Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Naval Special Warfare and Injuries - with Mike Glover

Episode Date: December 18, 2023

Mike Glover, renowned for his military and security expertise, joins the Cleared Hot Podcast today. His diverse background includes serving as a Green Beret in the U.S. Army Special Forces and excelling in the private security sector. Glover is the founder and CEO of Fieldcraft Survival, an organization that trains resilience and survival in worst-case scenarios. In this episode, we take a look into the Naval Special Warfare career, as well as the training required. We also cover being shot on target in Iraq, and what sort of treatment is required for such an injury. Today's episode is a cross-post, this episode will also be available on the Mike Force Podcast The Speed of War Comic Series: https://www.thespeedofwar.com/   Sign up for the new G14 newsletter here: https://www.clearedhotpodcast.com/exclusive Check out the newest Cleared Hot Gear here: https://shop.clearedhotpodcast.com/

Hey guys, welcome back to the Clear Dodd podcast. It is your host. Not any stuff. Mike Lover. That's right. Had the opportunity to interview Andy on a podcast talking about his career in naval special warfare, which is pretty rare. I mean, he shoots the shit with me, with black rifle, with Joe Rogan.

But we rarely get to talk about specifically his career path, why he took it and the things he went through, including getting shot on target in Iraq. So that's that podcast. which is about to come up next, and you can also find this podcast on the Mike Force podcast. I mean, surely, if you're a loyal listener declared hot, you got to be listening to Mike Force podcast, shameless plug. Guys, I want to say a big shout out to Black Rifle Coffee Company,

which is the only sponsor of this podcast. You could find all the coffee that you ever wanted and needed, some of the best coffee on the planet, at your local Walmart, or your local Black Rifle Coffee. Come out and visit us at Calispell, Montana, and his black raffle coffee and get that nitro cold brew. Denver and Andy put that together. It's one of my favorite drinks when I get to Calispell. We're all hopped up on the cleared hot podcast. I appreciate you guys. And you're probably wondering lastly, like, why are you doing this?

Well, one, Andy just got out of the hospital. So it's very important as a friend number two to be able to pick up his six. So I'm picking it up. He is completely fine. He's out of surgery. Make sure you say a little prayer and make a dig joke and send it to Andy. he's completely fine and I'll let him communicate everything that happened on his own on his own accord but he's completely fine y'all and I want to give off this podcast here we go thanks guys close now did you design this particular lip here let's show it towards the camera from this side it would appear you know traditional can this side though is a little bit more probably more tactical you could fit it inside of a it needs more resilience well you can put it inside of a molly pouch I just don't know what you're going with is this an intentional design that you what okay yeah yeah it's a little bit That's so you could drink around some difficult adversity. Yeah. To make you better at being prepared.

Looks like it's a really repeatable design on the top here. But I'm sorry. We can't, you can't deviate. All right, so I'm going to ask you, I mean, it's going to be a conversation, but I do have some tier one patron questions at the end of this. Okay. Specific to your experiences. Oh, you're talking about Patreon.

I was like, what are you talking about? My patrons asked for my Patreon. So your career. in the Navy was very non-typical compared to the fleet, the Mews, the standard protocols, because you did very specific things, including becoming a sniper. Like we talk about this offline, and you're a very competent, long-range shooter, because you're a sniper. You're a sniper actually before you went to Damnack.

As long as you keep it within less than 300 yards, I can hit stuff. No. You're pretty good. I was a sniper before I went to development group, yeah. It was actually the second, I think that was the second course that I went to in 99. When you got first assigned to the SEAL teams, what SEAL team did you go to at first? Five. Yeah.

And it's, it's, that's Coronado, right? It's Coronado. Odd number teams are West Coast, even number teams are East Coast, except for the SDV team, which is out in Hawaii. And SDV-2 used to be in Virginia Beach. and I used to run from those things like the plague because can you imagine sitting in the back of a mini sub for 8 to 12 hours? Yeah.

It would suck. It would suck. So anytime they would say the word SDV, I would leave the room, and I've only actually seen one in person one time. Yeah. Because I was terrified. They would open the back and say,

do you want to go for a ride? Yeah. I just don't. But the team you first go to is, it was a good introduction to what's called the needs of the military. In second phase, I believe it was, after you graduate pool comp,

the statistical odds of you making it through buds and becoming a seal are high 90th percentile. Like you've gone through the crucible portion. There's going to be job requirements that you have to perform

an educational aspect, but you're probably going to make it to your team. You're going to lose a few people along the way. So they sit you down and they give you what's called a dream sheet.

What seal team would you like to go to? I was from, I am from Santa Cruz, so I put down 2, 4, and 8 because I thought, let's check out the East Coast. They gave me team 5. So it really was a dream.

It's called, waste your time filling this paper out. We're going to look at what teams need what, and it's the need for the Navy. Was that a good thing looking back at it or a potential, you could have had it better on the East Coast potentially? I would say it was a good thing. I enjoy California weather better than I do, Virginia Beach weather. And honestly, the community of guys is largely the same. The capabilities of the commands at a conventional SEAL team level is largely the same by design, which I would imagine ODAs are similar.

Like we all have our medals. And for people listening to, you know, mission essential task lists, if you were to look at it like a three ring binder, you have to be able to do this, this, this, and this. You train to that standard. So really, you're just talking about where you pick up your mail between odd number teams and even number teams at this point.

Now, development group is also on the East Coast, and that's a whole different animal. But that wasn't obviously an option right out of the gate. Now, did you know the path was going to be Damnick? And then you thought to yourself, Well, if I want to go to DevGrew, I want to get on the East Coast anyway, because that's where it is. Didn't even know it existed. Really?

So I went from Navy boot camp, which is in Great Lakes or was in Great Lakes when I went through. They used to do it in San Diego and in Florida, and they reduced it down to that. Like the third week, you go in and it was a VHS tape. And there was a grainy video of the classic images of guys coming out of the water with probably rubber M4 shapes. Yeah, M16 shapes. It's a VHS tape. Yeah, with just a. camo across the face.

God, that looks good. And then you realize later on it just goes into your eyes and I've never worn camo once ever, for real. Because it would be an utter galactic waste of time. And from there, who wants to sign up for the physical training test? You raise your hand.

It's a swim in a pool, I think maybe 500 yards. Pull-ups, push-ups, sit-ups, in a run. Super low barrier to entry. That's to qualify to go talk to somebody. While you're at boot camp, camp and when I was there now in the modern era being a seal as its own rate which I think would be an MOS would be like you know the 18 whatever so when I went through there was only I think 16 A schools

which is your occupational school you could pick and I just looked at the list as which one was the shortest and I picked operations specialist a school which is a radar scope operator so I went from boot camp to radar scope operator school which happens to be on the damn neck naval annex and I still after graduating there had no idea that development group was just up the road because I had no reason to go there. I was just doing my A school stuff. I was training as hard as I could. I got my Bud's class assignment at the end of that course, went to Buds graduated from Buds, went back to betting for static line, checked into Team 5, spent the year and a half doing my, actually about a year. I was in an operational platoon, but I didn't have my Tridentient, spent the year doing the training,

did the test, which when I went through was hosted by the team itself. You did each one of the departments would set up a test is like the diving department you would put together open circuit gear closed circuit gear plan a drag or dive talk about currents plan a diving mission then you go over to the um the ordnance department and they'd have like a sig two two six out there an m60 which god i wish we still had those the sound of an m60 it's such as a lower cyclic rate than the modern ones which don't get me wrong like i like and i saw or at 240 because they are ripping it but the 60 is I would go to a symphony. Like if I was at a symphony,

I would want to be first chair on the M60. Oh, yeah. And the flames, the way they spike and spit. But so they had an M14 out there, an M4, and you're taking everything apart

describing every piece. Then demo, do a demo calculation on C4, time fuse. And then you'd go over to the air department. And I wasn't a jump master, and they know that, but they're talking to you about jumping things, put together, you know,

put your stuff on correctly, pack a ruck for a jump. They did that for every, single one of those departments. And at the end of, and then there was an oral board, and at the end of that, you are awarded to Trident or you're not. And they'll recycle you back through that if you, if you do poorly, because they've put two and a half years into you at that point. In my first platoon, there were two guys who were screening to go to Green Team, which is what they call the selection. I think they call it S&T now. And that was the first time I had ever

heard the term development group. And I think at that time, they were just still calling it SEAL Team 6. Development group is the official name of the command. And SEAL Team 6 is what's on all of the slides. And that's not by any means sensitive anymore. It's all over the fucking world, unfortunately. So those two guys, and asking them what it is they were training for it was the first time I had ever heard of it. I do remember being at OSA school and hearing explosions and gunfire on the north side of the compound. I'm like, I don't, I'm not going up there.

