Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Episode 135 - Matt Vincent

Episode Date: July 6, 2020

Matt Vincent is known for being a two-time Highland Games World Champion and strength athlete. He spent more than 10 years competing in powerlifting, strongman, weightlifting and highland games. Although his knee injury caused him to have a total knee replacement and remove himself from competing completely, Matt will continue to share his fitness passion through seminars, book writing, fitness apparel and podcast. In Matt's first book, Training Lab, he spelled out the philosophy of "The HVIII," and tried to capture the spirit of self-improvement through self-loathing. This idea would serve as the spark that led to HVIII Brand Goods and a ton of adventures. Matt chronicles his travels and conversations with people in the strength game and beyond on his podcast UMSO.

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And that's it on the business side of the house today. My guest is a very, very, very, very strong man, far, far too strong. His name is Matt Vincent. And he was a two-time Highland Games world champion. If you don't know what the Highland Games are, they're pretty fucking crazy. And he talks about him and explains him in depth, so I'm actually not going to. But he's also the founder of hate brand goods. And it took me forever, and we talk about this as well, to figure out what HVIII stood for.

But that's how he breaks it out. Hate brand goods. He's traveled all over the world, spent time with exceptional people. He started off doing track and field. He's written books. He does training. like I said, he's got up in peril brand. The dude's awesome.

And he happened to be traveling through Montana, literally miles from where I live. So, of course, I'm going to snap up the opportunity to sit down and talk with him. We talked about quite a bit of stuff, actually. Quite a bit of stuff. And we talked about him as a grown man wearing a kilt. And that is all I will say. We'll let you guys go off and enjoy episode 135 with Matt Vincent. Enjoy.

I'm looking at danger close now. Everything is synchew. up and ready to go. Do you use pluralize when you do your video? What do we use? To sync to do the multi-camera back and forth. So I had one camera for a long time. I don't know how far along you are in your podcast set it, but I had one camera for a long time, which is easy because you can just sync it up. Right. Pluralize is this killer software so I can take all three cameras, dump them in, take the raw wave file. It'll correct audio drift, which is a bitch. I don't know if you're experiencing that. I am familiar with that. Yeah, yeah. Does it,

you links them all up. I use Final Cut Pro, but it'll work for Adobe as well. Yeah, so we use Premiere for everything. You can dump it in there and everything is synced. And I just, I hard to wire the audio to stay and then I switch back and forth on the camera angles. So do you still have to pick back and forth on the cameras? I do. And that's the difference between not having a producer. Gotcha. Well, I know that like, since I've had to do a couple of these remote, I've only done, I think I'm a 130 or so episode, 130, 140 episodes in. We're right at the same spot. And just started doing video for it. Since I've mostly just done it by myself, like the idea of fucking sending up a camera, it's just more shit to deal with.

I was like, we're just doing audio. This would be great. And then now that I've got a media guy who's traveling with me, typically he'll do the audio and then the video part of it as well. And the nice thing about doing it remote and using Zoom is it'll automatically switch to who's talking. Okay. Okay. Does that ever mess up though, where it's staring at you and the other person's talking? I'm sure it's not 100% great, but also I don't rewatch it hardly any of my shit as much as I can avoid it. I am not a fan on the stand of my own voice.

No, of course not. No one is. So you're the first actual guest in the studio. Dude, this is killer. It is, but here's the thing. People are going to bitch. So why wouldn't they? And it's early. So it's not completely done yet. Like, I need to steam the trapes. I'm going to steam the drapes. I would prefer take any criticism.

on the podcast, please have them send them your studio, their studio. Or to find one and then go through the effort. And then there's going to be some other stuff. Like this is literally the first day where everything has been ready to go. I couldn't get this audio shit to work until yesterday morning. Of course. Of course. The best is like, this worked 20 minutes ago.

Oh, my God. Why is there a phantom in this? It was all in the software. Because, you know, these mics, these XLR mics, they go in and you can't plug. them into the back. So I had to have that interface. There was one box. One box. I took it completely apart. I went and got the other podcast board that I used. I hooked it up and was about to throw the computer through the fucking window. Dude, my frustration with electronics and computers is, so I cut my teeth like, I guess, fresh out of college, I opened a bicycle shop. So I like

bicycle stuff. Like, it's simple mechanics, right? If something's not fucking working, I can be like, That's not lining up. Let's address it. If my computer goes to shit, mystery, I may as well set it on fire. I was going to say, when computers go bad for me, I just clean them with a garbage can.

Put bullet holes in them and throw them in the garbage. After cleaning the hard drive off and making sure that, actually, I haven't always done that I've lost. Just microwave it. Yeah. Well, that destroys your microwave and your computer. Get a cheap microwave.

Yeah. How awesome is Montana? Man, this is now my fourth trip here. And of course, it starts like me and my chick are just talking and like we're not bound really to live anywhere and it's like well montanao's pretty cool it's like we could look at that and then it's you know trying to figure out what what we like i don't need 20 acres fucking land i'm pretty 20 acres is actually some work yes well it's amazing but you're gonna put the time in yeah

like at least robin nims is just woods and so i i'm not a big house guy i mean it's just me and my chick, we're not having kids. It's under 2,000 square feet is just perfect for me. For a house size? Perfect. That's actually phenomenal. I would rather go, 3-bedrooms. So I have an office, a guest room, basement,

and then I'd rather have a 7,000 square foot metal building to have a gym. I was going to say heavy things? Garage. Yeah, heavy stuff. Not as heavy as they used to be in the past now that I'm happily retired. We should probably address the vehicle that you pulled up. to the parking spot in because there are... I think I chose poorly when I left Rob's house.

Well, so I don't know exactly where they live, but I think it's whitefish, right? Okay, so you showed up in essentially a side-by-side. Yeah, I can't am. A can't am, which I am not a cop, so I don't know if those things are particularly road legal. I know you can drive them legally in Whitefish. I fucked up on the map bit, too. I was like, oh, okay, cool. Yeah, you got on some freeway.

Yep, we're going to go further. It runs at 80, happy as a clam. You know, and I know a lot of the cops here, I don't know if they would pull you over or just give you a thumbs up on the way by? I saw you pull up. I've been pulled off before. I just apologize a lot. I didn't know you were staying with them.

Like I said, I know they live in Whitefish, but yeah, you drove, you probably got a good 15 miles in that thing. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think from their house to here, it was 21 miles.

Yeah. Something like that. So. The Can Am is not traditionally considered a commuter vehicle for those purposes. That thing also, that's the first time I've driven that one. They have another one.

And dude, that thing shits and gets. Oh, yeah. It'll burn tires on concrete. Yeah. I did a trip out to the desert years ago. I got linked up through a random email, actually. Somebody sent me an email. He owns Brock.

He owns a fleet of dealerships out in Phoenix. He's like, hey, bring your family out. We'll go out and we'll do a desert trip. Yeah. So we went out there. Fuck me. There are some people who dedicate their lives to those desert trips. So they made like this huge circle of fifth wheels and like toy haulers.

All the ramps start coming down. Really roughing it. Oh, yeah. Well, and so there was like the Thunderdome in the middle. All the little kids had like motorized and electric four wheelers. So they're just tearing shit up constantly in the contained circle. But these vehicles that started coming out, there was some four person can amps. There was some custom stuff that I don't know how much horsepower it had.

but when they were going up, what I could only describe as nearly vertical sand dunes and the spit that was coming out of the back of those things, the rooster tail, fuck me. Oh, then they just, what, put those giant paddled sand tires on them and they just...

And gun it, and you just see the thing, me, zipping across. Crazy man. And then they would get stuck, and then sometimes they would lose momentum and maybe they tip over. It's sand. It's basically, it's cushioned.

It's not enjoyable. My oldest side of my middle somewhere in the back and they were doing like a joy ride in one of these ridiculously custom vehicles. And it got like three quarters stopped and was just spitting sand. And I can just see my kids just like, ah, stop. And they just bombed out of the thing and ran down the hill. You know, I've got a couple other Navy SEAL buddies that retired from that line of work.

And they're not fans so much of the beach or sand anymore. They feel like we've got our fill. I can do, I can do beach with sand or I can do water. That's fair. I don't feel like doing both. Like going to, you know, where we are in the Flathead Valley, there is some beach, but it's mostly like pebble type stuff. Yeah, right, right, right. No problem whatsoever.

I'm not going to lie and say I'm a huge fan of getting in the water. I've had my fill. But what I really don't want to do is get in the water and then be told by another human being that I need to roll around in sugar cooking myself to cover every inch of my body or, you know, have that going down your pants into all the unmentionables. You've had that experience. Oh, fuck it sucks. You're good there. You've, you've checked that box enough in your life of, uh, you know, uh, you've, you've checked that box enough in your life of, uh, You can tell people in buds what phase they're in by how they walk.

Oh, no, just raw. Just sandpapered out. Like, leading up to Hellweek, it's, you know, they're doing okay because they're doing the training leading up to it. Then after Hellweek, where you're just completely and utterly chafed, like where you probably should be in a hospital bed for some people. It's just, I mean, it's ridiculous. And you see them, and then there's the under the arm. Just trying not to let any skin touch itself, walking around like the star guy from Spongubon. Yeah, you're like, waddling.

You're like, oh, you just made it through Hellweek, didn't you? Man, I can't. Yeah, I don't have any frame of reference, right? Like essentially, yeah, no military background, never had an interest. You're not missing out of much. If it's not something that you... I don't have the calling. And that's the thing.

People ask me all the time military questions. And I actually can't answer most of them because they'll say, I want to get an army's special forces. How do I do that? And I don't know. Yeah, right. I worked with them, but I don't know. or I want to do this in the military or how do I get a waiver for that?

And I don't, I wish I could answer more specific questions, but my experience level was so narrow in comparison to what I did. But what I can say is if you don't have, if you don't have the calling or it doesn't seem like it has a poll towards you, I would say look at something else. See, I guess I look at the military as a complete civilian as if you're going to pick one of the majors and go in,

you know, start enlist. It's essentially like going into, undergrad. And then if you've gone to Navy SEAL or Special Forces or Green Beret or any of these other type of things, that's PhD. And most PhD people I've met like within academia, they know a shit ton about one thing. Yes. Yeah. And of course you don't know what the other special, like, it's like asking a chemist what he knows about architecture. Like, you might find that random chemist that knows a shitton though. Maybe. Most of them, though, are I'd say an inch wide and mile deep. Right. But yeah, people, you know,

pre 9-11, I think the military, it drew people for different reasons. They were going for, you know, an economic change in their life because it's a government job. You're going to get paid first and 15th. You're also likely not to get fired. It's actually pretty hard. Right. It's a secure position. And there's educational benefits. So you could really change your socioeconomic station in life, wherever you're starting from.

And you could travel around a lot. So there's a bunch of experience. some people who had joined pre-9-11 probably were not ready for the post-9-11. They were in the middle of an enlistment pre-loving life and then post-9-11 hit. People who come in in in a post-9-11 world, I think they have a better idea of what they're coming in for. It's less, I think, about the educational benefits and more about that they feel driven to serve. Yeah, I would say that there was definitely a stretch of like, well, we could do the military. I'll probably get out without ever having to see combat. Which about 85% of the military doesn't.

It's not even their job to engage in direct combat. There's plenty of ways to go into the military if you have no desire. I was actually talking about this. I do a Friday episode where I just do QA. And I was talking about violence. I mean, my experience with violence in the SEAL community was way different than, say, somebody who was on a nuclear submarine. Or somebody who was on an aircraft carrier. You know, when I joined, I went to a school.

I was an operation specialist. That was my rate. So I was a E5, but also I was an OS. What would that be it? I was an OS2, which made. E5 Operation Specialist second class.

My job, had I been in the fleet, would have been to monitor and use radar scopes and equipment in a room called the CIC, which I think the Combat Information Center.

You're not part of your issue, your daily issue is not a gun. Okay. You're not getting on helicopters. You're not going to, you know, gather intelligence or work on a network or go and kinetically take down a target.

It's just not your job. So you're essentially helping schematics get people planned for them to go. It's not even that, I think. And again, so I've never seen a radar scope for real in the fleet, but it's their, you know, they're monitoring aircraft in vessels and subsurface type stuff. So they're gathering information for fleet-specific operations.

There's no need for that, even what we were doing in Afghanistan or Iraq. There's no need for that, anybody to sit there and be looking at a radar scope. But oftentimes aircraft would come off of aircraft carriers to support us, and then they would go back and they're talking with the, you know what I mean? Right. So the vast minority of people in the military actually. have a job that is by design supposed to see combat. Okay.

And then even inside of those communities, the number of people in those communities that actually see combat is far less than what most people would think. Yeah. And I mean, my own ignorance, even having close friends who've served at a lot of different levels, I just don't know shit about it, right? Yeah. You think you do from whatever various forms of media or this and that. And you don't.

