Jocko Podcast - 236: There Will Be Punishment. You Will Get Beat Down. The Projects, SEALS, and Martial Arts, with Jeff Higgs.

Episode Date: July 1, 2020

0:00:00 - Opening 0:05:49 - Jeff Higgs.  The Projects, Military, and Martial Arts. 2:07:21 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 2:35:30 - How to stay on THE PATH. 2:50:40 - Closing Gratitude.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 236 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. When I went through basic seal training, there were two people recognized with an award at the end of training. The first award was for the honor man. And the honor man is the guy in the class. I think it's for the best sort of overall performance, which is mostly physical.

Running, swimming, obstacle course, pull-ups, sit-ups, whatever other physical events. You do life-saving and not tying and buddy breathing and pool competency, and you kind of have to just do good at everything. And not just good, you have to do really good at everything. It seems like the honor man is going to be one of those people who did some kind of athletics in high school, maybe even college. In my class, the honor man was a complete badass.

His name was Keith Kimura. Total stud. He, and I don't remember everything about buds, but I remember that he won just about everything. Although there was one other guy that was always right there with him, but somehow Keith must have edged him out enough times to become the honor man. I never was close enough to the front of the pack to know which of those two guys won,

but obviously it must have been Keith because he was just pretty much savage at everything. And even after seal training, he pushed himself hard, tried to maintain that edge. And after his first tour at a team, he went back to Buds to be an instructor. and on January 10th, 1997, Keith was practicing breath holds during an evolution with the students in the dive tower. And the other instructors were, they were working with the students and they were running the evolution and they weren't tracking Keith, who was down at the bottom of the 50-foot tower holding his breath. And at some point, at some point he passed out. and because he was just sitting down there almost in a meditative way

no one really noticed that he had passed out he took on water by the time the other instructors recognized what had happened he was unconscious and he never he never regained consciousness and he ended up dying the next day January 11th

1997 a better man than me the other person the other award that gets given out at the end of buds is called the fire in the gut award and I don't know if there's some kind of official definition for this award but it seems like the award was given to the individual that had to dig the deepest to get through the training and who in doing so also inspired and motivated the rest of the class. And in my class, class 177, that was another badass man, a guy by the name of Jeff Higgs. And his journey to buds, two basic seal training and through basic seal training is a pretty

incredible story and because of that you know we're we're brothers but we're brothers not only because we went to buds together not only because we served at SEAL Team 1 together but also through Jiu Jitsu I'm I'm pretty sure we both started the Jiu Jitsu journey the same exact day and we are connected through our Jiu Jitsu lineage because Jeff Higgs eventually got his black belt. He gave the black belt to Dean Lister. Dean Lister gave the black belt to me.

And I guess we should include that there's also a connected lineage here to Echo Charles, who then received his black belt from me. And it's been a while, but it's an honor to have Jeff here with me today to share his experiences, his knowledge, his outlook, and his lessons learned in life. Jeffrey. Hey, thanks for having to be. Thanks for having all, man. All right.

Always good to see you, to hear you. I heard you at some pretty, I heard your voice at some pretty traumatic times in my life. So it's always good to sit down with you. Obviously, we trained a ton. But let's start at the beginning. Let's start at young Jeff Higgs. Where were you born? I was born in Rams, you were in North Carolina.

It's a town like almost smack dab in the middle of the state. And what was the situation there? Like what was your mom and dad doing there? What was a scenario? At the time, my parents were separated. So I was, you know, my mom had me there and moved back to you. York when I was about three. So was she a New Yorker originally? No, my mom's from that that town. And where was your dad from? My dad was born in the Bronx, grew up in Harlem. And so then,

so had they moved down there together, or were they already split up and she took you down? Yeah, they were split up. And I wasn't born yet. So I was born down there. The rest of my family was born in New York. And then you moved back to New York at what age? Three. My mom moved back. So at this point, I had really met my father, and my mom moved back to New York. And then it's kind of a whole family issue thing that I wouldn't want to get into publicly. But my dad got custody of me and ended up growing there with my father and going to my mother.

and going to my mother's back and forth on weekends. And then whereabouts in New York where you live in? So I grew up on Staten Island in a place called West Brighton Projects. So that's where I lived with my father. And my mom lived in another project called Park Hill Projects. So a lot of people are familiar with that. Stapleton. Park Hill are right next to each other.

Like the Wutang Clan is from Stapleton. from from west brighton markham holmes area there was like the force mds there was some people who had come out of that area that had gotten fame and then like uh i remember when i was a kid and i would take the train down to the city and we would go by you know i'm coming down from new england from connecticut you know whereas in the sticks you know i grew up on a dirt road and so we'd be on the train, me and my buddies, and you'd be going through the projects for, it's probably, it seemed like about maybe 20 minutes of riding the train where it's just building, building, building, building. You can tell that they're in rough shape.

And, you know, I would always be sitting there on this train, you know, coming in from a really rural area and looking in there thinking, that looks. rough. Yeah. Yeah, all the projects are very much the same in the Northeast area. You know, there are rough areas. So what did your dad do for a living? My dad worked with, like, housing. So he didn't have too much education, but, you know, he did what he could. And he worked in the housing department. So he worked in, like, for the projects for the city. Like, you know, I remember, like, as a kid, he would take me into these, big boiler rooms.

Like, we'd go down underneath the building, and, you know, for it's winter in New York, you have these boilers that heat the buildings. And the boilers are huge. You know, you could see the fire in there, and you'd show me how to, you know, show me the gauges and all that and how to operate. It was pretty cool.

And did you, I know you have at least a sister. What else did you have for siblings? I have three older brothers and two older sisters, so I'm the youngest. the youngest. Yeah.

Were all of you co-located in the same house with your dad? Yes and no. There are all kinds of situations going on in there. So I'm not really going to be the vulture. My family is to be in a book or something. Yeah. But so it was pretty much some of the kids that were around some of the time. You're around.

Sounds like you said weekends with your mom, but the rest of the time with your dad. Yeah. And for the most part, my brothers and sisters, we were with my father. Okay. And I'd visit my mom on the weekends. And then what were you doing? Like, what were your interests?

What was going to school like? Okay. As a kid, I was very thin. And I had, like, an incident happened, like, I guess, like, in second grade or so, when I got really sick. Like, I got sick in front of a bunch of people in school. and I was just really embarrassed by it and I didn't want to get sick again

so I stopped eating a lot so I was really thin but besides that and that went on for a long time I wouldn't eat much so what grade was that that's like second grade so you got you mean

when you say you got sick you mean you threw up in front of a bunch of people yeah we were doing like this play like the lion the witch and the wardrobe something like that and I was just

I told the teacher I'm like I do not feel good and she just let me sit there and then I was like they put out a bucket in front of me you know this is New York in like late 70s, early 80s and then it came

I just started you know going at it right there and everyone in the class just scattered and they were like just like pointing at me and it was just like I couldn't do anything you know it was like I had no control

and the body was just just doing what it was doing. And I was, I just kind of toned down my eating. And I would eat like just a piece of bread in the day. But I mean, besides that, I was, you know, really bookish. Read a lot of comic books, encyclopedias. I was just reading all the time. And pretty much like pretty much a nerd, you know, I would walk around and that's why I was a target. And that kind of neighborhood, you're definitely going to be a target. You know, I used to have, I used to carry this book in my pocket called the Golden Guide. Golden Guide?

Golden Guide. You can still find them. And I even bought the book because, you know, just for a nostalgia sake, but it's a little book of spiders of North America. So that, you know, people used to call me Spider-Man because I would, I would come up, you know, I'm like this little kid like, oh, that's Electrodectus Mac Tans and like saying all these species names of these Arachnus different types of arthropods and people were like this kid you know and I would collect spiders and go down and get ants and put in the web it was like pretty twisted I guess looking back on it but that's got to completely isolate you from like other kids

especially in the projects yeah it's kind of weird especially like my dad said I was creepy Do you think that like when you were sick in front of all those people when you kind of got called out It's funny because we're sitting here laughing about that But that kind of stuff leaves a mark on kids, right? Yeah, it leaves a mark on kids Do you think that left a mark? Do you think that's what made you kind of Become more into books because books couldn't laugh at you? No, I was I was into books before that, but I think it made me more introverted you know because now the spotlight's on but it's not for something good and everyone's laughing

and pointing and like a lot of people just really disgusted it was just it was you know really stands out in my mind so then what was it seems like you know you're reading books you're kind of a nerd what about like as you get older as you get into high school i mean damn you know like i said from me especially in the 80s you know like going down to the city in the 80s you know like going down to the city in the 80s, it was mayhem down there. It was total mayhem. Yeah. The drug dealers, the pimps, the prostitutes. Like, I remember we used to go out at night and, and you'd see like prostitutes at probably around 10 or 11 o'clock at night and they'd be out on the streets, you know, working. And then we'd come back at three or four o'clock in the morning. We'd go to see a hardcore show or whatever.

We'd come back later. And there'd be those girls. They'd be out there, you know, turning tricks. they'd be looking like they've been turning tricks all night. I mean, how does a kid that's reading about spiders get through that without getting dragged into it? I think one of the main reasons for my path in life was being the youngest in my family, I could see different mistakes. I'm not even going to say mistakes, but I just, I'll say different choices that other people made.

And I'm like, hmm, maybe I'll go this way. I think when you're the youngest, you may want to look to be distinctive because everyone's always telling you do this, do this, do this, and you want to think for yourself. So I think maybe that's a reason. Were you getting any guidance from your older siblings that were saying, hey, you might not want to do this? Because the other thing, man, this is such a negative way to look at human nature.

But so often you see people try and drag other people down. And I mean, this was in the SEAL teams. this is where I know it from in the SEAL teams where you'd have somebody that was trying to kind of move in the right direction and the other guys would kind of drag them back down you know like they wouldn't want people to succeed and and that's not a blanket statement but I'm just saying it happens and I could definitely see it happening within families where you know one sibling does start starts to do something well and the other siblings kind of grab them and drag them back down but I could also see siblings saying don't make that mistake go in this direction Did you see either one of those, or was it more just your perception of what to do and what not to do? I would say my siblings, my brothers and sisters have always been really cool with me. You know, I'm kind of like, I feel really blessed in that sense. You know, they always steered me in the right direction. And the weird thing was around the neighborhood, you know, I was known as like Little Higgs.

And my other brother was a similar age. You know, we were like, you know, they were like, oh, you know, look out for those guys. So, I mean, we would, sometimes I'd be walking by the lobby in my building, and the guys, the drug dealer is right there. I know the guy, he lives up on that floor, you know, you just know he sell drugs, he does his thing. And, hey, what's up, little Higg? You just walk right by. You know, it was never like, I never really felt like I wanted to get involved in that stuff. So I didn't really have too much of an issue, but I could see all these things going on around.

And this is like in the 80s, in New York. York City, which is very different than it is now, I would say. You know, it was definitely a rougher time. Oh, yeah. When's the last time you were back in New York? Just this few months ago, I see him my brother. So I go visit my brother and, you know, he still lives in Harlem. So I'll visit him, you know, pretty much when I'm coming back from overseas or something, I just stop over there. Yeah. Yeah, New York is a completely and utterly different place now than it was in the 80s. Never mind the 70s I never went down during the 70s but in the 80s for sure what about um you know one of the things you used to tell us stories me I mean you and I would sit down and talk for a long time

we were going through training and you tell me stories about some of the characters in the projects there was I know there's a couple brothers that seem to have they seem to be they seem to have their own like world that you kind of brushed up into sometimes It was just like the, I mean, I remember these stories, man. Give us a little hint of those guys. What was their deal? So these two brothers, Mark and James, they just, I don't even know what started it. They just had it out for me, mostly James.

And these guys would, every time they would see me, you know, they were high on something and they would make this sound like, you. And when I heard that sound, I was like, you know, I would start. running I'm guessing like looking back they're seeing this kid with glasses on looking at a spider book in the corner of a building and they're just like target and you know that's that's how it started and this I used to be in the corner just getting taking punches from these guys in the it's so it started with them just saying yeah and and that's how you'd know that they were coming for you yeah and and it was also kind of a signal because Because in the projects, you know, each building is kind of like its own entity. And like maybe a guy in another building, it's like a signal to that person. So you hear like, and then way in the distance you'd hear. Who?

So it's like, it's a weird thing going on. So the funny thing is, this is fast forward a little bit. But, you know, when we are going through seal trading, Jeff, you would do that, like, At moments of whatever, like moments of chaos where they're trying to get us to quit, all of a sudden you'd hear, ooh, hoo! So,

it just needs to be said, though, I was, I told that story to someone, and that person just started saying it over and over, and then it spread. So then everyone was saying it. So I wasn't like, you know,

just randomly and butts like, you know it's just someone started and then it just spread and then it's like from buds st. T to the teams. So when you get to high school, is your attitude change or is your attitude the same through high school? Very different. What happened in high school? So when I was 12, my dad was a football coach.

You know, I was doing like Pop Warner football and I was one of the worst on the team for sure. And, you know, my dad was always trying to encourage me, you know, you've got to try different things. So try football, try this, try that. And, you know, my dad, one day I came home and he was blowing his nose. And when he pulled the tissue away, it was just blood everywhere. And, like, you could see, like, chunks and stuff, like, like, didn't look right at all. Like, you knew something was wrong. And he was like, yeah, you know, I got a bad flu.

and we didn't really think anything of it. And then finally, you know, I guess he went to the doctor and then we found out that he had leukemia. So that was in November, and it just got progressively worse. So this is 83, late 83, and then he ended up, you know, going in the hospital to get chemotherapy back then

was way more harsh. And so, you know, from like November to like where he died, in January 4th. And so it was just only a couple of months of this. But, you know, after school I would come, I would just walk to this hospital that he was in. It was on the way back home from the school.

And just watch, I would just watch my dad go from someone really big and strong and just watch him just shrivel, you know, going through this treatment. So between the leukemia, the chemotherapy, then he got pneumonia from the, just being sitting in the bed and hepatitis from blood transfusion you know it's just a whole bunch of things happened and then you know he died so you said that that things changed did that change your outlook on things did you did you start to look at the world in a totally different way now yeah I would say you know everyone has that that pivotal point in their life where like I guess you can

say like innocence is lost like it's not like you know know a fairy tale in life anymore. You know, I basically, death was introduced really quickly, you know, early on in my life, and I just saw it. And that changed me because I became even more introverted. More introverted. Yeah. So I would have maybe a friend or two at school, but, you know, I would just be into my own, my own world pretty much. And did, uh, where you, where were you living now? I was still in West Brighton projects, visiting my mom back and forth. Was your older siblings taking care of you?

So that's where it gets a little, you know, for my family, dicey, but essentially out of stepmom at that point. And I was going between my stepmom and my mom's on the weekends. And, you know, getting involved in the, you know, right after your father passed away and then you're going into courts and all these, you're in these rooms with these people. doing psychological evals, you know, are you okay? And who do you want to stay with now, your stepmom or your mom?

