Jocko Podcast - 116: "I Can't" VS. "I Won't". And What's More Important? With Rob Jones.

Episode Date: March 7, 2018

0:00:00 - Opening 0:06:09 - Rob Jones: A strong path to recovery. 1:02:117 - "I Can't" VS "I Won't", and the 31 Marathons. 1:45:48 - Proofing the Lane for others. 1:50:51 - Closing Thoughts and take-aways. 2:10:02 - Support: JockoStore stuff, Super Krill Oil and Joint Warfare and Discipline Pre-Mission, THE MUSTER 005 in DC. Origin Brand Apparel and Jocko Gi, with Jocko White Tea,  Onnit Fitness stuff, and Psychological Warfare (on iTunes). Extreme Ownership (book), Way of The Warrior Kid 2: Marc's Mission, The Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, and Jocko Soap. 2:42:33 - Closing Gratitude.      Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 116 with Echo Charles and me Jocco Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. So this then was the culmination to die. Die in the stinking mud. Twice before I'd crossed this no man's land darting from shellhole to shellhole. I'm no hero. I was numb with fear.

but this time a barrage was on I lay there at the wasteland's edge thinking was there any way to the right lay crack shot snipers to the left in the brush machine guns hungry waiting and fair in the front great bursting mud clouds playing tall costs with bodies. Get through once more, son, the colonel had said. Communications down. Our guns firing short, killing our boys. Yes, it must be done. But how? Wait.

The barrage, sweeping across the field and back, a deadly windshield wiper, were I to follow it down, and when I returned, dig in. I might. Now. drunk with fighting fear, I chased the mud cloud down the field, kicking dead bodies, twisting like a ghost, and I laughed, and I yelled, you bastards, you can't get me. Our trenches ahead, almost there. Back came hell's windshield wiper, vomiting death, and I dug in, dug in with all I had.

Mom, dear God, help me. On it came 40 feet 20 feet God my head torn from my body is this what being dead is like Peace quiet Clean white sheets my head must still be here. It hurts me These must be my fingers. I can move them and now a voice a voice My boy, for you, the war is over. You hear that, Mom?

I'm still alive. I did not die. I'm coming home. And that is a poem that was written by a man by the name of Ralph Mone, of East Machias, Maine, who left his job as a civil engineer in Waterville, Maine, to enlist in the army in 1917. And he was wounded badly on that day, but he did live. And he was decorated for his actions on that day.

And the citation for his award reads, The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress 9 July 1918, takes pleasure in presenting the Distinguished Service. Cross to mechanic Ralph T. Mone, United States Army for extraordinary heroism in action while serving with Company K. 103rd Infantry Regiment, 26th Division, American Expeditionary Force near Rayville, France, 26 September, 1918. Mechanic Mone, who is detailed as a runner, made several trips carrying important messages across terrain swept by constant fire from machine guns, snipers, trench mortars, and artillery. His disregard for personal safety and devotion to duty in the prompt delivery of messages contributed greatly to the success of the action. and Ralph Mone According to his family never spoke the war to his children or his grandchildren But he did live with it

Every day and tonight I am honored to have a guest Back on the podcast who is also wounded in war But who has not let that stop him in any way From driving on with his his mission and his life and doing more than most people could ever even imagine. Mr. Rob Jones, a Marine, a wounded warrior, and an inspiration to anyone that's lucky enough to come into contact with him. Rob Jones, welcome back to the show.

Hey, you know what? It's an honor to be just a single-time guest on what I consider to be the best. podcast on the airwaves but to be a two-time guest is purely rarefied air and I'm just I appreciate you guys deeming me worthy of a of a second visit so absolutely to be compared to that gentleman is even greater honor so yeah you know I read that a while back and it was one of those things as I was reading it I was thinking I was thinking about you I was thinking about you know I was thinking about Jody thinking about Travis think about you guys that were wounded bad and

and I've heard that before in another is another book I read about World War I where guys they wake up they think they're in heaven because they see white sheets and they see there's a nurse there that's talking nicely to them

and they think they're dead they think they're in heaven and that reminded me you know when I read that I was thinking about you and having waking up you know in a hospital somewhere and I know you actually woke up

you're not supposed to wake up in Germany but you did no you're not supposed to but yeah for whatever reason I woke up. I think I need to drink a water so you need to hydrate. Yeah I'm not sure why I woke up. I don't remember much but and I didn't definitely didn't see anybody you could mistake for an angel or I think my old squad leader. Yeah well for anyone that's listening that hasn't listened to the first time Rob was on go back and listen to episode 92 and that's

where we go through what Rob went through how he's raised you know growing up to Joining the Marine Corps deployment to Iraq deployment to Afghanistan and that's that's where Rob was wounded Hit an IED and and ended up losing both legs above the knee But like I said that didn't stop Rob and he went from that and In the podcast we we jumped really quickly through sort of your healing process right and we jumped right into the fact that you were Went out did the the the Paralympics as a row And we jumped into the fact that you rode a bicycle across America, which is, yeah, across America, during the polar vortex, by the way. Yeah, all that stuff is covered in 92.

But I was actually going back and I was listening to the 92. And I realized that, you know, maybe it's just your, it's your attitude that might have made me kind of do this in the conversation. Your attitude was like, yeah, I lost both my legs. And then I was just competing in the Paralympics. You know, you made it sound like it's like it was easy. That's the way it kind of came across in the podcast. And what I wanted to do today was kind of at least go back and talk a little with a little bit more detail about that process of going, because it's a long process, right? A year and a half, yeah, for me anyway.

Yeah, yeah, a year and a half of from letting the wounds heal all the way through, you know, where now your computer. in the Paralympics and you're getting around and you're mobile and all that. So you get back, how long does it take for your wounds? Because you can't do anything until your wounds are healed up, right? No, I mean, well, you can do some stuff. You can't do anything as far as prosthetics are concerned. So in the beginning, you know, the physical therapy would come in and they just basically just have me move my stumps around. And that would be like, you know, lift your right stump 10 times, lift your left one, move it out and

back and then that would be it for the day or you know i could do you know my arm still work so i would do little pull-ups on my little trapeze bar that i had attached to the uh the bed but yeah it was you know surgeries every other day they just come in and uh take me over and they'd just be just clean in the wound out any dead tissue or anything that was still left in there they cleaned that out but i had these wound vac machines on that were just constantly sucking the fluids out of the wounds because they were open for the first month. And yeah, so they were just like kind of sucking that stuff out. And it's just a, you know, a waiting game at that point.

I mean, you're, you can do some stuff. Like, I figured out how to, you know, it slowly got to kind of re-figured out how to move my body around and move my legs around to get comfortable. And were you getting like the phantom pains? Yeah, I didn't get it as bad as Travis had it. I never had to do a, uh, what was it, a ketamine coma in order to... I had it some, and they gave me this stuff called Lyrica,

which is like a fibromyalgia medication. And I got it, and I never really had it all that bad. It's like... It's pretty much at the same level it is now where every, maybe twice a day, my toe will kind of, like, hurt pretty bad for four or five seconds, and that's it. But there's some people that have it a lot worse. So I kind of lucked out with that.

but yeah so first month is kind of learning how to get into the wheelchair um and you know at first i wouldn't i couldn't i was so sore i couldn't really move very much and so i'd have to have a nurse and whoever was in there visiting me if i wanted to get my wheelchair i'd be sitting on this little pad and i'd say all right well i want to go for a roll and then so they would the nurse would be on one side and the other person would be on their side and they kind of like scoot me onto the wheelchair and then we'd have to take the wound back machines and hook them onto the wheelchair and take my catheter, which I was very protective of that catheter.

Hang that on there, and then the IV pole would have to come with me. And so then I would just kind of roll myself around the ward a couple times with my dad or my mom or somebody pushing the IV pole. And yeah, I'd just do that a couple times. Then I'd go see my buddy Daniel because he couldn't get out of bed. yet so I go and see visit him for a little bit and I go back to my room and that'd be pretty much my exercise for the day and then have like six milkshakes this eating as much as I possibly

could to help with the healing process you know where did you go through the whole woe is me why did this happen to me did you go through that at all and I mean I know I've I've listened some of your stuff and reading some of your stuff, you know, you talk about the fact that you knew you had to just move to like an acceptance phase immediately. Is that, is that what you did? I mean, how did you get, look, man, people hit all kinds of freaking roadblocks in life and very few of them are as heavy of and big of a roadblock as you hit. And you seem to power through that thing, like, miraculously. you know I don't

I never I never entered into an extended period that could be described as like a depression or woe is me you know feeling sorry for myself it would come in very short waves where you know I'd be sitting around I would struggle with something maybe and then after I figured it out I might sit there for a couple minutes to be like man

but that be about it and then it would be go away after you know minute or two. It'd be kind of like almost kind of like if you're talking to a girl in a bar and you like your voice cracked, you just totally blow it and you look like an idiot and then you go back to the table and like, man.

Sure. It's like that. It was almost kind of like that. I'm like, man, how did I miss that IED? You know, man, this sucks. But, and I, you know, I didn't really think about it probably this way at the time. I couldn't articulate it at the time like this, but it's like that,

whether or not, you know, I deserved, I, you know, I could acknowledge I didn't deserve it. I didn't deserve to be a double amputee. I didn't, uh, it wasn't, you know, fair. There's a lot of other guys that were running around in that same exact area. They didn't step on it. So it wasn't necessarily fair that I had to be in, uh, an amputee. I didn't want to be an amputee.

But none of that mattered. Um, it didn't, none of that had any bear. on whether or not I wanted to have an enjoyable life. And I did. I sat there and I was like, well, what is my mission in life? If you really take it to its base level, you know, have an impact, enjoy my life. That doesn't change just because now I'm an amputee. And whether or not it's fair or the fact that I'm starting from a, you know,

a little bit more of a disadvantaged position now, all that stuff has no bearing on whether or not. I want to accomplish my mission. And so realizing that, you just kind of, well, what do I have to do now? I mean, that stuff's in the past. So all I can really affect is how I react to it. And, you know, so I think that's kind of how I skipped all that stuff. Did you, I know one thing that I remember and, you know, one of my guys, Ryan Job, he got shot in the face. and he got gravely wounded and, you know, he ended up blind.

And he was down with a lot of casualties that had guys that had really bad brain injuries. Right. And he was there for a little while. And, you know, these were guys that had been severely wounded and, like I said, had severe brain injuries. So they're having trouble communicating. They're having trouble with motor skills. And these almost all the time come with other physical injuries. And, you know, his attitude was, hey, look, I'm taking up a bed here.

And we should give it to someone else. These guys are having a much harder time than me. I'm lucky because I didn't get that injury. All I got was blind and, you know, some damage to my face. But it was amazing to me to see a guy. like Ryan Job who who just Looked at him as self and said I'm lucky. I'm lucky those guys are worse off to me trying to give your efforts to take care of these other guys Instead of trying to take care of me I can I can do okay open up this bed for someone else to send me to a

Send me somewhere else and that's what they did and I think that You know that attitude of like hey this could be much worse right and And to me, first of all, hearing him talk about that was a testament to like the spirit of a guy that just is gonna carry on and drive on. And the things that he did before he died was amazing, you know, he graduated college with like a straight A grade point average.

He got married, he, you know, his wife got pregnant. He got a job with, he got a job with, a defense contractor. He was like totally on the path and crushing it despite the fact that he had You know one of the best excuses someone could have hey, I got wounded. I lost my vision It didn't didn't slow him down at all he climbed Mount Rainier. He just did amazing things and His attitude of look I'm in a bad place not that bad I'm gonna push on and and like you said This isn't gonna this isn't gonna stop me from having a great life and and and getting after it basically yeah

Yeah, a couple things. I'm glad you brought that up because there's definitely something to my own recovery during the time where I got there. So it's kind of like I almost had a feedback loop on myself. So I got, I was immediately thinking about even in the blast critters, one of my first thoughts was like my mom was going to be pretty upset about this. And when I woke up in Germany, the one thing that I did was I asked for a, stupid hat. I was like, my squad leader is there.

I said, see if you can find a stupid looking hat that I can wear when I come out of the ambulance so that when my mom sees me for the first time, she'll see this stupid hat and maybe it'll make her laugh a little bit, you know. But, you know, obviously they didn't find one. And, but I think what happened was I had a good attitude in the first week or two. And then that kind of set a precedent for myself.

And all my friends that came in, all my family that came in saw me with that solid, positive attitude. And that, you know, that gave them hope at the same time. So they had that hope. And then I kind of went on and there was times, you know, they saw me already like that. So if there was ever a time where I was feeling sorry for myself or anything like that, I was like, you know what? My mom, my dad, all these people have already seen me being positive. And if I flip that around, then that's going to hurt them now.

And so I have to keep that in mind. So it's not really about, it's not only about me. So that forced me to make sure I maintain my positive attitude because, you know, they're depending on me. I'm depending on them at the same time. So they're depending on me to stay positive so that they can stay positive. And so we kind of fed off Each other And so you know that just kind of

Snowballed I guess Until you know here we are Now you get So you're talking like a month of milkshakes And good milk They weren't mint chag chip but they were good you know And you're just feeding yourself You're trying to try to heal up

Get the wounds to actually heal And you're Every time you go around Every time you leave your bed it's a gut check because you got to, you know, do the wound draining and all that other stuff. And then after a month, things are starting to heal up. At what point did you, were you able to, like, get yourself out, get yourself in the wheelchair? I think I was probably after that first.

So I spent a week in the ICU, you know, high on morphine. I don't remember much from that time period. And then I get to the ward and probably after that first week, maybe 10 days on the main ward, I'd be like, all right, I'm going to try and do this myself, guys. And then it took five times the length of time, but I did it. And then from then on, I was doing it on my own. And so, yeah, and that was kind of the biggest milestone for, you know, being in the hospital during that healing period, was being able to do that. And then, so, and then, you know, as they slowly took tubes away.

And then the final milestone for being in the hospital at that point was when my wounds were finally sutured, closed, and I got the skin graft. I'd take a skin graft from my left leg and put it on the inside of my right thigh. And once they did that, and that was, they healed that, they checked it out, made sure it was good, then I was ready to be transferred over to Wall 3. But I still had stitches all in my, or staples. Staples or stitches, I wanted to. And so after that was done, that's when they transferred me over to Walter Reed.

And even then, I still had to wait for those stitches to come out before I could get fitted for prosthetics. And I was probably in the inpatient in the hospital for another two weeks while I waited for a room to open up in the outpatient housing. So it was pretty similar in those first two weeks. I just had the IV line. That's all I had. And, you know, I could go out. Are they pumping you with antibiotics the whole time? What do they got an IV in you for?

Pain medication. Okay. And I think it's probably just a standard just in case something goes wrong. They have quick access. My buddy Daniel, he had a pick line straight into his heart. What's that? I think it's just a tube. They just put it straight, put it into your chest.