I got to study how to use this radar scope. One of the guys made it through. One of them did not. And I think the reason I didn't know anything about it is if you went from a West Coast command and you didn't make it through, or even if you did, you never came back. They would send you to a different command most of the time on the East Coast, if you would come from a West Coast, or they'd send you out to Yuma as a free fall instructor.

And there just was almost no beta whatsoever. But I talked with them, the one who made it through, I maintained communication with. And then in my second platoon, that's when I started physically training for the selection process. And then the message came out where, you know, hey, if you're looking at doing selection for this, put your name into the hat and begin that whole selection process.

I didn't have a clue what it was until a couple of years into my career. And this was pre-9-11. This is pre-197, 98, 99. Peace time. Yep. I was in the Army and it was horrible. I mean, it was just, like, there wasn't a lot going on. And when you look at that time period in your career, you got to go to sniper school.

Is that the career path you wanted to follow? And did you enjoy that course the most? I wanted to be a calm guy and a sniper because in my mind, if anything ever, did kick off ever. You need at least a calm guy, but probably a sniper as well. So why not be both? Because you're going to get on every single man. Every single one. Yeah. So it started with comms because sniper school is limited by the number of billets available. And you're not going to sniper school and your first platoon is a brand new guy. Like when I got to team five, free fall was not part of the pipeline. Out of 16 guys, there might have been six who were free fall qualified.

Like you didn't get looked at for that. You guys used to go to our, you was free fall. Yeah. Well, even, I think Yuma, the JFK Center, is still the course, the overall umbrella for all freefall in the military, even though the SEAL program now has their own freefall course. I think they still report back to the Army. Yeah. But, I mean, and so for the SEAL community, the billets available were based off the number of instructors that they could have from the SEAL teams going to Yuma. So I think they would get two or three students per instructor. It was a very hard course to get. The Navy runs its own sniper course, right?

Yes, that's only Navy SEALs go through that. Unlike when I went through SOTIC, it was Rangers, it was the unit, and it was SF snipers and the SIF. But you guys have your own, yep. Is it designed kind of like off of Bennings? I know there's a lot of fieldcraft. Couldn't tell you because I never went to the Benning one. The only exposure I had to Sniper School and the POI there or the curriculum is when I went

through. I never went back as an instructor and I never audited any of the other services courses, so I have no idea. How many weeks was you? your cyber school. I think it was six weeks of shooting and then six weeks of stalking. Wow. It was we started on M14s. First you had to qualify with an with an M4 like I just shoot expert on a regular military qualification that you'd get your ribbon for. And then we started M14's open sites all the way out to a thousand yards, which is a poke open site M14. Then we

switched to 300 WMags, which is why I still to this day love that round. It's not that it has the best ballistic capabilities, but I've been shooting that thing since 99. Yeah. 50 Cal, which is a horrendous and horrible weapon system that weighs about as much as this table and the bullets are about this size and weigh about that much. And you will get a nose bleed and concussion if you shoot. Trude. And SR-25s were coming through.

We were the first class. We actually did a bunch of stalking with those. But that was kind of the beginning. So you had to pass the shooting course to go out to the stalking course. But during that shooting course, it was everything that I'm sure the other course. It was unknown distances, snaps and movers, walking targets. We were still milling. I didn't touch a laser range finder until probably like a decade later.

It was all milling things. Like I'm used to M.O.A. Like that's what I was taught on. So that's what, and I know a lot of the Army uses mill. And there's, I mean, there's so many different sites. And they're all awesome as long as you know how to use them. I've always been an M.O.A guy because of that school. So, you know, measuring things, observation drills, Kim's games, PT.

And I literally stayed in a tent out at a range, a civilian range out in Kalinga. That's where we did the shooting. And you were either on the line shooting or you working in the butts, pulling targets up and down. All day, every day for, I think it was about six weeks. Wow. So 12 weeks total around? Yep. And then you go straight to stalking out into Nileland, which is out near the base of the Chocolate Mountains in California.

And fuck, it's hard. It's high desert. It's, and they issued me a gilly suit. I must have spent three weekends and, probably bought most of the burlap sacks from Home Depot, just shredding them. I looked like Chewbacca. And of course, I was making, I remember making it, it was at my in-laws at the time's house, and they had a pool, and I would just sit in the shade under the awning,

and I'm just like putting burlap in their head. I'd just gone into the sun, I would have seen that it glows. And, like, crawling around in a burlap gilly suit, it just, it looks like nothing other other than a guy crawling around in a burlap suit. So by the end of the course, all of that shit I had taken the time to now cut it off. but it was all stocking. So you had to get to, I think it was between 150 to 200 was the range that you had to stock into. And I'm sure it was the same deal for you guys.

Take first shot unobserved. There's two walkers out there and generally two people at a table about this size. And it was, again, no laser range finder, but they'd always have either like the same set of binos up or like a Coke can or something like that that you had milled before to learn your distances so you could judge the distance. And so first shot, they'd move a walker to within 10 yards. you'd have to reload, take a second shot, and then if you could get to the third shot with MTHU, they'd pick up their radio and move it over and put it on you.

If you could get through the first two before that, I think you would get a seven, and then if you could get to the third shot, unobserved, you'd get a 10. And I think you needed an 80% to graduate, something like that. And you had no problems getting to the school?

It was hard. High attrition, I hear, and... Yeah, it was equal part. There's people who failed for stocks and people who failed for shooting as well. I wasn't at the top of the class. I wasn't at the bottom of the class.

It took a little bit to understand, you know, there's sniper school at like terrain and concealment and cover, and then there's playing the game. And, you know, sometimes instead of crawling, I would wait till one observer was looking at somebody else who had taken a shot and another, and I would look at them and tell that their binoculars

were in different directions, and I would just stand up and walk directly at them because they were busy. So why crawl? I would wait until somebody else would shoot and I would just stand up in the fucking wide open and walk at them. I've done that.

Why not? There's only two observance. So there's knowing the skill and then there's playing the game. There's playing the game. Yeah. I did equal parts both. That's good.

Adapt and overcome. You assess for Greenton. What year is that? I went through selection in 2002 and that started early in the year. I think we moved out. right around Christmas of 2001. So I went through the selection,

interview, physical test process in 2001, late 2001, post-9-11. So right after 9-11? I think it was October. So this is about the time Neil Roberts, Roberts, Rid. That happened when I was in Green Team.

Wow. You're getting a lot of feedback from, I'm assuming the field and you're going through training. That's likely, I mean, training evolved, especially in S&T, organizations for,

or every organization, organization in the military rapidly because we had a legacy with optic and viewfinder of how we operated, especially through the 80s and 90s and Cold War. And then all of a sudden we're in the GWAT and things are changing almost every single day. How long is Green Team and were you getting adaptive changes while you're going through training? Green Team when I went through was six months long and it was still based off of what I would say is tactics looking not in the rear view mirror because they weren't paying attention but they're the optic four. was changing at the speed of war.

I mean, we were doing dynamic CQB, regardless of the mission set, until 2005, which is insane, looking back now. Like, let's run into this room as fast as possible for absolutely no reason. There's no compelling reason to do so. There's windows, there's doorways.

We could put a hole in the wall if we want to. And it was wild. And looking back, like, that's not the smartest, but I don't know about the Army community. In the SEAL community, community there are often drastic shifts in tactics but it almost always comes with the loss of life incident and there was a few specific targets one of them was my old squadron in iraq where there's a guy who was from my understanding i wasn't there um sandbagged and laying underneath

carpets in the corner so the guy who first came into the threshold got stitched up in the head and the guy tried to come in to pull him out and got some lower pelvis shots and expired in the doorway And that was about the last time dynamic CQB was advocated for, except for in a hostage rescue situation. Did you get a sense going through that training? Because obviously it was different from what you were used to, that you were operating and potentially going to war right after training, and it was going to be very dynamic?