Of course. Just don't watch TV shows. Oh, well, depends on how you go in to watch. him. I'll give you that. If it's for a documentary and you're watching the CBS show SEAL team, you're fucking up. Right. Yeah, documentary there. Man, the Netflix, the World War II in color, I haven't seen that actually. It's excellent. Okay. It is really, really great. I also haven't seen the, they'll never grow old. I haven't seen that one yet. So it's Peter Jackson did it. It's Lord of the Rings director. Okay. And it's all colorized footage from World War I. I wonder how they do that. I don't know.

somebody's more talented than me. But World War I's gnarly stuff, just the technology change that took place during that war. World War I and then the Deuce afterwards. We're talking French warfare. Yeah. Oh, I don't know. Let's just go invade Iwo Jima, like Guadocanau, all of the amphibious landings. I look at what those people do. Like, I've never had to be in the opening scene of saving private Ryan. Right. I have never in my life had to be inside of a landing craft while getting heavy machine fire mortar and then basically run up a beachhead that's full of obstacles like those guys their balls drag behind them yeah i i'll never ever have a thing in my life where the game plan is we think we have more people than they have bullets yeah that's if that's your plan

you need to do better but fuck that's so horrendous terrifying man and yeah i i just yeah i'm good over here saying thank you a lot to people who provide me the life I get to live. Yeah. You know, people will say that, you know, they'll say thank you for, you know, providing my freedom. I've had people say that to me. And I actually take the time and I stop them. Like, listen, nothing I've ever done had anything to do with providing you your freedoms. The freedoms were established or at least maintain on the founding of this country. It takes some sweat equity to protect those things, but don't think for a second that at least a modern day soldier. And this, again, is just my opinion. I'm not saying it to,

put down soldiers at all, they're a mechanism of preserving and protecting rights and freedoms, not actually providing them. And I think it's an important delineation. Because you'll hear that sometimes like, fucking going over there, you know, I'm going over there so you can be free. It's like, eh, let's step back a notch. Let's step it back a notch. I'm not saying you're not, but let's look into the grander scale.

Like, you were free when you were, when you were born because of the documents and the founding of this nation and how this nation is set up. So let's just, I need you back at a seven, all right? I need you to seven. You're to 10 right now. Well, people's insecurity always plays weird, right? Yeah. Especially about justification of a job, justification of a thing you want to go do, especially

a passion. And then, I mean, how many people are looking for the thing they do to be the identifier of who they are? Right. Yeah. I mean, people that go into, you know, fucking anything. I mean, I know a lot of guys. Professional athletes. Of course.

Yeah. And then don't know how to walk away. Yeah. Well, this is the fucking thing. John Wellborn has been defined his entire life by playing offensive line. He is. Which is how we met, by the way. Right.

When you all playing against each other? No, no. I actually know I've been with John when we told people that I play with him and he would like go into this narrative of how I was like, I think he said I was like, it's free, I didn't even know what the shit he was talking about. Your free safety. Yeah, he's just like, yeah, I'm just like, I'm just like, yeah, I scored a lot of three pointers.

And I was just like, God damn it, shut up. But yeah, you don't want to talk about a guy who's not defined by it. Right. But also John's really smart. Well, and that's what I should just going to say, people wouldn't assume because he is, let's be honest, a massive beast of a man. He's smaller now. Yeah, oh, of course, right? You're not playing 12 years as an offensive lineman in the – or 11 years as an offensive lineman in the NFL and a first-time draft pick.

My brother played a few years in the league, and Andy's 6-5-3-30 and played at A&M. But, I mean, he's very happy to tell you the reason that career does. didn't continue is they stopped asking him to show up. You know, like, and so like, even at that level, the variance in talent. It's not that I got cut. They just stopped calling me. It's as if they stopped offering me a paycheck. But John, I met him for the first time. And within, you know, minutes of sitting down and having a conversation with him, you could tell the guy's crazy intelligent. And then you find out he went to Berkeley. And one of his majors was in rhetoric. He's like, dude, you used to smash people's

head in, you know, in the offensive line. Like, fuck, it's crazy. But I think he also might be a little bit an anomaly. Oh, for sure. And I have and I'm, that's an assumption on my part because I don't know that many pro athletes at that level and that sport, but he's smart as fuck. A lot of folks that make it to that level and like whether that's the people I know that have been Olympians or different levels like that, like most people who reach that level, they've had such singular focus for so long that it's blinders. Yeah. And you do get people like John who maybe love playing the sport but don't necessarily love football if that makes sense. It does actually.

I'm very good at my job, but on Sundays I don't need to spend all day hanging out watching other people do their job. Yeah. And at some point in my life, I want what I used to do on Sundays to be the past, and I want to use that as the lever going forward to something else. That's something that's always blowing me away, right? Like, that. So my background is I did Traggofield in college. Where'd you grow up?

Louisiana. So born and raised, was there up until a year ago moved to St. Louis. We'll have to get to that at some point. We will. Because there has to be a reason for that move. Divorce. That's a good reason for that move. All good.

So did a handful of years track and field at LSU and was a very average shot putter, discus throw, or hammer throw across the board. If you are 10% better than me, you could kind of consider maybe going post-collegiate and chasing the Olympics. And if you're 10% worse than me, you're dog shit. Okay. You're absolutely bad. So that's where I'm at.

A few years of strong man, a few years of powerlifting, and then found Scottish Highland games. And whatever weird configuration of my skill set lent very well to it. You got to describe what they are. I know what they are at like a super peripheral level. I know you guys are wearing it. This isn't a big thing your audience is into the Scottish Highlands. I don't think most people know what it is. Of course not.

I know that you're wearing a kilt. Got a kilt. What's under the kilt? I wore compression shorts because otherwise, like you would say, this walking around like this is what I would be. There hasn't been a moment since I was 15 that my legs haven't touched each other, much less than I'm putting an abrasive in there. It's a terrible plan. I'd just be a bloody, awful. I thought you're going to say thong.

I have worn a thong under one before. It's really funny. Yeah, I would imagine, because I would imagine at times it'd come up. You spin a little bit and it gets a little up. Yeah. Plus, my ass is tattooed. It's an entertaining. Oh, God.

Great show. Oh, God. So we have nine events. The most popular everyone knows is the cabre, which is big telephone pole, right? You have two stones. You throw basically like a shot put. So you have one, you throw standing, and then you have one you full approach however you want to throw it. Various weights.

The heavy one is 28 to 22 pounds. The light one's 16. So same as a regular shot put, but a stone. We throw two hammers, and so they're a 22 and a 16-pound ball. end of a 50 inch stick or piece of PVC pipe. Really? Yep. And so you spin it around, you don't move.

So you wear boots. So it's opposite than the traditional hammer throw where you're spinning? Correct. So you stay fixed. Well, it predates the Olympic hammer. Okay. As far as... That makes sense.

Whatever that means, right? And so you work it around you, but you wear these boots that have like this six-inch blade off the front of them. So you bury those in the... ground. Oh, okay. So this way as the weight passes you and you catch it back onto the right side here, you can pull on the ground to accelerate it. Otherwise, it's going on there?

I mean, if I've got a 22-pound ball that I'm going to throw from a fixed spot, 115 feet, I'm moving. Yeah. And if you're not anchored down, you can't. That makes sense. It'll win. I don't think I'm going to get a ball that that's heavy 115 feet. Right. And then the light one, the 16, I'll throw one 40-ish.

Jesus Christ. And so those two events, and then we have the weight for distance. So it's a steel block, a couple links of chain, and a ring handle. And so you hook grip onto it and spin twice and throw it. There's a 56 pound and a 28. Okay. Kind of looks like the discus, throwing it somewhere between discus and traditional hammer. And then you have 56 pound weight over bar, just throw for height.

as high as you can. What shape is the weight in? Looks just like the one we throw for distance. They just get rid of the lengths of chain and put the ring directly. So it's a solid piece. You're not throwing a sandbag. It's basically a kettlebell. Okay.

But the ring is independent of the implement. Okay. Also much smaller diameter handle to grab on to. So up for height over a bar. And then the last event we throw is called the sheaf. And it's a 20 pound like burlap bag that you throw with a pitchfork for height. So I traveled for 10 years with a pitchfork, like my own. Carry on or checked?

Check it. Also, when you get to the airport with it. When you get to the airport with it, like I've got a bag over the end of it, like a shoe bag. And then like a PVC pipe over the tines, so they're not jamming stuff. And then like pipe insulation over the handle. Whatever they ask you, is that a, just say yes. Whatever ends that conversation because no one has ever guessed pitchfork. Nor I don't think they would know what to do with it.

They get super confused. We had a buddy we threw with out of Canada at a Halifax that got to the airport. And they were like, nope. He's like, what do you mean? Nope. Just check it. No. Had to bring in like photos of him competing to prove that it was athletic.

Yeah. Yeah, I've had some interesting conversations with TSA. Even like the podcast kit that I used to travel with in that box. So like, sir, you know, are there any batteries in here? what's in here are these checked firearms like it's just audio recording equipment it's not that big of a deal they take it quite serious sometimes and then other people like i don't give a fuck just put that thing up here and we'll just go ahead and get it through that's a whole other thing as much as i'm sure you've traveled like i have that why is there so much variation in tsa a different

airport because of people and they get different leadership and they probably get i don't know much about the tc but i bet you they have this overarching guidance that is then probably refined further in areas that like LA where they have supervisors and all that stuff so they're probably drilling it down and then in other areas that are smaller they're like hey read this and then yeah the Calisville airport's a little laxed here's the deal I'm not going to complain about it because I can get there 15 minutes before a flight and still sit down for five minutes yeah it's there's been some times where that saved my ass man st louis's airport so previous to st. Louis I used new Orleans but it was about an hour from my house new Orleans airport sucks the

The St. Louis one's pretty sweet. 20-minute Uber ride. I'm at the gate in 10 minutes. Yeah. And it's international. So that would be my only hang-up of here is that I have to fly somewhere else. Yes. So there's, well, right now, it's a dumpster fire because I've decided that 2020 is the Chinese year of the dumpster fire.

It's been interesting. There used to be five Delta flights per day, options coming into CalaSpell. Are they down to like three a week? Yeah. It's really rough. That's why we drove up. I was trying to get out to see my buddy John Dudley, the Archer. And I've been there many times.

And I can leave here in Gallis Bell in the morning and get to Des Moines where I fly into maybe midday. And I started looking at flight options and it was like leave the afternoon overnight in Salt Lake City, Salt Lake City to Atlanta, Atlanta to Minneapolis, St. Paul. Minneapolis to St. Paul, Des Moines. I was like, hey, Dudley, it's going to be a bit before I'm able to come out and see you. It's easier to drive. It actually would take me less time, probably to drive. It's honestly my favorite mode of transportation. I've got a truck I've built up that...

I saw the pictures. You have some overlaiding stuff on it. Yeah, yeah, it's been fun. It's starting to look like... I don't know if you're familiar with the classic film, Labyrinth. I'm not. I feel like it's not a classic. David Bowie's in it.

It's pretty good. I feel like it's a classic to you. Could be. Jim Hanson, David Bowie, what's not the like? But there's a lady that essentially just has this carrying everything on her back, like a chair and parts of her house and all that. and my truck's just basically turning into it. That's what overlanding is.

So you have a pop-up tent looked like on the back. What's in front of that? Cargo carrier? Yeah, cargo carrier. So since I've got my chick and my media guy trying to figure out like where eight weeks of our clothes go. And we're not packing eight weeks because we'll stay at a friend's house and wash clothes. And humans, right? They had these things called laundromats.

I've never heard of them. Don't trust them for damn sure. Well, you wash your own clothes. You don't actually have to like give them to somebody. I thought it was a barter system. No. Well, perhaps if there's somebody in there. I'm talking a coin-operated laundromat.

The beauty of those is you can wash all of it at once. Yes, because they're about the size of this table. Or you can use two. Yeah, yeah. So I've got just swapped out the roof tent to an eye camper is the one I got. Eye camper. I can't see I've heard of that. I had a tapui.

And it was nice. No real complaints about it. I switched to this because it's a hard shell. Yeah. And the tapui, like Bonnie and I could open it and have it fully set up in under 10 minutes. This one I can do by myself in about 90 seconds. I have a roof nest, the sparrow. Right.

So it just goes straight up. It's a clam shell as well. To get that thing open, you undo a strap, two clips on the side, push the back. It's got pistons in there. It goes, shh. Actually makes that exact noise. It's pretty nice. Yeah, I don't think it actually makes any noise.

So those are my own personal sound effects. You start added to me. Yeah. And then I come to the front. It's, if I was hustling, 30 seconds. Right. That's about what mine is. And the inside of this thing is like a king-sized mattress.

It feels really... Memory foam? Yeah. So I'm talking. It's 20-20. And it just pops out. The other side pops open and it's great. And reverse the process to get it back down.

Easy enough. Yeah. Yeah, we leave like our sleeping bag and everything inside of it. You are describing the exact setup that I have, too. Sleeping bags, all the bedding pillows stay in there, press it down. And it doesn't change the gas mileage because it's super low. Well, my truck. It's dog shit gas.

