Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Full Auto Friday - Round 19

Episode Date: September 18, 2020

Rapid Fire Q and A from the viewers and listeners of the podcast. I do my best to limit myself to five minutes, I am not always successful... 1. When is it time/how do I know I am ready to have a child 2. Functional fitness vs. show muscles 3. Joining the military in your 30's, what to expect 4. Suicide/Violent videos/Movies and their impact on children Enjoy Element Labs

Okay, got to red smoke. Where's up a smoke? Okay, copy. West of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now. I'm all winning, baby. Ladies and gentlemen, round 19, let's get into it and into our weekend. I have four questions selected for today.

And as usual, I try to grab them from different buckets. And I try to grab them if they have a similar theme that I have been asked in the past, multiple times trying to work my way through the Q&A. Here we go. Question number one comes from Justin. He writes, up until about two years ago, all of my life has been filled with a below average trajectory. I'm 36 with only a high school education. I've been working in the same technical job since I turned 19. I do not make much money enough to pay the bills and save a little bit. It's not a job that I like. Two years ago, I started making changes to my life.

I was 380 pounds, a bleeding heart liberal that blamed the world for all of my problems. I never searched out discomfort. There was nothing remarkable about my life at all. Since then, I have lost 140 pounds. I no longer blamed the world for any of my problems. I take responsibility for my position in life. Extreme ownership a la Jaco, he would be very proud. of you, by the way. And I seek discomfort daily, be it running, in parentheses, by the way,

fuck running. You and I are going to get along, Justin, or lifting heavy objects. I still have a long way to go, but I am moving forward. My question is, as a result of my 35-year lifestyle choice, I don't feel solid in my position in life, to the point that my wife is ready to have children, and I do not feel ready. I feel like I should focus. on myself more before I bring a child or children into this world, as what kind of life can I provide them if I am still struggling to keep my own head above water? What advice could you give someone who is seeking the answer to the question? When should I have a child? Thanks for a lot you do, for putting your voice into the world, and for sitting down with miraculous humans. Yes, I do believe that I sit down

with miraculous humans. They are awesome. Here we go, but first, a sip of water. Okay. Justin, I'm not qualified to answer your question or probably any question that I am asked other than my advice, potentially in military service or my experience in the military. But what I will tell you is this. What you've done so far in the transformation in two years is awesome. 140 pounds of weight lost. That's unbelievable. Go put a 45 pound weight on each side of a 40. pound barbell, pick that sucker up, and that's the amount of weight that your muscular and skeletal

system used to travel around with. Actually, plus five pounds more than that. It's unbelievable. And I want you to go do that, actually, because I want you to remind yourself how far you have come and how much you have already actually accomplished. When should you have a child? I don't know if anybody is ever in their mind truly ready for what bringing a child into the the world is like. There are moments of beauty and joy and sheer panic and terror and the feeling of you have no idea what it is that you're doing or the feeling that you have made a mistake. And that's all okay because that could probably happen in the span of 60 seconds. I don't have a line in the sand that you can cross where I would say now you're ready to have a child.

But what I would say in your situation is, it seems to me that your head is screwed on straight. You have built momentum in the appropriate direction that lends itself towards the accountability and responsibility and integrity individually for having a child. I know you opened the second paragraph with as a result of my 35 year lifestyle choice. You know what, though? That's your past lifestyle choice. So let's build on the 24 months or two years going forward. That's the momentum that I want you to work on. And remember how far that momentum has already taken you because you've turned your life around. Losing 140 pounds is no joke. Changing your mentality from blaming others externally for what's going on in your life to a position of responsibility and accountability. Internally looking for that motivation and that responsibility. that's an amazing mental shift. I would say, and then you add to that, you seek discomfort daily, I would say you're there. I would say that the monetary aspect, which I'm sure you're concerned with, because like you said, you have a technical job you've had since you're 19, it's enough to pay the bills and to save a little bit. There's a monetary aspect to having children.

Anybody who says otherwise is what I'd like to call a liar and completely full of shit. money. But you know what? You'll find a way. If you are completely drowning and utterly upside down in debt, I would say maybe at that point look at the financial obligation and burden that having children comes with. But if you're not at that point, and I wasn't at a point in my life when my wife and I had kids, all three of the kids, I was in the military. So I was making a good amount of money, but not a lot of extra money to stuff into a savings account. You make do. You make do without some things, and you change your life around to facilitate and accommodate the child, which becomes the sole focus in your life.