And I guess maybe it's just for quicker access for pain medication. So I'd be in the hospital that first. month and you know they give you the pain button so you can kind of control yourself and to be funny because they they they only meters out so much in an hour you can hit it like once every five minutes or something but in the first week I'd be kind of passing out and I'd whenever I woke up I'd hit it a couple times just to make sure I'm getting that dosage because I was scared like what happens if this pain button goes away like I don't want to face that and so they'd come in after an hour and the nurse say you know you

can only hit this single once every five minutes. Like, yeah, yeah, I know. I said, well, you've hit it like 200 times the last hour. Oh, well, you know, I just hit it. Yeah. I fall asleep. Yeah. And so then during that time when you were still had like stitches, but, and I know we

talked about this a little bit, but you had like the triangle thing hanging above you where you start doing pull-ups and you start trying to do some kind of upper body workout at that time? Yeah. I mean, once I got to Walt Three, I met my physical therapist that day, and we set up the time I was going to come in, seven o'clock for occupational therapy, and eight o'clock for physical therapy.

And we'd be just doing stuff on the mat tables. So you don't have to be wearing legs, and you can be working on other stuff while you're waiting for that stuff to heal. So yeah, I'd be doing kind of dips. I've raised the arms and my wheelchair up really high, and I do dips. And, you know, they had stuff you could do, like trunk strengthening exercises.

You know, I wasn't the first double-in-a-neputee to come through Walt's re you know we'd been at war for nine years so they had this all these exercises already set up so I'd come in I do my exercises lay a legless for the day and just work on what I could while we waited for that stuff to while we waited for my skin and we're just waiting on my skin basically to heal how did you feel like how did you feel regaining your strength in your upper body were you like were you like were you like back on the gains path you know what I mean Were you like, okay, I just did, you know, yesterday I did eight pull-ups and today I'm going to do 10 and the next day. Did you get yourself right back in like the old school workout mode for?

Oh, yeah. Just back on the path. Yeah, man. When I was still in the, when I was still in the hospital at Bethesda, I would go into physical therapy. But you guys got a pull-up bar or anything like that? Yeah, we have one. They had one in like a closet. And I was, so I was like, yeah, I want to do some pull-ups.

And so I set the pull-up record for people that had come through, and it got broken by a seal later. But so, yeah, I set that pull-up. I was like, let me see how I never lost the desire to see what I could do, you know? I was like, yeah, I'm going to do a max set of pull-ups and see how many I could do still. But, yeah, it was definitely frustrating because I lost a lot of muscle mass. But, you know, once you start doing those exercises, like every time I came in, I wanted to go at one more or two more or a little bit. longer and I had that same attitude when I started walking you know the first day I started walking I'd maybe stood my legs for two minutes and the next day I was like you know I'm going to try three

minutes today or last yesterday I walked one time around the little track I'm going to go twice you know just slowly building up and you know kept that same so what's that process like getting getting standing up for the first time what does that feel like it's wow I mean the first thing you got to do is you got to get casted So they have to make the sockets that go on to your stumps. And they do it. They wrap this plaster around your stump, and they mold it so that it's putting pressure on the right spots. And they take that off.

They fill it up with some other kind of plaster material. They take the cast that they made off, and then they pour plastic around that. So then you have basically the mold of your leg. And the first time you step up in it, it's not comfortable at all. It hurts a lot because you're putting pressure on points that you didn't before, and they kind of have to. So you stand up and you're like, okay, well, there's a spot right back there that hurts a lot. So they take it off and they use this hair dryer, make it hot,

and they kind of mold it. They push it out against so it's not against that spot anymore. And then you put it back on, okay, that's comfortable. and then you do it for the other one. And for me, yeah, I mean, I could, you can't, I couldn't just walk from the first try. I had to have my arms on the,

on the parallel bars. Like, it was, you know, that slow thing that you see kind of in movies where I took maybe 10 steps and that was it for my first time. I walked five and is it like balance or is it, is it a little bit? Musculature.

Like, is it you're using different muscles? Yeah, so you definitely, you're walking in a different way than your body's designed to. So when you walk, you just go, you know, kind of forward and back here with your legs. You bend, bend at the knee to get it past the ground, so it doesn't skip on the ground. Whereas when you're double above knee amputee, you have to swing your legs out to the side at first because you don't have that knee joint. You can't just bring them, you know, forward. So you kind of have to learn that, and it's a lot of the balance. Your musculature has to kind of get used to what muscles you're using to keep your balance now.

So that has to be figured out by your brain and your spinal cord. And then on top of that, just developing the resistance to the discomfort. It's really not comfortable, and that's kind of probably what I didn't get tired. Like I could have stood for longer But it's just my legs were hurting so bad Yeah like you could run a mile Or you could run a marathon or whatever But if you're

If you're if you're if you have a blister on your toe You know then that's gonna stop you Mm-hmm yeah It seems like the balance thing Like sometimes I've hurt my Like let's say hurt my ankle or hurt my Even something's as stupid as hurt Like had a big cut on my

On the bottom of my foot Yeah And so you can't use your foot the way you normally do and it totally throws off your balance and I can't even imagine you're you're now trying to balance through the through the perception of your nerves in your in your stumps. Yeah and and and how that feels and how you got to kind of adjust for that. That's got to be like learning how to like to like ski or something. Learning how to do a balance type sport surf or something like that. I can only imagine that that's got to be what it's like to get your brain and like you said your brain and your spinal cord to be able to adapt to what's happening underneath you when you have a totally new set of sensors down there now. Yeah, and you also have to keep, for a double above knee amputee, all this stuff I'm saying is just double above knee amputees,

but you're also losing two joints that help with balance. So an able-bodied person they have, if they want to make a small, just when they use their ankle, and then they can use the knee, and then they can use the hip. But, you know, double above knee, all we have is the hip. so it's an extra challenge learning how to make these adjustments with just just your hips but you know it's kind it's a lot like a a dog that has a missing leg you know the first time

he goes to walk he kind of just figures it out and he just learns that new method and it's kind of it's pretty much a similar thing you you know you adapt to it and you just you figure it out and are the first prosthetics that you get are they articulated or are they just like straight because I know what you've got now It's pretty, they look pretty damn advanced to me. Yeah, I mean. I thought as advanced as you can get. Yeah, you're looking like a freaking Terminator robot over there.

But what are you getting at first? Because is it articulating? No. So, yeah, it's in the balance in that realm, they keep you really short while you're relearning that balance because just in case you fall. So while you're relearning that balance, it keep you really short. So basically, if I was going to fall, I just put my hand out, much and catch myself on the ground and so while you're relearning this balance they keep you

nice and short because your center gravity is going to be lower so it's a lot easier and then also you kind of learn that hit motion so they keep you nice and short just to make it a lot easier and then as you get better as you get stronger and a little bit better moving around they make you a little bit taller but there's no knee joint it's just you go from your socket and there's a a straight cylindrical pylon made out of metal, and that goes with a prosthetic foot, and you probably have a shoe on the foot, and then that's it.

So you stay really short for three, four months. And at this time, are you already thinking about, like, what kind of crazy stuff you're going to do once you figure this shit out? Once I had found out about the Paralympics, that was probably my first week when I was at Bethesda in the hospital bed, just researching. I wanted to get back in the gym,

and I didn't know what I'd still be able to do in the gym, so I was maybe looking for, I forget what I searched, but like disabled sports or disabled working out or something like that, and I found the Paralympics. And at the time, I wasn't saying to myself, I'm definitely going to commit to going,

because I didn't know much about it, and I still had this big, I still had to take, you know, a year and a half to relearn how to walking, and that was numero uno, uh, to learn how to do. but yeah it was kind of in the back of my head

I had found about it and I was thinking about it's kind of how things work for me the idea is impregnated initially and like okay okay that's an interesting idea you know Paralympics okay that's interesting I go riding my bike cross country okay interesting and then

I think about it a little bit more and time goes on I think yeah I could probably do that you know and then eventually I'll get to a point where like all right I'm going to do it and then I commit to it So at this point, you know, I hadn't committed to it, but I was researching and, you know, contemplating and figuring out the feasibility and, you know, how I would go about it if I wanted to try and make the attempt. That seems like that would have a massive positive impact on your mindset. So something that I talk about, I talked about with Jordan Peterson and he agreed with me on this idea of finding a new mission and having a new mission. So a lot of times, and I'm sure you've seen this too. I've definitely seen it when guys get out of the military for whatever reason.

When they get out, the guys that do well are the guys that have a new mission to go on. And whether it's a new job or whether they're going to be a super dad or whether they're going to go to school and get good grades, those guys do good in their new mission. The guys that have the most trouble from what I've seen most of the time is the guys that don't have a new mission. They get out and they say, well, you know, I might do this. I might do that. I might do something else, but what they're really doing is nothing. They don't have any real direction.

And they end up, you know, what's the mission? The mission becomes have another drink, you know, do something unproductive, do what feels good immediately, and it becomes problematic. But it seems like the fact that you found something immediately, you realize that there was a goal that you could go after,

even if it was only a little idea at first. Yeah. That idea can carry you a long way. Yeah. And also, luckily for me, it wasn't like it was, it's not like I was in Afghanistan one day and then separated the next day. I kind of had a mission that was, you know, it came about by its own because, you know, I just lost my legs. My first mission was to learn how to walk. So I had that right away. But, you know, while I was taking that time to do that, I was thinking about, you know, what I'm going to do after I get out.

You know, every guy that gets out of the military, you know, most the time, you know when your contract's going to end, so you can start thinking about it earlier. But it's definitely, no, I agree with you. Having something to work towards is hugely important. See, I'll tell you that even what you just said, so there's people that they get out and you're saying, hey, I had this new mission because I had to at least learn how to walk. There's people that they get out and they don't have a new mission and they don't figure why. out and that becomes so problematic and and you know what let's not just apply it to the military I'll apply this to every human being happen kids get out of college happens kids get out of high school happens when you go through you know you've got something that you're looking at or something that you're focused on and boom

it goes away well now what are you gonna do and if you don't line something up and don't focus on something you don't take aim at something well then you're not going anywhere oh yeah it's like when you're you know how you shoot do you guys call it table two when you're kind of working on uh shooting like targets that are right in front of you we don't call it table two okay we call it table two is table one is kind of the long distance rough range okay but it's almost kind of like when you're when you're when you're doing that and you they say okay shoot this guy twice and that guy twice so you do that and then at the end you scan and make sure there's nobody else around

so it's kind of like doing that your mission is to shoot the thing but you also have to be looking out for other stuff yeah yeah no absolutely you know it's it's funny too because I think about like when you think about kids that you grew up with and like high school they get done with high school and there's some kids that okay I'm gonna go in the college I'm gonna go to military yeah there's some kids that don't know what they're gonna do after high school and what happens to him you know what happens to them they they flounder around they get a little job here that they don't really like they do something else they don't really like you just have to be careful of that yeah you have to be careful and I'd say as a parent that's something to look out for too you know you gotta look out for your kids and make sure your kids have something to focus on, have something that they're striving for. Because if you don't have anything to strive for, if you're not trying to go anywhere, if you're not on some kind of mission, that's problematic. Yeah.

And, you know, so since I had that, everything I did during the day mattered to me because I had something that was vastly important to me that I was trying to achieve. So if I didn't care about whether or not I walked again, then I could just, roll around in my wheelchair and it wouldn't matter if I worked out that day. But since I really, I learned how to walk again and be totally independent and get rid of my wheelchair and all that stuff, be able to run and do everything I was able to do before, that was, you know, the most important thing. And so I fed off that when, you know, I didn't feel like going into therapy because I was my back hurt or whatever. And the, you know, whether or not I do that third,

fourth set of balanced drills or, you know, strengthening exercises, you know, that had an effect on that goal. And so, and the same thing with going to the Paralympics, you know, I wanted to be able to explore that. And so the stuff I was doing in the hospital, it mattered. So this is interesting because we were actually talking about this the other day. So you end up with, and again, I'm just trying to break down because. obviously you're a person that that can push through pain and suffering and

push through short-term challenges in order to achieve a long-term goal and I think that the way you break it down is you're looking even when you're you're you're suffering from a challenge right now you're you know I don't feel like doing another balance you drill because my back is sore or whatever yeah well people hit that those kind of obstacles every single day. You know, they don't want to get up in the morning. They don't want to work out. They don't want to do the last set, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

But you had, you tie those small-term, short-term things, the short-term pain because you have a long-term goal that's you really care about. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's all a matter of what matters to you most. You know, is what's more important to you learning for, or for me, learning how to walk again or staying in bed today. You know, staying in bed would be nice. It would feel good.

I'd be able to watch, I think what I was watching on Netflix, I was watching 24 of the series at the time on Netflix. I could watch an entire series of 24 today or something. And I could do that, and that would be fun. But at the end of the day, I'm still not going to be any closer to being able to walk again. And I would much rather be able to walk everywhere I went, totally independent. then find out what happens to Jack Bauer, you know.

So, and then, you know, at the same time, you know, if, if you're working on, you know, what people like to, if you want to lose weight, you know, would you rather have a milkshake, mint chocolate chip milkshake? Or would you rather, a cookie dough milkshake? Would you rather have that milkshake or would you rather, you know, be able to run? 10 miles or not get winded when you're walking with your kids or playing with your kids is like what which one matters to you more and I always pick that bigger one because I mean it's it's pretty straightforward for me Yeah, the delayed Gratification is the delayed gratification versus the instant gratification Delayed but much more enjoyable

Yeah much more enjoyable definitely better and better for your whole life Yeah last longer too by the way yeah Yep, and enduring, it's an enduring, lasting, longer lasting, enduring thing that you end up with. That's what people need to tap into. That right there. That's good how you have like a way, like almost like a, I don't want to say scaffolding, but like a way to look at it. Like how you, when you're presented with like an option, hey, you're conscious of it. B, you have a way to look at it where you're like, okay, which one is important to me?

Yeah. Which one? You know, is Jack Bauer and 24 important to me? Or is walking important to me? You know, so most people, they just go on how they feel. You know, oh, I really don't feel like doing this, so I'll do this. Or I really am in the mood for this, so I'll do it kind of thing. They don't like kind of, in a way, break it down, like how you do.

Just from moment to moment where you'll be like, okay, I have this way to look at it, and I'm going to look at it this way. And then I can behave, you know. That actually is pretty good way of looking at it. You put it into a binary calculation. Yeah. Right? Just, there's two options.

Yeah, don't go like... Am I going to do the thing that's going to make me better in the long run or the thing that's going to make me worse in the long run and feels good right now. Which one are you going to do? Did you just make that into a binary decision? Yeah. But even his is like so simple.

Which one's important to me? And it's almost like a black or white. So it's not what drives you. What's driving your behavior? And then you can even take it another step. Like, again, like the, uh, losing the weight. example. You will either want to have the milkshake or you want to be able to, you know, walk around

with the kids. Even if you don't care about, you know, being overweight or you're not being able to move your body around, you know, you can still lose the weight by figuring out what, even if you don't feel like going on a diet, like what is it that necessitates you to go on the diet? And for me, so I didn't want necessarily to train every day for the Paralympics. I didn't necessarily want to ride my bike every day on my bike ride or run up. I didn't necessarily enjoy doing that. I didn't feel like doing it. But I had to do that because my goal necessitated me to do that. So if you're struggling to get motivated to lose weight just for the sake of losing weight,

find something that necessitates you to lose weight that really matters to you, like, you know, not dying when you're 55. heart attack. That'll do it. There's three things that you talked about on the last, well, we talked about it on the last podcast, but I kind of breezed over them. And I realized when I listened to it again, I should have talked to you a little bit more in depth because I think it's helpful for people to hear again, to hear from you who's overcome incredible challenges. There's three things that you talked about. And it's actually in the journal, which you have a journal online on rob Jones journey.com. But, and this is there as well, but number one is writing down goals. Number two is celebrating milestones.