And, you know, it's just really confusing to me and just kind of overwhelmed. Kind of like, in a sense, checked out. So, yeah, that's what happened. So are you still participating in school, like, actively, like, okay, I'm going to graduate. Did you have some kind of plan? Are you studying at night?

anything like that? I'm not, no, one thing about my school work, I'm not like the best student, like going to school and, you know, getting grades and stuff like that.

More I just been following my interests. Now in the school classes that I was interested in, I always did really well. Other classes, I may not even care about the class, you know, but I said I wouldn't say I was like studying, but I would just follow my interests.

So your dad died, when you were 12. So you must have been in like eighth grade, seventh grade? What grade is that? Yeah, seventh grade. Seventh grade. So that was really pivotal because, you know, you get taken out of school because your dad died. And then when you go back to school in the seventh grade, you're the kid who's dad died.

You know what I mean? And you know, and you know everybody else knows it. And you're just kind of like, you know, to yourself more. So I had some good friends, like I used to, I was into like, I had some nerd friends, you know, like Dungeons and Dragons, that kind of stuff. You know, so I would kind of hang out with them, but it was only, you know, on breaks at school or something like that. And what would you do with, like, what would you do the rest of the day? What would you do in the afternoon? What would you do in the evening?

What would you do on the weekends? Come home, like at that age, after school, come home, watch like, what was it, Thundercats? Oh, yeah. Picks. You remember that, remember that, that, we had to go Picks, Picks, Picks, like. What was that? It was something to do with, you had to win these prizes and stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You had to phone in, right? Someone had to phone in and call for fire by saying Picks, Picks on the local TV station. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I do remember that. Dang. So, yeah.

I don't think that was, that was, you didn't have that echo, did you? No, it's not the bill at all. Because I think you might be younger. Yeah. But also, I don't think they had, that was like a local TV thing. Yeah. They had like a little echo. They had like a little call for fire.

So you'd be on the phone. You'd have to call in. While you watching TV? Yeah. And then it was like a video game of some kind where you had to drop bombs or shoot something. But at a certain time as it was moving. So when it moved, you'd say, Picks, picks, picks. And that was like the fire fire.

Yeah. Which was like maybe the channel. Like on TV, you know how it's like WLBN or whatever. this was W-P-I-X or something So you'd have to say, Picks, Packs, Packs, and then you could win whatever reward. So now I know who was trying to call in. It was Jeffrey.

That was the other funny thing about Mark and James is they'd see you. And I remember, that's why to this day, whenever I see you, I go, Jeffrey. Yeah, that's right. Because they'd see you and they'd call you out. Did you ever reconcile some kind of relationship with those guys?

No, because those guys are more like, you know, cool guys in a sense, you know, they were popular people and I wasn't, there was just really no connection, you know, and, uh, it was really weird because in the projects, the, the atmosphere, you know, it's like R&B, jazz, hip hop, but James was like into metal. Him, they were like, maybe like, just a fraction of people in there that were into metal, and he was into metal. He'd have Iron Maiden shirts on and all that stuff. and just be coming after me. You!

And he'd get me in the corner and just he'd start punching away and then ask me, do you want the medicine or the treatment? And both were the same thing, just more beating. Yeah, I remember you tell me you'd like be, you'd think you have, you think you would have made it past them or whatever, and you'd be going up the stairs, and all of a sudden you'd hear, Jeffrey.

And there was another one you told me about, something like you were walking. It was dark, and you were walking, I think you were walking down the stairs. And as you came down the stairs, one of them, whichever one it was, lit a match. Okay, yeah, yeah. So that was James, too.

And essentially, you know, every now and then you get blackouts, you know, in the city. And we had this big blackout back then, and that's a problem because now the elevator might not be working. So if you live on the eighth floor, you have to walk up. And there are some elderly people that live like seventh, eighth floor. And so we're like, you know, hey, you know, get a knife. And you could make a dollar or two walking people upstairs. And so, you know, I was walking people.

I walked maybe one or two people upstairs. And then I was coming downstairs and all of a sudden, It's about magic. And he just lit a match. And it was James and then more punishment. It's about magic. Wonder. Yeah.

Take your breath away. This is a Broadway play. Okay. That was going on at that time. Okay, that part I never knew All I ever knew All I remembered from Buds was It's about magic wonder

I thought it was just what those guys made up Psychos Yeah, just psychoness So these guys never You never reconcile with these guys There's no story of revenge Where you went back Not really

You know I was And I you know Looking back right now I wouldn't even You know I don't really have anything for those guys You know I'm just

I wish I everybody the best, so, you know, all that stuff passed. What music were you listening to? Back then, I only listened to what was there. So it was like a lot of rap music, you know, R&B, you know, just neighborhood music. And I got introduced to other forms of music. By first I played saxophone as a kid. So I played saxophone for like four years.

So I was like, got involved with like orchestra. Like I would, my dad set me up for a summer program and I would go and play in a symphonic orchestra for over the summer. So I'd like take out a bus and, you know, and, you know, take my saxophone along. It was pretty cool. That and also my dad liked jazz. So that was also another influence on, you know, my musical taste.

And then the kids. some of the kids I played Dungeons and Dragons with, there were some groups, like one group was like the Brewster Street crew, those guys, and then there was another group. And these guys, they were all into like metal and stuff. Because when you go to, you know, the schools over there are kind of like zoned. So they have people from different neighborhoods coming to the schools. So these were, these kids were not from the projects, and they listened to metal. And like when we were played Duns and Dragons, that music was. was there. And I was like, it just became normal. So I was like, you know, and also I wanted to,

I always wanted to try different things, you know, and see, you know, what's that like? So I was kind of exploring. And so I started listening to, you know, any kind of music I wanted to listen to. If I was interested in it, I'd check it out. Now, at what point did you start thinking about the military as an option? Okay, after my father passed away, there was a, um, My father's good friend, this guy James Harrison, Mr. Jim, we used to call him. He was, his son came back from the Navy. He was a regular guy in the Navy, and he told me about the SEALs. Because I think I'd seen, at this point, I'd seen First Blood.

And I was like, I'm going to, you know, I started finding out about the different military units. And so I'm like, my original plan was to go in the Rangers, then become a green beret. And then I heard about force recon. Then I'm going to go in the Marines and become force recon. And then once I heard about seals, go into seals and become a seal. I wanted to be all the special forces. But this, you know, Jamie, his son, that guy really changed my life because he told me. me about the SEALs and I was like well you know the Navy where they speedboat drivers I couldn't

think of what in the Navy could be spec ops and then he started telling me about it and I was like man that's like I need to find out more about it and so I went to the recruiter and at this point you know I'm like you know mid-teens and I asked the recruiter about the SEALs and he said don't even think about it because you'll never make it and that was like that's when I was I was like, hey, oh, yeah? And then I started, like, really focusing on trying to get into SEAL team. So Mr. Jim was, along with my father, they would teach boxing to, like, the kids, like, troubled youth and stuff. They had these areas.

You know, they had a heavy bag. And my dad was a boxer. And, yeah, Mr. Jim started training me. I said I wanted to go into SEALs. And he's like, hey, you know, if you want to. get into condition, meet me down here on the park bench at 4 o'clock. And it's like midwinter in New York, snow and stuff like that.

And he's like, if you're not here at 4, on the dot, I know you're not serious, you know, and we don't have to talk about it again. And I'm like, all right. And, you know, that was the first time ever, like, woke up early. That was 4 o'clock in the morning. Yeah. Oh, he's a good test.

I got out there Echo would have failed I could do 4 o'clock p.m. I would have been there 3.59. No problem. Mr. Jim, yeah, he started training me and it was like

push-ups, dips on the park bench, and like when you go into the buildings in West Brighton at least, there's kind of like this overhang, doing pull-ups on that. And he's like, you know, if you're going to be a fighter, you need to keep your hands up.

That's the first rule of fighting. So, you know, we'd go out. There was this field across the way. He'd have me running laps around the football field with bricks in my hands. And the goal was learn how to keep your hands up. And, you know, the first few weeks is bricks. You know, I'd meet him like two, three times a week doing this. And then graduated to, like, you know, milk jugs pouring water in them.

And then the milk's jostling around. you run around, you know, and he really just, he just really instilled in me, you know, like, you have to train, you know, if you want to, if you want to get something, you're going to have to work for it. So I, I worked with him. And then at a certain point, I was 17 at the time, and I just chose to go live with my mom. Because I was like, you know, I'm just really curious. you know, there were a lot of things in my mind that, you know, I didn't really know my mom like I think I should, I should have. And so I wanted to know more about that side of my family. So I went and moved with my mom and she wanted me out of the projects. And so we moved down to Florida,

Daytona Beach. So my senior year of high school was in Daytona Beach, Florida. So it was a weird thing because my high school, the first year of high school, I went to art and design in Manhattan. So I had to take a bus, a boat, and a train to and from school every day. So I take the three bus down the ferry, take the stand on the ferry across, take the four of the five up to 57th in Lexington,

go to school. And, you know, I was always drawing and stuff like that. So I got into this art school. I went there for a year, but I didn't do while. I was coming in late, and it just wasn't a good fit. And I ended up leaving that school, and then I went to my zone school, Susan Wagner, for two years. So 10th and 11th. And then I went with my mom and moved down to Daytona Beach, and I went to Sea Bree's senior high school in Daytona Beach.

So that was my senior year. And when I was there, that's when I enlisted on the delayed entry program and got into the Navy. Did you play any sports at any of these schools? No. Did you, it's weird how you had that, it makes me think it runs deeper than I've even thought before. Like the idea of when you saw Rambo, you're like, you can identify with it. Even though you were a nerd playing Dungeons and Dragons and looking at Spider Books, you see Rambo, you're like, oh, okay, cool, that's what I'm going to do.

That's a deep-seated thing, man. I think looking back on it, James had a lot to do with it. Mark and James, because, like, getting beat up like that, at a certain point, you're just, like, you know, you've had enough, and then you kind of, I think, in a sense, can overcompensate. So I started learning about martial arts. Another really big part of, you know, my story is my oldest brother was, you know, we had a big family incident. He was outside and a guy, and there's West Byron Projects and right near it is Markham Holmes. It's another pretty rough area, and my brother was there and this guy stepped.

him with a buck 007 knife that's a big blade to the hilt and you know his heart was was beating you know moving the knife you know punctured his lung

and he was in the hospital for a while and he got out you know you know doctors saved his life and all he's got a really big scar on his chest but I mean I think he got into Kung Fu from that I would say. And, you know, he went all the way to being an instructor in that. But, you know, he would show

me, you know, on weekends sometimes I would go with him and train in Hungar, Kung Fu. And I was never really, you know, I've ever really got good at it. But it did instilling me, you know, martial arts is something you want to learn. And so, you know, I had those things going for me. And I think between learning a little bit about martial arts and the beatings I was taking at a certain point I was like, you know, I can change it if I want. So my thing was to become a seal.

I thought that would be my answer. So that's where I went. So you get to Florida. What was it like going to school in Florida? I mean, C-Breeze High School sounds nice. It sounds nice, but what was it? I mean, was it nice or was it a dumper? Yeah, it was pretty cool.

It was definitely more laid back than being in New York. I remember distinctly at that time, Ted Bundy was in that area, and the chaplain at our school was, I think, associated with Ted Bundy. And I just remember he was getting the electric chair. And everyone in the school was like, make sure you keep all your electrical components low, so they have enough juice to find the street. You talked to the recruiter, so you had to talk to a recruiter again in Florida, right?

You obviously had to change recruiter. What did the recruiter say to you? The recruiters were all about getting as many people in as possible. Like, you want to go see L.Jol? Come over here. You look like I'll be a great candidate. That's why I'm surprised the first guy told you he didn't think you were going to make it. Although J.P. Dinell, they laughed at him. Yeah.

They laughed at him. Maybe that's a good test. And Dakota Meyer, the guy said for the Marine Corps said, we don't have what it and Dakota Myers signed up the next day or whatever right that's a good it's a little reverse psychology oh yeah but they told you oh yeah you look like you be a great candidate for the seal teams they're waiting for you yeah we have the die fair program and the die fair program I don't they probably have something similar today but you enlist for six years and if you make it through budge training and your seal training then you're on seal team

If you don't make it, you're still in the Navy for six years. That's what I. I did the Die Fair program too. And it's funny too because when you talk, when it seemed like six years, it's, well, that's like an eighth or sorry, a third of your life at the time, right? Because you're 18 years old and you're saying, I'm signing on this thing for six years. And you and me, I don't know about you. I'm pretty sure you were probably the same way. I had no idea whatsoever what the day.

daily life of a seal was. As far as I'm concerned, I was like, well, it's got to be pretty similar to John J. Rambo, right? I mean, it's going to be something like that. We're going to be out just hunting people down and killing them. That's what's going to be happening. Six years, cool, sign me up. You have no idea what you're getting into, which is kind of cool because I can just

about guarantee that anybody that had an idea, anybody that thought about what they were getting into, you thought it was going to be way more extreme than anything. that you could have then it actually was I mean I remember the stories of yeah when you're in steel training they bury you up up to your neck in the sand

and let the tide come in and drown you and then they resuscitate you and then ask you if you want to quit and I was like yeah yeah that's the program that's it you know what I remember is a guy that ended up he was actually ended up in a class behind us but I went through boot camp with him

And he was a smart guy, went to college, great guy. And he's telling me, he goes, yeah, seals have 50% casualty rate. Like no one makes it a retirement. This is 1991, bro. I mean, I guess the Gulf War was about to happen, but there hadn't been a war in a long time. And I think it came originally from World War II when, like, at Normandy, the UDTs took heavy. They took like a 50% casualty rate. But I thought that's just how.

I thought I was going in. I'm signing up and I'm going to get killed or wounded and I'm probably not going to make it 20 years. Whatever. Same attitude. Oh, yeah, you definitely heard that they drowned you. You definitely heard that they drowned you. In training, you're going to get drowned it. People are going to drown you.

That's what's going to happen. You're like, yeah, that's what I want. Which is pretty crazy, right? Yeah. It seems like even that's a good kind of screening process, an initial screening process. The crazy thing is so many people still quit. that's what's crazy. You know what you're signing up for.

You know what you're signing up for. At least you have somebody. You're signing up to die. I mean, I can tell you, I was signing up to die. Like in my mind, I was like, okay, when I signed this paper, you know, my life is no longer a promise. It's no longer even a thing. Yeah. I mean, you are an adult, even though a very young adult, but you understand what you're getting into.

And, you know, the chances are getting killed or hurt really bad. You know can happen. Anything else from childhood before we jump into before we get the into boot camp? Nothing of note at this point. So you finish up your senior, what kind of training are you doing getting ready?

Putting my backpack and sometimes I would run to school. I'm doing one incident. I got saved at the beach. So this, I, it's this tropical storm coming in. And, you know, keep in mind, I'm coming from the project in New York City. So swimming is not, I'm not a good swimmer.

