Barbell Shrugged - Training the Warrior Elite w/ Tech Sergeant William Johnson and Tech Sergeant Taylor Swartz, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged #572

Episode Date: April 28, 2021

Whether it’s calling in an air strike, dropping into the middle of a firefight to save a life, or operating as a one-man air traffic control tower in the middle of nowhere, those who make up the Air Force’s elite Special Warfare team are some of the best trained Airmen on the planet. And on the next Barbell Shrugged podcast Anders Verner speaks to Tech Sergeant William Johnson who serves as a Combat Controller and Tech Sergeant Taylor Swartz who trains these specialists how to survive any situation and in any environment from dessert to the arctic. Special Warfare operators are who other military branches call when a mission demands their expertise. And boy do they have stories to tell. So, don’t miss the next Barbell Shrugged podcast available at barbellshrugged.com. And to learn more about Special Warfare, visit at airforce.com.   In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged:   How USAF Special Warfare help every special operations group Specific roles in search and rescue Training for survival in bad situations Why mental health is a game changer for USAF training Why the best special operators choose the USAF   Anders Varner on Instagram   Doug Larson on Instagram   Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   ————————————————   Diesel Dad Training Programs: http://barbellshrugged.com/dieseldad   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa   Please Support Our Sponsors   U.S. Air Force. Find out if you do at airforce.com.   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged BiOptimizers Probitotics - Save 10% at bioptimizers.com/shrugged

Shark Family, today's final installment of us hanging out with the U.S. Air Force Special Warfare Division training the Warrior Elite with Tech Sergeant William Johnson and Tech Sergeant Taylor Swartz and why the Air Force Special Warfare Group is the most savage group of humans walking on this planet. Why they are the number one person that every Special Operations branch calls on when things get really crazy. We talk about training. We talk about their specific roles in search and rescue, training for survival in the worst situations possible, why mental health is a game changer for the U.S. Air Force Special Warfare training, and why the best special operators choose the U.S. Air Force.

And for everyone that is interested in learning more about the U.S. Air Force. And for everyone that is interested in learning more about the U.S. Air Force Special Warfare, make sure you get over to airforce.com. It has been a pleasure getting these stories out. These guys are some of the baddest humans to walk on the face of the earth. It's a pleasure to learn about their training, all of the care and attention that the U.S. Air Force puts into training these individuals. And it's just a downright beautiful time getting ready or getting to hang out and learn from just complete savages. Today, Tech Sergeant William Johnson, Tech Sergeant Taylor Swartz. and rescue and just the intricacies of where special warfare operators fit in in the grand scheme of our nation's special operations and how special warfare from the U.S. Air Force is

a piece of the entire puzzle and not just a single component like many of the special operations divisions across the military. Make sure you get over to airforce.com to learn more about the Air Force Special Warfare. And as always, we've got to thank our friends over at Organifi, Organifi.com. Check it out. Do you know why you need more micronutrients in your diet? Because micronutrients are the base, all the vitamins and minerals, those are the base of how all of the chemical and hormonal reactions happen in your body. And if you are deficient in those micronutrients, those vitamins and minerals, guess what? Your body's not going to operate optimally. Yeah, sure, you'll survive.

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So get over to Organifi.com forward slash shrugged. You're going to save 20% on the green, the red, and the gold juices from Organifi. Organifi.com forward slash shrugged. That is where you are going to save 20% on the green, red, the gold juices from Organifi. Organifi.com forward slash shrugged. That is where you are going to save 20% on the green, red and gold. And I have to talk about our friends over at Bioptimizers. I'm excited to tell you about the product I recently discovered. Most gut health supplements include all the same old ingredients packed into capsules. But what if there was a breakthrough gut repair supplement that had a new patented ingredient, tasted great and came in powder form so you could add it to water, coffee, or your favorite smoothie?

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Dude, Mash, you just flex on kids like that? I didn't mean to flex on them. I was just stretching. He's just yawning. Yeah. Well-timed bicep flex right there on accident. Today on the show, we are hanging out with Tech Sergeant Taylor Schwartz from SEER School. Is that right?

SEER School? SEER Schoolhouse? We're going to go over that fun acronym. And Tech Sergeant William Johnson, Combat Controller, United States Air Force, Special Ops. Welcome to the show, fellas. Thanks. Glad to be here. Hey, we got to kick this off.

One of you guys, whichever one wants to take the mic first. One of the fun things about podcasting, once you get the mic, you never have to give it back. If you got a full hour in you to talk about how awesome you are, get after it. Yeah, we'll sit and listen. I would love to know, when did you guys decide that you were going to go Special Ops route and choose the Air Force go first yeah absolutely uh so man i'm one of the guys that came in a little bit later in life i was 24 years old so i'd done quite a few things uh from working at a restaurant had a few years of college um and i got to this weird point where i was like well

what am i doing with myself because i was just chasing money at that point uh which you know i see it in my kids now but um i kind of started going through the list of items i was like, well, what am I doing with myself? Because I was just chasing money at that point, which I see it in my kids now. But I kind of started going through the list of items. I was like, all right, well, what do I like doing? Well, I like working out, right? So that was a big thing. And I did that on my own. Even when I was working at the restaurant, I worked at a bar for a little bit.

But I did that. I also liked – I realized I liked doing exciting things. I had a motorcycle at the time. I did skydiving. All the typical – You were born for this. Yeah. All the typical adrenaline junkie type stuff, I was into it. And then the last thing was that I was like, I kind of want to give back. It was in my head that I had lived a pretty good life. I appreciated the opportunities I had with my family. And I was trying to figure out how to

combine all that stuff. And I really didn't see a lot of good options out there. So like any person that doesn't really have good guidance and knows what they're supposed to do, I started talking to a military recruiter and started listening to them and trying to figure out which one kind of fit me best. Talked to the army recruiter. And obviously they had their options with the Rangers and special forces. I even talked to the Navy because obviously SEALs, everyone thinks about that when they think about doing something that's awesome and exciting. An oddball I talked to, I even talked to the Coast Guard. A lot of folks don't know that they have rescue swimmers and guys that do cool guy stuff as well. And, of course, like most folks, I'm like, what's the Air Force?

Yeah, I don't even talk to the Air Force. But ironically, like anyone who's ever been to an Army office knows, there's almost always an Air Force recruiter office like right next to it. So at one point I go in to talk to the Army recruiter. Oh, I forgot, man. I talk to the Marines as well. No question. I talk to all the services. As I'm getting ready to talk to the Army recruiter, he's not there at the time.

I pop into the Air Force office. I sit down, and, you know, the guy is just just hanging out and he has one of these little brochures over there and at the time he had two of them he had one for pararescue pjs um and he had one for combat control and i started looking through them and i was like man this pj thing looks pretty cool maybe i want to try and do something like this and and i popped that one down for a second i got off the combat control one um and i don't know if you guys have ever had a combat controller on before um but try to get one of them to explain to you what a combat controller is and as i went that's your job yeah what is it we don't have to get another one we got you yeah exact well so i started going through the brochure

and uh i was i didn't i didn't quite understand it long story short. And I asked the recruiter about it as well. And same thing, like he couldn't really explain to me like exactly what they do. So that actually was what made it intriguing to me. I was like, what is this? So I started researching it and getting into the weeds. And I kind of came to the conclusion that like a combat controller does a little bit of everything. Like all the little things you had talked about, you got to work out, you're doing jumping, shooting, diving, you know, not only doing it optionally, but you got to do it. Like it's part of what you need to do.

