, in fact, you are right. So when

• 1:45:34Jocko Willink?

  people have negative things to say about me, they're probably, they are correct, and I nod my head and think about how I can get better. And I think that, you know, is a positive thing to do, and it helps to not feel, you know, like you're being ripped apart, when I just feel like I'm getting good constructive criticism from the world sometimes, which is okay. And I think, you know, some of the criticisms of CrossFit along the way, I've been like, "Yeah, if you parse that out, I agree." So if someone's like, "Hey, you can get hurt if you don't learn to do Olympic lifts well, and then you do them while you're

• 1:46:15Jocko Willink?

  very fatigued, you can get hurt." Yep, that's correct. You know, if you learn to do them correctly, and you, you know, a huge part of this is just like Jiu-Jitsu. If your ego is driving you, look, if your ego is driving you, okay, cool, your ego should make you not want to tap out in Jiu-Jitsu. Your ego should want to get two more reps. Your ego should want to, you know, beat the time. But just like in the SEAL teams, your ego should say, "Hey, I want Arpaltoon to be the best. I want to win this shooting drill." But if your ego starts driving you to a point where you're making bad decisions, now it becomes a problem. Just like if your ego, you know, you get your arm broken, or your

• 1:46:57Jocko Willink?

  shoulder torn apart because you didn't tap in Jiu-Jitsu, that's not beneficial. If your ego won't say, "You know what? My form is falling apart right now, and I need to scale this weight." You're gonna get hurt. If your ego is, you know, saying, oh, you know, I'm, I'm competing against Dave on the pistol right now. And I can see that his, he could do this, he could make this movement a little smoother on his, on his holster, but I'm not going to tell him. So now I'm hurting my team so I can win. Like, those are terrible things. So I, I think as I see, and as I saw, cause I, again, I mean, we've had a CrossFit affiliate here since 2007. As I saw those criticisms, I'd say, yes, that's correct.

• 1:47:42Jocko Willink?

  Here's what we need to do to watch out for that. Oh, the whole idea, again, this is one of the things, just like Gracie Jiu Jitsu brought a lot of things to martial arts. The ideal of scalable workouts. I never heard of that. Never, we didn't, we didn't hear about that in the SEAL teams. I never heard about, look, hey, if you're going to deadlift and you couldn't deadlift as much as me, sure, you're going to deadlift less weight, but it wasn't a thing.

• 1:48:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:08Jocko Willink?

  It wasn't a thing. So to say, oh yeah. If you think you're going to go and you're going to clean and jerk 135, 30 times for time, and, and that's 70% of your max clean and jerk, you're not being smart.

• 1:48:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:24Jocko Willink?

  And you need to put your ego in check.

• 1:48:26Speaker 01

  Most new people should not do 30 clean and jerks at 135 for time. But could they do 30 clean and jerks with an empty PVC pipe? Picking up a stick, bring it to their shoulder and going overhead? Probably and completely safely.

• 1:48:40Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:48:40Speaker 01

  And so the, definitely the scaling aspect and what people forget about a lot in the criticism of the, the danger of CrossFit. Our core charter, we talk about in our course is mechanics, consistency, and then intensity. And with mechanics, it's about learning how to do the movement, learn how to do it correctly. And that journey probably isn't a 15 minute session at your first session. That journey can be a couple of months. Mechanic, consistent, do it well, do it well over and over. And then after your mechanics are consistently well, good, then you can add intensity and then you go for time. But that's been our charter from Greg wrote that, scripted that early on. And that's what we teach, often ignored and often ignored in the expression of it.

• 1:49:25Speaker 01

  What I mean by that is like, sometimes trainers get people and it's easy just to like, go. And like here, but we've got a really. It's so effective because it's so complex. And what I mean by that, these movements, these complex movements, there's a lot of bang for your buck, and there's a lot of respect that needs to come with that. And they need to, you need to give them the intention that they deserve with training and education on how to do them, prior to adding the intensity piece. Because, yeah, intensity and poor technique, intensity being going fast and high reps, for example, are a recipe for disaster. On the 30 clean and jerks at 135, the opposite end of the spectrum, now there's guys that'll do 30 clean and jerks at 225.

• 1:50:10Speaker 01

  You know, so.

• 1:50:11Jocko Willink?

  Salute.

• 1:50:12Speaker 01

  Unheard of, like you're seeing the progression and the whole full spectrum of it.

• 1:50:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. The, and you know, the same thing, there was a lot of criticism around, like, rabdo.

• 1:50:25Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:50:25Jocko Willink?

  And you can get rabdo. I don't know if I've ever had it. I don't actually think I've ever had it.

• 1:50:32Speaker 01

  I have not either.

• 1:50:34Jocko Willink?

  I, I think, you know, again, the probably, in my opinion, one of the primary causes of rabdo would be ego. Because if I'm trying to hang with you, and I haven't worked out for the last four months, or six months, or maybe two years, and you're doing a, you're doing a heavy Fran, and I'm like, I can actually do it, you know, because I still have some muscle memory. And so now I push myself so hard, I'm not conditioned for it. And that's when we end up with issues. Again, ego. And, look, as instructor cadre, you got to watch out for that stuff, for all these things, you know. The instructor cadre is responsible for saying, putting egos in check.

• 1:51:16Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:51:16Jocko Willink?

  You know, for saying, hey, you know, we have to do this in jiu-jitsu. I remember this is with kids, training kids. I would be very, I would always keep close monitor on kids, because kids don't want to tap. Like, their egos go crazy. And another kid's just like, oh, they're not tapping. Cool, I'm gonna keep going. And so I would stop for them. And it's like, you have to have that mentality with adults, too.

• 1:51:36Speaker 01

  How, when kids training kids, how old would the kids, are the kids that are training the kids?

• 1:51:42Jocko Willink?

  No, no, they're training against.

• 1:51:43Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, I didn't realize. I see what you're saying.

• 1:51:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they're just, they're just having matches. They're not, they're not instructors. Uh, so it seems like if you, if you want to focus on the criticisms and if someone's hearing about CrossFit and they want to Google like what's bad about CrossFit, cool, you can find what's bad about CrossFit. And if you don't say what are the mitigating approaches that handle these issues,

• 1:52:14Jocko Willink?

  then you won't know about them. So I, I think it's a, the education of what's happening right now is getting people educated where they're like, okay, I understand what's going on. I understand what the limitations are. I understand what, what guardrails need to be put in place to mitigate these things from happening.

• 1:52:31Speaker 01

  We need to, we need to do a much better job, CrossFit does, at this point of educating society on the safety and efficacy of the program in general. And we need to, all the, um, safety protocols and all the, the path through even to this intensity should be common knowledge to anyone interested in this style of training that like, yeah, CrossFit, mechanics, consistency, intensity. CrossFit, they don't recommend that you go a hundred percent when you first walk in there. They recommend you check your ego. For the benefit of our affiliate owners and our gym owners, to get more people into the gyms, our job, CrossFit HQ, call it, we need to be telling the world

• 1:53:11Speaker 01

  all of these things on a regular basis. I, I truly believe that. Um, we're not, I would say, doing a great job of it right now. I hope to work with our team to get us to a better spot where we are letting the world, everyone know, um, how safe it is and how the, how good the trainers are. And we have to do a, a better job of making the trainers better. We have to help the affiliates become better because we have to, um, let the world know that it's a great training option because it really is. And it's for anyone and everyone. I don't want to sound like I'm trying to pitch it, but I've just lived it for the last 20 years, but I am because it's, um, It's the most effective training protocol out there. And one of the things we've done is