And I'm like, well, the best way to learn, you know, is to go. Tropical storm, baby. I just remember getting out of, getting out, and looking at the beach and just seeing the water like frothy and stuff and I was just like let's go for it and I just ran in and basically I was a drowning victim this guy came out pull me out of water started yelling at me and stuff like that so then I came home and I'm like you know I told my my head I want to take swim lessons so then uh the only place

we could find was the YWCA and this this uh I think she was like uh maybe a college student You know, I just would see this girl's writing notes and stuff on the side of the textbook, but she was the guard there, and she taught me how to swim. So I learned the side stroke, like basic side stroke, not a combat swimmer stroke, breaststroke, crawl, you know, like the technique of it. And while I was doing it, I got books on swimming workouts, how to swim, how to, you know, get more hydrodynamic, this kind of thing. How much swimming did you do in the projects?

Not really any. I mean, like, in the summer, there's a pool right near it. The pool is three feet. And then they have a little baby pool. So that was another thing about Mark and James. When I would go to the pool, I mean, on several occasions, I mean, James, if you're out there listening, you almost killed me a couple of times.

And I'm not kidding. He would, you know, there's like a ladder you could walk out. he would get me under there and stand on me and hold me there. It's like trying to drown me. And the worst feeling I ever had was like just, you know, I'm in the water and like I'm bouncing, like bobbing because it's too deep. And I just hear, you! And I look over and I see him on his side. Jeffrey, I'm coming for you.

And then you jump in and come after him. Trying to get out, you know, trying to hop away. And then I look over and then it's Mark. and then, you know, I would, you know, the lifeguards would, you know, have to get these guys away from me. So, yeah, I was not a, the swimming extent was like, close your eyes, windmill until you can't hold your breath anymore and then stand. And hopefully there's a bottom to stand on. How did you, dude, how did you not get freaking discouraged after you almost drown and you don't know how to swim? And you must be at least seeing that the seal test is, what do we have to swim?

500 meters, 500 yards to, like, go to buds? Yeah. How did you not say, maybe I need to look at the Rangers or maybe I need to look at the special forces or something? I was just really bent on the seals. And that was just, that was the one back then. Like now there's a lot of information on SEAL team. But back then, you couldn't find anything.

And I remember there were these books. Like I'd get like the Ranger book. and then you'd open it up and you'd see like they had green berets, seals, force recon, and then you look like when you try to find the seal book, no one had it. And it was like the mystery. So I was like, you know, I think I want to go with that one. So how long are you in the delayed entry program for? Let's see.

I graduated high school like that springtime and I was in the Navy in August 15. Okay, so it's pretty quick. Yeah, I went in pretty much right after high school. So I have like maybe a two-month period of really swimming. That's what I was working on. And, you know, I was doing push-ups and finding, like, the screening tests or working on pull-ups and sit-ups, you know, all the basics you need for buds running. Then you shipped off.

Did you go to boot camp in Orlando? Right, Orlando, yeah. Was that a shock to your system? I think the main shock was just the first. first like wake up but then after that you know I was pretty smooth it wasn't really that big a deal I was in a nuke um uh boot camp so I was in the nuke boot camp and it was like myself and this other guy's name was justice we were both going to the seals and so we were like oh those are the seal guys you know over there we did we you know in boot camp my swim was still not qualifying so they

were like, hey, if you're serious about this program, you get up at 3.30, go over there to the pool and do your laps before, you know, the regular day of boot camp starts. So I was like, I did that throughout boot camp and really improved my swimming. And there was, you know, they had seal motivators working there. And there was a seal Vietnam vet, you know, rough dude there. And he was he would kind of, you know, oversee the swim. He would watch me and stuff. And he would be saying stuff like, you'll never make it with that kind of stroke. You'll just never make it.

And I had an issue with him because, you know, I had, I, I had, um, my swim was like just on the edge. I failed. So I knew I could pass it. I just needed to be faster. Push-ups are good, sit-ups. But my pull-ups were like on the edge, too. And so I remember like getting, I got seven And then I got eight was like right here

And he just counted seven And I tried again And you're like with pull-ups once you fail You're not going back up And I just stayed on the bar And he said all right recruit jump off the bar And I yelled out Sales don't quit

and he just laid into me screaming and stuff so I jumped off the bar and then I knew I had to work on the pull-ups so they had a gym there and what I did was that was during boot camp all this happened

yeah I'd only remember taking a screening test one time yeah I took it I think like two two or three times so then the because if you don't make it for buds you know there was you kind of

Okay, now you can go diver or EOD. So I ended up working on a pull-down machine, and that's how I got my pull-ups. So then by the end of boot camp, I passed the tests and ended up, you know, with oros. So then you get to buds. Do you remember checking into buds? Yeah, that's another thing. So when I was in boot camp, and I was. I get to, back then you had to go through your source rating.

So I was an engineman. So I had to go to Great Lakes and go through Engineman A-School. This is like the trade that you're going to get. If you don't make it through seal training, you're going to work in their job in the regular Navy. And so I went to Great Lakes and went through E-N-A school. And my vision didn't qualify for buds. Dang. So this is kind of like going to maybe put me in hot water.

with some people, but essentially I ended up passing the vision test through some nefarious methods. How'd you do it? So essentially what happened was I had orders to EOD training. Because your vision wasn't good enough? Right. For buds, so everything else was good enough, but my vision, you know, I have glasses. So one of the guys there that worked in one of the dive motivators,

Steve Collins, that another really pivotal person in my life. He was like, hey man, if you really interested in going the seal training, you know, we can work on switching your orders. And you'll have to work as a, you know, for us, as, you know, at the dive motivator shack. I was like, yeah, of course. And so I did it, and I had to wait like, it was like months, like, I'm going to say like at least six months. And I worked for these dive motivators. Just studying, studying for your vision test?

And here's the deal. They had the medical was right near it. And the vision test that I have to take is right there on the wall. So every day, I'm just looking at it and memorizing all of the letters and numbers. And I ended up passing the test. That's awesome. And this whole time you're obviously working out and getting in shape, and these guys are telling you what to do and what to be prepared for and all that stuff.

Yeah, that was another big deal. Like George White, Steve Collins, instructor Roberts, these guys really made a difference because they were like, hey, you know, they weren't like, you know, showing me everything, but they were like, you have to do this, this is going to help you, you need to run, you need to do this and that. And what was really bad was at a certain point, you know, team guys working at the dive motor vehicle, they don't want to do it. And so they're like, Higgs, he's a blue and gold, some UDT trunks.

So I'm looking like a seal, right? I got the blue and gold, UD trunks and the boots on and everything and dive socks. and they're like you're gonna give the test. Dang. So for six months, I'm working at the dive motivators and they're like... Pretending to be a seal.

Yeah, yeah, pretty much. They're like, hey, you know, Higgs, what's it like at sale team? And I'm like, let's not talk about that right now. What you have to worry about is getting through the screening test. So I would run the, they would do the runs,

they would do the push-ups, all the stuff, I would test them, and just record it. And six months of that, and then when I get the buds, you got like dozens and dozens of guys. You were like, hey, that's the dive-motivator guy. I'm just like, oh,

all right, so you check into buds. You know what's weird? I don't really remember. You know, some people have really good checking into bud stories or whatever, like they check in and they get immediately told to hit the surf in their dress whites or whatever. For whatever reason, man, I don't really even remember checking in the buzz.

I think it was a weekend. I think no one cared, you know, and I was, the biggest thing for me is I was kind of surprised, you know, I expected to walk through the quarter deck and just get ripped apart and start becoming a different, you know, you know, like the James Bond movie, Echo Charles, you know, where the door opens and there's people training and they're doing judo and they're shooting guns. I thought that was what was happening. But instead, I opened up the. door and there's like two new two other guys that are going through training and they're sitting

they're all scared looking and there's no one around and I said I'm checking into buds and they're like okay now you can just sign this and then you come back on Monday and I was kind of let down it's very anti-climactic some people get a much bad did you was anything cool for you yeah I think I showed up on the quarter deck and uh someone was getting hammered there because I showed up during the day oh yeah and weekday and guys were getting hammered and yelled that and instructors just look at me and like like, you know here? And I'm like, yes, yes.

And they're just like, good, we'll be seeing you. You know, and just walk off, you know. And I'm like, already like, oh, we. So then how long did it take for you to class up? I went through, I don't know if they do this these days, but they had the fourth phase. So I was in fourth phase. And you just wait there until you class up.

So I originally classed up with Bud's class 174. How far did you make it in 174? All the way to the day before, hell week. And then what happened? So you have like basically you're going through first phase like the conditioning phase of buds doing lots of long runs, swims, PTs, O-Cores, all that stuff. And I ended up doing this one swim like a week before that last week. And on the swim, my face mask, one of the lenses fell out. and I just the water was it was a super choppy swim so every every stroke I'm like taking on water

and then I have no you know it's I can't really see much and it's making me go slower for my swim buddy and everything and I just felt sick on the swim like nauseated and really weak and tired like not normal and when I got out of the water you know we just got hammered because we failed the swim and then I had to go in and you know do a um you're just getting hammered and so it was that was like on a Thursday it's in the weekend and then um Tuesday comes along and then we got to do the two-mile swims ocean swim and then on that swim I uh coming back past the swim when I came out of the water I couldn't stand I was just falling and I was crawling

and I would stand up and fall over again and the instructors just swarmed on me and just started trying to hammer me and I'm trying to do push-ups or whatever but I just couldn't and then I start laughing like it was funny that was like my first experience of being

inebriated because I was basically you know find out later I had hypothermia so I got I had a 91 degree core temperature at that point and And, uh, dang. So they brought me, you know, to, uh, the hypothermia chamber.

And, uh, that's basically a hot tub and get my, um, body temperature back up. And, uh, then it's like, you know, you're feeling better? Yeah. All right. This is seal training. So go get wet in Sandy. You know, right after I'm coming back to normal. And then they're like, um, that night I just remember, you know,

mind in the rack and thinking like, you know, medically I'm having some issues here. And how am I going to get through? There's another swim and then they just get longer, you know? So I just remember tossing and turning and then the everyone in the class was like trying to help me out. So like, you know, back then you got to take panathetic acid pills, like this B vitamin that's supposed to increase thermogenesis to make your body heat up. And so, uh, and then you need a, and then you need lots of calories. So what we did on this one swim before it, everyone came in, put Vaseline all over, then my wetsuit, and then drink a bottle of olive oil for calories to help burn during the swim. And, well, that's not a good idea. I didn't quite finish the bottle of olive oil, but I can tell

you right now it's not a good idea. So when, you know, we're doing swim inspection, And the instructors are, you know, checking knives, CO2 cartridges, and the instructor looks, and they see the Vaseline on the end of the sleeve. I'm like, what is this? And he pulls it up and he sees Vaseline. He's like, take your wetsuit off and then roll around in the sand and then put the wet suit back on. And then do the swim. And so I did, so it's like this two months.

while ocean swim just like every you know at a certain point it's just the sand is just destroying your skin and everything and um this is seal training yeah so i came out and i had hypothermia again and uh you know at this time it was a lot different because i was like you know i was like my body's not working the way i wanted to you know it's i'm not quitting it's like i don't even have control of the situation And essentially, at that point, they're like, you know, hey, you can't continue in the training. You're going to get killed. You know, they had someone a few classes ahead who had died out in San Clemente. You know, he did a swim, a four-mile ocean swim, came out of the water, and just fell down, and he didn't make it.

So, like, you know, and this guy, his body temperature was only a few degrees below mine. so they were like you know you're medically dropped from training and so I was uh that was a on that Friday then the hell week starts for that class I was in that Sunday and I just remember being in my room like with the lights off and like you know feeling of crying you know and all the class was going through hell week and I just I wasn't allowed in and uh you know there was some you know when I was medically dropped, I just started to do my own training because I was, you know, now I'm in the X-Division. So I got the Navy garb on, the white hat, the dungajee, dunga-jams, dungaree clothing, and doing watch. One of the instructors came by and said, eh, I always, I knew you'd quit sooner or

later. And I was like, I didn't quit. He's like, yeah, you did. And then walked off. And that just, like, got me angry. So I was like, I'm going to do my own training. So I started doing, I would join the class and run behind them. You know, I was just being a part of the class, doing cadence and everything. And I went and got wet in Sandy. And then instructor Dumas, you remember him? Yeah. He just pulled me aside and it was like, it's over, son. It's over. And that was it. And so I had orders to some ship in like Louisiana or something like that. But the instructors that saw me getting wet and sandy, they were like, oh, look at this kid, you know.

And there was an instructor named Chief Small. And he said, if you want, you write a request for Captain's Mass, and I'll try to get you in training. I'll put in a good word for you and get you back in the training. And I was like, yeah. and so I would write the request but now I'm in X Division so I'm working for that guy Bowered and this is an old Vietnam vet rough guy

I mean it's hard for me to do justice with this guy you know what this guy was like and he would just take my request and throw it in the garbage and he just kept doing it and he would just yell at me you'll never make it through this program son get the hell out of here and the guy, Chief Small, I told him about it, he took it up to the CEO and I got Captain's Bastast and Lieutenant Zinke was, I think, part of that. And those guys, they said, hey, we're going to give you another chance.

Because I was explaining, you know, I didn't quit the training. I got medically dropped. Like, hey, if you can gain weight, because I'm like, at that point, I'm 6'1, but I weighed, I've looked at my medical record, I weighed like 153. And, you know, that's just not enough mass to get you through the cold of being a frogman. It's just not going to, it's going to be tough. So they're like, hey, it was Christmas time. Merry Christmas.

You're back in training. Go get wet. And I started up in class 176 like a couple months later. So that time I was, that in-between time of classing up, I just focused on gaining weight. So I would, it was really strange for a lot of people. You can order pizza in butts. Like when everything's over, you can order pizza in butts. And so I was like, you know, I have to gain weight.

So, you know, on some time off, I got a big thing of that weight gain powder. I got a bunch of milk, like whole milk. And I would order two for one domino's pizza. and I was just constantly drinking the milk with the weight gain. I would eat a pizza before I went to sleep with the weight gain and the milk, sent my clock for three in the morning and eat the other pizza. You know, it got disgusting now at a certain point. Like, I'm not a pizza fan anymore.

But I ended up, by the time I classed up, I was like 170. You know, I'd gained weight. Dang. And then I classed up in Bud's class 176 And then came to more difficulties with pool comp And then I got rolled into 177 your class And I wasn't even poolcom It was it was um

Like dive buddy because I was with- Oh like buddy breathing or something Yeah I was with Matt Oh okay Did both you guys get rolled for that? Yeah So you didn't Sandwiches.

So you didn't get rolled into our class until second phase? Yeah, die phase. So I went through Hell Week in 176. The hardest Hell Week that ever really existed in Butts. Seven and six guys know this stuff. So then you rolled into R class. Yeah. No one really told, there was no heads up whatsoever about like the pool comp and all that.

stuff. That's something no one really knows about it. They know about it now, but back then, they had that Texas chainsaw massacre poster in the medical area and it said, but it was crossed out Texas. It said Bud's Pool Comp Massacre and it had like a mask

on one of the guys that was getting his head sawed off with a chainsaw. And that's what pool comp is. You know, you're going to go down there and you're going to get annihilated. I tell you, I mean, it's really hard to do it just is like basically it's not a matter of pain. It's a matter of dealing with not being able to breathe.