It's a tundra. They're not known for... Nine and a half gallons. Nine and a half miles to the gallon is doing great. I have my tent on my F350, and it's a diesel and still, I think, 20-ish on the freeway. Yeah, it's great. Yeah, mine is awful. But I've swapped in a 50-gallon tank, so it just looks like I have an air duct under my car.

You can go for a long time, but damn, 50... Well, whew, gas prices have been cheap. It's nice. Yeah. 50 gallons six months ago was probably a couple hundred bucks. Yeah. Damn, man. Yeah, so.

So how did you get into the Highland stuff? If you went track and field, how'd you find it? I knew it existed in college when I was competing. You kind of know of it as a thrower. At least you know the history. You kind of have the sport and Scottish clans and all that started, right? And so I knew they existed, but like at that time, so I finished college in like 2005. What'd you get your degree in?

Oh, general studies. I really, really spent my time well at LSU. You got a minor in English, a minor in psychology, and a minor in communication studies. Perfect. Yeah, oh yeah, wildly valuable. I don't think I've ever filled out a job application. So, I mean, I don't really know how useful it was. I finished college because I had a track and field scholarship.

Do you feel like if you could go back now, do you feel like that there was enough value in that educational pipeline that you would do it? Would I rerun it the same way? I'm assuming you would probably change what you. dedicated your time to or devoted your time to, but was there enough value in the experience of going to college itself? Because I have no experience at all. For me, especially getting to do sports, 100%. How about from the academic side? Is the information or the studies that you did, did it prepare you for what was going to come after? I guess that was probably a better way to phrase that question. No, no, not at all. I mean, I've written a couple books, but my grammar

and stuff's terrible because I just don't give a shit. I'll pay an editor. I was going to fix all that, right? People who specialize. I'm really good at that. I'm not. inch deep, mile wide and editing the written word. I'm an idea guy.

Fine tuning's not what I'm here for. But maybe the communication studies and maybe if I really wanted to squeeze out some of the psychology, because I spent 10 years doing outside sales in the oil and gas industry. Okay. And so that's a lot of dealing with. people and figuring out insight into people would probably help there how do I get us where I want to go yeah and let you feel right all the time and also let you feel like it was your decision to get you where we wanted to go I don't care how you feel about as long as we go where I'm hoping I asked that because

I have my oldest son is two years from being college age and I don't I did not go to college I was in the navy by my the end of my junior year in high school I had already enlisted now I had to finish high school to go but I don't I would have much rathered right like I I think it's sad that we don't have this option, and maybe they do, and I missed it. But I should be able to go to school on this athletic scholarship, and why can't LSU or our major universities also offer welding? Like trade school companies. That's what I was going to ask you next.

If you want to work, that's the way to go. And you're going to come in entry level with a really good paycheck. Yep. A lot of the trades. And you'll always have a job. Yeah. As long as you want to work. My dad owned a construction company in Santa Cruz, and it wasn't until he basically shut it down when my mom was dealing with cancer for her second time, which eventually ended up taking her life.

But he worked at the level that he wanted to for as long as he wanted to. There was always work in the trades. And he had the opportunity to put a couple young people on, to include myself. But, I mean, from an economic perspective, when I was in high school, I had a bunch of cash because I was working to trade. And still, I can still do tile. I don't fuck with lumber, plumbing, or electrical. Get the fuck out of here with all that. Specifically electrical.

So you're a decent carpenter? No, I don't fuck with it at all. Okay. This table? Let me tell you about this table. I didn't make this table. A buddy of mine, Cameron, made this table from Montana Wood. This thing is amazing.

If I would have made this table, well, we wouldn't have a table. You have a cardboard box sitting in between us right now. That's very, very similar to what my carpenter skills look like. I'm really fucking bad at it. But also, it's not a shock that I'm bad at it because I don't ever do it. And plumbing scares me too, but the one that scares me the worst. It's electrical. You mean to get dead part?

Very few deaths in plumbing. If I have to do anything near a socket, every single fuse in my house is out. Just flip the whole main breaker. And then I sit there like a total pussy and be like, like try to touch it first to make sure it's dead. Like the back of your hand helps? Like it's a dog? I've always been told if you grab it, like if you touch it with the front, it'll clamp it down. So I sit there and I like tap it.

And then I'm still scared when I'm working on it. And then I try to stand when I turn it back on. I feel like it's going to explode. At least it's not strong enough to really get you. 2.20 on the other handle. Yeah, it's not the amps. It's the volts, right? I don't know what either those are.

I know both seem bad. I know we kill people with electricity, right? Like so. Yeah. Yeah, however that saying goes, it's not the amps of the vault. It's the volts. If you don't know what either of those are, it doesn't matter. That's a very, very good point.

All you hear is, all you hear is, if I touch this, I'm going to die. Yeah, a lot of times it's just easier to say there's people that do this for a living, right? Yeah, it's worth the money. Yeah. But those people are demand. And those people are in demand. And they should be. Yes.

The skilled labor is like, I mean, and that's, that's part of what frustrates me currently with the tone of our country, right? Is we don't have this skilled workforce. And so. Or it seems maybe it's diminishing. It is diminishing, right? Or that, and that's, I think, part of why the middle class has become what it is. people graduate from college with a shit ton of debt and then think that equals this corner office with my degree and like, no, you're 18 years down the road.

Well, so that's the conundering I'm at when my kids talk to me about or they ask, you know, what do you think about the future? I don't know. I almost. Do you think your kids are going to be like doctors, lawyers, or nurses? I don't know. My middle son is a legit genius. Okay.

He, um, the conversations I have with him, like he'll come. I'm divorced as well. so I have limited time with my kids. The conversations I had with my son when he's with me, I have to fucking Google shit when he's gone. I pretend like he doesn't say things that I don't know what he's talking about,

but I'll go on my phone and put in the notes app. What's superimposed me? No, I'll be like, I'll be like, I need to fact check so I can crush this little son of a bitch, the next argument that we have. But he's super smart. Just steer the conversation to things you know about. Primary colors, white, black.

And he's like, no, dad, that's not them. I was just like, ah, you don't get any dinner tonight. It's hard to concentrate when you're being yelled at by a friend. He can do whatever he wanted to do. But he doesn't necessarily know what he wants to do. You're not supposed to. And that's what I tell them. I tell them, don't be in a rush.

And I hate that question. What do you want to be when you grow up? I'm 42. I don't know what I want to be. Dude. And back to that thing that we try to find as this identifier, right? And like when I retired from the Highland Games in 2016 due to injury, I made a big move and dropped 60 pounds of body weight and shifted gears.

That had to have felt awesome. Well, I was also fucked up because of an injury, so my body's previous felt better. I'm happier now on the backside of nine knee surgeries and a fake knee. How old are you? 37. Damn. Yeah. I've played the nickels on that.

Everything else runs pretty good. That knee's not great. Oh, well. Do you got a warranty on it now that? You're fine. It's true. It's nice made of metal. real sturdy.

Yeah, it's tough, man. I want them to make the choice for themselves. And I almost am at the point where talking to people about higher education, more often than not, I hear them saying things like you did. Like, I would change. You know, I got value in certain areas, but the areas that they got value in seem to be smaller than the areas of their... By a substantial margin, I almost think there might be more value.

in a trade school if they want to go that way. There is as far as if you consider the route for higher education not to be learning more information, but to help you get better job placement. That's why I wanted to go to college was make more money than a high school degree was going to get me because money for me equals options. Yeah. And options are freedom. But like you said, it may not if you're entry level versus a trades job.

But you're going to be entry level. Look, that's why they don't pay 22-year-olds very much because you're fucking dumb. You're 22. Your brain doesn't work yet. It works a little bit. Oh, barely. It's barely worked out. At 22, there should be a couple years of like, which bills should we pay

this month for just a little bit. I think everybody goes through that phase. Should. But what I think is horrendous is a 22-year-old with six figures of debt already. Out of the gate. How are you going to pay that off? And the thing is

the people loaning the money, they They know. Of course they do. It's a giant. Oh. What would you? I can't think it would work. Scam? Yes. As far as the loan stuff goes. Predatory? Predatory. That's right. Yeah. That stuff really bums me out. It bums me out that we've also let the system get that way. I was very fortunate to have school paid for.

And, you know, my chick's school was paid for. She did college somewhere else. And my exes school, she had her parents helped her out. And she had a, in Louisiana, there's a, in Louisiana, there's a, deal that like it's a pretty minimum ACT score and curriculum for high school and they'll pay tuition at in-state colleges. Really? Yep.

It's called tops. Yeah, I don't know if it's still around, but I had it. So that plus my athletics was a full ride. And I also worked the whole time I was in school and my parents helped. And just to be able to come out of those four years

and not be saddled with incredible student. Other friends that go to PT school and stuff like that. And then I'm like, so man you don't really start getting a paycheck into your mid 40s yeah and you can't default on that loan but there's no way to back out of it and from my understanding too you know they'll accept these microscopic payments of course they will because the interest on that fucker is running perpetually

look it's the same fucking we get on the housing market too that the interest is like the boomer set us up my parents bought a house for 17,000 dollars that's probably worth 150 right now. Well, yeah. And my house, no matter where I buy it, is never going to be 10 times the value I paid for it. That'll never happen in my lifetime again. The house my dad lives in now. I want to say that he bought it for, I think it was no more than 250. This is my understanding, but I think it was in the ones, higher ones. Santa Cruz is a very small town, but it's close to Silicon Valley. So a lot of money comes over Highway 17. beach access, beautiful cliffs.

Yeah, Santa Cruz is lovely. His house, like the median cost of a house in Santa Cruz, is almost $800,000. It's a college town. He could say, and I don't understand. I mean, so sure, they bought that house when I was in the Navy, but even if that was 20 some years ago, that's a 5x increase in the value of his house, nearly a 5x increase in 20 years. That's fucking nuts.

Before the mortgage is paid off. Correct. Yeah, it'll never happen for me. Yeah. You know, I mean, fuck man, the first house I bought. Did a great job on that one. Really killed it. I bought the shittiest house I didn't mind living in.

Paid 96 grand for it in Louisiana in a terrible part of town. Ten years later, we caught a flood from a hurricane. I got four feet of water in it. Oh, no. I'll tell you side story on that. So four feet of water, I ended up gutting it and said, selling it to my neighbor for 40 grand. Buy high and sell low.

That's my investment strategy. The insurance covered me for another 40. So a house that I owned for 10 years, I sold for 82 grand. And the sweat equity that you put into that and the little things, are you... At least when I got it, man. So that's at least a difference in the mortgage thing because that would have been like 2006. They're handing them out. Yeah.

I had a handwritten letter from the tattoo shop I was working at saying I made X. And they were like, sounds good. You're approved for 350 grand. Stated income low. At 14% interest. What could go wrong? I remember that time period because I was, let's see, that was 6. So I was an E6 in the Navy, not pulling in gold de balloons every first and 15th.

Not walking around the fucking satchel of sapphires. And in the military, it's an Excel spreadsheet. What rank are you? How long have you been in? Now, there's some special pays that come with being in the special operations world. But other than that, like in the fleet navy, it's like, this is your rank. This is how long you've been in. And I'm watching people, E5s, E6s do stated income loans for $1.5, $2 million homes.

And it's like... I just can't imagine having a $10,000 mortgage. Well, imagine the complicity in these fucks running the paperwork, too. Like the broker or the real estate agent saying, oh, you're an E6 in the Navy. Would you like to look at this $2 million home? It's like, come on. Right. No, I'd like to say that the ethics of that, it would prevent them from doing it.

You know, goddamn well, they're probably taking three points on a $2 million home. I'll take $60,000. Also, they don't give a shit. If it forecloses, they'll sell it a second time. Well, their paperwork has already passed. That's actually a good point. Yeah, the mortgage broker will get a second stab at it. Right, perfect.

And they'll get the commission on your purchase and then maybe the sale. It's a no lose situation for them. For them. It's like divorce lawyers. You know who wins in a divorce when it comes to making money? The lawyers. Yeah. And so, I mean, whose responsibility is it then?

Is it an ethical thing? Or should the buyer say, I can't fucking afford that? I would like to think that people have enough personal accountability, responsibility, and integrity to say, this is how much money I make. I mean, they sell Lamborghinis, too. I'm not going to pick up one of those. I know. And like any smartphone, right, it's going to have a mortgage calculator.

Or just a calculator in general. Let's figure out what your monthly income is and maybe not commit yourself to an adjustable rate mortgage. I like about 80% to go to my housing. Well, and that's in the first two years because then after it flips, 172% of your income. It's... The adjustable rate thing. That was insane. I had a guy that I worked with who was a seal who went to...