• 1:53:53Speaker 01

  we've demystified training. And what I mean by that is this, uh, this notion of training being for these, uh, call it the NSCA coaches and, and these, uh, Olympic weightlifting coaches that are, that are on a pedestal. Like you, these movements are complex, but they're accessible to all of us. You can do them. I can do them. He can do them. Our kids can do them. They just need to be trained in them and they just need to, um, have proper instruction. The funny thing is, I was telling this to, um, one of the captains I met with recently, um, on, in Fort Stewart, actually in Fort Bragg. I, I said that the deadlift, the squat,

• 1:54:35Speaker 01

  the clean and jerk, the snatch for soldiers should be just like how to break down your M4. And what I mean by that is the points of performance for all of those movements, they should learn through their training at every stage of training. How to identify good movement and how to perform good movement and how to correct good movement, just like they learn how to break down and service their M4. Now that's a foundational knowledge they should have. And then you have experts, you have strength and conditioning coaches, just like you have armorers that when you need a little more help or you want to need more knowledge, you take your gun to the armor. If you want to learn more about programming or learn more about movement, you go to the strength and conditioning coach. So there's

• 1:55:15Speaker 01

  a, there's a world where we need to educate the soldiers more on these movements and that plays back out to just this general concept of the general public. These are things that everyone should be doing and they're not hard to, um, hard to learn or hard to do once you have good instruction and coaches.

• 1:55:33Jocko Willink?

  Now, CrossFit, the last, I guess it's been two years. You've mentioned a couple of times you got fired. Uh, there was a, like, uh, I guess an entire paradigm shift inside of CrossFit. Um, Greg Glassman, who founded it, he, he's like a, I, I, I've met him before. I don't, I can't even say I really know him. I mean, I, but you know, just knowing about him, he was kind of like this libertarian to the core kind of guy. Spoke his mind to a fault, I would say. And the reason I say that, because some people like, oh, you can't do that. You should speak your mind. Well,

• 1:56:14Jocko Willink?

  If you speak your mind and it creates an outcome that you didn't really want, then maybe speaking your mind, you could have done a better job. Uh, but you know, that kind of stuff got him into trouble.

• 1:56:28Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:56:28Jocko Willink?

  Um, CrossFit at some point left social media completely. Uh, and, and just he be, it seemed like he became increasingly like outspoken about political issues and about things that, you know, honestly, I was looking through some of the stuff that he would say, and I was like, this is, you know, I like to talk about simple, clear, concise communication that people understand. It wasn't always, right? It was always stuff like, what does that actually mean? What are we trying to say here? It ended up not working out good for him.

• 1:57:03Speaker 01

  Yes. Um, Greg had a way of communicating that, um, where you talk about simple, clean, clear communication. Greg had a way, oh, I said that wrong, didn't I?

• 1:57:13Jocko Willink?

  Simple, clear, concise, yeah.

• 1:57:14Speaker 01

  Simple, clear, concise. Greg had a way of, um, not doing simple, clear, concise communication by design, kind of to let, uh, kind of make you think and go, what did he just say? And have to peel layers back because he was so intelligent and he, he's a fucking mad scientist genius. Um, he did that deliberately. And yes, kind of at the end of the day, that did catch up with him because he, um, in the tweet, he, what he said was definitely misunderstood by what his intent was with it. And it got him in a lot of trouble and a lot of his concepts were, um, he had to dive in a layer deeper to really understand what he's trying to say.

• 1:57:59Speaker 01

  But, but he didn't have, he didn't, he didn't want to dumb his talk down. He wanted to elevate his speech and let people kind of come up and figure it out. And one, one approach, I'm not going to say it was right or wrong, but that's the way he, he liked to do it. He liked to communicate.

• 1:58:16Jocko Willink?

  So he communicates himself out of a job, kind of. Um, uh, you actually became CEO for what? A month?

• 1:58:25Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:58:25Jocko Willink?

  Something like that?

• 1:58:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, like a month and a half. At that point, he hadn't. He had not sold the company and so he, he did the tweet, got in a lot of trouble over that and then ended up stepping back, still own the company, put me in as CEO. And then there was some other stuff that started coming out and more attention was drawn to him, they piled on him and then he, there was a lot more pressure to sell. There's actually a phase where I think had this second round of attacks not come at him, had it just been the original tweet, that he would have had a better chance, call it,

• 1:59:07Speaker 01

  surviving as owner with me as CEO and then getting out on the other side. But the second barrage of, of, call it, attacks, really just got him to a place where like, okay, I'm gonna sell this thing and he, he put a number out there internally, or not even to the team, but amongst himself and his inner team and someone met it and so he ended up selling the company. And when he sold it, the, the team who bought it, the guy who led the effort to buy the team was like, hey, I'm putting myself in as CEO. I'm like, yeah, I get it dude, he just bought the company. So like, I had no, once I knew there was talk of selling going on, I had no like aspirations to fight for the position or to like, I'm gonna stay here regardless, cause I'm a realist,

• 1:59:52Speaker 01

  I knew what that represented.

• 1:59:55Jocko Willink?

  So that guy comes in, this, company buys the company, company buys CrossFit, they put in this new CEO, he didn't last that long either, right? I mean, how long was he there for?

• 2:00:10Speaker 01

  Maybe a year and a half, if that. He, I, I don't remember the exact timeline, but he ended up firing me and then shortly after that, he, he left and then shortly after that, I came back.

• 2:00:26Jocko Willink?

  And, you know,

• 2:00:30Jocko Willink?

  For me, a lot of this drama stuff, this is for lack of a better word, drama. I know it's your life, right? I hate to just like paint it as like, oh, it's just a bunch of drama and it is a bunch of drama. Like, that's what it is. It's freaking drama. And the whole time I was kind of like looking at it, thinking it's a lot of drama, but still kind of, because again, I'm sitting here with a CrossFit gym that I've had for 15 years. It's like, where is this going?

• 2:00:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:58Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, I'm not a very, I don't, I don't overreact to things. I kind of let things play out and see what's going to happen. And, and finally, you, you know, as this new CEO came on board, Don, how do you say his last name? Fall? Fall? Don Fall comes on board. He actually went to the Naval Academy with Leif, who wrote this book with me and another book with me is, and he was in the Marine Corps. He, he worked in a bunch of like, you know, tech companies, is a legit like business guy with military background, with leadership experience. And that kind of gets it to where it is now. Like,

• 2:01:38Jocko Willink?

  like right now, it seems as though, honestly, for the, the, the most I've seen. And I, I think, you know, when you talk about Glassman, I think his approach, like you talked about his approach with like communications, he also had a weird approach with leadership, you know, like, it was like, hey, we're gonna like, uh, almost, again, I said libertarian, but that was also applied to, to the leadership. Like, oh, if you're good, you'll do good and your gym will do good. And if you're not, then your gym will fail. And that's the way, and it'll, you know, the brand will live on because the bad people will fail and the good people, when, maybe there's a better way to do things like you're talking about. Like, if someone's a shitty trainer,

• 2:02:20Jocko Willink?

  we shouldn't let him have a gym. If the gym is not have a certain standard, we shouldn't let it be there. But he didn't do that. Yeah. So now, it's, so, so to me, I was always kind of, you know, again, I've got my own gym here. I'm doing my thing, which is kind of also in line with that attitude. Like, hey, we're right, we're, we're not following your protocol. Like, I got my own gym. Like, we're, we're gonna do it how we're gonna do it. So I was kind of okay with that. Not thinking about the fact that if you've got someone that's a knucklehead running a gym, it can be problematic and the, the brand, a bad name. But that was his attitude. I would say now, I think,

• 2:02:59Jocko Willink?

