Jocko Podcast - 384: Always Finding Ways to Get Stronger, Faster, and Fitter. With Dave Castro

Episode Date: May 3, 2023

Dave Castro and the SEAL Teams, health, fitness, and the proliferation of CrossFit.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko Podcast number 384 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. I was studious by nature, and I had read considerably about the war. I knew that the careless way in which we fired our guns and dropped bombs in France was hurting lots of people. The average time in which a British soldier was still able to fight after he landed in France was three months. Killed, wounded, gassed, captured. something put them out of action in an average of 90 days.

So I enlisted with my eyes open, expecting to get killed, but hoping to have done more than my part before I got mine. I was young enough that I had a desire to be something great when I died so that my parents would receive a posthumous reward of some sort of metal and know that Bob had died bravely. but I did have ideas about the way I was to die if I must and none of these ways was with a bayonet or a knife in my ribs I had an antithy toward cold steel entering my body and trained hard to learn all I could about bayonet work in fact all through the war I trained just as hard as I would for an important athletic contest

I often thought that might be out in no man's land or meeting some form of an attack where I would come a upon hand-to-hand fighting with a German, and he might be one of the great old German strong men of whom I had read. I knew that they would have much more strength than my slender frame possessed, and in order to remain among the living, I had to acquire skill to win such a battle. I not only worked hard during the training time, but I talked to every man I met who had experienced hand-to-hand work at the front so that I could learn any tricks there were. These tricks did save my life later in the war.

I must explain here that although I expected to die in the war, I knew that one army beat the other by greater courage or greater efficiency in fighting. The side that inflicts the greatest casualties on the other would ultimately win. Therefore, I intended to sell my life as dearly as possible and see how many of the enemy I could take with me or send before. I never got careless. I always had my gas mask. I always carried a shovel and pick with me throughout the war.

Some men became tired and threw their entrenching tools away, but not I. I was the champion digger of the American army. Every time we stopped, I dug a hole. We didn't know when we stopped, whether it would be five minutes, five hours, five days, or five weeks. And as long as we were there, I improved my little dugout. And I can tell of many cases in which this digging saved my life. I owe much of the fact that I am here to careful training and superb physical condition. And that right there is a little excerpt from the book.

I remember the last World War, which was written by Bob Hoffman. It's a book we covered early in the podcast, podcast number 27. So that's like seven years ago. And he wrote another book called How to Be Strong, Healthy, and Happy. This is a guy that fought in the First World War. and he fought in the trenches in the First World War. And in those books, he explains over and over again the importance of physical activity of being strong and being able to lift weights and being able to do pull-ups and being able

to run. And in his books, he actually complains that men were getting weak. This was in the 1930s, by the way. He goes on tirades about how men spend too much time watching motion pictures. They eat too much bread, biscuits, pies, pastries, and donuts. That through physical training, you could condition yourself to obtain pleasure from overcoming and defeating problems and obstacles. And that this would give you greater confidence in your own abilities. By the way, like I said, these books are written in the 30s.

Bob Hoffman spread the word as widely as he could in his life. He founded the York Barbell Company, which is still around today. He started a whole media arm, which in those days meant he started muscular development magazine. He founded the York Oil Burner Athletic Club. That's what he was going. That's what he was doing. And we'd be in a much better place. I think if people actually listened to Bob Hoffman, but they didn't.

And our health as a country has continued to decline. But in my old job in the Navy, we were always searching for ways to get stronger, get faster, get healthier, get better. And we tried when I first got in the, we tried what our training was, which was calisthenics and traditional physical training, military physical training. We tried some weird combination of triathlons and bodybuilding. We played around with Olympic lifting and power lifting, maybe even a little gymnastics. Some guys really pushed to see what worked and what didn't. What could get us ready for combat? That was what we were looking for.

What would get us ready for combat? And what that means is there's an infinite number of things that combat can bring. So what can we do to get ready for just about anything? And people were trying to figure that out. One of the people that was trying to figure that out was a guy named Dave Castro. He's a seal who deployed many times overseas, deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. He wanted to be strong, wanted to be fast, wanted to have endurance, wanted to have explosiveness. And he, over time, found a path for physical fitness.

And he's led kind of like Bob Hoffman. He's led many people down that path, including many seals, many special operations personnel, conventional soldiers, Marines, law enforcement, first responders. And on top of that, just like Bob Hoffman was trying to do, he's done that with everyday civilian human beings that just want to be better. And it's an honor to have him here with us tonight to talk about his experiences and lessons learned. Dave, thanks for coming down, man. So Jocko, thanks a lot for having me. It's an honor. I'm excited to dive into all of these topics.

That was a great intro, by the way. That's a powerful book. I definitely am going to pick that up and dive into it. Yeah, it's an awesome book. And his other book over here, which is called How to Be Strong, Healthy, and Happy is this one is just combat. It's literally combat. I was looking at it yesterday.

It's combat until the last page. The last page, like, people are getting killed and then it ends. This book, though, How to Be Healthy, Strong, Happy, and Healthy is more of a manual. and it's very interesting, some of the quotes I pulled out of both of those, but it's incredible that people have been trying to figure this out and trying to teach people about this for so long. And that's what made me bring,

that's what made me think about those books because this is what you've been trying to do for the last, I don't know what it's been. It's been 15 years, something like that? Almost 20. Almost 20 years you've been trying to do this. Let's start at the beginning. Let me say this.

Yeah. But before even the beginning, I want to talk about this and the path. And his journey and how he was searching for the best way to get basically strong and fit and ready for combat. And exactly what you were saying, not a lot of guys acknowledge, well, honestly, prior to CrossFit, the way we were training, you hit it. There was triathletes, people biased towards that. There was guys who biased towards physical or just bodyway stuff, pull-ups, push-ups. And then you had the bodybuilding type. And every one of those was sort of done. in isolation and people grab, especially once you got to the teams, people gravitated towards what they wanted to do. I was a runner, and that's what I excelled at in buds, and as I went to different teams, that's what I was good at. So I kind of followed that. Stayed away from the heavy weights. I'm a smaller guy. And so, and, you know what's interesting, I don't know if your experience is different, but mine on the East Coast, I hardly saw anyone doing Olympic lifts. Back squats and deadlifts saw a number of guys who, especially football players or guys who are athletic, who did that.

But the Olympic lifts, I don't think I saw many people doing those at all. Yeah, I would, when I mentioned gymnastics, the only reason I got to throw that in there is because my commanding officer at SEAL Team 1,

when I was a brand new guy, he was a gymnast. Yep. And so he, that's the first guy I ever saw doing muscle ups on the pull-up bar. Remember that little pull-up bar at Seal Team 1?

It was a really nice, heavy pull-up bar. And I was a new guy, and I'm out there watching him going, oh, damn, like I need to up my game. Yeah. And he's another dude. Like he was jacked.

Yep. And I used to think, this dude's getting his, his khakis tailored. You know, his uniform was tailored because he had the body and his arms. His sleeves were real tight. He was jacked. But he was doing muscle ups. And I remember thinking, what is that? Yep.

And then starting to try and figure out how to do it on a bar. Never thought of rings. Never, never would have thought of rings until, like, until the CrossFit stuff started getting to the teams. And I'm sure we'll get to that. But so then I, so I started deploying. And I went to Afghanistan. And on my first trip to Afghanistan, we started doing combat ops. And in preparation for them, I was running because that's what I defaulted to.

I was a runner. And you'd insert, hike over these mountain ranges or hike over these terrain features. You'd get to Target. And then you'd go really hard. And then you'd come out, insert, or X-fill out, and go back. And I felt like on target, and I didn't have enough power, kick. I didn't feel like I was fit enough. And so naturally I was like, okay, I need to run more. I need to increase, I need to increase the amount I run. And at Bogram, we had, there was a loop

around the entire base and we'd run it. He'd run it once. It was four or five miles. It's like, naturally I need to do it twice. And so I started doing that more. And I still didn't see much improvement at all on target. So I was intrigued by that. And I was doing a lot of body weight stuff too, so combining them and thinking, how can I get the most out of fitness or how can I take this the next level? Every one of us in the teams has a passion. It sounds like early on your passion, a passion almost even outside of the work, but related to the work. Sounds like you got into Jiu-Jitsu. Yep, I did. Sure enough. Mine was rock climbing. So early on when I was in the teams, I got into climbing and I just went all in. And that's what I really enjoyed doing on my off-time. I'd go

climbing as a lead climber all types ice climbing rock climbing bouldering big walls in yosemite i just really went all in on that aspect of of the job and on a personal level well mark twight he was this famous climber and he had this book called extreme alpinism and he talked a lot about the way he trained and the alpinists the alpinists um per mindset towards going super light and super fast in their routes and in their climbing, that really resonated with me. I saw that and I was like, okay, that's similar to our mindset and what we're trying to do. We're always shaving ounces and trying to go as light as possible on our missions. And so that aspect resonated with me, the way they approached their climbs and the way they tackled them once they were there.

And this was specifically Mark Twight. This was a guy, these guys were radical, what they were doing. They were insane. They were climbing peaks that would take guys four or five days in 48 hours to 24 hours. Strait. Because of their philosophy of super light and super aggressive and fat, light and fast, light and fast, they would set the records on all these routes. And a lot of it, it wasn't just for the fact of doing it quickly. It was for safety, too.

The faster you get up and down the mountain, the safer you are, ultimately. And I read this book he had, it was extreme alpinism, and he talks about his training. And it was long slow, LSD, long slow distance stuff, go out for three-hour bike rides, go out for two-hour runs, and that's how he prepped for all these endeavors. So that's, in my mind, I was like, I need to do more of that to prep for this stuff. Get back from a deployment, and we were able to hire him out to do some training, him and his staff, and we went to Yosemite, and on a training trip, we were doing some climbing with some of the other climbers on the team and a number of his world-class climbers.

I said, hey, Mark, so tell me, this is at dinner in the cabin after a full day of climbing. Tell me about your training. tell me about the long, slow distance stuff. And he said, I don't do that anymore. And I go, I was blown away. Because, like, I studied his books, and he was an icon to me. And I'm like, what do you mean you don't do that anymore? He goes, I do something different.

He goes, I do CrossFit. It's this program that's created by this guy in Santa Cruz named Greg Glassman. I go, well, what is it? And he's like, it's body weight movements, it's pull-ups, it's running, it's cleans, it's deadlifts. And I was super skeptical because I'm a skeptical guy by nature. And when you look at Mark Twight, he's a, I'm a small guy. He's even smaller than not him.

He was probably 150, 5 foot 9, 5 foot 8. And I was like, okay, cool. This all sounds really cool. But coming from him, I don't know if, you know, this is the right thing for a seal who's deploying to Afghanistan. And I heard him. I listened. I started researching.

I started looking into CrossFit. I started looking at all the website, at all the journal articles. and it was incredibly intimidating, especially because I didn't grow up with the Olympic lifts or powerlifting really or any of those movements. So the movements, I was like, man, I don't even know if I can do any of those movements. I saw stuff like air squats and I'm like, I can do that.

I looked at a lot of things I could do and said, okay, it doesn't seem too bad. But I didn't buy it, and especially because he was the guy who exposed me to it. So I sat on it for a while, researched it, actually ended up deploying again, and even on deployment in the room where we had, internet, I was sitting at one of the computers, I'd sit at the computer every night and check out the workout out of the day.

Still not having done it. What years is? This is 3-4. 0304. Oh, 3.04. Cool. Still not having done it myself yet. We had a guy who was really fit on the team, and he came in and he sat down next to me.

And he said, what are you looking at? And I said, oh, this is CrossFit. You should check it out. He's like, oh, what is it? And I start telling him it's this workout that combines all these different. features and elements and they're really fast and it gets you really fit. I kind of faked him out and gave him the impression that I was doing it. So he's like, awesome, I'm going to dive in. He started doing it and I started from afar just watching how it was affecting him and the results

he got from it and he fell in love with it and he saw a lot of results from it. And we came back from that deployment and I still hadn't made the plunge and decided to do it. So later I ended up breaking my ankle in training, so that delayed the effort, deployed to Iraq, and on day one of being there, decided, all right, I'm going all in, and I started doing it. And the thing about, as you know, Iraq versus Afghanistan, in terms of op tempo, in Afghanistan, missions took a little longer to develop once a week, maybe twice a week at the max, at the time we were doing missions. Iraq, you're going out every night. And so you have the potential to go out every day. And so you have the potential to go out every night. And so we were on one of those every night type of situations. Go out, come back,

hit the workout of the day from CrossFit.com, go to bed, wake up at night because we're in a nocturnal rotation and just repeat. And I started seeing great results and I fell in love with it. Interesting story there. One of the other guys I was with, he saw me doing it and he's like, hey, I think I want to try it. I go, all right, when the next workout pops up, let's do it. And so the next day, we were just following the workout of the day. The workout that popped up was a workout called Linda, three bars of death. So it's 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 of deadlift, like 1 and a half times your body weight, bench your body weight, and clean three quarters of your body weight. And it's really one of the harder CrossFit workouts. And he did it, and as his first CrossFit workout ever,

on deployment, and I think he even tried going RX, I had to scale, because those weights at that time were too hard for me to do, even though I was developing strength. So that was how I got into, into the fire, but I researched and watched for a long time before actually taking the plunge. Yeah. Oh, damn, you jumped, right?

Skip the whole thing I was going to start with, which is like, where were you born? I'll go there. We can go there right now. So just to get us up there, where were you born? I was born in San Jose, California, 77. And were your parents, what did your parents do? My dad, he ran a trucking company.

Okay. And so he had a truck yard in San Jose. And when I was in about 84, 85, we moved from San Jose to Aromas where he bought a 65-acre property, and that's the home of the CrossFit games many years later. But he moved us out there to consolidate basically his trucking operation and the the house. So it was all co-located. And even now, so that's still in the family, both my parents have passed. My brother and I, we own that property. And that's where, again, the games have been held multiple years. And I spend a lot of time there. The place means a lot to me. It's the CrossFit Ranch,

right? Is that what it's known as? Yep. Yep. And was your dad in the military? Was your mom in the military? No, neither of them were in the military. None of, no, actually, that's not true. My grandfather from my mother's side, he was in the Korean War. Okay. Yeah. So he had military experience. And, you know, as a kid growing up, he had his M-14 that he was able to, M-1, yeah. And underneath the bed and we'd pull it out and look at it.

He had his ribbons on the wall. So that was definitely influential. But in my inner circle, there very little military influence or connection. And you mentioned that you when you were growing up or you mentioned that you were a runner, Was that the sport that you did when you were in high school and everything? Well, no. So the interesting thing about the running is I didn't discover that I was a decent runner until I decided I wanted to be a seal and started following the Bud's Warning Order.

The Bud's Warning Order was this online packet that told you how to prepare for Buds, and it had like running and PT a running and PT program that escalated in difficulty. And once I started doing that, and that was right after I graduated from high school, I realized I was a pretty decent runner and I thought I wish I would have ran in high school Here's what I did in high school I was on the football team for all four years I might have started one game

I tried out for the basketball team I didn't get picked And I tried really hard at these things To make it to the team And like I put a lot of effort into football And I also tried dabbled in wrestling That I just didn't dig it

Was into martial art Really into... What martial arts? I did Eskima, so Filipino stick fighting. I did traditional karate, traditional taekwondo. UFC was like, I remember watching the early like one and two and three, and those were coming up in those days, into boxing as a youngster, just training on my own.

