Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Cleared Hot Episode 1 - Ron Ortiz

Episode Date: June 11, 2017

Cleared Hot Episode #1 With Ron Ortiz - 18yrs of service as a Firefighter/EMT throughout Florida, and a dominant CrossFit Games Masters Athlete. Fighting fires, battling pill and heroin overdoses, and training to be competitive.

Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Andy Stumpf and welcome to the cleared hot podcast. So first things first, what does cleared hot mean? It means a lot of things, but in the true military sense of the word, it's part of the dialogue that you have to have with an aircraft if you want them to drop a bomb on the ground. A lot of people think that it's the pilot's choice to drop the bomb, but actually a controller on the ground is the last one to give that call. And if you give the call cleared hot, you own what comes off the aircraft. kind of like I'm trying to own what comes out of my mouth.

I don't necessarily know where the podcast is going to go. I don't have any overarching goal or end state that I'm trying to get to. I really just want to sit down and talk to interesting people about interesting topics and hopefully share a little bit of insight and experience from my previous career that helps you make some sense of the world around you. And here we go. First guest is a guy named Ron Ortiz. I've known Ron for about two years.

He is an amazing guy. He's a husband and father first and foremost. He's been a firefighter for coming up on two decades. And on top of all of that, he is a high-level competitive CrossFit athlete in one of the master's categories. If you see the guy on the street, he's about, I don't know, seven foot tall, ripped, probably 240 pounds of chiseled steel. And he's the kind of guy, the best description I can give you of Ron is he's the kind of guy when he gives you a hug. he holds you tight, he tells you that he loves you, and he leans his head in, so that your ears are touching. It's a little bit uncomfortable at first, but he's a huge cuddly teddy bear, and sat down

with him for just over an hour, talked about everything from, you know, lessons he imparted to his kids to the things that he's encountering on the streets of Florida as a firefighter. So here we go. Cleared hot, episode number one. Okay, I got the red smoke. Dr. Gun runs. The smoke. West of the smoke. Okay, copy.

West of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now. I'm all wet. They give it to me. I need it. You're cleared hot. Coffee, cleared hot. How long have you been a firefighter?

Firefighter, let's see, I started in 99. So, 18 years. Right, 17 years? All of them in the same district in Florida? Same district. So the city of Deerfield Beach. where I originally got hired, and Broward County took us over approximately five years ago. And so I became a Broward County firefighter, which means I can be deployed pretty much

anywhere within that city or that county. And do you, I know a little bit about firefighting just because I have family who's in the fire service in San Diego. So my brother-in-law is a San Diego City firefighter, but started off on the EMS side of the house, and he just tested and became an engineer. So I definitely, I pick his brain all of the time. His department is huge on multiple skill sets in diversity as your department exactly the same way. Very much, yeah.

We're required. When we came on, it was actually more of an option to become a paramedic. Now within the Brower County Fire Department, if you're not a medic within a certain amount of time of getting hired, they'll actually let you go. So you're required to actually become a firefighter. I mean a bum, not a firefighter, a paramedic. if you're not coming in, you have like a year, and then they'll let you go if you don't continue your education. And is that all based around that just want you guys to be multi-hatted? Yes, and it's required by the International Firefighter Association.

If you have a rescue truck that we all have to be paramedic, and because 90% of what we do now, not 90, maybe, let's say 85% to 79% is, Medical. Why did you get 79%? It sound like a good number. It's not like a great number. You sold it except for the 79%. Yeah, no, I was actually, I'm thinking ahead of what I want to talk to you about, because I have questions about your fire department, just from what I hear from my brother-in-law, and the vast majority of what he does is medical. Yes. And not only medical, but it's medical where people are using 911 is their primary medical service. And not only that, the same people inside of the same district that he works for his firehouse.

He says he'll say the same people, sometimes twice in one shift, but repetitively shift throughout shift throughout shift. Yeah. So we have a lot the same. It's real difficult because we're so customer service based. And that's what it's become not only your civil servant, but you're also now having to be customer service base where pretty much they're always right. the hard part is we'll run on somebody and if they decide they don't want to go we really

indicate to them at that time if we call if you call us back for any reason you will be going to hospital because it then becomes almost abuse of 911 so you're saying that they'll call 911 you'll come because you're dispatched to their location you'll try to treat them and then they'll refuse the treatment that you were just given correct so we had a we had a lady just for instance that had us come out she said she felt like she had chest pain to me it's like, okay, you have chest pain, let's go to the hospital. Well, you know, I really don't feel that bad. And I think what it is is the realization of, okay, I'm here,

and they've probably been with us to the hospital before, and they get charged for that call. So we, if we take them the hospital, they get charged. The citizen actually gets charged. Absolutely. What if the citizen can't pay? Then it would probably be billed out a couple times and... Build out to who, though?

Dissolved into Medicare. What would the, okay, so, I mean, what? If they can't afford it most of the time, they're going to be on Medicare or something like that. Like a ballpark figure, what would the cost of that call be? So, I mean, I won't share it with anybody except for a few friends on the internet. Like I said, you might be the first guest on the podcast, so there's probably be me, you and two other people listening. I actually had seen. Give me a ballpark.

Okay, I'd seen somebody's bill on their table, and the lady actually was sick, and she needed to go, and she refused to go. So she called her son to take her with us there. We wouldn't leave her. To avoid the cost. To avoid the cost. And it was between $900 and $1,500. Okay. I honestly thought you were going to say somewhere between like $5,000 to $7,000.

No, no. So it's going to be a five-minute ride and depending on whether it's ALS or BLS. I don't even know what's the difference. So BLS is basic life support where we're pretty much just monitoring your blood pressure. Probably we haven't, which is very rare. very rare you're going to go BLS. If you're in our rescue, I guarantee you're going to be getting a four-lead minimum. For-lead by that, you mean stuff forward leads hooked up to your chest?

Yes, to check your heart. So we'll be checking your heart rate. We'll be checking your SPO2, which is your oxygen, your blood. We'll be checking probably your blood glucose. Like basic things that we would normally do are considered ALS now. Advanced life support. Yeah, so BLS, I mean, is that, do you even think that your rescue truck would need to be called for a BLS? Or is that more like, hey, call a friend or family member, get yourself to the hospital?

That would never be said. If they call us regardless of- It could be said by me. I'm just saying, you know, hypothetically, all right, okay, I hear what you're saying. I mean, if you guys get a 911 call, you're obligated to go. I mean, that's the oath of service that you guys took. Yes. So you're on a rescue truck.

What's the difference between a rescue truck and a fire truck? So we're cross-trained. We just kind of discussed that before. So we're firefighter and paramedic within the same department. The fire truck is going to have a captain on it. It's going to have a driver. It has 500 gallons of water, enough hose to basically put out a fire, a house fire, good-sized house fire, and connect into a hydrant if we need to. They would never go alone.

So our normal dispatch, let's say communications gets a call for a fire. They're going to dispatch at least two stations, which will be two fire trucks, a battalion chief, at least four. four to five rescue trucks. They're going to have for any call? This is for a fire call. Okay. Fire call. For EMS call, it's pretty much just us.

And oftentimes they'll dispatch an engine and a rescue to that call. And they'll, the rescue, like oftentimes will just say, just go ahead and send single unit, we'll go. So that's the difference between the rescue call, fire call. Fire call, it can be, but now sometimes they get false alarms too, just sprinklers. I like a building sprinkler. and somebody calls and reports of fire. Or even just an alarm.

I'm assuming you did some time on a fire rig as well too. So before we actually went to Barber County, I was kind of cross-trained in a lot of different, I held a lot of different hats. I was a lieutenant on the rescue as a backup lieutenant in case of the lieutenant in show up. I was a driver also on the engine. So anytime you had taken a test and not actually become in that position because there wasn't enough availability,

they would use you in that capacity. Even though, oh, yes, in the military, we call that giving you all of the responsibility without the requisite authority and pay. So yes, if something goes wrong, they're like, oh, it was wrong. And if it goes right, they're like, no, Ron, get out of the way, I'll take credit for it. And you're also not going to get paid for your additional responsibilities.

I think we got paid. It was a 5% bump, which is worth that to about 20 bucks. 20 bucks for a shift of being ultimately responsible for your life and everybody else that gets into that truck. It's not, definitely was it worth it. You're saying some things that are reminding me of the bureaucracy of the military. Perimilitary, that's what you are. Yeah, I have a feeling that there's, there's some similarities for sure.