You're doing it for a good reason. And quite honestly, you're doing it in one of the services that are most fun to be in. So for all that stuff, it kind of just made it an easy decision for me because like i'm all over the place there is a job for somebody that's all over the place and that's how i got it got into it like isn't it air traffic control too do you do any of that part of it or is that not a part of it yeah i'm glad you asked that and it's like you had said man i could go into the weeds yeah stuff all day long but yeah you literally got from the exciting adrenaline junkie stuff you just talked about.

Right. All the way to like the nerd stuff. So we do surveys for aircraft to land. Right. So we go out to a road in the middle of nowhere and kind of determine we could learn, you know, what kind of aircraft can land out there. And then like you had said, we're all certified air traffic controllers as well. So when you get out, could you do that job? Like could you go work for Atlanta Airport and do air traffic control?

So I could have earlier, right? So I've stayed in for a little bit longer. There is a requirement in the FAA that you have to start at a certain age because you retired at a certain age. So I stayed in for a little bit, did for a few years, and then got out. at a certain age. Okay. He retired at a certain age. Oh, yeah. Stayed in for a little bit, did for a few years, and then got out.

Yeah, I probably could have transitioned over. It's not an automatic transition. So a lot of folks don't know this, man. Just because you get certified in something in the military doesn't automatically mean that you're certified to do it in the civilian sector as well.

Right. There's additional stuff. It'll give you a leg up. You'll be able to, you know, figure it out a lot quicker than some of the other folks are, but you still have to go through the process. Yeah.

Dude, I really want to – You said prior to the military you already – I stole it. See that? Yes, right in. You said prior to the military you already really enjoyed working out. What kind of workouts were you doing back in the day before the military, and how has that evolved over time? Yeah, so, man, I'm an older guy. I don't know if you guys can tell, but I come from that old

school mentality. I played football. I played basketball. Man, I even played a little tennis, which I know sounds like a crazy one for me. But with that, most of what I did was running, calisthenics. And when you lifted, man, it was to get your biceps bigger and to get your chest strong. You know, that was pretty much it. There was no Olympic lifting. There was no other lifts that I even know of. It was really just all about upper body. And if you wanted to work lower body, it was pretty much just running.

And then later on, once I figured out to join, you had to be a competent swimmer. I actually took swim lessons for about two years so that I'd be prepared to do that as well, which I'll tell you man despite what anyone will tell you anyone can learn to swim it really just takes time and you know kind of that focus that desire to achieve it and I was never the best swimmer within the group of guys that I had going through but I definitely got confident enough where I was middle of the pack the rest of the time that's where you yeah that's perfect but a lot of guys show up to the military not able to swim. Is that common? No, it's common. And the thing about swimming, so swimming is like 70%, maybe 75% technique.

Like you can't just gut check swimming. Like you can lift heavy and lift off stronger. Maybe not the scientific way to do it. You can run and run hard until you puke, and you can usually become a relatively good runner. But if you're not swimming with good technique, there's two things that happen. First of all, you ain't going to go very fast. Second of all, you're literally teaching yourself how to do it wrong.

So you're mastering bad technique, which makes it even harder to get to good technique. So you've got to learn how to do it right, right off the bat to be as efficient and effective as possible. You need to be a weightlifting coach too with that, man. Yeah, seriously. That's what I was thinking. That's like 97% of our jobs is saying slow down, people. You got a lot to learn, a long way to go. Let's just do it right first so we don't have to unlearn all the bad stuff.

Yes. That's my story. I don't want to take it from him. That's the whole point. You got the mic. Go. I'm sitting here. I'm learning. Taylor, I want to hear it from him. That's the whole point. You got the mic. Go. I'm sitting here. I'm learning.

Taylor, I want to hear about Sears School, man. Where did this journey start for you? And we got a lot to dig in. Sears School is like that acronym I think everybody knows. Yeah, unfortunately, everybody knows. What things don't happen when you go to Sears School? Yeah, it's like the worst best training anybody will ever have. Worst best training, yeah. Worst best training training yeah training yep it's you know scariest sounds at least to me it sounds getting kidnapped

by your own people's heart yeah and then you're like how and you're like how far are these guys gonna take it you don't know they're crazy you're on it's it can, really fun, or it's the worst thing in your life. So being on this side of the curtain now, I love it. It's great. What did you think on the other side, though? Wait, hold on. Let's back up real quick. Some people probably don't know what Sears School is.

Can you just give a brief rundown of what really we're talking about? Yeah, absolutely. So Sears stands for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape. And what the SEER school is tasked out to do is basically train anybody that is deemed a high risk of isolation personnel. So your combat controllers, your PJs, your pilots, your air crew members. And we give them basically all the life-saving skills to either survive a day you know behind enemy lines evade enemy capture resist enemy procedures uh and then escape uh aka torture but go ahead yeah your word yeah yeah yeah i gotta throw this in that cool about it is

that you learn to survive in your environment. Like, that's kind of a skill all of us want to have regardless. Honestly, you could use these techniques on your wife if she's trying to. Yeah. I will. Teach me. What do I need to know? Every situation.

Yeah. We're into some craziness, so yeah, maybe. You know, like he's saying we during our training we go to every environment uh so desert the or the arctic uh the coastline the tropics so like we get all this experience first during training and then we get to go back and teach it to all these different pilots and air crew operators that's cool actually do this when you know crap hits the fan for them on their worst day how long how long is your school is it two weeks right no depending on like what you need so there's different levels of this your school so you have

like your level a uh you have level a level b and level c level a is you sit there, you watch a PowerPoint, and you're done. Perfect. That's what we're looking for. Level B is like a week-long course where they go over. They don't go out to the field and learn the survival techniques. They're more focused on the resistance kind of portion. And then the level C is incorporative of everything. You learn survival, you learn invasion, you learn resistance, you learn escape,

all those different techniques, all everything globally principled. And that one, depending on like which school you go to. So the Air Force's school is three weeks, you know, academics, a week in the field, and then you get a week of resistance training uh the two navy schools so the air force has uh the only like service specific career field dedicated to seer no whereas all the other sister services it's like an additional duty like you're you're an infantryman but then you sign up and say hey you know i'll teach seer for three four years um oh i'd rather it sounds like you guys have got the right idea because you know you get to perfect your craft and like think about all the new things that could possibly happen like you know because those guys are guessing i mean you guys are learning like

here's what might happen in afghanistan here's what might happen in iraq that's beautiful really what's the coolest thing you've escaped from i only have like all my questions i just want to know like when you're out in the middle of like the desert is that scarier than being in the arctic would you rather be super hot in the desert yeah no no you'd rather be freezing cold i grew up from verm. Oh, yeah. You're crazy already. Put layers on all day versus be out in the desert and have to shred it or take everything off. I'm like, no, that's not my life.

