Barbell Shrugged - 166- Developing Mental Toughness and Becoming Unbeatable in Life w/ Navy Seal Mark Divine

Episode Date: February 25, 2015

This week on Barbell Shrugged, we talk about the importance of team building and breathing mastery with Seal Fit's own Mark Devine. Hey, this is Rich Froning. You're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. You know what? We're going to get fried out here, too. I know. I should take my to get fried out here, too. I know. I should take my shirt off and get some vitamin D. Welcome to Barbell Strugged. I'm Mike Bledsoe, standing here with Chris Moore, Doug Larson, and we happen to be at the Grindr, at SealFit, U.S. CrossFit.

I didn't know what the Grindr meant at first, then I found out. You're on it. We're here with Mark Devine. Hoo-yah. If you don't know who he is, you're about to find out. Mark founded SealFit, former Commander Navy SEAL,

and yeah, just overall badass. And as we've gotten to know him more, we've learned that he's also a very deep individual. Usually the best thing happens. Badass and deep don't go in the same. A lustful bookshelf. Mark, a lustful bookshelf. That makes me a little nervous when you use that word. I'm going to steal your books.

Awesome. We just got done with some log PT. And you were talking, I mean, basically that's a big team building exercise. I mean, because that's what you're looking for. That happens at Bud's a lot. Right. A lot of logs involved in Bud's carrying things around as a team, carrying boats around as a team.

If one person starts slacking a little bit, it becomes obvious to the group. Yeah. Sometimes you don't know who it is, but you're swearing at somebody. Is log the tool of choice for exposing weaknesses in teams? Yeah, when's the last time you saw six guys get under a barbell? It's difficult to fit them. If we could figure it out.

Getting six guys to do six man snatch or something. I want to see that though. Doug and I would sign up for that. So the log is basically your tool of choice to get people to gel as a team. And there's a lot of reasons for that. I mean, it's heavy as hell. It's like pretty cool idea. So the log is basically your tool of choice to get people to gel as a team. And there's a lot of reasons for that. I mean, it's heavy as hell.

It's like 350 pounds. And, you know, no individual can really manipulate it. I mean, there are guys who can hoist it up. We saw John try to do that, you know, John from SealFit. Just for a second, though. Just for a second. They're not running around with it. You're not going to be running down the beach with it, right?

You guys ran six miles with it when Hell Week first started for you? Yeah, a total of, I don't know, probably 30-something. But, yeah, the first Hell Week happened. You had 45 minutes of breakout working out. Then you grab your log and then headed about six miles down the beach for the first leg. You just had the stones to call this a fun thing, too. You know what's really interesting that I noticed, and we talked about this earlier,

is that you guys have been working together for a team now for a number of years. When you got on the log, you actually performed very well as a team, right? You were moving together. You kind of are in sync. You know how each other thinks. You understand the severity, what you got. And you also know that you all got to carry your load. You're not going to let your teammate down. Those are some

fundamental things that are mark one motto to teach in new teams when they come together and they're going through that kind of storming and forming stage. Or, in the context of our corral camp or in the SEAL teams, a bunch of individuals. They've got a bunch of rambos and SEAL teams don't

need any rambos, right? Those are the first guys to go. So if you've been training alone all your life and all of a sudden come together... You go to Storms, it's like... He's the first one to get shot in the face. Yeah, all these guys. He is, yeah.

All these guys. He has to kill everybody, and then every bullet just miraculously misses him the whole fucking movie? That's not how it happens in real life? No. Movies and first-person shooter games are not the real deal, guys.

I hate to tell you that. Make note of that. Do not train for the SEAL teams by playing first-person shooter games. It doesn't work. You know? So by getting under the log and all of a sudden you're faced with this thing, this big, large, awkward object, and now we're going to have to do things with it, exercises, right?

And so you guys, you know, hoisted to shoulder, then you did overhead press, and then overhead squats, and we end up doing log burpees, you know, sit-ups, lunges, long walks, runs, all sorts of things. What does a log burpee look like? I don't even know what that looks like. Okay, so imagine doing what you did, where you take the log and you bring it up to your shoulder, press, boom, the other shoulder, take it back to the ground. All six people turn in unison, drop, put their hands on the log, do a burpee,

and when they stand up and clap, we want to hear one sound. So we're not actually, you know, clapping with the log in the air and catching it or anything crazy like that. But the point is to be able to move in absolute unison and synchronicity, right? So again, you got to take your eyes off yourself and put them on the whole team and like literally serve your team by just not being the guy that screws up

because that leads to penalties. In a life situation or a mission, that could be compromised mission, failure of the mission, right? so um really good team development like what we do with log pt in kokoro camp or the 20x program of ours um or academy essentially takes you out of your sense of self and creates this sense of team self you know you might call it team spirit where you feel the energy of the team, right? It's not a platitude. It's not a concept. It's like, I'm feeling it, right? I'm feeling the energy. We're all moving together. You know, the thoughts are kind of rippling up and down.

And then the better and better you get, the less verbal or oral communication there is, right? And it just gets very, very, you know, up, boom, press, boom, down, boom. And then you can even do it without any talking at all. And it's like, bam. That's when the guy's got it. It's a pretty cool tool. Is there a lot of guys that go through Kokoro or, you know, actually go through Buzz and go through Hellwig and whatnot that come in as

like super individualistic type people and they learn to be team players or the individuals just weed themselves out to be team players or do the individuals just weed themselves out and the team members, the team players that are kind of, they're already naturally like that or just the people that remain? That's a great question, Doug. Great question. I would say that it does happen where a real, you know, big ego individual does learn to be a good team player and makes it through buds. It's, it's difficult for them, right? For instance, you know, star quarterback,

guy who everything came easy to, right? Because their athleticism was through the charts. Those guys don't do very well. There's less hot chicks out here than I thought. There's more of this heavy log. Wait, they're not praising me for being so damn good at this.