Yeah, he went to jail, a little prison time for messing around with some paperwork. Oh, no. Yeah, it wasn't a good look. They'll get you. And the thing is, is he prayed on the community as well. You know, he was a trusted agent inside of that community, and it did some damage to a lot of people. And not the community of people you would want to fuck over. He's a little bit safer because he came from it, but a lot of machine guns.

Yep. He knows how to use one too, though. Sure, but there's only one. of him. Fuck. So how'd you meet John? Because that's how we're, where you and I eventually met.

I met John through, it would be the first time I ran into John. Maybe either through Kelly Staret or Mark Bell. I do not know Mark Bell, but I used to know Kelly well. We just haven't seen each other.

Kelly's great. We'll definitely see him while we're out on this trip. We'll make our way out that way. I've got a ruck I'm doing in San Francisco. Okay. Middle of next month.

It's like I'm doing a 50-mileer. A 50-mile rug? Yeah. Yeah. Let me how that goes. It's probably going to suck super bad if I'm guessing. I got to do a 20-pound pack. Look, for me...

Is there like a scale there? Yeah, probably. I'll just carry a 25-pack. It's fine. I'm just saying you could put a pillow in there. I got strong legs. And look, it's for me, after competing and doing the strength stuff as long as I did, I'm really enjoying kind of leaning into endurance stuff because I'm fucking bad at it.

And it's fun to feel progress again. Isn't Rob doing that too? Rob has been. Yeah, yeah. I do bikes. I'm not trying to run. This fake knee and running are way down. probably a little bit more low impact.

Also, bikes gives me more cool shit to buy. You can accessorize a bike. Oh, bikes are great. If you're running, it's like, look at these fancy shoes. Also, this Batman belt full of goo in other sugary things. Also, distance runners don't have a physical build that I'm interested in. I don't think, let's be honest, you're ever going to achieve a runner's physical build. I'm never going to be good at this, right?

You're a massive man. Yeah, when I got done with the Highland Games, I had success in that sport. I won two world championships and then the other seven years that I was a professional took second at worlds and had a great run. Chances of me finding a second sport that I'll be best in the world

that are pretty fucking slim. Most people don't find one. What do most people do after Highland Games? Because I mean, again, it's... Most just continue into like the master's class after 40 and just throw and have a good time. Is there a way to make a living doing that? Are they doing it as an enthusiast more than professional?

At that level, it's kind of enthusiast. The professional level, which I was at, there's money. Man, great. Assuming if you're winning. Yeah. So figure the years during that stretch where I'm one of the top two guys in the world the whole time, I would compete 20 times a year in about a six-month window. Oh, okay.

So the seasons April to the last weekend of September. So a minimum of two a month, sometimes three. Sometimes five weekends in a row. Wow. And travel out to them. And the Highland game is a cool loophole of athletics. They pay for your travel. There was prize money every week.

And I mean, took care of it. They flew us out. It's great. Do they have like a governing body that's covering that for you? No, which is even cooler. That it's just festivals. It's kind of WWE. We're there to entertain.

Okay. Right. The festival has the heavy athletics out, and now none of what we're doing is scripting, but we're there to put on a show. That's what the crowd wants to see, the caber and all this other shit. So I made about 25 grand most of those years. Total? Yeah. Not over the nine years, but per year I made $25,000.

In the Highland game. Yeah, having a hobby. Okay. That's a lot of work travel for $25,000. Yeah, but, you know, it's fly on Friday. come home Monday. And I loved it. It's great. I had a great time doing it. I got to do it. My brother competed in it and we got to hang out. And the other 10 guys that I was with every weekend, because the pro class is small. We all know who each other is. Same dudes every week. It's great. I got to spend

three weeks in Scotland during the summer and go compete over there. It was a great time. I knew this wasn't going to pay my bills. Okay. So I had a real job during all of that. That's when I was doing the outside sale stuff. And then that later pivoted into this apparel thing I have going out. So. Well, what's the apparel thing? It's called, um, hate brain goods. Do you know how long it took me to figure out your fucking Roman numerals? Yeah, I'm not sure it's been a smart decision, six years in now, but HV-I-I-I. And I'm sitting there looking at that. It's better than the current climate if I actually had it named hate. So that's the blessing I just try to look at. It's like, fuck, man, I'm glad I don't have to explain that to people. How'd you come up with that

name. So I think my brother came up with the how it's written. He was using it as like a gamer tag on Xbox or something like that. Of course he was. What game was he playing? At that time, I have no idea. I'm going to guess Call of Duty. There's a very statistically the odds are that was Call of Duty. That makes sense. And so yeah, did that and have run with it. But the hate was something that he and I had talked about like we've we've never been sports fans. I like athletes. and I like individuals and I like whatever that drive is. And so the example we always use is like Jerry Rice. This guy is pro-bowler, the best he could be.

And even into the later years in his career, he's still up at four like going to run sprints and run routes and try to get better. And I always looked at it as like, that dude hates himself more than I do. A perfect example of that is... Hate is the motivating factor. I'm assuming you know Rudy Reyes. Fuck. I don't know how I do know Rudy

I don't know how to describe him though Rudy hates himself more than I do Yeah In in a good way And potentially in a bad way too That's right yeah right He flashes himself It's not a bit

That's why he doesn't have a shirt It's easier And his shorts are far far too short at all times He's an amazing looking human He is One of the most fascinating people have ever met I have to agree with you on that as well too Yeah there's not a second

He's on I would describe it at all times I have never seen him not on. I have not either. Yeah. Yeah. It took me a few years to really get used to him and think, I'm like, man, you can just chill. We're hanging out.

Like, I don't need you to perform. And then I've come to the realization that what he's doing exercise-wise, Rudy is very aware of what Rudy's demons are. And this is how he keeps them chained up in sight and on top of them. It puts the lotion on the skin. Exactly. Or it gets the hose again. And so let Rudy be Rudy. I'm not trying to stop him.

I have to go off and on from watching his Instagram page because he freaks me out and then I need to take a break and then I can circle back. That's safe. And then he freaks me out and I circle back. Yeah. Yeah, he's... He was at the damn summit too.

Yep. The day that... Because I remember he was trying to answer the questions that I was asking. And I finally said, shut the fuck up, Rudy, in the middle of speaking at John's power athlete symposium. That ends up perfectly. He was sitting there like three rows back with a fucking scarf on, which Rudy always has a scarf on of some kind.

I'm assuming not sleeves. He's probably sawn sleeves at the top. Of course. It probably is a collared shirt with a ragged tear on the sleeves. Pants that were at the very least spray painted on. He's just a human GI Joe. He's an action figure. He's an action man.

That's an apt description. He is an action man. He originally got hired from Generation Kill to be a consultant. And then they realized no one else could play him. So they're like, fuck it. You're in. And he probably did an amazing job. It did a great job.

Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, that's how we originally met. Would you, had you met John before that? Yeah, I've known John for a while prior to that. I like what he has going on with the power of things. It's great. We've recently, myself and Derek Woodsky was another guy who spoke.

So he and I have recently started working with the company, train heroic and offering some programming that way too, which John and them have done great job of programming-wise. And so Derek and I kind of same age, background as far as track and field stuff, and we're kind of just wanted to write programming for like, are you kind of beat up, would like to feel good again, but also lift? Have you ridden hard and put your body way wet repetitively for decades? My favorite way I've ever heard it described was it's from Kelly. And he's like, look, at the end of my life, whenever they decide to cut this tree in half and examine the rings, there's 15 years of fire damage. Kelly is such a unique, dude. I worked with him in my early days working for CrossFit.

We would see him all the time. I think he actually referenced me in his leopard book. Probably. Speaking of dumpster fires, how has CrossFit been? You know, it's been interesting. So today is, you know, it's July 3rd. I have to be very careful with what I say because I, there's more to come is my understanding. And the reality is it's not for me too.

say anyway because the things that I believe are going to come are about other people being able to speak. And the last thing that I want any of that stuff portrayed as is something that is being driven by me or me having an accident. And I read your article and it's great because you spoke about what your experience was. And didn't. And in hopes that it would allow people to speak from their experience. And I hope so too. What I will say is, you know, it's been, so I did in a podcast episode, the New York Times wrote an article, Business Insider, actually came out with one today about a different version of the story. Like I said, there's more to come. But the difference between what I know now and what I know then is startling to me.

And I've actually spent a lot of time thinking about those environments, thinking about how does this shit happen and working it backwards from just utterly catastrophic, horrendous shit to what it is that I saw. And my perspective on it has changed substantially. There's a lot of small things that I think add up in the aggregate. There's a lot of just things that would be easily ignored, but now it's like, oh, that makes sense. That's why that person would behave like that. That's why those comments are made.

And you brush them off at the time. Yeah, hindsight, right? You don't have a frame of reference to say, that felt odd. Or how somebody could say something fucked up and they would do it in a perspective where they're judging the reaction of other people. If somebody is like, hey, man, like you shouldn't talk like that, okay, well, I'm not going to push that person any farther.

But if somebody else laughs and doesn't say anything about it, perhaps that's somebody that you could pressure a touch more and pressure, you know what I mean? It's just, it has consumed my brain for the last few weeks. It's been tough. I've had multiple stretches of nights where I've had a really difficult time sleeping. I mean, it weighs on me that I, that what I didn't realize what was happening so close. It really weighs on me. You know, again, that perspective's tough, right? And it's always easy in hindsight to look back and say, I should have said something, stood up or this and that. But it's so easy when you're so limited to being around those people that you can especially say how people act when they know they're going to be dealing with, say, someone like you with this Navy SEAL background and think, you know, this hard edge guy.

Maybe I'll say some shit to kind of. Except I'm not. And if they said shit like that, I'd be like, yeah. Of course. But you're also talking about people who say shit like that. They're not smart. Yeah, it's true. And so it's easier to just be like, all right, that was a one-off.

Maybe this isn't a guy I want to hang out with. And you just operate in your world of like noted. Yeah. And then you don't realize that like, fuck, everyone you deal with, it's this. Yeah, I'll be interested to see how it all nets out. I think it'll be a while before a level of scrutiny and clarity comes to the whole thing. But I think the more attention that is paid to it, the more will. come out and I think that I think that the organization will probably survive and I wanted to survive.

It should. And I tried to be very clear about that in the video that I did. I like the methodology. I think it's beautiful and its efficiency and effectiveness. But at the same time, if there are systemic issues at an organization, which leadership drives culture, we should we should observe those things. We should objectively look at them and then the corrections should be made that need to be made. As someone who's never worked with HQ, but know a lot of folks who have. Yeah. I didn't think it wasn't common knowledge that HQ was full of shitty people and not full of. I know what you mean, though. Right.

And again, this was the leadership. It's been this way. It has been this abusive scumbag mentality for so long. And then when I think it's easier to, I would agree with you. I don't think that it was anything but an open secret. I don't think that people were totally shocked. I think the difference is, and this is purely my opinion and viewing this from a distance, for a long time, their star was on the rise and they could push and maneuver how they wanted to.

Yeah, they could do no wrong. They were just printing gold. But when your star is on the decline, your latitude to do that and to pressure people and to basically say it's our way or the highway, it decreases rapidly. But how weird is it ego-wise to never look at maybe this is what's the cause? is, you know, what's driving that boat is actually what's causing the decline. I think it's really impressive that they built such a strong community that it will happily fucking survive without their leadership. It will 100%.

If CrossFit headquarters, and this is not what I want to have happen, but if it were to cease to exist overnight, the community would be fine. They'd have some branding issues, and I'm sure they would split in. But they're already doing that now. Everyone's disassociating. I don't know everybody. I don't know the exact numbers. The five gems I know personally have. Yeah. And they have a lot. They say that they have 15,000.

And again, I don't know any of the legitimacy of the numbers when they talk about overall scale or overall de-affiliations. It had an impact for sure. But I never understood what the gyms got from being an affiliate other than able to call their gym a CrossFit gym. Because I never saw them support the local scene. You got a guy cruising around on private jets and you have a bunch of five. fucking gym owners trying to get their shit together. That'd be a better question for... I don't know, right?

And it's just something I think about. And it's... CrossFit, to me, as someone who's come from the strength and fitness industry, and that's still where I make the majority of my income, nothing has put more barbells in people's hands than CrossFit. And this, to me, fuck yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've heard many Olympic lifting coaches saying that CrossFit essentially saved...

USA weightlifting. Yeah. Of course. The resurgence of, you know, Lumber plates. I mean, I don't think I had it. I mean, Rogue's business. Yeah.

And they've diversified incredibly too. I can't even begin to think of like trying to keep up with that growth curve financially. Bill and Katie are behind the wheel of a behemoth. I love seeing their growth. I love them as people. They're awesome. But yeah, try to keep up with that machine. Be like, all right, let's, uh, we'll double capacity.

And then before that building's done, we need to double it again. And then build another one. and then another one, and then to be able to pivot during the pandemic time. Anything that grows that fast, you have to be worried about that it loses steam that fast. Of course. And like, fuck, are we standing here now holding our dicks with this 50,000, 500,000 square feet at campus? Whoa, my chair broke. Oh, no.