  It is a high point for me, from my vision of CrossFit over the last however many years it's been, and 15 years for me. Is that right? Or has it been 25? It's been a long time that I've been around it. Yeah, I guess it's 15 or 16 years. This is the time it seems like the clearest vision, the best quality, the unified goals. It seems like things are as good as they have ever been for CrossFit right now.

• 2:03:27Speaker 01

  I believe things are really good for CrossFit right now. Don Fall was a great hire by the board, a great decision in terms of just someone who their background specifically, you know, the Navy time, or I'm sorry, the Naval Academy, and then the Marine Corps time, and then what he did after that in the Silicon Valley. He checked a lot of boxes. And he, what I mean by that is like, here's someone that definitely can relate to a lot of the staff, a lot of the people like myself who have military backgrounds. A lot of our

• 2:04:07Speaker 01

  community is, you look at our roots and our history, it kind of is this counterculture, SEAL-like movement in the beginning that grew to much more than that. But having someone with his experience in this role showed an awareness and appreciation for where we've been and who we are that is powerful. And since he's been here, yeah, he's done a really great job in terms of bringing our team together, kind of galvanizing our mission and giving us clear vision. He is a much different leader than Greg. I would say Greg wasn't even a

• 2:04:45Speaker 01

  leader at times. He was a leader of a movement, but, I mean, to be honest, we, he and I, we are good friends. We're still friends to this day. I talk to him on a regular basis. We had a complex relationship. We had a wild ride together just as friends and as business, or as boss and employee.

• 2:05:12Speaker 01

  His style and my style or our style of leadership was very different. And, um, and that, um, caused problems at times. And even some of the crazy things he did in the past, um, with like the social media and some of those things you talked about. You, you know, like, um, to say that the team was on board or to say that there were things that we were doing as a company or things that he was saying as a company that we were, uh, supporting and on board with and bought in on. It would, I would be lying if I said that. I mean, he, and he was, he was the sole owner. And so people would always tell me that he's the sole owner, so he could do whatever he wants. That was true and he did.

• 2:05:54Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:05:54Speaker 01

  And, uh, and I, and the problem with that too, is a lot of us, because it was such a public, it's not your local, um, construction company. You know what I mean? It's a global brand that, um, represented a lot of employees, represents a lot of affiliates. And so the things he did at times was definitely in, let's call it isolation of, of a lot of the team members being on board.

• 2:06:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And when you mentioned the, like the SEAL teams, counterculture, the, the rebel nature, which is absolutely true. That's, that's part of who we are. But what I saw, and I'm sure you saw this too, the change and the professionalization of the SEAL teams as we grew and as the war continued and as we got bigger and as we had more people and as we had more visibility. We had to become more and more professional.

• 2:06:54Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:06:54Jocko Willink?

  And it, it seems like that's, that's what the transition is happening now. And has been going on for the last, you know, six months to a year with CrossFit. And, and I'll tell you what, it's been awesome for me. Um, you know, we, I, I was actually trying, cause we have. Been talking with CrossFit and Jaco Fuel for like the last, I don't know. That's what I was trying to figure out. I don't know where it started. At some point, there was.

• 2:07:24Speaker 01

  Well, when I saw you at Bobby's memorial.

• 2:07:27Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 2:07:28Speaker 01

  You had mentioned that you guys were talking and then I dug in with our team and at that point it was early in the early stages of development.

• 2:07:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and the connection was so natural, right? Like, like here we have Jaco Fuel. We make supplements to make you perform better. We make protein, we make energy drinks, we make, like, that's what we do. And here I am, had a CrossFit gym since 2007, like, it, it, CrossFit to me, as I mentioned, was something that was always trying to benefit the world and make people better. And I've gotten a bunch of people to do CrossFit over the years and to, to, to try and make them better. And Jaco Fuel's the same thing, like, here we are trying to help people optimize their performance in whatever realm that they're in.

• 2:08:20Jocko Willink?

  And so you have this real obvious kind of unified attitude at both companies of like, hey, we got two companies that are trying to help people get better. And I thought that was cool. And again, I'm not exactly, I don't know who reached out to who first. I don't think it was, I mean, I don't know where it came from. And I remember my, if they would have asked me this two years ago, two years ago, I would have been like, hey, man, like, I don't know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of polarization around it. There's a lot of people that hate on it and a lot of negative feelings about it and there's a lot of positive feelings too and we're gonna end up in this weird world. Uh, but, but since the timing was good and I'm looking at where everything's at

• 2:09:05Jocko Willink?

  and I see the progress being made, for me it was like the perfect time for. To to kind of join forces is pretty awesome.

• 2:09:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're definitely, uh, the last few years, we've been on our heels. And maybe even before the last two years, what I mean by that is just, um, working to pull ourselves up. Um, specifically the last two years after the, the Glassman, um, after the tweet incident. But even before that, we had shut down our social media. We had shut off a lot of our media creation. And when you think about at that time, um, as a long time affiliate owner, you're an affiliate owner, other affiliate owners. What value or what is CrossFit doing for me? If we're shutting off our mega mouthpiece, our mega areas to communicate with the world, the safety and efficacy of the program. And, and we're not doing that anymore, then what are you doing?

• 2:09:56Speaker 01

  You're just taking my money and putting or, or, or letting me use the name. And that there became a point when that wasn't enough. And so, yeah, the, the whole shutdowns of the social media was not on, not a fan of. And I did not think that did any favors. It, and it, and then obviously the transition and that phase, we were just clawing our way back. And now you are right, it is, it feels like we're in a much better place and an area to, uh, to grow on and expand from. When I was fired, uh, we talked about this briefly, I, uh, I lived it out publicly. And that was a weird, like, just like what I mean by that is like, uh, everybody knew.

• 2:10:40Speaker 01

  It wasn't like I worked for, again, that construction company example, a construction company. It's, I got fired and I had to, you know, I could go home and deal with it however I wanted. But like the whole CrossFit world knew, and that was interesting. It was, um, I definitely wish I could get fired and not have the whole world have to know again. That ever happens again, but I think those days are gone. Um, so being in this position, in this, with this, call it spotlight, it's, um,

• 2:11:14Speaker 01

  It's a burden. I mean, not a burden, but it's like, it's a weight. It's like, you know, I don't mean a burden in how I am or how I act, because how I act or how I am is consistent and the same regardless of if I was popular in the community or not popular. How I work and how I conduct business is the same, but there's this extra weight of like, the eyeballs, the attacks, and I didn't cover this early, but in terms of the attacks, like, way early on, I just stopped looking. And I drew a couple of rules for myself with social media early, early on. One, I was never going to comment. So even to this day, on any of my platforms, I don't respond to anything.

• 2:11:57Speaker 01

  I just feel like it's a slippery slope. And two, um, early, early on, there was a bunch of haters and that had blogs or whatnot, and they'd come after us. And one of them, I forgot which one it was, he posted something and my wife at the time, well, she's still my wife, but at the time, she was training at CrossFit Coronado, and he had pulled a picture from the website, from their website of her training and posted it and went after her form, but didn't cite her name or didn't say who it was. But he was coming after CrossFit and us with an image of her, and I was fucking pissed off. And I didn't know if, he must have known, and he was doing that to get at me. But at that point, I was like,

• 2:12:42Speaker 01

  I will never put my family out there. And that's another thing I've had, like, this wall of like, I don't post pictures of them or with them. I don't, um, because I don't want to have to deal with anyone saying anything and how it's going to make me react to that. So the best way I can handle it is just, nope, they're not out there. And I keep the private part of my life completely private. And so what I do put out there or what I do show is super deliberate, is super thought through. It's, uh, it's not by accident. I've actually, I have a second, um, I have another Instagram account. I don't even use my main one that much anymore, where, because I'm into shooting, as I mentioned, I just post hunting and shooting stuff. And it's like, hey, if you're into that stuff, you can go

• 2:13:27Speaker 01

  watch me do that and see that there. And I don't even have to put it on my main account, because, um, that stuff obviously is, is polarizing. So, and let me rephrase that.