And number three is overcoming rationalization. So let's just break those down a little bit. How strict were you with writing down your goals? And do you still do that? Um, I don't, I guess I don't physically, you'll have a pen and paper and write it down. I think what I do now is I'll announce it or something like that. or I'll make it known that that's what I'm planning on doing. Check.

So when I decided to do my marathon challenge, I did it on Facebook or something, or I put it on all my social media platforms, and then it's out there. Now, okay, now I'm responsible for it. This is beyond writing it down. Yeah, this is like writing it down and announcing it to the world.

Yeah, or telling people that you want to have the respect of. Like, if I told my wife Pam, like, I'm going to do this, and she she knows I'm a person that she respects me for living up to what I say I'm going to do. I don't want to lose her respect. So now, even though I would have done it,

regardless, I'm not saying I would have said I would do it and then fall out or back out. You know, the mission, even if the mission became not important to me, there's another aspect of that, you know, you've committed to it then. So that's another aspect of my personality where not only do I want to, help veterans, but now I've committed to something. I said I'm going to do and I've given my word.

And now there's people that are kind of relying on me to do that. And if I say I'm going to do it, then I say, oh, you never mind. I actually, I'm not going to do it. Then they're actually losing a little bit of hope maybe because they were hoping I was going to do it and they were going to get something out of it. Now, now they're, I'm not doing it. So they're kind of losing that benefit. Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. So it's beyond writing it down. It's writing it down and announce it announcing it celebrating milestones yeah so it's really hard to stay motivated when there's this obscure goal that is two years away or a year and a half away and you're not really seeing huge progress towards every day you're getting like a millimeter every day um it gets old you know

you feel really motivated in the beginning, right, because you're pumped up and you have tons of energy. And then when you, and at the end, you can see it. You can smell the barn. You can see it. So you find the extra energy in yourself. But in that middle part where you're not even sure that you're going to be able to do it. And it's so far away, you're like, man, I'm only like halfway and I still have, I've done all this stuff. And now I still have to do all that again. it helps to pick stuff along the way that you know is going to to be there that kind of, you know, all right, I'm not, I'm going for that far away thing, but right now I'm going to that.

And that's what excites me. So when I was in the hospital, getting in the wheelchair was my first little milestone. I had a year and I didn't even know how long was going to take me to learn how to walk again. At least I was thinking a year and a half, two years. You know, that's a long time. and with a lot of work in between. So, all right, right now, just get into the wheelchair. And then, all right, well, learn how to do it on your own.

And then after that, get your legs. And then figure out how to walk with only one cane instead of two canes, keeping you up, and then drop the other cane. And that's another milestone. And then you get your bionic knees. And so you probably go back to the canes for a while. And then when you have those, you take away that cane and then take away the other one.

And then you learn how to run, and then you learn how to do ride the bike or whatever. So you just keep finding little things along the way. And, you know, when I was doing, when I was training for triathlons, I do this on a small scale. I would have eight, two-minute all-out sprints on my bike to do. And I'd be sitting there on the first one, and I'm like, oh, my God, I have eight of these to do.

The first one would just blow me up. I'm like, oh, my God, I have seven more. And I would just be like, you know what, just focus on this next. one. Just do this one and then we'll focus on the next one after that. And then so does, and I would even trick myself sometimes. I'd be like, all right, I'd be at my sixth one. I'd be so tired. I'm like, you know what? If I can maintain this speed or if I can maintain my power output for this entire seventh one, I'll skip the eighth one. But I'll treat myself. I'll skip the eighth one. And I do the seventh one. I'll be like, all right, I'll just do the eighth one.

You know, I do that sometimes. I'm to trick myself, you know. It works. So yeah. So it's interesting. So what you've talked with is a dichotomy in this thing. And I've talked about this before. I've talked about before multiple times. I don't even know if I've talked about it. I must talk about on the podcast, but I talk about it with people,

which is you have long range stuff and you have short range stuff. And what you have to do is you have to put both bows in your mind and you have to shift the focus back and forth between the two to whichever one is going to get you moving. Because when the goal is too far away, you're like, ah, you know what, it's not going to really make a difference if I skip this thing today.

It's not that big of a deal. The goal's too far away. It gets blurry. And so what you need is you need to put, okay, I'll just do this short goal. Well, after the daily grind beats you down on the short goal, you start to forget what the long-term goal is,

and you go, you know what? I don't really need to do this workout today or I don't need to eat this food or I can do whatever because it's not going to make a big impact on the long thing. What am I doing anyways? Then you've got to look back at the long goal, and that's right.

I have this thing that I'm trying to make happen and it's these small goals that are going to get me there so you got to shift you got to have both the long-term goal that's got to be something that you really want to achieve you got to understand why you know like you said you got to understand why it is you want to achieve it you can't just be something that you don't care about and then you got to have that as your primary driving force but your secondary driving force which is equally important is these short-term things that you can get to that are there that are close that are you can achieve even if it's too Even if it's I did Tabada to Bada on the air bike the other day

Bro Yeah I was there I was like you know and my daughter was there my wrestled my daughter that wrestles She was there and so she's kind of like calling me out but but in a positive way She's like a positive person yeah you hype man yeah she was hyping me and I put out hard because she was there Come on come on. You know what it's like when your your daughter's going come on dad? Yes push harder. You're like oh awesome. Yeah, I'm gonna get some I wanted to die You know the blood taste in your mouth? Oh, that copper taste?

Yeah, that copper taste, yeah, whatever that thing is. So I had some of that going on. But yeah, you have the short term and you have the long-term goals. You've got to have them both, and they've got to be attached somehow, but you've got to lean on which one is going to get you to do what you know you're supposed to do.

You know you're supposed to do. That's a little psychology behind just getting after it. Yeah. Right? There's a little psychology behind just getting after it little head games you echo and I were talking the other day And he was all he was kind of surprised because I was talking about there's there's one workout that I do which is It's I it's my hardest and most brutal workout and it's in it's in the field manual But it's a 20 rep squat you do you do you take a weight that you can squat ten times

And you do it 20 times and Like After rep 12, every single rep is just, it just, it's, it's pain. And then you do that and then you lay on the floor for 20 minutes. And then you get up and you do it again. And you lay on the floor for 20 minutes and you get up and do it again. So it's three sets in one hour. It's a one hour workout.

But I was telling Echo, I was like, yeah, there's times where I'm in the middle of like set two and I'm on rep 14. And I'm like, I don't even, I don't even think I want to be strong. I don't want to be strong. I don't even care if I'm healthy. I just want to I just want to just this is horrible. Why would I be doing this right now? This is stupid. Yeah, relief, any kind of relief.

But actually what gets me to push through those is I think to myself, oh, you hear that? That's actual weakness in your mind right now. Actual living weakness gets a voice in your mind right now. Are you going to listen to it? Are you going to listen to it? No, you're not going to listen to it. Are you doing them straight through or you take breaks? Yes, that's it's an old school workout that I originally got from well there's a book called super squats

There's a book called super squats if and that book has this workup But actually that book only has you do one set you do one set I was the idiot that Sought to myself well if one set is good how about I do three sets of that and it's brutal it's brutal yeah and once you think of it It's like well I have to do it now. Yeah, no that's another thing that's another thing I say is is you know if you don't really feel like working out Okay, that's fine write down what you're gonna do and then just do it just just turn off your brain and just do what you're supposed to do just put the numbers down and do what you're supposed to do You know every day's all happy. You know this is great I feel myself getting stronger no I feel like I'm gonna puke That's not cool, but that's good. That's like like kind of like you're

talking about how if you go by how you feel every day like I feel like doing this or feeling what of you're feeling where just like are you're saying Rob or you you are in the habit of looking at it a certain way like what's important to me kind of how you feel is kind of shuffled to the side like what's important okay now I'm gonna get moving yeah feelings are not not generally not a good thing to rely on to make things yeah to rely generally not a good but it can You know how like just like how you're saying in the beginning, you know, when you first decide to do something. Yeah. You know, like New Year's resolution, whatever. You know, like it's real common thing. We're at the beginning. Exciting. Let's start this new thing. And then at the end, it can be because you see the goal right there. We're about to do it. You know, kind of thing. But in the middle, it's like, yeah. So feeling can, I don't want to say, yeah, you're, you're right. Don't rely on it. But it can trick you because in the beginning when you have that feeling like you want to, it's like it's almost like you think it's going to be there the whole time. Yeah. This is the new thing.

This is the new thing from me. I've never felt like this about anything I've ever done. I'm excited about this one. Then it goes away and you're like, oh, we're not doing that. You always have that energy at the end. I bet like the last one of that Tabada that you did was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, the last one. And it's like, well, where was all that energy? Yeah, yeah.

And it's like, have you guys ever heard of the central governor theory of fatigue? No. Well, it's basically about, it's a different. So, see if I can do this without making it super long. There's two different... We got eight hours of recording time. There's two different theories on how your body, I guess, processes fatigue or what exactly it is. And so there's the, I think it's called the catastrophic theory where basically you're during you tubadas and something breaks down.

And then like you run out of energy, you totally deplete yourself of glycogen or whatever. and then you can't because you don't have any more glycogen, so your muscles just don't work. And then there's this other theory, which is kind of the accepted theory now, that your brain has a governor in it, and it's getting all this information from your muscles and your senses, it's getting all this information,

it's calculating how much energy it meters out. And so when you're doing your tibatas, the first one, you have all sorts of energy, so your brain's like, go. And it's connected to your subconscious, and your conscience are kind of connected. So you kind of know how many sets you do, and your brain actually calculates that into how it decides to do this.

So that first one, you're like, oh, have tons of glycogen available to me, so I can just blow through this first one. And then as you go, your brain is getting the signals that you're run out of glycogen, maybe the calcium to contract the muscles is kind of getting low. And so it kind of dials you back automatically by contracting less muscle fibers. And so you kind of get, and it makes you feel fatigue. So they say that fatigue is actually, fatigue and pain are actually emotion. So it makes you feel these emotions.

Fatigue is a lie. So it makes you feel this. And it kind of dials you back. And then on that last one, you. know that this is your last one. So it's like, all right, well, we're done after this, so I'm going to let it go. And then, so that's the theory.

So it's kind of that. It's kind of, so there's this thing called the gold, I think I told you this, gold G-10, I think I'm pronouncing it correctly, Golgi tendon organ. It's a little regulator. And they're essentially like clusters of nerves. So this is more like high intensity.

Like I'm going to do a two rep, one rep, two rep, three, rep, whatever, max. So that's regulated by your brain. So when you get too much stress on your muscle, your brain says, hey, that's too much stress. We're going to stop the muscle contraction or let off. Usually it stops it. That's why if you go for a two rep max, one rep max, you can get it here and then you just boop and it fails.

You fail. But if you can get, if it doesn't fire, you'll go and you'll push, you'll push. Sometimes you'll pause. Yeah. And you can still put like, why did you just fail the other time? You know what I mean? Yeah. It's that.

So. And then if you go to lower intensity. intensity stuff then it goes more into the glycott like you ever seen like a marathon runner or you know some real long like I don't know an obstacle course or something where the guys like mentally you can tell he's he's not going to quit but his legs are like shivering and shaking and he it's like he's almost like he's going to pass out or something like that so that's more of that that's like your physical capability the energy the physical energy system is failing that's you know so that's a different thing so it's funny though like I'm sure you know like I'm sure

when you were in boot camp or going through buds? Like, how many push-ups are you going to do? You're just going to keep doing push-ups and push-ups. You literally just keep doing push-ups and push-ups and push-ups and push-ups and push-ups and push-ups and sometimes you lay there for flat on your face for like 20 seconds, but then they say keep going, and so you just keep going and then you keep going for a little while, and then you keep going for a little while, and then you keep going. Like, you can just keep going more. Yeah, unless you get to that.

Now, sometimes on like a run, someone, would pass out and like that would be that yeah what's that yeah that's yeah that's according to this there would be your your brain basically shuts you to so you you see somebody running at the end of a marathon and they're like mm-hmm and they think their legs aren't working that's kind of their body they've been able to somehow push through all the pain and all that stuff they've been able to they've been motivated to push through and then finally your body gets to a point that if we keep going we are going to die so I'm shutting you down and it just

hits the shutdown button and then your legs is stop where it will just stop contracting your muscles. I don't remember how we got on this subject but pushing through. Pushing through. Yeah. But it's like the engine is still going but the fuel doesn't get to the engine.

So the engine starts, you know, in those marathon situation. But in like a higher intensity stuff it seems like given what I know about the Golgi Tendon Oregon situation. It seems like you're a Golgy tendon expert. Yes, but well here, this is

This is when I really, I learned about it in college, but when I tore my bicep, you know, you know guys will lift real hard and just tear their muscle off their bone. Yeah. Because when you train heavy, you're training to, to, what do you say, to mitigate the effects of the gold Gid tendon. That's what, or like huge rushes of adrenaline will do it too. You know, you hear the story about the, the lady, she saw the car. Lift the car off the kid. Yeah. So basically, you're just bypassing the Gullgy tendon organ because of these extreme situations.

Yeah. But by nature try lift up a car you kind of can't and the same I mean the you know the well you know most of us can't You kind of can't But when you do like a one rep max like you ever When you test for that you see it all the time where you know the guy let's say I don't know he does 355 right? Like even there's like a pause because he's pushing so hard and he's barely and he can he gets it Put on 360 five pounds more he gets it like a quarter of the way up and it just falls on his chest you know because it fires and boom, muscle shut down.

That's what that is. Yeah, and when you're doing the heavy, you're also teaching, you're kind of teaching your body to, like most people can only contract 30% of their muscles at one time because their brain doesn't let them because if they contracted all of your muscle fibers at the same time, it could produce an injury.

Yeah. So when you lift heavy, your brain is kind of learning, all right, I can contract this many. Oh, okay, now I can contract this many. And like the best people still can only contract like 50% of their muscle fibers. Like Olympic lifters.