I remember the first time I saw a bumper plate, and it was at a CrossFit gym. Okay. And now it's like, it's weird if you don't see one. Right. But nobody had seen them before. Like 24-hour fitness, I'm in the early 2006, 7, 8, 9, 10th. And like you're, you're going to have some octagonal plates that were made out of metal, maybe coated in the spray paint of rubber, and you were going to be clanging and banging those sons of bitches. Whenever I was doing Strongman before CrossFit had kicked, uh, like, I mean, we had two training groups and both of them were out of storage units.

We just kept all of our equipment in a storage unit. We'd all show up on Saturdays and run strongman events, right? Yeah. We all chipped in and paid 70 bucks a month for this storage unit that 10 people paid for. So and that's essentially what boxes became. Yeah. And I love it as far as I like the methodology. I like the idea of the training.

I love that it's getting people active. They have a sense of community. There's a lot of really great things about it. Right. And it got a hard time for a long time about bad coaching. But fucking bad coaches exist in anything. I was doing jiu-jitsu earlier today. And the coaches that have are phenomenal.

Not all coaches are phenomenal. Some of them are suck. Some of them are creepy. That was the sport that I really wish I could have pivoted into. Jiu-Jitsu? Yeah. Oh, you would have ripped people's fucking arms off. Yeah, I just can't now.

You don't think you could? I'm not flexible enough. I can't deal. That's going to be a problem. Like, if you go anywhere near my leg, I'm just going to tap. Please don't touch me. That's 50% of your body? I'm terrified of it.

Yeah. I suck at jujitsu. Trust me. I've been at it for two years now, and it's a constant, like, almost every day, like, scratching your head. Like, I don't understand how this works. I was able to take classes for about six months prior to total knee replacement. And I really, really liked it. And I went in and was very, very clear with the owner of the gym and the guys that I was rolling with of like, hey, man, I'm here to learn.

And the way I took it, right, was I know that I've got this strength level card to play in my pocket. But I don't want to play that card. I'm not interested in going in there and just being a gorilla to tap someone out and try. training to prove a fucking point. What at a certain experience level, your strength is going to get used against you. Of course. So I want to go in and be gentle and try to figure out technique because if I can get a foundation technique with your attributes and then have that ability.

No, thank you. No thank you. Right. And then you would be a nightmare with like solid foundations and fundamentals and then your strength. You would be a nightmare. Yeah. Now at this, this is the weight I would want to do it at 290 meetings.

not so much. I would just attack your knee, your bad one. I would identify which one it is and try to head butt it like, oh yeah. He taps and he works anytime I'm even near it.

I breathed on it. But there's great coaches in Jiu-Jitsu and there's ones that suck. I hear people that people criticize CrossFit all the time. Like all it is is high-rep, high-weight Olympic weightlifting.

It's like that's no, no. That's not it at all. And that's not the experience you're going to get if they watch the CrossFit games. Like, well, I don't want to do that. I'm like, that's not the experience you're going to get

at an affiliate gym. you're probably going to be handling a PVC pipe for a substantial more than you would want to and you should have. Yeah. And you might do some Olympic weightlifting, but they're going to teach you first. Like that's what a good coach is going to do that controlled exposure. But yeah, the misconceptions about it kind of abound. I hope, I know that the community will be okay.

I hope that CrossFit headquarters can become what I think the community needs. But I do personally believe that there's some changes that have to occur for sure beyond just the ownership change that's been announced. Right. Yeah, I mean, shit, what they put Castro in control for about 48 hours. Yeah, I don't know. It might have, I think it might have been a week.

But again, it makes sense to have a guy who comes in with that robust business background to run a business. I'm not saying that Dave is incapable of it. But if you want to turn that into what I think it can become, you probably want some experience business people. I think between Greg and Dave, at least for my outside look, in, Dave's not been liked generally for a long time. I don't know if it's a smugness or what have you. Personality-wise, it's abrasive. It's a real punchable face. I don't know if that's the right term. I am going to- Allegedly. Yeah, I'm not even going to answer on that one because I consider Dave to be a friend. Okay. Here's the thing. He and I aren't close. We didn't serve

together. I respect him because of our shared background. Before I, I, I, I'm not even, actually released the podcast that I did about Greg. I called Dave and I told him that it was coming. And I told him it's because of respect of our shared background and he was the new CEO. But we're not close. And what I can say is, is I understand exactly why people feel that way. And everybody should make their own opinion. And I'm also aware, too, that I don't fucking know the guy. Yeah. The only interaction I've ever had with him was like the CrossFit Open in 2015. There was a handful of us that got disqualified during it because they, uh, The video portion where you submit? No. It was like a 15A, 15B. And maybe I've got the year wrong. But it was like a triplet of toes to bar, this light deadlift at like 175, and then a snatch at 175. And it was like, do as many rounds of this as you can in nine minutes.

Something about that. And then you've got six minutes to put up the heaviest clean and jerk you can. And then they were scored separately. And as in like two separate events. Gotcha. So a bunch of us got together and realized that that's how they're scoring it. And for, especially with the way the teams get picked, like your athletes that put up the numbers don't have to go with your team to regionals as long as they're in your gym. Oh, I remember hearing something about this.

Yeah. I went in at the time. You were able to game the system, weren't you? Yeah, yeah. I've got a 375 clean and jerk. And so. Me too. It's not big too.

Right. So why wouldn't I go help my local gym? Right. So I did one toast to bowl. bar. You did one rep of each? No, I did one toast to bar and then fucking hung out and went to go get ready to do a clean a jerk.

And they decued me. And they should have. Yeah, I get that. You were gaming it. I remember this happening. I should have. Yeah. My issue was, is it got, someone said it to them during the live of like, well, do you think people will sandbag the first half to do this? And he's like, well, it's not going to help you, but it would have

helped the team because they were scored separately. All they had to do to fix that problem was combine the reps plus the weight. Correct. To a cumulative score. Easy day. Yeah. But I got a bunch of emails from Dave. Oh, directly? Yeah, because they cut my score. And I respond to us like, I think you should. But I think it would also be terribly foolish to take the moral high road as a gym and not participate this way. And then your team doesn't go to regionals. Yeah, just create a better rule set. That's all it was.

But if these are the rules you're giving us, cool. We'll come play. And they were like 20. of us who got the boot. And we just laughed. It was like, we are the anaerobic. We are the strong. Yes. Yeah, of course.

Totabar, I'll be over here getting rid into a lift. But then they let some of the guys who put up big lifts like do one round. And I'm like, okay,

so where are we calling the minimal amount of effort that makes it qualified score? Yeah, now you're talking about subjectivity. And so my issue with that is the posturing. If I'm not giving it 100%,

I'll just do fucking one. Yeah. I mean, it's just as stupid as me doing it for 45 seconds to finish one round and then walk over. It's an interesting CrossFit is an interesting ecosystem. But my exchange with Dave then was, it was fine. Yeah, that's good. It wasn't aggressive. Just personality-wise, he doesn't seem like a guy I'd want to have beers with.

And here's the thing. His personality is his to defend. Absolutely right. You know, so people can judge however they want to. I'm sure there's plenty of people out there who feel the same way about me. And fuck all of you who feel that way about me. I'm the nicest person ever. Except for the people, to the people that I don't like.

So what drew you to the military? You know, that's a tough one for me to answer. And that's the same answer that I got from a lot of the people that I worked with. It was, I think it had something to do with the nature of the exclusivity. The, I don't know what the exact word would be, but just the idea of what that job was. So you didn't regular enlist and then. I did, yeah. Okay.

Yeah. I went from high school, boot camp, boot camp to the occupational school, that operation specialist, A school to Buds and then Buds into the CEO community. Okay. Straight shot. It's what I wanted to do since I was like 11 years old. Well, then that's the draw. Yeah. But again, I don't know why that community was the draw. I don't know why it was that instead of Branger, Green Bray. I didn't see the movie until much, much later. But fuck yeah, I watched that. Some jump off a bridge out of the back of that jeep. Yeah, that shit doesn't work.

MP5s and handlebar mustaches. Powerful. No mex flight suits. I go back and I watch that movie. I'm like, oh my God. I love your breakdown of action movies and shit like that because one of my favorites is the hard-on people have for John Wick. Yeah. And the Keanu Reeves gun training and this and that.

Meanwhile, I like movies. And I realize what I'm watching there. And it's the same thing I'm watching with Fast and Furious. These are superhero films. Essentially, yes. Well, there's a two-minute clip in the first John Wick where he goes into a place and they're like, we have a suit that looks exactly like a suit and bullets can't penetrate it. You just made him invincible.

And we never ever have to deal with the fact that he doesn't get shot the rest of three movies. This is true. That's all they did. They're like, Ring of Invincibility. Here you go, bud. Spell casted. I haven't thought about that. They hand him an invincibility suit and then he can just run around holding the jacket like this a bunch.

No one shoots him in the hand? Yeah, that movie is a movie. It's a movie. Same as Fast and Furious. I don't believe the rock can hold a chain attached to a Black Hawk and then pull it back and hook the chuck to it. I am 100% positive. He cannot do that. I don't know.

He's pretty strong. Yeah, there's a lot of torque. The amount of those movies. The amount of those movies just say, fuck it. And the amount of money that they make. It's incredible. But they are wildly entertaining. Because people go in there and they put their butts in the seats knowing that this is a fuck it movie.

It's not a documentary. That's how I view Joe. Like, I can make it through John Wick because I'm not sitting there looking for tactical instruction or guidance. Perfect. It's entertainment. It's pure entertainment.

I go in there and I'm like, all right, dude, I mean, it's a revenge movie. Yeah. I can get behind some revenge. I like Kill Bill too. Yeah, I can get behind some revenge shit. So yeah, I'm going to watch it for that

because people ask me to critique that movie. I'm like, listen. That's not what that movie is. And he's actually doing a really good job. Look, there's a big difference in the tone of John Wick and say, Sicario. Yes. For sure.

Sicario has one of the worst tactical scenes ever. With the guy in the car. With the fucking bolt locked to the rear and he's just looking through it. Well, he likes it as binoculars in a club, basically. It works better that way than actually. Here's the thing, though, an eotech is not a binoculars. It's a zero-powered holographic site. And I know how that stuff happens, having done some technical advising stuff now, it's just a shot that was done.

And nobody saw it. And the editors don't pay attention to it. And it's like, hey, here we go. I've shot quite a bit, not any amount that should register. but been around it enough. Own a handful of guns, enjoy shooting. The one thing that movies fuck up for me is how loud guns are.

If you fire a gun in a car... Oh, they put a suppressor on. It's like, yeah, get out of here. You fire a gun in a car through the windshield? No one talks for the next two months. Well, not even that. You are basically going to powderize glass, and that shit is going to get in...

It's in everywhere. Like, you need to have eye pro, ear pro. You need to be like buttoned up because glass, powder glass gets everywhere. Yeah, and I also love it too when they shoot from in a car through the windshield and they're accurately hitting things like hundreds of yards away. It's like, no, no, no. Like, your rounds like, pyr, pyr, pyr, they're all over the place.

Or shooting like this out of it. Like, you're not hitting anything with a pistol at that distance. Most people, you can't hand a pistol to and at 30 feet hit anything. Yeah, they'll hit the earth at some point. Yeah, that's about it. But like an eight-inch steel target, no chance. So who do you train now? Like, what do you say you spend most of your time doing strength and conditioning?

Is that online training? Time is the apparel company. Okay. Well, you said you make most of your income, I guess, from the strength of the industry. Well, that community. Okay. That's where the apparel company is based. It came from a book I wrote about training for the Highland Games, those type of things.

And the hate was one of the mindsets that I had spoke about with athletes. So they'd like be willing to fucking do the work. Yeah. Like, be accountable to you because it matters to you. And hate is a powerful motivator. Worse for me. Yeah. You know, and it's looking.

Hopefully you don't hate other people and aren't motivated by that. No. No. Self-motivation through self-motivation. Self loathing. Self-loathing. Yeah, there's a healthy amount of self-loathing in there of like, what I see in the mirror today's not good enough for tomorrow.

It's nothing like rolling out of bed and seeing yourself in the mirror. Like, you are a piece of shit. You know your day is going to go well if you start like that. That's a good start. Positive self-talk. Self-talk, right? Like, it's you again, huh? Fuck, I thought I was done with you.

Man, the best is like looking back at photos that I've definitely taken. It's like, oh, yeah, I look sweet. And I'm like, woof. Like, you're still 280, bud. You look like memory foam. So the journey through an apparel brand. I'd have to imagine that was full of left and right turns and pitfalls along the way. I did it a lot different than most people.

I knew some folks who were doing it, and I had no interest in starting one. I had the books, and I was just going to continue to put a book out every year and also keep this regular outside sales job. How many books did you write? I have three. Okay. They're all based on that working on another one about. the knee and some other shit.

