Jocko Podcast - 412: How Many Reps Should You Get? With Jason Khalipa.

Episode Date: November 15, 2023

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This is Jocko Podcast number 412 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. Things changed suddenly on January 20th, 2016. It was a Wednesday, and we had taken our four-year-old daughter, Ava, to the doctor. She'd been experiencing pain in her legs. At first, we thought these were growing pains, something every child experiences. But soon after, she started to experience severe bruising that just didn't make sense.

She'd also had a series of ear infections, bad ear infections. The doctor told us that one of these infections was the worst they'd ever seen. It was pretty ugly stuff. I started to think something was really wrong. At around 2 p.m., the nurse drew blood for a test. They thought that Ava might have some sort of significant deficiency that was throwing her system out of whack, like a lack of iron. They put a rush on the samples and sent them to the lab.

While waiting for the results, we had gone back home. My wife Ashley was making dinner when the lab called at about 6 p.m. They reported that there was something irregular in Ava's blood work and that we should expect a callback shortly. This was not the kind of thing we wanted to hear. Five minutes later, Ava's doctor called. You need to take Ava to the Stanford emergency room right now, he said. That was all he told.

us but the urgency in his voice told us not to hesitate we didn't have to be told twice we entered the hospital through the ER and were directed to an individual room for immunocompromised children a nurse led us to the room and before she handed us off to other staff she said something that took my wife and me off guard there's one piece of advice I have for you she said I've seen a lot of things happen here a lot of stories keep a date night for yourselves you have to your relationship strong. Ashley and I just looked at each other.

What the hell is that supposed to mean, I thought. For a split second, I considered telling her off, but I held back. Her words slowly began to make sense. It was like she had seen couples like us pass through these rooms for years, and she had. She knew we were in for a hell of a ride. After all, we wouldn't have been called in like this if it wasn't a big deal. Soon enough, we would figure out what the thing. this was all about. My father-in-law, Jeff, joined us in the treatment room with Ava as soon as he could.

We sat there for hours until around 1 a.m. when a doctor came in. She told us that two more pathologists had looked at the blood test results and asked me if I wanted to step outside of the room to talk about their findings. We went out into the hallway to speak privately. We're fairly certain your daughter has leukemia, the doctor said. Are you sure? I asked. We're 99% sure. And that right there is an excerpt from a book called as many reps as possible written by Jason Kalipa. And Jason is an athlete, a CrossFit Games champion, a businessman, an author, a podcaster, and most important, a family man, a husband, and a father where he has stood up with to help his daughter. fight a vicious enemy, and that is cancer.

And he's here with us tonight to share some of his experiences and lessons learned along the way. Jason, thanks for joining us, man. Hey, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, that's definitely, that's kind of the opening of the book. Yeah, it sets a stage for, you know, explaining your whole life and what the, the trajectory of your life and how this whole situation with your daughter impacted you.

and really just a powerful story for sure. But we'll get into that, but let's start at the beginning. Let's start at, you know, you as a kid growing up and whatnot. So you're from California, right? I'm from California, Northern California. And born in 85? 85, yeah. San Jose?

Uh-huh. Okay. So what'd your mom and dad do? My mom was a bookkeeper. My dad was an engineer. And my dad came here from Iran. my mom came here from Rhode Island. From where, Rhode Island?

Yeah. I mean, her family was originally from Italy, but yeah. You can't say my dad's from Iran and my mom's from Rhode Island. But they met here in California. Yeah, it's all good. And so they met, they got married. You got brothers and sisters? I have one sister.

She's older than me. Older than you? Yeah. Did she bully you when you were a kid? Bullying me? Nah, not so much. How much older? She was like three years older.

So just old enough where we were able to, You know, be in high school one year together. I help my parents out. Made it a little bit easier. And you're growing up, going to school, and you're playing sports. What sports do you play? Yeah, so growing up, you know, my background, I think it's because my dad, I was looking back on this just as a dad now, and your parents do the best they can with what they have.

I'm confident that any parent, they want to be the best parent they can, but they lean on on their experiences when they were children. So my dad came from me, Ron, and soccer was very popular there. My mom, she didn't really grow up with traditional sports. And so I played... Well, they don't have a lot. I mean, that's way over in Rhode Island. Yeah, I mean, Rhode Island.

I don't know what's going on over there. That's like a... That's very foreign in place, right? Yeah, very foreign. But, you know, so for me, I started off playing soccer. And then I ended up meeting a group of kids around my neighborhood. I got heavily into BMX bike racing when I was around eight or nine years old. And I competed in that until I was 15 and went to high school.