Desert's scary. Yeah, but desert's cool at night, right? Is that a true story or not? You know, like it says desert gets cold. Doesn't the desert get cold at night oh yeah so you get a few hours of like a little reprieve in the arctic you don't get any reprieve it's cold it goes miserable to more miserable to your yeah to hell out miserable yeah yeah i'd imagine there's a for for serious school there's probably a strong component of sleep deprivation like if you're

behind enemy lines you're not just like taking 12 hour 12 hours of sleep every night to get be fully recovered like you're trying to get out of there and you're sleeping the absolute minimum you probably don't have uh resources you're probably not fed very well oftentimes you're stuck in the woods is there an element of um of figuring out like what you can eat when you're lost in the woods yeah absolutely absolutely absolutely. Absolutely. Um, I, it's not like a required portion of our training to become a serious specialist, but it just kind of happens naturally. You're given a set of objectives, you know, for training, um,

and to kind of time manage and just kind of get that, what they call a stress inoculation. They kind of get that, that feel for being. I love that terminology yeah that's pretty cool aka tired as hell yeah yeah hey uh i think we get air can you guys still hear us yeah all right um but yeah that stress inoculation that happens um and then while they're doing that with like all these tasks and objectives that you've got to do, they're taking like slowly they take away like your food. So three, four days, five days, you've only had maybe like one MRE or one chicken separated between like 10 guys. And it's like, I'm hungry. where's the next food where's the next meal so you know

there's absolutely a portion of that where we learn that um and then we we try to expound on that as much as we can to you know our students and to what they're going to experience without actually like nope this is all my food nope i'm taking yeah what do you teach them though like okay so i'm starved to death what do you teach them though like okay so i'm starved to death what are you gonna tell me just suck it up or you know well yeah if you're talking to me personally like you're talking to taylor swords off script absolutely yeah yeah uh but no like we will go over you know animal procurement how to hunt uh with like means you know traps sneers uh oh cool like berries what berries you can eat what kind of over animal procurement, how to hunt with means, traps, snares.

Oh, cool. Berries, what berries you can eat, what kind of plants you can eat. It's not like we talk global principles on the plants and the food that you can eat and whatnot. But we also, hey, you're going downrange to Afghanistan. Before you go downrange, we'll sit down with this group and we'll be like, Hey, these are the things that are specific to this country or to this, right. This is, you know, things go wrong for you and you don't have your food or anything like that.

This is what you should be looking for. Yeah. Like what would you eat in Afghanistan? Like it's in a desert, right? Like a tarantula. You gotta catch it. I don't know if I would drink the water. Say you're in a country like Mexico or any place

that you can't drink the water. What do you do? Boil it? You risk it for the biscuit? You've got to find some way to purify it. You got boiling, you got chemical means, you got bleach. All right. So you got to find some way of purifying your water.

You can't just drink the water out of the stream because who knows where it's actually coming from. Now you have diarrhea and that's a whole new problem. Now you're going to dehydrate. Then you're going to dehydration. Yeah. Wow. This is awesome.

You ever been down to mexico and gotten that monozuma's revenge i have i got it in uh el salvador it was like a whole new monozuma was the reason i took a deep dive into learning about gut bacteria oh yeah i was like there is a war going on in my stomach right now and i'm losing epically what i mean like when sleep deprivation like you know do you guys do okay so you're deprived of sleep you're deprived of calories like you tell them okay you probably want to like not do a lot because obviously you don't you don't want to burn the calories like what is the strategy now sounds like you're out of luck but like uh so it's like

ration what is it ration ration water not sweat i think i think that's the right one i get it all i get it mixed up anytime um but do what like is necessary right low on your caloric intake and your nutrition i don't want to just be go walking around aimlessly it's like kind of adding on right haven, having been through the training, it's unique because there is really no specific recipe to success, right? So you can take two different people and they approach the situation differently. In fact, I know there's a show where they did that, right? They had two different survivalists kind of go through the scenarios. So it really kind of depends on what your achievement is if it takes like say if you know that there's an area where

there is water or there's a fresh supply that you may be willing to exert some additional effort in order to get there and vice versa if you're in a situation where you're gonna have to sustain yourself for a long period of time like you're on a desert island in the middle of nowhere your approach is going to be completely different as you are in an area where you know there's a lot of traffic and you're potentially going to have someone that comes in and see yeah yeah i would love to get back to just kind of like the the physical training that goes into preparing for i mean just getting to a school like that or just what what is the training i mean you guys are on the other side of it as uh kind of the the teachers now um but at when you guys were in and going through these schools uh what do they what's

what's like the strength conditioning program look like to actually get you guys prepared for this stuff? So it's, it's interesting because like he, like we kind of just both brought up is, um, when we first went in, it was more like hard knocks, gut check, just going as hard as you can and then doing a little bit more on top of that like a prime example that i can remember and that's actually going through this location right here is they have you jack your feet up on the wall and literally that's you doing a handstand on the wall until you you fall down and then every time you fall down you guys get punished and you

have to get up on the wall again and we've held that we've held that position for no specific like they just do it every time they came out on the pad because they chose to do it and hindsight being 2020 reason for it it's that when you're in combat man you don't know how long something's gonna last like you could be in a stressful position for an extended period of time yeah a guy's gonna fall off the wall absolutely but. But at the same time, they're going to realize that, okay, you know, how do, how do I mentally cope with this kind of stuff? Now, fast forward to what we're doing now, everything is completely science-based. Like it's literally, not that it's easy, but it's just, they stress you in order to elicit specific responses. Like they have you do an exercise because they know that exercise is going to get exactly what they need not only for the group but for you so i would argue that they're probably a lot smarter they're breaking a lot less guys and they're making guys stronger

and tougher than they did not not that i'm saying that we couldn't hang if we kind of didn't put back in that situation again but like back then man it was just like i literally had an instructor where we would just go on runs and climb over stuff and start, you know, a little crawling through this tube because we wanted to do it. Or they'd be like, yeah, you guys are going to push that truck around while I go run and sprint. And then you guys are going to catch up to me. If you don't catch up to me, you're going to have to knock out a hundred pushups. It was literally just a dude dreaming up stuff to see what the limits were. And when you look at it now, just talking through the thought process

that they're doing with this, it's like so much more calculated. I don't want to undersell it because it sounds like it's weaker in a weird instance. It's like looking at old football players compared to what they are today. But when you just look at the difference in physical capability man back in the day maybe they had more grit but man today they are physical specimens yeah guys that we have going through right now here's what they've kind of determined and and i'm not to kind of skip past that part but they've determined that they want certain qualities in people they want people with

high integrity they want people that no quit. They want people that no quit attitude. They want people that are just totally going to be good for the position. Now if you're coming with not necessarily the best physical qualities, like maybe you didn't have access to a good gym or you didn't have access to a pool or something like that, man, they're like, I got it. But you have the things that we really want. You have the ethics, you have the qualities that we want for success. You're not going to quit. We're going to help build you up to get to a point where you're going to be successful when you go. Right.

Yeah. The guys that are coming through right now are these guys that are former collegiate or like Olympic swimmers. We had to do this collegiate swimmer that was teaching these kids going through, you know, as opposed to me where I'm getting trained by a guy who does lifeboarding is his primary yeah that's that's uh that's an interesting thing that i've heard a couple times of like uh when they're when they're training you guys it's not like it's like oh we need to learn how to swim well they bring in the best swimmer in the world to teach you how to swim because

there's not enough time to let me teach you how to swim. So we'll just be flailing around for too long. If you've got to learn how to drive a car, they bring in a real car driver, Mario Andretti. It's like the real guys show up to train you. And when you say that, dead on. Like we literally had a school where you're learning to do J-turns, where you're learning to do stuff like basically shooting through windows,

where you get pepper sprayed so you know that you can fight through being pepper sprayed i mean go to schools specifically to know what you're going to react like and then how to deal with it yeah so do you guys go down to get pepper sprayed we go to this person yeah he told me you gotta do it he's got to okay you know man know, man, I'd do that. I would do the pepper spray and the gas. I would like to get gassed. You know how you throw up and spit everywhere? So I did that when I was younger.