There's no girls here at all. Nobody cares. It's only suffering. It doesn't matter. It's about the team. It's about accomplishing the mission. You mentioned you compared the log to a bar, but the first thing I thought, like doing the over squat,

besides, oh, Jesus, was like, you know, if you're doing a lot, you can really work hard and you can try your best, but if you've got a challenging weight over your head, you can just drop that fucking bar. It happens all the time. It's a normal thing. Right. But this is a situation where

even if you are really shaking, it's just really not an option because you will quit and you'll know it. Everybody will know it, but you're going to hurt somebody too. You're going to hurt somebody. And that actually happened in the, you'll never see,

we have one of them over there, the segmented log with the ropes between it. Do you see it behind me? Oh, I saw that, yeah. Yeah, they used it. They started using that last year. Two years ago at the CrossFit Games. Right, they'll never me? I saw that, yeah. Yeah, they used it. They started using that last year. Two years ago at the CrossFit Games. Yeah, that's right.

Right, they'll never use it again because that exact thing happened, right? They had guys, you know, from these teams that, you know, never worked together ever really as a team except for doing their individual things. They just happened to be really good wadders. They were good wadders who happened to be wadding at the same time together.

Right, right. That's really different than being a team. They're having a wad. Right, they're having a wad off, exactly. Anyway, so I don't know what exactly they were doing, but they're holding it overhead. And one guy just got frustrated. So emotional control is another incredible benefit of team training. Because you're held accountable. You're uber accountable to your teammates. That's critical. And if you lose your cool, then you're screwing your team. And so you have to, like, breathe through it, suck it up, right,

let it roll off you, be resilient. So this guy was not resilient, and he got really frustrated, and he just walked away thinking, like, he could do it, just like dropping the barbell. And the whole thing came crashing down and literally injured people. And, you know, they didn't call the evolution, but they decided never to use those logs anymore. Wow.

It's interesting, isn't it? For most guys that compete in CrossFit or they compete in weightlifting, it's a relatively individual sport. You might train in a group, but you're still operating by yourself. You're trying to get the best time. You're trying to win. How would something like this benefit guys that are not ever going to operate as a team? Well, team training is one of the things that we're big on at SealFit.

At SealFit, all the workouts we do are meant to be team workouts. And what happens in a team workout is you're both competitive and cooperative, but the cooperation always trumps the competition, right? Because what we find is that you grow more through cooperation than you do through competition. Competition is good for self-accountability to jack up your own level of intensity and your level of output. But when it comes to the more subtle aspects of being an athlete, of being a warrior, being a good person, that's all about relating with other human beings, communicating, being accountable, developing trust, right? So if you're like blazing through a workout,

and let's say here's a classic example of a team or a CrossFit setting, you're so intent on getting the score that your form sucks, right? That happens pretty often. It happens quite a bit, right? Yeah. And guess what? Everyone's noticing that. And so your trust or credibility on the team,

every rep is going down, down, down, down. And you may blaze through it and be like, yeah, you know, I got my whatever, 332 Fran. But everyone is looking at you going, what a nut, you know what I mean? Are you saying like maybe even they're not, the reps shouldn't even count. They shouldn't have counted.

Like the chin's not getting over the bar. Right. You're racing through it. Right. Or racing through it with complete non-awareness or lack of awareness for what's going on with your teammates. So you could have someone struggling here, you know, where a quick word of support,

emotional support, or even a tip could really help them overcome a challenge or, you know, step up to a whole new level of training. And so you've missed or ignored that opportunity to help a teammate out. So you can get the same benefit physically or greater benefit physically, I should say, by working as a team because you're being held to a higher standard by your teammates and you're holding yourself to a high standard because you don't want to let them down. And then also we call it integrated training.

You're working on your emotional control and emotional awareness. You're becoming more intuitive and aware of what's going around you because you learn to put your head on a swivel, constantly scanning what's going on with my teammates, how are we doing, where are we going, instead of just your own little cone of silence and ripping through a lot. These are benefits that are going to carry over into all aspects of life for sure we think about you know a lot of times when we talk to somebody on the show we're asking about you know how that can this how can this directly benefit somebody's performance in the gym but i've got a feeling that you may not

you're going to see performance benefits for you as an individual by doing this to some degree, but the biggest benefit is probably all other aspects of your life. Sure. You're probably going to be better at being a friend or a husband or a wife or whatever. Right. Just being more aware of what's going on around you, of your own actions and how you interact with the world. Yeah. The uncanny thing about it, Mike, is that when you're performing better with your family or your team at work, then guess what? You're performing better in the gym

as well. So it all works together in kind of a holographic manner. And so if you can train, if you can use the artificial setting of the gym to train what I call the whole person. So yes, we're training physically for performance. We're training physically for optimal health, for learning the movements, maximize movements, getting benchmark WODs and continuing to improve our scores. That's all important. But to also train mentally, like we were doing earlier, like log PT is mental training. It requires intense focus and concentration, right, to do that. Breathing work, concentration, meditation. So we train mentally, right,

so that we expand our mental self and our mental life and then that begins to also spill over into the emotional development because mind and emotion are really two sides

of the same coin, right? An emotion just is a felt thought. You know, it's a thought that you have meaning around. I put that on a Hallmark coin. Cognitively, felt thought you know it's a thought that you have meaning around that on a hallmark cognitively right exactly that's cool trademark marked mine anyways and then intuition you know i talked about earlier i call these the five mountains i think we talked about that a long time ago but we did physically mentally emotionally intuitionally and of course then you know you get your spirit in the game, however that is meaningful to you, but

warrior spirit, team spirit, non-quitting spirit, and you train that, it has benefit if you want to go to Bud's or anything in life. You will not quit because you're there for your team, you've committed. Once you commit, there is no going back. That's a trainable skill. Everybody has challenges in life.