So 18 years, is it what you thought it would be? Yes. I truly love my job. There's a lot of, you know, I'm sure like with yourself, you could tell some stories and people like, no way, there's a lot of stories. But that kind of what keeps you going. And then the guys that I work with are great guys. Some of them are, you know, you don't love them, but for the most part, they're really good guys.

You have a brotherhood, except when there's promotion comes up, and then they'll stab you in the back and, like, throw you in the back room. You know, that's one thing that, especially from my previous career, that I think it's a huge misconception among many. And you and I've obviously talked a bunch, known each other, I think about a year and a half, two years now. Talked a bunch. I love some of your stories, too. I'm going to make you talk about some of them. Oh, boy. But, you know, people look at the SEAL teams and they think it's, I call it the unicorn complex.

They look at the SEAL teams and they're like, well, you guys, you know, I've seen the movies and I've read the books and it's like, you guys are a bunch of beautiful unicorns and a beautiful grass pasture and there's daisies and rainbows and butterflies. And I try to make a constant effort every time somebody says something like that to say, the best people I've ever known and worked with was in the SEAL teams. And the worst people that I've ever known and worked with was inside of the SEAL teams. Same thing on leadership. The best examples I've ever seen of every characteristic embodied was inside of the SEAL teams. And flip the coin or six months later you turn around and you're seeing a terrible example. And it blows my mind how people want to discount that and they only want to focus on the good stuff.

They want to think of you as a unicorn, and I think there's so much loss there. Because especially if they're looking at potentially doing that job, like, oh, what you guys do is amazing. It's like, well, sit down for a few minutes. I want to read you in on some of the stuff that doesn't make the movies, that doesn't make the books. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that's part of what we end up having and what ends up happening when, again, promotion time comes around. And the guys. The knives come out of the closet.

Oh, my gosh, it's terrible. And they'll, a little change, too. Some of these guys will change. Granted, you know, an animal is kind of what it is. It's not going to change that much. So you know what you're getting. If somebody gets promoted, you're going, oh, my gosh, here it goes. This guy's going to be a complete A-hole.

But there's also guys that you're going, man, I'm so glad he got promoted because he's the coolest guy. Yeah. That's, I equated to either seals and there's team guys. Yep. You know, and you can be both. Yep. But most people are one or the other. And at the end of the day, I'd much rather be a team guy.

and be remembered for doing the right things for the right reasons when nobody was around to watch Then have some shiny metal thing that sat on your uniform that at the end of the day it means nothing Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah it's a wow the misconceptions They abound yeah for sure we have a we have a couple guys that have gotten awards and I'm like going You got an award for what because you know them outside of that and it's just like there's no wait a man You actually got up off the recliner one time and you then you get the award for it. Yeah, you know a lot of times the military, it's, you see the awards. And again, it's to somebody who doesn't live in the world, like I can look at an award citation because the award citation is just the end of it. There has to be

the narrative summary that leads up to it. And all, there's like eight pages that leads up to a one paragraph. And even in that one paragraph, the words that they choose to use that can describe maybe somebody was just there versus somebody was there and knee deep in it to the person who is not steeped in that. They're like, oh my gosh, that's amazing. They can see two citations side by side that are identical. But to the person who's in the community, you're like, no, no, that looks the same. It's not the same thing. Exactly. Yeah, we struggle with exactly the same stuff. And, you know, especially in the military. I mean, again, my personal opinion, I'm only qualified to speak for what I believe, but I think the military award system is completely broken because

it's tied to the advancement system. Sure. Especially the evaluations, too. like we had to do a yearly evaluation, just called an e-val or a fitness report if you're on the officer side of the house. And maybe a month before it was due, people would actually start paying attention to the stuff that had to go into it. And the majority of the time, you write the document, hand it to your superior, they make some grammatical changes and bottom line it. So you're writing your own evaluation. So you can totally snowball somebody who doesn't know what they're looking at because you're like, oh, look at this evaluation. It's glowing. Right.

Well, it'd better be you wrote it. Yeah. Remember the one I had you write? That's the same one. Yeah, I wrote about me, so of course it makes me look really good. We had a guy way back, way back. This is all, I think probably before I got hired, but the story carried on.

And his whole thing was he was getting ready to retire, probably like months away from retiring. And they had them do an evaluation. They're like, you know, they sit down and the chiefs are like really being hard on him. He looks at me and goes, gee, come on, really? The only way you're going to hurt me with that thing is you roll it up and you stick it in,

my eye and he got demoted right before he retired. That's a strong move by the chief. That leaves, that's a bold statement that others will pay attention to. Oh, it was. So after that, it was like, oh, damn, these things really matter. Because before he said, it was a piece of paper. Oh, yeah, I'll sign it, whatever. Now you kind of look at it and go, okay, I've got to be careful.

You know, there's certain things on there that if the captain's pointing out, maybe I need to address. Yeah. I think when it starts getting really dangerous is that when people are in the middle of doing your job. Like the roles and responsibility is your job, but in the back of their mind, they're thinking about something

that was written on an e-vow. Or they're worried about taking action because of something that could be written. Yes. I think that's where that system gets really dangerous. And again, when it's tied to advancement, it creates this really weird paradigm where people are,

they kind of like, yeah, it's an invisible glass wall, but I can kind of feel it. So I'm going to stay away from it. And it's going to modify my behavior. And your client, which in this case, right, is the people that you're protecting, They feel that to some degree. I mean, do you guys, you guys roll with police officers, right?

So if a 911 call comes in for the boys in blue, you guys roll out there as well too. Sometimes. So it depends on what call it is. A lot of times. Like medical related, like a car accident, right? You guys, it's always, I always see an engine rolling with a black and white. Have you noticed, I mean, I think this is largely rhetorical, but I'm interested to see your perspective.

But you noticed a difference in how people react to or treat or deal with law enforcement in the last, say, I mean, I'm sure 24 months, but when did you really start noticing the shift towards what it is today? Towards more along the lines of when a lot of stuff's hard to happen with against the police. And then, you know, there's like this derogatory feel of abuse because of their position and this that and the other where in all reality, I mean, I told my son wanted to be a police officer. I just told them I said, I wouldn't want to do it. I wouldn't want to have to worry about every car you walk up to that somebody should be point a gun on the other side or every house you go to that there could be some nothead

and they're like ready to kill you because they're pissed off about something. I mean, the difference is when I show up, people are happy to see me. Yeah. They're like running out to see me. The police officers are hiding and you don't know what they're hiding. Those guys, they, they, are like the true heroes.

We do a lot of stuff that gets recognition, but they're going into situations that I wouldn't want to put myself into daily. Every time I talk to, like, a police officer, one of the first things I do is I thank them. Like, I mean, it's almost impossible to understand and explain to people who haven't operated in an environment like that. And, I mean, I try to do the best I can. Like a lot of the blog posts, right,

are about, like, making decisions when the world is flashing at you, you have a half a second to make a life or death decision. Yeah. And it's hard to describe walking up on a vehicle. Granted, the way that I was walking up on vehicles overseas was probably slightly different than the way that police officers do. Right. Like you said, knocking on a door.

Like, you have to go to a house. You don't know what's on the other side of that. And you're at a tactical disadvantage the second you get out of your car. Yeah. And, you know, like I was telling you the story, I had an interesting experience with the police, like a week and a half ago. Yeah.

And I'm not going to tell you. the story until, I mean, I might have to go to court to testify. So we'll just say that I had an interaction with the police. It didn't start off with me. But it got to a point where there was one officer and there was more people than the officer could deal with. And I'm looking around left and right and there's plenty of able-bodied adult males that could have stepped in and rendered assistance.

But instead, they're fishing for their cell phone in their pocket to take pictures. Or they probably were on Facebook Live or film. the blank. And I can't do that. Like I literally I cannot, I try to teach my kids to be irresponsible and respectful. And I drop my 13 year old off at school every day. I'm like, listen, set the example and stand up for what you believe in. Right. And, you know, my kids and my family were with me when this was going down. So I'm literally in my head. I'm like, I cannot let this go on because I would not be living up the message that I tell my kids. So it ends up, you know, in interaction with police. I'm getting my statement taken.

well, everybody else just has their phones out. And I don't understand where that mentality came from, where a person that is obviously trying to do the right thing to help, and I'm talking about the officers, they're trying to diffuse the situation. The guy came out of his car like a rock star, like, hey, let's just, you know, separate. You guys go over here, I'll talk to you, I'll talk to them. And it terminates in basically street fight, you know, and eight other officers end up showing up there.