I'll shoot through the window. Yeah. I'll shoot through the window. Yeah, me too. I don't want to get shot at, but yeah, I'll shoot through the window. When you came, do you guys teach them any kind of breathing techniques? Let's say you're in a stressful environment. you guys teach them any kind of like breathing techniques to say you're getting a stressful environment? Do you teach them how to handle that stress?

I mean, there are techniques out there now. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, it's, I hate to say it. It's not secret information. I mean, you'll find online about being calm, trying to get your, like it's controlled by breathing. It, you know, it's, it's not, it's really about practicing it and trying to actually take it for what it is that is a serious technique so i don't know it's not secret stuff to be honest

with you but yeah they definitely impart that knowledge to all i think i think on top of that like there's a difference between like controlling and being calm both physically and mentally yeah like you can be physically calm and, you know, still be task-oriented and make sure that, you know, you're putting bullets down range and, you know, focusing on your target. But, like, when it comes to a mental side of that and you're still doing something, you still need to be able to breathe and focus and make sure you're doing that.

Yeah, I think – I would think as a coach, you know, that if somebody were calm that they would be able to shoot and, like, make decisions in a much higher coach, you know, that if somebody were calm, that they would be able to shoot and, like, make decisions at a much higher rate, you know, because if you're in that parasympathetic, you know, nervous system, you're relaxed. Your heart rate's down. You're going to preserve calories. Your brain's going to work. It's going to function better.

You know, only – I mean, sympathetic, you know, if you've got to run and get the hell out, I mean, then you want that. But I would assume you'd want to keep that. You don't want to be a sniper and all jazzed up taking pre-workout right no way like i'm about to do there you go yeah um so i've been doing martial arts my whole life and when i when i started fighting mma years and years ago uh i was in gresham oregon which at team quest which was randy Couture's original gym. And Robert Falls, who ran that gym, he told me right when I started that he can tell the guys who are going to be really good because when they get choked out or submitted or whatever,

they just laugh about it. Like they don't care. It doesn't bother them. They don't get hung up on themselves. They just laugh it off and go right back into training. Do you guys see any similar qualities, either good or bad, where you can tell somebody by kind of the way they react to things if they're going to do well or not do well in special ops? Absolutely. I'd say with us, one of the most interesting things is that the concept that you think you see when you think of an operator is usually way off. Like the dudes that are really good at this job are not the ones you would expect by

looking at them it's usually people that are humble it's usually the people that have no ego because here's the thing you are gonna have your ego checked whether it is in training yeah it is in combat there's just things you're not gonna be able to know and if you don't bounce back from from basically learning that you are not going to be able to solve every situation you're not going to be able to know. And if you don't bounce back from, from basically learning that you are not going to be able to solve every situation, you're not going to be your first one down range. And that's something you see right off the bat. It's the people that are willing to learn, even if they're the experts, right? So I've had dudes that have been shooting their whole lives. They'll come up and we'll start them all off on the basics, man. It's when you can

take those concepts and just throw out what you got, accept what they're giving you, and then roll in with that and really kind of incorporate into who you are. Yeah, gotcha. Roger. What's going on? Wait, did you just get in trouble? No. No, no, no.

We're just getting our cues. That's right. Absolutely. Getting cues. You got our film director in the background. You guys did go to city chases. Can we talk about, like, okay, once they've been captured, that's where you hear all the stories.

He wants to do the resistance. You want to talk about resistance. I want to talk about resistance. What do you do? Yeah. So there's only – I can only say a certain amount of things yeah i understand yeah we could say a lot though yeah we could we could assume it wouldn't mean anything but yeah yeah so yeah uh so load them up so i did a little a little background like my career. So I went through training, and we graduated.

We started with a class of 62, and we graduated eight out of my class. What? Yeah, absolutely. So we have a running joke in my career field. Were you the one of the eight? I take it. I was one of the eight, yes. You're a bad man, man.

Savage. So in our career field, we have a running joke. It goes, last hard class. So we always get – Anything above eight graduates, you're like, yes, it just wasn't even that hard. Child's play. So I graduated.

I did three years of doing the basic, like, survival course and training, going out to the field and doing academics. Like, hey, this is what the field's like. This is just how you survive globally. You did that. And then I worked three years down in the resistance training. And now I spent two years at our SEER specialist training orientation course where we're selecting and assessing students to come in and be like my next generation. So this is all the resistance questions questions this is this is my game so oh good this is what i'm interested in yeah what are the other are you allowed to take it oh i'm sorry you can ask you guys a question yeah yeah totally yeah if you give us the mic might be over just saying

obviously speaking to us right now um and i know you guys talked to a couple folks before. What do you guys know about special warfare? Like, what is your perspective on it? Like, when you hear that, like, especially after having spoken to us, like, what are the rumors? Like, are there any questions or anything you guys haven't thought of? Or what pops out to you when you hear about that? This is specifically it.

Yeah, this is what scares me the most, you know, would be like, you know, what is going to you when you hear about that this is specifically it yeah this is what scares me the most you know would be like you know what is going to happen when i get caught you know like uh even like it'd be cool if you guys could say here are some things that happen in real life not with you guys but like if i get captured in afghanistan here's what happens i'd love to know that but i'd also like here as far as we're allowed to take it you know once they're you know once you're caught, now you're resisting. Yeah, no, absolutely. But I'm saying with the name, when you hear Air Force, what do you usually think of?

Oh, yeah, we talked a little bit about this yesterday. But yeah, I think that this is our second run of interviews that we've done with you guys. We did some last year. The guy that I told the story yesterday, but the guy that we ran the Spartan World Championships was out there in silky three-inch inseam shorts on top of Squaw Mountain. Hunter? Ten degrees. No, it was the actual

Air Force Special Ops guy. He was an awesome dude. I can't remember his name right now. Jumping in cold water at the top of the mountain and I was just like, you guys are super freaks. I think that the Air Force Special Ops people just aren't as known and I think that there's like a code slash some sort of marketing piece to the movies always being about seals that everybody just

thinks navy seals are the only special operators or or built the force in the army you know yeah so i think it's really cool that we get to like connect with you guys and tell the story um especially after learning like kind of what the pjs do the fact that there's like three you guys this is the first time i've ever talked about seer school in any real way um but the ability to get out to our audience what you guys actually do and the fact that um it'd be we'd be lying if at some point in our strength conditioning careers we weren't like, I wonder if I could go be a SEAL. I wonder if I could get through Hell Week. But now I'm like, I wonder if I could go to SEER school at the Air Force and get through it. I think the coolest part

about all special operations is the fact that you guys get to learn from the best people in the world. And the training isn't like, oh, let's take this six year long course like no you've got three months to go learn from the best coach in the world at the specific subject because three months from now you have to go use it to save your life and create a mission and like complete the mission you go cool sympathetic nervous system yeah um yo i'm actually curious can you can you provide some distinction between the different types of special operations units like how SEALs are different from Rangers, different from PJs, different from Delta Force, etc? Yeah, so I'm absolutely elated that you asked that question, right? Because that is like the million dollar question is like what? How do you kind of look at them? Like what? Why would you do Air Force Special Warfare as opposed air force special warfare as opposed to seals as opposed to ranch so first of all i just want to put out that they're all hard right so if you are trying

to be the most tough bad badass person possible you could go into any of those particular things and you're definitely going to check that box like for you know for all intents and purposes like your your map your tough box right that that you're going to get regardless i think the question ends up being like what do you want to focus on after you've checked that box because if you're going to do seals man that's it's primarily maritime like it's water like they do other stuff right but they're leaning in on water that's what they focus on if you're looking at army special ops and i do want to just this is i hate this but when you say special ops by the way when you say that you're generally at Army Special Ops, and I do want to – I hate this, but when you say Special Ops, by the way, when you say that, you're generally specifically saying the Army Special Operations. Yeah.