There are all the three you have written though about Highland Games preparation? There's one that is like the actual throws events for Highland Games with a bunch of like shot by shots of technique and how to break down the events and then how to program the events for a season to peak when you should want to peak. Then I have a strength conditioning version of that for how to train for the Highland Games for a full season. Okay. The third book was basically a general

strength and conditioning version of one specified for the Highland games. So like, oh, you don't want to compete in stuff or you want to do powerlifting. Here's how my methodology would play. So they got broader. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So everyone could train this way.

And so, yeah, did that and then got into the apparel. I had a buddy of mine reached out who was doing some apparel for someone else. And he's like, have you thought about doing T-shirts? I think you got enough interest. I'm like, fuck, man, I don't want to do that. I got a real job. been like, I don't, I don't, I don't have time. T-shirts aren't a real job, man. I don't, I don't have time to box up four shirts today and go to the fucking post office. Because the way

the outside sales jobs work is, I'm gone a lot. I traveled. And then I'm traveling to compete. Like, I'm not home. And so I can't do it. And he's like, oh, well, I've got a warehouse and we do all this for another guy. A little drop ship action, if you will. And so I was like, now you have my interest. And so he's like, well, if you come up with the design, we can print one, photograph it, you get the site up. We'll do a pre-order. And whatever that turns into, we did a pre-order of our first shirt, October of 2014, had about a hundred of them sell in two weeks. Is that good or bad? It's okay. Okay. I mean, I don't have a work, I mean, whatever it was, right? Yeah. And so- Better than zero. Lusely, we're talking about a 50% margin.

Okay. So I sold 100 shirts, had money. Made double your money. Printed 200 more shirts. I see where this is going. That's basically what I did. And then the pivot from there was we now drop new items probably three out of four weeks of the month. Really?

Yeah, I put out a lot of stuff. I like doing the graphic design work. So is it mostly like lifestyle T-shirts? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's not heavy lifting stuff. There's no barbells on any of the shirts. Is it affliction, like gold and silver macramee? It is.

It's really nice. Very bejoled. I like... Dazzled, if you will. I like a contrast-colored stitching on my jeans. It's a really good look. I know some people who wear bedazzled jeans. It...

They live in Dallas. No. They're from the Dallas Fort Worth. I'm not going to use any names. I know somebody here. Oh, no. It gets me every time. Oh, man.

It's a... It's an odd look. I support people having an odd look for themselves. Here's the thing. If you like odd shit, you go do odd shit. I'm not going to judge you to your face. I'm happy. But I might think things that I don't say.

The contrast stitching on your jeans is essentially the same as like a shitty bumper sticker on your car, letting me know that we don't have to hang out. We don't need to waste each other's time here. And so, yeah, did that and then made more stuff and pivoted. I figured, look, I have very simple way to break down this. I have new customers and I have return customers. And if I only sell one shirt, only new customers can give me their money. But if I make new stuff, I can appease these people that have had my back and keep putting stuff out.

And try to do it all with some message. Like we dropped a line of stuff yesterday. And it was a be harder to kill. I support that. Yeah. I think that's important. I think that we should be more resilient. I think we should be challenged.

I think we should find something to adapt to. I mean, fuck man, the body loves adapting to whatever you give it. It's incredible that it can go from being what I was to... I did a 27-mile bike ride this morning with a bunch of climbing and feel great. It's almost as if the body was designed to adapt. I'm not a doctor. No, it adapts to the stimulus that you give it. It's amazing that women can grow a whole person inside of them,

and I can't fix this knee. Yeah, yeah. Figure out some wiring on that one. But, oh, well. Yeah. It's a knee. I wouldn't change it. The life experience was worth it.

Well, you're still pretty young. Yeah. You got a, well, you got a warranty on that thing. You might have to get it switched out from time of time. Probably, but the second one's not that bad. Says who? Well, all right. So I had eight surgeries that were really shitty.

Like MCL, ACL, Tendent types of? Four ACLs that didn't take. So I went in, got an ACL and basically did 90 days of really hard rehab. And your body rejected it, essentially? It just ate it. Really? It's just gone. So any cadaver tissue my body's not into.

I had burned. So I tore an ACL in college and got it fixed and did a patella for my own patella. They couldn't, they were going to use a hamstring tendon, pulled it, couldn't use it, and then used the patella. So that whole leg's cashed on organic parts. I'm not going into the good knee to fix the bad one. Yeah, I agree with you on that one. If I got a working vehicle, the toy car can hang out. That sounds like a risky proposition.

I don't need two bad knees. Yep. And so it was a bunch of ACLs and then trying to get out of pain. And chronic pain is really what changed everything. That's what kind of led to everything really changing in the last. four years, three years. Yeah, was being, like, going from taking second in the world at a competition till I couldn't walk upstairs. Like, I had to left foot forward, drag the right.

Fuck. And being still fit, and, like, it just felt trapped inside a machine that I don't know how to operate. And... I know the feeling, man. What the fuck are we doing? We can't jump. or when you tell your body to do something I had some neuropathic issues from my injury

I got at work and I remember sitting there inside of my body I was like screaming as loud as I could to move my toes and they wouldn't move. Like I felt like I was complete drop foot so I'm sitting there and I can feel my foot and I know like I can use my other foot like I understand the electrical impulses to try to get

and I'd be like inside I'd just be like as hard as I could. To. Wood move. Fuck. So frustrating. Now, what caused the drop foot? An interaction with an AK-47 round to my sciatic nerve.

That'll do it. It will do it. Yeah. Not like you kneeled too long. No. But that's happened too. So Kelly had dropped foot. Sturrette?

Yeah. I mean, it's probably because he's a sissy, though. That's true. That's, I believe, the medical term. Yeah, he got it from a kayak. Like he was just... He got dropped for it from a kayak? Yeah, because he was sitting.

So in the position that he's in in the boat, you're sitting on a... your knees. Okay, that makes sense so far. Like sitting on your ass on your heels, right? That doesn't sound awesome. And they were in a race, Kelly's a damn good, boat guy. Yep. It was, I think, at a World Championship or something like that.

And he just got into a bad position and felt it going numb, but they're in the middle of it. He's like, we got to go. Went through it. And got out, and a couple months of dragging it. The nerve stuff was frustrating, not only because I couldn't move it, but because I would go and talk to these doctors who had spent the vast majority of their life in school. and all they would say to me is, eh, we don't know. Nerves, millimeter a day, inch a month.

And like, what does that mean? They're like, well, your nerve is going to regrow until it stops regrowing and what you have left is going to be what you have left. It was very frustrating to not get, and it's not their fault, but from the person receiving the information was very frustrating to get, yeah, I don't know.

I can't even imagine that, right? Like, I've dealt with shit and I don't mind rehab because at least rehabs work. Yeah, you're active. I can't imagine not even being able to get to the research, because it doesn't fucking work. They put e-stem, they put an e-stem pad on my leg for like an hour. That would be my rehab, but I would sit there and like, first of all, I can't feel this.

It's not doing anything. Oh, you just get nothing. No movement. There was really nothing. I mean, they could fire the muscles electronically, you know, in place of the nerve, but it's not like it was helping me being able to control it. And then slowly months later, I was like able to twitch my, my big toe. But I could have, you know, you could have taken a pinky finger on a child, could have just,

Pushed it back over. Yeah. And I still have residual. I roll my ankle all the time because it would have to be really careful. But yeah, that injury, the chronic pain. If you haven't experienced that, it's tough to describe on how that, for me, at least, imploded my emotional mental state. Yes. For me, what it was, I attribute it to, as I've never dealt with long-term depression, I guess would be the term.

Everyone's got moments. Oh, for sure. But I think it has to be similar in a way that like It's like having someone tap your shoulder trying to get your attention 24 hours a day And even if you stop to give them attention they don't give a shit they're just still tapping you saying hey hey hey hey And it's people think that if you're in chronic pain or depressed that like like man we went out last night and he was laughing and having a good time and all this like yeah because I can deal with it Also as soon as I'm alone had some cocktail Hills.

Right. Don't have a bunch of weed before I got there and everything was great. Hey, man. It's people need to do what they need to do to get out of chronic pain. I have no judgment. Dude. So I, I have completely quit drinking.

Well, not completely, but I don't really. I may be one or two drinks a month. My desire to drink has just augured in the last few weeks. I fucking hate being hung over. Yeah. And I'm very pro-drug.

There's a lot of great stuff out there. They're chemicals that are either positive or negative for you. This is your choice. They don't give a shit. And so, I mean, Look, even the pain meds from all the surgeries. Now, I was very lucky and not running into that, but I was aware of it.

You know, I knew that monster exists. Yeah. And the only times I got nervous about it was they'd stopped down regulating me, and I would feel things speed up. But get lethargic at the same time. I'm like, nope, we're done with that. Yeah, there's some crazy shit. So, yeah, cannabis changed everything for me. It's, you know, in the Navy, obviously you can't use any of that stuff.

And they're, the Navy is obviously a part of the military in general. I cannot speak for the military in general. But what I would say in my experience is big pharma is a lot, it is the solution actually to what ails you. If you go in and you've got a headache, you're going to get a sandwich bag full of 800 milligram motrons. If you go and you're in chronic pain or you have a procedure done, you're going to get oxycott and oxycodone. Perkisset, you know, fill in the blank. It's, you know, my mom died of cancer in 2010. And she got to a place where non-smokers lung cancer, survivability rate of essentially nothing. My old man, I lost in 14 to pancreatic. It's fucking gnarly. So did he go down the chemo route?

Yep. My mom did as well too. And I was overseas when this was happening. So it was 11 months from diagnosis to death? My mom would be at about eight. And this was, she had had cancer previously 10 years before and so she was the second time being diagnosed with it. So she went down the chemo route, you know, the platinum therapy and all

that stuff and I was overseas so I didn't, I didn't experience this directly. But in talking with or emailing with my sister and my dad, you know, she got to a place where the chemo was going to kill her or the cancer was going to kill her. That's the plan. That's how they run chemo. Well, I mean, yeah,

I mean, it kills essentially everything, right? That's why it's so hard on your immune system. We just hope you can survive longer than the cancer. Well, my dad started making my mom pop brownies. Right. And it helped her sleep. And it helped her, you know, have an appetite. I tried really hard and my dad just wouldn't.

Well, there's a lot of people who are very resistant to it. Which I didn't understand because I know he had smoked at a previous time in his life. I was resistant to it too. For whatever reason, it had this negative connotation to me in my head of and I don't even know what it was. It was probably just because they harped on it so much when I was in the Navy, like, you know, you get drug tested. Not that often. How old are you?

42. Okay. I'm 37, so we've got a handful of years between us. Yep. I mean, we all came up with the J.S.A. No thing. Yeah. And that is part of it. That got ingrained at a very young age that this leads to you being a fucking loser.

That is true. That certainly was the narrative. And it's, you know, to watch the impact that it had on my mom, I am of the opinion. My thing is, first off, like, I want people to be able to do whatever they want to do. Same boat. And if people are not impacting my life, if they're not trying to say my freedoms are more important than yours, I really don't care what people do or believe. I don't argue with people on the internet. Exactly same boat.

Fucking go be you. I don't care. Yeah. Do you want to wear a thong on backwards with a fucking tiara? Go ahead. I don't care. Don't do that shit around my kids and don't do it around me. Right.

As long as there's not legislation against it. And yeah. And then so when it comes to stuff like we, like it has had such. a positive impact and benefit on my mom's life. And I've seen it in so many other people's that I think it should be classified as a medicine. But here's the thing. You can take it too far, just like you can take Motrin too far. You can also take cheeseburgers too far. Yeah. So it's, and I don't know how to legislate that. We can't start protecting people from what could be dangerous from down the road. We sell alcohol and cigarettes, no fucking problem. Well, if we were going

to protect people from what could be dangerous, we would never drive or fly or do any of that stuff. So that's a crazy argument. Also, we're aware it's not a gateway. and for some people it is though and that you know it can be um I think it I think broad terms when it comes to any drugs are tough this is a gateway drug it's like that might be a gateway drug maybe some people

I know people who legitimately have addictive personalities yep oh yeah yeah they had their I was there when they had their first beer and I'm like whoa right you can see that you watch them no longer exist well yeah and then it's like the next day and the next day and the next day whereas for me I'm like I could go out and party and then the next day I'm like I don't have a design I'm exactly the same thing.

I could shut it off for years. I actually went one time. I was like, I don't want to drink anymore. I didn't drink for two years. Not that I was drinking an excessive amount, but it was more an exercise and self-control. I do the same thing with cannabis. Every so often, it's just pump the brakes and reset the clock. You need like 72 hours to completely clean out receptors.

And for some people, that wouldn't work because they do have an addictive personality. I know that people say, you know, marijuana is not addictive, but it can. No, what feeling good is. That's what I'm saying. It can have an emotional addiction or, you know, beyond just the physiological and I'm okay with that. There's no chemical dependency, but there is an emotional. And that's why I, you know, broad statements like, this is not a gateway.

