Pod Insights Jocko Podcast Jocko Underground: Sometimes You Have No Good Options, But You HAVE TO Make a Move. About this episode Sometimes You Have No Good Options, But You HAVE TO Make a Move.
How to effectively deal with constant mishaps and frustrations.
How to turn a shabby day into a productive day with momentum.
How to effectively and reliably train your dog.
Pulling rank VS Taking the high ground.
Taking a job that is morally wrong to get ahead??
Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Jocko Willink? This is the Jocko Underground Podcast number 94, sitting here with Echo Charles, and we're going to talk about Zugzwang.
0:10 Jocko Willink? You know what this is? I do not know what this is, no. This is a German word. I guess technically it's two words in German, but German I think combines words together to make one big word sometimes, but it comes from two different words, Zug, which means move, and Zwang, which means compulsion. So Zugzwang means a compulsion to move, meaning you have to make a move. And this will make a little more sense when I tell you that this is a term that comes from the game of chess. So
0:52 Jocko Willink? in chess, there are times where you are, you have to make a move, and no matter what move you make, it's going to put you in a worse position.
1:01 Jocko Willink? This just happens sometimes in chess, but guess what? It does happen from time to time in life as well. We get stuck in positions where we are going to be forced to make a bad move. You've got to make a move and you don't have any good choices.
1:22 Jocko Willink? So what should you do? When you get in those situations? And the first one's real obvious. And this is sort of like the jujitsu answer you get sometimes, avoid it. Right? When someone's like, how do you get a rear naked choke? You got to avoid it, right? Are there escapes from rear naked chokes? Sure, kind of. I mean, if someone locks up a RNC on you, you're, look, people get out of them from time to time, but it's unreliable. Very unreliable. You're very unreliable. You're in a bad way. So the primary thing to do is to pay attention to your surroundings. And by surroundings, I mean what's going on in your world, what's going on in your life, pay attention to what's going on and don't allow yourself to be painted into a
2:07 Jocko Willink? corner where you're going to have to walk into that paint. You have to.
2:13 Jocko Willink? You have to. I mean, I guess you could wait until the paint dries. But then like, whatever, there's something going on that you need to stop. There's, you know, the the oven's on with the chicken in there. Now you painted yourself a new corner. You're either gonna have to mess up the paint, or you're gonna have to let the chicken burn. It's like, you know, and probably get a fire. So, pay attention, look around, be situationally aware, be detached enough to make sure that you don't get flanked on four different sides, and now you've got no good way to go.
2:49 Jocko Willink? Okay, so that's number one, don't let it happen. Number two, if it happens, take a step back, detach, and realize the situation that you're in. Because sometimes people won't accept the fact that they've got to do something that they don't want to do. And that they have no option. They can either do this bad thing, or this bad thing, they gotta do one of them. You've got it, so then they end up doing nothing, and that ends up being worse, worse than doing one of these two bad things that you have the opportunity to do.
3:17 Jocko Willink? So, detach, recognize the situation for what it is, don't panic, obviously, stay calm. Look for,
3:29 Jocko Willink? look for opportunities. Reframe it a little bit, look for some opportunities, maybe it's an opportunity for you to get rid of something that you don't actually want. Right? Maybe there's a positive sacrifice that you can make.
3:45 Jocko Willink? Maybe in a leadership situation, you can take one on the chin and kind of prove as an example, a highly valuable example, how you're gonna handle taking one on the chin.
4:00 Jocko Willink? So, you can look at things, and you can frame them in a way in your mind to go, okay, I have to make a bad move, but here's a bunch of benefits that I can get out of this bad move. This other bad move, I'll get no, none of these additional benefits. Okay, I'm gonna go with this bad move A, instead of bad move B.
4:21 Jocko Willink? You also have to make sure you're thinking about things from a strategic perspective and not a tactical perspective. Because sometimes the tactical bad move seems better because it's going to give you some immediate relief.
4:35 Speaker 01 Yeah.
4:37 Jocko Willink? And the, the, the strategic bad move seems gonna like be painful, more painful.
4:43 Speaker 01 Prolonged pain or something.