I mean, you're in nearly the kickoff to war. We were at the high-risk sear course up in Washington State. there was another course of instruction that was supposed to happen after that. I forget what it was, but they stopped anybody who's going to blue and anybody who's going to gold and surges over to finish up the Karzai detail. So we didn't even finish Grie team before we went over to Afghanistan. This was post the ambush attempt on Karzai. So we were largely just there to fill the gap until they turned it over to, I want to say,

Dinoco or something like. It was a state department contracting company. But there was no doubt whatsoever that we were going to jump from the conceptual world of Green Team to the practical world of direct combat. So much so that you got pulled out of training to do a real world op that was required of you guys to do because they needed bodies. They were short on Manning and they were trying to pull blue back because I think that was the first squadron that had deployed to Afghanistan. And in the, you know, in the jort cycle, they were getting ready to redo their deployment. just needed bodies. Yeah, was the gentleman who won the, who earned the Medal of Honor, Brits Blinsky? Brits. Yeah, he was in blue, right? Red. He was in red, yes. Got it. And that was

the Neil Roberts. Correct. Situation. There was an incident in the Carzai detail where there's a pretty famous picture of a deputy operator with a shirt off. Pete Kent. He's got a grenade on his belt. And his t-shirt tied around his head. Yeah. And a lot of people were like, oh, he's just, because it looks like he's like a model for like Devger. There's actually shrapnel wounds in his head. I think the round traveled around his skull a little bit essentially and he was just stopping the bleeding. He stopped

in the bleeding. He wasn't just trying to get a tan. He might have been doing both. Knowing Pete. Yeah. His brother was my first troop sheep in Goldswatern. Awesome. Yeah. It was a pair of brothers that were there. I was going to ask you specifically about the cars that detail because you were on that detail. The tail end. The tail end.

How was that in what Were you under or overwhelmed by kind of the situation? Because PSD sucks. Yeah, it's a horrible mission. Yeah. Nobody really wants to do it, but it happens and you get plucked for that. I've been plucked for a couple of precedential details. You were on his specific detail.

That was a very busy detail. Did you like it? I didn't know any better, really. I mean, I was, let's see, in 2002, I was 25. New guy. I was a new guy. One of the younger guys who had been through selection at that point in Green Team. And I mean, fuck, we were over in Afghanistan.

I had grenades on my belt. You know, I got an M4 ready to fucking rock and roll. And I mean, that part's cool, but going out into a town with a dignitary or somebody that you're, you know, he's trying to protect is the worst mission template ever. It's completely reactionary. You can see all sorts of shit happening. Are people looking at you and people maneuvering around and doing shit that you don't like and you just have to sit there and eat it until some. something happens. I hated it. I hated the actual job itself. Most of the time, we were, you know, we had a building we were staying in. He had the presidential palace and we would basically

walk with him until he got to his office, create a security bubble for him into his office, and walk back. So most of it was that and that wasn't that bad. But anytime we ventured out or went anywhere with him, it sucked. I don't even remember how long we were there. It was less than 60 days. And then we surged back and it was immediately prep for LAF1 in March of 03. So you guys get prep for OIF one and you go on your first rotation. What rotation did you get shot on? My seventh. Seventh rotation.

So you have a cycle of rotations both in Iraq and Afghanistan, or are you focused on Iraq? Back and forth. It was a ping pong. Okay. There was a time where the colors didn't play well. You know, Army, green, navy, blue. both have their own contingent, among many others of JASOC. And at the operator level, I always found those people to be fantastic.

But I think there was this ingrained, like, tension at the higher levels where people were talking about budget and mission set and all of those things. We were very busy in Iraq for OIF1, and they surged over another squadron from CAG that relieved us. And then there was a point in time where CAG was specifically focused on Iraq and Damnik was specifically focused on Afghanistan. which is stupid because you shouldn't have that level of geographic specificity. And they recognize that.

So they started bringing small elements from both cross-training, cross-pollinating, and cross-deploying. So I was actually with a squadron of CAG when I got shot. That's right. You were attached. Was one of your teams attached? Six of you guys. We know some friends that were on that hit as well. There's actually a whole bunch of people that were tied into that.

Yeah, like Tom Flanningin. The guy, Eagles and Angels. That's why I met, Tom. Tyler Gray. Yeah, was on that objective. He, we shared a hospital room in, uh, bog or not boggum, in, uh, launch stool together because we got medevac on the same bird. Yeah.

Let's talk about that. It's a fake name too. Fucking pussy. Tyler. What a convenient name for him. Um, let's talk about specifically that, that event. What are the moments leading up to you actually taking rounds and then walk me through the, the, the specific moment in which you got hit?

So to the best of my knowledge, we were looking for a kidnapping cell. I don't think they had kidnapped anybody at that point. And this is like rearview mirror of 18 years at this point. What year is this? February 5th, 2005 was the night I got shot. So run the math on that for me. I mean, you are, I've sent you the official quantitative certificate that somebody sent to me in the hopes that it would make its way to you.

19 years this February. This February? I think you mean next February. That's okay. I'll give you a pass on that. Because that's a calendar thing, not a math thing. We're Chinese calendar. Of course.

Yeah. Yeah. You have the snake, if you know what I mean. So we were after a kidnapping cell, and it was in between Baghdad and Fallujah, and people can go look at it on a Mac. There's not an overlap, but there's kind of an area in between the two. So we were going off of signals intelligence.

We were looking for a particular device, so we had people who specialize in that with us, who I'm sure in your own experience. Sometimes they're not exactly sure where it is. So you've got to go play hide and seek. Find the Easter egg, if you will. So in doing so, we were walking around and somebody came out of a, I was walking point at the time. And for people listening, that just means I was up in the front of the patrol.

That's what I did from the beginning of my second platoon all the way through my time at development group. I was a point man in a lead climber. So I was walking point and somebody came out of a building down a hallway, or not down a hallway, down an alleyway. And we pursued them into it. I'm pretty sure we shotgun breached a door. And the, you know, signals intelligence guy went back to work doing this thing. We retraced our steps, came back, and it was a corner compound at the end of the alley, which we had passed. And I remember that when we passed it, there were no lights on.

When we came back, there were lights on, both not external, but internal. The internal lights were on. And it was an L-shaped. It was like if you come up to a normal house, this is me approaching the house. The alley is running this direction. I got up on a ladder and I was holding security. on my side of the building. The only thing that would be different from this,

a very normal house in America where this would be a garage that's extending out a little bit. So it was window, door, wall that comes out and goes over and where the garage door would be, there was like another window. Super traditional short L-type building.

And I sat on that ladder for about 10 minutes, and I was looking underneath my nods, and then I would look back through them because you know you can get the shadow on the nods or people think that you're actually looking at, or like through the tube, and if, and this is one of the things that cracks me up in the movies, when somebody shines a flashlight on somebody and they're wearing nods,

they're like, ah! First off, it has an auto shut off switch. You know, dumbass. Yeah, and you're not actually, the light isn't making its way through the tube. You're looking at a little screen, you know? So it's one of the things that cracks me up every time I see that in the movies. But if you look at a light source and everything else is dark, it has like this halo effect. So I was looking underneath it and I'd look, and you know, the blacked out window where the garage door would be. I didn't see anything in there.

They determined that was going to be the objective. So it's like, okay, hey, we're going to go over. So I went over the wall and I waited. I almost approached the door, which would have been stupid. But I had that thought and I waited just some more people came up. And I was just going to hold security for the guy putting up a breach. Another mutual friend of ours. And I've talked about it and done a podcast with him, but Sean Evangelista, who owns 30 seconds out.

He's going to throw a C6 strip on this hollow metal door, also known as Overkill, which I'm a huge fan of. Keep for plenty. Yeah. Knock, knock. and here we come. Every time. This curtain. This door might have opened

if we blew on it. But like let's just put some C-6 on this bitch. Tip to tail. We're talking fucking full hinge side. Wow. Yeah. And for anybody who's ever been around that,

you're like, oh, daddy, that hurts. You want to get around the corner for that one. Yeah. So I didn't like this blacked out window that I couldn't see in. So before I turned my back to that, I wanted to take a look into it. And there was a vehicle that was,

in the courtyard as well, the gate. Are you running, what kind of, are you running, AVS-6s? 15s. 15s, okay. Aviation grade, PBS 15s. They were great. You could see what's in somebody's hand at a couple. A little heavy, but good not.