This is not a bad trait to develop, no matter who you are or what your goals are. We learn to embrace the suck, go toward the challenge. It's like we had the saying in the seals that we run toward the sound of gunfire because that's where the learning is. It's not in the other direction. The challenge

and the learning and knowing the next move to accomplish a mission is in the sound of gunfire. That's a metaphor, obviously. It's not going to be accurate. If you're in the neighborhood, it's a bad neighborhood. Don is in the sound of gunfire. I mean, that's a metaphor, obviously. It's not going to be accurate. If you're in the neighborhood and it's a bad neighborhood, don't go literally towards the gunfire. Don't literally step into the –

Yeah. In your mind, imagine there's a tough situation that you yourself will face in the gym, and you will be tough. That metaphorical – You face it, right. You face it. You face your fears. These are great points because I think people listen to this.

A lot of people understand the importance of nailing down how they'll train and how they stimulate the tissues and how they recover. And maybe they're getting the idea about sleep now. But it's always amazing to me that people who are striving for intense, amazing performances, that's a lot of people now. Yes, it is. They don't think about the control center and how easily it's influenced by everything in your life. That's right. And how the brain will completely undo. You can have two workouts and just the attitude you came in there with makes that thing impossible

or easy. That's right. Yeah. So the physical, the external physical is just a manifestation of what's going on inside. And so we like to say that we win in our mind before we step foot in the arena. So that applies to the gym or the grinder. So we win in our mind. We understand why we're going into the workout, what our intentions are and workouts will have

different intentions. You know, as you may be there just to build the team, you may be there to crank out a new PR, right? Yeah. In all cases, we're there to become better people, right? In no case, should you walk into the gym with a shitty attitude just because you know someone else a coach or your mom or dad or you know somebody said you had to be there i mean that's that's a fail right there yeah you know what i mean so you win in your mind by preparing your mind and how do you prepare your mind well those are the other tools uh that we've talked about earlier you know breath control uh meditation concentration Some are meant to be done on the spot in advance of the training. And some are things you do every day to continue to refine

the ability to win in your mind. But these are highly trainable skills that anybody can really make a profound difference in their life just by doing simple shit. Simple shit done every day. There's two ways that we like to train. One is what we call the daily practice, the daily effort, right? So daily effort includes, you know, obviously working out in a, you know, in a team environment, doing CrossFit style wads, seal fit wads, stuff like that. But also doing the inner training that I've been alluding to, that there's daily practice, right? Can imagine working out once a month or even once a week, right? And people look at that like meditation. Yeah, I meditate. Well, how often do it? Well, I do it, you know,

maybe once a week. Okay. Well, it has this much benefit for you if you do it once a week, zero. It's a daily thing. You're reading stressing emails and shit every day. That's the predominant relaxation. You're spending, you know, 12, 14 hours a day filling your mind and body up with anxiety

and negativity and crap. Your body becomes what you do most. You do. Yeah, it's easy. Why not five minutes, five to 10 minutes a day

to clear all that out, breathe, right, and just clear your mind and meditate, right? And there's a lot of different techniques,

but we won't get into your- We're going to some of those techniques, I think. We're going to take a break in a few your- We're going to some of those techniques, I think. We're going to take a break in a few minutes and we're going to get an example of those techniques specifically. Some of the breathing techniques.

Yeah, some of the breathing techniques. But going back to the team stuff, what are some things that if you're in a CrossFit box, what are some things, I mean, most boxes don't have a pile of logs in the corner. What are some things that they could do to program that day for teamwork? Right. Maybe four or five days a week you're training as individuals.

Sure. This would apply to pilot and crews or anybody who needs to work together to get a better outcome. Yeah. Right. What are some things that they can do? Just a team workout. Yeah. So we do that with even our CrossFit box because our crossfit gym is co-located

with seal fit uh once a week we do a team wad and so it's just pro it's good programming but it's also how you coach it a good example of team wad is to to pair people off as swim buddies so you got a team of two or as a boat crew which is a team of four right and then you're going to organize the work in a manner that task or time structure where that that team of four're going to organize the work in a manner that's task or time structure where that team of four is going to get enough volume enough work in right accumulative together it can be you know like move 10,000 pounds of gear you know up and back to this point that's a fun team or you know it can be an amrap you know really take any any structure and you can with a little creativity make it a team workout right or you can take tools like for you can, with a little creativity, make it a team workout, right?

Or you can take tools like, for instance, if you have a large tire, well, guess what? That is just a circular log. You know, it's a round log. Yeah. And so you get four people on the tire. You can clean it up, do presses, do all sorts of cool things, carry it around the block. I like the idea of the tire because you can actually look at your friends. That's true.

Which would be a little bit easier. I mean, the log not being able to see everybody is probably a lot more of a challenge and probably more benefit there. Somebody turn that car off. Time for a break. It sounds like that Siberian Husky set that car off. If I had a nickel for every time I heard that. All right, we'll take a break. I think that's a sign. We'll take a break for every time I heard that. Alright, we'll take a break.

I think that's a sign. We'll take a break. Make sure if we can get through this. God, come on, Will. Two huskies came. No, so... Oh, God. So,

alright, real quick. On this technique quad, this is going to be a technique quad this is gonna be a technique quad where you're not just gonna watch it you're gonna play along so me Mike and Chris are gonna be in the room

with Mark and he's gonna be leading us through an exercise so at home sit there and follow along on the technique quad even if there's

car horns beeping focus on your breath that's part of the training that's part of the training clear your mind get that shit out of it that's right this is Tim Ferriss

and you were listening to Barbell Shrugged for the video version go to Ferriss, and you are listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Barbell Shrugged is brought to you by you. To learn more about how you can support the show, go to barbellshrugged.com and sign up for the newsletter. Solution. Step in front of this train.

Think of all the time you waste by not breathing. Run towards the gunfire. Don't breathe. Don't breathe. Run a gunfire. From the author of Unbeatable Mind comes Run towards the gunfire. What about breathing? Don't breathe. Run at gunfire. From the author of Unbeatable Mind comes

Run Towards the Gunfire. And we're back. Mark's giving us the greatest advice. We're running towards gunfire. We're not breathing. These are all things.

Be prepared for the known, the unknown, and the unknowable. That's right. Yeah, so hopefully you enjoyed. If you're listening only, you probably didn't get to enjoy it. You missed out.