You ended the second paragraph with, what kind of life can I provide for them if I'm still struggling to keep my head above water? So I think I've already touched on the financial side. You can provide an amazing life for your child. Take the finances out of it, or you know what, even bring them back in. If, first, for the first six to eight years, they're probably going to have no understanding of the finances. But I tell you what you can teach your child.

It's the same thing that you've already taught yourself, that you can take ownership, accountability, and responsibility for the trajectory of your life. You can reverse bad decisions and bad lifestyles and completely reinvent and reform yourself into what it is that you want to be. The things that you've already accomplished are amazing. And each and every one of those things is an amazing example for a child that you might have. So I would say re-read your email, Justin, and focus on the positive things, the things that you talked about on changing or flipping the trajectory of your life. And imagine being able to provide that lesson to your child or children through an example, the example that you are already setting.

You need to stay the course, keep that momentum and keep going in the direction that you are going. One thing you should remember, when you're having kids, I look back now, my example. My oldest is 17 next month. There have been some peaks and valleys in those 17 years. And I have the ability to set the example and show and pass along lessons, good or bad, through the words that come out of my mouth, but more importantly, the behavior that I exhibit, both in the good times and maybe more importantly in the bad times. And you will have exactly that opportunity as well.

So I'm not saying that you should have a child. What I'm saying is focus on the change. changes that you have made in the last 24 months, think about what you're going to be 24 months from now and all of the things that you could provide for your child outside that monetary perspective. And then you need to make that decision for yourself. So I hope that helped you, Justin. Question number two, this one's a little bit, a touch long. Comes from Lee. Lee says, I had a quick, multi-part question. This opening statement is a lie because this email is quite long. Regarding fitness with your military background at your previous East Coast command, as well as your

CrossFit experience, what would you say is the best functional fitness training one could do as it might apply to law enforcement and or the military? In previous podcasts, I have heard you mentioned back in the day you used to do back and buys, chest and tries. Is this something you still recommend? Just this year, I changed my workouts to a push pole, leg split, where I do chest tries and shoulders on my push day, back and buys on my pole day, and leg day will either be with weights or doing uphill sprints with a weighted vest, in parentheses, is hit, high intensity interval training. I don't have a crossfit location near my house, and the closest one is hella expensive anyways. I'm going to stop reading this email right here. Lee, do me a favor.

Never use the term hella again in your life, whether it be written, spoken, and actually don't even think of that word. Moving on. I have a pull-up bar, weight bench, and adjustable dumbbell set, which all seem to be working well for me. Knowing what you know now and what worked and what didn't work for you and the guys at your old unit, what would you do differently and what would you recommend these days? Further, as a 43-year-old, any advice you can give on recovery, besides just getting plenty of sleep would be appreciated. Love the podcast. Best Worcesters and Take Care. P.S. When are you going to get more cleared hot shirts back in stock? I'm trying to give you my money, but they're all sold out. Not anymore. Sucker. My inventory is hella stocked up, Lee. I'm actually

wearing one right now. This is the reflective one, but this color is probably not going to be available because there was an issue with the blank. So black shirts are getting reprinted in this reflective ink. But that's a side note. Let's get back to your question. Yes, I used to do back and eyes, chest and tries. And by that, I mean I spent almost eight years doing that ad nauseum. And in my leg days, I would go for a run on the beach. I literally did not do a squat, a air squat, meaning just body weight, or a weighted squat until probably 2005. And let me just tell you, the day after I did my first air squat, or I did more than one the first day, I was a touch sore, meaning when I tried to sit on the toilet, I almost fell down like a sniper shot to the chest. Essentially, my leg stopped working.

We're like, hey, fuck you. You just punished us, so now we're going to punish you. I almost broke my toilet bowl with how hard I sit down. But that is not part of your question. Is this still something that you recommend? My answer to that would depend on why are you working out? Again, my favorite question is why. If you are working out for show muscles, then sure, back and by is chest and tries.

Why not? If you are working out because you're going to, goal is functional strength or functional capacity. I would say you could still do some of the show muscle workouts, but I would recommend doing multi-joint compound movements instead of isolation movements, which traditionally you'd find on the back-and-by, chest and try workout scheme. I'm not going to say that you shouldn't do one or the other. What I'll recommend, because you're specifically asking me, is that if you have a functional end state, which it seems like you're asking here, law enforcement and or military, I would void isolation. I would seek out compound movements. Let me see here. Knowing what you know now and what worked and didn't work for you and the guys at your old unit, what would you do differently and what would you recommend these days?