And you're on compressed air. If you hold your breath and rock it to the surface, you're going to embolize and hurt yourself badly. You know, so you have to have that control and the instructors are taking your mask off, tying your gear in knots, and you have to get these knots out. I mean, the other thing is they're using the old regulators

from the 50s, like Jacques Sto, so you can close it and you can't breathe. So they're taking this regulator out and it fills with water. And then you've got to turn your head to get the water out or blow it out. And they're

tying these knots in and you have to get it out. It's horrific and it lasts a long time. Yeah, it's 30 minutes. Your first breath is water. So, because when they rip that regulator out of your mouth, the hose fills with water. So when you put it in your mouth, you can't just, no, when your first breath is and you got to like absorb the water and get it out.

And then you get a breath. So you're in full panic mode as you're trying to get the knot untied. You finally get it untied. And now you're just just dying for air. And you put that thing in your mouth and you still have to clear that thing. It's, it's really, it's where I failed. I failed pool comp my first time. And then, I don't know.

Were you with us? in the dip tank? Because over the weekend, myself and a few other guys that failed, did you pass it the first time when you went through with 177? Did you pass pool comp? No, I did not.

Oh, no, brother. And what happened with, you remember Ensign Davies? Yeah. We got out on that weekend because, you know, we had failed. We were on the wall of shame. And we went down to Mexico.

Did you dive training? yeah and we were like I remember what was so weird was you know in Mexico the the beach had all this life on it that you don't see here you know but it's essentially the same beach just further down but yeah we did uh we kind of like worked on it ourselves for a bit and then came back and I just remember that that Sunday night thinking of everyone's just tossing and turning in their bed because you're like, am I going to make it through this the next day? You know, and I was able to, you know, I did it. Yeah.

Yeah, what we did. And I'm not sure how you weren't with us, but it was me and like three or four other guys that failed pool comp on Friday. And we went in the big dip tank and we straight up drowned each other. We were just murdering each other in there and clearing stuff. And, man, I was so horrible. of not making it and of getting rolled you know because I didn't even think about getting rolled it's like as far as I was concerned if I got rolled that that seemed like

just death you know it seemed like the worst thing ever but we pool comped each other so hard that all of us made it the first time on Monday morning like it was no factor so that extra little bit of training whether in Mexico or whether in the dip tank I also they let us do it like the instructors I don't know how we did it I don't know what happened that we had all the gear. Like we got full scuba tanks with air and brought them into the dip tank and just murdered each other.

I don't know, that's not legal. You know, like that's not okay. You can't do that. That's like if you ain't cheating, you ain't trying out there. They're just like, there's an opening right there if you take the opportunity. Good on you.

If you don't, so sorry. So sorry. Yeah, so we end up, you end up in our class. That's funny. I actually thought you did everything with us. I thought you got rolled into 177. I thought you went through Hell Week with us.

I didn't remember that. I didn't remember that you got rolled in in a dive phase. Because yeah, so then we did Sancomeney Island. Chewing tobacco. Yeah, that's a lot of fond of memory.

They found guys, you're not allowed to have chewing tobacco out there and they found somebody had smuggled a bunch out, a bunch. And so they made everyone in the class take massive chunks of chewing tobacco and then we did like a thousand eight count bodybuilders which is like an old school burpee and like me I never chewed tobacco and never smoked a cigarette and and all of a sudden I got a big mouth full of this. Yeah, I haven't dipped since. That was my one and only two. That was your opportunity. Does it like jam you like when you dip and you haven't ever does it like you feel like actual effects right like way stronger like it jams you up kind of hard? dip? Yeah. That stuff makes you feel sick. I feel nauseated.

It didn't feel sick. And burning in my mouth. Yeah. Yeah, but you know how like, okay, let's say you never smoked a cigarette ever and then you straight up smoke a whole cigarette. You're going to be like buzzing kind of hardcore, right? Were you buzzing from the dip is what I'm saying? I didn't notice any of that. I felt A-Cal bodybuilders and pain

and just thinking like this is horrible. But yeah, like you said, Jeff, it cured me of ever wanting to do that. Well, I think it's important to know like you know, in spec ops, a lot of guys are going to use dip chewing tobacco because of that reason. It's like a little bit of, you know, caffeine in essence. It's an upper. Yeah.

What do you meant? Anything else from Sancomitian Island? Besides good times and flights. I'm on fire, requested to do a touch and go. Do they still do that? They still do flights. They still do frog hills. They still do flights.

They still got a flight tower out there. and you still do touch and goes the whole nine yards yeah it's good times make you tough so then you get we got done with buds you check in a seal team and uh so what it's 1991 when we get to seal team one yeah it's early 1991 did we go to did we go to airborne school together yeah went to get our airborne on fort benning

so that's different too nowadays but back then you went to army jump school for benning Georgia And that's where seals get like a horrible, I guess kind of a horrible reputation because like you're coming out of buds back in the day. You'd go to airborne school, which airborne is a very conventional school to go to like everyone, like a lot.

Not everyone, but a lot of people go to the Army jump school. So there's no super high standard for physicality or anything. So when you get down, you're fresh out of seal training and you're down there just feeling like you can do anything. And of course the black hat, which are the instructors down there they you know what they call

everyone Navy if they call every guy that's not in the army they just call you Navy and they'd be like come on over here Navy Beat your boots that was another thing to make you do squats they say beat your boots and you basically got to hit your boots but it's pretty fun school I had a good time yeah yeah it's

Airborne was cool and then and then we check into SEAL Team 1 and you end well we went through SQT together or STT you used to be called

Zeal tactical training Yes That was just learning all the stuff that you actually I wanted to actually learn I'm sure we all just wanted to learn how to shoot move and communicate

out of patrol explosives Like this is when you start doing cooler stuff besides being wet and sandy Yes And then from there We roll into our platoons

You're in my sister platoon We call it Brother Paltoon Okay, fair enough I wonder why they call it Sister Paltoon They do They never call it Brother Paltoon You mean like stores They'll do that too

That's our sister store Yeah, we never say brother store Even in the teams where there's no females We say brother, what's up with that? I mean we say sister So you guys are in our brother Paltoon apparently now Or sister Paltoon And we're doing work up

you know it's a different environment I remember your platoon your platoon had some let's just say pipe hitters in it right and you guys had some heavy hitters in that platoon yeah

more so than in my first platoon we had great guys in my first platoon but the guys that you had in your platoon were harder straight up there's no real other way of putting it they were harder on you guys for sure yeah I mean I'm lucky in the sense that I wasn't the main target.

I mean, I was targeted. I mean, there was a situation we had down in Panama, like with the hazing that was really extreme. Yeah. You know, and, you know, some injuries happened. I got choked out at least five times that night, at least. Yeah. and yeah beating you know it's it was that platoon was pretty hardcore yeah i've told a story on this podcast a couple times about like when i got to the team and i'm sitting out by the puller i'm out

doing a workout on the pull-up bar and this giant human like barely human goes lumbering out across the it's probably 200 year maybe even 100 yards from like the team area to first lieutenant where the engines are and it's a guy from your platoon you know who it's is the biggest guy in your platoon. Yeah. And he's carrying a gallon of milk with him. And so he's lumbering across this giant guy with this whole body tattooed, no shirt on. And he stops, like, at the 50 meter mark and drinks a half a gallon of milk.

And then he puts it down and then he keeps walking. And I'm like, how am I going to survive in this environment? Because it was just, it was a very hostile environment back then, you know, very hostile in the single platoons. And, and you know what? A lot, not a lot of it. Let's just say some of it was wrong. Some of it, like some of it got taken to a point where it was not good for morale. It wasn't good for unity.

You know, some of the hazing got to a point where you're like, hey, that, that's not okay. Like, that's wrong. Some of it's good. You know, some of it's okay. You know, welcome to the teams. And it's a rough environment. If you screw up, you're going to pay. But, yeah, some of it went overboard.

But yeah, you had a, you had a hard corps platoon. And when we got overseas, we were, you know, what I remember is an old, an old master chief who seemed like the oldest guy I'd ever seen in my life, which was Steve Bailey. You know, and he was probably like seven years younger or eight years younger than I am right now. He's probably like 40, but he seems so old. And he's like, does anyone here want to learn how to fight? And I'm like, yep, me. And I guess, I don't know if we were together when that happened, but we ended up. in the Kwanzen hut with mats on the ground.

And he knew enough Jiu-Jitsu. He was like a white belt. Now, my recollection is different. So the first deployment overseas that platoon that we were just talking about, we went to Guam and then flew straight to Thailand. Okay. And we were in Thailand, and that's where I met Steve. We were talking about.

And basically, I got introduced to, Jiu-Jitsu there and then when we got back to Guam, you know, continue the training. Okay. So it's kind of weird. 1991. And I got introduced to Jiu-Jitsu, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in Thailand in 91. And then actually that's 92, right? Yeah, yeah.

And then coming back to Guam started at the Qantasidad. Yeah. So that must have happened. because you went right away to Thailand I'm still in Guam you everyone comes back from Thailand including Steve Bailey and then when he came back

he must have said hey who wants to learn Jiu Jitsu I raised my hand you know he I think he he's who wants to learn how to fight because I don't I think him asking who wants to learn Jiu Jitsu would have been the most you know would have been like oh is this a language is this a I wouldn't even know so it was more like hey who wants to learn how to fight I'm like

of course and then I just remember him just choking us out I mean and everything just like with three or four different moves. You know, it was like, oh, he knew maybe an arm lock, an Americana, maybe like the sit-up sweep. He didn't, there wasn't a ton of different things. Like, he knew how to take the back,

but it wasn't this, it seemed like a limited number of moves that Jiu-Jitsu was. It wasn't as evolved as it is now for sure. Were you already making the connection? I didn't even make the connection. I thought, oh, there's, in my mind, I thought Jiu-Jitsu was seven moves. Like, you know, or whatever.

Maybe when you get advanced, there's 12. You know what I mean? I just thought, okay, there's seven moves. Here they are. Practice them. And then you know Jiu-Jitsu. I didn't make the connection between that, what we were learning, and this whole freaking crazy sport.

Well, my training with Steve was a really pivotal time in my life. You know, he, introduced me to Jiu-Jitsu, that's really changed my life in a really awesome way. But also, like, it was a lot of striking, too. We did

kickboxing, and you know, I, that's what actually solidified my journey in Jiu-Jitsu. Because, you know, he had a few black belts that had trained under him, other team guys. And we were doing sparring at

this point when we'd come back home and I would go down there and like for two years at least I trained three times a week there and it was one day striking and then the next day we'd do ground and I got and then like on a Friday we do like just sparring and so it's like seal team and all the other guys are black belts and I'm like the new guy and it's just like the goal is to knock the new guy out you know and and um I got my job yard dislocated by one of the guys I came in on him and he turned around, it's being a hook kick right in my chin, and I fell forward. He turned his back, no hooks or nothing. I just put the choke on and I choked him. But then after that, I couldn't remember what day it was.

My back teeth weren't touching. And my chin was just swollen. And I had to wait around for a while so I had like the wherewithal to get back home. But that was like kind of like pivotal because I was like, you know, even when I was hurt, the jiu-jitsu goes on feel. And sometimes when you don't have your senses, if you can just feel what's going on, you have a chance. And so that was a big lesson for me. And that's after we got home. So after we got home, you were staying engaged in jiu-jitsu. When I got home, I didn't.

And I think part of it's because I just thought, like I said, I thought, well, I know the seven moves of Jiu-Jitsu, so I'm good. And I was in another platoon. And so I'm just like, okay, cool. I know J-J-J-J-J-J-I. In my mind, I actually thought I knew J-Jitsu. Like, I'm good. I know everything.

You know, it's like I know the alphabet, right? I know these words, so I'm good. And then, but you kept training. At what point did you find Fabio? All right. So it had been, I was getting out at that time. Okay. So we do we both do another platoon right I'm in an ARG platoon so I'm on a ship you go back on a

Specops deployment to Guam did you go to Guam so you go to Guam and you're training that whole time? Yes And then you come home continue the training. Yeah and at that point I was like hey, you know Do they have like any kind of? You know like any other places I can train? You know I want to learn more and I'm thinking about you know getting out and he's like well you know Steve was like you know you should um maybe check out a tournament and I'm like all yeah okay and I was the same way and I'm thinking you know at this point you know I know you jiu jits and um he wrote a letter to me he wrote a letter sealed it and he said when you uh get up there at the tournament give this letter to hoise and I went up there and I met Hoyce and gave him the letter.

He opened it and he said, well, you've been training with Steve for two years. You're a blue belt now. And so I got my blue belt from Hoyst Gracie. I never had trained with him at all, but got my blue belt there to do the tournament because like two years, you know, go in the blue belt division. But I had never trained with the ghee. Like when I got there, I was like, you know, everyone had gays on. I was like, we'd always done no ghee.

and my first opponent was Craig Cole, Fabio's first black belt down here. And I think it was maybe the worst, it might have been a record for the worst loss in Jiu-Jitsu because I didn't get tapped out, but it was like I had just never been swept that many times because he had the ghee and I'd never seen those sweeps because I was always going no ghee. And it was like literally like 30 nothing. Like I was just getting thrown around and then I remember back to the guy. then my defense for arm lock when someone gets mounted was to put your arm up and when they go for it yank your elbow down as fast as possible and uh he almost caught me with the arm up but when

i'm trying to get my arm out and then all of the friends were on the side like yelling break it and i ended up old school jujitsu yeah break it and uh yeah it was uh probably including fabio if he was there on the side fabio was refing Oh, check. That's going to work out good. So then after that, you know, I was like, hey, you know, is there, like, hey, Fabio Santos is opening a school down in San Diego. And that's where you can train if you want to go down and train under our system. So I was like, yeah, you know, I would definitely explore it. And, you know, and I went back.

I told Steve what happened. And he was like, you know, well, you know, expand your horizons, learn as much as you can. And so I started with Fabio and I would train at Steve's. And then at a certain point, I'd gotten out at this point. And I'm now getting ready to go into school. So I had the GI Bill, and I started working at the Mesa College, like a local junior college. What is it, like 1995? Yes.

And so 90, I started at Fabio. in 95 during springtime. Okay. So I was like very, very early at Fabio's, like, those are some good times too. Yeah, and then when you got out, what was your plan when you got out? I didn't really have a plan.

You know, I was just like, I mean, realize coming from where I did, I haven't really seen much. I mean, yeah, I've been into teams, but I mean, like, I haven't even, like, I didn't even go to school. or anything after. I went in right after high school.

So I was like really curious about just exploring. So I was like, go to school. I'm going to try anything I can, you know, just looking at the world, seeing what everything's about. You know, I think people who do come from areas like the projects, in a sense you're kind of sequestered and you're not maybe seeing the big picture of things. And I will say that's something for everyone. you know, you're in your environment

and no one ever sees the whole picture. Maybe we see most of the picture, but not the whole thing. And so I think at that point I wanted to just kind of explore life. And my plan was if I don't like it, I can go back in the SEAL teams. So then how many hours a day were you training in Jiu-Jitsu when you got out? Well, what I did was I wanted a way to be. be able to train a lot. So I ended up

working at Fabio's essentially, you know, like cleaning the mats, doing the intro class, running the students around, you know, the morning and the night class. So I was just there, all the open hours, along with my roommate, John. And we basically

were like Fabio's assistance there. Right, right. Now at some point, I guess it was in late night. Or early 96, you came to my house, you came to my house and said, hey, bro, you want to, you want to go train? And I was like, yeah. I was like, of course. So we go across the street to the park across the street from my house in Coronado, from my apartment in Coronado.