You missed out, so you need to go back, go to the website. You know where it's at, Bartleshark.com. Watch that video. At least find that technique wad. Are we making a technique one? Yeah. In the notes, you'll see all kinds of helpful bonus information as well, so get your butt over there.

Yeah. So now that you've got to see, or maybe you didn't get to hear what we just did, we were doing a lot of breathing exercises, and you had alluded to earlier that breathing is... What's the big deal about breathing? Yeah, it's like the new frontier or the last frontier let's try that drill

let's just stop breathing for five minutes we'll very quickly learn the importance of breathing you know all athletes quickly learn any real serious athlete learns that the breath holds the key to higher levels of performance

holds the key to higher stages of performance. It holds the key to higher stages of awareness, right? Intention, attention. I mean, there's a lot in the breath, right? It's amazing. But it's got to be trained. Interesting. I mean, improper, crazy, scattered, you know, weak breathing doesn't have to be trained. That's pretty common, right? But the way we normally breathe is kind of like being couch potatoes, right? We're couch potato breathers. Performance breathing or advanced breathing is complete conscious control of the breath, you know, being able to direct it the way you want it, where you want it to go, being able to use the breath as a center post, you know, for your, to ground you during training or during a firefight if you're a warrior.

Being able to use the breath to stimulate your nervous system, to charge you up for a workout, to charge you up for battle, or to stimulate your parasympathetic nervous system to calm you down or release, or to create a completely balanced kind of know, kind of equimonious. What's the word? I like both versions of these words. I have no idea what you're saying.

I don't use that word. Equimonious. Equimonious. Equimonious synergization of the breathing in the body. How's that? Zachary. Yeah, so nice and balanced and calm. Like, so from a leadership point of view, you want to be calm.

You don't want to be out of control, right, mentally or emotionally. And the breath can get you there as well. So there's a lot of practical uses, and it feels freaking good. You know what I mean? It did feel really good. It was really good. I feel like for me, when I'm trying to get something done really, really fast and I'm stressing about it, like if I'm working on something and I'm just like,

man, I've got to eat a meal real quick, and I try to just go in the kitchen and eat a meal in like five minutes, and I'm just like, man, I've got to eat a meal real quick and I try to just go in the kitchen and eat a meal in five minutes and I'm prepping, trying to just get back to work, I'll find that I'm doing a lot of upper chest breathing. Really shallow chest breathing. Yeah, after a while, I'll recognize it and I'll go, and I'll take a big deep breath. And for the first time,

I'll feel the breath down here. I'll feel like it's almost like it's been contracted for so long that I have to re-stretch it out. You're stretching tight tissue. And after the box breathing, I felt like that was like as loose as it's been in a long time, if not forever. The box breathing actually felt like a stretch in my intercostals. Right.

There's like a resistance trend. Then you're trying to get additional sips in as you move the interval up in time, which we'll describe. Right. And part of that is physiological. You're expanding the breathing kind of vessel, right? You're expanding the chest. A lot of times, you know, we just breathe in the upper chest that is physiological you're you're expanding the breathing kind of vessel right you're expanding the chest a lot of times you know we just breathe in the upper chest especially if you're a mouth breather now mouth breathing is not you know this hole here is huge damn mouth breathers you see them all over the place you can point them out a mile away

this is meant really primarily for eating you, stuffing food into our gullet and communicating, right? In both cases, you know, we could probably do less of each, you know? Yeah. Keep this thing sealed. And in breathing, the only time you really want to breathe through your mouth is if you need to take in massive quantity of oxygen, in particular, like during a workout, right, or a firefight or something like that. And so you will mouth breathe then. But as soon as you get back into the clear, it's back into the nose.

Now, there's a few reasons. The nose obviously will warm air, will cool air. That's important for us. It'll clean the air out. But it also, the nose directs the air into our abdomen or into our diaphragm or beneath that. So if you imagine, just go like this through your mouth. Where's the air go? Right here, upper chest.

Now breathe into your nose. Do you feel that? I mean, it's real. It's real. It's going deep into our, you know, it's not actually going into our belly or else we'd be belching all the time. But it feels like it's going deep into our belly. And you want to imagine it going down. Your belly is going to expand.

And then your diaphragm will expand. And then your chest. And so you're literally getting a full measure of air, three times as much fuel. If you consider air, oxygen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, to be your primary source of fuel without it, right? How long do we live? Yeah. It makes all life impossible. Correct.

A few minutes, maybe. There's some life left. The new paleo diet is to breathe like a mother. Breathe well. And your secondary source of fuel that's most important is fresh water. And it's, you know, hard food is your third, right?

We always focus on the third source of fuel. It's true. And the most important fuel is your breath and followed by fresh water, right? So we want to It's too simple, Mark. I know. Nobody wants simple solutions for complex problems. Geez.

Enough with the breathing. Tell me how to crush my water. Exciting stuff. All right. Wait, you guys completely lost it. If you're going to do a whole episode on breathing, which,

which, which pre-workout, that's what's really important. Which, which magic supplements. It's going to make a whole episode on breathing. Which pre-workout? That's what's really important. Which magic supplement is going to help me PR? It's going to make me win the CrossFit Games. I'll breathe. How many drugs as well? Give me the good stuff.

So the warrior breath, right? You're Rich Froning. I mean, he probably does this. I haven't talked to him. No, I find that a lot of athletes just going. They naturally do this. Exactly. The highest performers know they're like

oh I don't really pay attention to what I eat or I don't pay attention to this or that and if you were to just kind of observe them for a day or they talk about like

I really don't do programming but then you follow them it's like well they are they are doing it but they're so tuned in and some people are just naturally more tuned in

right and repetition of it and then other people most of that comes from experience and then a lot of people need like all these tools to know what their heart rate is

or, you know, that's one of my explanations with HRV. People ask for HRV. I was like, Rich Froning doesn't need HRV because he wakes up and he goes,

oh, I need to go hard today. Right. I need to go easy. And other people need like this metric. Right. But anyways, I'm skipping ahead of you.