4:45 Jocko Willink? But you realize when you get done with that prolonged pain, you're going to be out of it. You're going to be in a totally different bet- better spot. Then that short-term pain that you get over it real quick and you're like, okay, cool. But now you didn't improve your position at all. So pay attention to that as well. And here's what I think is the.
5:06 Jocko Willink? I don't know if I won't necessarily say this is a black belt move.
5:10 Speaker 01 Sure.
5:10 Jocko Willink? But I think there are opportunities that I have taken in my life. When I was caught into a bad versus bad decision I had to make.
5:22 Jocko Willink? Do something unexpected. Do something unexpected. Sometimes you have a bad choice and a bad choice and you've got the choice that no one even thought of. It's totally unexpected.
5:34 Jocko Willink? It's so unexpected that people aren't thinking about it. You're not even thinking about it. So you don't see. You don't see this unexpected choice. If you only think about the two choices and which one is going to be the, the best of two bad choices, if that's all you're thinking about, you might not see this other unexpected thing, which may actually give you an option that you didn't think of. So try and look to do something unexpected. That's my point. Be, you know, we did that one podcast where we talk about being a contrarian just because it opens up your mind.
6:04 Speaker 01 Yeah.
6:05 Jocko Willink? This is a similar thing. Think to yourself, I'm going to do something no one expects me to do. And that will at least open up your mind. Hopefully you can see some possibilities. The other thing is totally unexpected. If you're in a competitive environment. You know, if you're in a competition of some kind, you're, you're in a marketplace trying to sell something or you're in a jujitsu match. You do something that's unexpected.
6:32 Jocko Willink? You ever catch somebody with just an unexpected move that they didn't expect?
6:35 Speaker 01 Yeah.
6:36 Jocko Willink? I think I arm locked you one time and you just did not expect it and you were bummed out.
6:39 Speaker 01 Yes, I remember that too, yeah, very much so.
6:43 Jocko Willink? Straight arm lock. Why didn't you expect that? Cause I'm just such a Kimura person?
6:48 Speaker 01 Yeah, especially at the time and I remember that very specifically. So you kept... Okay, so we went through a phase, not to go too far deep, but we went through a phase where you'd get me with Kimura or a guillotine, right? Every time, like pretty reliably for a long time. And I remember thinking, man, let me at least like
7:09 Speaker 01 find it within my skill set or improve my skill set to at least mitigate one of these, you know? So the Kimura, so I remember I went for a long period of time with you never Kimuried me, you only guillotined me the whole time. And I remember thinking, fuck, I think I got it down, like the defense. And I said it, like after you guillotined me one day, I said it. I was like, something along the lines of like, oh, I finally got to the point where you can only get the guillotine. I said something like that. Then you did that arm lock.
7:39 Speaker 01 Literally the next time, man, it was kind of a flying one.
7:41 Jocko Willink? Yeah.
7:42 Speaker 01 But you're right, like, just like how you're saying, that's a perfect example because, um, sure, I wasn't expecting it and I remember thinking, oh, that was unexpected. I remember thinking that a little bit, but the more prevailing thought was like, oh, okay, he, he had to prove to me. And hey, you did it too. I wasn't mad.
7:58 Jocko Willink? You took it personal, bro. You took it personal.
8:01 Speaker 01 I was, it was the opposite. I actually learned from it, like, it's not all, you know, like in your mind and this goes for...
8:08 Jocko Willink? You just said yourself, damn, he actually can get me with a bunch of other things.
8:11 Speaker 01 Exactly, right.
8:12 Jocko Willink? Just doing whatever he wants.
8:13 Speaker 01 Yeah, like, don't start telling yourself, and this goes for outside of jiu jitsu, dude. Don't start telling yourself this big elaborate story just because you have one little proving point. Like very small proving point too, you know? And then, so yeah, it was just a little humbling reminder that, oh, okay, like, don't, don't look at it like that. Look at it. There's a big picture here. You, I don't know what's going on with you. Probably trained more than me anyway. Like, what the hell am I thinking about? I'm just like, that's my litmus test?