So I competed on a net. What kind of bike did you have? Like, I started off the GT, then I had a red line. Then I had one called Bad, which was like a undercover brand, like kind of... Were you sponsored? Yeah, at the time I was sponsored. Yeah. How long is a BMX race?

Maybe depending on the track, a minute, two minutes. I mean, it's not long. So it's a hardcore sprint. Yeah. And, you know, looking back on it, it's like that sport actually taught me a lot because you're on the, you're on a gate with like seven other guys. There's eight guys on a on a gate. And here I am a young kid.

The way it goes, it goes novice, intermediate expert. and then when you turn 16, you can turn pro. So I race at the expert level on a national circuit. And, you know, when you're on the gate, like, it's pretty nerve-wracking. And you've got to take the jump. And whoever hits that first berm first is probably going to win. And so I think it taught me a lot about mental toughness, individual sport. And then when I got to high school, I pivoted out of that sport.

So you're in the gate with seven other kids. Yeah. How far away is the first berm? Maybe 100 yards. How long is it to get there? Is it like a four-second? spread or something like that. I mean, it's all out.

It's 100% all out. And there's obstacles in the way, right? So you need to learn how to traverse, you know, go over the obstacles and you got to learn how to just crank it. You know, looking back on it now, you know, I used to, man, I wanted to win so bad. You know, I would ride rollers in my garage. Like there's like this essentially rollers. You put a bike on it and you just ride.

Okay. And I would do that all the time because I just wanted to win. And it was a great sport at the time, but I ended up getting out of it. my parents didn't really support it as much. And I think it's because they saw how many injuries occurred from it. And so I got hurt quite a few times doing it, but it was a great sport when it lasted. How do you get hurt? Are you getting mangled up with other bikes?

Yeah, so I got hurt a few times. One time I broke my collarbone, that one really sucked. I was coming out the gate going super fast. And I don't know if my crank, something happened. But long story short, I went over the handlebars and the helmet broke my collarbone when I hit my head. And then another time I was doing what they call a rhythm section. So you jump, jump, jump. But once you're in the rhythm section, it's hard to get out.

And I ended up, anyways, I ended up hitting my face and needing some no surgery and stuff like that. So you did that into your 15. So you did that until high school. That's right. And then what sports took over? Football and track and field. And so first day of high school, I remember I made one of my buddies, Joe Coons. He looks at me.

I was a pretty big kid at the time. And he's like, hey, man, you got to come out for football. And so that's when I tried. And, you know, I learned a lot through football. I made some of my best friends in the world from that. I think team sports are incredibly important. And, yeah, that became my sport for the next, you know, throughout high school. I wanted to go on to play in college, and I just, I didn't apply myself the right way.

I was getting recruited a little bit. It just, it didn't work out. And I ended up going to a junior college. Echo, football questions, go. Oh, yeah. You got to play. So what position did you play? Ah, so my team, we did some pulling guards.

stuff. Yeah. So I was playing guard. At the time, I was 260. So right now, I'm 215. You were 260? I was too 60. You know, I was thinking about it.

I haven't seen under 200 pounds on a scale since before I got into high school. Oh, damn. And how tall are you? Five, nine and a half, you know. 60. But you got to be fast for. I was pretty big. Yeah.

So I was playing defensive end and guard. And again, I look back on my high school. And this is something I'm thinking about just as a dad now is like, I didn't reach my potential. I didn't. I didn't reach my potential. And maybe my journey was already written, and that's when I got into CrossFit later on, et cetera.

But, you know, looking back on it, I do have some regrets about just the amount of time that I dedicated to sport versus dedicated to partying or doing other stuff. And, you know, I want to help my kids. I make the same mistake. Were you guys lifting? Oh, yeah.

So you were full on into it. Yeah, we were lifting. We were doing a lot of stuff, but we were doing some stuff that was very unconventional. I remember one year, it was right before, like, the big game. And one of our coaches had read, some literature about stimulating the muscle right before. And so what we did is we worked up to a one, I'll never forget this, we worked up to a one rep max deadlift and then got on a bus

to go to our game. Just, just cold. Just worked up to one rep max deadlift, got in a bus, and then went, those are the kind of things we were doing. Like, you know, yeah, strength and conditioning with one coach and 60 kids is tough. Yeah. Okay. So what, any other sports you said track and field? What did you do that? I threw the shot there. And, and that was another example of like, I, performed well. I still don't think I reached my potential. I just didn't apply myself. You know, the thing about high school was, is like I was at a school that, and this is my own fault, but I was at a school that would just move you forward, right? And at the time when I compared myself to my peers, I was always even, meaning like as long as I was going from