Yeah, that's like because they're just Yeah, exactly Or like really heavy power lifters Yeah So Now on the last podcast We talked about the Paralympic rowing So

And we talked about you biking across Across the country again Which is from Maine to San Diego And when And again if you want People should go listen to those on On podcast 92 And

But when you were on last time You were talking about Your latest announcement your latest goal that you had written down and announced everybody which was that you were going to run 31 marathons and 31 days which is just kind of a little bit psycho and actually you wrote down I'm going to read this excerpt from your from your online journal here we go back to the journal I can't this is an expression that is vilified in our minds beginning at a young age every time a young child announces this

decision they are corrected the first adult that hears it ask them whether or not they have even tried generally this confrontation will result in the child giving their task another attempt until their attention span moves on to something else the adult will see this and chuckled to themselves with knowledge that this is just a child who is yet to learn the art of art and virtue of perseverance by the time this child comes of age however they will have been told by adults more times than they could count that there is no such thing as can't it is interesting then to think about how many adults seem to proclaim this expression in their lives it is because is it because like many things that adults tell children they are simply telling the child a general rule that the child must follow but can be broken once one is a grown or is

it because these adults are simply repeating what they were told as children without thoroughly examining what the phrase I can't truly Suggests if you confronted an adult that claims they can't do something with the same question about whether or not they have tried the answer will almost always be yes Adults have learned enough to know that it is unreasonable to say they can't until they have at least tried once Therefore the real question that we should be asking in responses have you tried everything Have you exhausted every possible option scenario combination? tool and approach I do not simply refer to the ones that you knew of at the time you decided to undertake your task I mean have you also research possibilities that you had known about have you determined whether or not

There is another person out there that has performed the exact same task you are attempting or at least something similar Have you exhausted this research have you read every book blog journal magazine bathroom stall and well website if the answer to any of these questions is no then go back and try again because if you don't because you don't truly know if you can do something until you've tried absolutely everything the fact of the matter is that rarely if ever is the answer to all these questions yes therefore what is it that people actually mean when they say I can't a more accurate but more verbose way of saying it would be I don't care about or want enough this task or the resultant benefits of it in order to do all that is necessary to achieve it.

I was told countless numbers of times by people during my month of marathons that they couldn't run one marathon, let alone 31 straight. Every now and then when I had time, I would discuss what they'd said. We would jointly conclude that if something they cared about and depended on them doing so, it would be possible. The most common example I used was if someone had a gun to your child's head, do you think you could do it then? Therefore, the phrase, I can't, denotes a lack of investment as opposed to a lack of potential or ability.

I do not mean to say that every person I had this conversation with should have a have had the motivation to run marathons it was something that I decided to do not them I merely wanted to express to them what I'm expressing here given the right purpose and enough time you can what happens if someone has said they can't we have asked them if they've done everything and the rare cases happen and they honestly say yes do we concede that then they can't nope if everything in existence has been attempted enough to determine that it won't work then congratulations you've been awarded the honor of being the

person who must invent the method or the tool or determine the right combination whether or not you will once again boils down to how much you care and time it may end up being that a person ends up trying for their entire life but I suggest removing the phrase I can't from your lexswain and replacing it with I can't yet do this so that you don't risk being on your deathbed saying I didn't so. And I don't mean to like if somebody comes up and says I can't do something, I'm not going to say I'm not going to, you know, I know what they're really saying. And I don't I'm not going to judge them. I don't care if you if you don't care about this thing,

it doesn't matter to me, but you should just be a little bit more accurate in what you're saying. You know, I'm not, like if you say, I can't run a marathon, that's fine, that's fine. You don't want to run a marathon. You don't care about running. It doesn't matter to you, and that's your personal choice,

you know, but to say that you can't do it, having never even attempted it is just not an accurate statement. So where'd you get the idea to attempt? 31 marathons and 31 days. So after my bike ride, I tried to make the Paralympics for a triathlon, and I did not succeed. I failed in that attempt. But with every failure, there is a lesson learned, and I learned when I was training

for a triathlon that I was pretty good at running. I was able to run the 5K triathlon, 5K distance at the end of the triathlon at 18 minutes flat, which is pretty fast. That's maxing out the Marine Corps P. You can't get any faster than that. And so it's pretty fast. And I realized, you know, I have a decent, decent talent for running. And I'd run the Marine Corps marathon the year before.

And so I knew that I could run a marathon. And I was just kind of, you know, after this failed attempt to make the Paralympics, because it's kind of thinking about what my next mission could be. And I wanted to do another thing like my bike ride. And I had heard about other people doing this. kind of thing where they do, you know, 50 marathons in 50 days and 50 states or 50 iron mans in 50 days and 50 states. So, you know, I decided I wanted to do marathons. And I kind of put my own little spin on it. And I said, well, you know what? I want to get

this story in front of as many eyeballs as I can. So to do 50 or to do 31 marathon straight in my backyard isn't really going to do that. So I need to do, I could go down to the trail every day for 31 straight and do it, and nobody would ever care, and nobody would ever find out about it. And it would be the same amount of, it would be just as impressive to do. And so, all right, I want to get this in front of as many eyeballs as possible. So I need to do it in major cities where there's a lot of people that can find out about it and spread it that way. And so I figured, all, I'll take that same formula and do 31 marathons and all in different cities. And I picked 31 because I was trying to figure of a good number.

So I started with the 20 number, which is the number associated with the number of veteran suicides every day. I figured that would be a pretty powerful number. But after thinking about that, I kind of figured it wasn't enough. It wasn't enough marathons in a row. And I figured by the time... More marathons in a row. By the time I got started with that, I'd be... By the time I got kind of some momentum going, it pretty much be over.

and so I didn't figure it have it as big an impact so I wanted to do more and I was like well what about 50 and so I was like well okay 50 I could probably do it if I trained enough for it

but 50 might be too many might be too long so by the time I started getting going and then I'm at 40 I still have 10 more people are going to kind of maybe lose interest and I'm like oh is that guy still doing that

because I found out about the Iron Cowboy doing his 50 Iron Man and 50 days and I kind of had that same thing where I was like oh this is going to be awesome I was falling him for the first couple weeks and then eventually I'm like oh is he still is he even finish it oh wow and I kind of lost it so I'm like all right well what if I just did it for a month I think people can probably pay attention for a month then we'll really be interested for a month before they really move on it's like all right month and okay month the marathons and the longest month is 31 so I pick 31 and I have to say when you know what

you know what you're doing, you know what you're doing is hard when you come on Jocko podcast and he says this is insane. Jocko Willink says something is insane, you know it's the right level of intensity. So what kind of miles did you put into get ready for it? And how long did you train for it? Um, my total, I trained about 18 months for this specifically. And I say that knowing that I had been an athlete training just about twice a day every day for five years of the the time. So I had that huge history of being an athlete to begin with. And then on top of that, I put the 18 months of training specifically for this. And so the way it would work would be, I would run, I would do a six week block where I was applying a certain stress. And so my first

six week block would be, I was basically just working on getting long distance because when I was running triathlons, I only ever did, you know, five K. max so i was i would run an hour i'd probably run three times a week um would be an hour 90 minutes and another hour and they'd be spaced out by a couple days so i'd do six weeks of that and then i would do a little test block and my first test block was running the marine corps marathon again so there's one marathon and then i do another six week chunk where i would change the stress and make it a little bit harder so i would do i would either run a little bit longer on my really long run for the or I would block them together,

maybe run an hour and a half Wednesday and then run an hour Thursday. Kind of change up the blocking. And after that six weeks, I would do again, and I would do two marathons. And the first time I attempted two marathons, I actually failed.

I didn't. I ran the first one the next day. I ran maybe half marathon, and I quit. I was like, I can't. Had you already said you were going to run 31 marathons? Yeah, at this point, yeah. That's reassuring.

Yeah. So I was like, all right. But I kind of knew, 31 or 2 2. I told my friends was like yeah I tried to run 2 and I didn't They were like But I

What was the failure based on? I didn't need enough The day before So part of the reason I was doing these Test blocks was figuring out First of all pacing You know good different ways to pace it To make sure I didn't blow up

And then figuring out How much I needed to eat And figure out how much I needed to eat and figuring out, you know, what it was going to feel like. And so that first time I attempted to, I didn't need enough carbs the day, you know, after that first marathon. So I was just totally depleted the next day. So I was like, okay, I didn't, it wasn't a lack of willpower or a lack of kind of ability at that time. It was just my approach at that time wasn't right.

So I was like, okay, I didn't really panic about that because I knew, I kind of knew what happened. And so I was like, all right. And so I go, and then I do six. And I kind of just repeated that for the year and a half, where six week chunk and I just change it, block them together a little bit more, run longer. And then I tried three marathons and I succeeded and it was pretty easy. Not easy, but, you know, I was like, all right. Feasible.

It became feasible. Three, yeah. I don't feel that bad, you know. And then I did another six week and changing the stress again, longer. blocked together more. I ran five. I was like, all right, five, okay? And I would mess around with the different

pacing strategies, different ways of breaking up each marathon, taking breaks and that kind of thing, and eating different foods just to see how I would react to that. And then after five, I was like, you know what, I'm not going to do any more than five, because if I do more than five, I'm just going to

want to keep going. I don't really want to. So five was enough. I felt really good after five. And then after that, I just kind of trained through for maybe three more months. But I kept, every six weeks, I kept adding more mileage. And so the last 12 weeks, I was running a marathon every Thursday. And how many total miles were you putting in a week?

And that last 12 weeks, probably 60. Like my, you know how they say a day? Headlift starts at 135 pounds, you know. Like my runs would start at two hours. I wouldn't do anything less than two hours. And then, yeah, I would do that marathon on Thursday, and I would run two hours the day before and two hours the day after. And the reason I was doing that was just get,

just run a marathon so many times leading up to it that the thought of running one marathon isn't really, it's just norm. It became normal to me. And so I was trying to get that mental. How long would it take you of running to run a marathon at the pace at your, sustained 31 day pace. At my sustained, it was interesting. Were you running like eight minute miles?

Nine minute miles? Usually it would be between 8.30 and 9 minute miles. And it was interesting because in the summertime, I was running like a four and a half hour marathon of total running time. And so all the predictions I put on my website were like, oh, I'm probably going to finish in about this amount of time. but that was during the hot and humid summer in Virginia whereas when I was doing this it was in the fall time

so I was actually able to run faster and people would come out and say what the heck you said you're going to be running like 10 minute 10 minute miles then you're running 830s or 9 minutes and it was kind of it was what else was interesting was I figured my first marathon would be I'd be fresh and that would be my fastest marathon

And so that was in London. It was about four hours, roughly, of running time with breaks. I would take three, 20 minute breaks. Four hours of running time. And then it kind of did follow that trajectory where Philadelphia, New York, and Boston were a little bit slower, like 405, 415, somewhere in there. And then after I got there, I actually started getting faster. So the next, all the way into Chicago, my fastest one was my 10th one in Chicago, was three. 350 and of running time and then after that it kind of just a level off and I'd be I'd usually be going somewhere between 350 and four hours The human body's amazing Yeah, and all this stuff that I've been able to adapt to and even I still wasn't able to predict

That I would actually get faster. I didn't expect that and so that I mean this goes to show you that The body can adapt to even more than you think What are the biggest challenges of regular running and running with prosthetics on? I mean this goes to show you that? I mean So yeah One of the things I had to figure out Was one of the things I learned And of my first and second Marine Corps marathon was that I needed to figure out how I was going to prevent skin breakdown Right

So prevent I would run After my first marathon I ran and then I took my legs off And it was just blood I'd like take the liner off and just blood just shot everywhere And it wasn't all blood but it was like kind of blood mixed with sweat. Right. It was like,

oh my God, what I do to myself? I was scared. I was like, did I mess up my skin graft? Is that thing? Because those things can be kind of sensitive. And it ended up just being a little blister,

like, or a little, I rubbed the skin off and it's like a size of that big. But I knew if I did, I ran again the next day, that's going to get bigger and that's going to totally derail the whole thing. So I had to figure out a way that I could avoid getting, like, off. And so I started messing around. I wear these things called liner liners that kind of

wick the sweat. They kind of collect the sweat to help with claminess. And so usually I would put those on and they would go all the way around the end of my stump and be like a sock on the end. So what I did was I cut that off at the end. And so it's kind of basically like a kind of like a rash guard on my thigh and it wouldn't go down to the end of the stump. So I cut that off. Why do you want it to go down to the end? So what my theory was it's kind of a cloth. It's a cloth material. So what I figured was, and the liner itself is a silicone. And I didn't figure that the silicone would be creating a whole lot of friction.

So what I figured was maybe that little liner liner, you know, as comfortable as it was, was it was still fabric. So it was probably just 40,000 steps still rubbing the skin. I'll say, all right, so I'll cut that off and see what happens. And that was good, but it still didn't fix everything. So what I ended up doing was, you know, from my cycling experience, I'd use shammy cream on your butt, you know, to help prevent saddle sores. It's like, well, maybe I'll take the shammie cream and put it on these spots that I know tend to get rubbed.

So I would goop up. I would just take a huge goop and just slather it on there. And that seemed to fix it pretty good. And so I was like, all right, so I figured that method out. So that's one of the things is trying to figure it with running with prosthetics is figuring out how to avoid that. skin breakdown. And that's kind of numerino because that can, I mean, you can be as strong as you want, but if you can't put your leg on because the skin hurts so much, then all that strength

that doesn't matter. So what did you do with your diet, were you just pounded calories? I mean, just eating everything in sight. Yeah, so I approached my diet a little bit differently than most you might expect for marathons. I did a low-carb diet. Well, what would be a low-carb for this kind of thing? So I was using this, and all my training and all my pacing and on my eating,

I did this thing called the Maffetone method. And it's basically this guy Phil Maphatone figured that you should do all your training at an aerobic level. So he figured out this through experience he calculated your, he came up with an equation to calculate your maximum aerobic heart rate was 180 minus your age. And then there's other little adjustments you can make to that. So my Maffetone heart rate was 149. And so I'd never ran anything over 149. So you on a heart rate monitor all the time?

Yeah, I had a TomTom watch. And I had one and then my wife has one. So I had two on when I was running my marathon just in case one messed up. And so I ran all my training and all my marathons were run at as close to that 149 heart rate. And what it does is trains, instead of like making you strong. your muscles stronger, it actually trains your cardiovascular efficiency. So when you start out, you'll be running at 149 heart rate and you'll be pretty slow. But as you do that more, your heart and lungs will become more and more efficient.

So eventually you'll be running at that same 149 heart rate, but you'll be running twice as fast. Right. Because you're becoming more efficient. So I just approached it like that, or I kind of figured it would be better to do it that way because the more glycolysis and the more carbohydrates you use, the more your body's going to have to, they're more destructive to your body. So I'm like, well, in order to be able to run these, I have to run them at a maintainable pace in a maintainable way.

I can't just go out and run as fast as I can every single one. I had to pace it. And so I figured that's how I was going to pace it, keeping my heart rate under 150, not using those carbs. and so that also allowed me to be able to eat just really high fat. I think I had between 150 and 175 grams of carbs a day, and that's what I limited it to. And then I would eat during the run,

I would eat three bonk breaker bars. I wanted each of my brakes, and they're just like these little energy bars. And that would keep me going. That would be my kind of a lot of carbs there. So that would kind of keep me going during the run. I would just drink water whenever I got thirsty. And then after I ran, we had pre-made these meat, pre-made all my meals.

And we just made this super calorie dense cheese and meat sauce that we froze. We put it all in the freezer. And it was just the densest, you know, the calorie-density stuff you could probably like, you know, whole containers and cream and cheese and all this stuff. So super dense. My mom would heat up a bowl of that for me, and I would take a bag of pork rinds and put that in the chili and mix that in there and eat the whole thing. And a lot of the times before I even ran, I would eat another bag of pork cracklings. So I'd have two bags of pork rinds, this big ass bowl of meat sauce and cheese sauce, and then I would eat some sweet potato chips, things like that. If somebody brought us donuts, I'd have a donut, you know.