The whole police department's there, but nobody will raise a finger to do anything. And they're just looking for a reason. I mean, this is my thoughts, and I hope that I'm wrong, but they're looking for a reason to try to capture something on video so it'll make headlines, and that just makes the police officer's job even worse. And I'll be the first person to admit, too, that, you know, the police shootings,

the rash, you know what, it was funny, it wasn't even a rash of police shootings. No. If you go statistically, yes, they're on the rise a little bit, but a single-digit percentage point at best. What was crazy about it was the coverage that it was getting and how much it was leading. But very one-sided. That's the problem.

Yeah. They're only showing the perspective of the family screaming and crying about this guy. Well, why did he get out of the car like that? Why was he doing what he was doing? There's all of these things that as they're trained as police officer, I trust that they're not going to pull out of a gun just for nothing. Yeah. There on comes about, we were talking about body cameras.

Yeah. And these guys now, regardless of what happens, immediately put on their body camera. And they're cautioning us as firefighters, hey, careful. I got the camera on. Well, it's probably the sharpest double-ed. sort ever. It could exonerate them for their behavior or you could take again, you know, a body camera. I think one of the best examples I have of how footage doesn't show the exact picture, I forget where the shooting was, but there was a helicopter that was orbiting around. And it was

the lead story for like a day and a half was this helicopter going around and there was audio playing and I'm pretty sure it was the pilot talking between the co-pilot. And to somebody who doesn't know what they're looking at who hasn't spent hundreds of hours watching overhead imagery and looking at that, they think that they're getting the whole picture. Like, oh, why did they do that? Look at the body language. And then the police officers, I'm assuming they were police officers, or at least sworn officers who were flying the helicopter, right? They have some banter going on in between, which is not the banter of the officer on the ground, but that gets confused as well, too. And it's, you know, the footage doesn't show everything, but it's touted as this holy grail as to what's going on. And it, I always

almost find it is always that the officers are looked at in a negative light. Or they have to, they're guilty until proven innocent. And I really struggle with that. And it's a hard argument to make because people like, no, you're being an apologist for the police or you're racist because look at they're killing, you know, an unequal amount of armed or unarmed black men. And the reality is that I just have, I have empathy for the person in that situation who has to make a decision that's lethal or could be lethal.

in a quarter of a second and is going to be judged for the rest of his life by people who would never understand how hard it is to do that. Oh, absolutely. I think about with our department. I have a lot of friends that are flight medics, and they fly with the police helicopter. So during the time they're not picking somebody up off the road or whatever it is that they're getting called to for this trauma, they're actually being called out for whatever case of the police are working on chasing somebody down or whatever it is.

And, you know, it's, it is kind of ironic that a lot of the things that they get called to are very specific. You know, obviously they're, they're chasing people for shootings or this, that, and the other. And a lot of my friends are like, man, he goes, you know, it's just, it's astounding that we have this, all this technology. and these people really believe they're going to get away with this. It's crazy, but they'll try to do it. They will. It's nuts. And I think the media a lot of the times unwittingly helps those people because they turn it into a social issue.

They want to turn it into an issue of race versus, how about this for a theory, if you get pulled over and you speak English and you don't immediately comply with what the officer tells you to do and, you aggressively maneuver towards the officer, I can't think of a single reason to do that. And I don't believe that anybody deserves to be shot by a police officer, but I also don't think any police officer deserves to have to have the responsibility to choose between taking a life or not in a time-compressed environment. But both parties are responsible for their behavior. And that doesn't mean that you deserve to get shot. It means that you're responsible for the way that you acted. And if that, the way that you acted was induced because of a chemical state or alcohol, you're still responsible for that. And an officer, I mean, here's one thing

that I'm very firm on too. Like, if the officer acted outside of reasonable force, he should be absolutely crucified because you take an oath and you should be held to a higher level of responsibility. But again, like, that's the other side too. Like, everybody focuses on the person that got shot. Like, they don't understand the moral burden that goes into making a life and death decision. And it's, it's not that it's unfair to the officer, but they are shouldering a burden that 99.95% of people will never understand, but yet we'll judge them for it. And I wish that there would be time to have compassion for both. Like, I really wish there was a shooting in San Diego.

It was actually probably about 15 miles from where I live. And for the vast majority of the shootings that got a lot of the coverage, I was watching it on TV like anybody else. And, you know, it would be shooting, civil unrest, which, again, I don't understand how burning down the neighborhoods that you live in is going to help the situation at all. It's purely emotional, which I understand, because those environments are very emotional.

And then it happened in El Cajon in San Diego. It's about 15 miles from my house. And there was just kind of the same thing. Civil unrest, people stopping traffic on the freeway, smashing the hoods of cars and yelling at people have nothing to do with it just because they're angry. And it's gotten to a point where the police department, I wish they could mourn with the family.

And they'd be like, listen, this was absolutely tragic. Like, we're sorry that this happened to your child. to a father or to a mother and say, hey, we're so sorry that this happened. And at the same time, they can care for the officer and, like, the community can mourn together. Instead of the second that it happens, everybody moves in the opposite direction because they're all building a barrier for the lawsuit that's eventually going to come. And I think every time that happens, it makes it worse and worse and worse. And it's just 24-7 on the news.

What people have to realize, though, too, is during a shooting, I mean, I've seen some of the process. and those guys go into a debriefing. It's not like they get shot and there's a high five at the station. Those guys are held accountable to the nth degree about what they did, their decision. They sit before a panel of officers and go, did you make the right decision? And they should have that happen because like I said, they volunteered for the job. Nobody will take that. You know, you have to take that into account.

And when you swear an oath to, you know, put your life on the line and carry a weapon that can take life, yes, you should have to be able, every time that you decide to use that weapon, whether it's in a defensive nature or an offensive nature, you have to be able to justify your actions. Absolutely. And people miss that in the military too. Like they think that, you know, even in war, which is not like a traffic stop, not like any of the other incidents that you're going to see reported in the mainstream media here in the U.S., you have to stand in account for your actions.

You have to do a shooter statement for every time you depress the trigger. I mean, the paperwork that follows is robust. And you're judged not only by your peers, but by the echelons of command that are one or two or three above you. And you have to be able to articulate verbally written. Like it's a burden. And most of these guys, they don't realize, too, that so PTSD is a real thing. You know that. Everybody knows that.

I would take the D off of it, though. That's one thing I've always argued against. It's not a disorder. It's not a disorder. A disorder is when you're really sick and your body doesn't develop a fever. That's your body not responding in a way that it should respond.

Post-traumatic stress is, I mean, everybody, I equated to, every human being has a cup of some size. Absolutely. And at some point and at some volume, something's going to start spilling over the edge. Now, for yourself, you've been working in, you know, the firewall for 18 years, so you could probably come up on a car wreck

and see some pretty nasty carnage. and you have enough experience in training that it's either filtering some of the fluid out of your cup or your cup has more volume, so it's not going to spill over. Whereas somebody with none of that training or experience, that could disturb them for the rest of their life. But, I mean, war's gnarly.

I mean, that's a topic in and of itself. People are, wait, let's go to war with North Korea. Like, do you want to come? Yeah, you don't understand. Yeah, you don't understand. But, you know, and so you see people who have problems from coming back from a war zone, it's not a disorder.

It's the natural, I mean, like, maybe some people have a cup that's the size of a thimble, and somebody else has a beerstein that can hold 64 ounces. Right. I can't tell by looking at you,

and it's most of the time, coming from an environment like that, that's A-type personality, is they don't talk about it that much. I think earlier on it was treated much more like a stigma. Now there's a lot of things that they can do to help them out,

but it's not a disorder. It's a natural reaction to what happens. The problem that I have with that is that nobody can fix it except the individual themselves. And that's an issue that I think is flirted on, not flirted on, it's touched on very lightly because you don't want to sound like an asshole. You don't want to say, hey, I understand you have a problem, but I can't fix it for you. And in reality is that's the only thing. Like, I see veterans that come back, you know, the 22 suicides a day. I'm still a little bit unsure on that statistic. I've heard it's a little bit high. I've heard it's a little bit high. I've

it's a little bit low. A lot of that is associated with mental health problems, but nobody can fix those problems except for the soldiers himself, right? It's a wildly misunderstood, in my opinion, phenomenon, for lack of a better word, and I wish people would not look at it as a disorder. Like, you should, you know, you look at tribal societies in the past. They had straight up rituals from when the warriors would come back. They had to, like, detox and their families would be present,

and they would have this whole ritualistic activity to get them to transition from, I'm like, listen, you're not at war anymore. You're here. Now you need to come back and you need to be a natural functioning member of society. Sure. And now there's just a Bevmo, you know, that most people, not most people. That's a terrible choice of words that some people choose to use instead of going and seeking out the help that's available. Yeah.