Like, yeah, it could be. This is not addictive. It could be. You know what I mean? So with that said, I was the other drugs I have gotten into with psychedelics have followed the use of cannabis. What's your experience been like with those? Because I've had some friends that I know now that are exploring psychedelics and an attempt to, And this is me speaking for them.

And I'm sorry for the, if they may hear this, if I'm describing this improperly. This is my description of what I think they were saying. To close the chapter on a lot of the stuff from the previous occupation or to find healing from a lot of the stuff from the previous occupation or to just maybe just re-center themselves as a human being. What is, I mean, to me, I have not tried it. I have not tried psychedelics.

To be honest, me, they scare the shit out of me. Sure. because I mean I don't really have any experience I felt the same way for a very very long time I always looked at it as like man that's one of those things people talk about that like there's there's a finite moment of the day before that and you were different after yeah right and people I mean so I've quite a bit of experience with mushrooms LSD and over New Year's when did four days of ayahuasca and all of which I would consider very beneficial even the difficult trips I've had. So I've a friend of mine described that. He described it as a difficult trip because of what he was forced to, I guess, observe and work his way through. Is that what you're talking about when you say difficult?

Basically the scenario that is presented to you. Yeah. And also just like set and setting. I fucked up one day and was planning on being on a long hike and the hike was closed. And so like got a quarter mile into this trail to an impassable. option and then got back to my vehicle with a group of people and then we ended up going to like some brewery to hang out on a Sunday and now I've got five or six grams of mushrooms in

me and going into this brewery and like I sat in the truck for a while just trying to get my shit together to go in. Figure out what planet you were hunting. To just be like and I'm always capable to to not let it get carried away in my head because I can say this is a thing you took. Yeah. The weirdness you're feeling. You can separate it.

Yeah. So get your shit together and go in like this was a choice. You took this. I feel like I would have skipped the brewery. Well, I didn't have that option. And so I had nine people with me and by the time I got inside there, I walked in and it's really loud and a shitload of people and like kids. And it was one of those like big open type things. And they had ski ball and a bunch of other shit, right? Family, family stuff. And I just sat in the corner, sunglasses back on, hat down. and just sat. And the visualizations I kept getting about my anxiety was this, like snake eating its own tail. And while I'm stewing, I want the fuck out of here. But I have seven other people with me that are having a great fucking time. I chose to take this. Yeah. And so that lesson I kept seeing was as long as I don't give this snake something else to focus on and keep the venom on itself,

this will eat itself and fizzle out. And it did. And so maybe the lesson there is sometimes the discomfort you're feeling is yours and shut the fuck up. You're okay. I'm in a chair in a place that's air conditioned. I'm not in danger. Deal with the turmoil in your head and you'll be okay. Just keep breathing.

Yeah. You're not in danger. Right. And so that was a very useful day for me to later on be able to reference for patients and just being in an uncomfortable setting. like it's okay. You were able to draw from that in environments where you were obviously removed from that physically and under the impact or the effect of those drugs. Yeah, it has long-lasting effects of being in different situations and being able to realize

pinpoint what I'm actually being bothered by and whether or not it matters. And if it doesn't matter, it's gone. What was your experience like with ayahuasca? That was the difficult trip that he described. He said it was a very intense experience. So we did four days. My girlfriend and I had gone to... When you say that, do you mean back to back to back to back? Yeah, so we've gone to Costa Rica.

We're at a facility called Rhythmia, and it was great. Why did you decide to go there to the facility? I had been looking at different places. I've had some other friends that are far more experienced in this line than I am, and I knew that I wanted to try ayahuasca. And like anything else, this opportunity presented itself. And so I was like, okay, I didn't have to find you. Made the decision for you.

Yeah, they found me. They were interested because of the podcast for me to come, paid for the trip. Oh, and I got to go spend seven days at this resort. And the resort, a bit more like a rehab facility as far as resort goes. Well, from my understanding, a lot of people will use ayahuasca as an attempt in their journey through rehab. Yeah. I do think it's very valuable for a lot of that. if you're okay with looking in the mirror.

What were you looking for going there? Why did you decide that you wanted to try ayahuasca? I wanted to let go of frustration and pain and a bunch of those type of things, just from dealing with my knee and being frustrated and still being hurt and nine surgeries and losing my sport. Look, it's still really frustrating that, like, this never got hurt. This still knows how to compete and fucking throw. Everything below it can't, though. Right.

I know exactly what you're talking about. Man, I dialed it in for 10 years and I got to be the best in the world at a fucking thing. And, you know, there's a lot of sports, but I'm aware that the two years that I won, there wasn't a human that could beat me. And that's cool. And I can't ever do it again. Like, I can't kind of casually go have a fun time doing that sport. It's gone. All of that years and all of that, it's gone.

And so, like, I mean, what's that? Spending your life, learning how to master the guitar and then lose your hands? That would be a bitch. And so even further from that, like, the way that I like to train is heavy and explosive. Can't do that either. So now how I mitigate stress has been taken from me. So it led to a lot of frustrations with injury and chronic pain back to those things. So I was really hoping to figure out some deeper things there to let go.

And one of the nights I had, I ended up in this really deep conversation with my knee and hip. I did not think you were going to say knee and hip, but okay. So there's four nights of this. So like I had two nights that I basically got nothing. Okay. Just nothing at all. Really? Yep.

Just nothing. It happens called a Nata. And the third night is French for nothing. Right. Yes. A linguist you are. This is great. And the conversation with my knee and hip, it was like they started it.

It was this like, hey, man, we need to talk. I was like, okay. And it was like, so everything going good in your life right now with your business, the podcast, all of this has stemmed from work we did. Like, we have fucking dialed down our shield, man. What else is it you'd like from us that you're still mad at us about? How about a fucking break? How about quit hitting us with a hammer and a little bit of respect for the work we did?

How about you spend the next 18 months try to feel better? That's your goal in the gym every day. Feel better than when you got there. And it changed a ton, man. When you say you're having that conversation, is this a visual experience? Or is this you're actually, are you hearing a conversation? This wasn't a visual for me. Okay.

But it was an audible. I mean, I know that there's not noise in the room and I'm not audibly speaking. I think I understand what you're saying. But it is a conversation that I'm not controlling the other side of. It is answering back and not particularly happy with me. Did you get enough from that experience that you would do it again? Yes. I don't want to do four days of it again.

When you said four days, I was like, God. I also don't like staying up late. Oh, is it? Yeah. And these were overnight. And so like it was... Oh, you're up all night? So it would start at 5 p.m.

And then you would usually... So skip dinner. So you're fasted going in. Okay. So it works. Take medicine at 5. And then usually at midnight we were done and you'd go back to your place and crash. How do you feel the next morning?

Is there a residual lingering effect? Maybe a little down, if anything. Okay. So the first two nights that I got nothing, I really got nothing. And so like the next two days, I was really frustrated and I was really pretty just devoid of emotion. Like it was just empty. I think this was an experience I had built up for so long as this life-changing thing. And I finally get to go and I'm let down.

It didn't meet your expectation. And what they talk about with ayahuasca and psychedelics used properly. It gives you what you need, not what you want. Okay. And for me, with that, it was like, good. The, you know, the guys there or the shaman are basically like, be frustrated. Don't let it go. And so that's the other thing is like as emotions come up because of the medicine and whether or not you think that medicine is what's doing it, let them come.

And then let them go. They're leaving. And so it really did change a lot. I do think it would be something I would revisit. And the best way I can kind of describe it is like this check-in with your body or brain or mother IA if we're going to get that woo-woo about it. Do you feel like a different person after the experience? I think psychedelics have changed me a lot for a very, very positive perspective. Mentality why?

Oh, yeah. Just perspective shift. I'm less apt. Angers kind of out the window. just no interest in being an asshole. Like, I don't need to be right. Egos checked a ton. All of those wildly beneficial things.

I can't think of anything I would say has been a negative change to it other than I talk about it a lot. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's what people do. They talk about things that have changed their life. They've changed their life or have been impactful or that they're passionate about.

I get it. My biggest hangout man is, like I said, scares the fuck out of me. And but there's different levels, right? Like you don't have to jump off the high dive. Some people want to jump off the high dive. Of course. There's nothing wrong with jumping off the high dive.

But if you were saying like, hey, man, I'm interested in trying psilocybin. What do you think? I wouldn't say, eat a trash bag. Yeah, don't go eat a trash bag of it. Yeah, it's something I need to put my own time and effort and research into. I have yet to talking to the guys that I know that have gone down that route. And these are guys that I know. know pretty well and care about their opinion and their experiences. They have all resoundingly said

that it was incredibly positive. That's, so that was the big push for me too. With, with the guys I knew, I couldn't think of anyone I had met that said, fuck no, I'll never do that again. And we're talking about a variety of types of people. Yeah. Probably most of them A-type driven personalities as well, too. Yeah. One of the weirdest things I saw happen at the center, there was, there was a guy that who had been, this was his fifth or sixth time there in about as many months. Okay. He's trying to do work. He's putting into work, it sounds like, yeah.

Yeah, so he would walk around during the ceremony and like speaking tongues. It was, it's fucking intense, man. Like, that's the kind of shit that scares me. Yeah, but I'm in a room with a bunch of people. And you can mitigate that two different ways and different places to go. Okay. If you're ever interested, let me know I can find other options that are. aren't a room of 30 people.

I don't need to be around. I had 100 people in the room I did it with. No shit. It never, I can't ever say to you that I felt crowded though. Okay. So, fair enough. That. So this guy would walk around in tongues and it was very aggressive,

but it wasn't outwardly aggressive. I don't know if there's a way I can, like he's just mad and walk it around. And so he's, he's been there a bunch and he's fighting through it. And what typically happens on his trip by the second or third night, he either leaves or won't go to ceremony. Because he doesn't want to continue to battle it. And he has said, so the personality that he's battling is this thing inside he's had for a long time. And his friends have named it, his name's John. And so they've named this personality flip of whenever it happens is Johnny Darko.

Just an asshole and goes bad. Okay. And so this spirit, if anything in him is what is fighting and is what's yelling at him. Don't go in there. Don't go in there. It's building this fear of you can't be without me, you know, this side of you. And so he and I were talking at breakfast one morning. And there's this other kid in there who's dealing with a ton of crazy shit.

His stories every day during the sharing portion of stuff is nuts. I'm not getting any of that. And maybe that's my life's been okay. I'm aware of that too. Things have been pretty sweet for me since 1983. And he's like, man, I just see what you're going through and I wish I was feeling something like that. That's a really weird spot too is to get envious of someone else's journey when yours is yours. And it's what it's supposed to be.

I see that with everything. It becomes not about your journey. It becomes a comparative measuring stick. That I want to tell you the craziest thing I had. I didn't experience anything completely nuts. I got a lot of very internal stuff I dealt with. I find that that comparative measuring ruins just about anything. Well, comparison's a thief of joy.

Because I'm Mark Twain. I don't know. And yeah. It's true, though. You watch people start something that they're passionate about or something new that they love. And then somebody else starts and it becomes more about the competition or maybe one person surpasses them. And the next thing you know, they're like, fuck this activity.

Like, no. The people who feel that way, though, also operate out of so much scarcity that it's crazy that like we're all sharing X amount of success. Like, why would I be a guest on his podcast? I have a podcast. Like, what the fuck are you talking about? Yeah. It's a, yeah, it's a symbiotic relationship.

Or me and Rob not being friends because I essentially do the exact same fucking thing. Yeah, with this flag nor fail stuff. Yeah. They're just way better at it. What are you guys, how long are you going to be in town for? Probably Wednesday, Thursday. What do you guys got planned? We are going to go hang out at their lakehouse.

We've got some other friends in town and then play around on a boat. Awesome. Yeah, what do you have going on? Not a whole lot, man. I actually have the rest of today. I got to hop on a video called 5, but I have for the rest of today and then the weekend off. Come hang out. Yeah.

I'll text you. Yeah, for sure. I'll text you. Come hang out. For sure. Yeah. I think Robin Dana bought a boat yesterday. So why would of course they bought a boat yesterday the day before they were going to use it.

Yep. It's going to get scratched. The first scratch is the only one that matters. That doesn't seem to bother them about their toys. Yeah, I had a great conversation with Rob. He was really cool. Dude, they're, they're amazing people. I've been very, very fortunate to be able to call them close friends. A lot of people, whether that's friends through on it or anyone else I've made friends with that helped me follow this path.

Oh, shit, back to Johnny. Yeah. So he says. this and on the end of the third night he's like it's gone it's not there like he left johnny darko left the room he left and um the kid who was talking to him about like being envious of his thing during sharing on the fourth night he's like so i met this other side of me oh fuck seriously he's saying i met this other side of me and it introduced himself and spells his name it's d a r k o Careful what you wish for.