First and foremost, what I'm going to say is this. I can't think of a negative side effect to being strong. So whatever workout that you are going to do, and this is specifically for law enforcement and military. Whatever workout you're going to do, it needs to be increasing and enhancing your strength. That can be taken far, far too far. Terrible pairing of words there, but you can go too far with that approach. I don't want you to be a power lifter where you can rip a thousand pounds off the ground

because your four-mile time run is probably going to suck. I want you to find a balance, though. For military and law enforcement, you need to have a strong. strength component to your workout routine. That should always be the foundation that you are building from. And on top of that, I want you to have a cardiovascular system, a respiratory system. All of that needs to work well together. So you're going to have to find that balance.

You can get too strong and you'll know you're getting too strong or focusing your training in one direction too far when it takes away from another one. So what I recommend is a balanced approach. The advice I would give my younger self would be to skip the eight years of back and buys and chest and tries and dive into the final. functional training that I started using after getting shot. And specifically what I was using was the CrossFit methodology. And you mentioned CrossFit in your email.

And you say that there's not one near your house. But then you also say you have an adjustable dumbbell set, a pull-up bar, in a weight bench. And what I will say about CrossFit, and this is no secret at all, is they don't really have that much intellectual property. You can go onto the internet. You can research the methodology behind the program. You can research the workouts. You can find workouts online from the thousands of gyms that are around the world or from CrossFit headquarters themselves.

And you can do them with the things that you mentioned. And then I go one sentence up and you've got uphill sprints with a weighted vest on. You have everything that you need to do functional training in and of those things. And the training, when I say functional, I mean movements that you are going to find on the end state or the they will express themselves in the execution of your roles and responsibilities. So for law enforcement and military, picking things up off the ground, being able to lift weight overhead, being able to take weight from the ground and get it overhead. You could define those things as a deadlift, as a power clean, as a clean and jerk. And you need to be doing these things in combination.

So you need to have a broad level of physical fitness and capacity for law enforcement and military because the things that you will potentially be tasked with are broad and voluminous. So be prepared. On the recovery side of the house, besides getting plenty of sleep, that's actually where I would have started. One thing that I have changed, I'm going to say in the last six months that has drastically helped me is focusing on hydration. So what I have in front of me is a huge Yeti, I don't know what this is called.

Maybe it's a tumbler, a goblet, I don't know, whatever it may be, totally full of water. And I start my morning now with a goblet full of water, but I also have added salt and electrolytes specifically. And what I use, it's a company called Element Labs. And I heard about these originally from Rob Wolf. I started realizing or thinking about hydration after hearing about Rob talk about that. And I realized I was not getting enough water throughout the day. So I will take an entire one of these cups, pour the salt in it in the morning, and down it. That's how I'm starting my day now.

And then after Jiu-Jitsu, where anybody who does Jiu-Jitsu for a couple hours a day can tell you, there is some output and sweat involved, I will take another one of these massive cups of water with an Element Labs electrolyte packet in there as well. And it has been life-changing for me. I don't understand exactly the mechanism other than it is helping me hydrate and it is helping me replenish what I am losing on the maths. For people who want to know more information about that, I would point you towards Rob Wolf. But what I can do is I will put a link to Elements Labs in the show notes. So if you're curious, you can go and figure it out for yourself. And so sleep, hydration, and then I would say diet. I think the older that you get, your 43 as am I,

where I will be in a couple weeks. The older that you get, I think the less broad range you have to get away with messing around with your food. You need to, you need to, you need to dial your nutrition in tighter as you get older. And again, I'm not a nutritionist, obviously, but in my opinion, it's a key factor that when your metabolism is like a nuclear bomb going off 24 hours a day and your late teens and early 20s, that's just not the way it is for me anymore. So when I eat and I have too much sugar, actually too much of anything in my diet, because I can go too far with fat, too far with protein, and too far with carbs, I don't sleep well. That's the and I'm one thing that I noticed.

Specifically, sugar late at night. I'll wake up where my joints ache. They feel swollen, and I find that that happens freeming me with too much processed carbohydrate. So those are things to think of as well. So you got to sleep or you mentioned it. Focus on the hydration and then get your nutrition in there. As much as I hate to say it, I would say flexibility and stretching. And you could read that as yoga if you want to.