• 2:13:40Speaker 01

  I don't put it out in a polarizing way like I'm not like posting stuff and talking about the second amendment or talking about any of these issues going on. I just post videos of me doing my passion.

• 2:13:52Jocko Willink?

  What you like to do.

• 2:13:52Speaker 01

  And what I like to do.

• 2:13:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's funny because like I I only I I

• 2:14:01Jocko Willink?

  from my perspective like, oh, I saw you got fired, but like that was it. There's no, it was no drama for me.

• 2:14:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:14:06Jocko Willink?

  Right? I'm watching you get fired. But the the thing that was kind of weird for me is like I I've known you, I guess now we've confirmed since 2007.

• 2:14:14Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:14:17Jocko Willink?

  You didn't. I was just a random team guy. I wasn't like some like author or social media person. I was just a normal dude.

• 2:14:24Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:14:24Jocko Willink?

  And since day one, you were just like, cool.

• 2:14:26Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:14:27Jocko Willink?

  Uh, like, I remember you'd say, oh, you want to come to this thing? I'd email you once every three years.

• 2:14:35Speaker 01

  Funny you say that. That's what someone asked me like, how do you know Jaco? I'd say I'd responded with every few years, he emails me asking for a seminar. One of his trainers.

• 2:14:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, once every three years I'd email him to be like, hey, bro. Hope everything's cool.

• 2:14:48Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:14:48Jocko Willink?

  Uh, I see there's a a level one cert in San Diego. I need to get recertified. You'd be like, yep, you're in.

• 2:14:53Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:14:54Jocko Willink?

  That was it. No, no reason. And this was when the either I was still in the teams and was just, you know, like you had no reason to do this other than you're just a good dude that was just trying to help a brother out, right?

• 2:15:04Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:15:04Jocko Willink?

  And so that's my been my interaction with you. And then I'd go and you know, I'd see you there and you'd be like, hey, what's going on? We talk about whatever and then carry on.

• 2:15:12Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:15:13Jocko Willink?

  Wasn't like, well, he hasn't called me in a while. Like you had every you actually I'm the because I'm a I'm I don't communicate with people.

• 2:15:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:20Jocko Willink?

  Like, I don't respond to people like I don't I don't have a bunch of uh, uh, you know, I don't you're not going to hear from me on your birthday like that kind of thing. And so I would reach out to you like, hey, I need to go to this thing or hey, can we send a guy to that? And you like, cool, all done.

• 2:15:34Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:15:34Jocko Willink?

  Again, for no reason other than just like we met, you seem cool. I guess I seem cool. We're considered each other to be cool. We're good.

• 2:15:42Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:15:43Jocko Willink?

  And that's so when I would see people like getting, I saw people like getting crazy about you. I was like, bro, what is what's going? Gone and you know, I, I, I think that just, um, I guess that's a little bit of the nature of the beast. When you're in a position like you're in, people are going to find things to attack and, and look for reasons to try and bring you down and bring down what you're doing. Um, I guess that's part of the joy.

• 2:16:09Speaker 01

  The fitness, the fitness is polarizing in its nature.

• 2:16:12Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's true.

• 2:16:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:16:13Jocko Willink?

  It's a nutrition, right?

• 2:16:14Speaker 01

  Well, this fitness and nutrition, but this specific CrossFit, this style of fitness is even polarizing within fitness. And then you find someone in it, Greg or myself at the top and people who are leading it. And then they become easy targets because you just don't want to attack the brand. You want to attack the people. You know what's funny about all the people that attack us too? It's like, um, I don't like, well, I don't like bodybuilding for one, but you will never find me on any bodybuilding sites or any bodybuilding forums, talking shit about bodybuilders.

• 2:16:44Jocko Willink?

  Otherwise Echo would be calling you out.

• 2:16:47Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? So like, or yoga, I'm not a yoga fan, although I will say big picture. I appreciate both of those activities for people being in them and being fit and trying to change their lives. But my point is it's a unique person or a special person who doesn't like something and then goes over to their pages and goes over to their forums and starts blasting it. It's, it's a horrible person actually is what it is.

• 2:17:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's definitely not a good way to go through life. You know, as your, as your fourth grade teacher told you and your dad told you and your mom told you and your principal told you, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it, man.

• 2:17:23Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:17:24Jocko Willink?

  And that proves to be true. Um, we got this little collab going, I guess, Jaco Fuel and CrossFit. That's what we got going on. Hey, if you have a gym, a CrossFit gym and you want to carry Jaco Fuel, you can email J F sales at Jaco Fuel dot com. Uh, we're doing some, if you want to try Jaco Fuel, we're doing a, like a.

• 2:17:53Jocko Willink?

  There's terms in the, in the retail world of selling buy one, get one at 50% off. Jaco Fuel.com and free shipping over 99 bucks. We're trying to introduce people to what we've got going on. Um, we got a bunch of product for you guys to try, but that's because I want you to get better. I want you to go to the gym. I want you to eat clean. That's what I want you to do. I think Dave wants you to do the same thing.

• 2:18:24Speaker 01

  You got a lot going on.

• 2:18:25Jocko Willink?

  We got a lot going on.

• 2:18:26Speaker 01

  You also do clothing, right?

• 2:18:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we have, uh, we have a clothing company, all 100% made in America. We got, we make boots right now. Um, we make, you know, jeans, jujitsu gi's, rash guards, shorts, hoodies.

• 2:18:42Speaker 01

  I'm working on something, not to the level you have, but I'm working on something.

• 2:18:45Jocko Willink?

  Right on. Awesome.

• 2:18:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18:46Jocko Willink?

  Um, well, I look forward to whatever you're working on. Does this, does this get us?

• 2:18:51Speaker 01

  I'll tell you, olive oil.

• 2:18:53Jocko Willink?

  Olive oil?

• 2:18:54Speaker 01

  Olive oil.

• 2:18:54Jocko Willink?

  Oh, sweet. Right on.

• 2:18:55Speaker 01

  Uh, I've been saying that for years and, uh, you got guys in CrossFit selling coffee. You got guys selling, um, there's even some people that sell alcohol, wine, beer, whatever. Um, I'm like, no one in our space is selling something as clean and pure as olive oil.

• 2:19:12Jocko Willink?

  I'm in. Let's talk after we get done.

• 2:19:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure.

• 2:19:14Jocko Willink?

  I'm in a hundred percent where, um, I'm, I want in on that. That's what I do. Does that get, does that get us up speed where we're at right now?

• 2:19:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Uh, we're excited. We're excited to be working with a brand like yours. It's, uh, been years, I think in the making. And as you said, it's the right time.

• 2:19:30Jocko Willink?

  It's an awesome time. Um, Echo.

• 2:19:33Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:19:33Jocko Willink?

  Do you have any questions?

• 2:19:34Speaker 02

  I do.

• 2:19:35Jocko Willink?

  Bodybuilding questions?

• 2:19:36Speaker 02

  No, we'll, we'll skip that one. So when you're in the Navy, you can have another job? Or is that like an exception? I don't get it.

• 2:19:44Jocko Willink?

  Usually no.

• 2:19:45Speaker 02

  Well, I know, and now we know another guy that did that. And I was all confused. I was like, wait, how are you still in the Navy? If you're, you literally have like this company and this job or whatever. Like, so what's the, what's the deal then?