It's a rough one. Let me ask a good question. That's good. So a few of the athletes, a few of the soldiers I met at like 11th war. We talked a little bit about that. And they were saying that it's kind of sad because when you come back, back as a veteran and a wounded veteran that oftentimes there's the care is like kind of shady and they give you pills to take care of the pain and there's really nothing done like you're saying

there's nothing ever hey let's let's go through and not only while we have this guy here let's let's offer him this assistance to kind of help him sort things out you know and they said they were given pills pills pills pills kind of numb you out of everything pain and everything you're feeling and then you just kind of are expected to go on in life and there's nothing ever really given. And I found that kind of astounding because these kids are coming back without limbs. They're like coming out of there with like. Yeah. You know, so I got, I got injured overseas in 2005, which I'll call early in the, in both of the theaters of war. I didn't personally have a great experience when I came back. And I did get, I had 13 pill bottles at one time.

Sounds like the norm, bro. It is. Well, you know, but is it that different from what most people are getting in civilian medicine either? It should be different, though, because, It should be different, but what I'm saying is it seems to be that maybe it's not a military versus civilian thing. Maybe that's just the route that modern medicine seems to be leveraging. And I don't think it's headed in the right direction. Like I see there's a lot of people on pills. Yeah. You know, in every section of society.

And so the military is, I don't want to say that the military is designed to fight war because it's much deeper than that. But that is one of their jobs. I would say of the pie of what the military does and what the military is designed to do, I would say the thinnest slice of pie is designed and developed to help guys when they come back and they get wounded or injured. Or they're transitioning out because of that wound and injury. And let's be honest, just like in medicine in the civilian world, what is the easiest thing to do? Medicaid them. Write a prescription.

Yeah. Send them home because then it puts the onus on the individual, right? But it also creates a huge problem because if one pill, I mean, here was the theory I was under, if one pill is not working, maybe two will. Yep. I got to the point where I was taking four Ambien and I couldn't go to sleep. That's crazy. But when I mixed it with 16 fingers of Jack, I would sleep a little bit.

However, I would wake up not rested. Right. But, you know, I mean, and then I was on some, you know, gabapentin and neurotinins, these central nervous system suppressors that had secondary and tertiary, you know, effects for neuropathic pain control. but at the same time I couldn't do basic math. Yeah, that's crazy. And getting off of that, I mean, I upped my dosages on my own, nobody to blame but myself for doing that with the combination of cocktails

that I was drinking with, literal cocktails, not pill cocktails. Yeah, but nobody's monitoring that. Nobody was. Because I came back, and when I got Medevac home, I got to Germany on a military aircraft. I took a Delta flight home from Germany. And I was at my house probably 48 hours after being injured, and I went in and I would do some e-stem therapy.

That's how I actually found CrossFit was doing rehab on my own. So I would go in for some e-stem therapy, and I would have the rest of the day for myself. And all my boys that I had been working up with and deploying with, they were still overseas. They hit a target the next night. Nothing stopped because I got hurt. Because that's the role in responsibility.

The wheel keeps on turning, and you don't realize how much of a spoke in the wheel you are or you aren't. Actually, a better description be, you don't realize how little the spoke that you are matters to the actual wheel until you get popped off the tire and you're like, hey, guys, come back. Yeah. Come back, guys. I'm still.

It's like, I mean, they took care of me in the moment, of course. But like, then, like, I was in the hospital in Baghdad for about a day and one or two guys came by. Why didn't everybody else come by? Because they were off doing reconnaissance and work for another target. Like, it doesn't, it doesn't stop. And so I got back and I was, you know, I was very young, injured at a time. I didn't want it to be over. I wanted to still continue to do the things that I wanted to do.

And yeah, it was like here, I still can't sleep. Well, here, take one of these. Hey, my leg is killing me. All right, we'll take a green one of these and a blue one of these. And I know a lot of, I know a lot of guys that were in that same situation that kind of felt, they felt abandoned by the military because there wasn't enough of a, or a big enough net to catch them. And I was very upset about it for a long time. But the point that I've got myself to is that I, it's just, the military wasn't prepared when I got hurt for the number of people that were going to have that type of

injury or incident so I don't hold it against them and I'm actually really glad that it happened because you know I wouldn't be sitting here today if I hadn't to dug myself out of that hole you know one grain of sand at a time yeah but you know the pill thing is interesting one because it's not just a military problem I mean no it's definitely not we see that like we we and I discussed a little bit it's like the I look at everybody talks about you know marijuana being a gateway drug yeah gateway drug is pills so and I have to ask you about this because I have you know my son, my oldest son is 13. And I think back to my own life, you know, and when I was 13, I didn't, I didn't have a sip of beer or alcohol until I was like 17, 18 years old.

Yep. And I saw weed when I was in high school, but I cannot think of anything else that I saw when I was in that age. And the horror stories that I'm hearing of, like, heroin addictions at the, like, the middle school to high school jump ages. And we were talking the other night, like, I mean, yeah, I shouldn't have just like, you guys. So you know, people are saying that marijuana is a gateway drug. Tell me what you're actually seeing on a daily basis. So daily basis, I mean, and we had actually an incident happened in Florida not too long ago where like the whole grade, there was a whole grade of kids that one of the kids had gotten pills.

Grade you're talking like ninth grade? Yeah, like ninth grade, 10th grade. He was at a middle school. Middle school was like eighth grade. Yeah. Some kid had gotten a whole pill bottle full of stuff that was brand new from his mom's and giving it to like a bunch of kids. These kids are all sick.

They started splitting the pills in half. Some of them got in shipped to the hospital and stuff. That's like a, you know, that's like a, maybe a, something that happened occasionally. On a larger end of that, you have kids that are going to school with, with, and selling pills that are like pain pills. Are they just, what do you think they're getting from? Oh, they're from their parents.

Medicine cabinets. Yeah. Yeah, because, I mean, and I hate to say it, but, I mean, I've had a couple surgeries. And then for my surgeries, I think I took one or two and I have like a whole, you know, a hundred, a hundred pill bottle of. you got a house your can of oxy yeah yeah sitting in my but thank god my kids were never into any of that stuff and i don't know why i still have them in there yeah it's just like i i was looking through my medical cab the other day because one of my friends got hurt and i was like

hey bro take a couple of these which is the worst thing you do but so how many parents have that i know how many people have that and the crazy thing is is so then their kids start that and you see the progression we talked to we had a couple kids the other day heroin overdose Well, like, 20 years old. But like, go back. Like, when you were in eighth grade, would you have taken a pill if your buddy was like, hey, take this? No.

I wouldn't have either. Chewing tobacco. Chewing tobacco was the big thing. He was like, whoa, bro, I got chewing tobacco. I try some. It's like, you get sick and you're like, I'll never do that again. That was it. Why do you think that kids of that age are willing to take a, I mean?

It's more available. It's more, I think it's more readily available. Yeah, because think about how many more people are prescribing it. We had pill mills in Florida that were literally like prescribing bags. pills to people. They would go in. These people would come from like, we always kind of joked around, but we had a couple like hotels that were really sad. We picked dead people up all the time. They'd go to the pill mills, get their prescription, go there an overdose, either cook it or shoot it up or take it and multiple. And the sad thing is, a lot of them, probably veterans.

Yeah. Probably veterans coming down, get their prescription because they had, you know, x-rays that show they have wounds or whatever it is, going in, then, doctors just write these huge scripts out, well, they finally got shut down. A lot of those doctors were proven to, I mean, one guy we picked up, he had a bag of like, I think, 250 morphine pills. The guy was taking like 80 milligrams a day. We give somebody 10 and they can, they'll pass out and stop breathing. He was orally ingesting 80 milligrams of morphine. Yes. What does that even do to your body over the long run? Is that just, well, you build up a tolerance, obviously at that at a certain point, you have the tolerance to taking 80 milligrams that's like years of dosages and I mean for them for the

most part like a you and I if we're to take morphine at five you're really feeling it I would imagine because that I'm just thinking the people we give it to because we give it in doses of two yeah so you get two to two to until they really start to feel it most of the time you get them eight and they're feeling pretty good oh yeah that's enough I can feel it there if you gave them 10 we had a case at one point somebody had given somebody 10 and literally had to give them the antidote. Narcan. Narcan. Because they stopped breathing and it was like, whoa, let's give them this.