They were a little heavy, but they were fucking good. Yeah. And the whole time I was looking at the window that had the internal illumination, I never saw a shadow. I never saw a curtain move. I didn't see shit. I was looking at that window for about 10 minutes. So I get up to the corner of the building,

and right before I was going to continue on, I just wanted to look in the, the blacked-out window. And I turned my head to the right, and I heard a shot break. And it felt like Jose Canseco hit me with a baseball bat, right in my super high left leg. And it spun me towards as I pushed off with my right foot, and it spun me towards the window. And it's the only time of my life where I've had that sensation of time slowing. And, you know, I don't know if the guy had the AK on full order, or he was just cracking, but it was like full-on Somali style, just AK up the air. I don't think he had been aiming it, but it was like, boom, boom. And I hit the ground,

slid under the goddamn car. My sling of my weapon decided to attach itself to the undercarriage of the vehicle. So now I am stuck under the car with no ability to shoot back as I'm listening to rounds, impact the vehicle, looking at the muzzleblash. And within what felt like about 30 seconds, which probably about three real time kick back in. And, uh, you know, what's the first rule of the firefight fucking return fire let's just say Mr. Man with the AK got overwhelmed with suppressive fire pretty rapidly but you had cover you had we had people back up on the wall people who were in the courtyard started shooting back in I'm fucking stuck under a vehicle the first thought that that hit my mind as I was spinning you know all the medical training we go to

they talk about the danger of you know femoral arteries you know your pelvis you can fit all of the blood volume of your body into your quad and hamstring space and I knew that whatever had hit me, however bad it was, was above where I could put a tourniquet on. So I assumed that I was probably going to be dead within three to five minutes. All of those thoughts went through my head before my back hit the ground. Interesting. So I can't. You knew you were hit. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It was not a shiatsu massage to use a term that you're familiar with. I completely know what that means. You're Korean. Not that I'm sure Shiazhu is actually Korean. But Ivan comes over and pulls me out,

and I'm like holding on my leg direct pressure. And of course, like, this is the thing that I don't know if you can ever describe to people about war. You'll have the most horrific thing happen, and then you're just laughing afterwards. He pulls out a set of trauma shears. He's like, move your hand, man. I've got to cut your pants.

I'm like, bro, direct pressure. And we just start laughing. and he cut He's like, I got to cut your pants off direct pressures and then, give me your penis.

Yeah, so he cuts it open and he cut your pants off he cut at the pocket he didn't cut him off he just exposed the wound and exposed the wound

and I don't know if I ever looked down at it is this a dev medic or a unit medic? No, this is just Sean oh, this is just Eva. This is just Eva. This is the dude who moments later

still went up and put the breach on the door. There's still a gunfight going on. They were just laying heat into that window. And what we didn't know, because this will tie into the story later on, is that an element from A squadron had also entered on the other side of the building.

And they were working their way towards that doorway that we were getting that breach. They were internal in a firefight. So all of that shit was going on. Sean cut it open. He looked at it from what he had described. And there was multiple holes. He drugged me out of the courtyard.

And then a medic got to me. And they wrapped it up with, Curlix. And that was it because Corlex allowed the pressure. The gauze. And they just were basically trying to stop the bleeding. Yeah. And I basically sat on the outside with my back up against

the near the gate on one of those thick mud walls with my M4 and they went to work. It was weird. Because all I could have just, all it did was hear it. It was really odd. I was sitting there with my shit not able to do it. By yourself. There was other people like running about because it, like there was people who were already

injured from the gunfight on the inside. internal there's people who took rounds internal then a breach goes up and I hear him saying you know send the breach and this and the breach goes and for maybe another 30 seconds there's a lot of noise and then it's like fuck me and they started bringing in little birds and putting people on it Tyler's arm damn near came off there was a guy so close to the breach that it peeled off layers of his ballistic helmet like he went blind for about 30 seconds to a minute massive concussion could do with the gunshot wound to his uh bicep one of our guys had a gunshot wound to his uh bicep one of our guys had a gunshot wound through and through on his hand.

It's a mass casualty nearly. There was, I think, seven or eight guys that got hurt. I got put into a Bradley and driven back to the green zone. And they were landing little birds there to stuff the most critically wounded people and get him out of it. It was a fuck show. What was the disposition of you with the injury post getting hit? Were you in pain? Were you able to stop the bleed internally?

The only thing I ever got applied to the wound was Kirlex. I've still never had surgery. I've never had stitches. I've never broke. Well, you know, sometimes I break my pinky doing jiu-jit suits. The gentle art should get into it. They didn't do anything because my main complaint when I got to the green zone was my ankle. I felt like my ankle was being driven over repetitively by a steamroller.

Come to find out later on. Not that getting shot feels good. And I don't advocate it for anybody. There's hundreds of pieces of metal. I actually have a picture. I'll show you. of my pelvis. There's a bunch of pieces of metal inside of there.

But my main complaint was, and you've seen this, and people can look it up on Google, when a bullet goes into like ballistic gel, the shockwaves. So that round, when it came out, either hit my sciatic nerve or the shock wave interacted with it, but it fried it. And the termination point of that is in your ankle.

And it fucking hurt. So I thought my ankle was broken. And in Green Zone, they were awesome. They're like cutting my shoe off and getting me image and they come back. They're like, dude, your ankle's fine. I'm like, no, it's not. Let me see your ankle.

I will provide to you the type of pain in your ankle that I'm currently feeling in mind. Give me a hammer. Yeah, I'll show you. And then, you know, they juice me with Morsehine for the first time there. And this is where my sister and I, which I didn't know at the time,

my sister, when she was trying to get her wisdom teeth taken out, they tried to put her under and they gave her the classic countdown from 100. Yeah, well, she got to zero. Which is uncommon. Yeah. We have a genetic blood abnormality that processes opiates specifically and some pain modifications differently. So it's far less effective.

Yeah. So they juice me with morphine, like, I need more of that. And they juice me and they juice me and they juice me. And then they brought out a chart and said, this is where you're at for height, weight. If we give you any more, it's going to stop your heart. And it was having an effect at that point, but it was far less. It's a shitty time to find out that you have that type of genetic blood abnormality. But you're going through the pain.

Yeah. You're feeling it. And the doctor, so they. imaged me with an x-ray and the guy said it didn't interact any bones your body will encapsulate all of the shrapnel in calcium we can try to get it out if you want and I said well how would you do that and like we'd knock you out we'd put a tube down your throat for to intubate you we'd put you on your stomach take a two-dimensional x-ray because we don't want to give you a cat scan because they assume that there's ferrous metal in my body and we would just start cutting and slicing

and pulling open and just looking through the for the frag and I said is is there another option because that sounds horrible. He said, leave it in, left it in, never had a surgery. When the scabs came on, his guy was literally like, hey, when the scabs come off, this was later on in Port Smith when I was getting following care, they're like, yeah, when the scabs come off if you're a fan of taking bath, so you can take a bath. That was it. Now, what are you, after looking back on everything and assessing what happened on that target that night, what specifically happened when you got shot? What do you think happened as far as the round, where it impacted and how it came in? So the first round hit me. And, and,

And I'm glad that it did. I think I've showed you the belt that I was wearing that night. So it hit me and it spun me towards the shooter. And I pushed off because the second round traveled down my belt for about four inches. And the copper jacket of the round is still melted into my belt. Had it not spun me, that probably would have been a fatal 760 by 39 pelvis shot. And I mean, there's just not a lot you can do in the pelvic girdle, as you know. No.

And it's fuck, it's not a good way to go. Not that there's a great way to go, but if I had to choose between being shot and the pelvis, in the face, I'll take two between the eyes, Alex, for 500. So it was, I think, more than likely the people in that house, we were obviously at the right house because that was, I never actually checked to see whether or not they were at the cell, but they were obviously armed and willing to fight, which was kind of uncommon at that time.