• 2:19:57Speaker 01

  It depends at what occasion and sometimes you have to be really formal and get like written permission all the way up to your CEO and and oftentimes if I was not at that role I had, there was no way it could have been done. Like if I was at a regular SEAL Team where I was deploying and training, I could not have done the role. Unique time, unique circumstance, unique leadership that allowed me to.

• 2:20:18Speaker 02

  So, so it's essentially what you can get away with with varying degrees of officiality kind of a scenario?

• 2:20:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, that sounds about right.

• 2:20:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And it's almost, it's always going to be on a not to interfere basis.

• 2:20:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:20:31Jocko Willink?

  In other words, no matter what happens, this Navy job is the absolute priority. So you gotta be careful of that one.

• 2:20:37Speaker 02

  Makes sense. Cool, man. Great to meet you in person.

• 2:20:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, nice to meet you too.

• 2:20:41Jocko Willink?

  Right on. Crossfit.com is where you can find out about CrossFit. You can find it on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, at CrossFit. Dave, you're on Instagram.

• 2:20:52Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:20:52Jocko Willink?

  You're on Twitter. Now, the one I know is The Dave Castro.

• 2:20:56Speaker 01

  Yep, that's my Instagram.

• 2:20:57Jocko Willink?

  That's the one?

• 2:20:58Speaker 01

  That's the big one. And then I have the hunting one, which is at TDC Hunts.

• 2:21:02Jocko Willink?

  At T D C, The Dave Castro Hunts.

• 2:21:07Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:21:07Jocko Willink?

  Uh, and you got CrossFitRanch.com?

• 2:21:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yep, we have CrossFitRanch.com too, where people can sign up for drop-ins to go work out at the ranch, which is a pretty cool, people who travel do that a lot.

• 2:21:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that sounds pretty cool. It's a pretty cool site.

• 2:21:20Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:21:20Speaker 02

  I have one more question.

• 2:21:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:22Speaker 02

  If I go to the CrossFit Ranch, can I do a bodybuilding routine?

• 2:21:25Speaker 01

  You can. Thanks, man.

• 2:21:30Jocko Willink?

  I got this guy. You can ask this guy. He does metcons now.

• 2:21:33Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:21:33Jocko Willink?

  He's all for me. He used to just be just nothing but curls. And you know what? I did his, I did his bicep. He's got a bicep routine. I did it today. I did it today, first time. You know, we're gonna work on those biceps a little bit. Uh, awesome, man. Dave, any closing thoughts?

• 2:21:49Speaker 01

  No, thank you for having me on. This was a pleasure.

• 2:21:51Jocko Willink?

  Well, um.

• 2:21:52Speaker 01

  Honored, and I'm enjoying your book.

• 2:21:54Jocko Willink?

  Thanks, man. And, uh, thanks for coming down. Thanks for sharing your experiences. Thanks for sharing your lessons learned and, um, most important, thanks for your service to the teams, to the country. I know you don't talk about it, but, um, I know it's serious service and sacrifice. So, thank you for that and thanks for what you continue to do today to go out there and try and help people become faster and stronger.

• 2:22:21Jocko Willink?

  And fitter.

• 2:22:22Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:22:22Jocko Willink?

  Which helps them with every aspect of their life. That is appreciated. Thank you.

• 2:22:28Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 2:22:31Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Dave Castro has left the building Echo.

• 2:22:35Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:22:36Jocko Willink?

  You did not get to go as deep into bodybuilding, especially he kinda came at it too.

• 2:22:43Speaker 02

  Little bit.

• 2:22:44Jocko Willink?

  He literally said he didn't like bodybuilding.

• 2:22:46Speaker 02

  No, he said he respects it as a.

• 2:22:48Jocko Willink?

  No, he said he didn't like it at first.

• 2:22:51Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:22:51Jocko Willink?

  And then I think, I don't think he said, he said he respected yoga.

• 2:22:54Speaker 02

  I think, no, bro, I think.

• 2:22:56Jocko Willink?

  He respects yoga, but doesn't respect bodybuilding.

• 2:22:58Speaker 02

  He said, I'm not down for bodybuilding, but I don't go hate on them in their forums or something like this.

• 2:23:02Jocko Willink?

  Cool. Have you ever been to a bodybuilding forum on the interwebs?

• 2:23:06Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:23:07Jocko Willink?

  Disappointing.

• 2:23:08Speaker 02

  I don't think.

• 2:23:09Jocko Willink?

  I figured you'd be all up in there.

• 2:23:10Speaker 02

  I don't spend much time in forums to say the honest truth to you.

• 2:23:14Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 2:23:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:23:15Jocko Willink?

  They, they seem like they might be a place for negativity.

• 2:23:19Speaker 02

  Maybe. I don't know.

• 2:23:21Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's what it seems like.

• 2:23:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:23:23Jocko Willink?

  Free, uh, free for all.

• 2:23:25Speaker 02

  Well, I know that fitness as a space, if you will, fitness, I don't care, CrossFit, bodybuilding, uh, functional fitness.

• 2:23:35Jocko Willink?

  Fitness, powerlifting, Olympic lifting.

• 2:23:38Speaker 02

  The whole gig, um, is a very, uh, like competitive, real like.

• 2:23:44Jocko Willink?

  It's controversial.

• 2:23:44Speaker 02

  Controver, like, yeah, like if there's gonna be some controversy that comes out, they're gonna, but they're gonna talk about it, they're gonna hate on it.

• 2:23:51Jocko Willink?

  They're passionate. There's gonna be a lot of passion in the topic.

• 2:23:53Speaker 02

  There's a lot of different approaches to fitness and there's a lot of different approaches to different goals within fitness as well. It's like how you kinda started to talk about diet, okay, fitness, diet, how to raise kids, polit- political stuff and religion. Five, that's the big five. We call them the big five.

• 2:24:09Jocko Willink?

  Is that, is that your big five or is that a, a more known big five?

• 2:24:12Speaker 02

  It's a known big five, not called the big five. Big five is something else.

• 2:24:16Jocko Willink?

  It's called five topics to avoid at Thanksgiving dinner. What are they again?

• 2:24:20Speaker 02

  Religion.

• 2:24:20Jocko Willink?

  Religion. Okay, hold on, slow down. Religion. Okay, yep. There can be some controversy around that. Diet. Okay, yep, there's definitely controversy around that.

• 2:24:27Speaker 02

  Exercise.

• 2:24:28Jocko Willink?

  For a little while in my life, my wife.

• 2:24:33Jocko Willink?

  Told me, don't talk about diet with her friends.

• 2:24:36Speaker 02

  She was correct.

• 2:24:37Jocko Willink?

  This is in the old school days. I was ahead of the curve. She would be like, can you not talk about this, please? And I'd be like, alright, cool. But they don't know.

• 2:24:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, what do they know?

• 2:24:48Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so we got diet, religion.

• 2:24:52Speaker 02

  Politics.

• 2:24:53Jocko Willink?

  Politics, certainly.

• 2:24:55Speaker 02

  Fitness.

• 2:24:56Jocko Willink?

  Fitness, yes, certainly.

• 2:24:57Speaker 02

  How to raise kids.

• 2:24:58Jocko Willink?

  Interesting. Yep, I'm gonna say that's probably all of them.

• 2:25:01Speaker 02

  True, bro. So yeah, if there's gonna be some drama in any industry, and you select one of those industries, you can, there's a high likelihood that the drama's gonna be sky high.