We go down there and you just, you know, you're like, let's roll. And so, you know, I attacked you or whatever, and you were just triangle, arm lock, you know, whatever, choke, back. You just annihilated me. And it's actually, it's crazy, right? It's like you had gotten so good. And I just remember saying, all right, give me the address to this place. I'll be down there. Is it open today?

Because I'll go down there today if it's open today. And if it's not open today, then I'll be down there tomorrow. And I went down there and I said, I remember talking to Fabio. I said oh yeah I'm here and I want to sign up for unlimited classes and she's like well do you want to try it first and like nope I just want to sign up for unlimited classes and she's like okay so that was that and then we then it was on with the old school the old school crew at Fabio's which was a beast crew yeah you Dean Lister Craig Craig Cole James Nielsen right some

in there. Greg Mack ended up showing up along the way. Along the way. Who else? Dr. Mick. Brent was there, too. Brent was there. Remember Kim?

Yep. I see Kim at wrestling tournaments sometimes. He's a referee at wrestling tournaments. Louis? Louis? The Korean dude from... Oh, Lewis, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

He was a... Because he was a judo guy originally. Bro, he used to go hard. Yeah. Especially like, early when he showed up, he would go hard. He was there to, he was there to win. Every time.

It's, you know, I look at that now in hindsight, you know, having, have some, had some judo experience as well. Judo, the, the, um, the way people attack is, um, I would say, they're trying to make you tap. Yeah. They're not looking for you to tap. Like, you know, I've, I've even traveled in certain areas in Asia. You can, no one taps to chokes.

It's just, oh, you caught me to choke, I'm going out. They're just not going to tap to a choke. So I think the judo guys, anyone who's a judoka, when they go for their taps, like if you stand up in the guard and the guy has your arm, they're going to try to break it so that if the fight does continue, now you have one arm. So if you don't tap, they're still going to win because you have one arm. At what point, and I think Fabio used to say this, he used to say, you're the only person, Jeff, that went from jujitsu to Capoeira. When did you start getting into Capoeira? That was like maybe a year after I got out.

And essentially, it's just like I've been saying, I want to explore and try different things. You know, I've never been the type of person that, okay, don't do this, I'm like, well, why not? You know, so I was experimenting, and I was, like, it's a good way to get good condition for jiu-jitsu, you know, and learn something different. And that's another thing I remember is when you came to my house to fight me,

I was like, like, how would you, you know, if we were going to fight, how would you, what would you do? Like, how would you start it? And you did some weird capoeira stuff? Yeah, I started doing coffee. Yeah, and I was all confused. And I'm like, oh, man, I don't even know what's, happening this is horrible and then I'm in a triangle tapping out and we were competing a lot back

then like every opportunity we would get we would go and compete and one of the most well it's it might be it's definitely in the top probably five that I've been at live matches was we were at neutral grounds oh yeah which was in the ghetto in in like inglewood or something I mean it is a nasty part of L.A and it was uh it was like in the back backyard of some crappy, you know, house. And they had a cage there. And there's freaking rabid pit bulls

in the alley and everything. And we roll in there. And I, we all had matches. And they set up, it wasn't a tournament. It was just like one match. And God,

think about those matches. There was, so you had a, well, Dean had a match against the, the Armenian dude. That was like a grown man. and he I thought Dean I thought he like I thought the guy died of exhaustion or something in the ring I don't know if you remember that one it was mayhem and the Armenian guys are cranking the Armenian music on boom boxes and stuff it was it was so crazy it was nuts dude and the cool thing is that's like the carol Parisian crew like that's them so like when Carl Parisian was like oh yeah dude is one of like the old school guys they had that that and they were all kind of linked to judo Jean LaBelle so it was just like really really

cool to be a part of that but you had a match at neutral grounds pop in the day against a beau hirschberger who was this he was he was he was like hickson's as far as i know he was kind of hickson's premier purple belt at the time and at this time like purple belt was kind of yeah if you were like purple belt was the highest level that americans had at this point right and so you had this match against um against that guy. And he was a great guy. I mean, he was a great competitor. He competed all time.

We'd see him all time. But he was a lot bigger than you. A lot bigger than you. You know, he was probably like, what do you think? 200, 220 or something like that? Yeah, I don't know. Big guy. And you guys threw down in a jiu-jitsu match.

And, you know, he was kind of on top and kind of, as far as I can remember, sort of dominating the match. And then there came the triangle out of no way. and that was kind of nuts, man. You won that. Is there video of that anywhere? No video. I have maybe a couple of pictures of it, you know, with competition.

You know, I look at competitions are, I think it's really good to test your skill against other people in competition. Basically, you're looking at someone who has the same skill level, but you don't know their game. and it's up to you to try to negotiate and have your jiu jih Tzu win in this situation. So, you know, the tournaments are good, I think, but, you know, because of Steve, because of where I grew up, my focus as far as Jiu-Jitsu is self-defense. That's my main focus. You know, I look at the matches like, this person won today, but then if they repeat the match, what happens then?

and repeat it again and again and again. That's how you find out who's the best. You found out who's the best right there. You know, so I kind of, I want to keep my, you know, my humility, I guess, I would say, as far as, like, fighting is concerned. Anyone can lose at any time. So, you know, make sure your technique's on point and be aware. Yeah, that's a weird thing, too, is it's a cool thing about Jiu-Jitsu.

is like you can go so hard, you can go as hard as you can. You know, like that's the way Jiu-Jitsu works. But then there's the other thing is it's as close it is to a fight. It's not even a real fight. It's still not a real fight. And then what do you have in those other arenas? What can you do? What can you create, really, is what it boils down to.

There's a creativity aspect. That's another thing that you kind of excel at with Jiu-Jitsu is the creative aspect of kind of creating moves and creating series that work really well together. How much, how about, you went to, like, I remember, you know, when I would see you, because eventually, you know, we weren't all training at Fabius anymore. We were training at different places. And so when I'd see you, it would always be, like, you'd be deep into yoga,

or you'd be deep into kettlebells, or you'd be deep in a Bulgarian bag, or you'd be deep into Samba. You were always going down these different paths to add to your, to add, your repertoire of moves and movement and strength and conditioning. Yes. Is that just still something that you're always doing? Yes. I mean, one thing that happened, a very pivotal thing, you know, when I was in school,

the thing I focused on first was trying to get some type of work. So they had the San Diego Community College fitness specialists. They had that the first year. I was in that first class. And so I did that to become a personal trainer. The way personal training set up, you know, if you work for like an organization like Ace or something like that, you always have to upgrade your training. And so what I did was I would go outside of Ace and see, oh, you know, what's this like? What's this like?

And I saw this advertisement for circular strength training. and I went to Bellingham, Washington, and I did the CST course with Scott Sondon. And, you know, how it's, why is that relevant to what we're talking about? Scott Sondon is the guy who kind of coined the term the saddle, and he's a Sommbo instructor, distinguished master of sport, American. And he basically developed that leg lock game. of the saddle, which everyone does today, especially if you're in no-gee, that's a big part of

the jiu-jitsu. I don't think he gets the credit for it, but he even had a video that came out that didn't really go over to, I guess, like, as far as like, it is, everyone knows it now, but he doesn't get the credit for it. So I, I did want to mention that. I trained with him with the clubs and did that certification, but then afterwards, we went and trained together. And, you know, I learned some things about the, basically the thing I learned is no martial art has all the answers.

And if you understand the counters to a martial art, you can counter it if you are on time and you do the technique right. And, you know, from his end, Samba, judo, I think he did a Sistema as well. I don't really know too much about that. But I was concerned with learning Samba. And he was like, hey, you know, you can even, if you'd like, compete in Sambo. But you're going to have to get your throws together because I was just purely Jiu-Satz. And I was like, all right, yeah, well, when I get back home, I'll do some judo. I'm like, yeah, I'll do some judo for like two weeks and then I'll be ready for Sambo.

And I got into judo and I learned. judo is its own thing and so I never really I never really had much contact with Scott son and after that but you know he if it weren't for him I probably have never done judo so then I started training at Judo America and continued on in judo so I think it's very important if you are a Jiu Jitsu God you definitely need to learn some type of stand-up fighting whether it's striking or throwing wrestling, learn something that you can do stand-up.

Because if you cannot get the takedown, what are you going to do? Block punches with your face. So you don't want to do that. And so where does it all lead to? Where does it lead to you? What are you doing now? Well, I was

teaching Jiu-Jitsu at Studio 540 and doing a lot of privates and personal training. People probably know right now Studio 540 is defunct, but I'm still continuing on with personal training and jiu jitzu privates and also i travel so at a certain point

you know mark we uh another mutual friend that started with us in uh jiu jihitsu another team guy he had a school in coronado and invited me to come you know train there and teach there so I started doing that. And a Russian guy came in, a judoka, and he was curious about jujitsu and started training with us. And then he said, hey, you know, we want to see some jiu-jitsu in Russia. And he said, hey, if one of you guys want to come out, you know, come out and teach. You know, I'll set everything up. And there were no takers.

I was like, yeah, well, I'm not doing anything. I'll go. and so I ended up going to Vladivostok. And so I've been going there like, you know, once a year, every two years and work with those guys. I had a guy that I worked with in Germany. Rymar, he owns a 10 show. It's a really great school in Hamburg, Germany. So usually on this trip, I'll go to Russia, Vladivostok, fly all the way across to Moscow,

and then over to Hamburg, Germany, train with those guys. Then I stop over in New York, visit my brother, and then all the way back here. Have you learned any Russian? In every country, I've been in everyone speaking English, so I don't really had incentive to really learn much. How long do you usually stay in Russia for? Usually two weeks. So you're training in Russia with mostly judo-based guys?

It's sombo guys just fighters nice a lot of Vladivostok team jiu jiu jitsu oh so it's jiu jitsu guys yeah oh okay yeah i mean jiu jitsu is a worldwide martial art right now it's everywhere well i guess i thought that because you said when the guy came to your school he was a judo guy yeah he was a judo guy and and basically in the judo world all this you know that jiu jihitsu guy you know they're learning like if you go on the ground you're probably gonna get tapped out He wanted to learn something a bit about BJJ. And so, and the issue there is they're training with no instructor. They're just going off video.

And there are some hardcore, highly skilled guys over there. And women, I mean, like this, it's, I mean, in this area where we're training before class, they have Asombo and they have judo, men's, women's you know and and everyone's going hard so I mean I think everyone needs to especially here Brazil get ready because in Russia they're like they're doing I think that it's Russian Federation on Brazilian Jiu Jitsu but they allow all the leg locks so you have guys who are highly skilled at Samba learning and if you're a highly skilled at Sambo if you're a master's sport in Samba, you're probably a master sport in judo, or at least a black belt, because

the styles are very, very similar, except it's, you know, Samba, of course, has the leg locks. So you better be prepared because I think, you know, over time, they're used to something that you're not used to, and it can make a difference. When you say they're used to something? I'm saying, like, do a Ghee tournament, and all leg locks are allowed. Oh, got it, got it, yeah. In 10 years, what's going to happen? When those guys can pee here.

Yeah. And they're going to have to at some point in America open up leg locks for the ghee. It's just, it's silly, right? Well, the issue is it's a sport and they're looking at, you know, long-term health of people. And I can tell you, when I'm in a Samba class, like looking at the Samba fighters in Russia, I think everyone has at least one leg wrapped. Like, everyone's hurt. Yeah

Don't you think it's a little bit too Like the culture over there is a little bit different Just in terms of like Yeah, Russian culture is very different Why? Because they're getting nuts more often Like the guys with the leg Like you say you see everyone with the leg wrap Meaning they kind of maybe have an injury

Or hurt legs From leg locks and stuff Yeah that's what I was thinking too I was like wait but Like we have no ghee has leg locks here Yeah So we don't have that much of that But then how you say like Russian they go hard

So consider leg locks as being a complete part of the Jiu-Jitsu culture or Samba and all this But they go hard That's when you're gonna see that Yeah and also what is complete I mean if you look at you know having Trained in judo now You're

Kano's Original vision Was you have a style where you can strike You can throw. Oh, you're still moving on the ground? I can submit. So I think it's imperative whether you learn wrestling. Judo, Samba, you need some type of stand-up art.

You know, that's the full, complete system. Yeah, it's tough to, like, the kids that wrestle. Like, if you start jiu-jitsu, I'm not saying you're not going to be able to pull this off. But if you start jiu-jitsu at whatever, you know, 24 or 31 or whatever, you start, you start later in life to get the reps in for the takedown game when you're a little bit more fragile and compared to a kid that wrestled you know six years old eight years old 10 years old through high school had you know hundreds of tournaments hundreds of hours in the on the mat doing takedowns and by the time like that's why the ufc is so dominated by wrestlers because they are they have that

in thing just embedded they don't they don't need to live it. learn that that's embedded in them they know how to get that takedown they know how to get out the takedown they know how to scramble there's a huge part of that that wrestling comes in and that's what's when you start taking that and you just make replace wrestling with sombo and now you've been doing that your whole life which has takedowns yes it also has submissions it also has knee locks and footlocks I wish that there was just something like unified grappling that's that's a vision you know um that was kind of happening at Studio 540.

Yeah. All different kinds of black belts from all over coming together to teach their Jiu-Jitsu. I mean, because... But beyond that, right? What you need is unified grappling where the whole world says these are the rules. Like, these are the rules, the whole world. So in the Olympics, there's no more judo wrestling, freestyle wrestling, Greco.

It's just like grappling, unified grappling. If you want to, like if we're going to get invaded by aliens that grapple, if we're going to compete with them, we got to unify this. We got to unify this pretty quickly. Otherwise, they're going to have a leg up because they've been out there, you know, in their planet. Sure. And they're, they've combined it all together. They got the unified grappling. Potentially.

This is. What are we going to tell the aliens, Jeff? We're going to be like, hey, no. No, no reaping here. Hey, no, what is it? No guillotines, you know, no guillotines from that position. We can't tell that to an alien. They don't care.

They're there to win. That's very true. Unified grappling, free the world. You know, on that subject, this might rub a few people a wrong way, but I think when I look at Jiu-Jitsu, one thing I think that can really help is to make a rule set of that switched Like in other words, if I pass your guard, that's three points. Make that an advantage and make actual submissions. Like if you have to escape it, those are the points.

What finishes fights where you could actually have killed this person? Chokes, make those four points. And if I see, I have the choke on and you're trying to escape and you get out as four points. And then this way people are going after submissions more rather than – Because I had a judoka buddy, a ross, and he would do jiu-jitsu tournaments in the black belt division. He's a judo black belt. And he would win some of these tournaments. You know, 50-50, I would assume.