We have issues With that Pork grind is good Donuts, no If people could see What just happened To Jocko's eyes When I said I didn't

Don't Thought he was gonna come across So I'd eat that And then at the For dinner I'd eat Eggs and bacon And the whole time You got an RV

Because you did this In 31 different cities Yeah You started off in London And then you flew back to America And then started The grind New York, Chicago

just going around the country. Yep. And your wife and a little support team was in the RV? Yep. So it was four of us. It was Pam. What kind of RV did you have? Coachman Marada, I think.

Get some. It's like a 35. Do you have an RV? I do. You have a 35 footer, huh? Yeah, it was Class A 35 foot, king-sized bed in the back. Oh, yeah, that's nice. Don't you sleep good in RVs?

As long as you're not moving. I don't know why. I sleep like a baby. in RVs. I slept well, but it's not totally comfortable when you're driving down the highway at 60. Yeah. It's pretty bouncy back there. And actually, it made it, this is something I didn't expect was it made it kind of hard to eat being in the back.

So I'd have to eat all this stuff. And by being in the back of that RV for five, six hours, I would start to get a little bit. Yeah, well, being in the back of an RV is a lot more bouncy than being in the front. Oh, yeah, big time. That's a, behind the axle and there's so much weight. Yeah. Pam, my wife, team leader. She drove some.

She drove a lot. I wasn't really in charge of the day to day. Yeah, my job was. You just be quiet and run. Yeah, exactly. Well, run when I needed to run, when I need to do interviews, run my mouth. You know, do that. And then that was it pretty much.

And then, but Pam, she was doing everything, you know, driving, setting up, scheduling all my interviews working with these reporters that are like, oh, we want to do this at 630. Can we make that happen? She's schedule it in and then calling ahead to the venues that we had decided to run at, you know, squaring that away. Okay, where can we park? We're coming now. And there's probably so many other jobs that I didn't even know about that she was doing. And then, you know, it's taken on a boatload of stress for her. And then my mom would, she'd be kind of Pam's assistant. She'd be in charge of kind of keeping me fed and hydrated during when I was running making sure I didn't need anything. And then afterwards, she would make my meals. And then one of her most important jobs was

she's a massage therapist. So she'd give me two massages every day after I ran while we were driving to the next place. And then I also had a driver who did most of the driving. And then he just kind of helped out around the RV, like whenever Pam needed him to do something. He would do it. What kind of people joined you on the runs? I know you said you were telling me yesterday some Royal Marines in England joined you. You got it out there. I mean, tons of military.

If I had to categorize, I mean, it just people from all walks of life. Ultra runners would find out about it. People that ran, people that didn't even run would come out. A lot of military. I would say 50% of the people, though, that came out, I would say, how did you hear about this? They say jaco podcast. No bullshit there. At least 50% of them.

That's killer. The troopers are not playing around. Yeah, no. They're there to support. They're doing major support. And then, yes, there should be a lot of military,

a lot of guys that I deployed with came out and supported. A lot of cops, a lot of fire departments. But, you know, there really wasn't one niche. It was just, even kids would come out.

Yeah, kids would come out, people with their parents. A full families would come out for the day. and run. It was awesome. I had kids that ran their first ever marathon with me, you know?

That's awesome. And a lot of people would just, they'd be running their first marathon. And then I had a lady, she's like, well, I'm running a marathon next week,

but I'm going to run one with you. And she PB'd, you know. And so it'd be all sorts of people. I'd come out of the RV in the morning and there'd just be people that had been waiting there for me to come out. And no matter what. And it didn't matter.

What time in the morning would you start running? I would usually start, around seven unless I had some kind of big interview like I had a Fox and Friends interview when I was in New York so I started at 730 or 8 but I would try and be pretty religious about starting at 7 and then yeah people be out there it didn't matter if it was 20 degrees in Denver they'd be out there if it was raining they'd be out there you know it was it was awesome that is awesome what was the what was the hardest part or did you meet any hard parts during the during the trip or was there any and actually I remember when you were getting ready to go yeah this is pretty cool I'm like hey man

like what if you know what if you're not gonna make it like what if you can't and what I was actually thinking about I was thinking about your legs and I mean I know that I mean I've got other friends that that that have prosthetics and I know that it's a that it's a grind and it rips your skin apart and I was kind of thinking that's what I was thinking I wasn't

thinking like oh you were is going to get tired and quit, but I was thinking that there, there might come a point where you physically weren't going to be able to do this without, you know, causing a massive damage to your body. Yeah. And, and possibly, you know, getting infections and everything else. And I said, you know, what if, you know, what if something happens and you were like, no, I'm going to, I'm going to finish it. Okay, well, there you have it. Yeah, well, you know, that was something I was concerned about, too. I didn't know how my body was going to react to it. And I didn't know for sure. I never knew, even up to the last one, the last mile of the last one, I would never say,

I'm definitely going to finish this because, you know, anything can happen. I could have my prosthetic on, twist it a little bit, and then that rubs off skin on my skin graft, and then that causes it to die or something, and then I'm screwed. Then I have, I can't, you know, can't continue. So I never knew for sure, but I believed that as long as everything kind of went according to plan, then it was possible, as long as no catastrophic events happened. And I was feeling confident. I was very confident the whole time,

and then I got all the way around to Texas. And I had been really lucky with the weather all the way around. We got to Texas and we're hitting a heat wave in Texas. And it was probably, I woke up in the morning in Houston, sweating already. It was ridiculous. I was just covered in sweat waking up in Houston. It was like 100% humidity, probably like 75, 80 degrees just to start the day.

Houston gets some. Oh, my God. And the heat gets to me pretty easily. It's the one thing that could really slow me down. But I came out of that RV and there were... And the heat can get to you because you basically are missing a couple radiators. Oh, yeah. I mean, because your body, everyone's body.

gives off a lot of heat through their legs and you don't have those radiators to give off heat anymore. So you you can overheat fairly quickly. Exactly. Yeah, and then my let my so in addition not having the radiators my legs are encased in carbon fiber. So it's actually bottling in the heat on my legs instead. So it can really slow me down. But I came out of that RV in Houston and there was just 70 people there waiting for me to run and a lot of them are Marines there's a local Marine recruiting office

that came out and they brought their police people that were about to go to boot camp and they brought them out and I'm like well it doesn't matter you know I'm gonna even if they weren't there I still would have ran it but I'm like man look at all these people that want to run with me and so I just

did it and then it just took a long I think that was probably my long it was probably four and a half hours of running and that was a guy in his regular wheelchair that did it with me the whole time. He's just rolling in his wheelchair behind me. So that was a really tough day.

So San Antonio, Houston, Dallas were all really hot and really humid, and I had to do them back to back to back. But I got through it because people came out and ran with me and kept me going. And then in Nashville, it had been raining that

day. And I was running on a trail and there were these wooden bridges over these little Rick Creek. and I had run on wooden bridge before so I knew they were going to be slippery and I was like, all right, I'm going to take it slow over this and I still,

I slipped on this bridge and injured my back. Not at the time. I didn't feel like I injured it at the time. I was like, hmm, it was kind of a hard fall and I kept running. But the next day when I woke up in Atlanta,

my back was killing me. And I had four left. And I just had to gut it out. You know, every time I landed on my road, right foot, it was like kind of shot a bad pain into my, into my middle back. And it was a little bit frustrating because I was like, I was feeling so good up to that point. And I had run a super fast marathon in Memphis. I was feeling so good. I was like, oh, man, I'm going to be able to

really enjoy these last four, you know. And then, you know, the universe is like, nope, you're going to have to earn it. Sorry. You're going to have to earn it. I'm going to be able to cruise these last four. And then you finished up on Veterans Day. Yeah. In D.C. In D.C. Veterans Day. And my back was feeling a little bit better at this point, but still hurting pretty bad. And it was interesting because all up to that point, my stumps were feeling pretty good.

I started to get these little pockets of fluid on the kind of the outer corner of both of them. And they hurt. when I pushed on them and then usually for the first mile they would hurt pretty bad and it got to a point where my mom had this like kind of icy hot spray she was spraying that on the ends every day

to help and so but after the first mile that pain would kind of go away I would just pound them into submission or whatever and they would be like all right you're going to keep going we're just going to turn ourselves off or whatever and so after the first mile I'd be good and they wouldn't really hurt it much more

until the next day. The boss is a knucklehead. Just keep going. It's like, he hears us, he hears us. He's going to keep doing it. And yeah, so after the first mile, it'd be fine. But that last day in Washington, D.C., they just never turned off.

And I think maybe it was because there was that same thing where I knew this was the last one, and my body kind of knew it was the last one. So it was starting to maybe let itself, it had held on to that last one and maybe it was starting to let itself unravel a little bit. and so that whole last day was just pain in the back, freezing cold.

It was like 20 degrees out. And so every time I stopped to rest, I was sweating. I was like, you know, I had a hot water bottle I was all snuggled up with under a blanket, and I would still be like cold. But just the sheer number of people that were there, I never,

I, there was never less than 100 people running with me that entire day. That's awesome. And I had, there was, people there that had run with me in other cities that came and came for the last one. I had brothers with me that had deployed to Afghanistan all there running with me. I had, for my last mile, I had, there was a general running.

He was out in front. So we were running around the National Mall, my last mile around the reflecting pool. It's about a mile. And so there was a general out front being like, clear the way. because clearing people out of the way and then there was Sergeant Major who had been my company First Sergeant

So they were running like Side by side Like get out of the way They're politely telling people To get out of the way Sergeant Major Kent Retired

Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Top Sergeant Major in the Marine Corps Was running with me That last maybe 12K Singing Cases You know There was you know, I just had brothers with me that were in the group.

Their kids, you know, Pam joined me for that last mile. My mom joined me. I had family in there for the last mile. And before we started that last mile, I promised. I was like, all right, everybody, I'm going to take this last mile real slow, just so that we can, everybody can stay together. And then by the end of them, I was like sprinting. Just so pumped up, you know, to be finished.

But, man, it was so cool. I finished that last little loop, and I kind of like ran up. There's this little curved sidewalk that goes up to the Lincoln Memorial. And so I finished that last mile, I kind of curve it up to that last, and the whole sidewalk was lined with folks, and then they had set up a little finish line for me up there,

and the whole thing was just lined with people like, yeah, you know, and cross a finished line. Pam was there. You know, we celebrated. She cried. I did not cry. Jack. To make that clear right now.

Finished, you know, kissed her, hugged her, and then the reporters kind of came in and started talking. Awesome. And you raised money. Yeah. You raise money, a bunch of money for, I know you support a bunch of foundations. So that was awesome too. That was sort of the other driving force behind you doing it besides just your

crazy but also because you were raising money for a bunch of good causes. Yeah, you know, raising money, we raised $200,000 at the time I finished I kind of, I stopped keeping track, but it's probably like $215 now or something like that. For September 5 Fun, Tunnel to Towers Foundation, Coalition

to Suit America's Heroes. And that was kind of, that was kind of how I almost manifested, physically manifested, how successful it was. and so what I was trying to do is create a story that people could feed off of

and so when you when you look at all the stories that are out there about veterans coming back the vast vast vast vast majority of stories are the post-traumatic stress story every movie that comes out that is about oh we have veteran coming home is this pretty much the same

same recipe. Veteran goes overseas. They experience war. They see some bad stuff like you do in war. They come back and they're a basket case and they implode and they implode their family and all this stuff. And that's a hugely important story to know

because it does happen. And we have to take care of those guys and we have to make sure we keep that story in the forefront of our minds. But what started to bother me was that was the only story that was getting told. And I think General Mattis said it best when he answered the question somewhere and he said, you know, expectations are very strong. So if you go overseas and everybody's kind of expecting you to basically have PTSD,

then there's a good chance that you're going to manifest that in yourself just by due, by virtue of the fact that that's what's expected. And so you're just going to create that. Yeah. And so what I wanted to do was get this story out there, tell a story, where there was a guy that went overseas, had a traumatic experience and came back and was better than he was before. And so that was how I determined I was going to create this story. And, you know, I felt that I knew that this was a problem, that this story wasn't getting out there. And no, so I felt the responsibility.

to create it myself. If it's not out there, it's like what I was saying and that I can't journal. I had that responsibility because it just wasn't out there very much. And so I set out to create that story and then, you know, so if

if there was a guy that was struggling, he could see that story and then he could see, you know what, it actually is possible to go see war and come back and be fine or not be necessarily be totally fine, but overcome it

and find your new path. and find your new mission and continue on, keep fighting for veterans, keep fighting for your brothers. And if there's a guy that's coming home and he's kind of on the fence, he sees that story and maybe takes him the right way. And then at the same time getting it out there for civilians, there's a major military civilian gap of understanding

because military tends to be isolated and on the bases. And, you know, that I could see that gap, Because of all these movies that were coming out, there's every, like 100% of movies that came out were the main character at PTSD. Whereas you look at the statistics and it's 25% of non-combat troops have what we'll call PTSD. 7% of combat troops have PTSD. And so it's a huge misrepresentation of the actual, of the actual scale.

And so I wanted civilians to see that story. Here's a veteran that came home and was, you know, he was able to kind of adapt or process what he'd seen. No, I think that's 100% right. And I think you get, you get, you nailed it and Mattis nailed it. Yeah. Like you set the expectations that everyone thinks that when they go to war, they're going to be all screwed up. It's like, that's what's going to happen to them. But if they get told, hey, and I mean, you know, you just.

said when you came home you were better yeah and like that's awesome and you know I I had that conversation with Sam Harris where you know I he'd asked me he said hey you know you you get told you I hear you saying that war is horrible and war is hell but at the same time you say that it was like the best highlight of your life and it was and I told him and he's like how do you reconcile those two things and I said well have you ever known someone that had cancer and when they get If they make it through, they say it made him a better person. And they wouldn't wish it on anyone, but it made him a better person. And he said, yeah, and it made sense to him then.

And that's what I think is an important thing. And, you know, look at the – I mean, every war has incredible veterans that come home and do incredible things. And, I mean, Charlie Plum, when he was on – you know, after being in the Hanoi Hilton for six years, and he rattled off the guys that were in the Hanoi Hilton with him, Yeah, that were, you know, presidents and and congressmen and just all these incredible achievements, maybe not presidents. But incredible, incredible achievements. Well, presidential candidate with Stockdale.

So, and McCain, right, two presidential candidates. So, so incredible achievements. And yet the media and the Hollywood, they don't shine the light on that. What they shine the light on is the people that are having issues, which, again, like you said, That's real too. Yeah. But the fact that you made this huge effort and are continuing to make a huge effort to show not just civilians, but also military, that, yeah, war is bad. I mean, you've, you know, you say you had a traumatic experience. You had a freaking life-changing experience and you've come back and you've proven that that traumatic experience is not as strong as you are. And I think that's the most important message that, that anyone could communicate back to both sides, both the civilian and military side. Yeah, and I mean, there's so much to be said about what,

knowing something is already possible. So I told you about Dan Kanasin last time I was here. And back then, he was about a year and a half in front of me. Yeah. And he was showing me what was possible for me. I didn't know that it was possible to be able to walk around and with a huge backpack on and using no canes. But once I saw it, it's like, oh, so it is bottle.