freshman, sophomore, junior, and I was getting okay grades, like, we're all even. It wasn't until we applied to colleges. I realized, like, hey, like, life doesn't know you anything. Like, you've been, you've been coasting, man. one time my son said to me when he was a little kid like some kids can't do any pull-ups you know what I mean like he was making an excuse for only being able to do whatever oh yeah fort fool and pull-ups like bro what's wrong with you you little savage like what's wrong with you and he you know he looked at me like dad some kids can't do any pull-ups right and you know I'm just hey you cannot compare yourself to these kids that are sitting around doing nothing you're not going to

be like that you know but that's a common thing to do it'd be easy to say well you know you know Hey, the kids can't even do any. I can do 10 or 12. I'm GTG. Echo, good to go, baby. So as you're going through school, how are your grades? Is it the same thing with your grades? Like you're just kind of doing the bare minimum a little bit?

Yeah, they're fine. You know, again, like I said, you know, the moment of like when I really woke up and I was like, oh, was when I applied to colleges. So my mom, my dad and my sister all went to a school called Santa Cruz University. my wife or my girlfriend at the time because we met when we were 14 Ashley Ashley she got accepted so did all my best friends they all got accepted to school and I did not get accepted and why not grades yeah and that's what I realized like oh boy my mom my dad my sister went there and I still didn't get accepted you know something something's up here so yeah I ended up going to a junior college and I applied again didn't get in I kept going to

in college applied again, didn't get in. And then finally, when my high school transcripts were removed, I got accepted to San Clair. So anything else you're doing in high school, though? Like you said, you mentioned partying? Like, are you guys out drinking? Are you getting crazy like that? Yeah, I mean, I was one of those popular guys playing football.

Just, you know, I just, I was just distracted. You know, I didn't. I was just having a good time, making a lot of friends, doing a lot of stuff. But I wasn't applying myself to my full potential in school or at sport. Did you have any idea of what you're going to be doing in the future? No, I didn't really think about it. It wasn't like a thought. And I think that that's an area that with my kids, I want to try and navigate them through.

I think as a parent, you're just trying to think, like, what can I do to set them up better than the way I was going? And yeah, so I was just kind of mosing along. And then all of a sudden I got to a junior college, West Valley. And I walked in for my first class. And it just woke me up. You know, I wrote about this in the book. But like, you got a good section here in the book.

You say this. My first day at West Valley, let's just say the whole thing was a humbling experience. To be honest, I was a little embarrassed to be there. Not that I was above West Valley, but that I had wasted a lot of my time, talent, energy, and I'd fallen short of my potential. The high school atmosphere that I loved was gone. High school had been about chest bumps, high fives, and having fun. There was a built-in structure, and you didn't have to think too much about it.

I made the structure work for me, and it didn't take a lot of effort. I coasted. And all the way from timid freshman to school ruling senior, I found a way to work the system. I did just enough to get by. I played sports because I had some natural size and athleticism. I hung out with my friends during the day and we partied hard on the weekends. Come Monday, I showed up at classes. I knew I needed to attend and skip the ones I thought I knew I could.

Signed, sealed, delivered. I graduated. Sounds familiar, right? When I sat down for my first core curriculum class at West Valley, the differences between my high school life. and life in community college started to sink in. I didn't know anyone in the class and it sent me into a bit of a spiral. I found myself in a big lecture hall with people of all ages and backgrounds. I looked around the room for a familiar face, but all I could see and feel was change.

A radical shift from everything I had known. My heart rate spiked and I was scared. We were asked to introduce ourselves to the class. One by one students stood up, gave their names, and offered up a personal detail or two. People were in that room for all sorts of different reasons and they came from all walks of life. There was one woman sitting next to me who looked like she was in her early 20s. I looked at her. She stood up hoping to establish some unspoken common ground with someone.

It didn't turn out that way. I can't remember her name, but when she told the class, this is my seventh year here. My heart nearly stopped. Seventh year. Dude, I remember that like it was yesterday. Like it was yesterday. I just remember this woman sitting next to me saying this is my seventh year. saying to myself, like, I got to get, I got to get out of here.