The martial arts formal training, the boxing on my own. The lack of success that I had in high school sports is a big part of why I decided I wanted to become a Navy SEAL. How did you hear about the SEAL teams? So the summer after I graduated from high school, 96, I went to the movies with my girlfriend at the time. We watched the movie with Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage called The Rock. And you know the story in that movie,

a group of Marines take over at Alcatraz, and then they call the baddest motherfuckers in to come save the island to save the nation from the nuclear weapons they have. and these dudes, Michael Bean, that was like the third or fourth movie, he'd been a seal in. He comes in, he's the commander, and these guys in all black, and then they have all this cool gear. Then they insert in the water with their little mini submarines, and the dude comes up out of the water with the MP5, and I'm like, man, these guys are badasses. And then they come through the sewer and come out of the shower, and the Marines waste them.

Didn't matter, I was already heavily influenced by the black gear and how cool everyone was. So I left that theater and I started researching everything I could about Navy SEALs. And I started watching all the movies, read all the books. And the thing that kept returning in what I was consuming was the fact that the training was the most difficult training in the military. And at this point, I had been accepted to Cal State University of Monterey Bay. So I was going to college. And my parents really wanted me to go to college. but that notion of the toughest training in the military, something happened.

I went, I wonder if I can do that. And that was fucking it. Once I said, I wonder if I can do that. I was like, I need to chase this and I need to figure it, find out if I have what it takes to go through this training and become a seal. And again, I had this burden of feeling like I didn't accomplish months much athletically in high school. And I was like, and here's the thing.

And we know that I'm saying accomplished much athletic. Athletically, Buds is not athletic. You do have to be in shape, but Buds is 100% a mental test. I would learn that later. I didn't realize that at that point. But so I told my parents I wanted to do it, and they're like, no way, you got to go to college. And so I said, okay. So I started school.

About two months into it, I had this other realization. I thought, if I don't do this now, if I finish school, because they said, hey, finish school, and then do it after that. I thought I might not ever do this. Life will change. Life can change so much if I don't do this right now. I said to myself, and it's pretty funny when I think back of it,

even being 18, 19 at the time, that I was able to, whatever, that I thought this, I thought I don't want to be 30 years old and looking back and saying, I wanted to be a Navy SEAL at one point. I'm like, I need to do this now. I dropped out of high school,

or college, sorry. and told my parents I'm enlisting and I enlisted and I and that that for me even that moment that life lesson that that's been something that's meant a lot to me and I even advise people or help people with that just like hey sometimes you have to chase the dream because if you don't if you delay it there can be so many other things that get in the way of it ever happening and you don't want to have that regret but here's the thing you have to be really measured and realistic about that Because I think that especially with social media and a lot of the messaging, there's a lot of the chase your dream and all that shit that's really surface level and shallow. But there's a big process you have to go through in your mind and in understanding what it represents to chase it.

If the timing's right, if you should, rather than just recklessly chasing the dream. Yeah, because the reality is of every guy that goes, I'm going to go for it. 80% of them don't make it. It's probably more than that too. Exactly. 80% of the people that actually make it to Buds don't make it. So you don't have a really good chance of making it. Did you, what kind of prep did you do?

So you're doing this Bud's Warning Order? But the Bud's Warning Order was an online program that NSW put out. So this was 96, 97. Internet was obviously around then in the early stages. And they had built out, maybe not the early stages, but it had been around for a number of years. They had built out a recommended training protocol for Buds. And you did it stuck to it?

I stuck to it. I'm that type of person. Like, if there's a training for an event or a training protocol that the event's putting out, you probably should take a look at it and follow it because they're probably trying to set people up for success. So, yeah, I followed it at the time. So when you get to Buds, or how was Boot Camp? Was it a shock to your sister? Were you like, no, this is what I signed up for, good to go.

I'm down with folding underwear and whatever. Boot Camp was a massive shock, specifically culturally. I grew up in California. and I remember going through the lines and I'm like, hey, what's this thing called grits? And like, I had never even heard of grits. And so, like, I had never really left California or that area my entire life. And so it was a big cultural shock for sure. One other interesting thing about that period, too, especially once I went to buds,

growing up in California, growing up in that area, growing up Hispanic as a Mexican, when I was applying for colleges, the messaging and everything, was about, hey, make sure you tell them you're Hispanic. It's going to help you get in. It's going to help you get admission. It's going to help you advance. And I was like, okay, cool, I didn't know any better. I was a kid. Once I got to the Navy, to the military, especially once I got to Buds, I saw that that didn't matter at all. It didn't matter what color you were. It didn't matter where you were from. What mattered was performance and the standards that they put out and that you met them and that you worked hard to accomplish those goals.

So a little shock to the system, and you get done with that. You check into buds. So what years is it when you get to buds? So late 97, graduated in 98. Okay. What was strengths and weaknesses going through buds? I think my strength was being kind of middle of the road. Like I didn't excel at anything.

I was good at running, so that was definitely a strength. Like you never fell back on runs. Never fell back on runs. Not good. A weakness was swimming, swimming for sure. How about just general comfort in the water? General comfort in the water.

So even now at this stage, I'll say, hey, I'm not a fast swimmer, but like, especially because of the training in all the years, I'm really comfortable

in chaotic environments in the water. So being comfortable in the water that was trained into me through the training. I didn't know I was comfortable in the water prior to buds. But, oh,

and I did. sort of even back up. I swam a lot. And the Bud's warning order had a swimming protocol. I swam a lot to get ready for buds because I wasn't a swimmer through high school. And as you know, the difference between someone who has a swimming background and someone who does not, who goes to training like that, it's massive. It's mad. Quick story on that. We're swimming, if you don't mind. We're here for. We are swimming once I was at a team, many years later, around an island in Puerto Rico. We were forward, we pushed to Puerto Rico for, for a little outpost.

I want to say deployment, but it's silly to say that we deployed to Puerto Rico. And so there was an island off our base, a few hundred yards away, and we'd swim around it. We'd launch from the shore, swim around it, and come back as a platoon.

And I'd been swimming a lot at the time because I wasn't a good swimmer, and I was like, okay, I want to train and I want to get better, and I want to represent myself well on these evolutions. We take off, and as you know, in the teams, most of the swims, at least we were doing on the East Coast, we're with fins. We're going around the island and I'm in front of everybody. And I'm like, all right, cool,

the training's paying off. And one of our officers, I forgot his name. He was on the other, on our sister platoon. He starts slowly passing me. And I'm like, this is fucking awesome. All my work's paying off because he swam in college and I'm in front of him. And as he passed me, he had no fins on him. Yep. He had no fins on. And I was like, all right, that's the difference right there. We all had fins on. He had no fins on and he came out and beat everybody on the swim. Anyways, back to strengths and weaknesses. So I think it was this, my mindset, the way I approached it, I think really was a strength ultimately, obviously, because I made it through and just, it sounds so silly, even when I say it, but it is powerful in how to make it through,

there was a point where I woke up and I said, I still have five months of this shit. I still have five months of all this bullshit we're going through and like, how am I going to survive this? And I stopped thinking about how much time we had left to go through it. And even in workouts or endurance stuff I do now, I'll still sometimes stop thinking about the total duration and just think about what's in front of you. So at that point forward, all I thought about was just make it to the next meal and just make it to the next meal. And that was, I had to think sitting in the cold, sitting in the surf, all right, the next meal's going to be in three or four hours. This isn't going to be that hard. One other interesting thing about when I got there,

I was one of the younger guys in the class at 1819. I was paired. My roommate was a 32-year-old force recon gunny sergeant. Dang. Yeah. And so talk about opposite ends of this spectrum and talk about a culture shock. And we became really good friends and spent time together. And you had this guy who was a hardcore Marine, X-Force Recon, ex-special, and I had just watched The Rock a year earlier. So I knew everything about force recon. And so his presence was also really seeing how he handled everything and how he's just quiet and professional and how he conducted himself was a huge influence.

And I don't think it was by design that one of the younger guys in the class was put with someone like that to be a roommate. And, you know, when I was not, let's say, behaving professionally as a young sailor, he was there to straighten me out. I had like an E5 roommate who, same thing. Like he was just older,

had been around and then he quit. That's where I thought you were going with that story. This guy stuck through. That's awesome. He made it through. Did you get rolled back for anything? No, I made it through my first time. And just again, like the middle man, just making it through every evolution,

didn't get injured and didn't get performance role. If anything, I was very close at multiple times getting performance rolled for swimming. How about like pool comp and stuff? Were you good to go? Yeah. I mean, I might have failed once or twice, but never, like, where you get to the limits of how many times you can fail.

Yeah, it sounds like you were the same as me. Like I didn't, well, you sound like you were a better runner. Maybe I was a better swim, but I didn't win anything. Never came close to winning a run, never came close to winning a swim, never came close to winning an obstacle course. But I also never got rolled back for anything.

And I failed pool comp and then I passed it. So being that what they now call, I guess they call it the gray man now, which is like, you're just, there's a lot of people in that class. And if you're kind of just blending in and you're getting the job done, it's kind of a nice place to be. You know, because you have the loud mouse, you have the guys that stand out for being characters,

you have the guys that get a lot of attention for performing poorly at everything. I just tried avoiding those extremes. I just tried staying away from that. Like, I got to do my job. I don't want too much attention from the instructors good or bad. Could you win the runs? Would you win a four mile time run? We had some fast guys.

So you come in like fourth or third or something like that. I wouldn't I couldn't win them we had some really fast guys everything I had to put out really hard to pass everything Everything I did I kind of had to put out hard there was no crew I had no crews I don't think other than life saving Life saving I was not worried about I'm like I'm gonna kill the whoever my instructions I'm gonna fight him so I was kind of fired up were you big then no I was 174 pounds when I checked into buds I was 185 pounds when I graduated okay you remember what you were in the 50s okay yeah I was smaller than even I was just hostile. You know, I was good at like, I'm going to, I'm going to fight this.

Dude, I saw it as a fight. So I think that helped me. So you graduate from Buds and then where you go? I go to the East Coast and I spend all my time pretty much on the East Coast. What team did you start at? So this is funny and this is going to be a good conversation. I've kind of drawn a line in the sand with myself as a seal professionally or even on the outside now where like I don't like talking about the numbers. I don't like talking about

any of that stuff because when I was working for CrossFit, it was when I started working for CrossFit, I was still an active duty seal and there was a couple other seals around and I saw how Glassman and the media team kind of wanted to, I don't want to say take advantage, but highlight, right? And I was like, hey, I don't want my identity to be built around me as a seal or my exploits or So they really listened to that and they did a really good job of not highlighting. So I kind of, I told myself at that time, hey, a lot of the experiences I had and the teams I went to and the things I did, I'm not going to talk about. Especially as I started seeing once social media came around, how much guys did and how many lines guys crossed now. So the thing I'm trying to be at this point, I still meet people in CrossFit.

who come up to me and say, hey, I've been following you for 10 years, and I just found out you're a Navy SEAL. And I'm like, fucking success. You did good. Yeah, I'm like, fucking success. And so at this point, I have a, some of the units I've been at, I still have guys, I still get invited back to the reunions or to the events. I have senior leaders say, hey, thank you for handling yourself the way you do

in regards to all of that. And so even the question of what team on my, It's, it's, it's, like, anyone can talk about it. It's not a big deal. But for me, it's just like a personal line that I'm really trying to stay with conviction of, of not diving too far and going into publicly. You know, I've had people online say Dave Castro was never the seal that Jocko, Goggins, or whoever was. And they said someone else, and I don't know who is another public seal.

And I'm like, motherfucker, you're only saying that because you know, so, and no, like, no offense at all. of the seal things they show and talk about. Yeah. And like, I don't want people to know what kind of seal I was, what level seal I was. And I don't want to be known as that guy. And I want to, and forgive me for like, I'm not saying you're known as that guy. It's all good, man. And I also want to show an example to younger seals that, hey, you can kind of transition out or get out and do something and not

lean on it so much because I think you'll agree with me here there's some guys that are way I don't want to say abusive with it but over the top yeah I mean for me it's like well this is what I did for 20 years of my life there's no like well hey here's 20 years in my life these are the lessons that I learned this is where everything came from that that's the way it is you know the the to to your point of like well geez Dave Castro must not have been as good of a C-E as Jocco, that's just embarrassing. Yeah. Because both you and I know that there's seals that did 25 deployments.

Yeah, exactly. And are the most heroic guys ever. I, you know, they're just outstanding. And there no one knows who they are. No one knows who they are outside the community. And that's the way they want it. And that's the way they're going to be. And so that's just like a terrible thing to even think about.

There's this like pop iconic culture now. Pop seals. There's like these icon seals who are, and you're one of them. And I, and you know, it's funny and it's totally fine and I respect it. And when I'd first have these conversations with people about you or Goggins, and I would say, hey, I don't have a problem with what they're doing. It's just not the way I want to do it. And in regards to even your situation, you're exactly right. It's your experiences. And I want to say something. I just, since you decided to ask me on the podcast, I decided to pick this up and I decided to start reading it and I'm 100 pages in and it's fucking great. You did a really good job with it. But for years, any of these books, any of the other ones out there, I wouldn't touch or read or even acknowledge the movies I don't watch. Other than a rock. Other than the rock. That's legit. Oh, and let's talk about active valor in a second. I'm going to write that down. Oh, I'll talk about it now. Active valor, I think, was a breaking point for a lot of these seals out there and a huge mistake of our leadership

in sending the wrong message to our community. And here's why I say that. Even before Act of Valor, especially after Vietnam and Marcinko era, there'd been a lot of seals who did books. Seals even before modern area more common than it felt like some of the other special forces, Delta, you name it. Then I felt like act of valor was this moment where we were all taken advantage of, meaning the Navy, the command, the leadership said, we're going to take seals and we're going to put you guys in a movie and we're going to utilize your likeness to profit off of, essentially to recruit with and you're not going to get anything from it. And so you have all these guys at that time saying, well, the Navy did it with us. Why can't we do it? Why can't we do it

when we get at, why can't we capitalize on what we've done? And so I think Act of Valor laid the foundation for opening up the floodgates for sending the message to a lot of guys, hey, it's good. I'm going to get out there with it. Yeah, I don't know much about the backstory. Neither do I. And I'd be curious of what the backstory is. I do know that, here's what I know about it. They were initially going to make like some kind of a modern version of the be someone's special video yeah which was a video that I watched in 1989 that showed this really cheesy example of like what your job was in the SEAL teams yeah and from what I understand they initially brought a company on board to make a 20-minute you know

hey this is what the SEAL teams is and that company came on board and said hey we don't you shouldn't just make a 20-minute video you should make an actual feature film and we think we do a great job with it and For some reason, again, I don't know the backstory. Leadership said, yeah, that sounds like a good idea. I don't know why they did that. I don't know if we were having problems recruiting. I don't think we were having problems recruiting.

But so at some point, I'll dig and see what I can find out and see why that decision got made. Because it certainly was a complete departure from, you know, the way, the way that I was certainly raised in the SEAL teams. When I was raised in the SEAL teams, it was like, you didn't talk about it, you definitely, like you, there was no stickers, there was no nothing, but that's just the way it was. And that was, you know, for me, man, when, when I remember Laif and I who wrote extreme ownership with me,

like the, I wish I would have recorded, like the first call we had with our publisher, I was such a jerk. You know, I was just like, listen, if this is gonna misrepresent this, and all, I was just, it was, Because it was a huge like step, right? And it felt uncomfortable.