I don't particularly do yoga, but I do stretch a little bit for at least one minute before a jiu-jitsu class and I feel like that's all that I need. But that's just me. So Lee, hopefully that helps you. Two more. This question comes from a guy named Andy. So of course, I'm going to select it. My name is Andy and first off, I'd like to thank you for your service and for being an inspiration to men and women like me all over this great nation. Andy, you're very welcome. My service was almost all of it extremely pleasurable to me. So you don't have to thank me for anything and I'm not that inspirational and I'm actually not trying to be. I'd rather be open and honest about my shortcomings as opposed to trying to inspire anybody.

But you continue. I need some advice. I'm a 32-year-old father of three ages, one, three and six. Recently a fire has rekindled in me to enlist in the service. After 9-11, all I wanted to do was become a soldier. I trained for years in preparation and then hooked up with an Air Force combat control team for a summer to get ready to join the Air Force and pursue that pipeline. Unfortunately, in that time, I met a woman who would eventually become my ex-wife that basically said it was her or the Air Force when I was 19 years old. I've regretted this deeply ever since. Fast forward 10 years and I have a solid career in a technical field and I'm with a woman

who supports everything I do and is my rock. Recently, that fire burning in me to become a soldier has returned 10fold and I'm tired of regretting my decision I made all those years ago. My wife now completely backs my decision. decision, although we both studied and talked about it and know it will be harder on her and the children than it will be me. I've recently gotten back into training. I ruck, I run, I work out, and I've studied. I want to enlist in the service again, but being 32, I was wondering if you have any advice you could share them what to expect as an older man coming into the service

and what the best path to prepare both mentally and physically. I've recently linked up with a captain in the Rangers and he's helped guide me as far as training and what to expect, but it would mean a to me to get some tips from you. I'd be lying if I said you, Jocko, and Tim Kennedy haven't been a huge influence in my life and how I've, and how I live every day. I was lost and just going through the motions and you guys have inspired me to get off my ass and just stop cruising through life. Best wishes, God bless. All right. Hmm. Where to begin? Where to begin. So I'll give you the beta on what it's going to be like if you're older in the military service union list now. I'm not going to try to talk you out of your decision. I'm not going to try to talk you into it. What I'll say is the

military is a rank-driven organization and you are going to come in at 32 years of old. Wow, that was amazing English. 32 years of age. And you are going to have potentially, but probably vastly, vastly more life experience than the people that you are working for, not the people that you are working with, the people that you are working for. They are going to be younger than you with, with less laps around the sun, but a higher rank. And I've seen that be no problem at all. And I've seen that be pulling your hair out in frustration, almost insurmountable to deal with depending on the individual.

And that is something that you should prepare yourself for. It's not necessarily negative, but you will be starting in the military at the bottom of the ladder, on the first rung, just like the people who are going to be your boss did. You know, you might have somebody, though, who is a 24-year-old with six years of military experience. And how old are you? You are 32. Yeah, so six years more military experience than you, but six years less.

Actually, no, eight years less of life experience. It can be grading. Having said that, the military as a whole will probably benefit from and be well suited to you with your enhanced life experience. If people working for you or the people that you are working for are receptive and you can develop a relationship with them, they will highly benefit from your enhanced perspective and optic of the world because of the extra time you've had in the world. That is going to be dependent on your ability to develop that relationship. I personally think that the military will benefit and does benefit from older people

joining because they bring with them that solid life experience. Physically, it already sounds like you found somebody to work with you on the potential demands. What I would say is focus heavily on recovery and make sure that you're not overtraining. It's not that 32 is incredibly old age, but you have a few more miles on the tires than most people enlisting, and you need to be cognizant of that. So actually, just like my previous question, focus on your sleep, your hydration, your nutrition. Train smartly. Don't crush yourself just because you feel like you need to. And then food for thought. You want to be a soldier, which is amazing. And I respect anybody who wants to make that decision. Be sure that you are okay with a complete shift in your life from what

it is that you're doing now and your family life now to going into the military and what your family life will be then and your occupation could be like then. Be prepared that it's not going to be what you would want it to be and be prepared that you may not get to serve in the soldiering capacity that you have that fire rekindled in you to do. It's very possible that the world will shift on a dime while you are in and it could become incredibly kinetic, much like 9-11. Or it's very very possible that things will continue to dwindle, which is a good sign, meaning we have less enemies or situations or issues or things in the world that we have to react to as a military. Those could be on the decline, which is what I hope they actually are.