The more in tune you are with your body through breathing and meditation exercise, the more you can tell right away. Like, what do I need today? And that's kind of the way I've gotten away. I have a loose structure of programming, but I allow myself to come in and kind of feel my body and get a sense for where I'm at. And then I'll modify the program, you know, to meet that need. So I find that that gets more and more important as I get older and older, too. Yeah, sure. To have some flexibility. Flexibility, right. Yeah. Not my body. Cause that doesn't exist there, but in terms of what I try to do with my body, be flexible. Important. Yeah. So what you were alluding to the kind of the charge yourself up, prepare you for

battle, prepare you for the, you know, for, for peak performance in the wide, we call that the warrior breath. And that's that, that forceful inhale through the nose and then release. And that release is a complete relaxation just like, like in that moment, all is good. And then, right. And we did a nine cycle. And then in the ninth one, now this is really interesting. This is really more for the mind. We held our breath, not to the point where we get dizzy and hallucinate

or anything like that, although that will happen on occasion. That's great. It's to have that clarity and that concentration of in this space, in this space,

we held our breath for at least a minute, right? I wouldn't time it, but a minute, maybe a minute and a half in some of those. There's not a lot of mental activity. like you're not solving complex math problems you're not thinking about your workout you're just allowing your brain to like really really focus

and drop into that that present moment awareness one of the things i noticed was and i i like to meditate and um and my style meditation I've been following has been more like, you know, you just walk, you sit down, you follow your breath. Mindfulness. Yeah. And, and I noticed that, you know, it might take me 10 or 15 minutes to drop into a state that, uh, that I'm kind of going for, or maybe not going for, there's not really a goal there, but like, it occurs. Yeah. It's an experience. And then, and then we came in here and I noticed it within a few minutes. Right.

In a very short period of time, I dropped right in and I was way more aware of my body than some of the other stuff that I do. Right. And so I think that you hit on the head, this, the breath training is a, um,

you know, it's a, it's a rocket ship to, you rocket ship to concentration and meditative states, which then we anchor. So at the end of it, you note that state. You note what got you in there. And then you eventually can get back there with a single breath. A single breath can be a perfect breath.

And your brain just goes. You're just training your mind. You know where that state is. And you just drop. And then you're ready for anything. Right. All your senses are on full alert. But you're present.

That's when your power is going to be most available to you. It's not. There's no concepts getting in the way. Does that make sense? Yeah. You don't have to think. All the thought has been removed. And you're just perceiving reality.

And you're ready for action. Whatever that might be. And if you're trained, that action will flow out of you really well. Yeah. Just in a simple, very practical way. If you do that every morning, because I could even feel myself towards the end, we were doing, was it 10 seconds was the maximum. So 10 seconds in, hold, mix up. So by the end of that, I'm a little bigger. I'm consuming more. That was the box breathing, right? I can feel myself having to go, okay, look, you can feel it getting a little short. You want to take a breath.

Hold on. Stay, stay, stay. And I would feel my concentration sort of peak. Like nothing else get in my way, but really kind of a peak intensity. And then when 10 seconds gets to release, I just felt like I told you, I felt like you see just black space behind your eyelids. But then that moment of just release, it felt like the room was 100 yards in every direction.

It was just me in a big black space. It felt such like a powerful relief. And I imagine if you just build that skill, where you start feeling, okay, I'm freaking out with a little bit of my breath. I'll just hold on, hold on, hold on. Then it'll be over. I mean, how beneficial is that during a tough WOD where most people freak the fuck out? And that's what stops your performance. Not your body.

You just lost control. You're training your willpower, your intentionality through the breath. And ultimately, if you look at a workout, that's what your body. You just lost control. You're training your willpower, your intentionality through the breath. And ultimately, if you look at a workout, that's what we lose. Obviously, you fatigue, but you lose it with the breath and your heart rate well before your muscular fatigue in most cases. And so that's what throws people off. So if we can keep that under control and learn how to activate that recovery breath, you know, in an instant, right? So let's say you're in the middle of a set, you know, let's say you're doing grace and, you know, unless again, you can just bang out 30 perfect clean and jerks, which I can't, you know, I'm going to be doing them in maybe three sets of

10. As soon as that 10th rep, right rep right i'm not like going i am literally just going and it brings me back to the same state we were in yeah in the mind gym and boom energy rushing back in mine's clear there's the barbell i merge with it again boom there we go actually that's a clean and jerk not a snatch but so so we use the breath not just to for an energy state management during the training but in an interval sense we we use the breath to come right back to the presence because in the present you know if we're in receive mode think about this concept of yin and yang in receive mode energy can flow back in and if we invite it in visually so that we add a little visualization to that, boom, put the barbell down, inhale, visualize just white light energy just

streaming into your body, just flooding your body, right? Exhale that nice calm ha looks like in all that light energy in boom guess what you just recovered in about five seconds yeah back on the bar go so the breath can be a remarkable tool we always comment that you can do work great but how quickly can you recover to do more of it? Like Rich Froning always seems you turn around, he's sweaty, you look this way, you look back, he looks like he just woke up. He's like totally recovered, he's quick.

I mean, I always noted that. Look, it's not how, okay, you're strong now, you're fit now, can you get over it and do it again efficiently and move well? And then tomorrow, because you could do that, you recover quicker and now you can train more effectively it starts a powerful management and breath and breath can be used for mental management right so they're two sides of a coin right you you you're aware of your breathing state that's part of mental management that

awareness keeps you really focused because instead of letting your mind run off about how's this guy doing over here compared to me, I'm only at rep this, I'm starting to get fatigued. You're just focused on breathing, right? Breathing and moving, breathing and moving. In fact, we use that cue during our training, breathe, move, breathe, move. And it collapses the focus on the most critical task right now, which is to breathe and then move, right? And so that awareness allows, again, it allows you to be both in a deliver energy out and a receive energy in mode, right? And so there's a transfer that happening. And then when you drop the barbell, you just want to be all receive. And I think this, again, this is the next frontier in training where we can really work with the breath through a workout, using the intervals before and after, and, you know, have this nice kind of like integrated training.