• 2:25:11Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And look, there's drama, this is what, you know, we, we talked about, and I, I didn't mean to diminish the drama that, that Dave, you know, actually lived through, but from my perspective, it is, it was a bunch of drama. Like, you know, I'm watching, it's like, geez, what are these people, going crazy, attacking each other and all this stuff? So the good thing is, and as I said, if they would've come, if we would've started talking two years ago, like Jaco Fuel and CrossFit, I would've not been too fired up for it. And who knows what they would've been, I don't know, but I'm just saying, from my perspective, two years ago, three years ago, it's like, there's a lot of mayhem going on.

• 2:25:52Jocko Willink?

  But they certainly have moved and are, I think they're in a much more positive place right now. And I think it's gonna be awesome, because CrossFit is a gateway to fitness for so many people, so many people, and I think that's gonna be awesome. I think that people hearing about it more is gonna get more people to go and try it. I think the fact that they've gotten better as coaches and as instructors is gonna be beneficial to everybody. And yeah, I'm looking forward to see where this goes. We got, I mean, the stuff that we're making right now too, at Jaco Fuel is like, gonna be so beneficial.

• 2:26:37Jocko Willink?

  We got, I'm actually drinking some hydration right now. Have you tried the Hydrate yet?

• 2:26:41Speaker 02

  Hydrate.

• 2:26:42Jocko Willink?

  Jaco Hydrate.

• 2:26:43Speaker 02

  I got my first one today.

• 2:26:44Jocko Willink?

  You tried it today?

• 2:26:45Speaker 02

  No, I didn't, I didn't.

• 2:26:46Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you haven't even mixed it up yet? That's coming June.

• 2:26:51Jocko Willink?

  Ninth, June ninth, I think is when is when the hydration is coming out. It's awesome. We got Time War. We got Joint Warfare. We got the the protein cookies. We got Peach. So many good, so much good stuff that we're coming out with right now. You know what I think is gonna be? And I was talking to Jason Kalipa. Do you know who that is?

• 2:27:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:27:11Jocko Willink?

  I was talking to him the other day and he's because he's got a couple like CrossFit gyms and he advises a bunch of people and he's a former CrossFit champ and he's like, yeah, the ready to drink protein.

• 2:27:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:27:24Jocko Willink?

  And the go. To to it's the same. It's it's such a good combo to go, oh, I'm going to do the activity. Go.

• 2:27:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:27:33Jocko Willink?

  I'm done with the activity. I need to recover. Molk.

• 2:27:37Speaker 02

  Got the full.

• 2:27:37Jocko Willink?

  Get that protein. Full protocol. Excellent. This is what this is my protocol now, by the way. And having like here at Victory MMA. When you can just get done and you're walking to your car and you're drinking a Molk.

• 2:27:49Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:27:50Jocko Willink?

  You feel the goodness. When I crack a go, like I walk to my eyes. I'm walking. I have a is this bougie to have a beverage refrigerator in your house?

• 2:28:00Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:28:00Jocko Willink?

  Okay, I I am admitting to a level of bourgeoisie.

• 2:28:05Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:28:05Jocko Willink?

  I have a beverage refrigerator in my house that is filled with beverages. Those beverages are go and Molk.

• 2:28:14Speaker 02

  Just beverages.

• 2:28:15Jocko Willink?

  Just beverages.

• 2:28:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's bougie.

• 2:28:16Jocko Willink?

  It is. Okay.

• 2:28:17Speaker 02

  That's good though.

• 2:28:17Jocko Willink?

  But that's what I have.

• 2:28:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:28:19Jocko Willink?

  But when I'm going to come to the gym, I'm walking, I go past my beverage refrigerator, my bourgeoisie beverage refrigerator and I get a go and I open it and I drive here and it's like it's the perfect time. And then I get here, get changed. By the time I'm stepping on the mat, I feel it.

• 2:28:39Speaker 02

  I have the exact same protocol. Well, essentially where, yeah, I actually can't really go anywhere. That's that takes more than 15 minutes without bringing a go. Pretty much like there are very few exceptions. We went some place, me and the fam. Go. Come down to train today.

• 2:28:53Jocko Willink?

  Go.

• 2:28:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, all day.

• 2:28:55Jocko Willink?

  You know what's another?

• 2:28:57Jocko Willink?

  I don't you call it a sleeper. I don't even think it's a sleeper. The Greens? The Greens are good. This is the thing that.

• 2:29:04Speaker 02

  Well, Greens aren't known to be good.

• 2:29:06Jocko Willink?

  Greens are known to be bad.

• 2:29:07Speaker 02

  Greens is the kind of like, hey, look, I don't want to eat a whole bunch of roughage, you know, in real life. So I'm going to take a cool, like legitimate supplement. But you got to understand, it's just like. It's just a bunch of greens kind of mashed up and it's like, yeah, that's it. But they're not known for taste. That's the thing. So it's like, okay, if you're gonna rough it, at least rough it just for a little while. So it's like, yeah, we're gonna gut through it. Cool. We've all accepted that. That was kind of the, the original protocol.

• 2:29:30Jocko Willink?

  They, you know, they'll be like, hey, what should we tell people about the greens? This is me imitating everyone at Choco Fuel talking to me. It's the combination of Joe Moss, of Pete, of Brian, of all them, they, when I combine all their voices together, they sound like, hey, what do you think we should?

• 2:29:47Jocko Willink?

  So they'll say like, hey, what do you think we should, what's a good thing to say? What should we tell people about green? And I go, hey, tell people your greens don't have to taste like dirt.

• 2:29:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:29:54Jocko Willink?

  How's that? Your greens don't have to taste like dirt. Tell them that. Cause, cause greens taste like dirt.

• 2:30:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:30:01Jocko Willink?

  No reason for that.

• 2:30:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:30:02Jocko Willink?

  There's no reason for that.

• 2:30:03Speaker 02

  Dirt and moss, like there's a little bit of moss.

• 2:30:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:06Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 2:30:07Jocko Willink?

  And you know, when you're a little kid, let's face it, you were looking at a piece of moss. It looked like it might taste good. Right? That's how we know what dirt and moss taste like.

• 2:30:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:30:16Jocko Willink?

  And then for some reason, people thought just because you ate it when you were five, you're still gonna gut through it. No reason for it.

• 2:30:23Speaker 02

  Nope.

• 2:30:24Jocko Willink?

  Greens, peach greens. Anyways, that's what's going on. We have a little partnership that we formed up with CrossFit. So

• 2:30:34Jocko Willink?

  if you're gonna start doing CrossFit, you're gonna need to fuel yourself. Get yourself some Jaco Fuel, JacoFuel.com. Go check that out. Like I said, we got, we're doing a little special to welcome the Crossfitters out there into the fold. Buy one, get one, 50% off. Free shipping over 99 bucks. That's a big deal. Cause shipping can cost a lot.

• 2:30:55Jocko Willink?

  But if you buy more than 99 bucks, then you're good to go. So there you go. Go check that out. JacoFuel.com. Also check out OriginUSA.com. Cause OriginUSA.com, we have stuff that's made in America.

• 2:31:08Jocko Willink?

  And there's a lot of people right now in the world that are pro human rights. And let me ask you this. Have you met anyone that's pro slavery?

• 2:31:18Speaker 02

  No. Well, no.

• 2:31:19Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:31:20Speaker 02

  I have not.

• 2:31:20Jocko Willink?

  I have not met another human in my lifetime that was pro slavery.

• 2:31:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:31:26Jocko Willink?

  And yet there's slavery right now.

• 2:31:28Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:31:28Jocko Willink?

  There's slavery right now.

• 2:31:29Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 2:31:30Jocko Willink?

  And I can tell you where it is. It's if you look at the tag on your clothing and it says made in China, they might as well say made by chained people. Cause that's what's going on over there.

• 2:31:46Jocko Willink?