Even if they were armed, they didn't want to fight because they knew that if they didn't fight and they threw their hands up, they might live to see another day, at least at that phase in the war. They hurt us. I don't think they saw us because of the walls. but they hurt us and hurt enough to get ready. And when we came back, they were just ready.

Yeah. That's really all it was. Yeah. I mean, think about somebody coming to your house. You're going to have the tactical advantage, at least for a little bit. They're going to overwhelm you with firepower and numerical superiority and all of those things. But, I mean, I live in a small townhouse right now that we went rent in town. I know exactly where I could go and stand and really make somewhere between six to eight people's lives really shitty.

They're going to win eventually. But I'm going to take. some people with me. Did you get exfilled out of country after that happened? I imagine it became more complicated medically so you needed to get to higher lobes. So Tyler and I got thrown on a helicopter and uh flunda ballade then c141 medical c141 to launch stool into a school bus rigged to hold stretchers and that actual portion of it the airplane and the school bus ride was the worst part. there were tip to tail side to side

full of injured people who were fucked up. Yeah. We're talking, screaming in pain. Anytime that they moved excruciating pain, did we had a J-Soc doctor.

I mean, myself and Tyler had a guy. I was like, hey, this is horrible. Can you put me out? He was like, yep,

no problem. Like, see you in Germany. Yeah. Other people didn't have that experience. But we get on the bus in Launchstool, the airport, there's like a 40-minute bus drive. You know about vehicles.

Shocks on school buses aren't great. Imagine being in a stretcher with like a rector sets that they were able to put on some people or broken. You know what I mean? And you're like bouncing around. It was horrible. It was horrendous. We get to the hospital, Tyler and I shared some jello together,

watched some DVDs. He stayed there for longer. I ended up getting on a commercial flight coming home and was home a couple days after it happened. Wow. So this changes, this is probably a turning point in your career because after this, the whole officer then comes into play. That came into play a couple years later when I was a Buds instructor. I was doing my LPO tour, a leading petty officer tour during that deployment. And because I didn't do it for enough days, they counted it as incomplete.

So you couldn't promote? I could not promote and I didn't know it at the time. I got turned down for E7 twice. and I finally was able to talk to somebody who was at the board and they're not supposed to talk about it whatsoever and I was like, your record never got assessed because the LPO block

was not checked. And at Buds, I was at a short command, at a short command you have to hold that billet for two years. And I had just checked in and the guy had just started. So I would have had to wait for two years for him to finish. Do it for two years. So now we're at four and then apply for the next E7 cycle. Hopefully it wouldn't have been an additional year

because I only do it one time a year. So I had like a potential five year, like trying to run uphill in soft sand. And I didn't want to get out of the military. And the reason I wanted to make chief, I think just like everybody does, as they go up the ranks, whether it's officer or enlisted, is I want to have an impact. You know, like you're starting to get a good amount of experience. You want to be able to pass that experience on it. You want to be in a place where you can help make decisions and have some impact over what

happens. And it wasn't going to happen on the enlisted side. and I found a program called the LDO program or the limited duty officer program that didn't require a college degree. There was no LPO requirement. You basically submit your service record. You do a couple of interviews.

In the Navy, it was the same vehicle that the warrant officers go through. Their commissioning is a little bit different, but it's the same package and interview. And, you know, what does honor mean to you? You know what I mean? Like you fill out all these things, which it's not hard to do.

And everybody kind of just fills in the wrote answers, you know, And then you submit the package and a message came out in like July of 2008. Hey, you get picked up number one candidate to be selected. And so the first guy gets commissioned in October, second guy in November, then December and it goes on. So October 1st of 2008, I went from being an E6 to 2001 with no additional training or understanding how to wear an officer uniform.

So you just literally go to like clothing and sales and they went to the Navy exchange. I'm going to assume the woman I talked to was your cousin. You can fill in the negative space on that. Genetic related, at least. I said, I'm going to become an officer in October. I don't know what uniforms are required. Please fill my shopping cart up with me for everything that I'm going to need. And then we went, no, they have the tailoring department there.

And yeah, that's how that went. So one day you're enlisted, the next day you're an officer. Were there people in your command that were like, what? Like what? No, I mean, everybody knew it was coming. It was going to happen. Yeah. And then I remember the first time I wore my khakis, which is like the working officer

uniform, I walked over and I found a guy. It was an E9 who I had known from the command. I was like, do I have this shit on, right? I had no idea. So crazy. Yeah. So crazy. That's what in people, this refers back to a time where I imagine it comes from, I know

some guys in B Squadron who had done this early on, but it comes from back. but it comes from battlefield commissions it comes from the concept it's not that level i mean i know you're talking about those guys are a lot of the times i think that happened because almost everybody else died or all the officers died it wasn't a battlefield commission it was off the merits of my service record for sure but it was not as extreme as the situations that you're talking about but it's also at the time in war i mean i imagine that's the protocol it's like you need a lot of good officers and you have a lot of enlisted experience so let's down select the the best of the best.

I only know three guys total, you're one of them, that went through that experience in soft. Maybe it happened in the Army. I don't know if it happened in big military. So LDOs are line officers, even though it says limited duty officer. I was supposed to be in a training capacity. So my first duty station after that was at SEAL Team 3,

which is a nine iron shot away from Buds, or at least it was, all the seal teams now have been moved. The whole compound has been moved south down. Actually, by where we got those burritos. Yeah. That one day where they recognized you before me, which is awesome. We're with,

Rock Hard was there too. We're with, we're like in the most seal-centric area and we're getting a burrito because I was going to show you like the most awesome place to get one in San Diego. They were delicious.

And this SEAL student comes up is like, are you Mike Lover? I'm like, is this fucking happening right now? It was awesome. It was fun. Most of the SEAL teams are like actually literally right across the street from now. So it moved from there.

They invested like billions of dollars to build a full complex. Indoor ranges, like really cool shit. So I go to Team 3. I'm supposed to be the training officer, and they're kind of racking and stacking where the vast majority of the team ended up going to Iraq to include the headquarters unit, and two platoons were going to go to Afghanistan.

There was already on the radar an issue with the leadership of one of those platoons, the OIC of that platoon or officer in charge. The AOIC of that platoon, or assistant officer in charge, his wife was pregnant. So he was going to be delayed on coming overseas because he wanted to stay as the, the to see his child be born, totally legitimate. And the military will almost always bend over backwards to accommodate that for people who think that it's just like, no, you always go. Like, and at least the communities that I was involved with, they always tried to make an effort. If the person made an effort to show them it was a priority.

If you don't say shit, the military is not going to do shit. Early on in the training cycle was identified that there was an issue with this guy. And then of all the people going to Afghanistan, most of them were on their first deployment. and almost none of them, if none of them, had ever actually set foot in Afghanistan. So I was moved, even though I was still the training officer at Team 3, the commanding officer put me into the interim AOIC slot for that platoon. And I did the last few blocks of training with them to just kind of get back up to speed and get to know them and we get overseas.

And I ended up in a leadership, tactical leadership position, which is not the design of the LDO program. Shortly after this, too, to jump forward a little bit, there was little to know participation or people looking at the LDO pipeline. So they actually closed it down for the seal community. And they converted everybody who was in 1130. And I forget the four, it was like a 5962 or a 5162. That was the LDO code.

A commissioned Naval Academy or ROTC officer is an 1130. And they moved all the LDOs over to becoming 1130. So I would have on paper or in the digital system, I would have just disappeared into the sea of regularly commissioned officers all having college degrees. I'd barely graduate. I'm like, you know me.