Like hey, the slippery fingers on the soret. Let's go ahead and back that off a little bit. We call them slow ride, the guy. Yeah, let's back it off. Just give them half of what you think half should be. Yeah, so it's crazy. Morphine is such a, I mean, and that, granted, not a lot of people go in and just get a morphine prescription,

but they're getting oxyconons, they're getting perkinsets, you're getting all these other things. kids find these things take them they're selling them because they realize they can sell them and the sad thing is there's a lot of people will put their kids in private schools and that probably I would imagine the private schools are the worst places because yeah I was going to say it you know it's funny right people love walls I wrote about this one recently too it's like you know walls are great you know that can keep everything out until all of a sudden you have something inside of your wall yeah that you don't want and you can't escape it yep absolutely so so you're in your

opinion, the pills are much more of a gateway drug than marijuana? I would say yes, because that's what we find. Those kids that will usually have the pills and then they go to, and this, again, from what I've seen? Yeah. Because we're getting, I think. It's kind of a broad assumption, but yeah, I mean, you're dealing with it all the time. So they say start pills and then what does that lead to? Heroin. It seems like now, and it's like, if you go into and check out probably Palm Beach County, I know we were at a hospital not too long ago in Palm Beach County, and the doctors were like, this is like, I guess, it was towards the end of the month,

but it was like 3,000 overdoses that they had already registered in like Palm Beach County. Already this year? No, that was that month. What? Yeah. It was crazy. That's 100 a day.

Ridiculous. Ridiculous. Skeba, why are you raising your hand? So we were at, in Baltimore. Yeah. Most of us come heroin streetwise is way cheaper than by gasey. So so many people are doing that. I think every police officer and firefighter in Baltimore's work with Narcan.

It is just standard thing. They're starting to sell Narcan in the stores. Skeva, do you know why you don't have a microphone over there? For that very reason. Because we're not talking to. You shut your face. Sit up there and be quiet. Your point was solid, but don't make another one.

You got lucky on that. You're one for one. Leave it there. Where are they getting heroin, though? So I don't know. I don't know. I wish we kind of did know because apparently we were talking about what it's being cut with, right? Yeah, the fentanyl.

Fentanyl. Which is dropping people left and right. They don't realize the strength of it or how much, so say my knowledge of this type of drug or anything relating to a needle comes from movies, which like any other topic is probably wildly untrue, but so say you get a hot dose of

heroin and you, you shoot yourself in the vein, right? Yeah. How much time is, so let's say that there's fentanyl how much time would you have before that hit you? No idea. I have really, we have no, I don't personally know because we usually just show up and give them Narcan. That's our extent of knowledge of that.

They'll give you an idea of what the drugs are that are out there, but I guess it depends on the person. You never take it before. Oh, okay, that's what I was going to ask. If you never take it before and you take it and it's a high dose like that, you could kill yourself because you could have a junkie with you going, oh, no, you've got to take, you know, I don't know, the guy's resistant to it a little bit.

Who knows? And he'll overdose right away. So it's kind of crazy. It's one of those things that it's scary, because it's making a resurgence from where it used to be, I guess, years and years and years ago, and it's because it's cheap. Like Skeva said, it's come back and it's very affordable. It's like we had, what was the drug that everybody was taking? It was like Flaka. Did you guys even hear anything about Flaka? You know I'm going to ask you what it is. So it might as well.

So it was a designer drug made up with all kinds of crazy stuff, literally had like rat poison, and everything you did. So basically chemist was reaching underneath what I keep under my kitchen sink and making that into a drug. Yeah, awesome. Pretty much. That's probably really good for your brain. Probably scrape the inside of like the sink out.

Oh, perfect. In a container. Yeah. Here, take this. Very healthy. It's what you're saying. These guys, well, they figured the guy that ate the face off the guy in Miami. I did hear about that.

That was, he was on Flaka. They get hot. They strip down to nothing and they're running around naked. Like their core body temperature juices up? Yeah. Like over 100? Yeah. Over 100.

To tell like almost heat stroke levels. Like, I would say probably 104 or 105. That's how we would tell. And then their reaction was like crazy, bro. And they were crazy strong. Crazy. I mean, but now you find out from Flocka, and that's the thing that kind of stopped it.

It was like $5 a hit. Wow. So you could go and get a hit of this stuff. It was relatively long lasting too, right? Well, it took a long time to react. So they would take a hit and go, nothing happened there. Oh, boy.

Give me another hit. So there are four hits in, and now they're going nuts. Police are trying to figure out what to do. There was a couple interesting, videos online do you watch this one guy like chase a police officer around on his like like crab walking crab walking backwards like chasing the guy around the cops like whoa he doesn't know what to do with the guy it's crazy i mean i have a solution to that problem but that's why i'm not a cop exactly you

that's what they weren't wearing body can cameras back yeah so it's crazy and then you know again brings us all right around at the beginning how many these people are on something and the police have no choice in the world and everybody around them is like don't shoot them don't shoot them well guess what you have no choice as it is and i was thinking about that as you're talking before you know we have castle law somebody approaches me yeah it's kind of stand your ground law same thing yeah exactly that's right the florida is a stand your ground state you shoot them and you're protected because well hopefully your guns licensed and everything's in order yeah now you have a police officer that is trained much more than that you know if he pulls his gun out i guarantee you it's a

lot more threatening than what you're feeling you're being threatened when somebody comes at you. How can they not protect themselves now? They literally, I have a very good friend that's police officer and they got into the point where it's like, it's almost they'll get fired if they if they, you know, kill somebody. Wasn't there a woman officer in Florida who almost got beaten to death and she was, she was not beaten to death, but she basically said afterwards that she was afraid to shoot because of the legality. I could see that. I didn't hear about that one, Exactly, but I mean, that's like, that's the end of effective law enforcement. If the people who are, who are there to uphold the law and, you know, and serve the law and the people,

if they're afraid to do their job because of a lawsuit, like, that's, that's the end of it. Yeah. His, my buddy's responsible is, you know, because we had asked them about, you guys he brought, it's almost gotten to the point where it's like, it's almost easier to be on the other end of it and, and not have to shoot somebody because it's gotten to the point where you're going to be almost accused. convicted before it even happens. So it's gotten to a point where it's not safe for them to be police officers. And you can't protect yourself. Well, it's a dangerous job as soon as you strap on your gear in the morning.

Absolutely. I mean, and the things too, like I know a lot of police officers and have an immense around respect for them. It's not like because they're not in uniform, they're off the job. A lot of those guys carry not because they want to be some bully, but because if something happens, they want to be able to run towards the sound of gunfire as opposed to away from it. Absolutely.

Yeah, I see them and I couldn't operate in that environment. I couldn't do it. For one, I was used to operating an environment where I had every mechanism in place to protect my life and the people and the people next to me. And that guideline works great in a war zone and I wish it would work better in the United States because they're not only do they have the deck stacked against them. You know, I was looking up the stats when it was in the middle of all the shootings. there are hundreds of thousands of police interactions per day, whether it be tickets or an officer living up to 110% of what people think the police officer job is and what they should be doing, and not a single one of them makes the news.

Oh, no, why would they? Yeah, but hundreds of thousands every single day, so millions a month, tens of millions of month, you know, maybe hundreds of millions a year, and the ones that make it are the statistically anomalous events to paint the occupation in a bad light that erodes the trust and the respect to the people that they're actually out there serving. It's the most screwed up. That's what the news will do for us. That's the sad part we're talking about that. How dare you even call it news? Yeah. It's sad because it's gotten to the point where even with us, I think I told you that story about the lady that was in the surf the other night.

Yeah. You know, the police's response was, you know, if we have you go in and get them, this lady, then somebody's going to pull out a camera, and it's going to be the fire and police, you know, for harassment and doing this, and it's going to look terrible, and we don't want that. And I was like, man, you know,

you finally got to a point where we talked to our chief, and the chief's like, no, let's get her, let's get her out of there, because ultimately the responsibility lies on us if she dies. Yeah. So we went and got her, and it ended up okay, but. It's money you had to have a conversation, about doing the right thing right like hey we guys um we have to do this because it's the right

thing to do it sucks that you have to have that internal conversation yeah we went down the rabbit hole of the darkness wrong let's talk about um let's talk about what we're doing out here in atlanta okay so you're you're how old are you i'm not going to guess uh 51 502 in august so you'll be dead soon of old age like extremely soon you'll die of old age you're much older than me one of the two. But you probably could whip my ass in any exercise-related activity whatsoever. I'm going to take a picture of you, and people are going to see you're just freaking Adonis over here.