Is this something that CrossFit coaches could potentially program at their gym where they're doing rounds of, say, they do like a five-minute AMRAP, followed by one minute of breathing practice, and then they do rounds like that. Absolutely. So it's part of the workout. That's a great idea. We do that here. We're in seal fit training. We'll program.

Say, okay, we'll start out the workout with a round of box breathing, right? And then three, two, one, go, right? Kick it off. Everyone's in. First of all, that box breathing synchronizes everyone as a team. It's like all the baggage gone right now we're all super aware so your safety record will go through the roof right and uh and then um you're right you could you could pro to train this so that it happens more naturally program breathing into the workout right so it can be um breath control for a

particular exercise. For instance, today I was talking to someone who was working on an old workout I'd written a long time ago where I was doing breath hold 50-meter sprints as part of the workout. Again, it's just a breath awareness, breath training exercise. Running or swimming? Running. Okay. Yeah, sprint swimming would be good too. I just assumed swimming when you said that.

We did a lot of that stuff in Bud's. Yeah, 50 meters 50 meter breath hold that's usually about where people start passing out you think about I did some work

with some we had an Australian reality show with these it's called the Watermen actually the show is called Deep Blue I think

okay it's their their version of the Ironman they have like ocean swimming beach running and paddling yeah

so it's different than ours so they had their top athletes come up, and we put them through like a 12-hour gig. And we had them in a pool, and so we did drum proofing as a race. Oh, cool. It was cool. So we tied their hands and feet together,

had to stand on the edge of the pool. And then, you know, like walking the plank, we just came by and boom. Are they trying to see who the other side fastest? They had to swim 100 meters. that'd be fun and these guys were were so confident in the water that they immediately got into and that was all just breath control and relaxation so it was like breathe porpoise breathe porpoise breathe flip turn hands and legs tied boom it was beautiful to watch and those hands tied behind their back

behind their back yeah wow their back, yeah. Wow. We'll try that next time. Everyone at home, go try that. No, don't do that. Don't do that. On Barbell Shug, you'll find a legal liability release form to download and sign. If you want to do that, come to Seal Fit. You need professional guidance.

You can do it whether you want to or not. Get guidance for that. But a lot of people are now doing the kettlebell work where we have a pool next door now, and it's a little green and grungy because we just bought the house. But we're chomping the bit to get over there and put a kettlebell on the bottom of that thing and start doing crossovers and obstacle courses and stuff like that. And so you go to the bottom of the pool and need to move that kettlebell across the pool as far as you can. How is that different than doing five clean and jerks holding your breath?

Right? Yeah. So you can do breath training. Now, again, this is advanced training. I don't recommend you try it without some coaching around it. But my point is that crazy – well, let me give you another example. Mark Twight, you ever heard of his breath ladders, right? No, I haven't.

And so he would do, like, say he chose a movement, a burpee. So hold your breath, do one burpee. Hold your breath, do two burpees. Hold your breath, do three burpees. Take one breath between each set of burpees. Yeah, one breath, you know. I used to do the same thing with swimming. It's a breath ladder, see how far you can get.

Yeah, I used to do the same thing with swimming. Before you lose consciousness. You just, you do a two-stroke, You do a lap with two strokes between breaths. A lap between four strokes. A lap between six strokes. You work up to 12, and you ladder back down. Or pyramid back down. Swimmers have breath control down to science because you have to.

Obviously, you're not breathing underwater unless you're a special breed. I've always been jealous of them. I know. Them fish. Those guys, those fish men. Yeah, it's good shit, man. I've always been jealous of them I know Them fish Those guys Those fish men Yeah It's good shit What's happened

Since the last time we were here So it's been A little over six months You said you guys Started an academy And you've had people That You wouldn't typically

Think about being Right Seal fit Right Doing anything In my mind I hear seal fit I'm thinking

Yeah You know The military scene On the beach With very fit people doing something that almost they can't. Right. But that's not true. In fact, you've had some. No, I've had this kind of drive for the past few years to make it more accessible. Right.

Because seal fit has always been very inspirational to people. But the reality is Kokoro Camp, which is our 50-hour nonstop event. I mean, gosh, we can only get a couple hundred people a year who raise their hand for that. We do it five times a year. And you've got to be ready, right? So it's like the.001%, right? Excludes me. Everyone else really was relegated to the sidelines to cheer people on, to be inspired by the videos and stuff like that.

I thought, well, that kind of sucks. They were going, gosh, I wish I had an unbeatable mind. It'll never happen. I want to bring that unbeatable mind to everybody. We created a three-day academy which is still ass-kicking hard but we meet everyone where they're at. I was just telling you guys earlier that we had

a 67-year-old woman come through the last one we did. Wow, 67. 67. And she was awesome, right? She rocked it. She couldn't do everything that we asked her to do. So that's where the team effect came in. So the team would come around together, and then it would be a big challenge.

So how do we get Sally through this evolution? So for instance, we went out on a ruck, rucking and swimming. We give them the full seal fit experience. It's really about a download of the knowledge, how to train with the model. So then you can go back and employ it in your life. So we want them to experience, you know, what it's like to get out of the environment and put some weight on your back and go ruck. Because it's incredibly, you know, useful, functional, environmental training, right? And she couldn't do it, right?

And so we pulled out a stretcher and said, okay, guys, here's the team drill embedded into the ruck because you're going to carry Sally, you know? Yeah. And from the emotional standpoint, she developed emotionally through that because that was hard for her to allow that level of support. Right. She's a very successful businesswoman.

Yeah. She runs a huge real estate office. She's the one providing the support. She probably calls all the shots. She calls the shots, exactly. All of a sudden, the only way to get through this without quitting is for her to receive that level of support. And it's powerful training.