You know, I had one of one of my friends who was an admiral was like, he said something that I was very appreciative of, which was, hey, we're quiet professionals. That doesn't mean silent professionals. And if you have important things that should be shared, then they should be shared. And I was like, well, okay, now look, there's,

you can argue against that all day long. There's there's an easy to say yep, that's bullshit and you shouldn't share anything and that's absolutely a valid opinion But that's the that's the direction that I win in like hey man I was working with these companies and these people were falling over themselves saying this is such good information Thank you so much and then it's like well we could really help out a lot of people if we do this so there you go and it and That's balanced against the fact that when you write a book that That's about you, about, you know, I wrote a, you know, Leif and I wrote a 300-page book. That's about us.

And that's all, that's all you need to say. Okay, so you're, you're tooting your own horn or whatever the case may be. Yep. Yeah, that's, there's no denying it. And so you do the best you can. I think we did the best we could to maintain like professionalism, humility. I mean, the things about, you know, as far as like classified material and stuff, that wasn't even, to me, that's just a non-term. Starter obviously and you know for us the combat that we were in was in front of the

world it was that in daytime it was like there was no there was nothing secret about what we're doing at all you know like we had when we had guys get killed it was in the newspaper the next day wasn't some big secret their names like it was that's the way it was so we kind of felt like we were a little bit exposed anyways but yeah it'd be interesting to find out and pull the thread on active valor and see what the thought process was behind that, because I don't know. Even the way, from what I've read, I think you guys are portraying in a great way and everything you're saying about like your experiences and what you're helping the world

and giving back and giving some great leadership lessons and insight to, at this point, millions of people, right? But there's other guys who are not. There's other guys who are just talking and telling their story and just like, some of these cats will say I even look at I look at what they're talking about and I look at where they're at in life and I'm like dude that was 15 years ago that was 20 years ago that's another reason why I'm like hey I've done but I you know this is a podcast of course we're going to talk about the past but I'm like hey there's a lot I've done since then and and I don't

I kind of view it as like I don't want to be defined solely by then I want to be defined what I've done since then. Yeah. Well, I definitely have talked to a lot of people about the fear of becoming Uncle Rico. Yeah. And being like, you know,

the state championship, if I would have thrown them, if I would have been good to go. I would have won the state. I would have gotten recruited. Like, hey, man, these are,

these are, I learned some awesome lessons. We learn some awesome lessons. Pass them on. But I mean, my life since I, I've been busier. Yeah.

Since I retired than I was when I was in. Yeah. But you have a lot of, you've built a lot and you have a lot of, you have a lot of stuff to talk. about since then. I think some of these guys who are talking and there's a lot of them are they don't have that, that new experience even. You know, the other thing too, though, in my situation, I also, I was in a very, people even ask me for transition advice sometimes, other

team guys. And I'm actually the worst person to give that because my situation was super unique. The last three years, I was an instructor before I got out, my ninth year to basically 12th year and I was working full-time for CrossFit. And so here I was, I was... Which is another reason you keep that stuff on the down low because he would have gotten in all kinds of trouble. Yeah. Or maybe you had permission. You can't get permission. Informal permission, let's say. My leadership knew, but it wasn't formally written. I was doing the CrossFit thing on the weekends because I had a fixed schedule and working for CrossFit. I'm sorry, in the Navy as an instructor. So I had to make a decision to stay in. And if I stayed in,

I'd go back and be operational and wouldn't be able to do the CrossFit thing or get out and work full time for CrossFit and leave the Navy. And that was a tough decision to make because I loved if I didn't have that CrossFit opportunity, I would have stayed in for 20 for sure. I'd have been retiring around this period. But so where I'm going with that is it's easy for me to sit up here and talk all fucking bold and like, yeah, I'm not going to tell people what I did and where I was at because I had this nice transition. I had this huge buffer. where I was able to get out and not, and I was getting out with a public persona

and building a new, working with a new company, building it up. My transition was one of a, it was super seamless. And not to, people don't get that chance too often. A lot of other guys like yourself, like you got out at 20 and then kind of had to start your thing and chose the leadership route and kind of had to build everything from there.

And like you said, capitalize on and acknowledge what you did for the last 20 years. I can't say I would not have done the same if I had to get out and didn't have CrossFit. And so I do acknowledge that it was a unique situation for me, so I don't want to sound like I'm acting better than anyone else. It's just, and I don't, and honestly, like everyone, again,

to the kind of the free speech thing, everyone's, they can pursue whatever they want, talk about it, however they want, share, even though some of that stuff they shouldn't share, share what they've done. It's all good. I don't care too much at the end of the day. It's just not the style I'm choosing. Yeah. Well, and also there's just market saturation at this point. You know what I mean? Like there's so many incredible stories of things that guys have done from every branch of the service. And there's a lot of it. I mean, 20 years of war, you're going to get some incredible stories you're going to get some incredible lessons learned and that that's I think I think

that's almost like it's become a just a free market control is that oh yeah you can get out and talk about what you did in the green braes or what you talk to what you did in the seal themes or what you did in in Mars soccer or whatever yep but if there's not something compelling there that's that brings something to the table for people then the free market will just kind of say hey thanks you know pre- thanks for your service and and move on I think that's happened with a number of these books a number of these stories there's so many seal books out there not all of them are hitting anymore like you have to have you have to have a compelling message you have to have something with value that's going to make people really gravitate towards it and consume it

yeah yeah no I'd say there's no doubt about that and we went down this little freaking tangent because I was like okay so what teams you go to so you go to an east coast team How's you how you like being a new guy? That's a great question. I mean you don't right? Being a new guy isn't a pleasurable experience. But even when I got two teams, I was kind of just staying in the middle, try to stay the invisible man.

But there it's you quickly realize you have to, you can't. You have to stand. You have to, because it's such a smaller group. Because it's like new guys up. Yeah, exactly. and you're in the spotlight a majority of the time. But I was quiet and I was a really hard worker and I wanted to prove myself. Even now, but even then I felt like I had something to prove.

Even now I still feel like I have something to prove. And so working hard mattered and showing my leaders and not even my leaders, but the guy to the left and right of me that I was a good contributor. and ultimately a good warrior meant a lot to me. And so I worked really hard and tried to excel at everything I did. Even though I wasn't winning everything I did, I tried to win everything I did. Well, people can tell when you're trying. And it's hard to win stuff when you're a new guy.

Now look, you might win a run. You might run a swim because you're coming out of buds. You're in good shape. But it's tough to beat a guy in shooting. It's tough to beat a guy in anything tactical. But they can tell when you're working hard. So this is still pre-9-11, right? Yeah, and on that note, it's still pre-9-11,

and I have a ton of respect for every seal, anyone in the military who enlisted after 9-11. I did not, you did not, we basically enlisted in peace time. And I'd like to say, I mean, I think I would have. I know I would have, but it still, it takes a little more knowing that after 9-11, if you enlisted and came in. to these career fields, you were probably going to war. Yeah. Well, I did, technically, I thought I was going to NOM when I enlisted.

And I remember one of my buddies who also came to the teams. So what year was that? 1990 was winning with a guy that I went to MEPs with. Yeah. And he ended up in the teams, ended up a Master Chief, just a freaking awesome guy. We were like riding the MEPs bus down to the, the airport and we're talking about you know he was a wrestler and so we're talking about oh i was like you know he i think he said to me like are you going you trying for you're trying

for buds and i was like yeah are you and he's like yeah and of course there was you know a bunch of guys that were trying for buds but but anyways he had been to college yep and i had i was kind of like dumb and but he was telling me hey you know the casualty rate of seals i think it was him that told me this The casualty rate of seals is like 50%. The chance of finishing a career at 20 years is like, it's almost nothing. And I was like, hell yeah. Like we're going to war. I think he must have read that.

And again, if I'm putting this on this guy, I'm sorry. But some, I heard that rumor in boot camp. I'm pretty sure it was him that was like, hey, it's really hard to retire as a seal because chances are you're just going to get killed. Yeah. And I remember being fired up about that. I was like, hell yeah. And then, of course, I got to, you know, Seal Team 1 in 1991 and that's the first Gulf War.

And, yeah, realized pretty quick I wasn't going to Vietnam. But yes, these guys that were coming in post-9-11, and especially once it was really obvious that this was going to be a long war. Like if you were enlisting in 2005, 2006, 2007, yeah, you knew what you were getting into. I remember Tim Kennedy saying that when he went to enlist on September 12th, like there's a line around the building. I remember I called the officer D. Taylor on September 12th, you know, and I was in, the Navy had me in college at the time. And I was saying, hey, sir, you know, send me your team right now, please.

I'll graduate later. And he says, you know, hey, it's going to be a long war. Don't worry. But I was actually talking to him a couple years ago. And he said, I was like, yeah, I remember calling you. He said, everybody called me. And I was like, that's actually awesome. You know, that's exactly how you want it.

Everybody in the teams wanted to go and fight. Did you do Seaman to Admiral? Yes. Okay. So I did my first eight years at Steel Team One. And then I got picked up for the Seaman Admiral program. I was in the second class of the Seaman Admiral program. And then went from Team One to OCS.

E5 at Team One, OCS for 13 weeks, and sent at Team 2. Damn. It was freaking awesome. Yeah. I didn't realize you were on the East Coast. Yep, yep. Went to Team 2. But that new guy experience that you had, I mean, you know, even though it's like,

oh, there's nothing to like about it, but damn, it's freaking awesome, being a new guy in a SEAL platoon. Well, it's super formative. It's super, like, foundational to where you go and what you become and how you succeed or don't succeed in the community. And I think back to some of the mentors and the guys who really, um, developed me at that point. They're tremendous in your life.

They are super influential, again, in this notion of where you end up and what you become and what choices you decide to make. So I had some guys that I really respected that helped develop me and bring me along. So were you like a point, man? I'm guessing. Yeah. Yeah, just like you'd guess you were a 60 gunner. I was actually a radio man.

Okay, yeah. I signed up to be a radio man. I heard an officer told me on quarterdeck watch. He said, if you want to, if you want to go on every mission, you should be a radio man. And I was like, probably the only guy in the history of SEAL Team 1 that walked up to the radio room the next day and knocked on the door and said, I want to be a radio man. Like, no one ever wanted to be a radio man except for me. So it was great advice, though. So you end up a point, man.

And then you're going on, these are peacetime deployments. You're training people. You're doing exercises and all this kind of thing. September 11th comes, how long did it take for you to go from peacetime deployments to wartime deployments? Much longer than I thought it would. I think when it first went down, we were all like, oh shit, here we go, it's real, we're going to go to war now.

At that period, especially with the teams I was at, it wasn't, every SEAL team didn't push out. And everyone, even within a year afterwards, it was very, very, very, very, you know, clear to get into combat that I had to make a few career choices, career decisions, and basically put myself out on the line, kind of, to do that, that I had to take a different step. And so I did that. And then I went to a team where, okay, it's real, we're going to combat right away, and then did a few appointments, did multiple appointments, and went through that phase.

that 9-11 I remember I was in Montana and we were training the black feet or we're training on the black feet Blackfoot reservation Indian Reservation and we were working with the BIA the Bureau of Indian Affairs and we had gone to their facility and I'll never forget this it's so crazy a few days before 9-11 we're looking at the FBI top 10 list and I was just skimming it and I saw bin Laden and it just stood out to me I'm like oh look it Osama bin Laden's on and I knew of them from the coal bombing and that incident. And it was like that, I remember him

and being on that FBI top 10 list standing out. And then a few mornings later, we were staying at a resort hotel. I remember walking into the lobby and everyone huddled around the TVs and that had just happened. And seeing the planes hit the towers. And at that point, you know, it was still,

I think pretty quickly though, within a week or two, they tied it to him. Maybe even within a few days, tied it to bin Laden. I don't remember. Do you? I don't remember when it got tied in. I mean,

I remember the second plane hitting, and it was like, then it was real obvious. Yeah. And I also remember hearing, because I was not drawn to the TV, and I was actually going to college at the University of San Diego,

and I show up there, and I'm kind of listening to radio, and there's some little something, you know, they're saying, there's some news break, oh, there's been a plane's hit the World Trade Center. I don't, you know,

I figure a Cessna, you know what I mean? Like I just didn't, they didn't make it sound like what it, as big as it was. And so I'm going to class. I just turn off the radio, go to class. Like I thought it was just Cessna hit the tower and get done with class. And I go to, I actually go train Jiu-Jitsu. And when I get to Jiu-Jitsu, they're like, no one at Jiu-Jitsu watches TV. That's just like not happening.

And I get to my J-Jitsu Academy and everyone's watching TV and I'm like, what is going on? And sure enough, the second tower had been hit. And yeah, next thing you know, I'm calling my detail or trying to figure out how I can get back to a SEAL team. Well, much later in the whole, in the conflicts, more all teams are getting involved. I think in that first, even that first call it 3 to 5, 6 period, 03, or I'm sorry, 01 to maybe 4 or 5. There was small amounts of guys going out, especially once that racks popped up too. Then it's like all the teams We're getting a lot of action

Yeah So in O three I went to Iraq And in O4 My whole team showed up So I had one platoon in Iraq Yeah In 03

Yep And then in O four I was at team seven And then And then the whole team showed up Yep And it was like then That was it

From then on The teams rotated through And that was like In the beginning When it was just Afghanistan that definitely wasn't the case. Oh yeah, definitely not. Yeah.

Definitely not because it was a rapid deployment. What period is this? So most of the Battle Romadi that we talk about in that book is 2006. Okay, 2006 from April until October 2006. Okay. And so I, we were, we were anyways over there with guys, I don't even know, were you over there at that time? Were you and I rock at that time? I was back.

I was not deployed. Okay. Yep. So you're, we kind of already talked about the fact that you were in Afghanistan doing missions and you're, you're feeling good on the patrol in, you're feeling okay on the patrol out, but maybe on target you're feeling like maybe a little bit of lightweight. Yeah, it's interesting. So I'm doing a lot of training right now with, we're working with General Donahue.

He's a three star in charge of 18th Airborne Corps. 18th Airborne Corps is hundreds of thousands. It's massive. And he's tasked us with, he was in charge of 82nd Airborne before this post, 80 second airborne. He's tasked us to do CrossFit training with third infantry, third ID in Fort Stewart. So we're conducting some training with their soldiers out there. And where I'm tying this into or why I brought that up is because same thing with here. He said he was like training for an athletic contest.

and even you reference to, and you hear a lot of the strength and conditioning coaches, talk about how our training should be more like athletes and professional athletes in general. It's actually fascinating because as I've thought about it, it's athletes and professional athletes specifically. The demands of their sport and their job are so clearly defined. I think we need to have a mental reset where no, we need to train like combat, warriors and we need to be proud of that and we need to be proud that it's different than being a professional athlete because what we're training for you have no idea what you're up against and and in this effort with the army hearing some of the other fitness specialists or fitness professionals

and other soldiers talk about training like a professional athlete or training like an athlete it's it's actually the wrong perspective you should train like the combat warrior or soldier that you are and be proud of that and that is a very different demand and requires very different skill sets than the clearly defined, I mean, even you take a fighter where they have great conditioning and they're great athletes, they're pro athletes, some of them, what they have to train for is in a box. They understand three minute rounds or five minute rounds, one minute rest, and within that they have to be incredibly capable, obviously, but they don't need to train for five hours or they don't need to train for 48 hours out there.

The demands of a soldier, the demands of a warrior are everything and anything. Yep. It could be everything from a 13 kilometer patrol one day, rest for the day, another 10 kilometers the next night. You get on a target somewhere. Then you've got to kick open a door. Then you've got to haul something. Then you've got to grapple with someone. Then you've got to lift that person into a V.