With us, we can see ourselves by saying Special Warfare within the Air Force. Ah, okay. It's my thing, but it's just like people really get hung up on that terminology. So when you talk about Green Break Special Ops, that's what you're talking about. In addition to them, you've got the Rangers. So basically what they are is counterinsurgency stuff. So when you talk about Green Berets Special Ops, that's what you're talking about. In addition to them, you've got the Rangers. So basically what they are is counterinsurgency stuff. They work with the local nationals, either the host nation, in order to secure their country or with the insurgency or whatever they're to try to do uprising.

That is their primary mission. Like unconventional warfare is what it's called. That is what Green Berets do. Do they do all the other stuff? Absolutely. Like like those are ancillary additional things that they do same thing with the seals they do the water stuff and yeah they do land stuff but it's mostly water that's their sweet spot rangers okay rangers is infantry they are your if you want to be the most elite infantry if you want to like do army stuff specifically army stuff they're the best at doing army stuff right moving into us this is awesome by the way but yeah well it's i put a

lot of thought into this it's a funny part because it is a weird because a lot of people like why just want to be the most badass person ever right well i hate to say it they're all tough like you're going to hit failure no matter which of those jobs you do yeah i'm not trying to mess with either of those so yeah i totally respect all I'm not trying to mess with either of those. So, yeah, I totally respect all of you. Yeah. The big thing with the Air Force is that we take that and we add the Air Force flavor to it. So we generally support those missions and bring air power to those missions.

So for us, it's really taking any mission that a SEAL does, throwing a controller or a J on the team, and then all of a sudden you've got the back and weight of the Air Force behind it. So we have to learn all the skills that your SEALs learn, but we've got to be able to have that break in case there's an emergency in order to get guys out, rescue somebody if they need to be rescued. And we bring that primarily, and this is kind of what our big goal is right now, to all of the services. Like generally, I've been attached to the SEALs, and I've been attached what our big goal is right now, to all of the services. Like generally, I've been attached to the SEALs, and I've been attached to the Green Berets and to the Rangers. And through each team, that was our role. We do the exact same stuff. We're going on

the same missions, but we're that, man, there's something really bad that happened. There's a lot more of the bad guys than there are us. We're running out of bullets. We got to get out of the situation. And that's when you got someone that can bring in a bomb from an aircraft that's, you know, 30,000 feet up in the air. You have at a precise location, man, when you see those video cameras of bombs dropping on specific locations, those don't happen all by themselves. You got to have a dude that actually designates that's where the bomb's going

to land at. And really that's, that's the solution to a situation where, guess what? More bad guys than good guys. And, yeah, we're all ninjas. But, man, ultimately, numbers are what's going to win. Yeah. When you look at those overruns, that's what's going to win. And it's the same thing with the rescue capability.

Like, that is a situation where, like, okay, yeah, we're all ninjas out here. But, boo, we got a dude trapped inside of a cave or on top of a building. How do we get out of this? Man, we got a guy trapped inside of a cave or on top of a building. How do we get out of this, man? We got a guy who's a rescue specialist can get you out of any scenario. He's going to get you back to home. That's, and that's really awesome. The Air Force advertises that we help all the other services when they need the weight of the Air Force behind them. And that translates over to all the combat support as well. So when you look at the SEER guys, they're literally the specialists from the Air Force because no other service has people that just do the SEER function, right?

They're the only ones that specifically do that. And they work with all the other services, but they are the specialists, literally the ninjas of it. And the same thing with all of our particular jobs is that you've got to be a specialist in all these other what we call just the ways we get to work,, right? You got to be able to skydive. Funny story for you. Not all Green Berets are Halo qualified. Not all SEALs are Halo qualified. Wait, wait, what's Halo qualified? High altitude, low opening. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. All right. So when I say that, what I mean is that you do, you know, who does have to be fully qualified on all that stuff.

I bet you guys. Your Air Force Special Warfare dudes. You don't even have a choice, right? You have to go to dive school. There's dudes that don't want to go to dive school or are never qualified to go to dive school. You can't be a Special Warfare operator unless you've gone to that school. You're jumping out of the plane. Absolutely.

What I'd say the biggest thing is is that we usually don't run just our own little Air Force mission. We help everyone else make their missions happen. That's what I want to hear personally as a civilian. It's nice to hear how we all work together. You know you always hear, well, the Navy is better than the Army. The Army is better. I mean, it's like you guys all better be working together if shit hits the fan. I'm hoping.

Like if China is invading, you guys better be working together if we're shit hit the fan i'm hoping like china's invading you guys better be working together who cares about help us well i'd imagine there's like a healthy rivalry between the different groups but also you guys respect each other yeah yeah you get all getting shot at if a bullet flies everyone got shot at yeah you guys have ever seen it there's like a meme out there where uh it's like the godfather picture and it's all the different like each brother uh from the godfather is like a different service and you know they all make fun of each other but as soon as somebody outside of that brotherhood makes fun of you they all turn and they're like oh it's game on oh that makes total sense my brother yeah yeah because my two boys fight every day but if someone were to mess with them, they would definitely protect the others.

Crazy how that works. Yeah, that's like the biggest thing. I just want to make sure people get is that. That's awesome. Like it's really bringing air power in all its levels, right? So whether you're getting pulled out of something, whether you're having a bomb dropped, whether you're having someone that has to get rescued from like they got shot out of their plane that's what we bring to that battle because really the error is going to be the defense like that's going to

be the thing that determines the course of the battle when it comes down to it so that's what we bring to the fight with you guys are the rescue missions one of some of the more complicated dangerous missions or they kind of just like an average mission so rescuing are super first of all they're rare to be quite honest with you because you know i hate to say america rocks we don't we don't like we don't hate to say it i'm i love hearing you say that i don't want you to be like yeah we're like fourth place even if you got like seven dudes man taking on 100 guess what man i got a plane overhead that's

going to even the odds immediately it really doesn't yeah that's so badass boom boom boom there's only two left and that's really super unique is that the bad guys know you're coming now right so generally when you do an offensive operation dude they don't know you're coming like they may be asleep you know bad guy you know you don't know what they don't know when we when you do an offensive operation, dude, they don't know you're coming. Like they may be asleep, you know, bad guy, you know, you don't know what they're, when you had the raid on Osama bin Laden, you think he knew the guys were going to be landing in his front yard? Absolutely not.