I'm a fucking idiot, right? So I just would have disappeared into these sea of people with like four year degrees and some of them had like masters or road scholars. I'm like, oh God. I literally,

my first thought when I found out I got commissioned was this is proof the military advancement system is broken. If this just happened, we're all fucked. So, so, So we get over to Afghanistan, and we were out in a, there's a Boole province out in a place called Nabahar,

and we built the fob that we moved into. It was remote, it was by with and through, you know, but it was also relatively kinetic in nature. And it was awesome. I mean, as an O, was I an O1? Yeah, it was an O1. My commanding officer threw me a set of lieutenant bars, which is an O3 or a captain equivalent. So I was wearing 03 around generally. And then when I would go to meetings, I would grab my boss's like 04 oak leaves. I would put that. It was awesome. Whatever meeting

I was going to, I would pick the rank that I was at. Because if you're in 01 at a meeting full of like 05s and 06s, they're like, I'll take two creamers with my coffee. Yeah. Oh yeah. So I'm sitting there. Like, yeah, Scott, I need to, I need to borrow your caller device. Like, yeah, go for it. So it was awesome. Up and down the pay grade as needed. But how I found myself in that place, it was insane. I mean, as an 01, I was carrying my 300 wind mag, the javelin clue, and two tubes that I had created in a backpack for myself. And I would largely, it would help in the mission planning process, but largely I got to cherry pick the high ground positions I wanted to be in and just lay heat on people that were trying to maneuver around and figure out where the lower level, meaning terrain-wise or elevation-wise ground elements were. It was awesome.

Did you have to act as the ground force commander as well on the, on the from time to time. Yes. There was a, there was a time where I. You give it initials to Cass and just like thrown up? No, but there was a time where I essentially relieved that, oh, I see. And he was sent home within 72 hours. That was part of it. I was in an ambush.

I remember sitting there. I was sharing a vehicle with the E7. We were in side by sides. We put thousands of kilometers on side by sides because the IAD threat was so high. We actually here is this. 10? Yeah. So. Oh, is there in 10, too?

Is that Afghani? Yeah. It was in Kunduz. Yeah. One of the first things we did was like a presence patrol in an RG 33 and hit a fucking IED with the roller up front. And we had to sit there for like four days for them to come recover this thing. So it's like side by sides only thousands of miles or, well, maybe not miles, kilometers for sure, probably over a thousand miles and side by sides.

I was in a Overwatch position and so was the OIC at the time. And for whatever reason, he started. rendered a high ground position that was dominant and went down into the village that we were over watching. And we had already a guy riding through on a... This is the ground force commander who's acting platoon commander. He's the platoon commander who was up in a high ground position, which is a great spot for the ground. And there's one officer per platoon, right? Two. OIC, AOIC. And then the leadership suite would be... What is that? OIC, officer in charge, and then... AOIC, assistant officer. And then there's

going to be an E7 or a chief there. That's kind of like the leadership suite for a platoon. And then an LPO. That would be your... top four. What does this span for? Leading Petty Officer. Okay, got it. Guy had come by on a motorcycle with an AK strapped on to him. He ate a 300 one mag round.

So people knew that we were there. And an element moved into the village. And for whatever reason, I look up and I see this side by side coming down a hill. I'm like, what the fuck? That is the most dominant terrain feature that we have. And he called everybody in, so we collapsed from our positions. I remember talking to the chief. and telling him like, this is not good.

We no longer have eyes up and out in the other direction. And if we stay here like this and don't get the fuck out of here, we are going to get ambushed. And about five minutes later, we did. And I remember sitting there looking at the OIC and I was counting in my head, like one, two, waiting for him to make a call. No calls were made. I was like, fuck this.

And I just took over and started maneuvering the ambush from my element. So this is post you're getting ambushed. Yeah, we're in an ambush. for decisions. I'm in an ambush watching the OIC do fucking nothing. Ooh, okay. And counted to five, I was like, that's it. And immediately drove up to a high ground position,

to identify where we were getting shot from, maneuver the element out, bounding overwatch, got to a safe area, got cast in overhead. So you're the assistant in this position? Yeah. Okay, got it. Yeah. I mean, by rank, yes.

That was the second in command at that time. And, yeah, that guy got sent home about 72 hours later. How did that work on? Does you call some money and say, this happened? The AOIC had the ability to come back. So I was going to then be pulled as the operations officer, which at first I wasn't super stoked about, but the legend of the javelin had spread.

I remember the first time I shot one of the dude at an observation position, and I was reporting it back down into Kandahar. And I was giving the, you know, the Sulta R report, the size, the activity, location, time, actions taken, all these things was like, one by enemy personnel reporting on our positions from high ground

with an ICOM engaged with one by a javelin missile results are vaporization and I got one for one the guy was like engaged with what a buddy of mine was in the jock down there he goes they were losing their fucking minds not that they were mad but they were like that's awesome

so I get pulled back to the headquarters element and I was I would do a bunch of computer work during the day but the range on a javelin is great And by 2010, our enemy knew the effective range of our weapons. And a PKM will just lob shit in beyond any 762 rifle other than, well, effectively beyond the reach of a 762.

They can stand outside of our effective range and just lob shit in. And plunging PKM fire is second to me other than indirect mortar fire. It just sucks, man. It's such a big round. It sounds like, and I made this comment one, and people like, you don't know shit about ballistics. I said it's like a belt fed 300 wind mag. I didn't mean it was a fucking belt fed 300 windbag. It sounds like and feels like. Um, so they would creep into like 2K. And let me just tell you, the javelin can lock onto a 2K

is a fire and forget heat seeking missile that works all the way down to what I would say somewhere between a 10 to 12 year old because I try it and I couldn't get it to lock on. Um, but adults for sure. And I'm joking about that. I would never aim it at a child for people out They were like, you fucking war criminal? Like, I'm joking. Yeah. But it'll lock on the heat signature of a person at that distance. And if there's more of them, the more the better.

So I was able to have some impact, not only on people observing, but people maneuvering and people and firing from ranges that we wouldn't be able to do much with. And the other platoon we were with had heard about that. So I started to get sent like mission planning slides. So like, you know, if we were to invite you, what high ground position would you want? I was like, well, this one right here. And they're like, cool, you're on the manifest. So then I got to double the.

amount of operations that I got to go on. So I do computer work during the day, and then I would load up my, you know, my Jetman backpack at night. You're your designated javeler? Yeah. Just javelin. It was basically I looked like Buzz Lightyear

with his little things go, and they would stick out, because I would go all my kit, helmet nods, all the other shit I needed backpack on with two missiles that I had strapped like this. The clue would flip over the top in my 300 WIMAG. And I would just go get on howl.

Were you a javelin ace? Oh yeah, by far. Yeah, I think I should 12 or 13 of those things. Yeah, it was just rare. Javelina is rare. So you, I'm noticing a trend here, you're like the ghost assaulter. You could, you're, the ghost assaulter? Yeah, the ghost, you're, you're able to be in any position you want, but you have no specific responsibility. You've kind of gotten to a position where like, you could do, you could free float and do whatever you want. Two degree, yeah.

It's a very atypical career progression. Yeah. And I want to ask this to write, was the fact that you came from Dev grew a component and giving you the latitude from chief, from senior officers, even from the men's perspective. I imagine that word was getting around. It's like Andy came from Dev, he could do what he wants, kind of deal. It was never that I could do what I want. Like, I don't get me wrong.

There was, I have always played inside of the rules. And I, you know, it's one thing that people have always complained about you know, the rules of engagement are too confining or the theater-specific guidance. I look at it the other way. Okay, this is my hard left and hard right, but I can do anything in between those. Like, okay, now I know what I can do. Now I can get creative. So even in the roles that I had, I could never just be like, hey, I'm going to go do this,

but I could pitch an idea. Like, what do you think about this level of force multiplication? Put me and two javelins up there and two snipers on this hilltop, I have a three-kilometer ring that I can provide security and observation for, as well as I wasn't current at the time, but I had been a J-TAC in my career through the comms as well, so I can talk on any radio, I can shoot out there with my three-in-way bag,

I can pull up the javelin and hit both people and equipment, and at that time I had more combat experience than anybody in either of those platoons, so I think all of that factored in. I don't think it was specifically a dev-group thing, experience it. And I'm not saying that I have a lot of or had a lot of experience, but in comparison to my peers, I had more than most, if not all of the people that I was there with. Interesting.

We talk about this endeavor focal point where, you know, I think you created the mission set of wanting to allow people to critically think versus telling them how to specifically think. Sebastian Younger's quote, the role of the press is not to tell people what to think is to tell people what to think about. Yeah, I love that. And that's something that we've been doing on FocalPoint. In fact, we're filming episodes for Focal Point tomorrow, which is going to be awesome. Thank you for telling me that today. I was not aware of that. That's how we roll. It's as easy as a conversation. It is. The Patreon's on Patreon, I want to get to those because they're very much like that.