Like there's such a unlimited variation that you can. come up against that you really do have to train and prepare for that even though it's funny as I have one of my training partners a guy named Miha he's a you know really good jiu jitzu blackbelt and for we I've been training with him for the last six months or so and we have been training the entire time with five minute rounds that's just like our standard you know you get to want to roll with a bunch of different people so we do the five minute rounds and all good and we went on a trip we want to we want a trip and all of a sudden it's just like our own a bunch just me and him and we were doing no time limit rounds,

just like we're training two submission. And he mentioned it. He got done, he's like, it's a lot different when we're going with no time limit. And I was like, I hadn't really thought about it, but I was like, oh yeah, there's a lot of, you know, all of a sudden it's not, the explosiveness is down, the endurance is up,

like it's a different strategy, it's different tactics and it's different even from a physical conditioning, perspective. So then you take, that's just one element of combat. Now you take that and multiply at times the infinite different things that you can face and you realize, man, you got to, you got to condition yourself. Like you said, it's not a sport.

Yeah. A sport has rules. Yep. And there's got to be a mentality change and shift and a lot of the leaderships and soldiers who kind of say that because it's easy to default to that. And it's easy to think, oh, we need this guy who taught the Dallas, Cowboys or the strength and conditioning coach from there. Like, yeah, those guys are well educated.

They've trained professional athletes, but that doesn't translate necessarily to working with warriors. And that's something very special. I want to ask you this about striking because you brought it up in general or fighting, I should say. I'm a big believer that if I were to start someone from scratch now at this point to prepare for physical combat, I think striking is a good start to keep people away. and then actually before jiu-jitsu, I think learning judo

and the skills of judo trying to get people off and keep them away with prior to going to the ground actually creates a well-rounded, capable fighter. What do you guys think about that? Yeah, I heard some quote recently, and I actually covered on the podcast. I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was something along the lines of, if I have two hours to prepare you, Yep.

We're not even going to talk about grappling. Yeah. If I have two weeks to prepare you, I'm going to start to address it. If I have two years to prepare you, that's where I'm going to start. Okay. Because it does take a lot longer to learn. And, you know, I always recommend if you're going to commit to something and you're going to train, you should start with Jiu-Jitsu. The reason is because if we're in a striking combat, if we're in a fight and you box and

I didn't, I can run away from you. Yeah. If you want to kick me and you're a kickboxer, I can run away from you. I don't have to actually fight you until you grab a hold of me. And then my kicking doesn't work, my punching doesn't work. What works is grappling, what works is jujitsu. And if you wrestled and I didn't wrestle, you're going to take me down. Like to this day, like I didn't wrestle in high school.

If somebody wrestled in high school, they're going to take me down. Yep. That's what's going to happen. Like you, they spent four years. Yeah. You know, three hours. It's kind of like the swimming thing. Yeah, it's kind of like the swimming thing.

So they're going to get the takedown. So what I have to get good at is I have to get good at Jiu-Jitsu. I have to get good at from a self-defense perspective, getting back off the ground, getting away from them, breaking contact. So that's how I would answer that question. Judo is great. Judo is great. The throws and judo are great.

They rely on the takedowns in wrestling comprehensively are more reliable. But if it's pure self-defense and you know a good, judo throw man that's really good people you're dealing with somebody that's got clothes on you can grab a hold of their clothes there's no grabbing clothes in wrestling that means also if I have to grab clothes and the clothes aren't there my my moves don't work if I'm a rest if I'm a judo player so being well-rounded it almost goes back to the same theory of fitness which is being well-rounded and having an open mind and being decent at a lot of of different things is probably going to be better than being an expert and one thing

and that was really proven out in the early UFC's which is this guy that's a pure boxer is losing to you know hoist Gracie this guy that's a pure taekwondo is losing to a wrestler you would see that these purists and then the pure wrestler is losing to the jiu jihitsu guy the jiu jitsu guy was the most rounded at the time yep and if you take just pure one sport or one technique or one art versus one other art, Jiu-Jitsu clearly was the winner. That's been proven.

So that being said, nowadays, you have to learn everything. And you wanna learn everything. So, you know, when we were dealing with combatives and the SEAL teams, one of the arguments that I got told about certain systems was, hey, you know, Jiu-Jitsu takes too long. to learn. MMA takes too long to learn. We only can train these guys for five days or seven days or two weeks, so we have to give them something that's going to help immediately. And I said, hey, how long have you been in the teams for? Nine years, 12 years, seven years. I go, hey, man, you don't have two weeks to learn how to fight and you can't learn how to fight in two weeks. You have a career to learn how to fight. So learn how to fight. And then you'll be much, much better off. And to some degree, combatives and the fight in general.

There's obviously a lot of skill that comes with it, but there's a warrior mindset and like a perspective that this guy in front of me is not going to stop me and I'm going to fucking go through him or do whatever it takes. And it might not express in the perfect technique and the perfect form, but there's an aggression that I saw that I think sometimes even trumps a lot of the traditional training. You think of some of the guys that we've fucking worked with, guys bigger than you, guys as big as you, that weren't as well trained as you in combatants, was still beasts and still able to muster up the fight and the aggression to take anyone out. Yeah, no, there's a level of just being aggressive that is going to be very, very helpful in a combat situation. Especially with a lot of the people we would come across, meaning probably not trained.

Exactly. Like it's, you come up against a 160 pound, you know, 43-year-old Iraqi dude. Like, you're 227-pound freaking seal that can bench 380. Like, and he's hostile. Dude, he's going to bring it. That, dude, that Iraqi doesn't, he's not going to cause much of a problem. Now, that being said, I saw with my own eyes guys. getting guys having problems controlling Iraqis.

Yep, yep. I saw that with my own eyes. I mean, one of the very first, like, times I was out in Iraq, 2003, and we were doing a vehicle interdiction, and we, we get this vehicle pulled over. And I'm the ground force commander, so I'm kind of like, you know, got my gun at high port. I'm kind of observing the whole situation, making sure everything's cool. And all of a sudden, I hear this guy calling for help, like a seal. And I'm like, this is weird.

So I walk over and sure enough, he's in a, he's in hand-to-hand combat with like a 15-year-old kid. And he's not winning. Yeah. And so I go over and it takes me two seconds to get the guy under control and get it solved. But he was panicked. The 15-year-old kid was panicked. He doesn't know what the hell is going on. So he's freaking out.

He's, do you get that pain like we used to hear pain compliance? Pain compliance also causes pain noncompliance because if you start torquing on my wrist or torquing on my shoulder, I get, I react to it. And my reaction might seem like hostility to you. So then you apply more pressure. That makes me fight even harder. And next thing, you know, we've escalated the situation. Yeah.

One of the good things about training combatives all the time, Jiu-Jitsu, boxing, moiety wrestling, all that stuff is that you are very used to physical confrontation. It happens to me every single day. Like an hour before you got here, I had a bunch of savage dudes trying to choke me, right? Grabbing my neck, grabbing my arm, trying to knock me down to the ground. But that's what I do every day.

And when you get used to that, it just becomes very, very natural, much like you already pointing out the example of someone that swims. Like this dude, no fins. And that guy passed pool comp easily and he's not freaking out. You take some kid from Iowa that didn't spend much time in the water, they get in the water, they freak out. Yep.

So doing this stuff regularly is extremely important. You know, that's another thing with like parachuting, right? I would use the comparison. Like, who does better? Well, if you're getting, if you get into sport parachuting, right? You get really good at sport parachuting. And then guess what? When you put on a ruck and a weapon, it's not like, oh, now you're all confused

because you got a ruck and a weapon on. No, those people that are sky gods. Yeah. And have 6,000 civilian jumps. They have 6,000 civilian jumps. You can put anything on them. And they know how to handle it. They make it happen.

It's not like they go, oh, ha, no. Same thing with. Well, same thing with sport shooting. I was about to say. And you know what? So since I got out of the teams, I became an avid shooter. And I shoot in a lot of different disciplines. And that's my passion now.

So I spend a lot of my off time competing in shooting sports. And in the teams, when I was, at least when I was coming up, and especially on the East Coast, there was no culture for pursuing the shooting sports outside of being a team guy and the training that we did. The Army guys, some of the Army guys I saw, they actually had a pretty good culture of competing outside of work in some of these civilian competitions. And to this day, they still do.

I've actually recently worked with guys from Juan and a few other teams down here in trying to help them expose them more to the civilian competition world because if you're shooting civilian competitions, you are way better than everyone else who's shooting just in the teams. And I think that our operators aren't fighting enough. Like you said, they're not making that a premium and they're not shooting enough. And those two things pursuing it. But it's also like, it's so easy to say from the outside, but it's also like, hey, our time is so precious and asking someone to shoot on the weekend, you know, they're taking away from an already really, or taking their time away from their family with an already really busy schedule. But because when I first got out,

I mean, I accomplished a lot in the military. I've worked with some of the best units. I was a good shooter. And then I went and shot some civilian competitions. And I failed, I mean, I finished like at the very bottom. And I saw how slow I was. So my eyes were opened. And I'm a huge believer, it's just like the sport parachuting aspect. Right. Right. Like you pursue that stuff a little bit on the side and you're going to make yourself a much better warrior and prepared for combat. Yeah, like you are a lead climber. Yeah, exactly. So you're a lead climber. When you're out climbing L cap, are you wearing all your gear for combat? No, but when you're now in combat and you got your gear on and you have to figure

out some kind of a problem, you're going to be infinitely better. And some people used to say, we're going to get bad habits. Do you remember that? That was one of the things you're going to get bad habits. going to get bad habits. And I was like, man, if you're that good at civilian shooting, those bad habits that you have are just going to be nothing. They're going to be, they're going to be good. I think we, and actually, it's interesting. I think you learn skills to apply to different scenarios, meaning what can be called a bad habit. Well, in the sport, let's say you're drawing from the side and you're engaging and then you're holstering without sweeping left and right and that would be considered a bad habit when you get to the environment or the

training environment with the seal teams where you have to us look left and right you'll know to do that yeah like you're smart enough and trained enough to adapt to different situations with different skill sets from the same realm yeah meaning there's a lot of different techniques it's like it's like well to go back to the climbing stuff too for ascending a rope there's um people would say okay so you use this prusick knot and then you tie here and you create this assistant and you ascend a line. And I would, I would, I learned early on, don't learn the knot, learn the system. Learn, okay, you need a friction knot here.

Not necessarily a Proustic. There's probably five different friction knots you can apply to this scenario. So even to these days, and the same is probably same of Jiu-Jitsu. There's a lot of different ways to tackle a single problem. Obviously in the beginning, it might make sense to teach one, but then you have to educate conceptually, I need to build a tool. box in leadership too same sort of principle and so this is sort of the attitude that opened your mind to CrossFit absolutely and for me again I was watching an old clip that we recorded on this

podcast a long time about about CrossFit somebody had asked me like what do you think of CrossFit and I actually compared oddly enough I actually compared CrossFit with the Gracie family because if the Gracie family didn't exist, we would not have the UFC. We would not have mixed martial arts. We would not have this incredible progress and open-mindedness that has now become the core belief inside of mixed martial arts. Anyone that's a mixed martial artist right now, which pretty much if you train martial arts now, you're a mixed martial artist. your premise is there's going to be new things that work. There's going to be some things that don't work.

If something works, it's good. If it doesn't work, it's bad. If it doesn't work, we don't throw it away, but we definitely are going to consider what the benefits are and when is the appropriate time for it. But the key component being my mind is open to what is happening. I looked at, you know, CrossFit. Now, I was an odd person that had always kind of been into strong man, Olympic lifting.

I never had an Olympic lifting coach. I wish I would have. They didn't exist. When I, you know, there's a magazine called Milo. I was a subscriber for Milo from like 1994, I think is when I have my first copies.

I still have them. And in there, they had Olympic lifting. They had strong men. They had power lifting. They had those things in there. And so I knew about them, but I,

like me doing a clean and jerk, you know, was an embarrassment to the world of technique. But I knew about it. I knew about it. No, there wasn't a place to learn clean and jerk in San Diego. There wasn't a limped.

There wasn't bumper plates in San Diego. There wasn't bumper plates at the seal teams. No. So, CrossFit came in. And actually, I remember, the reason I asked you the date when you were researching it, You were researching about it. So I was on deployment in 2003.

And remember I said the whole team showed up, including my commanding officer. And I'm pretty sure he's the guy that said to me, hey, have you heard of this stuff? And I was like, no. And I started looking at it. And I said to him, hey, news flash. If you pick up heavy stuff and you do it over and over again, you're going to get stronger and you're going to get in better shape. I acted like this was common sense. And it was a little bit of common sense to me,

but I don't want to give myself too much credit. I'm not trying to say, I'm definitely not trying to say I had that. But like, like, but let me say one piece you're not saying, but you understood inherently. And one of the reasons why Cross is so effective is the intensity aspect of it.

100%. And picking up heavy shit under intensity and CrossFit translates to the things being time. Sorry to interrupt, but I just wanted to say this. Interestingly enough, nowadays, especially with even some spec operators or some pro athletes, intensity is incredibly vulnerable. Intensity, you see it in fighting. I mean, you have to be, if you don't have

intensity, you're going to get choked out. But in training, people are now doing the movements, but taking the intensity out because they don't want to be exposed. They don't want to be seen training under duress or snot coming out screaming making you know shaking and no you can't scream anymore that's when you're really there is when there's no more noise to be made you got nothing left so so the intensity piece too is what you were talking about in the very beginning yep yeah and that so so so crossfit comes in so when did you when did you when did you so was 2003 2004 that's when you actually started doing it so probably four five I was doing it And then in six or seven, six, I was in Monterey and started working out with, or I knew CrossFit was based out of Santa Cruz.

And so I started going over there, met Glassman, started, introduced myself to him and just started training with them. Were you going to school in Monterey? Yeah, D.L.I. Oh, okay, right on. Yep. And so that's how I, that's how I was connected to Glassman. And he'd always been super welcoming of military guys, especially at that time. And so he found out I was in the Navy, let me train there for free, started inviting me to events, started...

Was this the actual Santa Cruz gym? Yes. Yep. That actual original gym started, offered me a spot at a level one seminar. I went to the level one seminar with a few other seals. Then he asked for me to attend some and help out. And so I started going to them and helping out as an instructor. And what's interesting at this point, so this is 6-7,

there were a handful of other team guys that were from West Coast that were in that same Glassman Circle kind of working with him and part of his little crew, I'll say. And this is 06, 07? Yeah. And so 06 for sure. And I... So my...

I'm pretty sure. My assistant platoon commander, who was with me, when my CO said, like, hey, what do you think of this stuff? And I was like, hey, lift stuff, go hard. You're going to get in better shape. Like, he was my workout buddy. We were doing all kinds of stuff. Like, he was doing the 20 rep squats with me.

Like, he's a freaking, you know, a badass athlete. And we were getting after it. And then when we got back, he, I think he went to Buds as an instructor. And so that's why he had time to go and start to getting done. engaged with CrossFit. Well, we ended up having lunch maybe in eight or nine with Glassman and Nicole Carroll. Okay. So we had lunch at Coronado Brewing Company.

Okay. And I think that's the first time I met you. And I'd known of you. I was still an instructor at that point. And yeah, the four of us sat down. I remember that lunch for some reason. I don't remember what we talked about, but we hung out. Yeah.

Yep. And that's why, so I was going to ask you this. So I went to a level one certification for the teams. Yep. I think it might have been the first one that you guys put on. It was pre me for sure. Okay. So I was, Greg, they were doing seminars before I was coming around.