You look like you're about, I don't know, 50. Don't you remember a conversation with Rosmas? I don't want to go down that road. Oh, man, that was the subject for another sit-down for sure. But so you work out like a madman. And you compete competitively in the Crosbyt sphere. Love it. And I'm assuming, I'll make the assumption that it helps you with your job just for your ability to do your job.

But talk me through how you got involved in just the competitive nature of Crossbe. Because you won your master's category last year, right? Yes. Didn't you win it before? No, in 13. In 13. So you've won it twice. And I actually was third.

Nobody really knows. It's been third and 11 as well. Yeah, but nobody really counts that around. 11 was served. You know those other two places on the podium that are a little bit lower than first place? It doesn't know. That's right. Nobody remembers those.

Third place. Third place, loser. Your first year last, right? First year last. No, but it's amazing. And for people who don't know anything about the competitive CrossFit world, whatever, it gets painted in a variety of lights. But what I will say is that the amount of work that you guys do and can tolerate and the training that you do is unbelievable. So talk me through like an average training day because this cracks me up because you're like, oh, yeah, I do these on my off days from work.

Yeah, yeah. So walk me through, wake up on a Ron Ortiz off day. I'm pretty fortunate. I have a group of coaches that love to torture me. And I appreciate every part of the torture session that I get. So I have Jay Layden that does my GPP, my general program. Yeah, I know Jay. He's a good dude.

Very good dude. And because of how he writes things out, he understands me as a master's athlete. The workouts are hard, but not as hard as I used to do. I used to do crazy, much harder workouts. And he's like, we got to chill you out a little bit. First off, in my opinion, just based off what I saw you right up on the board on Thursday, what you do is still absolutely crazy. It filled an entire whiteboard that was probably three feet tall.

And I looked at it and you were not even done riding it. And I immediately removed myself from anything involved with that. It's not happening. Yeah. So Jail usually program general weightlifting, which is then looked over by my buddy, who's a lifting coach. And he kind of like, you know, I send him video, like a lot of times on videotaping, just sending it to them, make sure that they go.

So that workout session would normally have taken me four hours. We condensed it probably two and a half hour. You had two hours. Yeah. So we really rushed through it. And then there was some stuff that I didn't do that I stayed and did after. So it was longer than that. But like break, I mean, so you have a gymnastics component.

Yes. You have a heavyweight component. Yep. I'm sure you're doing the mobility stuff afterwards as well. Mobility and flexibility. You got me. I really don't, and I should be doing it. Chanks in the armor are coming out.

Been sitting with you for an hour and I'm already exposing this thing. Man, you're done. But I usually have an aerobic capacity. Yeah. Chris Hinshaw does my aerobic capacity stuff. And then whenever that's on there, like today I looked at it and I was like, I was praying. I was like at the bottom.

I'd start scrolling really slow. I'm like, oh, thank God there's no Hinshaw today. Because that's a whole other, that's 45 minutes. Hey, man, every workout that you wrote up on that board, I would be happy suffering my way through one of those. And then you just were like line across and then we'll do this, line across, and then we'll do that. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, so your normal is in a crazy amount of work for the average person. How did you find, like, again, so you've won't the master's category twice, and we won't talk about where you finished the other years. But, I mean, how did you find it? Okay, so I actually was helping a friend of mine kind of get a gym together. And he really wasn't a CrossFit gym. Another friend of mine was like, hey, there's this CrossFit games thing.

I checked it out. And I was like, what were you doing before? Like, what was your workout routine? before so we were just starting to get back into working out my wife and I we'd had kids yeah any we she had she had kids I only correct you on that because my wife is open-handed slap me to the face I think I had participation in that there was some part you had participation early on but I don't think you had the kid she looked at me and yelled at me I'm telling you Andy she called me names in the

birthing room I've experienced that myself and I've made the mistake of saying did me had the mistake of saying yeah we had kids I'm like go go like no okay yes Honey, you had the kid. I was physically present for the birth. She did have the kids. Yeah. But after she had the children, you know, it's just, you kind of fall into this lull. I started gaining weight.

Well, how about this? Your life's turned upside down. It is. Yeah. It is. And we had, so we stopped it for. I got cable TV. Brave man.

A video game, I think it kind of eased that of. And after having the kids, it was just like, man, we have to do something because we already kind of purposed that we're going to stay in shape. and here we are like falling out of shape and she felt bad. So I started to go work out and as I did, she would be like, well, you're going to work out without me. Well, you have the time. That's that, that's the, you have the time to go work. I don't have the time.

So when we both had the time, we started working out and a friend of I was invited over to his garage, six o'clock. He goes, six o'clock. I was like, awesome. Six o'clock afternoon. He goes, no, in the morning. I'm like, I'm out. But we started doing it. And then we opened up gym with him and it grew into a CrossFit gym.

And as it grew, we started watching the games, and I was like, man, I could do that. And I had that, I think we all do. If you ever did any sports anywhere along the line, you have that competitive. Yeah, I think naturally most guys have that desire to compete in some way. We think we can. In some way, shape, or form, right? How can it be? It's on TV.

Right. I could do that. Look that guy. He's small. Chris Beeler. What the heck? Well, in fairness, he is very small. It's four feet tall.

He's like a gnome, little hobbit. I love that, man. But he can't go on all the rides. at the fair I love him to death. He just can't hit all the rights. I was with him at Paramount and he goes, I took a picture and he goes, hey, thanks for making me look like a really short person.

But so I started watching, I was like, I can do this. I really want to try. I tried one year when they did sectionals. And it was like all these young athletes. I'm like, there's no way. At 40 years old, I can compete with these guys at 35 or at 22 or 23, whatever it was.

And they opened up a master's division. 2010 was when they opened the 40 to 45-49 and that was the first year I did and I loved it and I've been doing it ever since I tried and made it out there had a blast and it was hooked I met Freddy Camacho yeah the whole crew ready's awesome good people man he's a police officer has been involved I think in two shootings and has yet to hit anybody so he's right on the bullet have you seen Freddy Freddy has terrible overhead I'm sure he couldn't even name that high I used to give the technique lecture and I would draw up targets and the one that miss all of them. I'd be like, you guys know Freddie Camacho? And a lot of times it would be at

his gyms and he'd be sitting in the back and he knew it was coming. I'd look at him and be like, yeah, buddy. Like this is Freddie shooting on the range. He's safe. If you ever do something when you want him on your, to hold still and turn sideways and just suck it in real fast. So do you spend most of your year thinking about the competitive season for CrossFit? Yeah, it's kind of a continuum. That's the scary part is that so you finish. You have like a month off and then we have granite games. Do you really really? take a month off though? I mean how much time do you yeah because I saw you last year's games and you were I mean everybody was destroyed right because it goes to the endth degree higher on the intensity

side but how many do you give yourself five days off? A little bit more because I'll all what I'll do is after the games I start still doing cardiovascular stuff aerobic capacity stuff and it's more like um just kind of a flush to make sure you're you know you're still feeling good I feel guilty after about five days of doing nothing it's like you know I'm like oh my gosh I think I'm you know I'm you know I'm I start getting sore too. That's the weird thing. Being an older athlete, if I sit too long, like right now, I'm going to cramp it up. Yeah.

No, if I sit any amount of time on the couch for, let's say, for a couple days, not in a row, obviously. I sleep and get up and pee, and then I get up and go pee. Yeah. Like I said, you'll be dead of old age very soon. I'll actually start to get sore. So if I'm doing things actively, whether I'm jogging or riding the bike or doing something like that, I feel much better. So I think part of my addiction to what we're doing is that. Yeah, it makes me feel good.

Well, it changes a lot of your lifestyle when you take it, because you're not going to be competitive. And again, I've never been competitive in that sphere, but I've been proximal to it enough so I can see the, it's amazing to me the lifestyle choices that the competitive athletes will make. Yeah. And how much, quite frankly, life experience is that they will sacrifice to be competitive. Like, they actually, especially the younger ones,

that's like, wow, when I was your age, that's not what I was doing. Like I was working out hard, but I mean, again, they're doing something that at a physical capacity level I never had. But yeah, it's living in the gym. It's consuming. Yeah, eight hours a day in the gym is not my idea of a good time. There's a young man who works out with Rich, and I look at that. I'm like, man, this kid's just amazing, the growth capacity that he's experienced over the last two years because I've known it for better. Yeah, muscular-wise.

Ridiculous. But you know what, though, like, I mean, I learned a lot about myself at that age, and it didn't happen in the gym. Yeah. I would work out a little bit, but then, you know, I got my teeth kicked in by life at that age, and it helped later on. These guys are getting sponsors. I mean, at that age, they're getting sponsors, but you know what I want them to get? I want them to get balance. Yeah, I agree.