But basically he's like, I'm going to throw and stay on top and stay out of submissions. And basically he could do that at will because he's like a legit judoka. And that's a problem. Now, if you do it this way, that's just an advantage, but now you're forcing people to go for the submission more. Yeah. Well, maybe that's part of the unified grappling rules. Chokes four points, arm locks, shoulder locks type stuff, maybe three points.

BJJ doesn't like leg locks too much, make that two points. Here's the only argument I'll say against that. if you're in a fight and you get a cross-side, you get past someone's guard, that's a real problem. Like if we're going to a real fight, that's why I think it's so advantageous. Well, that's why I think it's a big deal because they say, oh, if you pass the guard, if you were in a fight, you're in a much, much, much worse situation than you were in a second ago, right? So that's, and if you're mounted, even worse, right? Half guard, a little bit.

But so I think there's, oh, and if you give up the back, obviously in a real fight, that's the, that's the biggest problem. So you remove the striking, but if you added the striking in, those positions are in some ways even more important, even more relevant. So it's almost like that plating philosophy. I didn't say the relevance of those positions are any less. I'm just saying for a sport to get people to go more for submissions rather than, because there are a, we've seen it. A bunch of guys who wrestled in high school.

I got to take down advantage. I'll take this person down. Wiggle a little bit to make sure the ref thinks I'm still doing something. They stand us up. I do it again and they won and they never submitted anyone.

And you feel cheated. They never even attempted a submission. Yeah, you feel cheated. You're on the bottom doing guard the whole time and couldn't do anything because you got stalled out. Yeah. And stalling is a real thing. If someone's stalling,

that's like a hard thing to undo, you know. I mean, without strikes. Yeah. Yeah, and then you had the strikes in? Yeah, that's a whole different thing. So you're talking about essentially like with the philosophy, you know, of fighting. Yeah. You know, let's kind of keep treated that.

Yeah. But for the sport, you're absolutely right. Like even if, like, even just stalling in general, like even if you're just up by some points that you got from all your cool takedowns or whatever. And then they take you down and you're now they're only. kind of the only thing they can do really is tap you out because there's maybe a minute left. They can't score 14 points in a minute.

To not get tapped out, if someone's just, my whole thing, yeah, your mouth, you're just like, control and you just don't want to get tapped out. That's hard for the guy. It's hard to tap someone out, like way harder to tap someone out when their whole thing is just not to get tapped out.

So, yeah, it can be like an issue for the sport. So it's like, what philosophy do you follow, you know? You still get the same result of guard passing in positional dominance because, well, what kind of arm locks are you doing when you're in someone's guard? You know, I'm not going to do a commora to you if I'm in your guard.

So you're still forced to, I mean, those principles of Ossacomi, those are all the positions, right, of pinning someone. Those are still going to be important. I mean, in judo, there's no, there are no points for guard passing. It's just pin this person.

Because I know if I have you pinned, if I want to, I could bash you or I could go into, submissions. Right. Yeah. So the advantage for guard passing or whatever isn't the points. It's because you're, now you're cross-site. There's your advantage. So it's sort of like, so use it then. If that's such a great, you know, use it. But you're not getting points for that kind of stuff over here. That's the Jeff Higgs way. And I'm not saying, you know, I'm, you know, it's just a thought. You know, maybe it's a nothing thought. But the idea is to keep the purity of going for submissions.

in jujitsu. I mean, I think with rules that we're seeing in BJJ, judo's even worse because it's had a longer history of taking dangerous moves out. And that's what I see happening in BJJ right now. Well, I think the ultimate rule set for grappling is no striking. That's it. That's it.

No time limit. No submissions are barred. Just you're not allowed to punch or strike the other person or kick them. Other than that, you can get after it. And you can go as long as it takes, which means people are going to have to, you know. Get up. Yeah.

Yeah, but come on, let's face it. I mean, the sport thing, you know, you can't make the audience sit there for, you know, five hours. Well, I don't know. People do other sports that take a really long time. And they've managed to televise that. Baseball game takes many hours. Yeah, that's true. Right?

So you would occasionally, you'd get some weird match that goes like nine hours. Yeah. Before someone taps out from dehydration. That's what I'm. want to see I want to see someone tap out from dehydration. No, yeah. You know what I'm saying? Because you're not allowed to get a drink.

You got to go in hydrated. You got to go in a fuel in your system. Yeah. So yeah, it's a lot different, I think, than baseball. But, yeah, because baseball, you have, like, understood little breaks. That's why we can hang out. Right. That's why it can last so long.

Yeah. In a jiu-jitsu, on no time limit, jihitsu tournament, there would be like a limitation just by nature. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Just by the limitations of humans. For the audience member, they're not going to be happy. about that because at any moment the match could technically turn around or something

could happen so I got to be engaged for one out my solution for that is you run three matches at the same time so two of those matches are going to at least one of those out of three is going to be kind of exciting at some point so you're just running three matches you focus the television over there I got this solved

what did I have a name for this what was I naming it? Unified grappling no unified grappling yeah but there's just like no no time limit death matches basically because it's There's one way to win. Cool.

Make the other person tap out. Yeah. That's the one way you win. Yeah. That's a game changer. Yeah. Remember the Hickson tournaments that were like that? Mm-hmm.

It was you put, you could also win by 15 points. Yeah. So those, those matches would not go long. Hmm. Those matches would not go long. You could win by 15 points or submission. And those matches would be like seven minutes, four minutes, 10 minutes. Occasionally there'd be some, you know, 20-minute match.

Yeah, rarely. But the Gracie tournament is similar. I mean, they give you points for guard pass, mount, and back control. Those are the only points. And, you know, the rest is continue until someone gets submitted or 15 points. Yeah, because 15 points does show you win. I mean, if you beat somebody by 15 points, that means positionally, if you were in a real fight, you would destroy them. Yeah.

It's horrible when you get somebody that's really good positioning, like an MMA fighter to roll with. And, like, I'll do this with Taylor. We got a guy here named Taylor Johnson, and he's just a savage wrestler. And he savaged everything. But, you know, he gets a position on me. And I'm just thinking, if we were in a fight right now, he would be just killing me. He would be punching me in the head until I was dead, repeatedly. Like, repeatedly dead.

Because he wants us unkind of. So if anybody wants to get a hold of you, like anyone wants to get a seminar, because that's another thing. You know, you mentioned it self-defense and how that's kind of what your focus is. It's really solid. Like you have your own little techniques in there. You've got moves. I know you do weapon stuff. If somebody wants to get a hold of you to get some kind of training, what do they do?

Who do they contact? I guess they could contact me. Well, how would they do that? So this is an issue. Jocco sent me a text last night and said, do you have Instagram? And I said, no, I don't have any social media. And basically, I can give you my email.

You can call me and leave a message. That's basically how I... Do you have like an email that could be open to the public? Because you don't want to be giving out your email that you're doing your normal personal business on to a bunch of, of people. All right. Well, let me, let me make one right now. And then I'll set this email up. All right. So we will put that out in the future. Yeah. And I'll post it how to get in touch with Jeff. Echo, you got anything else? No, that's it. It's good. Good to see you again.

Yeah, man. Great to be here. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, man. Any other closing thoughts? Anything I missed? Well, I think right now it's a really important thing. We're looking at the, I'm talking about the world situation right now. And I think it's really important, you know, with all these things going on, that we somehow get some cohesion. Because, I mean, looking at jujitsu, seal team, all these different ways of destruction. It's a lot. easier to destroy than it is to create. And, you know, as we have to start thinking on a species level, I don't really want to get preachy on people, but, I mean, just something I see.

If we don't do it, humans in general are getting so good at war and destruction that we're going to end up killing ourselves. And really, all around us, you know, you have the universe. There's a wake-up call right now. the whole planet got caught off guard with the virus. Luckily, I mean, there are a lot of people that have died from it, but the death rate is not like 50% or higher. I mean, what if Ebola was as contagious as this virus?

So we have to be smart with what we're doing. Basically, nature, giving us human species a wake-up call on, got to start being aware of what's going on outside, of our little bubble, the human bubble. That's basically what I wanted to say. There's like a, this is, you know, a physicist. Are you familiar with the Kardashev scale? No.

So a physicist was astronomer looking out into space, you know, with his equipment. And what do you look for in space for life? and so he started coming up with things that he would look up look for and he came up with these levels type zero type one type two type three and humans right now we're at type zero civilization civilization right type one is when we actually have a really good control of the planetary systems

and then type two is when we have control of the energy of the sun and type three, the galaxy. This is all hypothetical. But the issue is, you know, with our capability at war right now, we've got to be really careful because if we don't reach that type one level where, you know, at a certain point we're going to be able to give, there's going to be food, everything for everyone. You see what I'm saying?

Like, over time, humans make things easier. And one of the issues we have is all resources and stuff like that that are if they're in low supply here, you have that starts causing skirm issues and stuff like that. So what I'm saying is over time, those problems are going to be solved. But before we reach type one, at a certain point, weapons and how to fight, that also starts to spread. and then at a certain point we can end up destroying ourselves before we even reach type one civilization

and type one type one allows us to leave the planet yeah of course we'll be at a point where you know we're not even type one now and we've left the planet leave the planet and stay somewhere I mean no type one is harness the energy

of our planet like all the energy not just like oil or whatever it's like basically utilize 100% of the energy available from our planet whatever that is. That's type zero. Type 1. That's type 1.

We're not even there yet, obviously. How do you know this, Echo Charles? You just figured it out? We're reading, you know. We hang out at the same spot, so, you know. But essentially I'm getting at, you know, we don't want to get caught off guard. And I see there's a lot of separation right now

and a lot of social unrest. And we have to get through that. to a point where we start to unify. It's very, very tough to do. But hopefully it can happen. What do you see as like, when you see the disunification, like what do you see as things to move in the right direction of becoming unified again?

Well, I think one of the main reasons is not thinking on a species level. And, you know, when I'm talking about this, I feel kind of funny because it feels like I'm talking in the clouds or something like that. But I'm just being really genuine and sincere about the human species looking at itself as a species and not as so separate. You know, in my travels, I've been, came from the projects, came out to, came here and became a seal in San Diego. my travels in Jiu-Jitsu learning there, judo,

traveling around the world. I've seen all kinds of different people. You know, in SEAL team, Southeast Asia, been down Central America, South America, Russia. And I see everyone really wants the same thing,

basics of life. You know, and if you're in the military, going to Russia, it's kind of a big deal in a sense because they were like the great enemy. And I see like, families over there just like everybody else everyone's trying to live their life the best they can and

the separatism that we have is making a big problem we're gonna end up killing ourselves before we reach a level where everything can be better for everyone that way I mean before I even continues that sound like kind of wacky no no because you know what it is actually like you make a good point where it's like people got to point this out like people like that's like that's I mean, that's obviously like good that you say that. People do say that every once in a while, but that's a lot of time not what you hear. So when like what you're talking about is essentially like, you know how if you have, you know, you have kids, right? Where let's say, you know, I don't know, you have a goal to get somewhere to do something or really just a general goal as a family where it's like, okay, our job as parents is to maintain this household.

Make sure you guys are prepared for life when you grow up. And when you do that, you're going to be successful in whatever way you want to be. and then you can sort of do the same and around we go, right? Same kind of analogy. Perpetuate the species. Exactly right. So, you know, in a smaller analogy is like a family situation. But currently in our family, the whole world, we're kind of infighting.

You know, the brothers and sisters will fight and it be like, hey, he took my thing. No, no, he hit me, he pulled my hair. So he goes, well, you pull my hair back even harder. And now they're fighting. And then you're like, hey, don't yell. And then the wife is like, hey, don't yell at her like that. You didn't have to say, you know. So we're all infighting.

We're forgetting about like, we don't forget about it. I think we get distracted by just the little micro feeling or the short-term things that go on. And we start to forget about, you know, progress, you know. I mean, I just, I don't want to come off sound in high-minded or anything like that. You know, I'm just looking at the world per se and what has just happened, not just our country, but all over the world, like this virus has come out and everyone got called with their pants down.

What kind of prep was made everywhere? Now, what if that virus was more deadly? I mean, so we have to be smart. Yeah. Would that unify the world against a common enemy or would it separate the world more? And here's, remember, I had a guy named Peter Attia, he's a doctor, and he was a doctor.

and he was a doctor in the trauma center, an ER doctor in Baltimore. And so I forget the statistics. He was dealing with something like 18 puncture wounds a day. So that's shootings and stabbings. This is Baltimore, you know, one of the worst crime rates in, it's actually one of the worst crime rates in the world. I don't know if you knew that. It's in the whole world.

It's one of the worst crime rates. So that's what he's dealing with. And what he said was when you have a family come in that's gone through this of trauma usually it's the loss of someone because these puncture wounds or you know stabbing or not everyone's as hate to use the word not everyone's as lucky as your brother was taken of seven inch knife to the chest and surviving right most people are going to die from that and that's what happens so what he said was if the family is tight they're tight-knit family and they and this horrible event occurs this pressure will make them even tight

However, opposite is also true if there's fractures in the family those fractures under that pressure explode and it just destroys the families so I think what you're seeing right now and what you're talking about is let's face it in the world as a species there's fractures right there's fractures with different countries there's fractures with different cultures and all of a sudden we just got put under pressure by the disease and what we're seeing now is we're starting to see these fractures expand and what I will from my perspective the thing that we miss and I keep trying to say this in different ways and maybe I I mean I'll keep trying to say it you know in the military what you end up doing is you end up

dehumanizing the enemy and it's kind of a goal right kind of a goal to say you know what I'm going to go kill these people. That's what I'm going to get told to do. I'm going to go kill these people. So you know what? I'm not even going to call them people because there's some part of your subconscious that says, hey, it's not okay to kill people. So you know what?

I'm going to call them animals. I'm going to call them savages. I'm going to call them crowds, right? World War II. I'm going to call them gooks in the Korean War. We're going to give them names that's not people. So now we start to dehumanize them and now, all of a sudden, it's a little easier. It makes that job a little bit easier to kill them.

Okay, so that's war. That's what happens there. Well, what happens when you start looking at the different culture and you start doing the same thing because you're like, well, I've got to take care of the people. We're getting pressured by this disease. We're getting pressured by it, and I'm going to take care of the people that are with me.

And what do I do? How do I be mentally okay with that? I got a good solution for you. I'm going to dehumanize the other people. And now we get separated, and now we don't talk to them. And so that's what when you talk about Jeff when you go to these other countries and you start talking to people All of a sudden they're not Russians to you

They're whatever Ivan you know who they're a person with a family and it becomes they become humanized to you just like when they meet you and they go You know they have this horrible vision of what Americans are like and then they meet you and you're cool and guess what? You all do jiu jiu jitsu and you like footlocks and it's like all of a sudden it becomes human, but we don't do that We don't humanize each other on a broad scale, which is very strange right now because we should have the ability to do that Better than anyone right now, right? Because we've got all these communication systems set up where we should be able to say hey, everybody Look, let's let's be together, but instead we show each other the worst part of our of ourselves and and we place blame instead of taking ownership and that that's kind of how we do so instead of us unifying as you said Jeff this pressure that that gets put on us by something like this virus, all of a sudden we become more fragmented.