Really cool. So I'm excited about that. That's cool. And I'm excited about writing a book on warrior yoga, which'm excited about, I'm writing a book on warrior yoga, which is kind of, I want it to be introduced the principles of yoga, the way they originally intended to be, you know,

a thousand years ago or so when yoga was used to prepare warriors and athletes for their event or are you suggesting that the real purpose has been, let's say diffused. Oh yeah. With a lot of like Peruvian flute music and massage parlors or whatever the shit. What yoga shoes have you been going to, man? The best kind.

Yoga was traditionally used in the ancient times for spiritual development and warrior preparation. In fact, there's a lot of evidence to suggest that the martial arts came out of yoga. There was a guy named Bodhidharma who came out of Tibet, the Himalayans, or Himalayans. Some bad motherfucker. He was a yogi, but who ended up at the Shaolin monastery, taught the monks how to fight, and then martial arts, you know, fragmented and splintered from there. But if you trace martial arts movements back and you trace yoga movements back, you find the same stances.

Warrior I, Warrior II are variants of fighting stances. Warrior one, warrior two are variants of fighting stances. And if you look at martial arts or yoga in northern India, it looks like a martial art the way they train. And if even the major source tasks for the spirituality of yoga is the Bhagavad Gita and the Bhagavad Gita

is all about a battle. I got that book. Yeah, it's all about a battle and yoga is basically the topic and it's about how these warriors. And yoga is basically the topic. And it's about how these warriors are using the principles, not just the physical movements, but the breath, the concentration, the meditation. And it's ultimately about enlightenment or integrating ourselves at our highest level as a human being.

Boom, that's it. But when Westerners started to get into yoga and it came to the United States, it got changed. It was really heavily influenced by bodybuilding and weightlifting. Like a guy named Baptista, there was a fellow named Baptista who was one of the big early yogis. Now, Baptista was, I think, like Mr. Universe or Mr. Olympia or something. And so he brought brought a real physical culture to the yoga and yoga started

to look a lot like exercise here in the West. And now today, of course, there's a yoga student in every corner and spandex girls doing what looks like exercise. Yoga sculpt. We're all big fans of it. Big fans of the spandex.

The guys love the spandex, The girls love the yoga, right? There's nothing wrong with that, of course. But originally in the way it was designed is really the physical preparation was to be functionally fit and healthy so that we could then move on and do the higher order work of breath control, life force development, concentration, meditation, and integration. So my intention with warrior yoga is to take the spandex out of yoga. Come on, Mark. Killing our vibes. And figuratively speaking.

Figuratively, yeah. Oh, okay. And to provide a yoga that athletes and warriors immediately understand both the utility and the benefit to them for the psychological and the physiological effect so not only

help them be better people but help them perform in the battlefield or in their sport and so I've taken I say I take the foo out of the kung fu, right? So we don't use flowery language and bow and say namaste and I don't use Sanskrit for any poses.

And like, for instance, this morning's warrior yoga session, you know, I started out with some breathing exercises, some visualization. Then I went into asana. My asana included, you know, knuckle pushups, just like I used to do in my karate days, really slow, controlled push-ups.

Karate Kid soundtrack playing in the background. Go on. I do like that, actually. Gladiator, actually. You're the best around. Nothing's going to ever keep you down. You're fucking knocking on the push-ups. No.

How do you remember that? Anyways, and then we went into you know some what you would look like more traditional asana or yoga but then we integrated some more breathing exercises ended up doing some

fight sequences right some more breathing exercises and then we ended in seated meditation right and so we've integrated

you know the breath with visualization with the movement functional movement with meditation and all in an hour to an hour and a half training session. The only part of that sounded out of place was a fight sequence. Yeah. What is that? Well, again, warrior yoga. Right. And so whether we're doing a sun salutation flowing through a yoga pose or whether we're doing a sequence of kicks and punches it's just functional movement right i'll even do body a body weight wad right

in the middle of a warrior yoga session so again it depends the way that i design warrior yoga is it's intentional what is my intention if it's to recover after a hard workout i'm not doing any of that stuff it's just pure you, maybe five or 10 poses held for a long period of time, really getting into the breath, really focused on the recovery. If it's my workout for the day, say it's an active recovery day, then I'll throw in a 20-minute bodyweight WOD or a grinder session or a fight sequence, you know, which I call combat conditioning, and that'll become part of the training session. So I'll start out with maybe standing poses and then I'll flow into the fight sequences

and then I'll finish up with some seated poses and core development and then I'll move into the visualization and the meditation. The point is that it really is kind of modular and flexible based upon the needs of the warrior, the athlete, and I'm writing a book about it.

I'm looking forward to reading that book. You just sold me. It's pretty cool. And an interesting story that I tell in the book is that I did this. The first warrior yoga session was on a C-130 and I was flying into Baghdad in 2004 for Iraqi freedom. And I had been studying yoga for five years.

And here I was a Navy SEAL lieutenant commander, reserve officer. And I hadn't been with my team. I had no team around me. I hadn't even sighted in my weapon. Is the team on the C-130 with you? No, the team was in Baghdad. Oh, okay.

So they weren't like, oh, who's this weirdo joining us? Right. I was a reserve officer augmenting the battle for a special project. And so I was flying in with, there was a Marine general in his aid and I think one other dude on the aircraft.

That's pretty badass. I've come to augment the battle. You like puff a cigar. The battle is ready for me. Exactly. It's phase three. I wish it was that cool. So I'm sitting there going,

and just like three or four days before some Australian poor guy guy got shot through the ass leaving Baghdad International Airport. So the airplane's going up, and some insurgent's like, hey, look at that. So he's just sitting in his chair. I made it out. Not in scratch. Not in scratch. Shot in the ass on the airplane, leaving the fucking airport. Man, that is life right there.

Exactly. Who knows when it's going to be your turn, right? Shot in the ass. Just when you think it's safe. You did it, Dan. A feast on me. I'm sitting there thinking, I don't want to get shot through my ass. And then I start, you know, I'm just losing it.