Oh no, he wouldn't have been there. Now I want you to take that same scenario though. And all of a sudden an aircraft got shot down. Bad guy shot the aircraft down. They know you're coming now. They know you're coming. So they're prepared, man they're prepared man they're laying traps they're getting everything ready you have all these other layers that you have to add on and make sure that you can get them out because guess what america's not going to leave you behind like we are there there is something to that other countries man that they'll leave they'll leave their folks because they're like man we're going

to lose a lot more people trying to put it in the back. Can I ask a question? So is it true? I've heard that, like, you know, you're in a battle. And they shoot somebody. He's wounded. They leave him alive so you will come. Basically using that person as bait. Is that true? Oh, yeah.

I mean, when you think about it, let's look at it like this. From a tactical standpoint, it absolutely makes sense, right? Yeah, totally. If you're a bad guy. I don't even want to kill people, people. So then you've got to send people out to try to bring them back. So what we have to do, because we're going to bring our boys back, because we have to provide overwhelming force.

Like when we have a rescue mission, every aircraft that's in the area is going to get sent to that location. Every additional force, guys that aren't even supposed to be working at that time are going to volunteer to work to go get their brother back. Because they know the exact same thing for them. So, yeah, is it more complex? But is it necessary? Absolutely. Awesome. On top of everything he's saying, on my deployment, just like Sergeant Johnson was saying earlier,

SEER guys are jacks of all trades. You can give me a deck of cards, and I can basically tell you what each deck of card I can do with it. On my deployment, when we're deployed as SEER specialists, we deal in personnel recovery. Everything that you guys are talking about right now, on just behind the scenes, like, he goes down, he goes gets the people, he rescues them, you know, with PJs and, you know, calling in air traffic controls and whatever it is. I'm the guy behind like, hey, what aircraft do we have? You know, this is the information. These are the people that you'll be looking for when you're down on the ground. And on my deployment, I had, you know, that rare opportunity to actually deal with two different recovery missions. You did. Oh, this is awesome.

Yeah. So in one of them, there was a, you know, a Saudi tornado, which is an aircraft, you know, it went down in the Middle East. And so not only like are we working you know with american forces but also you know other friendly allied nations right how do we get our friends back to come back and do the same mission um so like having to deal you know with the communication aspect with them to get them back uh and then the other one had a uh actual like rescue helicopter go down in the Middle East. And just seeing that overwhelming manpower and aircraft and support from America, but then also our allied friends and nations, we are going to create a perimeter, a box around these guys.

No one's getting in. No one's – we will bring everyone home. That's just awesome. You know, like, I gotta tell you, like one of the coolest things about this is like the fact that in American society that we commit to that. And we also commit to that, like on that same fitness front and preparing guys to be as capable as

possible. Like I know back in the day, it was just all about sucking it up, but they took that same concept and they were like like, Alright, we want to bring everyone back. But we also need to make sure that we have the finest fighting force out there. Right. And that's when they basically applied all the science, man, they brought in coaches like you guys, strength and conditioning coaches, man, I'll tell you. So before I joined the service, man, I was trying to do the snatch and clean and jerk. And if you you know if you ever tried to do those lists before man they are highly technical exercises and I can't explain to you how many times I know a little bit about that yeah well I'll just say I used to throw my back out all

the time same thing with deadlift like the concept to me that you're not supposed to use your back so much was just it didn't translate in my head and I was completely missing out on the benefits of doing that exercise. Man, when you get in and now that they've already said, okay, look, we're going to show you how to do this properly and we're going to make you as explosive as power as possible, like strong enough so you can lift something if you need to lift something, climb up something if you need to climb up. Like that's been a huge game changer. Yeah. You don't have access to that stuff when they come in. Once they hit it and they're working with coaches like you guys, it's been like huge.

I tell you, I'm jealous a lot of times because I didn't get that when I first came in and I'm still trying to deal with all the injuries that I had of overuse, you know, that I wish I had gotten the right information right off the bat. Like I tell you, if you would see me trying to do these lists back in the day, you probably would have just smacked me, knocked me out of the way and wondered why I was doing it.

No, I would have just helped you. So are those movements pretty standard now? Cleans, deadlifts, squats, etc. People think about conditioning for the military, they think about running and push-ups, a lot of pull-ups, etc. Pull-ups, yeah. But is that more old school? It's both, right?

So they've had to combine them. So part of one of our tests right now, and this isn't really the one they do when you first come in, but once you come in, they actually have deadlift as part of it. Like you do. The trap bar deadlift, right? there was a study a little while ago and I literally just heard about this is success in the pipeline and they're predicated primarily on two main factors. And one is your middle to long distance runtime and it's pull-ups and whether it's causal or whether it's, you know, correlatable core, man, I'm saying bad word here, correlated. That's not completely. Causation or correlation. The thought process is that if you get to 18 pull-ups,

that probably is because of all the other things that it took to get you to those 18 pull-ups. Like you're not just pull-ups if you can do 18 pull-ups, you're probably good at pushups, probably overall just a strong individual because doing 18 pull-ups is no joke. Running is different in the sense that it's not strength, but it is that mental attitude as

far as grit and just grinding because as you may or may not i mean you guys know this when you run the only way to get better at running is to literally hurt yourself like you can't just jog and get better at running you have to you have to be breathing hard you have to suck it up and that is something most people don't they don don't embrace it. So are they doing both? Absolutely. I mean, like most people, I like lifting more, but I absolutely realize that you've got to put in the wind, you got to run and you got to do the things that you got to sacrifice to make sure you don't bleed on the book on the battlefield in the future.

You know, I've coached, like I've coached people to the special, you know, preparing for special forces. I've coached a kid to the navy seals preparing for navy seals and i've worked with the paratroopers out of um pair jumpers sorry out of uh in north carolina not right yeah not fort bragg but pope pope air force base you know and like the one through the common thing thing behind all three is their scientific approach to their training. They were really – like we developed a really well-thought-out plan. We looked at the aerobic, anaerobic. We tried to get them explosive to a degree.

It was just interesting to watch. They were all very similar humans. They were all smart. They were all dialed in. They all had their entire life like dialed in. They all had their entire life dialed in. They were getting their sleep when they could sleep. It was just interesting to see their – it's not a bunch of me-ads. People might think it's just a crazy guy who goes out and shoots people.

They were very – like Michael Waters, he wrestled at Penn State. He's one of my athletes. That kid is just – he's very dialed in. I sure wouldn't want to be messing with him on the battlefield but it's just anyway to let the audience know like these people are super smart they really approach it like uh and then if i've coached nfl athletes it was all similar it was like the way they approached were all similar i'm actually really interested in how you guys actually kind of foster that culture of of learning and just continuously like learning new things to

develop your skill set now that you guys are instructors how do you guys go do that in the classroom and on the in in the field so it goes back to a question you had asked earlier about who we pick and what kind of criteria we're looking for you can't have that ego right so try to weed that out. In fact, let's look at a football team real quick. Who do you think would do well in special warfare on a football team, position-wise? Like what positions do you think would do well within special warfare?

Like physically? Yeah, offensive line, right? Why do you think it's offensive line, guys? They're kind of the – they're like a mini team within the team. They have to work together. They don't get the big accolades. They don't have all the same ego that a running back or a quarterback or a receiver would need in order to be successful.