They don't, and you speak broadly, especially when it comes to things like, Okay, leadership. Go. Which we're doing here in like 20 minutes. Yes. Do you have any suggestions for developing leadership? It says 11-year-old, but let's just go with young men. How do you develop leadership in young men?

Yeah, people aren't going to like this answer because it's really hard. You have to model the behavior you that want to see from them. And if you look at the most influential people in your life, or if you are a parent and you don't recognize the power of that leadership position, you're already at a disadvantage. I mean, I look back. I learned the vast majority of the lessons had my true. true north oriented early on in my life before the military. The military refined it for sure. But the examples of hard work and integrity and communication on a job site, that came from my dad. But the ability to how to have a conversation between a man and a woman or a loving relationship

or showing affection or dealing with adversity or things that you don't agree on and being able to communicate and grow and evolve, that came from their interaction. And I don't think there's a course that you can send an 11-year-old to. because they're in school every second that you are around them, and they're watching you. Do your kids know any bad words, Mike? A lot. Have you sat them down and been like,

just so you know, when you stub your toe, what you should say is motherfucker, because that's what my daughter does when she stubs your toe from from the age of three. Yeah. I wonder where she learned that from, though. Not from me,

because I don't ever swear. I was my ex-wife, of course. She was a terrible role model. Also a joke, everybody, you don't need to fuck. You don't need to send her a clip of this. I'm joking. Parents are the most valuable leadership role that there is.

By example. By example, because the kids don't have a processing ability of sitting down and going through a point of instruction or a POI. They're not interested in doing that. I don't think they have the processing capability, but think about all the micro lessons that you can teach them. And that starts with you having a really good understanding of who you are and at all times an understanding of how you are behaving in front of them because they're listening to

everything, they're watching everything, and they're ready to make. mimic your behavior. Very good answer. Thanks Adam for that. Omar asked, this is very specific to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Do you think Renee's Gracie Online, BJJ University, is good enough to learn basics? Did you say Renee? Is it R-E-N-E-R?

No, he put... It's Hennar. Yeah, it's Hennar. That's not how you... Yeah. If there would be an R in there, that, yeah, it's Hennar, Gracie. Yep. It's good enough to learn BJJ basics or entry-level fundamentals to stay alive in the real world.

work schedule and location doesn't lend itself to getting on the mat. My girlfriend is more than wanting to be a training partner to do it that way. Let's work this question backwards. Do not use your girlfriend as a training partner whatsoever. In jiu-jitsu especially. Yeah. My wife is a fucking badass on the mats. She's a three-stripe black belt, which it's uncommon for a woman to achieve a black belt in jiu-jitsu. Three stripes mean she's been a black belt for nine years. Her next stripe will be five years from now. So it's three in between each and the next one, her four. will be five. We roll, and I recognize once because I beat her.

And as that was happening, I could see in real time the impact that it was going to have on my personal life. And it's not worth it. I realized, oh, no. And I've seen it coming. Oh, fuck. Like chess. Don't do it.

So, and it can be tough. We get an argument sometimes after we roll. I am bigger than her. I am stronger than her. I have been an athlete my entire life. Jiu-Jitsu is not magic. It has to take into account everything else that you bring to the table. I can give her a hard time.

She doesn't like that. She's been training for a lot longer than me. We have found ways to sometimes successfully navigate that. And that means I'm not allowed to win. I actually, we just kind of go back and forth and I leave it at that. Use with caution significant others as training partners. So let me... Relationship.

Let me help you help yourself. Now, okay, on the jiu-jitsu front, can you learn... If the options, if you're going to give me a binary option of I can't train or I can only do it online or instruction online absent a coach, I'm always going to tell you to train online apps and a coach. I don't think, and I've only been doing jiu-suezy for five years, so I'm not an expert. I'm not a coach. I'm not a black belt. Something is better than nothing, but videos are a tough medium because you can't feel what it is they're trying to show you. One of the most valuable coaching tools that I've ever been able to be given is when a coach talks about something and if you have a question, they come demonstrate it on you. You understand the angle, you understand the grips, you understand specifically the pressure, which you can't see that in videos. So if that's the binary choice, do I think that you can learn enough to defend yourself?

I think you could have enough information in your head, but you're not going to have enough live reps pressure testing that information against a truly resisting partner. Knowing all of the jiu-jitsu in the world is great. Not being able to apply it with timing and technique is a problem. And you're not going to get that absent live roles. So if that's all you have, do it, but I would find a way to modify your schedule if you want to go down the jih Tzu path to do it with training partners

that are about your size and experience level so you can pressure test these things because your online education, in my opinion, and that's all it counts for, will fall apart in a real world application. Xavier says, what have been some of your personal challenges during your journey after the military?

And how are you able to overcome some of these challenges? Thank you. Hardest thing I've ever done in my life was go through my divorce. It was the roughest two-year time period of my life. It had a physical impact on me that was probably worse than anything that happened collectively in my military career. It was the lowest point in time of my own self-worth. My value as a human being.

My value is a parent. I questioned everything about myself. It fucking sucked. And I went back to, I've talked about this in some of the leadership seminars that we have done. And one of the key things that allows people to make it through selection processes, specifically buds, is that they just break down their massive. have goals into super small digestible chunks. And in buds, that could be make it through the day and how weak that could be make it through to the next meal or make it to the next hour or make it through the next evolution.

But there were times in the middle of that divorce where I'm like, you know what, I'm just going to try to make it through the end of the Zoom call. And then I'm going to try to see the sun go down. And you know what? I hope tomorrow is a better day. If I would have started looking at how long am I going to be able to do this and how much more do we have to do and what's this going to cost, it would have absolutely destroyed me. It was hard enough.

So I defaulted back to breaking up massive goals into digestible chunks and only focusing on that next chunk. What specifically helps you out of that? Were there certain very specific things that did that? I spoke to a therapist every Wednesday for almost two years. Staying physically active for me is directly tied to my emotional stability and my emotional health as well. So I leaned on jiu-jitsu and the people at the gym as my training partners, They didn't even know it. They did not even know the role that they held in my,

I would use the word stability, but there were times where I was unstable, called recovery, I guess, from where I was to where I was able to grow out of. They didn't even know it. They had no idea that they were playing that role in my life. And then probably the biggest thing that trended stuff in the right direction

was meeting Leah. Yeah. R. Perron asked, Andy, in all seriousness, we were alone with your thoughts, not podcasting, not doing media, not talking to left or right folks. Do you ever go down the thought process or path of the fact that the U.S. is dying? I mean, I think a bigger question is, is the U.S. dying? I don't think it is.

I mean, you've known me long enough. I don't hold different opinions off here than on air. You know, whether we're creating content or doing something in front of a classroom, that we're getting ready to do here at your HQ in Provo or a podcast or we're at a sharing an Airbnb somewhere before an event like are we are good at the thoughts that we have or the thoughts that we have it doesn't change whether or not there's a red light flashing somewhere you know I have I try to have conversations with people from all sorts of different generations and I don't worry about it too much because it seems as if every generation has

faced an existential threat of what they used to know it seems to be threat and they're unsure of the future. And I think we're going to be okay. I was doing a podcast with Tim Kennedy this morning, actually, for change agents. And he was talking about, because I asked him, I said, are you hopeful or cautious about our future? And he goes, you know, my sons are playing on a hockey team

or my son is playing on a hockey team. And I just went there. And it was people all the way up to, you know, 18-year-olds just before the professional cusp. And he's like, I smoked the shit out of them, and they were there for it. They trained 10 times a week. They wanted to work out hard.

they're exactly the person that you would want in a foxhole with you. So those people are still always going to be out there, and it doesn't need to be everybody. I'm worried that we seem to be trending towards a gelatinous, homogenous society that is completely incapable of getting off their ass to a degree. But the beauty is, as long as that core nucleus of people exist, we can do so much because of the leverage of those people and the power of those people. I'll start getting really worried if Tim had gone to that or you and I in our day-to-day professional or personal life.

we don't run into that group of people, if that disappears, I'll start being worried. As long as that exists, I think that we're going to be okay because of the power of leverage and how much we can leverage those people. It doesn't have to be everybody. I am worried about like the passivity of our society and this desire to treat uncomfortableness and pain like a medical symptom that has to be addressed. Like the most valuable things in my life are the ones that I have worked the hardest for. It seems like if you, and I'm not saying that this is the case, is what it seems like. To me, if you wake up and you, you know,

I'm just having a bad day. It's like, oh, we need to treat that. It's like, no, work your way through your fucking bad day. Like, it's going to be all right. You're going to be more resilient at the end of that. Not every day is supposed to be like ear to grins, you know? William Likos asked, how would you teach daughters how to always be aware without making it obvious? I may imagine he means situation.