Like, literally, like. That would be a bad thing. Everything that I've talked, everything we've talked about on this show, you know, I was doing the opposite. I was like, my breathing is all, you know, because I'm flying into a combat zone for the first time. But these moments strike people no matter where you're at. I mean, you can be very skilled and you can get bit by the opposite. I was like, am I breathing this all? Because I'm flying into a combat zone for the first time. But these moments strike people no matter where you're at. You can be very skilled and you can get bit by the moment. You've got to fight back. I was crawling out of my skin, so I got up out of my chair.

You had all that training where there's a lot of combat simulation. Right. Mr. Tough Guy Seal. You're going into combat for the first time. You don't see anything. Just the knowledge that you're flying into a combat zone piqued you. Piqued me.

Because I was all alone. You know what I mean? Granted, I had been out of active duty for six years or so. No, actually about eight years. And so I wasn't in the training mode. Right. When I was in active duty and training for 12 to 18 months with my team

and my team's all around me, you're freaking invincible. You know what I mean? Right. You feel invincible and there would have been none of that. But now I have a family guy and a newborn son at home

and here I am. I hadn't even had time to sight my weapon which is a big no-no. This guy gets shot in the ass. My friend Scott Helveston was hung from a bridge and remember they got four guys from Blackwater who were killed in Fallujah? That happened like the month before. This guy gets shot in the ass. My friend Scott Helveston was hung from a bridge.

Remember the four guys from Blackwater who were killed in Fallujah? That happened like the month before. Jesus. All these things are going through my head. I got up in the back of the C-130 and I started doing yoga. I started breathing, moving with the breath. I just did about a good hour and a half ass-kicking yoga session. It was all gone.

Yeah. Flushed it all out. Wow. Landed, you know, mortars going off, and I'm like, I don't care. There it is again. Shit, run. I'm good. I was gone.

Back on the airplane. Every time you hear an explosion, you start doing yoga, he's like, this guy is useless. Send him back here. He's just staying over there. We're the worst SEAL commander we ever had. Do you mind if I borrow your story and wrap a screenplay or something?

Because that's entertaining as shit. I mean, that's a crazy scene. Yeah. I mean, it makes for a great story and how you're able to wrestle control out of it. Yeah. Sure. We'll partner on that. Yeah.

I'll give you 1%. I'll take it. Mark Devine, big block letters with fat, loud mouth Chris Newell. So, yeah. Warrior yoga is something I'm really passionate about. I look at that as like the practice for the inner development because I kind of, all the building blocks are in there, right? Wow. And then seal fit or cross fit, whatever your physical training is,

that's how we get the structure to be really strong. But it doesn't matter how strong the structure is on the outside if it's all gone to shit on the inside. Yeah. Man, that sounds amazing. Let's wrap this up. Oh, yeah. Yeah, oh, yeah.

Where can people find out more about... Well, I mean, you have... Well, what all do you have? Because I'll leave something out. You forget all you have. It's a long list of shit. You have a lot of stuff. I'll let you present in the order you wish.

I don't have a wishful order. Sealfit.com is probably the coolest website we have because we have a shit ton of videos and free content on there. Yeah. And then Warrior Yoga can be found right now in Unbeatable Mind, which is a course we have.

We've got a DVD coming out probably in a month, maybe a month and a half, which has a bunch of the stuff that we've talked about on it. So that'll be pretty cool. That'll be on the website, sealfit.com or unbeatablemind.com. If you're just kind of interested in some of the concepts, then a couple of books I recommend.

I wrote a book called The Way of the Seal. I think that's the one you said you read. Yeah, me and Mike both read it. Did you read that? I haven't read it yet actually, no. Okay. Yeah, so that's kind of a mental orientation and leadership book. It's like, here's how to think, you know, using some different principles and also to integrate some breathing and meditation and visualization into,

you know, to train as a leader, right? You don't have to be a SEAL or a Spec Ops guy. And then the whole philosophical framework of how I live my life and what I teach in Unbeatable Mind, I've got a book out called Unbeatable Mind. So those are cool places if you're interested in just learning the philosophy and some of the training techniques. Yeah, read those books.

And those are available at Amazon or, you know. You can buy those in bulk too. I know Zach Evanesh gives those to all of his athletes he gives them to all of his wrestlers that's how I got my first copy Zach Evanesh

was just like yeah take one of these he had a big box of them he just gives them to everybody that's a great practice for a coach if you have some books

that you think are just fantastic just buy them in bulk and give them to all your athletes whether it's The Way of the Seal or it's like

some other book you like it's a great gift don't worry about spending the money the more books you buy the better the more you give them out the more good comes back to you I believe It's a great gift. Don't worry about spending the money. The more books you buy, the better. The more you give them out, the more good comes back to you.

I believe that. For sure. I totally agree with that. That is awesome. Excellent. Thanks for joining us, Mark. Yeah, it's been my pleasure. What's that?

Didn't you just start a podcast? Oh, you did start a podcast. Right on. I forgot about that. I've been trying to get on your podcast for like, it's like somebody on your team was like, schedule a time to get with Mark on his podcast. Just link it's like you're somebody on your team was like, schedule a time to get with Mark on his podcast. Just link it up here. The first one didn't work, which I moved stuff all

the time too. And then it's been like, what, six months. Yeah. Yeah. Since we're a training company, we don't, we don't have the, um, let's just set up you guys. So we don't, we don't fly around and do like cool video podcasts. I have people just call me. Translation. We have jobs. We have actual jobs. But yeah, so it's on iTunes and you can find it on our website. But I like to interview people

and then also it's going to have just kind of like me espousing some of my philosophies of some of the inner training, particularly with warrior yoga

and stuff like that. This is called the Seagull Fit Podcast? It's called Unbeatable Mind Podcast with Mark Devine. Okay. Cool. Excellent.

Check that out. Check the notes for the links. If you're bored listening to us, go check out Mark. That's right. That'll never happen, we know. I doubt it. This is pretty damn exciting. Thanks for joining.

That was awesome. Thanks, Mike. Thank you, guys.