They're that down-to-earth mentality, people that are willing to learn and willing to listen, and that's generally what we're looking for. We don't look for the people that are rock stars on the football team. We're looking for the person that, and I'm not saying you can't do this as a running back or receiver. I'm just saying it's the, it's the thought process, like wrestlers, right? Wrestlers almost always do well. You know why that is? There's not a lot of professional opportunities for a wrestler once they've done with wrestling. Like you wrestle for pride. You wrestle because you want to win. Like there's no just immediate win in a wrestling competition you have to grind in that and that's those are the people that are

gonna be successful in their career Michael is the toughest human I've ever met in my life I saw him beat up he was a low weight class he might have been 125 pounds and he beat up a 300 pound guy who went to NC state to play football. I saw it in my own eyes. You need to talk about the, the, the, the food thing, right. The, you know, not being able to eat like that court, it translates really well. Michael don't care. You need to have that self-discipline and then, you know, bring that humbleness and that integrity into, you know, whatever,

like the wrestling, the, you know, bring that humbleness and that integrity into, you know, whatever, like the wrestling, the, you know, your offensive line, you bring that over to our career fields. You mentioned a really good word discipline. And I assume that you guys have, have things in place to create that discipline. But do you also notice when people show up that don't have it, that may maybe a little lost, you were talking about at the beginning, you had no idea what you wanted to do, but

then finding the services or getting into something where discipline need, you have to have it in order to succeed. And people, people get in there and all of a sudden they're able to actually flourish by having a little bit of structure in their lives. Yeah, that's, I'm a little bit mixed on that, to be honest with you, because, like, when you join one of these career fields, like, for example, we've got guys that recruit for these, right, special warfare recruiters.

Those dudes are not trying to convince someone to be part of this career field, right? They are literally trying to say, hey, we're going to provide you an opportunity because it looks like you have certain prerequisites, and those prerequisites are generally going to be someone that wants to work hard like we're not going to turn you into something you're not like to join the military generally they're taking someone that doesn't have any guidance or direction and they're like all right well we're going to give you all that man you're not going to get into special warfare or special ops if you're that same individual i'm not saying it's impossible i'm just saying it's unlikely because the person we're looking for

already has certain attributes they're going to push them to want to be at a higher level right right you go into special warfare because you don't know what to do with yourself or because you have no guidance or direction you go into special warfare because you want to do something more than that that baseline like it you have to volunteer several times to do a lot of crazy stuff in order to be part of these jobs so that's the reason i kind of say is like some of it has to be internal whether you develop yourself or genetics or however you want to use it like you don't have to be a physical specimen but man you got to have that no quit mentality you don't necessarily have to be a physical specimen, but man, you got to have that no quit mentality. You don't necessarily have to have done all the right things, but you have to at least

have a moral compass, right? You got to have done some physical things or at least be willing to put in the work to get physically better. Like we don't, when you look at freaks of nature, like you look at the NFL and guys that have all these crazy genetics, argue most of the dudes in our career fields don't have that. They have more of, you know, lack of a better word is that grit, that I want to get better.

Like these are normal human beings that are doing things that are very, very difficult, but anyone quite honestly is capable of doing. It just takes a whole other level mentally of achieving that stuff. I think also too at MASH, I'm sure you could even, you have tons of athletes and I've coached tons of people, too, that seem so average on day one, but they're just willing to put themselves out there and work every day versus the person that has no idea why they're good at something. Like they've just always been good.

That's the tougher one. So they have no idea, one, that they could be great, and two, they don't see the need to work at it because they've always been better than everyone. Yeah, until they get to the tip top where everybody is like that. That's the only problem. If you get the guy who's always been good, when they get to where everybody's really good,

that's where they fold because they haven't worked. So if you don't give them a work ethic. That reminds me, like Michael, you know, he could have gone to like NC State Appalachian and he would have started from day one, but he chose to go to Penn state, the best wrestling school in America. And he probably didn't get to start until he's like fourth or fifth year, you know, but he would rather have gone there, you know,

and be a part of something bigger than himself than to go on to NC state and been the man, you know? So I just, I see how, you know, I'm lining up thinking about the people I've worked with who do what you guys do. They do, they are certain characteristics. They would want to be a part of something bigger than themselves. Absolutely. There's, there's also this weird undercurrent that it's, I don't know if people want to say it, but like, you got to kind of feel like you need to do more right you can't ever feel

like you've kind of checked all the boxes and that you're at the end you've got to kind of like maybe i'm not the best like if you don't have this kind of thing going on your head where it makes you continue to push you're going to struggle to continue to improve and you're going to struggle when you said about learning things new techniques if you say say, for example, going back to air traffic control, right? And I'm like, yeah, it's like a video game. It's easy. I can do it all day long. And then all of a sudden they throw some new stuff at me. If I can't adapt to that, man, I'm going to fail.

I got to have something in my head where I'm like, maybe I'm not quite the best. Maybe I can get a little bit better because then that's going to make it a lot more easy for me to that new tech, that new information. Yeah, man, that is great advice for everybody. Like I, you know, I coaches when I, when I work with other coaches, I tell them that's the number one quality of a really good coach is, you know, when people start to say, I have this certain system and that's the way I do things. I think you should retire at that moment because you're saying you have learned everything you're going to learn.

And so that's why they're getting beat now. So that is a brilliant advice, and that's good to teach these young guys that for the rest of their lives. They will be successful if they think like that. Absolutely. Yeah, the thing I would add, and this is kind of the thing that I've seen that guys seem to be struggling with, is that same grit mentality as well. So you have to keep that in there.

Yeah. I've seen dudes, because I used to work as an instructor where we did assessments, and I'd have dudes that would come in and blame the training for their failures, right? They'd say, well, you had me on this training program. I don't know why I didn't make my runs. And what it came down to is they somehow forgot that, yeah, I can give you all these great training programs. There's got to be that effort, that desire,

that willingness to put yourself through something difficult in order to become more. No doubt. I wish guys had this. That's the one thing I think that us older guys had a little bit more on. Like if I want to give ourselves credit for something is that we're willing to put ourselves through so much more at times regardless and we won't blame any of the the the tech or the thought process behind it's like we're gonna we're gonna make this happen that's one thing that's so awesome about your selection process too is like the attrition rate needs to be high to weed people out. You just get to do it up front versus over most industries and most sports.

It happens over time. You guys just don't have that time. So you make the first two years or whatever it is absolutely brutal. So everyone quits because they wouldn't make it. How many people make it through school? Speaking of that, like now you said that you were this huge group and there's only eight of you. Now what are the odds of finishing Sears school nowadays?