Got it. Yeah. So they were doing those level ones before I was coming around. And then I got involved. And what's interesting in that, the life lesson and the thing I talked to people about from my experience in my engagement with CrossFit at that stage, I'd accomplished a lot in the military. I had, you know, done a full spectrum of things. I was at the top of the tip of the spear, call it for who we were. And here I was kind of introduced to a new community, introduced to a new almost opportunity, job opportunity. And there was a couple of different paths to go. One was sitting there and being like, well, I'm a seal. I've done this. I'm good. like ramp me up to the front of the line and or just fucking buckling down and getting to work.

And I took this perspective of everything I, and I tell guys this now, everything you did in the past is significant and it's foundational and it's, it's very, it's why you are who you are and it's taking you to multiple levels. But once, and it'll open a lot of doors for you. But once those doors are opened, you have. have got to start over. You've got to prove value and show who you are here and now and stop leaning on the past, stop living in the past. And so that's kind of was my way of operating when I first got involved in CrossFit. I was fucking taking the trash out. And I was setting up chairs. And here

I was. I'd been in the Navy for nine, ten years at that point. And again, I've accomplished an immense amount of things where I could be proud of everything and not take trash out ever again or not set up chairs. But I started from the bottom and just went in with like, okay, I'm the new guy. I'm a new guy again. And that attitude was really for me in getting through and call it advancing and getting more opportunities with CrossFit was significant. And it was very powerful and and it's something that I like to tell guys, hey man, just be super humble, regardless of what you've done in the past. Two things. Number one, my first seminar. I feel like I kind of knew what was up a little bit. I was heads up. So kind of was talking to

me like, hey, no, I remember had the old school PVC homemade rings. Yeah. Rings. Yep. And he goes, he's like, oh, you got to try a muscle up. And I was like, what is it? He goes, oh, it's like this. And I remember thinking to myself, I got to do this right. Like, it's just me and him. Me and him are hanging out.

And the first try, got it. And I was like, totally bad technique. But what I realized was like, oh, there's, there's things going on here. So I remember I was at that level one thing. Was it in Ramona? No, it was at the teams. Okay. Okay.

They did one for you there. Yep. Yep. Yep. So. What year? I don't know. No.

Okay. It's around this time frame. It's around when... I might have been involved with that one. Yeah. It might have been... It seems like maybe that's why we were at lunch. Yeah.

Yeah, that might have been... Because we did a few seminars at the teams there. Yeah. By the time I was coming around. Yeah. So I remember thinking, this is a trick. Not in a bad way, but I remember at the first UFC was 1993. I already knew Jiu-Jitsu.

I knew Hoyst Grace who was going to win that thing. They started saying... and like, hey, who wants to do, you know, whatever? Who thinks they can lift 95 pounds? It's like, I see a couple of team guys raising their hand. I'm like, this is a setup, dude. You're getting set up. Who wants to go against the coal with this?

And I'm like, dude, you guys are getting set up. You guys are getting smoke. You're going to get crushed right now. So I kind of knew what was up. I knew to keep my freaking mouse shut. Because if you don't train in those modalities, you're going to be, you're going to get caught totally off guard. Well, and a lot of the movements, especially when they put guys up against Nicole,

specifically the overhead squat, the flexibility demand, they're not there for a lot of guys. Unless you've been training like this, unless you're Olympic weight lifting and or cross-fitting, your shoulder mobility probably isn't there to have the bar in an optimal position

to do high reps with... To do 27 reps. Exactly. And while you're face to face with Nicole. Yep. Which is what you're getting yourself into. Yep. And this was, honestly,

it was like the first, UFC because people just didn't know people just didn't know and they were like oh I got that can squat 380 what this girl's gonna beat me no way give me that ball 95 pounds are you kidding me yeah and I was like dude this is you're about to get choked out physically uh in the in the physical realm but but what what an eye opener right what an eye opener to say oh there's a little bit of a there's more to this than just how much can you squat you know what's your shoulder mobility what your hip mobility what your ankle mobility where are you at and do you have it and by the way if you can't do that what else can't you do where else are you falling short and a muscle up is another great example

like isn't it a very important skill to be able to take yourself your body weight and pull yourself up not just up to the bar but above the bar yeah that seems like it doesn't take a genius to go that It seems like it might be a really good skill to have. I should be able to do that. And there's some technique to it. And there's some strength to it. And there's some flexibility to it. And I don't have those things.

And I better figure them out right now. Because I'll tell you what, I did that one, well, the first time I ever did a muscle up, I did one. Thank God, I didn't get asked to do another one because who knows what would have happened. So that's what I saw. So as you go up to Santa Cruz and you're just getting annihilated in workouts,

you know, and you're just thinking, what is going on. How do I move forward? Well, they got me actually with Nicole early on. One of my first sessions ever, yeah, they got me. They got me. One of my first sessions ever at the CrossFit Santa Cruz, I went to an evening class and they get us in a big circle and they're warming us up.

And they warmed us up for the push jerk. And I didn't have, I had been doing CrossFit now for probably eight or nine months, but I didn't, never coached. And so still doing a lot of these movements poorly. And they're like, all right, now we're going to break. break up into groups and we're going to do this for, I think it was a one rep max load. And so they had four platforms out in the gym. It's a small gym.

And they go, okay, this platform is going to have the ladies. They're going to gravitate towards that group. This platform's going to have the stronger ladies of the class. This platform's going to have the men. This platform's going to have the stronger men. And I go, okay, cool. I start walking over to the stronger men platform. And the guy goes, no, no, no, you're going to go to this fifth platform.

That was, no one was at yet. And I was like, don't you think I should lift with the dudes? And they're like, no, no, no, go to this platform. And then I see, and then I see this 130-pound-year-old female putting a bar on there, and she's, like, tiny. And I go, hey, man, I don't know about this. I shouldn't be lifting with a female. I should be lifting with the guys. And the trainers like, no, no, no, lift with her.

I'm like, all right, maybe they just want, you know, her to have someone to show her how it's done. And so we start barbell, warm up a couple reps. The 25s go on, do some at 95s. Then the 45, 45's going on it, we're 135. I look around and like all of the other groups, the men, one group of men are at 145, the other's not, the women are not even close to that. And we're knocking out some reps at 135. And then she's adding more weight and more weight.

And her form is impeccable the entire time. We get to 165, 175. And again, that's not a lot, but I'm not a big guy. And at that time I was new to these movements. I hit whatever, 175. And I'm like, oh, that was stuff. And then she hits it, no problem. And I'm like, ah, I was like, this was a fucking setup.

And then we go to 185 and I miss it. And she gets under it and nails it. And we didn't talk to each other a single moment. And was this Nicole? Yeah, this was the same. The one they set up. You're getting shut down. Yeah.

And she crushed me. And I left that gym calling guys back on the East Coast saying, I fucking should turn in my trident. I just got destroyed by a, by a female on a barbell movement. movement, but that's CrossFit. And just like Jiu-Jitsu, just like Jiu-Jitsu, there's people, they get choked out by the 150-pound girl, and they never come back. And their ego is so destroyed that they think, oh, this is a, if this was a real fight,

I would have done this. And you think, you know, well, if this was a real situation, I'd just pick her up and throw her to the ground. Instead of going, damn, I got some weaknesses I need to work on. And that's the difference. It's a very, it's a humbling experience, just like. Jiu-Jitsu is a humbling experience. CrossFit is a very humbling experience. And you'll see people doing movements that they've that they've trained in. Yeah. That's why they it's also similar to

jiu-jitsu is like, oh, the reason the 150-pound woman choked you out isn't because she's a better human being than you. It's because she's trained for that. Yeah. The reason that Nicole beat you in clean and press or whatever it was movement you were doing isn't because she's a better human being than you. It's because she's trained in it. Well, you know, to that same note, I would hear guys talking about the shooting stuff again. Like, we'd hire external experts, shooting experts to work with us. And like, oh, those guys shoot all the time. That's why they're good.

Exactly. But, like, yeah, like, that's not an insult. Like, people would say it as an insult. Like, he shoots all the time, so he's really good. Well, yes, you guys roll all the time, so you're really good. That's part of being really good. I tapped a guy out one time who was a team. team guy and I was bigger than him and stronger than him and I tap him out and he goes you never would have got that if you weren't so strong and I said that's why I lift motherfucker

I also wanted to say this like you said it a while ago you were talking about the fact that we don't shoot enough they shoot a lot more now in the teams they're doing way better and they're doing more combatants way more good it across the board they're just going to be better they're going to be better seals than we were doing we were because they're just they got it they got it on tap the shooting and the fitness um less so with the combatives but you might you might argue with this or you might have an answer that i'm not thinking of but it needs to be measured and what i mean by the standards like shooting there needs to be timed and everything if you're unless and same with fitness unless you're putting it out there and competing and actually okay what's your draw from a holster with retention if you guys are just going through the motions and not actually measuring it and pushing it and trying to get faster, it's still great, right?

Don't get me wrong, but that's the thing that takes it to the next level. Same thing with CrossFit. The fittest guys and the fittest people are doing it under a stopwatch, and actually there's a ceiling for intensity that we're all capable of, and they're actually training there and pushing it and hitting on that ceiling, and you keep hitting it and you raise it. If you don't train with intensity and hit that ceiling at all, you're never going to raise that ceiling.

So the question then from that is back to the combatives part, How do you measure and how do you You do what the U.S. Army does. You have a massive combatives tournament. You have combatives tournaments on basis. You have people train And you can make it like, hey, you will compete in this And that way you know who's training and who's not training.

And I think that's a great way that they do that To get people to train Because if you're training, you're going to know. Yeah. If you're not training, you're going to get crushed. So it's very cool the way the Army sets that up. I don't know if the Marine Corps has those. I don't know why I'm looking at you echo,

but I don't know if the Marine Corps has those combative tournaments the way the Army does. The Army has legit combatant. Well, the Marine Corps has the Marine Corps. What's it called? McMap. And you advance through that system. So you get like belts in their system.

What do you think of that? I'm happy that people are training. I'm overjoyed that people are training. If you take a Marine that knows McMap compared to a Marine that doesn't, that Marine that knows McMap is going to win nine times out of 10, if not 99 times out of 100. So I'm glad that they're training.

You know, and look, belts to me and that kind of stuff, I've never really, I've never really been that super into them. I know why little kids, why it's cool, little kids like belts. You know, little kids want to get stripes on their belts and they want to get that next color belt. I get it. And adults too, you know, there's some adults that that, they get some goal accomplishment, right, which is fine.

So I think if it helps people train, good. But that's easy coming from the super. black belt over here. Easy for him to say at this point. I can say I never even when I wasn't a black belt. How long did it take you to get to black belt? 10 years. Damn. Hey, I respect the shit out of jiu-jitsu and their path towards excellence and how they give away they give belts or not give away how you earn a belt. Yeah. Because it takes a tremendous amount of effort and commitment and especially in the traditional martial arts. That's not there. I mean, you get people getting belts in Taekwondo in a few years. Yeah. When they're nine.

Yeah, exactly. Which is unfortunate. At this point, so when did you actually leave the Navy? What year was that? 09. And so I had been working for CrossFit for about three years at that point and an instructor at Buds. And that's where I had to make. Were you a Buds instructor or SQT instructor?

SQT. Okay. Yeah, but it was under Buds at that time. That's why I say that. I had to make a decision and stay in. again, if I was going to stay in, I was going to end up going back to be an operational, and I wouldn't have been able to do the work I was doing for CrossFit or get out and work full-time for CrossFit. And you got to understand at that point in 2009, CrossFit was already like

blowing up. Like the games had been around for three years. Our number of seminars were exploding, the number of affiliates were exploding. I was already becoming like a figure in the community. And so, and honestly, financially I was able to take care of my family much better if I pursued the CrossFit route and didn't do the Navy thing. So it was a tough decision. And I will say this about the time, being saying I don't talk a lot about stuff. I will acknowledge this story. Shortly before getting out, I called one of my old team leaders from the East Coast. And I said, hey, are you guys pumping out anytime soon? And he said, yeah, we are. I'm like, I want to come with you. And so I asked the leadership, I'm like, hey,

can I go on a little deployment? They said, yep. And so I hadn't signaled to the Navy or anyone at this point that I was getting out, but a few months before I got out, I was fortunate enough to push over with my old group and do a last appointment to Afghanistan. That was pretty fucking cool and it was unique because, and this is a unique piece that really nobody knows, I was overseas planning the CrossFit games and planning seminars for CrossFit from Afghanistan. From internet, we had hijacked from some local Brits. And so then I came, and it was honestly, again, I couldn't signal or tell anyone I was doing that because they probably would have not let me, they wouldn't have let me do that.

but I came back and was like, okay, now I'm done. Like I have it out of my system. You got it out of your system. Yeah. And I needed that one last touch point to know I could walk away from it. Now, 10 years later, no, 14 years later, I made the right decision, but sometimes I'm like, man, I wish I would have stayed in. And especially as the years have passed, I've really, like, appreciated what I did and who I worked with and wish I would have, done it longer, but the outcome would have never, that was the right choice at the right time.

I actually say Glassman saved my life because I do think, especially you know the deal, doing the stuff we do and the number of times you go overseas, it's ultimately becomes a numbers game. And so by giving me the opportunity to get out and do this, I feel like I do say that honestly, like he saved my life. But I loved it and I miss it. And again, as time has gone on, I really wish I would have stayed in longer. When I got fired a year and a half ago, two years ago, whenever it was, when I got fired, the first thing I did is I texted one of my buddies on the East Coast and said, hey, you guys need a shooter?

And he thought I was joking. I was actually kind of serious, but. Yeah, so timing-wise, I was looking at the history. In the year 2000, CrossFit was incorporated. In 2001, the first gym opened. And in 2005, there was 13 CrossFit gyms. Yeah, nuts. Victory, which is my gym.

We started our CrossFit affiliate in 2007. I want to find out what number we are. Oh, we can find that out for sure. Yeah. I mean, that's pretty good to go. And then there was probably top two or three hundred for sure. It might have been. And again, this is like probably right after we're doing these things.

Yeah. It was late 2007. we opened our doors opened here January 2nd 2008 but we had everything maybe higher than 200 yeah I think it is higher than 200 yeah by 2013 there's 8,000 gems there's over 10,000 gyms right now so so in 2009 this thing is blowing up crossfits totally blowing up you decide to get out and you're you what was your job well at that point I was running the seminar department, the training department, actually with Nicole Carroll, and I was running the CrossFit games. So I had created the CrossFit games. The first three games, seven, eight, and

nine were on the family ranch that I grew up on, the CrossFit Ranch. And they, after that, we ended up, 2010, we had to move them out because the county kicked us out. But so I was in charge of the games and in charge of the seminar department. Two of the, there was three large sectors or departments at the time of CrossFit. It was training, affiliates, and then the games. And so two of the three I was in charge of which, and again, that's a super unique

opportunity. And especially both of them, it's kind of like I just, a lot of the hard work I put in and a lot of, I laid the foundation to do that. I laid the foundation, worked hard and kind of, I want to say, um,

well, again, I think I mentioned, this earlier being a seal though I acknowledged and respect opened the door and opened the opportunity to be close to the leadership crew there and then once that happened I had to capitalize on it and essentially did yeah you know that's something I when we were talking about this earlier the the being a seal people people respect that yep and they say oh you were a seal that means you're a hard worker that means you're disciplined. That means you've been in pressure situations. I would more,

come come work for me. Yep. So that door was open. Now, all those things that I just said about being a seal, have varying degrees of being true, right? You might not necessarily be a hard worker. You might not necessarily be disciplined.

You might be a terrible leader. There's terrible leaders in the seal teams. There's people that have terrible judgment, and they were seals. So the door, there's a lot of doors that absolutely, get opened up, but once you get inside, you're going to have to prove yourself. And that goes back to what you said earlier.