And it just made it so much easier to do. And I was doing a talk not too long ago, and somebody told me afterwards that something that I didn't even realize. I was, you know how last time I was talking about finding IDs and that we do that thing called proof the lane. Yep. And they told me that they just kind of mentioned to me that I kind of had continued. I did that in the Marine Corps and I did this thing called Proofing the Lane

where I was proving what I was stepping on the ground and proving it was cleared and then they said that kind of that I didn't realize that this is the time but they said that theme is following you wherever you go so I'm now proofing the lane

for these veterans that may be struggling a little bit so I'm trying to improve what's possible and so yeah I'm glad that they told me that because that really makes a lot sense to me. That makes total sense And Dan Knoissan, who's a total stud. He's about to be in the Paralympics.

Again? Yeah, again. He's going to Pion, was it, Pyeong, which one's the, yeah, Pyeong, South Korea to, I think he's doing biathlon and the cross-country skiing. Yeah, no, he's a total beast seal that also lost both of his legs above the knee and just a total badass stud. I want to read a couple more little sections from your, journal to close this out.

Here we go back to the journal. So when I get asked my people, how could you fathom, let alone complete, running 31 marathons in 31 days, I give them the same simple answer because I am a Marine. And my mission to fight for my fellow veterans has not changed.

And when a Marine is on mission for his fellow Marines, he is capable of anything. Therefore, when people ask me, Haven't you done enough? Sacrificed enough I remind them that not only do I have the capability to accomplish my mission Be proud of my Marine Corps heritage

Stay faithful to my fellow Marines and keep fighting I have the responsibility I have the responsibility to keep fighting for my country My core and my fellow veterans So no it will never be enough The day that I have done enough will be the day that six Marines lower my body into my grave in Arlington Cemetery. And how can I do it?

I do it because it is my duty. And to do my duty is my honor. In one last little passage I want to read from your journal, it says, I am merely a representative of what is possible for any veteran, any person. So as time passes, I do not want my name to be remembered. All I want to be remembered is the story. Years from now, when people speak about this, I want him to say, I remember that guy who ran all those marathons that one time. And their friend will reply, what was his name?

And they will say, I don't remember. But he was a Marine. Well, Rob, I can tell you that I got a feeling that you will be remembered and your name will be remembered. And the way that you have represented the Marines and America and mankind will be remembered and revered as well. So, thanks for coming on the show again and letting us all know that we are capable of much. much more if we just step up and push a little bit harder

been awesome having you back on man it's been awesome being here I mean again I'm glad I could come up with the material I was like once you said you invited me back I was like I gotta start writing some stuff no you don't have to write

maybe we can just come on and talk echo you got any questions for the man yeah was there any time like during the 31 marathons that you were like, oh, this is kind of lame. I'm kind of off this now.

Did you ever think that? I mean, not even necessarily that you were like tired physically or nothing, just kind of like, you know, that's interesting because I got,

I definitely got tired of doing the interviews. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. But the thing with that is, the interviews, you know, I didn't,

I wasn't doing this to like to get a bunch of, you know, people telling me I'm awesome, you know, or anything. But the interviews, So doing the marathons without the interviews would be pointless

because the story wouldn't get out there without doing the interviews. But doing the interviews without the story without doing the marathons is actually also pointless. Right, right. And it kind of got... The funny thing is, I did this because it was going to be hard. I did this because it was going to be really difficult.

Yeah, yeah. And I knew that going in, and that's the whole purpose of it was to do something that was hard. And then, you know, the last four days, and in Houston and stuff when it started to get hard I was like it's bullshit Why is this so hard? Yeah, yeah

But Yeah I like I was saying before There was never a point where I was like There's no way I can do this Or anything like that I was like as long as I don't get severely injured by a mistake

Don't get hit by a car Or you'll break a bone or something Then I'm gonna be able to do this Yeah Gonna get her done Yeah feel like every once in a while when I do something that takes a long time, like months or

something like that, I get to a point every once in a while, I'm like, what am I doing here? Yeah, it definitely gets, I mean, it gets, it gets repetitive for sure. Yeah, yeah, that's what I mean, yes, wake up, uh, run marathon. You don't listen to music, you don't listen to, do you listen to a podcast? Do you listen to music? I didn't really on the month of marathons except a few times because you have people with you talk. I had people with me. And you're just going to be like, hey, I'm listening to a podcast. leave me alone. Well, sometimes I did do that, to be honest with you.

There were times I did do that. Sometimes. That Wednesday morning, that Jocko podcast dropped. You're hoping for a long one. One of the few people I was hoping for a four-hour podcast to get you through it. There were, I felt kind of bad in the last four because I told you my back was hurting so much. And I was like, every time I landed on that right foot, it would be severe pain. And then I would kind of make me kind of gasp a little bit.

Yeah. And so I felt really bad because there's a lot of people that were, you know, they came out to run with me and they were like talking to me and trying to help me keep going. But I just was not in the mood for talking, you know, and I felt terrible because they'd be like asking me questions. I'd be like giving them the one word, you know, like, oh, you know, but what's your favorite place or whatever? I'm like, oh, I don't know. And it's, I just, I, so I wish I could have handled that part a little bit better. you know, get, let those people, you know, talk to those people a little bit, but I'm sure they understand.

Yeah. Why? And I kind of said it before, and I was like, listen to everybody. If I'm not talking, if it's because I have this back injury. It's not because I don't like you personally. Yeah, so it's that. But, you know, when it got hard, I fell back on, on my mission, and that's what, that's what I was doing it for.

Whether or not I was hurting or didn't feel like doing it was not as important as Doesn't have anything to do with anything, really, does it? Yeah. Can I ask you, I want to ask your opinion on something, because I came up with a theory, and it's not totally thought out yet. Like my theory. And this theory might actually get me killed, so please echo. Of course. Defend me. I think that there may be something that's more powerful than discipline.

And what... Anybody that's listening? Jocko reached for the knife. And maybe it's just that they're kind of going to go hand in hand. But I think the one thing that may be as powerful or maybe even more powerful than discipline is selflessness. And so the reason I say that is because I don't know, maybe the discipline leads to the ability to perform the selfless acts.

but it seems to me like all the discipline in the world might not allow you to do something like lift a car off of your child or dive on a grenade. Well, yeah, I mean, I think you're actually 100% right. I don't think that's a theory.

I think that when you take guys in combat, when guys are in combat and guys do incredible things and sacrifice their lives for their brothers, that is not about discipline. And, you know, they're doing that because they're selfless and they want to take care of their friends. That's what they're doing it for. Yeah.

And, you know, there can be people that are, you know, undisciplined individuals that perform incredibly heroic things in combat. So, no, I don't think it's, I don't think it's, I think that's actually correct. I mean, I think there's, that's an extremely powerful force. And, you know, that may be that. that and and I was thinking about you know the power of that where I thought you were going to say

where I thought you were going to talk about it was you know you weren't doing this for yourself right you know you weren't doing this for yourself you were doing this to get a message out there that you're doing this to raise money for others for your friends for your brothers that's that is a more powerful thing

than hey I'm just a self-disciplined person right now you know discipline is like it's like there it's like they're it's like they're they're in different it's not apples to apples I don't think it's not like it's not like this is more powerful than that no because I'll tell you that if you want to perform well if you want to achieve things like you wouldn't have to be able to do this for these causes if you didn't have the discipline to train hard to eat right to get on the path to stay on the path you wouldn't have been able to do this even though you really wanted to even though you

really really wanted to care about your brothers you really really wanted to raise money for those funds if you don't have the discipline to make it happen and and train yourself and be ready that that you wouldn't be able to deliver that just like a guy on the battlefield they're on the battlefield because they they were able to perform they were able to have the discipline to get to that point but they're they're too i'd say they're related i don't think they're they're definitely not opposing each other and i and in fact i think that if i was to tell you you know when i was in the seal teams what the dry the actual dry force behind the discipline that that I tried to have myself wasn't for me it was like I want to be able to perform well on the battlefield not because I want to perform well but because I want to make sure I don't let my brothers down yeah so I would say it's actually like a force that's a foundational force you know it's like people that are heavily heavily religious their discipline relies on their religious faith people that are over

Overachievers that want to accomplish something their discipline is based on the fact that they want to get that achievement So the discipline by itself There has to be something that the discipline there has to be a foundation that that's built upon and I think a lot of P lot of times people build their their their foundation of discipline the foundation that their discipline is built on Is actually the fact that they want to take care of their friends. They want to be able to take care of their brothers They want to take care of their family You know you get all kinds of you know, I was you take a single mom that's working three jobs right now,

well, she has to be highly disciplined. She has to be highly disciplined. She's got to get up every morning at 3 o'clock to get to the diner in time to start waiting tables. She's doing that. She has that discipline, not based on the fact that she wants to be stronger for herself.

She's doing that so she can feed her kids. She's doing that. She's doing that selflessly so that she can feed her kids. Yeah. So, no, I mean, that's absolutely true. And I totally agree with you. Yeah Supporting uh

Yeah I think the The best way the way to get the most out of yourself is to figure out a way to make it about something that you care about more than yourself Yeah yeah I mean I think that discipline is a manifestation of Of selflessness in many ways it's a way that you're like I said a single mom That's working three jobs Look let's face it she doesn't want to work any of those three jobs She doesn't want to work any of those three jobs but she's doing it she's doing it every day day and yet day out why is she doing that she why is she just showing that discipline and

manifesting that discipline it's because she cares about her kids more than she cares about herself yeah and that's all there is to it and you could go to the battlefield and say the same thing why do why do why do why do Marines train so hard yeah exactly why do we train hard in the seal teams what why are we doing that are we doing that for ourselves are we imposing that discipline ourselves are we having the self-discipline because we want to be good for ourselves no it's because we want to be able to take care of our friends we want to be able to take care of brothers and and you could go across the board with any of that so I totally agree

with you awesome one glad glad that I'm still alive now check but could they at any point come into conflict with each other where you got to choose to remain discipline or serve others I don't I don't see how they would come in conflict with you and if they did come in conflict I think you make a rational decision yeah yeah sure like I mean I mean Hey, am I gonna get sneak my workout in like what's more important to me working out or or going on a mission with my friends right right or You're I don't know daughters piano recital that they want you to be at but you got it's that it's a certain time you got to choose you know between what one one being disciplined with a workout that day okay I mean making the recital right I mean obviously you want to make the recital but if the if the if the choice is between making the recital and you have to go to your job and work

Well, if you don't go to your job and work, guess what? Now you don't have money to pay for your piano lessons in the first place. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no. So you better think about that. That's all I'm saying is it is, is there a situation where discipline and selflessness will come into conflict? I'm just saying usually they support each other for sure. I think you're right.

But is there a circumstance. Yes, there is there is you could actually become, you could actually focus on yourself and be like, hey, it's more important for me to take care of me. Right. than it is for me to take care of my team. And that's not going to go over well with the team. And you may end up being, you know, a highly disciplined individual. Right.

But you have no, you have no outlet for it because you have no one to take care of it except for yourself. And that situation. You see like the, what's the, uh, I haven't watched the movie, but I know exactly. No, I'm serious. I haven't watched the movie. It's American cycle, right? Oh, yeah. No, I haven't watched the movie, but I, but I, I know exactly what the story is.

The guy is like super highly disciplined, right? Yeah. Isn't he like the way he does everything highly disciplined? Yeah. But at the same time, obviously he's a psycho and he's not supporting anyone but himself. Sure. So that's like an extreme version of someone that cares about themselves. Right.

Yeah, sure, they're highly disciplined. But, you know, being highly disciplined doesn't make you a good person. Yeah, it doesn't automatically make you selfless. No. It doesn't make you selfless. And it certainly doesn't make you a good person either. Yeah. And you could certainly get into a situation.

You know you get people that are Bank robbers. No I was highly disciplined bank robber. I wasn't thinking bank robbers, but you think You know the people that are so into working out that that trumps Yeah, yeah, yeah, everything trumps everything yeah, and they and they have an issue, right? They're so into it that they did they sacrifice Yeah, not even sacrifice. They just don't care. Yeah, yeah. It's a what you know when you meet someone that's so into working out that I mean that's a very selfish thing right working out is a selfish thing right now there's part of it that's selfless because you're working out so that you can stay healthy so you can take care of your family

you can take care of your friends like we just talked about but you can take that to a point yeah so you're capable of surviving and taking care of your your friends and your family but you can easily get to a point where hey the most important thing is me yeah my pull-ups the most important thing is me and my numbers yeah my numbers and you know what I was danger close to this with jiu-jitsu Because for a while, I was like, I'd come home at night. And my wife would be like, you know, this is, I was still in the teams. Yeah. And I was a task unit commander.

Like we, I was, that was the most important thing of my life. But I would still come home at night at 7.30 at night or 8 o'clock at night. And I'd grab my gym back and I'd go train Jitzu. And my wife would be like, what the hell is wrong with you? Yeah. Like, what are you doing? And that's, that was borderline, right? That was borderline.

But for me, it was like, hey, this is. a skill set that I should have when I'm on the battlefield so I can take care of myself and take care of my friends and by the way that means I have a 1.001% chance that I'm gonna come home instead of not come home so I'm gonna do it and that right there that's probably a little bit of rationalization because because selfishly I really love training Jiu-Jitsu yeah yeah so there's there's a selfishness there and I that I just tried to rationalize a little bit and and you know that's actually another thing we talked we talked about the first podcast with you is rationalization and how you got to be careful of that got to be

careful of rational rationalizing everything yeah so yeah those are those are things that definitely can get can become can become problematic if you if well that's what that's why there's a dichotomy yeah that's why there's a dichotomy and everything because you can go overboard with any any personality trait you can go too far with yeah and you can definitely go that that That's why discipline and freedom, it's actually a balance. Even though discipline equals freedom, but guess what? If you have pure discipline, if you remove all freedom, well, then what did you just do?

Inslave yourself? Yeah, you enslaved. So you, there's balance. There's balance in discipline. There has to be balanced and discipline. I think the reason that it strikes people to talk about discipline equals freedom is because most people don't make that connection. And most people lean so far towards just freedom of doing whatever they want.

want that they end up enslaved from a different direction yeah which is equally if not more problematic and I say more problematic because now you end up a situation where you're slaved you're enslaved by something that's not good that's not healthy that's not positive whereas at least with discipline if you're imposing the discipline on yourself self-discipline well then you're you're imposing things on you that are at least positive long term at a minimum they're positive long term yeah yeah now can you go overboard with that yes There's people that have eating disorders, right?

Oh, yeah, yeah. There's people that have eating disorders. They impose such strict discipline that they're unhealthy. And that's bad and that's horrible. You know, I've heard back from some people that said, hey, you know, I have trouble with eating disorders. You know, it's generally been females who have more trouble with that category. And they actually have to use the discipline to say the correct discipline thing to do. Is to eat more is to eat the proper amount of calories because it's a horrible horrible thing if you see people going through that and it's a fatal disease

Right? Yeah, it's a fatal disease and so so again to your point there's you can become so disciplined That it's that it's that it's negative yeah it's negative on your personal health it's negative on your you know you can work yourself you can work yourself so hard You can say I'm gonna be disciplined at work and now you you you stop you lose the balance and you start stop working out and you stop working out and you stop training you start eating donuts and you start eating donuts not before you run a marathon but before you sit down in your front of your computer yeah so there there absolutely has to be balanced but factually the the the tendency is I'm gonna be I'm gonna be less disciplined and I'm gonna do things that are easy I'm in the easy path and if that leads to that's that's the 80% 90%

I don't know what percent, but that is a vast majority of people. Vast majority of people don't need less discipline in their lives. They need more discipline. That's the vast majority of people, myself included, myself included, need more discipline, not less. And it's almost about what you're being disciplined towards. So like in the situation you bring up with the recital, you have the competing thing. So maybe it actually takes more discipline to forego your workout. I realize what's more important.