So we're really looking at our program right now just because we've had that historical attrition rate where over 60%, 70%, 80% of the classes that have been sent up to Washington to actually promise your specialists have all gone away. And then, you know, you're left with the eights, the tens, the, you know, the highest class that I knew about was like 25 when they are 30, 40, 50 guys. And so, you know, they're taking all this historical data in the recruiting aspect, you know, for special warfare to get numbers. And now we're like, okay, you know, what can we, we're learning all this physical stuff. Like,

Hey, how do we get guys to be physically better in these different environments? How do we get them to have more sleep? Um, and so we're just looking at all this different data sets that we've had over the last like five ten years yeah and now we're bringing them in like this we just graduated a class in December where they had a 94% graduation would you say that's due to the training or due to like the selection of the people? I would say both. I'd say really both. We have that class in particular,

like our commanders and everybody above us, you know, they were really gung ho on, you know, make sure they are meeting the standards, but also give them the opportunities, give them the training that they need. We've been talking about you know have that self-motivation you know i can i can give a guy all the all the workouts all the training everything he needs to do but does he really want to do it himself right you know it comes down to him or her because we had a you know i think we had a girl graduate this last morning one girl yeah wow yeah to you know what do they want to do mentally but the training bad woman the training aspect like we've they they tailored training so you know down here it's in antonio

we're doing more of you know hey this is an orientation to what you're going to do for the next three four years as a SEER specialist. And then you get up to Washington and they're kind of adapting like a coaching and mentoring kind of session now where, okay, you've made the cut so far. You're still like on the cutting board, but you've made it this far and we want to give you some more tips and tricks to make you a better uh candidate and you know a better seer specialist so i mean can i get two real quick things um so he had mentioned uh the female part of it and just so your whole audience kind of is tracking i know you said you had 80 male but regardless uh females these jobs are all open to everybody right so there's no limits on your gender just for your guys' essay and everybody going forward.

In fact, we have at least one female in special warfare that's doing well. I can't be specific. She's done pretty well. And like you had said, man, she's a freaking beast. And literally the same standards as everyone else. Honestly, that's the thing. So some people, if you've seen, was it G.I. Jane? Yeah. G.I. Jane. they didn't change anything and in fact I'd almost argue it was tougher because she

didn't want to have that thing on her back you know as well where they're like I'll read the standards for you so it's open to everybody it's possible like is it difficult absolutely whether you're male or female but man it is you know it's open to everybody yeah and then the second thing was uh i forgot what it was you had kind of mentioned uh oh the selection okay i know what it was combining those two different aspects is that um you had mentioned how attrition needs to be high. That's recognized, but it's actually a network trying to crack, right? Because we don't want to lose people that want to join. Sure.

People that want to join the military are a rare commodity within America, right? Yeah. If you want to join the military, that already is a freaking plus with us. Like, that's great, man. I'm glad you want to serve your country. And I want to help you be as successful as possible. And is it still going to be something that's going to be challenging to get through? Absolutely.

So we're going to try and help you once we identify that you are the right person to help you be as successful as possible. Now, are we going to be able to run that run for you? No, we can't run it for you. Are we going to do that for you? No, you're going to still do it. The standards are going to remain the same, but man, we're going to give you everything you need like he had mentioned the sleep thing like there's been a huge breakthrough at least within the military i know you know within the fitness community you guys have known for a long time but there's been a huge breakthrough where

they're just saying man people need to sleep like that's how you get better you don't want to yeah right because doing sleep deprivation doesn't yeah you see how you really the only thing you learn from doing sleep deprivation training is that how you're going to react when you're sleep deprived you don't get better at being sleep deprived okay this is how i react when i'm sleep deprived i can still make decisions i know where you know my limits are you don't get better at it though but if you are during training want to get in better shape you need to get a full amount of sleep in order to recover so those little things they are trying to take these individuals that have volunteered to do this job they want to do these things to serve

and help them be as successful as possible so those are the things we want to throw out yeah it's awesome yeah where uh where can people find you guys and find recruiters? Um, I assume you guys have a website for, yeah. So for seer, uh, people can go to, you know,

go seer.com. Uh, we do have a Facebook page. S E R E. S E R E. Yeah. Um, we have a Facebook page.

We have, uh, an Instagram account. Uh, not really sure about the Twitters. Uh, how do you put it do you put it on Instagram? We got a guy in my office. Everything would go viral.

I'd be on there all day watching people trying to break out in the Arctic. No, there's a lot of good stuff. Our point, our seer, for anybody that wants to come in or like is interested uh you know first off you know go talk to a recruiter and and then after that you know they'll get you in touch when at least from my information they'll get you in touch with a special warfare recruiter and say hey i have an interest in these and they'll get you in touch with those uh those guys or girls okay um so i'm holding off just right now because I'll be honest, there's a ton of resources out there, and I want to give you the information.

So one thing you'll notice, and you guys keep saying special ops. When you put in special ops, you're going to get all these things. I want to make sure I'm giving you exactly what you need to look at if you're doing an Air Force special warfare job. Okay, so there's airforce.com which obviously makes sense you type in here yeah backslash with special warfare you're going to go straight to our jobs but honestly you could do a search in airforce.com and you will find the special warfare jobs and that's for the officers and enlisted by the way so i don't know if any of

your viewers out there are interested in officer careers but i do need to put the plug in for them as well is that man if you have a college degree and you want to lead some hard chargers that are basically doing the most elite stuff you can imagine, man, there's officer jobs out there for you. And then the other one that I wanted to point you to is Instagram at USAF spec war recruiting. And yeah, that's, that's what we got for you. In fact, we probably send the links to you as well. Yeah. We'll have them in the show notes,

but it's really the air force website looking at the special warfare link. And that'll give you all the ones that you talked about with seer. That'll give you the application. If you want to be an officer, it'll tell you all about the jobs in detail. And it has really cool pictures and graphics too. Cause you know, air force is all techie page. It gives you some really cool pictures to get you motivated when you're feeling like this isn't necessarily something you think

you can do so that yeah pretty good resources for you awesome yeah i'm looking at it's awesome wait by the by the way for for the audience uh i i tried to go to go seer.com and it didn't pull up and so i googled it it's goosear.af.mil for the audience. Perfect. I'll talk to my guy. On Instagram, it's USAF underscore gosear. There it is. And it's even got the blue check mark.

Damn. So legit. Influencers. Coach Travis Mash. Mashlead.com. It was an honor talking to youcers. Coach Travis Mash. Mashlead.com. It was an honor talking to you guys. It was awesome. Absolutely.

Doug Larson. On Instagram, Douglas C. Larson. I really appreciate this, fellas. This is really fun. Great conversation. This is a blast. We've had a good couple days chatting with all you guys. Next time we do this, we're coming down.

We're coming to San Antonio. We're going to do all the cool stuff. So I really appreciate you guys taking the time. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We are Barbell Shrugged. Barbell underscore shrugged. Get over to barbellshrugged.com forward slash Diesel Dad. Strong, lean, and athletic.

Make sure you get over to Walmart in San Diego, LA, Palm Springs, and Vegas. We're in Performance Nutrition. Get over to the pharmacy. Three programs on the shelves. We will see you guys next Wednesday. That's a wrap, friends. Make sure you get over to iTunes. Leave a five-star review. Say programs on the shelves. We will see you guys next Wednesday. That's a wrap, friends. Make sure you get over to iTunes. Leave a five-star review.

Say something nice about me. It really helps the show get out to all of the people. I also want to thank everyone over at the U.S. Air Force, the Special Warfare Unit, working with us again this year. If you want to learn more,

get over to airforce.com. Check out Special Warfare. Buy optimizers. Make sure you get over to leforce.com. Check out Special Warfare by Optimizers. Make sure you get over to leakygutguardian.com forward slash shrugged and organifi.com. Save 10, 20% at organifi.com forward slash shrugged. Friends, see you on Friday. Diesel Dad episode six coming at you.