Just being humble and working hard and keeping an open mind is going to be the way to be successful. If you think you can ride being a seal, the, what is it on the movie Elf? The Santa Claus meter? You know, not tracking me over here? No. The spirit meter for being a seal. only lasts so long and it burns out and people like hey you actually have a job

do you are you gonna be able to do this and if you can't you're not gonna go very far you obviously proved yourself you're working hard you end up running these two big portions of it and CrossFit starts to go Richter now with popularity comes heat-seeking missiles from all directions and so CrossFit was the target of a lot of criticism like early on and right away and what's crazy about that people ask me like how I deal with some of the stuff now at this point some of the public stuff and I'm like man I've been dealing with this for over 15 years and like early eight nine time frame like you're already seeing personal I'm already seeing personal attacks I'm already seeing people online trashing and destroying

crossfit trashing and destroying me and then as it just got larger that just scaled up So it just scaled. You know, I find that a lot of times when people are being critical of things, my general attitude is to say, well, they're probably right about something here. Like if somebody says that I, like, am doing something that doesn't seem to make sense, my initial reaction isn't, no, they're wrong. My initial reaction, okay, well, what am I doing? That's not making sense.

And it seems like that attitude is a good attitude to have, as opposed to getting super defensive and saying no I'm actually perfect and why are you questioning everything that I do. Do people come at you at all? They're all afraid of you. It's a odd thing. No, I think it's because I would say I'm more, I think because I am open-minded about things that I'm probably not the funest target to attack. You know, if you say I'm not a great seal, I'd be like, yeah,

I definitely wish I was a better seal. If you say I'm not that good at Jiu-Jitsu, I would say, yeah, I definitely am not that good of Jiu-Jitsu. If you say I'm not that strong, I'd say I'm certainly not that strong. If you say I'm not that smart, I'd say, you're right. I wish I was smarter. So it's probably not that fun to come at me because I don't, you're probably right. If you're finding fault with me, I'm going to say you're, in fact, you are right.

So when people have negative things to say about me, they're probably, they are correct. and I nod my head and think about how I can get better. And I think that, you know, is a positive thing to do. And it helps to not feel, you know, like you're being ripped apart when I just feel like I'm getting good constructive criticism from the world sometimes, which is okay. And I think, you know, some of the criticisms of CrossFit along the way, I've been like, yeah, if you parse that out, I agree. So if someone's like, hey, you can get hurt if you don't learn to do Olympic lifts well and then you do them while you're very fatigued, you can get hurt. Absolutely. That's correct.

You know, if you learn to do them correctly and you, you know, a huge part of this is just like jiu jitsu. If your ego is driving you, look, if your ego is driving you, okay, cool. Your ego should make you not want to tap out in jiu jihitsu. Your ego should want to get two more reps. Your ego should want to, you know, beat the time. But just like in the SEAL teams, your ego should say, hey, I want Arplatoon to be the best. I want to win this shooting drill. But if your ego starts driving you to a point where you're making bad decisions, now it becomes a problem.

Just like if your ego, you know, you get your arm broken or your shoulder torn apart because you didn't tap in Jiu-Jitsu, that's not beneficial. If your ego won't say, you know what, my form is falling apart. part right now and I need to scale this weight. You're going to get hurt. If your ego is, you know, saying, oh, you know, I'm competing against Dave on the pistol right now. And I can see that his, he could do this, he could make this movement a little smoother on his, on his holster, but I'm not going to tell him. So now I'm hurting my team so I can win. Like, those are terrible things. So I think as I see and as I saw, because I, again, I mean, we've had a CrossFit affiliate here since 2007.

As I saw those criticisms, I'd say, yes, that's correct. Here's what we need to do to watch out for that. Oh, the whole idea, again, this is one of the things, just like Gracie Jujitsu, brought a lot of things to martial arts, the ideal of scalable workouts. I never heard of that. We didn't hear about that. In the SEAL teams, I never heard about scale. Look, hey, if you were going to deadlift and you couldn't deadlift as much as me,

sure, you're going to deadlift less weight, but it wasn't a thing. Yeah. It wasn't a thing. So to say, oh, yeah, if you think you're going to go and you're going to clean and jerk 135, 30 times for time, and that's 70% of your max clean and jerk, you're not being smart. Yeah. And you need to put your ego in check. Most new people should not do 30 clean and jerks at 135 for time. But could they do 30 clean and jerks with an empty PVC pipe, picking up a stick, bring it to their shoulder and going overhead, probably and completely safely. And so definitely the scaling aspect. And what people forget about a lot in the criticism of the danger of CrossFit, our core

charter we talk about in our course is mechanics, consistency, and then intensity. And with mechanics, it's about learning how to do the movement, learn how to do it correctly. And that journey probably isn't a 15-minute session at your first session. That journey can be a couple months. Mechanic, consistent, do it well, do it well over and over. And then after your mechanics are consistently well, good, then you can add intensity and then you go for time. But that's been our charter from Greg wrote that, scripted that early on.

And that's what we teach, often ignored and often ignored in the expression of it. What I mean by that is like sometimes trainers get people and it's easy just to like go. And like here. but we've got to really, it's so effective because it's so complex. And what I mean by that, these movements, these complex movements, there's a lot of bang for your buck, and there's a lot of respect that needs to come with that. And you need to give them the intention that they deserve with training and education on how to do them prior to adding the intensity piece.

Because, yeah, intensity and poor technique, intensity being going fast and high reps, for example, our recipe for disaster. On the 30 clean and jerks at 135, the opposite end of the spectrum, now there's guys that'll do 30 clean and jerks at 225. You know? Salute. Unheard of.

Like, just seeing the progression and the whole full spectrum of it. Yeah. And, you know, the same thing. There was a lot of criticism around like rabdo. Yep. And you can get rabdo. I don't know if I've ever had it.

I don't actually think I've ever had it. I have not either. I think, you know, again, the probably, in my opinion, one of the primary causes of Rhabdo would be ego. Because if I'm trying to hang with you and I haven't worked out for the last four months or six months or maybe two years and you're doing a, you're doing a heavy fran and I'm like, I can actually do it. You know, because I still have some muscle memory. And so now I push myself so hard. I'm not conditioned for it. And that's when we end up with issues.

Again, ego. And look, as instructor cadre, you got to watch out for that stuff for all these things. You know, the instructor cadre is responsible for saying it, putting egos in check. Yes. You know, for saying, hey, you know, we have to do this in juditsu. I remember this is with kids training kids. I would be very, I would always keep close monitor on kids. kids don't want to tap like their egos go crazy and another kid's just like oh they're not tapping

cool i'm going and so i would stop for them and it's like you have to have that mentality with adults too how when kids training kids how old would the kids are the kids that are training the kids no no they're training against kids i'm sorry i was like i didn't realize yeah i see what you're saying yeah they're just they're just having matches they're not they're not instructors so it seems like if you if you want to focus on the the criticisms and if someone's hearing about CrossFit and they want to Google like what's bad about CrossFit, cool. You can find what's bad about CrossFit. And if you don't say what are the mitigating approaches that handle these issues, then you won't know about them.

So I think it's a the education of what's happening right now is getting people educated where they're like, okay, I understand what's going on, understand what the limitations are, I understand what guardrails need to be put in place to mitigate these things from happening. We need to do a much better job CrossFit does at this point of educating society on the safety and efficacy of the program in general. And we need to all the safety protocols and all the path through even to this intensity should be common knowledge to anyone interested in this style of training that like, yeah, CrossFit, mechanics, consistency, intensity, crossFit, they don't recommend that you go 100% when you first walk in there. They recommend you check your ego. For the

benefit of our affiliate owners and our gym owners to get more people into the gyms, our job, CrossFit HQ call it, we need to be telling the world all of these things on a regular basis. I truly believe that. We're not, I would say, doing a great job of it right now. I hope to work with our team to get us to a better spot where we are letting the world, everyone know how safe it is and how good the trainers are. And we have to do a better job of making the trainers better. We have to help the affiliates become better because we have to let the world know

that it's a great training option because it really is. And it's for anyone and everyone. I don't want to sound like I'm trying to pitch it. I've just lived it for the last 20 years. But I am because it's the most effective training protocol out there. And one of the things we've done is we've de-missive. justified training. And what I mean by that is this notion of training being for these, call it the NSCA coaches and these Olympic weightlifting coaches that are that are on a pedestal.

Like these movements are complex, but they're accessible to all of us. You can do them, I can do them, he can do them, our kids can do them, they just need to be trained in them, and they just need to have proper instruction. The funny thing is I was telling this to one of the captains I met with recently in Fort Stewart, actually in Fort Bragg. I said the deadlift, the squat, the clean injure, the snatch for soldiers should be just like how to break down your M4. And what I mean by that is the points of performance for all of those movements they should learn through their training, at every stage of training, how to identify good movement and how to perform good movement and how to correct good movement, just like they learn how to break down and service their M4. Now, that's a foundational

knowledge they should have. And then you have experts, you have strength and conditioning coaches, just like you have armors, that when you need a little more help or you want to need more knowledge, you take your gun to the armor. If you want to learn more about programming or learn more about movement, you go to the strengthening coach. So there's a world where we need to educate the soldiers more on these movements and that plays back out to just this general concept of the general public these are things that everyone should be doing and they're not hard to hard to learn or hard to do once you have good instruction and coaches now crossfit the last I guess it's been two years you've mentioned a couple times you got fired there was a like I guess an entire paradigm shift inside a

CrossFit, Greg Glassman, who founded it. He's like a, I've met him before. I don't, I can't even say I really know him. I mean, I, but, you know, just knowing about him, he was kind of like this libertarian to the core kind of guy, spoke his mind to a fault, I would say, and the reason I say that, because some people like, oh, you can't do that. You should speak your mind. Well, if you speak your mind and, you speak your mind, and, you know, it's, you speak your mind, it creates an outcome that you didn't really want, then maybe speaking your mind you could have done a better job. But, you know, that kind of stuff got him into trouble. Yep.

Absolutely. CrossFit at some point left social media completely. And just he seemed like he became increasingly like outspoken about political issues and about things that, you know, honestly. I was looking through some of the stuff that he would say and I was like, this is, you know, I like to talk about simple, clear, concise communication that people understand. It wasn't always, right? It was always stuff like, what does that actually mean? What are we trying to say here?

It ended up not working out good for him. Yes. Greg had a way of communicating that, where you talk about simple, clean, clear communication, Greg had a way, I said that wrong, didn't I? Simple clear concise, yeah. Simple, clear, concise. Greg had a way of not doing simple, clear, concise communication by design, kind of to let, kind of make you think and go,

what did he just say and have to peel layers back? Because he was so intelligent, and he's a fucking mad scientist, genius. He did that deliberately, and yes, kind of at the end of the day, that did catch up with him. because he, in the tweet, what he said was definitely misunderstood by what his intent was with it, and it got him in a lot of trouble. And a lot of his concepts were, he had to dive in a layer deeper to really understand what he's trying to say. But he didn't want to dumb his talk down.

He wanted to elevate his speech and let people kind of come up and figure it out. And one approach, I'm not going to say it was right or wrong, but that's the way he, he liked to do it. He liked to communicate. So he communicates himself out of a job, kind of. You actually became CEO for, what, a month? Something like that. Yeah, like a month and a half. At that point, he had not sold the company.

And so he did the tweet, gotten a lot of trouble over that. and then ended up stepping back, still own the company, put me in as CEO. And then there was some other stuff that started coming out and more attention was drawn to him. They piled on him and then there was a lot more pressure to sell. There's actually a phase where I think had this second round of attacks not come at him, had it just been the original tweet, that he would have had a better chance, call it surviving as owner with me as CEO and then getting out on the other side. But the second barrage of call it attacks really just got him to a place where like,

okay, I'm going to sell this thing. And he put a number out there internally, or not even to the team, but amongst himself and his inner team. And someone met it. And so he ended up selling the company. And when he sold it, the team who bought it, the guy who led the effort to buy the team was like, hey, I'm putting myself in a CEO. I'm like, yeah, I get it, dude. He just bought the company. So like, I had no, once I knew there was talk of selling going on, I had no, like, aspirations to fight for the position or to like, I'm going to stay here regardless because I'm a realist. I knew what that represented. So that guy comes in, this company buys the company. Company buys CrossFit. They put in this new CEO.

he didn't last that long either, right? I mean, how long was he there for? Maybe a year and a half, if that. He, I don't remember the exact timeline, but he ended up firing me, and then shortly after that, he left, and then shortly after that, I came back. And, you know, for me, a lot of this drama stuff,

this is, for lack of a better word, drama, I know it's your life, right? I hate to just like paint it as like, oh, it's just a bunch of drama. And it is a bunch of drama. Like, that's what it is. It's freaking drama. And the whole time I was kind of like looking at it thinking it's a lot of drama, but still kind of, because again, I'm sitting here with a CrossFit gym that I've had for 15 years. It's like, where is this going?

Yeah. And, you know, I'm not a very, I don't, I don't overreact to things. I kind of let things play out and see what's going to happen. And finally, you know, as this new CEO came on board, Don, how do you say his last name? Fall? Fall. Fall comes on board. He actually went to the Naval Academy with Laif who wrote this book with me and another book with

me. And he was in the Marine Corps. He worked in a bunch of like, you know, tech companies is a legit, like business guy with military background, with leadership experience. and that kind of gets it to where it is now. Like right now, it seems as though, honestly, for the most I've seen. And I think, you know, when you talk about Glassman,

I think his approach, like you talk about his approach with, like, communications, he also had a weird approach with leadership, you know, like, it was like, hey, we're going to, like, almost, again, I said libertarian, but that was also applied to, to leadership. Like, oh, if you're good, you're do good and your gym will do good. And if you're not, then your gym will fail.

And that's the way to, and it will, you know, the brand will live on because the bad people will fail and the good people. When maybe there's a better way to do those things like you're talking about. Like someone's a shitty trainer. Yep. We shouldn't let him have a gym.

If the gym is not have a certain standard, we shouldn't let it be there. But he didn't do that. Yeah. So now, so to me, I was always kind of, you know, again, I've got my own gym here. I'm doing my thing, which is kind of also in line with that attitude. Like, hey, we're not following your protocol.

Like, I got my own gym. Like, we're going to do it how we're going to do it. So I was kind of okay with that, not thinking about the fact that if you've got someone that's a knucklehead running a gym, it can be problematic, giving the brand a bad name. But that was his attitude. I would say now, I think, uh, it is a high point for me from my vision of CrossFit over the last however many years it's been and 15 years for me is that right there's been 25 it's been a long time that i've been around yeah i guess it's 15 or 16 years this is the time it seems

like the clearest vision the best quality the unified goals it seems like things are as good as they have ever been for crossfit right now i i believe things are really good for crossfit right now. Don Fall was a great hire by the board. A great decision in terms of just someone who their background specifically, you know, the Navy time, or I'm sorry, the Naval Academy, and then the Marine Corps time, and then what he did after that in the Silicon Valley, he checked a lot of boxes. And he, what I mean by that is like, here's someone that definitely can relate to a lot of the staff, a lot of the people like myself who have military backgrounds, a lot of our community is you look at our roots and our history. It kind of is this counterculture

seal-like movement in the beginning that grew to much more than that. But having someone with his experience in this role showed an awareness and appreciation for where we've been and who we are that is powerful. And since he's been here, yeah, he's done a really great job in terms of bringing our team together, kind of galvanizing our mission and giving us clear vision. He is a much different leader than Greg. I would say Greg wasn't even a leader at times. He was a leader of a movement, but I mean, to be honest, he and I, we are good friends. We're still friends to this day, I talked to him on a regular basis. We had a complex relationship. We had a wild ride together just as friends and as business or as boss and employee. His style and my style or our style

of leadership was very different. And that caused problems at times. And even some of the crazy things he did in the past with like the social media and some of those things you talked about. You know, like to say that the team was on board or to say that there were things that we were doing as a company or things that he was saying as a company that we were supporting and on board with and bought in on. I would be lying if I said that. I mean, he and he was the sole owner. And so people would always tell me that he's the sole owner so he can do whatever he wants.