And when we become fragmented, the ability to communicate with each other goes down instead of up. And the possibility of someone actually saying, hey, hold on a minute. You know, other human or other thing. Wait, maybe you have some of the same, whatever you just said, Jeff, about like,

hey, everyone's pretty much got the same goals, right? Like you said. Like, hey, I want my kids to have a better life than me. I want my kids to do better than me. I want them to have a nice, be able to be able to have their own family and kind of repeat what we did here. That's kind of a common theme.

And it's the same thing in Iraq. You know, whenever I explain an Iraqi family to people, I say, oh, if you want to know what an Iraqi family is like, it's very easy for me to explain. It's like an American family. Like if you have you asking some Iraqi dad what his goal is, his goal is to take care of his kids. you know, build up a house, build the business.

So that's what their goals are. The same thing when you ask an American, dad, that. Same thing. So it's across the board. We get in these situations where instead of, we're on like a mass dehumanization mode. Well, Howard, the relevance to Jiu-Jitsu is there's definitely a clannish aspect to all martial arts.

I train Taekwondo, you're training boy Thai, you know, you're nothing. You know, this kind of attitude of, of, well, and from my experience, going and learning a different martial art, starting from Roundup, you see that the martial arts also all have the same goal of I get into an altercation, I can take care of myself. You know, so I think learning this stuff has kind of,

it has changed me in a way where I'm trying to, instead of compare and contrast and trying to see how we're more similar rather than how we're more different that's a way to say it yeah and the other interesting thing about

let's face it if you if you know jihitsu moitai boxing wrestling taekwondo ninjitsu Kenpo you if you know

27 different martial arts right and somebody introduces you to the 29th, if you have an open mind, you will learn something from that other thing, right? It's kind of like, I mean, back in the day, Jeff, you and I lived through this where it was a jiu-jitsu move or it was bullshit. If it wasn't a, if it wasn't a jiu-jitsu move, like this is a jiu-jitsu move, then it's bullshit, right?

That's the old mentality. Like, that is not a jiu-jitsu move. So therefore it can't work and it shouldn't be part of the system. It shouldn't be part of the world. That's a bad attitude to have. And it's the same attitude. If you look at another culture and you're like, okay, well, there's a lot of things in that culture that doesn't make sense to me. What does make sense?

How do you open your mind to say, okay, well, at least if I don't want to be a part of that culture, what can I take from it? What can I understand from it? How can I relate to it? So it makes me and my culture a little bit better, a little bit more understanding, have a better grasp on the world. And we don't do that, just like the old school martial arts, and specifically the old school jiu jitsu was if it's not part of this, then it, if it's not jujitsu, don't do it. Doesn't work and it's don't bring it in here. And that's the way, I mean, I think, I guess you could say like Bruce Lee, you know, he was kind of an early adopter. and, you know, if it doesn't, you know, he had some great quotes of which I can't think of any right now, but it's...

Absorb what's useful, discard the rest. There you go. Thank you. Absorb what's useful, discard the rest. So that's the attitude to have. And yet, what we like to do in martial arts and in life is discard everything else. We're not listening. I don't want to know what you know. What you know doesn't make sense to me and I don't want to be a part of it. I hope, you know, I'm not, and I don't have any misconceptions like, you know, we're all going to be holding hands singing kumbaya and all this stuff. I'm not saying anything like that. Well, I for one, don't hold hands with people, so we're out there. You can't get there. But over, basically, what I'm saying is over time, what people have now, they didn't have a century ago. You know, humans progress over time. to get better all people do this.

And the same thing with, you know, our war and stuff like that. We got to find answers or we're going to end up destroying ourselves or in the fights against ourselves, something else is going to get us. And this is a warning sign from nature. You know, there's a whole universe out there. I mean, when you start studying things in science like astronomy and stuff like that and how really big and expansive, you know, really is, we're in a really little small space.

Now, I know maybe to some religious people, you know, science perspective is not really that great, but I'm trying to deal with what we know with some certainty. You know, what I do know certainly is we're in this life right now. We want to make it the best we can before it's over. And so that's why I wanted to put that point out. And on a on a on a personal level like it seems like you're doing your best to kind of reach out the world and make that happen through through jiu-jitsu through martial arts. Yeah, I have to say even SEAL team.

I mean getting in SEAL team coming out of the projects, I don't know anyone from the projects that's in the, that was in the teams during that time. You know, I was definitely unique in that aspect. So you get introduced to all different people. And, you know, when you travel around the world, same thing. And are we going to keep doing what we're doing? Because I think the path right now might not be the best one. And again, with humility, because I know when you start talking like this,

people are like, you know, shut the hell off, shut the fuck up, whatever the case. When you look at the, it's the, Idea. I think here's the crazy thing. The most simplistic thing that you've said is the thing that people have such a hard time with, which is looking at all humans as one species. That's why when you put that video out last week, a couple weeks ago about everyone being human, I was like, you know, that was a cool thing, man. you know, it's, you know, especially right now in the state of the U.S., what's going on, you know, it's really important that we stay smart, you know, because there is still this virus out there that we have to be aware of. I was, you know, in my studies, I have a book here on pandemics. When you look at the 1918 pandemic, we had three waves.

will say maybe even a fourth wave if you do the research. But the first wave was a regular flu. That started, I believe, March 4th, 1918. And then over the next few months, in the fall, the virus mutated. And then killed upwards of 50 million people. That's a possibility. So we have to be smart with what we're doing. I understand the social aspects that we're looking at, too.

that's important. But, you know, the health of the planet, too, is also really important. Got to look out for each other. Got to look out for each other. It's true. I think that's a good place to wrap this up a little bit. Actually, I have a question. Well, you said you saw that video that Jocco made a few weeks ago.

Where did you see that video? YouTube. Oh, right. Oh, he was about to call you out on no social media. You're one of those guys. You have social media. But you're always on private. You're that guy.

But I stand corrected. He's a lurker. Yeah, yeah. Okay, I dig it. I dig it. What do you think? You think you could make an Instagram? Yeah.

Or do you just have no interest in it whatsoever? That has been my main thought regarding social media. I mean, like, just the idea of like, let me take a picture and put it online and show everybody what I'm doing. I have no really no affinity to do that. I had a Facebook page. I started, I actually opened it up and then I never touched again. I was having a weird conversation

with my two daughters the other day. Sure. And what they were, they were basically saying they don't like Instagram. And it's, you know how you hear people say like, oh, it's comparative, you know, you compare, you end up comparing yourself

with other people. Oh, on Instagram. Yeah, on Instagram. Yeah, yeah. You know, oh, you compare with this, you compare with that, you compare with, you're basically comparing your life with the absolute best view that everyone else has of their own life.

You know, that they're posing in front of the Lambeau or whatever in order to look cool. And I got to admit, I don't really think of that. You know what I mean? I don't really think like I'm not really out comparing. Probably because I'm like almost 50 years old and there's, you know, it's kind of like I'm just an old man that doesn't care anymore. But, you know, when you're younger, you're like, wait a second. How is that person, how's that other person that's my age or a little younger, a little older, how do they have this amazing situation going on?

And I'm over here, you know, with not an amazing situation. Yeah. So I'm not worried about you getting caught in that trap, Jeff. Yeah, you don't seem like the type. I think he'll be okay. Yeah. So Instagram, that's the one you just put up. Yeah, you take it.

You can put words under it too, you know. Um, you can film videos. The videos can be 10 minutes long. there's something called IG TV expert over here this guy so I'm feeling like pretty sad right now just you're explaining social media it is well the funny the really funny thing is when I got on this path God I hate even using that word I well I started social media um Tim Ferriss when I got done with interviewing with Tim Ferriss he's like do you have do you have social media I'm like no He's like, you should get up.

I'm like, no. And he goes, you really need to get it. And I said, kind of like, okay, I mean, he's a really smart guy and does really well with what he does. I mean, amazingly successful guy and just cool. Four hour work week. Yes, yeah. So he's telling me, like, you got a guy that's done what Tim's done,

and I'm just becoming a civilian kind of. And he goes, yeah, you need to get Twitter. He goes, just get it. And he said, he said, I'll show you how to use it. He never showed me anything. But the good thing is, you know, what he knew that I didn't know. Is that there's nothing to show.

Like, this is how you make it work. You put little words in here. And the thing that you'll find interesting, I guess if it's used in the right way, I mean, I've made all kinds of incredible connections through social media. All kinds. I mean, I would say 50% of the guests on this podcast, and I've had some amazing guests, were through social media. They DM'd or they emailed or they contact or whatever.

And I'm talking, I'm getting World War II veterans on here. and Vietnam vets, I mean, incredible people that it's an honor to be able to have them on here. A lot of them come from social media. So it's a great tool. It's a great way to communicate with other people. And just like everything else in the world, if you do it, if you go too far with it,

it can absolutely turn it into a negative. Yes. And there's some pitfalls too. People will tell you stuff on social media that they would never tell to your face just every day. Oh, you're talking smack talkers. Yeah, or whatever. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. So there's that, if you go in knowing that, okay, that's a thing, then you might not hit some of the pitfalls for sure. Have you ever had a hobby before? A hobby? Yeah, it's like a hobby. No, I've never had a hobby. You have a spider books, bro.

Come on. Okay, so let's say your hobby is knitting, right? And you get home and you're like, okay, I'm going to knit some yarns or whatever. Sure. And that's kind of your thing. There's some people, their hobby, what they do for fun, is get on social media and try and basically terrorize other people. Yeah, it's called trolling.

Yeah, trolling. I understand all of that stuff, but it's just like I've just never felt like I want to do that. Yeah. Like, let me take a picture of myself and then post it for everybody in the world to start looking at. It just seems like a weird idea to me. Yeah. Yeah, in that way it is. It is weird.

I see it's a change in society. it kind of almost takes away anonymity. Everyone's a star in a sense. Yeah, if you use it that way for sure. Yeah, but a lot of times, like, if you have a business or something, right? And you know how like you're like, okay, I want to go to this, I don't know,

chicken restaurant or something or maybe even a place where maybe the experience there is more significant. Like, you know, a martial arts place or whatever, and, you know, you can go to Yelp or, I don't know, old school, go Yellow Pages, whatever. And you don't have the number.

Dang, we're talking about yellow pages right now? Is that happening? Maybe. And, you know, they're like, okay, well, now I got to drive down there just to check it out. I'm not even committed to, you know, so if you have an Instagram, for example, you know, you can see pictures of the place. You can see descriptions. You can see comments of people that, you know, may or may not like it or whatever. So you can, you know, it is useful in a lot of different ways other than everyone trying to be a star, even though I think that's one of the more prevalent uses for Instagram.

Yeah, by the way, Twitter is a whole thing is you don't have to post a picture of yourself. No, exactly. You can post a picture of a knife or a picture of a wall or a picture of a plant or a picture of a star or your watch. Or a sweat. Every single, single morning. Or whatever you're going to do. You can just do that. So you don't have to necessarily, you know, just pose for pictures for yourself.

With your shirt off or whatever. Yeah. Flexing. You know how you get sometime. But yeah, that's what I'm saying. But you are right, though. That is true. But then again, you know, what if you posted this one?

Let's say you're doing a seminar. You post one, a picture of the cool picture of the seminar or whatever. And then someone's like, hey, you know, your shoulders look real solid. You've been working on them. Then you'd be like, oh, yeah, got that feeling. So the next one, you might be a little bit more compelled to. Let me post a picture with me, maybe like in some good lighting or something. And then the comments start rolling.

You see the slippery slope, though. But then there's someone that says, Yeah, but he's got skinny wrists, right? And then all of a sudden you're trying to do wrist workouts. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, me. And then, of course, that guy's now your enemy because he's talking trash to you. So now you're back and forth with him.

And now you've got to check to see what your friend said about that guy saying. You know, so it's a thing. You know, you got to watch out back and stuff. I think you'll be all right, bro. Yeah. It's like, in a sense, like a public record because at a certain point, right, you're dead. But the media stuff is still there. It's like a record.

maybe 100 years from now, they can access. Who was this person? What was this person like? What were they into? It's like a historical account of individuals. Yeah, no doubt about it. Straight up, voluntary.

Yeah, yeah. I got some friends that have died and their social media pages are there and I'm so happy that their social media pages are there because it's like, yeah, I can go on there. Still alive. Yeah, still hang out a little bit, you know? So there's definitely a positive in that regard.

Yeah. Was that your question? I don't even remember what? your question was. Actually, you know what my question was? Okay, remember when you were doing the eight pull-ups? The pull-ups and you were like, I got the eight, like almost got, what's the qualifying thing for pull-ups? How many do you have to get? Back then was eight. Oh, okay. So you had to do 42 push-ups, 50 sit-ups, eight pull-ups. And you had to run a mile and a half in boots and long pants for, I think, 12 minutes and 30 seconds. And then you had to run, you had to swim using

side stroke or breaststroke 500 meters, I think, in the same time, like 12 minutes and 30 seconds, something like that. And this is all in one go? Or is it like day one you do this? No, it's like one after the other. So the swims usually first, then

the calisthenic stuff, and then the run at the end. Gotcha. Yeah, and that those, those, that level of qualification is so not prepare you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like if you're a

guy sitting there going, well, I can do eight pull-ups. You're totally wrong. You're totally wrong and you're going to get destroyed. If you takes you 11 minutes and 30 seconds or whatever, run in a mile and a half and you think you're going to make it through Buds, you're not even close. I mean, back in the day, and I'm surprised they haven't changed it. And they have changed it now. Like, once you're in the pipeline, you compete against everyone else.

So the way it works now, Jeff, is when you get to Buds in order to go into a class, they give everyone in the class a screening, a physical screening test, the top 165 people go. If you don't make it, you don't go into class. And if you don't make it, I think two times,

you're done. So it's a competition just to get into class. See who gets the best score. So eight pull-ups and getting you nowhere. Is it like the enhanced screening test? Because I remember getting a budge, you got another screening test when I, in 7-4, where everything was higher,

like 75 push-up. Yeah, I don't know. like 12 pull-ups or something like that. I just know it's a competition. So the max, the minimum fluctuates because if there's a bunch of studs in your class and you're not good at pull-ups, they're like, oh, yeah, sorry, you're not in class.

Yeah, it's like later. It's kind of. The crazy thing is, no matter what they do to those standards, the same number of people quit. It's the weirdest thing. It's the cold water. It's definitely the cold water. The cold water, the lack of oxygen.

And the sleep. And the lack of sleep. And then those are, that right there is 90% of the quitters, I think. Then you have some people that, you know, whatever, they got some weird, they'll get in their head psychologically and they'll just, yeah. They look, man, you know, you got to recognize that they're going to try and make you quit. So if they see some kind of weakness that they see they can trip you up.

And they might, here's the thing, ego up or ego down. You know, they might be like, hey, no one's going to want to have you in a platoon. Listen, man, you seem like a good guy, right? A little ego up. But if you were at a team, I wouldn't want to work with you. You don't look like you can carry your weight. And like you're actually, by staying here, the rest of your boat crew, you're putting them at risk in the SEAL teams. So even a good, like if you're a good, hearted person that has good intent, you want to take care of your teammates.