  Don't do that. Don't support slavery. Support, don't support.

• 2:31:53Jocko Willink?

  Um, environmental disaster, which is all, when you have a factory in America, there's inspectors that come to see what's happening, to see what kind of waste is coming out of your factory. And I'm talking about the factories that I have. There's inspectors that come and you're not allowed to put certain things, chemicals into the ground or chemicals into the air. You're not allowed to do it. There's rules and regulations. There's no rules and regulations overseas. They're just dumping their chemicals into the water, into the air. They don't care.

• 2:32:26Jocko Willink?

  So for all those reasons, go to Origin USA and get yourself. A pair of jeans. By the way, best jeans you'll ever get.

• 2:32:34Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, and just in case a small chance comes around, uh, comes around in your head that you care about how, uh, how you look in some jeans. I throw in that reason as well.

• 2:32:45Jocko Willink?

  Or if you care how you function.

• 2:32:47Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:32:47Jocko Willink?

  Cause you might be into the. Fashion. Sure. Over on this side of the table, we're in a function.

• 2:32:53Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:32:53Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. Uh, go to originusa.com. Get yourself some stuff.

• 2:32:58Speaker 02

  Also, also Jaco's store. It's called Jaco's store. Go to Jaco's store.com when you really look, we're on the path. Look, whether you do CrossFit, Jiu Jitsu, both. Running, lifting, bodybuilding, whatever. Actually, I'm gonna be honest, I don't know that I do bodybuilding.

• 2:33:13Jocko Willink?

  I, I actually know that. I, I, well, no, no, no, wait, wait, wait, let's say this. Your, your CrossFit. Uh, modality.

• 2:33:22Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:33:22Jocko Willink?

  Includes bodybuilding, right? Am I wrong?

• 2:33:25Speaker 02

  Well, let me think. Okay, so. Does shoulder press dumbbells? Okay, I already answered.

• 2:33:33Speaker 02

  So if I did, uh, four sets of 15 with a minute and 10 rest between.

• 2:33:40Jocko Willink?

  Bodybuilding.

• 2:33:40Speaker 02

  Uh, to failure or almost to failure. That's bodybuilding, huh?

• 2:33:44Jocko Willink?

  I mean, I'll ask you, that's bodybuilding, right? What is the purpose? As you like to say, why are you doing that?

• 2:33:49Speaker 02

  To make my shoulders strong.

• 2:33:50Jocko Willink?

  So to make your shoulders what? To make your shoulders what?

• 2:33:52Speaker 02

  Strong.

• 2:33:53Jocko Willink?

  Is there any concern about size?

• 2:33:57Speaker 02

  Look, am I going into the five sets of 12 kind of scenario? Wait, what did I do? Fifteen.

• 2:34:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he said fifteen.

• 2:34:04Speaker 02

  Hey, look, if they happen to get bigger, hey, man, cool. Yes, I will. That's a lateral bonus. It's a win, yes, sir. But I do do deep squats.

• 2:34:12Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:34:13Speaker 02

  I do do clean and press.

• 2:34:15Jocko Willink?

  Yep, good, good.

• 2:34:16Speaker 02

  As part of a MetCon. This is my routine, by the way. So, hey, man, I'm doing the whole gig.

• 2:34:20Jocko Willink?

  You're good doing the whole gig. Bodybuilding. Hey, I will say this. I do bodybuilding type exercises like tricep pull downs.

• 2:34:30Speaker 02

  You do them curls?

• 2:34:31Jocko Willink?

  Curls.

• 2:34:32Speaker 02

  Oh, dang.

• 2:34:33Jocko Willink?

  I do those things.

• 2:34:34Speaker 02

  Good.

• 2:34:34Jocko Willink?

  Why? Look, do I do also do cleans? Yes.

• 2:34:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:34:38Jocko Willink?

  Do I also do presses? Yes. But I found that keeping your like smaller muscle groups also engaged is useful.

• 2:34:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:34:49Jocko Willink?

  And let's face it, we want to have guns.

• 2:34:53Speaker 02

  No one's gonna be bad. No one's gonna be bad. Let's go. Uh, but yes, okay, good. Okay, good. I do some bodybuilding movement. I don't do, because you consider the whole routine. In the spirit of all these modalities, as it were, consider the whole routine. If it's a hybrid of bodybuilding, strength training, nah, Olympic lifting, clean and press, clean and jerk as part of a MetCon, so that's some Olympic lifting. There's some CrossFit in there because it's some stuff is work time. Sometimes it's a AMRAP. What's the?

• 2:35:22Jocko Willink?

  AMRAP.

• 2:35:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes it's that. So there's some CrossFit in there, kind of a thing. And then, um, what else would there be? Yeah, the bodybuilding stuff for sure. So, okay, as a comprehensive program, what is that? It's kind of everything, right?

• 2:35:34Jocko Willink?

  Which kind of makes it CrossFit.

• 2:35:35Speaker 02

  And then I do the.

• 2:35:35Jocko Willink?

  Be honest with you.

• 2:35:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:35:37Jocko Willink?

  And the.

• 2:35:38Speaker 02

  There you go. But, um, either way, hey, look, it's part of the protocol. It's part of the routine. Same thing with the whole, you know, nutrition, diet, exercise is part of the whole routine. It's part of the path.

• 2:35:49Jocko Willink?

  Ah.

• 2:35:50Speaker 02

  See what I'm saying?

• 2:35:51Jocko Willink?

  I see exactly what you're saying.

• 2:35:52Speaker 02

  Back to Jaco's store. If you want to represent while you're on this path, you see what I'm saying? You go to jacostore.com. Discipline equals freedom. It's true.

• 2:36:00Speaker 02

  It's an oxymoron or a hyper, what do you call it when it contradicts it?

• 2:36:03Jocko Willink?

  Call it the truth.

• 2:36:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it is true. We also have the shirt locker, which is a subscription shirt scenario. Get a new shirt every, every, uh, every month, different designs, some good, uh, good feedback on that.

• 2:36:15Jocko Willink?

  Subscribe to that. Subscribe to this podcast. Subscribe to jocko underground.com. We appreciate your support. We don't own this platform. Unless you're listening on jocko underground, we don't own the platform. That means they could be getting in there and editing it out or removing it, banning us. They might be banning us because we are doing bicep curls.

• 2:36:34Speaker 02

  No, possible.

• 2:36:36Jocko Willink?

  Uh, jocko, that's jocko underground.com. Go check that out. YouTube subscription. Jocko podcast official origin USA. Go check out the video Pete just put up. We were able to give a raise to everybody up there at, in Maine. So go, go watch that video. You'll, you'll see what I'm talking about. That's it. That's at origin. Origin USA YouTube, also jocko fuel YouTube channel. If you want to know what's going on. Inside jocko fuel or that's more like not inside. That's like with jocko. This is what we're making right now. So check that one out. Uh, psychological warfare, flip side canvas. Just talked to Dakota today. Dakota Meyer, you know what he's doing? He's getting after it, man.

• 2:37:20Jocko Willink?

  And if you want to get after it like Dakota, go to flipside canvas.com. Check that out. I got a bunch of books that I've written. You can check out those books that I've written. Also have a leadership consultancy called Echelon Front. Go to echelonfront.com. If you need leadership inside your organization, we will help you out. We do live events and they all sell out. We oversold our last muster. We had to like, the staff had to sit in the back corner and all this stuff. So we sell everything out. So if you want to go to one of our live events, go to echelonfront.com and check out our live events. Also, if, like I said, if you have problems in your organization. Those problems, oh, you, how do you get know what the problems causing the problems, Jocko? You don't even know what industry we are. I know what's causing the problems. It's leadership problems.