That was true and he did. And the problem with that, too, is a lot of us, because it was such a public, it's not your local construction company. You know what I mean? It's a global brand that represented a lot of employees, represents a lot of affiliates. And so the things he did at times was definitely in, let's call it, isolation of a lot of the team members being on board. Yeah, and when you mentioned the, like the SEAL teams, counterculture. the rebel nature, which is absolutely true. That's part of who we are.

But what I saw, and I'm sure you saw this too, the change and the professionalization of the SEAL teams as we grew and as the war continued and as we got bigger and as we had more people and as we had more visibility, we had to become more and more professional. Yep. And it seems like that's what the transition is happening now and has been going on for the last,

you know, six months to a year with CrossFit. And I'll tell you what, it's been awesome for me. You know, I was actually trying, because we have been talking with CrossFit and Jocko Fuel for like the last. I don't know. That's what I was trying to figure out. I don't know where it started. at some point there was

Well when I saw you at Bobby's Memorial Right You had mentioned that you guys were talking And then I dug in with our team And at that point it was early in the Early stages of development Yeah and

The connection was so natural Right like here we have Jock Fuel We make supplements to make you perform better We make protein We make energy drinks we make Like that's what we do And here I am

Had a CrossFit gym since 2007 like it it crossfit to me as I mentioned was something that was always trying to benefit the world and make people better and I've gotten a bunch of people to do crossfit over the years and to to try and make them better and jaco fuel is the same thing like we're here we are trying to help people optimize their performance in whatever realm that they're in and so you have this real obvious kind of unified attitude at both companies of like, hey, we got two companies that are trying to help people get better. And I thought that was cool.

And again, I'm not exactly, I don't know who reached out to who first. I don't think it was, I mean, I don't know where it came from. And I remember my, if they would have asked me this two years ago, two years ago, I would have been like, hey, man, like, I don't know. There's a lot of, there's a lot of polarization around it. There's a lot of people that hate on it and a lot of negative feelings about it. And there's a lot of positive feelings too. And we're going to end up in this weird world.

But since the timing was good and I'm looking at where everything's at and I see the progress being made for me. It was like the perfect time for us. It's pretty awesome. Yeah. We're definitely, the last few years, we've been on our heels. And maybe even before the last two years, what I mean by that is just, we're working to pull ourselves up, specifically the last two years after the Glassman, after the

tweet incident. But even before that, we had shut down our social media. We had shut off a lot of our media creation. And when you think about at that time as a long time affiliate owner, you're an affiliate owner, other affiliate owners, what value or what is CrossFit doing for me? if we're shutting off our mega mouthpiece, our mega areas to communicate with the world, the safety and efficacy of the program, and we're not doing that anymore, then what are you doing? You're just taking my money or letting me use the name. And there became a point when that wasn't enough. And so, yeah, the whole shutdowns of the social media was not a fan of,

and I did not think that did any favors. And then obviously the transition and that phase, we were just clawing our way back. And now you are right. It feels like we're in a much better place and an area to grow on and expand from. When I was fired, we talked about this briefly, I lived it out publicly. And that was a weird, like, just like what I mean by that is like everybody knew. It wasn't like I worked for, again, that construction company example. A construction company, I got fired and I had to, you know, I could go home and deal with it however I wanted.

But like the whole CrossFit world knew. And that was interesting. It was, I definitely wish I could get fired and not have the whole world have to know again if that ever happens again. But I think those days are gone. So being in this position with this, call it spot. light, it's a burden. I mean, not a burden, but it's like, it's a weight. It's like, you know, I don't mean a burden in how I am or how I act, because how I act or how I am is consistent and the same, regardless of if I was popular in the community or not popular. How I work and how I

conduct business is the same, but there's this extra weight of like the eyeballs, the attacks. I didn't cover this earlier, but in terms of the attacks, like, way early on, I just stopped looking. And I drew a couple of rules for myself with social media early, early on. One, I was never going to comment. So even to this day, on any of my platforms, I don't respond to anything. I just feel like it's a slippery slope. And two, early, early on, there was a bunch of haters that had blogs or whatnot, and they'd come after us. and one of them, I forgot which one it was, he posted something, and my wife at the time,

or she's still my wife, but at the time, she was training at CrossFit Coronado, and he had pulled a picture from the website, from their website of her training and posted it and went after her form but didn't cite her name or didn't say it was, but he was coming after CrossFit and us with an image of her, and I was fucking pissed off. And I didn't know if he must have known, and he was doing that to get, at me. But at that point, I was like, I will never put my family out there. And that's another thing I've had, like, this wall of like, I don't post pictures of them or with them. I don't, because I don't want to have to deal with anyone saying anything and how it's going to make me

react to that. So the best way I can handle it is just, nope, they're not out there. And I keep the private part of my life completely private. And so what I do put out there or what I do show is super deliberate, is super thought through. It's not by accident. I've actually, I have a second, I have another Instagram account. I don't even use my main one that much anymore where, because I'm into shooting, as I mentioned, I just post hunting and shooting stuff. And it's like, hey, if you're into that stuff, you can go watch me do that and see that there. And I don't even have to put it on my main account because that stuff obviously is polarizing. So, and, Let me rephrase that.

I don't put it out in a polarizing way. Like I'm not like posting stuff and talking about the Second Amendment or talking about any of these issues going on. I just post videos of me doing my passion. What you like to do? And what I like to do. Yeah. It's funny because like I only, I, I, from my perspective, like, oh, I saw you got fired, but like that was it.

There's no, it was no drama for me. Yeah, yeah. I'm watching you get fired. But the thing that was. was kind of weird for me is like I I've known you I guess now we've confirmed since 2007 yep um you didn't I was just a random team guy I wasn't like some like author or social media person I was just a normal dude yeah and since day one you were just like cool yep uh like I remember you'd say oh you want to come to this thing I'd email you once every three years

it's funny you say that that's what someone asked me like how do you know jaco I'd say I'd responded with every few years he emails me asking for a seminar for one of his trainers once every three years I'd email him be like hey bro I hope everything's cool yep I see there's a level one cert in San Diego I need to get recertified you'd be like yep you're in yep that was it no reason and this was when either I was still in the teams and was just you know like you had no reason to do this other than you were just a good dude that was just trying to help a brother out right and so that's my been my interaction with you And then I'd go and you know, I'd see you there and you'd say, hey, what's going on?

We'd talk about whatever and then carry on. Yeah, it wasn't like, well, he hasn't called me in a while. Like you had every, you actually, I'm the, because I'm a, I'm, I don't communicate with people. Yeah. Like I don't respond to people. Like I don't, I don't have a bunch of, uh, uh, you know, I don't, you're not going to hear from me on your birthday. Like that kind of thing. And so I would reach out to you like, hey, I need to go to this thing or, hey, can we send a guy to that?

And you like, yeah, all done. Yeah. Again, for no reason. than just like we met you seem cool i guess i seem cool we're considered each other to be cool we're good yep and that's so when i would see people like getting i saw people like getting crazy about you i was like bro what is what's going on and you know i i think that just um i guess that's a little bit of the nature of the beast when you're in a position like you're in people are going to find things to attack and and look for reasons to try and bring you down and bring down what you're doing uh

I guess that's part of the joy. The fitness is polarizing in its nature. Oh, that's true. Right? It's a nutrition, right? Well, this fitness and nutrition, but this specific crossfit, this style of fitness is even polarizing within fitness. And then you find someone in it, Greg or myself at the top and people who are leading it. And then they become easy targets because you just don't want to attack the brand.

You want to attack the people. You know what's funny about all the people that attack us too. It's like, I don't like. Well, I don't like bodybuilding, for one. But you will never find me on any bodybuilding sites or any bodybuilding forums talking shit about bodybuilders. Otherwise, Echo would be calling you out. You know what I mean? Or yoga.

I'm not a yoga fan. Although I will say big picture, I appreciate both of those activities for people being in them and being fit and trying to change their lives. But my point is it's a unique person or a special person who doesn't like something and then goes over to their pages and goes over to their forums and starts blasting it. It's a horrible person actually is what it is. Yeah, that's definitely not a good way to go through life. You know, as your fourth grade teacher told you and your dad told you and your mom told you and your principal told you, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it, man. Yep, yep.

And that proves to be true. We got this little collab going, I guess, Janko Fuel and CrossFit. That's what we got going on. Hey, if you have a gym, a CrossFit gym, and you want to carry Jocko Fuel, you can email J.F Sales at joccofuel.com. We're doing some, if you want to try Jocko Fuel, we're doing like a, there's terms in the, in the retail world of selling buy one, get one at 50% off. Joccofuel.com and free shipping over 99 bucks. We're trying to introduce people to what we've got going on. We got a bunch of product for you guys to try.

But that's because I want you to get better. I want you to go to the gym. I want you to eat clean. That's what I want you to do. I think Dave wants you to do the same thing. You got a lot going on. You also do clothing, right? Yeah, we have a clothing company.

Shoes. 100% made in America. We make boots right now. We make, you know, jeans, jujitigis, rash guards, shorts, hoodies. I'm working on something, not to the level you have, but I'm working on something. Right on, awesome. Yeah. Well, I look forward to whatever you're working on.

Does this, does this get us up to... I'll tell you, olive oil. Olive oil? Olive oil. Oh, sweet, right on. I've been saying that for years. And you got guys in CrossFit selling coffee. You got guys selling...

There's even some people that sell alcohol, wine, beer, whatever. I'm like, no one in our space is selling something as clean and pure as olive oil. I'm in. Let's talk after we get done. Yeah, for sure. I'm in 100% where I want in on that. That's what I do. Does that get us up speed where we're at right now? Yeah, absolutely.

We're excited. We're excited to be working with a brand like yours. It's been years, I think, in the making. And as you said, it's the right time. It's an awesome time. Echo. Yes, sir. Do you have any questions?

I do. Bodybuilding questions? No, we'll skip that one. So when you're in the Navy, you can have another job or is that like an exception? I don't get it. Usually no. Well, I know another guy that did that and I was all confused. I was like, wait, how are you still in the Navy?

If you literally have like this company and this job or whatever, like, so what's the, what's the deal that? It depends at what occasion and sometimes you have to be really formal and get like written permission all the way up to your seat. CO and oftentimes if I was not at that role I had there was no way it could have been done like if I was at regular seal team where I was deploying and training I could not have done the role unique time unique circumstance unique leadership that allowed me to so so it's essentially what you can get away with with varying degrees of officiality kind of a scenario yeah that sounds about right yeah and it's always going to be on a not to interfere basis right in other words no matter what happens happens, this Navy job is the absolute priority. So you got to be careful that one. Makes sense. Cool, man. Great to meet you in person.

Yeah, nice to meet you too. Right on crossfit.com is where you can find out about CrossFit. You can find it on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook at CrossFit. Dave, you're on Instagram. Yep. You're on Twitter. Now, the one I know is the Dave Castro. Yep, that's my Instagram.

That's the one? That's the big one. And then I have the hunting one, which is at TDC hunts. at TDC, the Dave Castro hunts. And you got CrossFit Ranch.com. Yeah, yep, we have CrossFit Ranch.com too, where people can sign up for drop-ins to go work out at the ranch, which is a pretty cool.

People who travel do that a lot. Yeah, that sounds pretty cool. It's a pretty cool site. Yep. I have one more question. Yeah. If I go to the CrossFit Ranch, can I do a bodybuilding routine? You can.

Thanks, man. You can. Special permission. I got this guy. You can ask this guy. He does Metcon. now. That's all from me.

He used to just be just done nothing but curls. And you know what? I did his, I did his bicep. He's got a bicep routine. I did it today. I did it today first time. You know, we're going to work on those buys a little bit. Awesome, man.

Dave, any closing thoughts? No, thank you for having me on. This was a pleasure. Well, honored. And I'm enjoying your book. Thanks, man. And thanks for coming down. Thanks for sharing your experiences.

Thanks for sharing your lessons learned. And most important, thanks for your service to the teams, to the country. I know you don't talk about it, but I know it's serious service and sacrifice. So thank you for that. And thanks for what you continue to do today to go out there and try and help people

become faster and stronger and fitter, which helps them with every aspect of their life. That is appreciated. Thank you. Thank you. And with that, Dave Castro has left the building. Echo, you did not get to go as deep into bodybuilding.

Especially, he kind of came at it too. A little bit. He literally said he didn't like bodybuilding. No, he said he respects it as. No, he said he didn't like it at first. Sure. And then I think, I don't think he said, he respected yoga. I think, no, bro, I think he respects yoga but doesn't respect bodybuilding.

He said, I'm not down for bodybuilding, but I don't go hate on them in their forms. Okay, cool, cool. Have you ever been to a bodybuilding forum on the interwebs? No. Disappointing. I don't think. I figured you'd be all up in there. I don't spend much time in forums to say the honest truth to you.

Check. Yeah. They seem like they might be a place for negativity. Maybe. I don't know. Well, that's what it seems like. Yeah. Free for all.

Well, I know that fitness as a space, if you will, fitness. I don't care. CrossFit. bodybuilding, functional fitness. Powerlifting, Olympic lifting. The whole gig is a very like competitive, real like. It's controversial. Controvers.

Like, yeah, like if there's going to be some controversy that comes out, they're going to, they're going to talk about it, they're going to hate on it. They're going to be passionate. There's going to be a lot of passion in the top. Yeah, there's a lot of different approaches to fitness. And there's a lot of different approaches to different goals within fitness as well. It's like how you kind of started to talk about.

diet. Okay, fitness, diet, how to raise kids, political stuff and religion. Five, that's the big five. We call them the big five. Is that your big five or is that a more known Big Five? It's a known Big Five, not called the Big Five. Big Five is something else. But- Called Five Topics to Avoid at Thanksgiving Dinner. What are they again? Religion. Religion. Okay, hold on. Religion. Okay. Yep. There can be some controversy around that. Diet. Okay, yep. There's definitely controversy around that. Exercise. For a little while in my life, my wife, my wife, told me don't talk about diet with her friends. She was correct. This is in the old school days. I was ahead of the curve. She would be like, can you not talk about this, please? And I'd be like,

all right, cool. But they don't know. Yeah, what have they know? Okay, so we got diet, religion. Politics. Politics, certainly. Fitness. Fitness, yes, certainly.

How to raise kids. Interesting. Yep, I'm going to say that's probably all of them. True, yeah. So yeah, if there's going to be some drama in any industry and you select one of those industries, there's a high likelihood that the drama is going to be sky high. Yeah. And look, there's drama.