And like, we just were like, they didn't have that conversation. So that was a very odd thing for me. I was like, okay, noted. Yeah. That's weird. That is weird. Yeah, I've had a few instances in my life where I'm like, huh, all right. I don't think I know very much nor am I in control of any of the shit that's going on to any degree.

Yeah. And, you know, I'm okay. I'm really okay with the indifference the universe has about my plight in this place. I am too. Like, I wanted to go well and I wanted to go my way, but I'm okay with the fact that nobody else gives two shits. Doesn't care. Yeah. Also, you know, with the amount of travel and stuff that for me, I look at things like, I mean, for the size of the universe, right?

There has to be the most incredible shit out there, an infinite amount of it, in fact. I hope so. That's what I think. Well, it is infinitely big. I don't believe all the best shit was stuck on our planet. It seems really odd. do believe that and they also believe that our planet is flat and I don't know what to say I also think it's 6,000 years old there's like I'm glad we live in a place that is things are so comfortable that this is what we get to revisit yeah that we get to think about stuff we figured out fucking thousands of years ago for sure great work um but even though this zero percent of the universe I get to explore and then if we mix time into that it's really none there's awesome shit here and incredible

credible people. And I want to see as much and meet as many of them as I can. Can't argue against that. I think it's a hell of a philosophy to go through life with. I mean, I'm going to die. And so that was a big shift that came from psychedelics, too, was the acceptance of death. I've heard that from a few people as well. Yeah. Acceptance of death. And then, so when my old man passed away. So this is April of 2014. We'd gotten the word in January. Like we were going to go in and have surgery and remove this chunk. The chemo had shrunk it.

And they basically opened him up and they're like, fuck. Everywhere. Stitched him up. And so from that point on, it was like nine different surgeries of just trying to buy time and like watch my old man fade away. Tremendous. It was a boiler maker. His entire life, he's a welder.

He's a fucking man, right? And then be weighted on and watch that spark die. The frailty as well. And so he ended up shooting himself. And he had spoke to me about it before, and I never, the only thing I said, as long as it doesn't fuck up whatever mom's got for the insurance, I think you've got a right to make whatever decisions you want to make. if you're done, I think it's a shame that we don't have another option.

Yeah. We would never let one of our fucking dogs live like this. It's true statement. We'd never do it. You know, that death with dignity thing's a big one. And so he ended up shooting himself and passing away the day before my birthday. And he was 62 and I turned 31 the next day. And I just remember this feeling of halfway.

And now I can stack some cards in my favor to try to mitigate that, be healthier, do some other things. But you don't fucking know. I don't have a guarantee that I make it back in the car tonight. Yeah, it's not a car. It's not a car. It's not a man. It sure shit ain't 100% safety. Correct.

Right. And with that said, like, so if I look at that and I extrapolate that out to say 70 at the time, it's like 1860 weeks, something like that. And if every Monday you pluck a marble out of that jar and decide was this week well spent or not Did I spend this week doing a bunch of shit I was obligated to do with people I don't care about In a place I want to be away from? Or was I doing things I love around people I like The marble goes in the trash can either way Yeah, it's spent You're not a fucking martyr for living a miserable life

Either way both these roads can verge with me in the ground. So why, what risk is there of trying to live a life that I really like? And psychedelics have laid into that pretty good. It's a hell of a perspective. I agree with it completely. You know, I, I'm not interested in having that was a recent, a recent trip brought this idea up and it's further on top of that.

It's especially traveling right now. that feeling at the end of a good trip where like I didn't do enough I didn't see enough and we're going back to the real world and this time crunch right and this kind of panic to do you should feel that way in your life

because all this is is the trip and no fucking way do I sit at the end of it and say I wish I wish I'd have done this or I'd have done that I'll go then that's the way to live man

I agree with you it's you know you see people who are afraid to do anything because of either failure or fear or fear. Fear is such an incredible motivator for so many people, right? That and scarcity mindset. That, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's even when I left the real job when they finally let me go,

I could have found another one. I had 10 years of experience in that industry and would have easily found another sales job that paid well. But why not try? Yeah. Because I can always go find a fucking job. I work hard. And that is more than a lot of people, I think, are willing to do, which is bizarre. But yeah, I have no special skills whatsoever in my life.

But I have the ability to just keep grinding. And that's pretty much how I've gotten anywhere that I am in my life. Same. Yeah, it's not to, I didn't come out of the box with, I can tell you right now, a higher than average IQ, physical ability, anything. It's just one foot in front of the other And then the journey keeps getting longer and longer and more interesting So one of those interesting things that you do

Is the wingsuit stuff Yeah, I haven't done it in a while, but yeah So does that did you get into skydiving first? Oh yeah, for sure So that's the route The route that I would recommend for people is learn how to skydive Learn how to fly a wingsuit in a skydiving environment That makes sense not

There's nothing to hit. Correct. Then learn how to base jump and then and only then combine the two activities, wing suit base jumping. Man, the risk to reward ratio of that thing seems. You know, it can be made to appear to be more dangerous than it actually is. It's, there is risk. You're not shooting any holes in.

I have. You know, I certainly have. What the fuck, man. But again, you know, you don't have to go through the hole. You can have a primary, secondary, tertiary option. You can constantly be managing your distance from the terrain. I mean, at some point, you're committed if you're going to do mandatory performance stuff like that. But up until that point, you could bail it any time.

If the conditions aren't good, you can walk away. And should. Yeah. There's nobody with a gun to your head. So it's a risky activity, but you can mitigate and manage a lot of that risk. Okay. So, and again, you know. But so is there enough experience to where, I mean, me getting on a dirt bike and trying to hit a big jump would be dangerous.

Correct. It's not dangerous for Travis Pistrana to do a backflores. You can do it with his eyes closed. And I bet he does. So riding motorcycles aren't dangerous for him anymore. There's still a level of danger, but his experience is mitigating a lot of that danger. Okay. So, and again, it's, you know, there's a lot of stuff that doesn't make it on YouTube or Instagram.

The boring training. Actually, I'm not even going to say boring. The training jumps, the currency, the competency, the practicing, the trying to figure out new skills in isolation that you can put together slowly over time to make something look far more compliant. you know, or to be able to achieve something complex by adding in small independent skills. It just takes time. And every one of those things that you enhance your performance at, in my opinion, at least, you know, that risk is going down because you have an enhanced experience. After jumps like that, are you slaughtered? No.

No. See, I just figured CNS overload of everything going on and paying attention that much during the actual action. I mean, I've been jumping for 20 years. Okay. So I got just over 7,000 skydives, a couple hundred wingsuit-based jumps. It's exhilarating. Of course. But I'm not like just completely spent.

I'd be very confused of why you're doing it. But I'm not completely spent. I still can do the rest of my day. It actually enhances the rest of my day. It's not like a peak and then a crash. You're just really involved in the moment. How long is it jump? I mean, there's a couple in Switzerland.

You can go off the high young frow where you're probably going to get, two minutes of flight. Whoa. Yeah, starting off a cliff. That's a long time. But, I mean, a wingsuit base jump flight, probably be somewhere between 30 seconds to 60 seconds, which is awesome when you're talking about jumping off a fixed object.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so towers are... Towers are going to be lower. You know, it's, you know, Monta Brento, I think it's maybe 5,000 feet in the air. You're going to get like a minute off of that. Probably, you know, at tower,

most people aren't going to jump wingsuits off the towers or buildings. So you want to have some altitude, so you're only going to get a couple seconds of actual free fall from those objects. And, I mean, I know that we've got illegal things to jump off of. And then, I mean, do you have to, what's permitting like to get, you know,

I'm going to go and do this jump in Switzerland. Switzerland is, they're permissive. It's legal. Oh, all right. Yeah, just show and go. The Laudabrunen Valley, you go get some helicopter insurance. You pay your landing fee.

You get a stamp for your helmet. So they aggregate the money to the farmer, so they'll actually cut out landing zones in their grass areas. And then, you know, base jumping can be legal in the U.S. I know some buddies who have done it for film projects because they sit there with a checkbook and they're like, just tell me when to stop writing numbers.

And then it's like, oh, that's an acceptable. Oh, and guess what? You may jump off our building. So base jumping becomes legal again. It's what you're going to get hit with is trespassing. Yeah. Okay. Going into a building that you don't have permission to be there on.

Nobody owns the air. And then maybe. Can they arrest you for jumping off of a bridge? I mean, that's a legal thing you're allowed to walk off of, which part becomes illegal, the jumping off of it? I don't know the specifics. Right. But there's the Twin Falls Bridge, you know, the Parine Bridge.

That's legal 365 days a year. Cops will come sit there and have a coffee. Come on. Watch people jump. Watch people jump. And it's a great place for people to learn. So a lot of first jump courses will happen there because of the permissive nature. You don't have to worry about getting in trouble.

There's enough shit to worry about as it is. Yeah. That adds such a different barrier to entry of like, fuck. Yeah. I also need to not get arrested. today. And some people, I don't think even will go beyond the bridge. They'll go bridge and then go overseas where it's totally legal. They don't want to flirt with the illegal aspect. You know, because there's things like Yosemite. Right. Half dome. Those jumps are amazing. You've done that one. No. Those jumps are

amazing, but they're illegal. They're illegal. Shit. And so then you're going to risk the fine. You're going to risk losing your gear. People have lost their life in just trying to get away from the authority. I also assume they'll probably get a ban to natural national parks. I don't know. I don't know how they track that. It's not like they have photos at the entries. I don't know the exact totality of what would happen, but go get a plane ticket to Europe and they don't give a shit. And you can land in their grass and they're going to give you a fucking strudel and it's safer. Yeah, a cappuccino and your day will be good. Wow. It's an expensive hobby to get into?

Initially, there's some gear costs. Well, you still have to skydive. Definitely need to skydive. So there's gear costs there. There's the cost of the aircraft. But base jumping, you know, you're going to buy your equipment. And beyond that, it would be travel cost to get to where you're going. How physically demanding is it? Not incredibly.

The hike. I mean, there's a hiking component. There are some places like there's a pretty famous jump called the crack. And I forget the name of the city that it's in Switzerland. And you actually take a lift all the way to the top and you downhill walk for 10 minutes. but then like the high young frau that's a three plus hour fucking alpine ascent i mean climbing half dome sucks yeah and that's the thing so it that's the physical nature the actual jumping off and flying a suit is not hard okay at all yeah the suit is yeah i just didn't know like how

how much it's not that crazy and the and the durations being shorter you know not that long it's not that hard yeah you ever spend any time in like the uh just wind i guess the wind tunnel yeah indoor skydive things i guess hundreds of hours yeah spent a lot of time in there during my military career. Is that just like a cheat that like, oh, now we get to... It's an awesome cheat. You don't have to worry about packing a parachute. You don't have to worry about flying an airplane to altitude.

You can just focus on flying your body. Oh, man, I bet it makes it. It's like having a foam pit learning how to... It changed the game. Yeah. I think it really changed the game. And now they're relatively accessible and the skill level of like the tunnel instructors, the guys who fly in there all day long.

Fuck me. They're so... They can do whatever they want. I love watching people that have like that level of body awareness. And then they throw a parachute on and they're just sky. sky gods. They're just doing whatever they want to. Any movement maneuver, they're just like, please. You got to bring back skyboarding and all that. Some people still do that. And I don't know why more people don't do that. I don't know. I've never done one. Again, that's another thing

I look at. I'm like, eh, I don't want to have that strapped to me. And do you, I mean, I'm guessing the world of that's relatively small. It is small for sure. So, I mean, the only other person I follow that does that type of stuff. I don't know personally at all is Mike Escamilla. I don't think I know Mike I've done some stuntman stuff Jumps was a professional BMXer for a little while Cool

I think he's got a podcast Who doesn't Of course It's 20 20 If you've got a following And people want to hear things you have to say Why wouldn't you provide them with more content If you have things to say

I am still baffled The people are interested in what I have to say Join the club I threw fucking rocks in a field Yeah And some reason they measured it I don't fucking know I'm very aware

at how odd what it is I became best in the world at it. Yeah. Well, dude, I'll let you get back up there running out of time. Oh, shit, yeah.

Yeah, I really appreciate you taking the time on your journey. I appreciate you as well. Hit me up and let's see if we can I don't really like the water, but I'll like hang out with you guys near the water. We'll be on either a boat. Yeah.

Or not a boat? Yeah, or a dock. Okay. I'm probably going to cook a bunch of steaks. Oh, I'm definitely in. You should text me immediately. If you're into steaks. Since Rob doesn't eat meat and Dana doesn't either

A handful of other guys I have to feed. I'll just eat steaks around them. Perfect. Yeah. Well, killer, man, I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you again to ExpressVPN for being a sponsor of the podcast.

I appreciate it. And I really dig your service, actually. The offer, again, for people listening. Visit the link, ExpressVPN.com slash cleared hot. You can get an extra three months of ExpressVPN for free. You'll be supporting the show. show you can watch whatever you want regardless of what it is that you want there's no regional specific content that's going to be cut off from you in the future and protect

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