• 2:38:04Jocko Willink?

  So if you want to solve the problems in your team, in your organization, go to echelonfront.com and we will come and work with you. We also have a, we have an online trading academy for life.

• 2:38:18Jocko Willink?

  To interact with other human beings. You know, if you want to interact with other human beings, you, you need to learn it. It's not a natural thing. I was talking to Ty. You know SD Ty?

• 2:38:30Speaker 02

  I do.

• 2:38:30Jocko Willink?

  Sandy, he used to be, he's transitioned. He was main Ty, but now he's become SD Ty.

• 2:38:35Speaker 02

  I hear good things.

• 2:38:35Jocko Willink?

  So SD Ty, I was talking to him and he, you know, he was talking about having conversations with people and how he's starting to become aware of, oh, these are the things that I've heard you talking about and now I can see them. And I can detach enough to make sure that I am taking the right approach.

• 2:38:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:38:56Jocko Willink?

  That is what you learn on extremeownership.com. How to interact with other people, how to converse with them, how to ask earnest questions, how to see their point of view, how to influence them, how to allow yourself to be, all these things are in there. A little bit of magic. It's kind of like jujitsu.

• 2:39:14Speaker 02

  I was gonna say Brad, you made such, the other day, you made a good point where you're like, hey, if you know how to, if you're doing all this stuff or whatever, imagine how, and it made me kind of go down this little whatever, psychological rabbit hole. Where, and you're right, it's same as jujitsu, same as fitness, lifting weights. It's the same as like, reading, even something as fundamental as reading. Imagine if you were the only one who knew how to read right now, just all of a sudden. Or let's say you were only one of like eight people in the whole wide world or whatever that knew how to read. You know how, how easy things would be for you compared to everybody else?

• 2:39:45Jocko Willink?

  If you're the only person that knew how to do jujitsu, if you're the only person that knew how to do an overhead squat, you would go challenging people to overhead squat contest.

• 2:39:52Speaker 02

  Well, let's say if you were the only person who lifted weights and ran and, and did good nutrition. First, everyone else just ate the normal stuff, didn't lift at all. You know how, how much stronger it would be? It'd be easy. Life would be easy for you in a way.

• 2:40:06Jocko Willink?

  Just walking around ruling the planet.

• 2:40:08Speaker 02

  It's, it's kind of the same. It is the same thing.

• 2:40:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's a little, it's the same thing. It's actually, what's different is if, if I know jujitsu, powerful skill to have, powerful skill to have. If I know it, when do I get to use it?

• 2:40:23Speaker 02

  Right, you're right.

• 2:40:23Jocko Willink?

  I get to use it if you want to use it with me and you come to my gym, or if we happen to be in the streets and you happen to assault me. Maybe I get to use some jujitsu.

• 2:40:32Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:40:34Jocko Willink?

  If it's strength training, maybe a car is on top of a baby and I get to lift it up. Right? Maybe. We're not gonna set that up on purpose, but this extremeownership.com, this is daily interaction with other human beings. This is figuring out what you need to do to maneuver correctly through life. So that you can build relationships where your life is moving forward and getting better. Rather than moving backward and getting worse. That's simple, a real simple question. When has it been good that you had an antagonistic relationship with someone?

• 2:41:14Speaker 02

  Never.

• 2:41:14Jocko Willink?

  Like, like, oh, oh, I don't like my boss. Okay. Does it help you that? That you're fighting? Oh, I don't like this peer of mine. Does it help you that you don't like each other? I don't like this subordinate of mine. Does it help you that you don't like each other?

• 2:41:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:41:25Jocko Willink?

  I don't like my neighbor. Well, how does that work out?

• 2:41:29Jocko Willink?

  I don't like the garbage man. Okay. Well, how does that work out? If you, if you have a good relationship with your garbage man. Guess what? Some of the garbage spills out, he runs out of the truck and throws it in, he takes care of you.

• 2:41:38Speaker 02

  Bro, that's so true because

• 2:41:40Jocko Willink?

  I'm telling you.

• 2:41:41Speaker 02

  Bro, you ever see, you've seen those guys who like, come on, let's face it, garbage truck sometimes can be rough. And your garbage like overflows and flies inside. Right? He's not getting it out of his truck. Right? He has many more garbage things to take care of.

• 2:41:52Jocko Willink?

  No, but when you line up your cans correctly. And when you're out there, like maybe, maybe once every other week, you're out there and you're helping. You just give him a little help, man. You can hear the garbage truck coming. Let's face it. Get out there.

• 2:42:05Speaker 02

  It's true.

• 2:42:06Jocko Willink?

  You do that every once in a while, you build that little relationship. All of a sudden, he's taking, he's being a little bit more gentle with your cans. And you gotta take him down to the city when they break. It's a problem. Your whole life could be better.

• 2:42:15Speaker 02

  It's true.

• 2:42:16Jocko Willink?

  So that's the kind of thing, when you start thinking about it. You start making every aspect of your life better because you got a good relationship with your garbage man. Got a good relationship with your wife, with your kids, with your peers, with your boss, with your subordinates. With the other team over there, the other department, the other division.

• 2:42:36Jocko Willink?

  They're like, oh, hey, Jocko, what's going on? How much what's going on with you? Oh, it's not a big deal. It's true. It's just gonna make everyone's life better. So go to extremeownership.com. Learn a little bit of the magic. And if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to Americas Mighty Warriors.org. And also don't forget about Micah Fink, who is currently at this time, apparently last report. He was out in a field of rocks.

• 2:43:13Jocko Willink?

  And he was slinging rocks at waterfowl and then swimming in the frigid waters to go recover them and eat them raw. He's helping veterans relocate their soul.

• 2:43:30Jocko Willink?

  Heroes and horses.org. And if you want to connect with us, Echo is at Echo Charles. I am at Jocko Willink. You can find CrossFit at CrossFit.com. They're on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. They re-engaged in those things. They are at CrossFit and Dave Castro, he's Twitter at The Dave Castro. And also Instagram at The Dave Castro. And he's got that CrossFit Ranch. And thanks once again to Dave for coming down, sharing your lessons. More important, of course, thank you for your service

• 2:44:10Jocko Willink?

  in the teams and for our great nation. And thanks to everyone who has served or is serving in the military. Thank you for protecting our freedom and also thank you to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service and all first responders. Thank you for protecting us and keeping us safe here at home.

• 2:44:35Jocko Willink?

  And everyone else out here.

• 2:44:38Jocko Willink?

  Let me ask you something.

• 2:44:41Jocko Willink?

  What are you doing right now?

• 2:44:45Jocko Willink?

  Right now, what are you doing?

• 2:44:49Jocko Willink?

  Are you getting better or are you getting worse?

• 2:44:53Jocko Willink?

  Are you getting stronger or are you getting weaker? Are you building or are you decaying?

• 2:45:00Jocko Willink?

  Are you becoming less capable or are you becoming more capable?

• 2:45:07Jocko Willink?

  What are you doing?

• 2:45:11Jocko Willink?

  I'm asking you that question, but you need to ask yourself that question. What are you doing daily? What are you doing hourly? What are you doing this very second? Ask yourself that question. What am I doing? Because there's a decent chance you aren't doing anything productive.

• 2:45:32Jocko Willink?

  You're wasting time and you're wasting your life and you're wasting away. Do not let that happen.

• 2:45:42Jocko Willink?

  Get control. Take over.

• 2:45:47Jocko Willink?

  And go.

• 2:45:50Jocko Willink?

  Now.

• 2:45:53Jocko Willink?

  And that's all we've got for tonight. And until next time, this is Echo and Jaco. Out.