This is what we talked about. And I didn't mean to diminish the drama that Dave, you know, actually lived through. But from my perspective, it is, it was a bunch of drama. Like, you know, I'm watching it. Like, geez, what are these people going crazy, attacking each other? and all this stuff so the good thing is in as I said if they would have come if we would have started talking two years ago like Jocco Fuel and CrossFit I would have not been too fired up for it and who knows what they would have been I don't know but I'm just saying

from my perspective two years ago three years ago it's like there's a lot of mayhem going on but they certainly have moved and are I think they're in a much more positive place right now I think it's going to be awesome because CrossFit is a gateway to fitness for so many people, so many people. And I think that's going to be awesome. I think that people hearing about it more is going to get more people to go and try it. I think the fact that they've gotten better as coaches and as instructors is going to be beneficial to everybody. and yeah I'm looking forward to see where this goes we got I mean the stuff that we're making right now too at jocco fuel is like gonna be so beneficial we got I'm actually drinking some hydration right now have you tried the hydrate yet hydrate jacco hydrate I got my first one today do you try to today no I didn't I didn't oh you haven't even mixed it up yeah yeah that's coming that's coming June 9th June 9th I think is when is when the hydration's coming out it's awesome We got time war.

We got joint warfare. We got the protein cookies. We got peach cookies. We got so many good, so much good stuff that we're coming out with right now. You know what I think is going to be, and I was talking to Jason Kalipa. Do you know who that is?

Yeah. I was talking to him the other day. And he's, because he's got a couple, like, CrossFit gems, and he advises a bunch of people, and he's a former CrossFit champ,

and he's like, yeah, the ready to drink protein. Yeah. And the go. It's the same, It's such a good combo to go. Oh, I'm going to do the activity.

Go. Right. I'm done with the activity. I need to recover. Mulk. Get the full protocol. Full protocol. Yeah.

This is my protocol now, by the way. And having like here at Victory M.A. When you can just get done and you're walking to your car and you're drinking a milk. Yeah. You feel the goodness. When I crack a go, like I walk to my eyes, I'm walking. I have a.

Is this? Bougy to have a beverage refrigerator in your house? Yes. Okay. I am admitting to a level of bourgeoisie. I have a beverage refrigerator in my house that is filled with beverages. Those beverages are go and mulk. Just beverages.

Just beverages. Yeah, that's bougie. It is. That's good though. But that's what I have. Yeah. But when I'm going to come to the gym, I'm walking, I go past my beverage refrigerator, my bourgeoisie beverage refrigerator.

and I get a go and I open it and I drive here. And it's like it's the perfect time. And then I get here, get changed. By the time I'm stepping on the mat, I feel it. I have the exact same protocol. Well, essentially where, yeah, I actually can't really go anywhere that takes more than 15 minutes without bringing a go. Pretty much. Like there are very few exceptions.

We went someplace, me in the fam. Go. Come down to train today? Go. Yeah, all day. You know what's another? I don't know. I don't even think it's a sleeper. I don't even think it's a sleeper. The greens. The greens are good. This is the thing that

Well, greens aren't known to be good. Greens are known to be bad. Greens is like, hey, look, I don't want to eat a bowl whole bunch of roughage, you know, in real life. So I'm going to take a cool, like, legitimate supplement. But you got to understand, it's just like, it's just a bunch of greens kind of mashed up. But they're not known for taste. That's the thing. So it's like, okay, if you're going to rough it, at least rough it just for a little while. So it's like, yeah, we're going to gut through it. Cool. We've all accepted that. That was kind of the original protocol. They,

you know, they'll be like, hey, what should we tell people about the greens? This is me imitating everyone. Sure, everyone else's voice.

You know, it's a combination of Joe Moss, of Pete, of Brian, of all them, when I combine all their voices together, they sound like, hey,

what do you think we should be? So they'll say like, hey, what do you think we should, what's a good thing to say? What should we tell people about green? And I go,

hey, tell people, your greens don't have to taste like dirt. Yeah. How's that? Perfect. Your greens don't have to taste like dirt. Tell them that. Because greens taste like dirt.

Yeah. No reason for that. Yeah. There's no reason for that. Dirt and moss. Like there's a little moss. Yeah. For sure.

And you know, when you're a little kid, let's face it, you were looking at a piece of moss. It looked like it might taste good. Right? That's how we know what dirt and moss tastes like. Yeah. And then for some reason, people thought just because you ate it when you were five, you're still going to gut through it. No reason for it. No.

Greens, peach green. Anyways, that's what's going on. We have a little partnership that we formed up with CrossFit. So If you're going to start doing CrossFit, you're going to need to fuel yourself. Get yourself some JoccoFuel. JoccoFuel. Go check that out. Like I said, we're doing a little special to welcome the crossfitters out there into the fold. Buy one, get one 50% off. Free shipping over 99 bucks. That's a big deal because shipping can cost a lot. But if you buy, more than 90 bucks that you're good to go so there you go go check that out joccofuel.com also check out origin usa.com because origin usa.com we have stuff that's made in america and there's a lot of people right now in the world that are pro human rights and let me ask you this have you met anyone that's pro slavery no well no okay i have not i have not met another

human in my lifetime that was pro slavery Yeah. And yet there's slavery right now. Yeah. There's slavery right now. It's true. And I can tell you where it is. It's if you look at the tag on your clothing and it says made in China, they might as well say made by chained people because that's what's going on over there.

Yeah. Don't do that. No. Don't support slavery. Support. Don't support, don't support environmental disaster. which is all, when you have a factory in America, there's inspectors that come to see what's happening,

to see what kind of waste is coming out of your factory. And I'm talking about the factories that I have. There's inspectors that come and you're not allowed to put certain things, chemicals into the ground or chemicals into the air. You're not allowed to do it. There's rules and regulations. There's no rules and regulations overseas. They're just dumping their chemicals into the water, into the air.

They don't care. So for all those reasons, go to origin USA and get yourself a pair of jeans. By the way, best genes you'll ever get. I was going to say, and just in case, a small chance comes around in your head that you care about how you look and some jeans. I throw in that reason as well. Or if you care how you function. Yes, sir. Because you might be into the fashion over on this side of the table.

We're in a function. Okay. There you go. There you go. Go to origin, USA.com. It's true. Some stuff.

Also, Jock has a store. It's called Jocko Store. Go to jocco store.com. Look, we're on the path. Look, whether you do CrossFit, jujitsu, both running, lifting, bodybuilding, whatever. Actually, I'm gonna be honest.

I don't know that I do bodybuilding. I actually know that. I do do that. Wait, wait, wait, wait, let's say this. Your, your CrossFit modality includes bodybuilding. Right? Am I wrong? Well, let me think. Okay, so does shoulder press? Dumbels? Okay, I already answered well. So if I did four sets of 15 with a minute and 10 rest between bodybuilding.

To failure or almost to failure. That's bodybuilding. That's bodybuilding. I mean, I'll ask you, that's bodybuilding, right? What is the purpose? As you like to say, why are you doing that? To make my shoulders strong. So what to make your shoulders? Strong. Is there any concern about size? Look, am I going into the five sets of 12 kind of scenario? Wait, what did I do? 15. Yeah, he said 15. Hey, look, if they happen to get bigger, amen. Cool, yes, I will consider it.

It's a lateral bonus. It's a win, yes, sir. But I do do deep squats. Yep. I do clean and press. Yep, good, good. As part of a Metcon. This is my routine, by the way.

So, hey, man, I'm doing the whole gig. You're good, doing the whole gig. Bodybuilding. A, I will say this. I do bodybuilding type exercises like tricep pull downs. You do them curls? Curls. All day.

I do those things? Good. Look, do I do also do cleans? Yes. Yeah. Do I also do presses? Yes. But I found that keeping your like smaller muscle groups also engaged is useful.

Yeah. And let's face it. we want to have guns. No one's going to be bad at you. No one's going to be bad at it. Let's go. But yes. Okay, good.

Okay, good. I do some bodybuilding movement. I don't do, because you consider the whole routine. In the spirit of all these modalities, as it were, consider the whole routine. If it's a hybrid of bodybuilding,

strength training, Olympic lifting, clean and press, clean and jerk, as part of a Metcon, so that's an Olympic lifting. There's some crossfit in there because it's some stuff is for time.

Sometimes it's a, Am rat what's the Em rap Yeah yeah sometimes it's that So there's some cross-wit in there kind of a thing And then what else would there be? Yeah the bodybuilding stuff for sure So okay as a comprehensive program

What is that? It's kind of everything right Which kind of makes it cross-fit And then I do the Yeah And those you shits Yeah there you should do what There you go

But either way Hey look it's part of the protocol It's part of the routine Same thing with the whole You know nutrition diet exercise It's part of the whole routine It's part of the path I see what you're saying

back to Jocco Store if you want to represent while you're on this path you see what I'm saying you go to jocco store.com discipline. It's true. It's an oxymoron or what do you call it when it contradicts it? Call it the truth. Yeah, but it is true. We also have the shirt locker

which is a subscription, shirt scenario. You get a new shirt every month different designs. Some good feedback on that one. Subscribe to that, subscribe to this podcast. Subscribe to jocco underground.com. appreciate your support that we don't own this platform unless you're listening on jocco underground we don't own the platform that means they could be getting in

there and editing it out or removing it banning us they might be banning us because we are doing bicep girls no possible uh jaco that's jocco underground dot com go check that out youtube subscription uh jaco podcast official origin u.sa go check out the video pete just put up We were able to give a raise to everybody up there in Maine. So go watch that video. You'll see what I'm talking about. That's at origin, origin USA, YouTube, also Jocco Fuel, YouTube channel. Want to know what's going on inside Jocco Fuel or what?

That's more like not inside. That's like with Jocco, this is what we're making right now. So check that one out. Psychological warfare, Flipside Gammis. Just talked to Dakota today, Dakota Meyer. You know what he's doing? He's getting after it, man. And if you want to get after it, like Dakota,

go to Flipside Canvas.com. Check that out. I got a bunch of books that I've written. You can check out those books that I've written. Also have a leadership consultancy called Eshlamfront. Go to Eshlamfront.com. If you need leadership inside your organization, we will help you out.

We do live events, and they all sell out. We oversold our last muster. Kind of like the staff had to sit at the back corner and all this stuff. So we sell everything out. So if you want to go to one of our, live events go to ashlamfront.com and check out our live events also if like I said if you have problems in your organization those problems oh you how do you know what the problem is causing

the problems jraco you don't even know what industry we are I know what's causing the problems it's leadership problems so if you want to solve the problems in your team in your organization go to echelamfront dot com and we will come and work with you we also have a we have an online trading academy for life to interact with other human beings. You know, if you wanna interact with other human beings, you need to learn it. It's not a natural thing.

I was talking to Ty, you know, S.D. Ty? I do. Sandy, he used to be, he's transitioned, he was Maine Ty, but now he's become SD Ty. I hear good things. So S.D. Ty, I was talking to him, and he, you know, he was talking about having conversations with people and how he's starting to become aware of,

oh, these are the things that I've heard you talking about and now I can see them and I can detach enough to make sure that I am taking the right approach. That is what you learn on extreme ownership.com how to interact with other people, how to converse with them, how to ask earnest questions, how to see their point of view, how to influence them, how to allow yourself to be in full. All these things are in there. A little bit of magic. It's kind of like jiu-jitsu. I was going to say, Brad, you made such, the other day, you made a good point where you're like, hey, If you know how to, if you're doing all this stuff or whatever, imagine how, and it made me kind of go down this little whatever, psychological rabbit where. And you're right, it's the same as jiu-jitsu, same as fitness, lifting weights. It's the same as like reading, even something as fundamental as reading. Imagine if you were the only one who knew how to read right now, just all of a sudden.

Or let's say you were only one of like eight people in the whole wide world or whatever, they knew how easy things would be for you compared to everybody else. If you're the only person that knew how to do jih Tiu-Jitsu. If you're the only person that knew how to do an overhead squat, you go challenging people to overhead squat contest. Well, let's say if you were the only person who lifted weights and ran and did good nutrition, first of the everyone else just ate the normal stuff, didn't lift at all. You know how much stronger it would be? It would be easy.

Life would be easy for you in a way. Just walking around ruling the planet. It's kind of the same thing. It is the same thing. Yeah. It's a little, it's the same thing. It's actually what's different is if, If I know Jiu-Jitsu, powerful skill to have, powerful skill to have it.

If I know it, when do I get to use it? Right. You're right. I get to use it if you want to use it with me and you come to my gym or if we happen to be in the streets and you happen to assault me. Maybe I get to use some Jiu-Jitsu. If it's strength training, maybe a car is on top of a baby and I get to lift it up, right? Maybe.

We're not going to set that up on purpose. But this Extreme Ownership.com, this is. daily interaction with other human beings this is figuring out what you need to do to maneuver correctly through life so that you can build relationships where your life is moving forward and getting better rather than moving backward and getting worse that's simple a real simple question when has it been good that you had an antagonistic relationship with someone like like oh you oh I don't like my boss Okay, does it help you that you're fighting?

Oh, I don't like this peer of mine. Does it help you that you don't like each other? I don't like this subordinate mind. Does it help you that you don't like each other? Yeah. I don't like my neighbor. Well, how does that work out? I don't like the garbage man.

Okay. Well, how does that work out? If you have a good relationship with your garbage man, guess what? Some of the garbage spills out. He runs out of the truck and throws in. He takes care of you. Bro, that's so true because, bro,

I'm telling you. Bro, you ever see? I'm telling you, you guys who are like, come on, let's face that garbage truck. Sometimes it can be rough. Oh, yeah. And your garbage like overflows and flies inside. Right.

He's not getting out of his truck. Right. He has many more garbage things to take care of. No. But when you line up your cans correctly and when you're out there, like maybe once every other week, you're out there and you're helping. Just give him a little help, man. You can hear the garbage truck coming. Let's face it.

Get out there. You do that everyone. So let me build that little relationship. All of a sudden, he's taken, he's a bit more gentle with your cans. Then you're going to take him down to the city when they break. It's a problem. Your whole life could be better. That's true.

So that's the kind of thing when you start thinking about it. You start making every aspect of your life better because you got a good relationship with your garbage, man. You got a good relationship with your wife, with your kids, with your peers, with your boss, with your subordinates,

with the other team over there, the other department, the other division. They're like, oh, hey, Jocco, what's going on how much? What's going on with you?

Oh, that's a big deal. It's true. It's just going to make everyone's life better. So go to extreme ownership. Don't know a little bit of the magic and if you want to help service members active and Retired you want to help their families gold star families check out Mark Lee's mom Mama Lee she's got a charity organization if you want to donate or you want to get involved

Go to America's mighty warriors.org and also don't forget about Micah think who is currently at this time Apparently last report he was out in a field of rocks and he was sling flinging rocks at waterfowl and then swimming enough frigid waters to go recover them and eat them raw he's helping veterans relocate their soul heroes and horses dot org and if you want to connect with us echo is at echo charles i am at jocco willink you can find crossfit at crossfit dot com they're on instagram facebook facebook Twitter. They re-engaged in those things. They are at CrossFit and Dave Castro. He's Twitter at the Dave Castro and also Instagram at the Dave Castro and he's got that CrossFit Ranch. And thanks once again to Dave for coming down, sharing your lessons. More important, of course, thank you for your service in the teams and for our great nation. And thanks to everyone. who has served or is serving in the military. Thank you for protecting our freedom. And also thank you to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers,

correctional officers, border patrol, Secret Service and all first responders, thank you for protecting us and keeping us safe here at home. And everyone else out here, let me ask you something. What are you doing right now? Right now. Are you getting better or are you getting worse?

Are you getting stronger? Are you getting weaker? Are you building or are you decaying? Are you becoming less capable or are you becoming more capable? I'm asking you that question, but you need to ask yourself that question. What are you doing daily? What are you doing hourly? What are you doing this very second?

Ask yourself that question. What am I doing? Because there's a decent chance you aren't doing anything productive. You're wasting time. time and you're wasting your life and you're wasting away do not let that get control take over that's all we've got for tonight and until next time this is echo and jocco