Like, it was at that moment that I said to myself, like, like, this is 100% on me. I need to take, you know, to your point, like ownership, extreme ownership of this situation and get moving. So I went from that class immediately to a counselor and I was like, I got to get the hell out of here as fast as I can't. By the way, this whole time, you've been working in a gym. Yeah. Since you were, how old? So I started working at the front desk when I was old enough too.

So I think it was like 15, 16. I started working the front desk because my parents, Used to go to a health club called Melpitas, Helden Fitness. Shout out to my Melpitas Southern Fitness crew. And I started working at the front desk on the weekends when I wasn't playing sports. And that was a really cool experience. You got to check people in.

You got to, you know, conversate with people, sell them stuff. It was a lot of fun. And when I went to college at West Valley, I started working full-time there. So, and what was your full-time job? Full-time front desk in the beginning? Full-time sales. Oh, so you picked up in the sales position.

Yeah, so at that time, so I was working the front desk, when I went to college, two gentlemen, Joe Gigantino and Min Nguyen, really impactful my life. Min Nguyen was the head of sales, and I would always see his commission checks when I was working the front desk, and I was always inspired by him. And anyways, he took me underneath his wing, and what I loved about sales was that the amount of hard work you put in was directly correlated to the amount of money that you would make. And so I would be able to go to school in the mornings and work from like 2 p.m. to 8 p.m., which was like peak time at a gym, get the walk-ins, get the leads.

and just hustled. And at that point, you know, I was making pretty good money throughout college for a college kid. And what's interesting in the book is you talk about, you talk about your first kind of three business investments in life. And it's cool that you put them in there. And it's always tough for people to talk about their mistakes and their shortfalls.

So your first investment is in a product. And it's a product. I couldn't make this up. The product is called batter blaster. It was batter blaster. It was so good. It had so much potential. So go ahead, explain what batter blaster.

So what batter blaster was. It was a pancake, organic pancake in a can. And so think about cheese whiz, right? So imagine cheese whiz. But instead of it being cheese whiz, it came out. So like, let's just say you want to make pancakes. You got to make like the batter. You got to make all this stuff.

And you can't just make one. But what if you just want to? I won. And so this guy, Batter blaster. Dude, I'm telling you, man, this was the thing. Hell yeah. And so I remember I invested who was looking for investments in how did you get in on this?

Joe and Min. And so Joe and Min knew a guy who had created it. And so I tried it one day. I was like, wow, this is really good. I brought it to my family. They're like, wow, this is really good. So I invested like five grand in which at the time was a lot of money for me. And man, the sky was the limit. I was thinking, oh, dude, this batter blast was going to be the next big thing. You're picking out Cadillax. Yes, I was ready.

And then all of a sudden, it got into Costco. And there was a big opportunity. But I learned a valuable lesson there. It got into Costco, and that should be the where you start buying Cadillacs, actually. Yeah. But then all of a sudden, if my memory serves me correctly, it got into a big account. I believe it was Costco. But they couldn't keep up with the inventory and demand.

So they needed to take on outside investment or something. And they had an opportunity to sell. but the leader of the organization at the time didn't want to sell for the amount of money they got and anyways they couldn't keep up with demand and they ended up shutting it down. That's what I believe I remember having. My takeaway from that was that

when you're investing in a people you know like you have to, I didn't even know the guy we invested and I just thought the product was cool and I did it because my friends were doing it. I should have done more due diligence and understood that more. But it was a good lesson.

Yep. Batter blaster. So wait, wait, so it came out. It was pancakes. Yep. But did you have to cook it or was it already just boned out of the can? Like, what was it do? Put it into a pan.

No, you had to cook it. It was like, it was like the batter, right? You would just like spray a little bit in a pan. Yeah, yeah. And then yeah, and the rest of it keeps in the, you just put it back in the refrigerator. Okay. Yeah, almost like a like a cool whip. Like a, you know, like a.

But it makes pancakes. Yeah. Were you seeing the vision? Well, if they couldn't keep up with demand, that means there was massive demand. You know, there was a few situations like that where, you know, I just wanted to feel like I was connected, like I was investing. And, you know, these gentlemen were super impactful my life. You know, I would, I would meet probably once or twice a week with Joe on the elliptical. And we would just talk to all things business.

As a young kid, I'm incredibly grateful for those lessons because what I would do is I'd go to school in the morning. Remember, at this time, I'd kind of woken up. Like, I was a hard worker at this time. I would go to school. I'd go to the work. And then afterwards, I would ride the elliptical at night. And we would just talk business. And I would just try and pick his brain.