And you need to be sure that you could be okay with both of those, because what I would hate for you is to make a drastic 90-degree left-hand turn and have the military not be what you thought it was going to be or not get out of it what you thought you were going to. So spend some time in between your ears, thinking about what it is you want from the military, why you want a soldier the way that you do, because I can tell you right now, serving in the military is not like playing call of duty. There's a vast amount of boredom, sit around, you know, hurry up and wait is a term that you're going to get used to. And there is a drain, friends, family, loved ones.

Be prepared for that. So hopefully that helped. And if it didn't, write me another email. I'll try to answer it again. Last question for today. In case 2020 couldn't turn into more of a shit sandwich. There has been a video circulating social media of an army vet that shot himself in the head with a shotgun on a Facebook live stream. I am not going to link to the video.

And thank you, Paul, for not doing that because I don't want to see that. I don't think I need to show you what a round does when discharged in that close of proximity to a person. Correct, you do not need to. And like I said, I do not want to or need to see that. The video made it to TikTok, which is heavily used by kids and teens to watch dancing videos. What do you think violent videos like that have as an effect on kids and teens? And what are your thoughts on the ease at which kids can access this type of gnarly shit? Paul.

This is a heavy one. And I chose to answer this because Suicide is... September is actually Suicide Awareness Month, which we're obviously talking about suicide. catastrophic. I saw the news reports about this. I intentionally did not go out seeking that video. And I hope that people didn't either. And I really hope they didn't stumble across it because nobody needs to see that. Kids and teens specifically in the formative years of their life don't need to watch somebody put a shotgun to their face and pull the trigger. Let's just say gently, as gently as possible, that it looks like a Jackson Pollock. And if you don't know what that is, just Google Jackson Pollock painting. And you'll get an idea of what a shotgun round to the face looks like at close proximity. I don't want my kids to see that. What I am not adverse to is them being aware that that type of video is in fact on TikTok in the hopes that it would spark a conversation about suicide,

about communication and empathy and compassion and being there for people should they reach out to you and say that they need help. I do not want my kids watching that video at all, but I do want my kids to understand that there are people, men and women, young and old, who get to a point where they feel like that is their only option. And all I would ever want for my children is if they were to ever get to that place would be for them to reach out and say something. Or if they knew somebody who was ever at that place, that they were there to be a sounding board to listen and to help to make sure that somebody doesn't make that decision, which I'm going to classify it as a mistake because obviously the person who's making that decision has no idea the

catastrophic effects that are left behind. What do I think about violent videos and what effect do they have on kids and teens? I don't know. I don't know what effect violent videos and violent video games have on teens. Do I think that they create serial killers? No, I do not. Do I think that a serial would love playing those types of games and watching those videos. Yes, but I don't think they're causal. They might have a correlation to some degree for some people, but I do not believe that they are causal, and I'll leave it at that. The last part of your question, what are your thoughts on the ease

at which kids can access this type of gnarly shit? Well, beyond suicide, and let me, the gnarly shit to me extends beyond suicide. We're talking about porn, drugs, anything that all of our children have access to, anytime they pick up a smartphone and have unlimited, basically unmetered access to the internet. And for parents out there who have kids who have phones, you need to be really clear that they do, in fact, have access to the broadest depths of the internet. You can put things on your kid's phone that throttle and govern, but guess what? Kids are devious little bastards.

And I know I have multiple parents that have told me about their children finding backdoors or ways around all of those protocols that they have put in place onto their phone. And then all they really need to do is grab one of their friends' phones whose parents don't give a shit because they're off caring more about themselves than raising their kids. And then all of those things are gone. It is incredibly scary to me. The Internet is a beautiful thing. I love the access to information.

But I'm viewing that through 42 years of life. when you're younger and that insatiable curiosity about topics that could potentially seem taboo, it worries me. And that's why I try to have very open and honest conversations with my kids on any topic that they want to, drugs, alcohol, sex, pornography, fill in the blank. I would prefer, I'm not going to expose them to those things, but I would hope that they're not exposed to those ideas for the first time on a web browser on a smart device. that scares the crap out of me. And I do think that all of those things have a negative consequence

on the brains of children in their formative years. And I don't have a solution for it. But it is something as a parent, I think you have to consistently and constantly combat against. And that is all I have for this full auto Friday. I hope that helped you out, Paul.