Bigger discipline kind of thing. People will say to me like on Twitter, they'll say, if you have real discipline, once you have the discipline to sleep in tomorrow. Get out of your comfort zone and sleep in. Oh yeah, that's a different thing. But yes, so you'd have to look at the bigger, is there a bigger discipline then, right?

Because you gotta, you gotta consider your goals and stuff like that. You can't have the discipline to sleep in if that doesn't benefit your goal. Right, right. It's not even discipline. Yeah. And like the person that's struggling with the eating disorder, they're disciplined.

At first they were disciplined to lose weight. Right. Yeah. They need to change that discipline to be healthy. Right. Consider the goal. Yeah. The goal needs to be health.

Yeah. What a scary thing. You look in the mirror and you think you're overweight and you're not. Some guys get that the opposite. For sure. Body dysmorphia? Yeah. Is that what it's called?

Yeah. So you can have it like, you know, you think you're always, you always think you're fat, But you're skinny and then the other way it's like you always think you're skinny so you need bigger muscles so you know so you that you get on the juice Yeah, whatever yeah yeah yeah asteroids And that's actually why we're gonna echo Jocko we like this earlier too much girl oil You have big enough muscles yeah thanks Rob Jones This guy so supportive man

You just seen him before he started cutting weight Check speaking of health and support and support and support and support echo Charles is there any way that you could advise us how to support ourselves ourselves and other and possibly we just support you support yeah we support out there we support you there we support you did actually one of the benefits of having you on is you're very supportive encouraging you know and I like that but in the event of people us wanting to support This podcast in addition to each other in addition to ourselves or all at once we can stay on

Jocko super krill oil I thought you're gonna say the path well yeah the path that's bigger picture for sure and we'll talk about that But one of the methods to stay on the path is krill oil you can lift a lot of weight to get strong muscles Kind of like like like when you tear your skin apart. I guess But if your joints are all jacked up they don't want to move you're not lifting nothing So, and this goes for everyday life. So super cruel oil, jaco has supplements, finally. Super cruel oil, joint warfare, and discipline, which is a pre-mission, what a cognitive enhancer, force multiplier?

Technically, what does force multiplier mean? It's like when you get one thing and another, and the sum is worth more than the parts. Kind of, yeah. Yeah, cognitive. You were so excited about that. I'm just going to let it roll. Anyway, three supplements, right?

Not counting the new one that's gonna come out soon So krill oil for your joints Joint warfare for your joints and Discipline pre-mission you take a cognitive enhancers A little bit of caffeine in there 15 milligrams Unless you drink multiple scoops Sure then it's 30 I did an event the other night

And I was kind of tired going into it straight up I was kind of tired and usually my events are during the day But this was at night And so I was kind of like you know I had flown out there I was feeling a little bit, so I drank some discipline. And then I drank some more discipline. And I ended up having, I guess it was a total, some total of about five scoops of discipline. Sure.

So, what's that? 60 milligrams. But there's not just the, yeah. But anyways, I got done with the event and went up to, you know, hung out with everyone for a little bit. Add the little dinner thing and then got done with that and then hung out and then went up to my room, hotel room and I just sat there BTFing BTF DTF and the funny thing

is I didn't realize I was like why because I had gotten up early in the morning I worked out to travel to blah blah And I didn't realize why am I Why do I have energy right now? Why can't I sleep right now? This is ridiculous what's wrong with me? What's wrong with me?

What's wrong with me? What's wrong with me? And then I didn't even realize until the next day because I went to bed at 1.30 in the morning woke up at 4.30 And then I did like a stretch came home.

Jack steel when I got home of course yeah I got home did squads but which is nice because my arms been jacked up so I haven't been able to do I still I'm not doing overhead squats right now or even front squats oh right right so I am doing front squats with kettlebell yeah and so one of us have a bigger kettlebell than other people but whatever so you got to be careful don't have the if you're not used to caffeine because I'm not used to caffeine because I only have jocco white tea which has the same 15 milligrams or discipline if you're not used to caffeine that little 15 milligrams and you drink a bunch of it you're gonna feel it don't drink it before you go to bed at night yeah that's my warning

unless you have stuff to do unless you got stuff to do yeah yeah get after it yeah yeah you want to balance the discipline for sure yeah you will not you will feel sharp that's what's good about it you feel sharp it's good it's funny physically and mentally when you or when someone says hoi I'm drinking the discipline you ever watch space balls Remember that show? Spaceball one, he's like, liquid Schwartz. Remember?

It's like the Schwartz is the force. Oh, liquid force. You know what Space Wars is, right? It's a parody of Star Wars. So instead of the force, it's the Schwartz, right? That's what it was shorts. And then he had the liquid Schwartz. Oh, yeah.

So that was like the fuel or so. I forget. Anyway, that's how you sound when you say, I'm drinking the discipline. You can't drink the, you know. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. I think you meant to do that.

Nonetheless, you get this at, OriginMain.com. On the top it says labs. Actually, a guy emailed me. It was like, hey, I can't find the, I can't find the discipline. I said, look within yourself. Then I said, go to origin main.com on the top, it says labs. You just made it funny.

You like that. You know, I'm jumping back and forth. Anyway, that's where you get it. OriginMane.com. Also on origin, main.com, they got some cool geese. All made in America. Rash guards. Compression gear.

Topps and bottoms. rash cards spats spats yes spats yeah move them with spats do they have the black out yet yeah I don't have they do you know also look at the start planning your schedule for the origin jitzy to camp immersion immersion camp yeah it's not like it's not like a hardcore like that's the thing and that's what Pete kind of what old is what he was kind of telling me where it's not like the kind it's not like like boot camp or something which it would be cool too it's not like a training camp for like a event you know what I'm saying like you know what I'm saying like you And guys train for A2CC.

Yeah, yeah, we're training. We're training hard. But it's more like you're in there to immerse yourself in Jiu-Jitsu. You want to train hard, you train hard. You want to learn hard? Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, the case and point, there's a lot of people that have never even trained before. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Literally have never trained before. Yeah. Got up, said, A, before this morning's class, I need to get a ghee. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I don't even have a ghee. Yep. So, yeah, that's in August. You can check on the website for that too.

Come on up. Echo, Charles and I will be there. You want to go? Yeah. Okay, cool. It's good fun. It's fun. It's cool.

You can start learning more than I taught you last time we did Jiu-Jitsu. Oh, yeah, the two moves that we had. I have Jiu-Jitsu legs now. Oh, you do? So what do they look like? J-Jitsu legs. Because I told you got to get rid of, like, the hard thing. Yeah, they were just hard sockets, right?

And so what I did was, you know, I had trouble standing up. Yeah. So what I did was I had these two. I have the sockets that go on my leg. So what I have my process does do is cover them in foam and then so that's a little bit softer for people so I don't hurt anybody and then He made it so I could just stand on the ends of those sockets so like the same height? Yes, so the same height awesome and so now I can I use them to you I haven't started taking Jiu Jitsu because I've been really busy but I'm gonna I think once we get back my wife and I are gonna start going in awesome and then I also use them to do some weightlifting stuff

I've been able to figure out how to do squats off the ground. Nice. Squats, squats. And, yeah, so it's awesome. So I'll be ready. Yeah. No, that is awesome. Yeah.

Yeah, because the biggest concern I had last time was the shell had like a metal thing. Yeah, valve. And that thing was uncool. Oh, yeah. He's jamming up. Oh, man. Yeah. No, I didn't realize at the time that you were insulting me because.

That's how I do things. Not until after. No, not until after. because the whole time you were, after we rolled, you were like, oh yeah, you're really strong, you're really strong. And then a couple times later,

a couple of podcasts later, you're like, oh, it's actually an insult. Yeah, yeah. You don't have any technique, but you're strong. That's how I learned that I was almost optimistic to a fault was that when we roll, and you've talked about this before, when we roll, I was like,

there's got to be a way that I can catch Jock. There's got to be some way. And that guy, like, who is the guy that's missing his hand that we rolled with, I rolled with afterwards. Oh, Jeffrey. Yeah, Jeffrey. I had him in, I had him by the neck,

and I was like, oh, dang, I got him. I can't believe this. I got him. And then afterwards, you're like, there's no possible way. Yeah, yeah. Somehow, is it so optimistic about what I can do to a fault? It is that.

And you're the, you're with so many people. Majority people, especially with Jiu-Jitsu, fall in that category of like, well, and the other funny thing is you'll get somebody with something. And then they think to themselves, I was if I could if I just stop that yeah then I'll be able to win yeah I had a had a had a wrestler this was back in the day I was like a blue belt and and this blue belt and I was going against this wrestler you know like a a really good college wrestler and

the look on his face every single time was just okay let's let's go let's go again he was the first person that I realized like that that's the normal reaction but especially for a wrestler because wrestler that wrestling that wrestling college Man, they've been dominating people in high school. They've been dominating people in college. They know they they understand grappling and so when they get They get like submitted. They just can't they just don't even understand it. It seems like the one thing they never saw before and you know and then and I don't know you can you can you can give me some advice on this is it better because I've done it both ways is it better to submit them with the same thing every single time Which I've done that or to submit them something new every single time where they just are dumbed out Yeah, I think the second one gets especially giving what you said because it's true the wrestler He's gonna have all this knowledge of grappling so and it makes sense, you know

So you see this one weird thing that you never seen in your mind you're like all right That's just one weird kind of rare kind of thing it's a feeling and then but if you're like this thing this thing this thing It's like okay this world is opening up now. Okay, I understand a little bit better You realize it wasn't a fluke. Yes, it wasn't just that one thing like I just got to stay away from his or Yeah putting my neck in there just gotta stay away from that that's all so It kind of depends or or deviates from that whole idea. So we'll be having these discussions and many more at the immersion camp in Maine in August. August yeah, it's right before school starts. Yeah, so yeah, those are good fun, man. Yeah

Anyway, yeah, origin main.com. Check it out good way to support also Jocko talked about his new cool kettlebell that's heavier than mine. Nonetheless, I got the whole set on you know the you know what kettlebells I'm talking about right? Yeah, the demon or the the the primal bells you ones or whatever yeah guerrillas I think there's like a cyclops in there too anyway any more word on the jaco head or is that that can happen yeah still working probably we're in the idea phase on that one still but yeah that's good but nonetheless you want the whole set go to on it.com slash jaco really good kettlebells in there other exercise stuff on there too you want to switch up your workout I ran into that the other day like dang this workout is getting boring so I just BTF through it yeah

And then did you because it's good to do things and you brought this up before if you're not used to something even though it's like we talked about squats like Going all the way down which is what I'm used to if I was to do squats to To what is it parallel to the deck that's the standard. Yeah the standard and then those squats would actually be a little bit harder for me Yeah for like a week or two weeks and then I'd realize it going down in the hole is the place we get yeah, but and it goes along with exactly what you're saying how like your brain has to do it It's called neuromuscular connection. Where if you're used to doing a certain motion, you can do it way more efficiently. Put more weight on there.

We're pretty efficient, you know, and that's where gains come from. Or a big part of where it gains come from. So, yeah, you just change the movement just a little bit. Boom, whole other thing your body got to get used to. More gains to be had. Well, that's the whole theory of West Side Barbells, and they change the way they do something every three weeks.

Instead of doing this bench press the same exact way, they did that for three weeks, and then in the next three weeks they do it wide or they do it with a different kind of bar or they do it different range of motion. Yeah. So once you, they don't allow their body to totally adapt

and constantly changing it and just kind of. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of cool ways you can kind of manipulate that from workout to workout. But yeah, so yeah, if you want to vary up your workout with all kinds of different movements on it, they have some cool stuff. Battle maces or, no, battle ropes.

Mases, some other stuff. Anyway, onet.com slash jockel. Good spot. also when you buy the books that we sometimes review on this podcast I got them all organized on jocopodcast.com in the book section just click through there

it takes you to Amazon Amazon Prime if you have it and you know get your book good way to support if you're doing other shopping continue do your shopping buy that lawn more you've been meaning to buy also subscribe to the podcast

if you haven't already. Seems obvious, I know. iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, and other podcast-providing, podcast-providing platforms. Also on YouTube, because we do have a YouTube channel, Rob Jones.

I know you're on there sometimes. We have excerpts. I think that's really one of the main values is the excerpts of the podcasts. For sure. People like that. Yeah, because a lot of times, I mean,

aside from seeing what you and our guests look like, you know, the video version or whatever, the excerpts are shareable and I didn't realize how valuable that was with the sharing thing. Until when? I think it's a gradually increasing understanding of the value overall. Nonetheless, I could go into a whole thing about that. You know, all the people that say like, hey, could you make an excerpt of this and make an excerpt of this and make an excerpt of this? You're just starting to realize that maybe they had a reason for that? We'll just say I'm realizing it more.

How about that? Check. Nonetheless, good value there in my opinion and a good way to support, so subscribe to the YouTube channel. If you want, also, Jocko has a store. If you didn't know already, it's called Jocko Store. Go to jocco store.com and if you want the shirts that say discipline equals freedom, get after it, a warrior kid shirt like this one, or the shirt that Jocko always wears the Victory

MMA and Fitness, that's where you can get it. That's where you get it. Jocco store.com. We need to make gray ones of the... gray yeah just gray gray oh like you had they're gray I don't care I don't know gray gray can we do that yeah but that's a general term you know great it's like you can't just say hey you know you got it well I need gray shirts for the summertime that's coming I bet there are 50 different shades of gray there's a whole

documentary about that right oh oh there's a documentary about that this guy you know he really doesn't know you're talking about either that's the funny it's a pop culture reference yeah yeah 50 shades gray you know Nonetheless, I'll make the gray one, so there will be a gray victory MMA and fitness shirt available on jocco store.com soon. I like it. I promise. Also, some women's stuff on there. Some patches.

I just got the patches reordered so they should be in there. You know, store's running better now. It is. So, you know, check it out. We're happy to hear that. Yeah, man. Yeah. It means a lot to us.

Yep, some hoodies on there. Some rash guards on there for various activities. including but not limited to Jiu-Jitsu, cycling. There was a guy on Twitter, Instagram. I think he ran, I think a marathon, I think. Nice. Representing. With representing big time.

With the get after at Rashgard. He said he did it 50% better, 50% better. Well, there you go. There you go. The factual. That's scientific. Yeah, proof is in the pudding. So boom, rash guards, yes.