8:37 Jocko Willink? Well, what's interesting, I'd already been down that whole road with Dean Lisch.
8:40 Speaker 01 I understand.
8:41 Jocko Willink? So like, you know, I would get Dean Lisch with the Kimura. And then, you know, he just is able to defend it. And then one day I just tossed out that straight arm lock. It was unexpected. There you go, Dean listed. And Dean listed that with heel hooks to me. Heel hook, heel hook, heel hook. And finally, I started like, okay, I can turn out of this. I've learned a good, pretty good defense. Then one day, he goes back four years worth of training, straight foot lock. Cause the defense is opposite. Brings it back. Just, just straight foot lock. Unexpected. So that's what we're talking about here. Doing something that's unexpected, doing something that's bold. Here's, here's one. You get caught in an L shaped ambush. Do you know what that is? Get caught in an L shaped ambush.
9:27 Jocko Willink? What you need to do is assault. You need to do the unexpected, which is we're, oh, we're caught in an L shaped ambush. We are going to assault the enemy right now. That's what we're gonna do. It's unexpected. It's highly aggressive. And you can get the upper hand quickly. I mean, look, you're caught in L shaped ambush. You're in a bad freaking spot. You don't have too many options. But doing something bold and unexpected is a good mindset to have when you have two bad choices. Think, okay, what else could I do? What freaking crazy move could I make? By the way, how much risk is there? Like I have a lose, lose situation. Can I take a high risk? What am I, what do I stand to lose anyways? I'm gonna lose.
10:07 Jocko Willink? It's like, you, you, if you're in a jujitsu match and you're getting just smashed and you try and toss some foot lock at the end of the match. Like you were already on the bottom. It's a no risk move. You're already down nine, you know, nine points to zero. You're going to lose. Might as well try it. Right? Do something, but don't try and pass anymore. You haven't been able to pass the guard for seven minutes.
10:28 Jocko Willink? Heel hook. Like that's, that's the type of attitude.
10:34 Jocko Willink? And of course, don't give up. That's also important. You can find a way. There are ways to win. If you have that mindset as well, there's a way to win. There's a way to win. And sometimes you gotta take a loss to win. Sometimes that happens. Sometimes you gotta take a loss to win. But there are ways to win. Go find one.
10:55 Jocko Willink? That's what I got. That's what I got for, for today.
10:58 Speaker 01 So the L-shaped ambush, is that, does it matter where they're coming from? Or as long as it's just in the shape of an L?
11:02 Jocko Willink? They're in the shape of an L.
11:03 Speaker 01 Okay, so it can be the side and behind you, the side in front of you?
11:07 Jocko Willink? Yep. It's either gonna be one of those two.
11:08 Speaker 01 Yeah.
11:09 Jocko Willink? Cause they can't be, they can't be in front of you and behind you.
11:13 Speaker 01 Yeah. What do you call that, interlocking? And it's not in the shape of an L either.
11:17 Jocko Willink? No, that would be...
11:19 Speaker 01 The H.
11:19 Jocko Willink? Yeah, but they're shooting at each other. So people, well, the Moos would set up ambushes like that, like on both sides of a road.
11:26 Speaker 01 Unexpected.
11:27 Jocko Willink? It's unexpected for sure, but we came to expect it. But see, they don't care if they're shooting each other. Collateral, they don't care if they have a blue on blue. And there you go. That's a little taste of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground Podcast. If you want to listen to the whole thing, go to jacood underground.com and subscribe. And we're doing this, we're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms. So we are not subject to their control. And we're doing this so that we can support the Jocko Podcast, which will remain as is, free for all, as long as we can keep it that way. But we, but we are doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors.
12:11 Jocko Willink? And we're doing it so we can give you more control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us to strengthen this legion of troopers that are in the game with us. So thank you. It's jacood underground.com. It costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford to support us, we can still support you. Just email assistance@jacood underground.com and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.
Previous 392: Life, Death, Darkness, and Light. "OUTLIVE" with Dr. Peter Attia Next 393: 4th of July, 1863 Page updated October 26, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