The best thing you can do to take care of your teammates right now is quit. Yeah, jam you up mentally for sure I can. They're going to figure out, they're coming at you. And when you're cold, wet, and tired, and that's the other thing. You know, people, when you're cold, wet, and tired, man, those options start popping up in people's heads. And they start, you know, maybe they weren't thinking about it. But now they're thinking, well, I really don't want to let my teammates down. And that hot cocoa looks good over there.

I'm going to go get me some hot cocoa. That's what they had in our class. Swiss Miss Hot Cocoa. and crispy cream donuts. Oh, that's the good. And electric blanket. Yeah. If you quit.

Sitting on the beach. So you're sitting in 58 degree water, a jackhammering freezing cold, and there's some quitter up there with an electric blanket on and a hot cup of cocoa. They're calling you out. I laughed at that craziness. So if a guy quit, he doesn't just go.

He doesn't just leave. He's still there. They make a positive spectacle out of it. Yeah, well, here's a thing, though. And they treat him like a bro, too. They're not harsh on them. They're not like, they're not like, oh, get over here, quitter. They're like, it's okay.

Yeah. They're running the whole sci-offs on everybody. To me, that's the worst part right there. Because if you're just like, oh, yeah, here's all the quitters on display, look at them, enjoying their hot cocoa. It kind of creates this divide. Like, bro, I don't want to be that guy. It looks nice.

No, I don't want to be that guy. That guy's, actually, you know, he's a good guy. Yeah. That's his car guy. He made a decision. Yeah. You know, and it's probably a good decision. It's a good decision for the teams.

He really cares about the teams because he doesn't want to bring the teams down. Not like you. Trying to hurt the teams. See, I think I understand you a little bit more now. Just a little bit. I get it. Check. All right.

So I guess we're all probably going to start training in Jujidzzi if we're not already. Yes. I guess we're probably going to be swinging some kettlebells, working out, trying to get better, trying to humanize each other. Yes. We're just moving in a positive direction. Yes, sir. What are you got for, us, Echo Charles?

Well, we're going to keep ourselves in the game with what? Jock fuel supplements. Supplementation, important, you know, especially when your body starts falling apart, right? Okay, joint warfare. Crill oil, super krill oil. Keep your joints together, bro. When your joints go out, bro, you're going to be thanking me when you're taking the krill oil and joint warfers.

Well, yeah, no, super krill. Super krill oil. Yes, sir. Because the krill oil is made with regular krill. regular krill has not been screened super krill they made it through the training yes sir and they're ready to hook you up it makes sense to get don't get regular krill get yourself off super krill yes sir also discipline both kinds of discipline by the way the supplement discipline okay it's for your brain or your body too but you know all these

things they're gonna keep you in the game big time jiu jitsu or otherwise so jeff COVID before at the end of January I went to Seattle, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and Austin, Texas, and in each one of those locations, I shook hands with one to two thousand people and bro-hugged

50% of those people. I did not get COVID. Matter of fact, it never even, like, it never even got after my immune system at all. I got the test. I'm not saying that it's like this genetic thing, but it's now proven that if you're healthy, right? If you work out, yes. If you eat clean, yes.

If you take vitamin D. Sure. Also, discipline. Back to the discipline thing. We do have cans of discipline, R-T-D cans. Stands for ready to drink in the industry. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

Those are good. Those are the, I'd say, actually, you know what, Brad? I'm on both. I'm going to be honest with you. Got the cans and the powder. Yeah, there's something really good about just cracking up in a cold can. It's true. Oh, yeah, Pete, guys, thanks for the refrigerator, by the way.

I mean, you know, Jock's head is on it, which, you know, mixed emotions about that whole thing, but overall, good. Big hit at my house. They sent me this refrigerator with Jocco's head face on the refrigerator. Very strange. You want to talk about, like, strange times. COVID strange, right? The world's strange.

We got strange people running for president. When your head starts showing up on your friends, refrigerators, that's some strange times. That's some strange times. Yes, sir, it is. Get some milk. Get some protein in you. Protein's better than no protein for sure. Protein, which by the way, have you tried the protein I make, Jeff?

Because if you haven't tried it, it's 100% guaranteed to stop Spanish flu. It's 100% guaranteed to stop Spanish flu. It's been lab tested the whole nine yards. You don't have to worry about it. I'm one of those. What is it made of? Well, I don't know all the ingredients, but I will tell you this. It's clean protein in the form of a dessert.

That's what I do know. I don't know the ingredients. We're going to have to contact Brian. What do you mean what's it made out of? I'm one of those wacky vegans. Oh, okay. Yeah, you're not good because it's no, because it's got Cassian. It's got the milk protein in it.

It's got that and egg protein. So you're just out across. the board. Yeah. You're gonna have to, uh, well, you're gonna have to eat something else. If I do get COVID, I want a can of that stuff. Oh yeah, yeah. You'll go out in style. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Also tea, jaco white tea. Yeah. You want something a little lighter. That's something that. That's something that. Yeah. And you know, since you are vegan, it's not only vegan, but it's also organic. Certified organic. You see, think I'm playing around over here? I got your back. bro. I got your back, big time.

I'm going to stop you from catching Spanish flu. Probably prevent COVID from getting in your system. And I'm going to protect your vegan rights right over here. Yes. Is there such thing as vegan rights? It's just regular rights, right? Yes, sir. Isn't vegan rights a thing? Not

that I know of, but I don't know. Maybe we could start a movement. Anyway. So, Is vegan rights a thing? Not that I know of it. Oh, okay. Oh, man. Just like there's no keto rights. There's no other dietary philosophy. Straw man argument. That's a strong man argument. No, it's not. No, it's not. Vegan is a, uh,

food dietary choice. And it, there's a philosophy behind it for sure. Oh, yeah, 100% I dig it too. But I don't, I don't think you can choose that kind of philosophy and then gain sort of, you know, more rights or lose rights for that matter. I'm going to start a keto right movement. All right. Well, I'm going paleo rights over here. Right on. Straight up. I got to start paleo first though. Yeah. Kind of a thing. Anyway, speaking of a thing,

Jiu-Jitsu, right? By the way, everything we just talked about, you can get on origin, mane.com, or you can get it at the vitamin shop. Yes, sir. The vitamin shopee. What was the first one? OriginMane.com.

OriginMane. Yep. Maine, like the state. The state of Maine. Origin man. Yep. Because of your origins. Yes.

Yes. Dane. Okay. Yeah, I'm sorry. Yes, sir. Also at origin main. dot com, jiu jih Tis and rash guards. Okay, these geese and rash guards are made 100% in America, 100%.

Even the cotton that they grow to form the material. Even that grown in America, 100%. 100%. It's a big deal. So yeah, when we go back to Jiu-Jitsu, we need a new ghee if you don't have one already. Even if you do have one, grab an origin one. Yeah. That's why.

You know, one thing about Jiu-Jitsu I wanted to say to for all those people who are like sweating the load about, you know, I haven't trained in a while. You know, I had an injury from the military that just got worse doing jiu-jitsu. My neck got hurt really badly. So I was supposed to get fusion on C-5 to C-7. And I was out for two years. I just didn't train. So when you come back, you know, jiu-sitsu's not going away.

So when you come back, you will get better. All those techniques you've been working on, that stuff's kind of just gestating in your mind, mixing and matching and forming into new things, you'll be better once you get your conditioning back. So do not sweat. A lot of people are like, I'm looking at these. I haven't trained in a while. Yeah.

But the conditioning thing, that's going to be a thing, especially if you like to go hard, right? You're going to jump back in there, try to go hard. And you're going to get kind of dealt with it. When you come back, come back smart. Just nice and slow, easy, get back to where you. And I think it's also while you're not rolling, do your conditioning. You know, it is a lifestyle.

You eat right train right you know you got to have your conditioning going on so you should be doing that In other words stay on the path and also when you come back you don't necessarily have to ramp it up You could just go 17 rounds death matches come and get it Yeah, yeah Yeah Anyway yeah, so yeah I get origin geese if you uh you know when you get back into it If you haven't already got back into it Yeah

Yeah a lot of stuff on there originating dot com boots boots jeans oh yeah t-shirts All made in America. All made in America in the good old U.S. of A. It's true. Also, Jocko is a store. It's called Jocko Store. Merchandice. Super original.

Yeah. Creative. Relax thereof or whatever. But hey, man, it works. Jocco store. Easy to remember. That's where you can get T-shirts. Discipline equals freedom.

You know, this one that I got on, good, you know, represent. You know, a lot of cool stuff on that hat. This one that I got on. Yeah. Def Corps, all day, to the core. All day. All day.

Yeah Talkastro.com If you like something Hey man Get something Also subscribe to this podcast You can subscribe to it wherever You can leave a review

We will laugh at your review If it's funny And if it's cool And if it's not funny It's not cool And it doesn't have any layers Well, we appreciate it It's cool still

Still, still cool Do you like When you're looking at comments And stuff Do you get a lot of Do you get some negative stuff Like people Trying to fire it up on you?

For this podcast Yeah Almost none It's really cool Everyone's super stoked on it But yeah You know some people give some feedback That might be considered negative

But I look at it with an open mind And I say hmm Maybe there's some adjustments I could make Maybe I could do a better job We also got the thread We're almost out with a new thread With a new name and all that stuff I'll let you know grounded podcast

Where we talk about Jiu jitsu Warrior Kid podcast where we talk about being a warrior kid Don't forget about the warrior kid soap Including killer soap Irish Oaks Ranch or on the jocco store website you can get yourself some soap so you and everyone that you know Get clean I can stay

so the byline is is uh what's this called the standard operating procedure is I do a little bit of a buildup and then I say stay clean and you just took my byline Yeah, man. So normally I would say, hey, so everyone, so you, everyone and you and your family can stay clean. And Echo usually goes like this. But you took the glory. Amen.

Oh, man. And you said get clean, which is also, you know, the precursor to staying clean. You have to get clean first. For those of us who are not clean quite yet. Oh, man. This is going down real quick. So, yeah, we got a bunch of podcasts. We got a YouTube channel that you can subscribe to if you want to see echoes.

If you haven't seen this yet, Jeff, Echo puts ridiculously crazy amounts of explosions and fire and Terminator heads into his videos because he's all into, you know, whatever that's called, CGI. Well, I just watched Terminator the other day, and that was what I studied in school too. What? Terminator. Video. Terminator. I have a media arts degree. Oh, yeah.

So my specialization was 3D animation. Oh, boom. Maya and Lightwave and digital video so video editing compositing and stuff like that Humble brag Humble brag over here

I dig it fully He's kind of like You know the enlisted guy That doesn't like the officers because they think they know What they're talking about because they went to college He just I just felt it Whatever I didn't even exude that at all

I'm like respect you know he's a peer We're peers in that way Oh, we're peers now. That degree you have doesn't mean anything, apparently. We're peers. See how I like to instigate this? Yes, sir, I do.

All right, cool. So we got a YouTube channel. We got psychological warfare. We got flipside canvas.com where you can get visual representation of the path. Got a bunch of books, the code. Leadership strategy and tactics, Square the Warrior Kid, one, two, and three.

Mikey and the Dragons. Discipline equals freedom, field manual. Extreme ownership and the dichotomy and leadership. Eschelonfront, my leadership consultancy. EFonline.com. If you want to talk to me and hang out with me and hang out with everyone on the Escalonfront team, go to EFonline.com and come and ask questions. We solve leaderships, leadership problems. That's what we do every day.

Come and check it out. We're on there. EFonline.com. The muster coming up. Phoenix, Arizona, September 16th and 17th in Dallas, Texas, December 3rd and 4th, Extreme Ownership.com for details. We do, we usually do an introduction to jiu-jitsu at those things. I'm not sure what's going to be happening because of the current COVID environment.

Because you know what, Jeff, you know what we do? We try and be smart. So we're going to try and be smart. And we may or may not do that. EF Overwatch, if you need people, leaders at your team, go to EFoverwatch.com where we take leaders that understand the principles that we talk about on this podcast

and they can take them and bring them to your organization. Also America's mighty, Warriors.org. Mama Lee, that's Mark Lee's mom. And she has been on a mission, on a mission since she lost her son, on a mission to help service members, their families, gold star families around the world.

If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's mighty warriors.org. And if you haven't had enough of my plodding platitudes, or you need more of Echoes, misplaced mentions then you can find us on the interwebs on Twitter, Instagram, and on Facebook.

Echo is at Echo Charles. I am at Jocka Willink. Jeff is going to make some kind of social media of some kind and we will tag him and he's going to post a picture of his face. Yeah, if you want to YouTube,

if you want to see what Jeff looks like on YouTube, you can come on here and check him out. We probably already know. what Echo Charles looks like. And apparently Echo Charles does not look like how he sounds. You know what's pretty funny about that is I do have a client that I do privates with. And I don't think he's ever seen the YouTube channel.

He just watches, he just listens to the podcast. And he's like, he doesn't think, he doesn't, has no idea what you look like. And he's like, he thinks that, I think, he thinks you're kind of a small guy. Yeah, I heard that before for sure. Apparently, Echo Charles sounds like a skinny white boy. Hipster. Hipster. Hipster's often used.

Something like this. Yeah, pretty hip, I guess. But yeah, that does not surprise me. I said, no, I said, Craigman, this guy's pretty big guy. Yeah, so we'll get that. We'll get your social media. We'll figure it out. Hopefully, if not, we'll get you an email.

And if not, we will find an address that people can write you letters to. They can mail them. They can peel boxes. Yeah. And if not, we can get smoke signals going to Jeff Higgs. Jeff, you got any last words? Yeah, first and foremost, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it.

And I do want to say thanks to my family, Fabio, for showing me and Jiu-Jitsu teaching me, all my training partners. And Steve, I will, kind of leave that a little bit anonymous there, but big change in my life from him. And also James Harrison, who was my father's friend and really kind of was a mentor to me and gave me, kind of instilled discipline in me on what it takes to overcome your life's difficulties. Yeah, that's awesome. And, you know, that just, you know, it's a great reminder that,

when you're going through life, if you make a little effort, make a little effort to help somebody out, you can actually change the trajectory of their entire life. And we all have people like that that did those things along the way. And clearly, that's a great example.

So be cool to people. Help them out. And with that, thanks, Jeff, for, For coming on. Thanks for your service in the team, obviously. Your dedication to Jiu-Jitsu. And thanks for being my brother for the last 30 years. And hopefully we can squeeze out another 30.

Yeah, I'm sure we will. But there's no guarantees, as you once said to me. This is true. Time will tell. And to everyone else that has served or is serving, Thank you for keeping the world safe for freedom. And to the police and law enforcement out there, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service.

Thanks to all of you for holding the line. Despite low pay and high risk, despite the lack of appreciation that you receive, know that most of us are grateful for what you do. to keep us safe and to everyone else out there just remember that life is not easy at all there's gonna be challenges you're gonna get beat down there will be punishment and you will fail sometimes and that's okay that's okay as long as you get back up and no matter what what my brother Jeff Higgs says simply do not quit until next time this is Jeff Higgs and Echo and Jocko