Jocco store.com. Look at that stuff. I'm not saying buy something. I'm saying, if you want something. get something good way to support also psychological warfare I'm gonna explain what it is again it's no problem for me it is an album not a music album it's a spoken word album with tracks and these tracks are for they ever a purpose not just entertainment like oh this poetic it is poetic but that's not the purpose the

purpose is for each track is to get you through when you're on the path on the campaign against weakness you'll run into these moments of weakness, right? Just little weakness insurgents, if you will. You know, they show up every once in a while. So you listen to a specific track designated for a certain type of weakness that'll creep in. And the track is Jocko telling you

why you should overcome this weakness. Why? Kind of how as well. It's not Jocco yelling at you. It's just a pragmatic, kind of in a way, these steps to take to overcome these weaknesses boom hundred percent um hundred percent hundred percent hundred percent uh what you saw success rate on that one in my experience hundred percent good way to support you can also get jocco white tea on

Amazon it's called jocco white tea sure and that's for people that want to deadlift eight thousand pounds and this is another scientifically proven factually double Blind placebo Yes placebo proven Somebody on the or I don't want to say somebody Okay, there's this guy he deadlifted a bunch Oh yeah yeah yeah yeah what's that guy he's huge He's it Bjorn Thor Bjornson yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah he just won the Arnold classic yeah he won the Arnold classic

So I've been seeing a lot of that video in reference to No a lot of people are a lot of people are wanting to test him to see if he was in a jaco white tea Oh, the jocco white tea. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they don't know that. It does, no, you can, you won't test. It doesn't test positive. Yeah, yeah. So he only did a little bit.

The test is the deadlift. Yeah, he only did a little bit. You know how they smell those things before he just smelled the tea bag? He was snorted. Yeah, that's jocco white tea. You can get that. But that's coming in a can, by the way. But it's going to, it's in starting production.

It takes a long time. But by the summertime, you'll be getting jocco white tea. in a can like a right like one of the other energy drinks that just fill you with sugar and get you crazy no this is going to fill you with antioxidants a little bit of caffeine and some good tastes so yeah that's coming let's see what else books speaking of books on amazon or wherever weigh the warrior kid you you should have that book for all children right is there any children Is there any child in the world that doesn't need way of the warrior kid? No, didn't think so.

So get that, and speaking way of the warrior kid, there's a new way of the warrior kid that is out right now available for pre-order. So get it. And one of the things that I would like to do, everyone tells me things like everyone should get way of the warrior kid, every kid should read this book, every kid should read this book in high school or in their school. people say that to me all the time because it's very simple clear lessons that everybody should absorb and it would help it would have helped me if I had that book it would help everybody when they had that if they had that book when they're younger so want to get this book out there in to more kids one of the best ways to do that if you order way the warrior kid to Mark's mission order it from

different sources get it from Amazon get it from Barnes & Noble go to your local bookstore and say hey can you please order this book for me we want to get it spread out where a bunch of different outlets are seeing the demand for it that will increase the publicity that the book receives and it will get into more kids hands that's my goal is to get more kids to read weigh the word kid and to read mark's mission so do that it's alive um um Also speaking of warrior kids if you want to support a warrior kid there's a warrior kid that's a farmer and a businessman And he's making soap from goat milk why because he's getting after it You can order some of that at Irish Oaks Ranch.com and the motto because he makes he doesn't just make so he makes jaco soap

Sure. Yeah, he wanted to make good soap Ding it I quote I want to make good soap G O O D capitalized yeah, so he makes jaco Soap smells like coconut by the way really yeah because I like the smell of coconut Yeah is there coconut it here's yes I didn't find it to smell like coconut it smells it oh it definitely you don't think it smells like coconut well maybe you have a more sensitive Yeah, a olfactory olfactory Sensity situation yeah but the motto for jaccos dope steak clean Discipline equals freedom field manual again you know I was traveling around I I signed a lot of these books

I just traveled around when I was in Australia a lot of people brought it in and that was awesome a lot of great feedback One thing that's good if you have that book and you like and it's helped you get it for someone else that you know that that wants to get on the path or should be on the path So that's pretty easy to do Also the audio version of that book does not exist on audible.com It exists on iTunes Amazon music Google play other MP3 platforms It's an album with tracks Sure. That's why we did it that way.

And finally, of course, extreme ownership, the new version of extreme ownership is out. The black one, which looks cool. It's got a little excerpt, new beginning, and it's got an excerpt of Q&A from this podcast in the back, which is solid. How long is that part of it? I don't want to say, I mean, you know, how much of that is there?

I think there's eight questions. I mean, and they're, you know, answers, which is, yeah. Pretty robust answer. It's fairly robust, yeah. Yeah and Speaking of leadership We have a company Eschalon Front we solve problems through leadership That's what we do and we do it all the time. It's me Laif Babin J.P. Danelle Dave Burke

You can email info at Escalonfront.com or you can go to our website Escalonfront.com and of course there is the muster Which is a leadership gathering a leadership seminar a leadership conference what do you learn there? Pragmatic leadership skills So you can win. That's what you learn. We're only doing two this year. We're doing one in Washington DC You come in May 17th and 18th? Yeah, okay, so you can come meet the Rob Jones and then we're doing one in San Francisco October 17th and 18th The DC one by the way right now is already it's more than half sold out right now So these are both gonna sell out just like all the events that we've done have sold out so if you want to come register as quick as you can

Extreme Ownership.com. We'll see you there. And until the muster, if you want to hang with us, we are on the interwebs. We are on Twitter. We are on Instagram. And we are on that you facie, boy. Echo is at Echo Charles.

I am at Jocko Willink. And of course, Rob Jones is at Rob Jones Journey. And he also has rob JonesJourney.com. And on top of that, Rob Jones has his own podcast now. One episode. He's one episode deep. Boom.

One episode deep. He's on the path. Yeah. The podcast is called Use the Weight. Yep. Oh, that's good. Yeah. Use the weight, which is...

Wait until you see the logo. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you can get that wherever MP3 or sorry, podcasts are available. I've listened to the first episode. You talk about getting after it. Oh, yeah.

And yeah, you talk about how to get through a lot of, of things so it's it's awesome can I add to that I'm yeah absolutely it's kind of an advice style a podcast right now are people asking me questions so all those people listen to this you know you're sending question after question to Jocko and he just refuses to answer he reads it and then just throws it in the track no I'm just kidding but yeah if anybody has questions that they want to get answered by me then send them to me at Rob Jones Journey at gmail.com or through my website or through social media, and I will answer them. You just gave out your website on this.

That's awesome. Yeah. Oh, my email email. You're fired up. Yeah. Oh, that's my, that's my special email. That's not like my personal email that I give out for stuff like this. It also helps to keep it kind of separated.

So I can just check that email. Oh, yeah, yeah. So you don't get a sift. Yeah. So I have to sift and organize. Oh, look of the way I have to sift. Dang, yeah, I got to learn that listen to a little bit. Did I miss anything else from your various platforms?

No, I mean, I am working on a book, too. Oh, awesome. There's no real, you know, date to release date or anything, but I'm hoping it's going to be a book about veterans and the positive, and just continuing to create that story that I was talking about earlier, about telling that side of the coin about veterans that come home and are fine.

Yeah. And I'm hoping it's going to be, right now I'm kind of making it kind of like, you ever read anything by Plato? Well, he had, basically all of his writing is conversations that Socrates had. So I'm hoping I'm going to make it kind of like that where it's just basically this series of conversations

between two people. You know what? And this, I just thought this while you were saying this because I think this is another important thing about on that exact subject. And we were talking earlier about these two categories of like the vet comes, that comes home and he's good and the vet that comes home and he's a little, a little bit off track. Yeah. But I would like to say, and I know you're going to agree with this 100%, just because you're

a little bit off track, doesn't mean you're going to get, you can't easily get back on track. Or I've known all kinds of veterans that they were off track a little bit for a little while, And then they figure it out and they get back on track. They find a new mission. So, you know, the guys, and that's actually fairly common in my, in my, from what I've seen. And actually talking to a lot of guys that that went through Vietnam. And they'd come home from Vietnam. And they were a little messed up when they got home, you know, and they got through it, got over it and got it out of their system and moved on.

And again, we've talked about, I've talked about this before, you know, when you got done with World War II, you sat on a ship with a bunch of other vets for six weeks. and you debriefed everything on a ride home. And you got that out of your system and you got to communicate and you got, you moved through it mentally. Vietnam, they didn't have that opportunity. Vietnam was, oh yeah, you're in Vietnam today and then tomorrow you're in San Francisco.

Alone, by the way, you're not with anybody else. You're not with any other veterans. Nowadays, we do a pretty good job of when you come home, you're coming home with your unit, you stay together, you have people to talk to that have the common experience. But yeah, to the vets out there that are thinking, oh, man, I feel like I might be one of those guys

that's not on the right track right now, you can get back on the right track. And it's, it's finding your new mission and moving down that path towards, towards achieving it. And just trying everything that you possibly can. Like for me, it's easy to figure out what I needed to do because there was a system in place and it's an obvious physical injury. But with the mental injuries, we don't exactly know how to fix them yet. But you just have to keep trying this. All right. Try talking about it with a therapist. Didn't work. All right. Try, you know, hyperbolic chambers or whatever try this try that for that and because just because you tried one thing and it didn't work out doesn't mean that you don't want to that doesn't mean that

you now are fine with you know nightmares and stuff you just got to keep trying everything until everything is exhausted yeah and I'll tell you I've I've in talking to to uh Jordan Peterson the couple times we've had him out here into listening to him in reading his book it's because very obvious to me and it's sort of reflective of something that Dakota Meyer said on on the podcast which is like hey there's a your your your your your brain your mentality your psychology is a system and just like just like you have a system to move through when you have a physical injury to get healed or get corrected well this is the same thing with your psychological state

and if that psychological state is off a little bit well there's things that there's people that know how to fix it if you listen to when Jordan's talking about the way that he would bring someone through a problem there's a systematic way to do that and I never really understood that until I started listening to him because you know when they'd send us to the psychologist to debrief a deployment you know for me it was just sort of You know I had the the negative attitude of all this I'm not going to tell this guy anything because I don't want them to think I'm crazy and I don't want to get you know Put on whatever you know thing and so I just was hey. I'm just gonna move forward and and and and that's the That was sort of my attitude and I'll tell you when I was in that was a very common attitude was Hey look I'm not gonna tell this this psychologist does know what I've been through Yeah, so I'm not gonna tell them anything that was a very common and again I think for me

Listening to Jordan because I I would have been you know two years ago or a year ago Before I started listening to to Jordan Peterson talk I never really saw the connection and then it really solidified it when I heard Dakota talking about it saying look This is a I put the two and two together when I heard Dakota talking about it like there's people just like if you wanted to get good at Olympic lifting you'd go to an Olympia if you tried to figure that out on your own it would take you forever and you might get hurt You might get hurt worse Whereas if you went to a real Olympic lifting coach and said hey I want to learn the clean and jerk and the snatch They would say okay here's where we're gonna start we're gonna start with the PVC pipe and then we're gonna go through the motions then we're gonna get better at this and then we're gonna do high pulls they're gonna walk you through

through the whole system. And a psychologist will do that with your brain. They'll say, oh, okay, I see what you're scared of needles. As the example, Jordan Peterson again. Here's what we're going to do to get you used to needles. Well, when you come back from a traumatic event, here's some things that we can do to revisit that. And I think the same thing that you talked about earlier with, like, movies.

I think that part of my prejudice against psychologists came from the way that they're portrayed in movies. Oh, yeah. as being like you know sitting on this couch and like these weird people that you know and and it's not it's more pragmatic than that at least it seems that way to me so it's like a trainer kind of like yeah it's more like a trainer more like a more like a coach right yeah more like a coach or more like a jitzo instructor yeah that's saying like hey here's what you need to do here you get caught in this position here's what you need to do the psychologist says oh you're having you're

having bad dreams about this okay let's try these things and I don't know what those things are because I don't know not a psychologist but they do know they do know what to tell you to do do and they do know how to help you get through those things and just like jiu jitsu or just like athletic training or just like Olympic lifting it's going to vary for different people and a good psychological coach is going to have a know how to make those adjustments and say oh you're feeling this a little bit more oh it's because you came from this kind of family so this is what's going to help you but you came from a different kind of family so this is going to help you a little different way so i think those things are are important to think about

And again, I just wanted to reemphasize the point that just because you might be in a rut as a, either as a vet or just as a human being, you know, there's every little decision you make, you can start moving in the right direction and moving towards a better place in your life and everything that you're doing. So just wanted to bring that out. Echo, you got any other, anything else? All good. Good to see you again. Oh, man.

It's so awesome to be here and just be included. among the people that you guys deem worthy of, you know, takes a long time to do this. It takes a lot of preparation. And it's just for you guys to take that time and spend it on preparing to have me as a guest. It's a huge compliment and huge honor. Man. It's an honor for us.

Do you got any other closing thoughts? Yeah, I just want to point out that, you know, I'm the one here in the hot seat. And I'm getting all the accolades. Sure. But, you know, I didn't do any. thing that I've accomplished without people help me. I like to, it's kind of like a pyramid.

I'm the tip of the pyramid. I'm like the thing that everybody likes to see and it's the top of the pyramid, but there's a whole gigantic base underneath this pyramid that if the tip didn't have it, then the tip would just be a stupid rock. And so, you know,

I, all the way since my recovery, and I've had supporting people and my family, and especially on this month of marathons, I just did. If my wife hadn't been there, if Pam hadn't been there, then it's not happening at all. I mean, there's some things that I could say, you know, I could have done it, but it wouldn't

have been as good, but this thing would not have happened without her. I mean, I totally gave her the reins. I, you know, set it up, and if there was any question she had about overall, you know, vision for what I was trying to accomplish, she would ask me, but, like, when, you know, we had a couple hiccups along the way and I just totally 100% trusted her that she'd be able to take care of it and she did

every single time and she I'm sure I'm not giving even enough credit I don't, so there's probably a thousand things that she did I don't even know about yet but I mean I just owe her huge and then also my mom same thing

you know just being willing to withstand a month in an RV with four people, you know, and probably putting up with me being grumpy or whatever, you know, in pain and stuff. And I couldn't imagine having, you know, two people along with me that that would have made it better or that I would have trusted as much. And then also my buddy that drove. And then just all the people that kept me going that ran with me and, you know, deemed me worthy of their time. And the people that sent me messages of encouragement that couldn't make it out.

I just owe everybody a huge debt of gratitude. And I'm going to do my best to continue to keep fighting and earn that respect and earn that, earn their effort, earn their sacrifices as much as I can. Awesome. Well, obviously, Rob, it's an honor to have you back on here again. I look forward to whatever the hell kind of crazy thing you do next. I'm not sure what it's going to be, but I'm sure it'll be something awesome. And of course, thanks to everyone for listening to this podcast.

Thanks to the service men and women that are holding the line day and night, day and night fighting against evil. Thanks to police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, other first responders that are always on call, always on call to protect us here at home. and to everyone that's listening I want to refer to one last journal entry that Rob wrote and something that we talked about the last time that he was on then that was using the weight because the weight of the world can be heavy the weight of the challenges and the trials of life can drive you into the ground and that weight can wear you down and break you but instead of letting the weight wear you down instead of letting the weight break you you can use the weight to make yourself stronger to make yourself tougher to make yourself better and that is what i

recommend everyone does just like Rob says use the weight now get out there and get after it and until next time this is Rob Jones and Echo and Jocko out