I want them to win, but I hope that in their pursuit of winning, which I think is a great pursuit. And everything that they're doing is healthy with an asterisk, because I think sacrificing life experiences and the longer continuum may not be healthy. But it's amazing. And I look at the stuff that you guys do. I mean, for, nobody would look at you and say that you're 50. Like, realistically, I would say you're like in your 30s. Oh, thanks, man. Yeah.

I mean, I'm saying that because you're sitting right in front of me. If you weren't here, I'd say you're like 60 or something like that looks like. Like Siba, Siva, C's 65. You can take a look at him. Yeah. He's not allowed to talk. He doesn't have a microphone. And you have kids, right?

Yes. How old are your kids? So, oldest is 26. I have a 23. I can imagine that's double the age of my son right now. It's crazy. And then, you know, they grow up. up to be amazing human beings and you realize my wife did something right yeah I would like to

say that on that one I think you share as well too well again so she she um home we homeschooled our kids yeah she homeschooled the kids I helped some part of it yeah um you know I probably provided the means to do it but in in the in the grand scheme of it at the end it's just like it's amazing to watch how they came out as young human beings and on the other end of it going to high school because they all went to high school, how they handled themselves in high school. I mean, it's just things came up and it's just like, you know, our go-to saying was like, you know, you can do this, you can handle this. We've showed you how to do this.

As mom and dad, we've showed you how to handle this. A lot of people are like, when we first started, I can't tell you the repercussions that we ran across our families were like, oh, my God, the kids. So you said you were going to make the decision to homeschool them? Yeah, they're going to be introverts and this, that, and the other, well, guess what, our kids seem to be pretty well balanced and they handle themselves really well. They handle situations at school. We had teachers come to us and go, my God, your kids are amazing, amazing.

That had to do with them being... It's the example that you and your wife said. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I look back at school and the only classes that I probably use on a daily level are math and typing. Yeah.

You know, like never did I learn in school how to do my taxes. Yeah. I didn't, you know, like, some of the same. social skills I guess but I look at some of the best lessons that I ever learned in my life and things that that were reinforced and enhanced later on in my military career was learning with my dad yeah he was a masonry contractor I learned lessons with bricks in my hand yeah like you want to talk about goal setting this is when I talked I mean I'll go and I'll talk to businesses all the time and they're like how well you know how does somebody make it through butts that's like the number

one question like how do you do that and I say you know you have two choices you can look at buds as a six month process which is the beginning by the way they think that you graduate buds and you're like a seal and you're obviously, you're immediately on the bin Laden raid. Bad ass already. Well, and it's like you don't know anything. You're wildly dangerous to yourself and everybody around you. And it's like you can look at Buds as six months long, which you'll probably fail if you think it like that.

Or you can look at it as 180 days where you want to see the sun go down. Yeah. And you're going to probably be way more successful. Yeah. But I started understanding that at like 11 when I was working for my dad and he would have a pallet of bricks delivered making a fireplace. I still remember like red McNier Common brick. Yeah.

He's like, hey, I want all these on the roof on the scaffolding. And the tongs only held six. Yeah. So am I going to, and it was like, and at first I was like, how am I ever going to move this massive pile of bricks? And then finally you learn like, I'm just going to take six at a time. And I stopped worrying about where it was. Six at a time up the ladder. Then as I got older, I mean, I weighed 150 pounds when I graduated high school.

I was a skinny, skinny little bastard. But two tongs at a time up there. And it's like, that lesson has served me well throughout my entire life. And I didn't learn that lesson in school. I learned that through the example of my parents. Yeah. So the life lessons that you're talking about, and I think those are the key things that as those young kids start to mature

and go into the workforce as CrossFit, you know, these young CrossFit, they are not going to have that because I had some pretty shitty jobs growing up, you know, I'm sure you did as well. I did. And you know what?

I'm thankful for them. Oh, absolutely. As opposed to trying to avoid them. And, you know, in the moment, I probably would have tried to avoid them. It's only through the lens of hindsight where I realize, okay,

that actually helped make me the person that I am today. Not that I'm saying that I'm anything, but I think I try to be grounded and respectful and I try to set a good example for my kids, but I can look back to, I've learned more from the shittier situations in my life than I have. Well, I say all the time to my kids, like, you know, because they all get upset about things. Yeah. And I'll tell them, I'm like, listen, anything that comes to you easy is very likely worthless. Yeah.

If you work hard for something and you value it, it's going to be, that's where the worth comes from. So don't get bent out of shape about your skin. skateboard. Yep. Like, we can go to the store and a place. It doesn't mean anything. Yeah.

You know, get bent out of shape by somebody picking on your sister. Like, that's the value because guess what? You have to make a hard decision to stand up for her. Needs and wants, man. I used to tell my kids. I was like, all right, needs and wants. Need is something that you would carry with you in the desert. If you had to walk across 100 miles of desert, if you need something, you're going to

carry it. Something you want. Like you need, like, a car so you don't have to walk. Exactly. So you would be a second. I'd be like, so you know, you might need to roll the window down, but whatever, you're just carrying the door. Yeah.

So now, you know, so I joke around with them all the time. So I think that's a great. I mean, we run across that in the fire service, back to the fire service a little bit. So these guys will come in and they've never had job experience. And they love the thought of being a firefighter, but they come in and it's just like no work ethic. None. The shiny object syndrome, you see that? It's crazy.

That's why most people quit buds. don't become seals because they come in and they really it's another classic phrase in the seal teams everybody wants to be a frogman on Friday who doesn't right because you do have a cool job title yeah and you go to work in flip-flops and shorts and yeah on Fridays before 9-11 we had kegars and we played volleyball you know jump as me it's fine yeah we lotion each other's backup of coconut oil and we got after it and then maybe afterwards we have body surf it's you know it's okay we were comfortable with our sexuality but there's a lot of work that goes to becoming a part of that like you have to suffer and grind your way through before I got my

tried and pinned I was in 18 months of everyday training and at any point in that I could have made a bad decision I could have given up I could have given in and you wouldn't have achieved that shiny object and if you only focus on oh I want to be a firefighter well guess what first comes the academy yep then you're probationary officer and guess what what you learned in the academy and this is an assumption on my part based on the training I've gone through that wasn't fire training but there's academy skills and then there's real life skills And there's overlay, but it's not exactly the same.

And it's not all pretty. It's mostly ugly. And it actually hurts a lot of the time. But you know what? When it's the sun is shining on Friday and you're to barbecue with your boys, it's awesome. Yep. Yeah. They always tell you in either paramedic school or fire school, this is all stuff you're going to learn right now.

And when you get hired, you just forget it all. Because we have a different way of doing it. We have the guys that are street smart and book smart. Well, it's based on the principles. You have to, again, you have to have the requisite knowledge to build off of. Yeah. It's the same thing as, you know, you see people struggling in the business world. Like the definition of teamwork doesn't change in the military and the business world.

And everybody could tell you, you know, a rough definition of teamwork being, you know, a bunch of individuals working together for a common goal. Sure. Cool. Everybody knows that. Almost nobody knows how to foster that environment or to lead that environment or actually truly how to be a selfless member of a team. Yeah. It fails in application, not definition. Yeah.

Comes by experience. It does. And you get leadership. They like teamwork and the team mentality, and I'm sure it's the same in the fire department, and in the SEAL teams it was, it's driven by leadership. It's driven from the top down.

And, man, there was some bad examples of it, and there was some great ones. And I just tried to work and gravitate more and emulate more of the great ones versus the ones where I was like, ooh, I don't want to work with that guy. Some of the best officers I've had so far are guys and they actually probably younger than I am,

a lot younger than I am. Who is? And they've... and they come up through the ranks, fuck you. And they come up through the ranks, and they've experienced all different types. And the first thing that any one of them will tell you is like, bro, I couldn't stand being under that person again.

Yeah. And that's the person you want because they've experienced bad. I shared that with my son one day. He was actually, he used to swimmer in college. He had the worst coach ever. And he ended up quitting the swim team in college because this coach was so bad. I'm like, but that's going to make you a good,

coach. It's what he wants to do. I'm like, you've seen that. You know what you don't want to be. Literally take notes on the things that turn your stomach. Thank him. Turn around and be better than him because that's going to make you a better coach. And there's another step to that too. And this is something that I think people don't realize. Almost always people associate leadership with position, just exactly like that, the coach. Or it's title in business, right? Or the initials it says on either your door or your business card. And everybody else just is like, well, they're in charge. So I, I, have no say I can just quit right like that's the that's one choice another choice is as you

could show that person how to lead by setting the example setting you always have an opportunity to lead whether yeah yeah mentor up absolutely you know and that's a tough one because especially when you have a douchebag up on top of you raining down trying to push you under the thumb because when you do start setting the example it makes them look bad yeah because they feel bad because they know I have found that most bad leaders inherently understand that something is off. Yeah. And they just don't have,

I don't know if it's the depth of character or whatever it is, but they don't want to address it. So they just push other people down to try, you know, they step on the heads of those below them to try to get above the fray instead of pulling people up the ladder.