Yeah. I mean, I think you should teach. It's interesting. I had a question for an episode that came. out today, you know, it was about how do I teach my daughter? You know, I want her to be independent, but also I don't want to like turn her off from allowing people to help her. And my theory is you should treat like, will your daughter know how to change a tire? Yes. Of course, right? How to check the oil in her car? Some people are like, oh, only a guy should do them. Like,

that's really weird. It is weird. Like, how about we take the gender role out of knowledge and teach everybody the same because to me there's two different buckets there like there's capability men and women from a knowledge perspective should be equally capable like like oh I shouldn't know how to change a attire because I'm a woman like the fuck you're talking about you're you're waiting to be a statistic and like what if you're in the middle of nowhere like let's be capable people so teach men and women the same skills and then we have to teach men and women how to respect each other like for me I don't look at it as a gender role to open the door for my wife I love her to death and I respect her and I enjoy doing it. And I saw my father modeling that behavior. I walk to the outside of the street when

we're walking down the street because I recognize that the vehicles are threats. And I just because I love her and respect her so much, I want to put myself in that position. If we see somebody weird walking down the street and this happens all the time, I just put myself in between her. I don't say anything. I'll grab her hand sometimes, but, and she knows what I'm doing. But there's the capability and then there's the respect aspect. Capability, I think, should be equal For guys, you also don't want to be overbearing and try to do everything. And for girls, you don't want to be passive

and demure all the time and waiting for people. So that's kind of that balance. So I would teach them to be as capable as possible and then also explain to them, like you don't need somebody to open the door for you and maybe don't expect that. But understand if somebody does, it can be at a level that's deeper than,

oh, what they're thinking in their head is, oh, nice tits. Maybe they had a great set of parents and they're just being respectful. You know, but again, it goes back to my mind. but treat men and women the same when it comes from a capability perspective. I like that. Last question, Cammy says,

what do you think will be the first move the enemy will take to potentially to stabilize the United States? EMP, question mark, then synchronize attack station wide or just major states? How do you think that will unfold? Like unrest, worst case scenario. They've already done it. No, they divided us. I think this country is the most divided.

I've ever seen it in my 46 years on planet Earth. We can't even agree at this point and find any common ground on most issues. So we're spending so much time looking inward, arguing about who we are and what we stand for and for our little time looking external. I don't think they need an EMP. You think that was part of the plan? I think that there are nation states out there that disagree with our way of life, and they will do anything that they can to interrupt that. But why invest all of your money into a military power or nuclear bomb program or all of these things? When you could sit down with 100 people who are really tech savvy, leverage AI.

I mean, how many people get all of their information and social interaction from this anxiety cube? And it's not that, you know, that I think somebody sees an Instagram video and then it's like, God damn it. They pick up a battle axe and they want to go like, I'm a conservative, I'm going to go kill a liberal. It's not that. But I think it's micro nudges. And like there are behavioral therapists. that know exactly what type of little hooks to put into content that elicits a response. And if I was a nation state, what would I rather do?

Would I rather line up tanks in armor and battle it out or sit back and just completely erode a country from the inside while the people who are being eroded don't even recognize it? I think the first move's already been taken. We focus in that effort and conversation of AI, EMP, kind of end-of-day scenario. in one of the Focal Point episodes. We just talked about E&P stuff actually on the change-age episode,

which I have no idea when it's coming out, but it'll be after this, because this comes out Monday, I think you said. Yeah, we just did that. When is that? I have no idea. You just did one with Tim, right? Was that the same episode or is it a different episode?

That was this morning, I think you and I, what day is it today? I have no idea. It's Friday. I think you and I did her episode Thursday. Yes. I have no idea when it is coming out, though. Okay, and I have no idea what day is,

or what time it is. We got eight minutes into our leadership seminar. I have one more self. Well, a true leader shows up five late, so we actually have carry the 113. True. Yeah. I'm actually interested in this personally. I've never asked you this before, but where does the obsession of jumping come from?

Because I see you passionate in many things. Jiu-Jit's one of them. Yeah. But jumping is, yeah, but there's something, like that's got to come from somewhere. Is there a root to that? Did you get the interest in military free fall? Because outside of just jumping for fun, you've broken. in many records including a world record with supporting folds of honor with legacy expeditions

seven continents seven days and you guys did in six days six and a half yeah six and a half days and then also uh world record jumps for a wingsuit flying and you've you've based jumped and where does that come from uh where you hate the water you seem to love oh yes i do hate the water um my original desire to get free fall qualified was an absolute disgust and distaste for static line jumping because we would get a C-130 and the static-glide dunes were on the port side of the aircraft and the freefall dudes were on the starboard the free fall guys were happy and hooting and hollering and hollering and hollering and having a good time and the static line dudes were wrapping their ankles knees neck elbows wrists

and fucking tape and ice and getting medded back off the dropout from as you hear people in free fall can he's like oh it's so awesome did you see me I saw you seeing me And that was my initial. I'm like, fuck this. So I went and got civilian qualified first and ended up challenging the military course. I just always really liked it. It's just fun. I enjoy it.

It's really cool to be able to, you know, manipulate your body in a three-dimensional space. And then I had the opportunity to pursue all the era qualifications when I was at Development Group. So I got every air qualification the military has to offer. And just really enjoyed it. There's not like a deep, like, oh, like this is filling a hole for me. I just, even from my very first jump, like, damn, this is awesome. And for some people, that's the way it is.

Like it is, like the jiu-jitsu bug will bite them. And others, I totally get it. Who are like, yeah, this is kind of okay. And this is what we do from get to A to B. But whatever, I want to go do something else. So I don't really have a super deep answer on that one. It's just something I always enjoyed. Very interesting.

Yeah. Especially, like, you usually are bigger guys. Like, I mean, me and you were nearly the same size. It's like, I, in static line, ate shit every time my job. Correct. And in free fall, I also ate shit. That's because you're not good at it. I'm not good at canopy control.

I'm very bad at it. I'm good at falling. So from what I have seen, and I have terabytes of footage that I'm happy to display, from the exit, not good, free fall, not good, pulse sequence, questionable, canopy control, not good. But let's compare me with Mike Sorrelli. He's worse. He's...

Or maybe Evan, not. Haven Hafer. Evan Hafer is not the fondest. Not great either. I also have some video of him really rolling up the windows, doing some little midget kicks. They don't work, you know. My favorite is the one of you just filmed with Tim Kennedy. And it was like a perfect exit off that helicopter.

And then he just kind of like, I'm just laying on my back, just filming him with my arms crossed, just laying back on the air mattress. And as soon as I saw he was going to go, he recognized he was going to go over two. He was like, God damn, he's got a GoPro on. He went to punch the air. Yeah. It just doesn't work. Low air speed exits are tough.

You just got to relax. All right, Andy Stump, cleared hot podcast. You're doing a special edition of cleared hot, or is it a different kind of thing? I don't know. I'm just, when issues come up that I want to take a few minutes to talk about, I think I'll probably keep it under that banner for a while. I don't know what necessarily the name is going to be, but I enjoy doing it. I enjoy the thought process of seeing something, thinking my way through it.

And really, at the end of the day, I love that Sebastian Younger quote. You know, just don't tell people what to think about. Tell them, I'm sorry, don't tell people what to think. Tell them what to think about. And it's just, here's some other food for thought that's not based in a left or a right or religious or not, because I don't really care what people's beliefs are in that matter. You know, like, live your life however you want to live. And here's maybe an opposing opinion that's not based in trying to manipulate your behavior.

Yeah. Looking forward to that in 2024 point. Check it out. I'll link it down below as well. Also, all of any stuff. if you're hearing Andy for the first time. I appreciate you. Thank you. Yeah.

Yeah. Thanks, guys.