But I constantly, like, because my sons are like, oh, you know, I don't like the, some of the players that are on my football team. I'm like, good. You know, that's great. You need to be exposed to those people because guess what?

You're not going to like a lot of the people that you find in life. And he's like, well, they're always just, you know, they're on their phone, They're looking at pictures that I don't think are appropriate. I'm like, good.

Show them what good behavior is. You don't say a word to them. Just rise above it and set the example. You always have the chance to lead. I don't care what your rank is. And I try to push that all the way down to my kids and to my daughter especially, you know. And I mean, hopefully at the end of the day, it has an impact because if I could change one thing, and maybe people would take more responsibility for what happens to them.

Like just stop empowering us. other people. Stop complaining about Trump and go be a good contributing member to society in your community. Stop complaining about your neighbor and set the example for your neighbor. I see it all the time and I think it's the only thing that's going to have impact. But I don't know. People don't listen to me. He's the figurehead and everything else that happens underneath is basically result of what we're doing. And that's the crazy part is that we were talking about that a little bit on the way here too is it's, you know, the polarization that's occurred because of one man's election to the

thing. when in all reality is like the only reason it's being polarized is because the people that are running those two different groups those two different camps they're like yeah causing this this wave of dissent and i mean it's it's kind of sad it's i i look at it and i'm a little scared for my kids but i think they're learning you know they're learning along the way but uh yeah man it's i uh you know we i i i really feel like it's important for us to uh to make sure that our kids understand those those things. You know,

as far as like what we're talking about, the responsibilities, the things that we have to instill in them, their work ethic. That's,

I think with CrossFit, back to that a little bit. Yeah. That's where I, that's where I kind of like, some of my drive comes from. It's not that I don't want to win. I think we had talked about this, too.

No, I want to win. I know what you're going. One of my favorite things about CrossFit is that it hurts. Yeah. And you voluntarily, knowing that it's going to hurt, go to that place.

And that's where growth comes from. You know, laying on a bed of cotton balls, actually, I don't know if that would be very comfortable. I'll try that later. But for the purpose of this metaphor, laying on a comfortable bed of clouds is not going to get you any better. I think there's so much to be gained

from facing the thing that you don't want to do and then going and doing it. And if I could change anything about my limited understanding of the younger generation, it would be that. Stop avoiding. things that scare you. Yeah. Just comfort is only temporary.

It's like a temporary thing. And not only that, it's where you learn. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. That's where growth is at. Oh, yeah, you know, things were just given to me, you know, until I was in my early 20s. Well, guess what's going to kick you in the teeth, the rest of your life? Yeah.

And you're going to be a target to people. Yep. Not everybody's a good person. And they're going to see that and that you're not ready and they're going to totally manipulate you and take advantage you. And it's like, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah.

I think that's what I would change about. the younger generation that I would see is like just face what it is you don't want to do and go get it done yeah get in there don't be scared of it yeah that's that's it's it's yeah I kind of related back to my kids and at a certain point my son as a swimmer was like there was a certain part of races like anything that you do in the pool there's parts of it that are really important and one of them is being able to like come off the wall and streamline you've yeah the foot turn and being streamlined and if you can do that for a longer period of time you're going to get further than the person that comes up and starts swimming.

Swimming's about efficiency. Most people don't understand that. They want to muscle it. Yeah, yeah, you got to be really smooth and feel the water, feel the water. But he actually had like kind of an epiphany. He went to a swim camp and he came back and he goes, dad, you know, I was always afraid of staying in the water too long because, you know, the shallow water blackout. And he goes, I felt like it was, but I didn't.

And it was like, to him it was like that light switch that turned on it. I think that's what our kids nowadays are, they're missing because maybe we've protected them too much. They don't ever get to that point where, you know, I didn't. And that discomfort point we're talking about with Crossett where you push to the point and go, holy shit, that really hurt, but I'm alive still. I'm still here. Kids don't have to do that now. I think they're almost, we provide it.

Well, I think, and I think they're almost told to avoid it. Like, oh, no, no, don't do that. It's dangerous. Yeah. But maybe it's dangerous not to do that. Yeah. You know, there's the other side of that coin as well, too. I mean, yeah, I mean, don't, God, we can talk for another two hours.

Like, another one, safe spaces, right? Oh, yeah, that was so good. You need that? Come on, Skeva. Dude, I mean, yeah, I could put my pen through my eye on that one. But again, that's another thing that's like, that's an, it's an academic principle that fails in the real world. Yeah. I had my daughter read that, and she was like, Dad, can I get a dog?

She was like, totally like, can I do that? I don't know how that equates to getting a dog, but I like, I like how she tried to try to try to. No, they have dogs now that are like, what is it, stress dogs. And the kids are carrying these dogs around with them in college. Like you little chihuahuas? Like little small dogs. And they're allowed to have them because they're a stress dog. And they take stress level out of the kids.

The safe spaces that you're, oh, no, no, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm talking about the other one that you wrote where the kids have the safe room or whatever it is they can go to in color. And safe spaces, yeah. In Ivy League colleges where they have Play-Doh and coloring books and that's what it means. So she really literally is like, well, can I bring my dog? Because she has a little Maltese.

I think she might have missed the point of that particular place. She heard what she wanted to. That was classic. So, yeah, it's scary, man. What we're allowing a generation of whips. That's the sad part. Yeah. And you know what?

And like I said, I wish that people would take more accountability and responsibility for the world around them and not empower other people to, like, here's a thought. Who gives a shit who the president is? Yeah. I have never been called by the president and consulted. I served in the military under a Democrat, a Democrat, a Democrat. Zero change whatsoever. Went to war under all three, to a degree.

Is it the most powerful desk in the world? I don't know. But again, there's only so much that I can control. So whatever the president or whoever it happens to be, Republican or Democrat, I'm the one making my kids lunch in the morning. And I'm the one with him on the way to school, talking to him about his day, talking and watching and sporting events and my kids are the ones

who are going to make the generational change. Not the guy sitting in the Oval Office chair. He can make it really hard. And yeah, if they started a nuclear war, we're all going to die. But I can't control that. But everybody focuses on that and when that person is doing, and I would rather them turn the TV off,

take the phones away and sit down at the dinner table and be a family. Like that, to me, is where it's going to come from. Take ownership of the world around you and what you can control and then just turn all of this. other BS stuff off, man. Yeah.

That's an interesting point. Ben Bergeron has a seminar that he does. And in that seminar he talks about, even with us as crosswaters, there's a circle of things that are in your control. Circle of influence, circle of control. Right? Yep.

And so there's all the other things. And he had at one point had Katrina sit down and write out all the things that she was scared of. And he drew a circle around the ones that she could. And the one she can control were like, I think it was like nine or ten things, maybe, maybe. Yeah. All the other things were things she couldn't control, but she was worrying it.

Spending time, yeah. It's circle of influence, circle of concern. Yeah. And you only should spend time on things that you can directly influence and spend nothing on. And that's, it's a simple, not easy. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Simple, not easy.

But I think the world, and especially the U.S. would be a better place if people adopted that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I totally agree. That's one of those things I've tried to. help my kids understand a little bit more. See, I've learned some outside things in cross-it. Things that really can make a difference.

I have learned the most important lessons of my life through physical experiences. They reinforced what I read about in books to a degree that it stayed with me in a concrete fashion. It wasn't abstract anymore. It was like, oh, that sounds like a cool concept. Like, experiencing it with my hands or my body, solidified it, and it made it sick with me for the rest of my life.

You can read all the books you want to, but it's not going to get you. No. You know, you have to pick up the ball at some point and run with it. I agree. Life experience, bro. All right, man, we're going to end on that. We just burn through an hour and 15 minutes.

You're the man. Potentially. I don't know, maybe. We're going to need to do this again. I have a feeling that we're going to need to, like, do another one. All right, cool. I'm in. I'll see you like two years from now.

It's perfect. Two years. All right, man. Thanks for taking the time. No, probably. Later. Thanks.