Because I knew at an early age that as soon as I graduated, I wanted to open a gym. I knew it when I was a sophomore in college. What about this real estate investment that you did? What was this one? Yeah. You bought some land in Idaho. We had on some land in Idaho. Yeah.

And that one ended up going bankrupt because I don't even remember exactly what happened. Well, it's called a global economic meltdown, I believe. The economic meltdown happened. This is like 2007. I think it was like 2008, and then all of a sudden I lost, I lost my shirt on that. But my buddies lost more. And so at the time, I didn't feel bad, but I didn't really have anybody to vent to because my buddies had lost a lot more money than me.

I think I put another $5,000 into that one. And then finally you had a faded lifestyle. Oh. Let's talk faded lifestyle. Man, I have not faded lifestyle. So I'm so glad you brought that up. Wow. I haven't thought about that for a while.

So a couple of buddies and I, you know, we started. started a clothing company called Fated Lifestyles. And at the time, you know, we were young kids. We were 17, 18, 19 years old and faded was like, hey, are you getting, you know, faded like drinking. And so we would, we created a clothing line and we would print our own shirts. We would actually, we actually bought a,

like screen press, screen press, and we made ourselves and we would go to clubs. I remember my cousin at the time was a club promoter in San Jose. And I just remember we'd get it, we wouldn't even be 21. And we got there and we had faded lifestyle stickers the back of our cars.

Like we thought we were so cool. We'd go up there, be like, hey, this party's brought to you by Fated Lifestyles and we would just throw out shirts and stuff. We didn't end up selling much at all. But it was a good, you know, the takeaway from that experience was there was, I remember when we signed up for the business from the Santa Clara County, there wasn't enough space on the line for us to fill out the amount of people that were part of the company because there was four of us.

It's a lot of people when you're, you know, so we put each person's name and the learning lesson there was like partnerships, clear guidelines and expectations, and how, you know, doing business with friends, you just have to be aware that like, unless you set the expectation early and often, it could end up bad. And in our particular case, nothing was terrible, but it was a good lesson. But we, we, that one sank too, man. How much money did you put in there? I think I put another five or seven thousand in that one. Because at the time, you know, I was doing pretty good. Actually, some money I got from selling Nintendo Wees, I put into Fated Lifesel So my girlfriend and I at the time, we wanted to get a Nintendo Wii for Christmas, but there was a high demand.

So we ended up realizing that if you take these and you sell them on Craigslist, you can actually make money. So what we would do is we'd stand in line at Best Buy at like 5am on a Sunday. We'd wait for them. We'd get a wee. We would then later on sell it on Craigslist. Then we ended up getting our friends to do it, and then each because it's one per person. So we ended up getting a bunch of whee's during Christmas time. We sold them and make money, and then I used that money to fund them.

Fated LifeSows. Damn. Right on. All right. But what this does to you in the book, you talk about this, is basically put you in debt as you graduate from college because you eventually did get transferred over to Santa Clara. And that was after it was on your fourth attempt, three rejections, fourth attempt. Yeah.

I thought I won the lottery, man. How bad was your high school transcript? You know, looking back on it, it must not have been very good. But I think it was probably like a 2.8 maybe. If I applied three times, it probably was pretty bad. Yeah, yeah. Okay. But you eventually get in there and now you go.

What was your degree in? Business management. You graduate, which is cool and you're stoked. And now you roll out. And I got to go to the book for this because it's kind of, it's kind of an interesting scenario that goes down and kicks off some of your future life here. So it says this. So you end up going to this interview for like a financial company.

You go to this interview for a financial company and basically the one of the women that interviews you said, you know, hey, you did okay. Here's your next time for your next interview. You need to get a better suit for your next interview. This one's kind of, you know, not up to speed. And you say in the book this, this woke me up. And the great wealth promised by a job in finance faded into the background. First off, did I really want to spend the rest of my life at work in a suit and tie? Was that what I wanted to be?

Despite my best efforts, I had been told to come back looking sharper and better groomed for the next interview. What next interview I thought. I walked out of the office to climb the steps to the third level of the parking garage. My future career felt like it was a blazing, forlarm fire. Sirens were blaring in my head. This was no joke. It was a good opportunity for a business grad and it was a smart, comfortable choice. Was I in a position to pass it up?

It was traditional and safe for sure, but was it me? My heart said, no, absolutely not. It was a resounding and echoing no. This was 100% not for me. First off, if my best dress wasn't good enough for them, then why bother? Besides, this wasn't how I felt comfortable either. If I were to define my ideal dress style, I would characterize it as clothes in which I can move around in easily. Suits feel like straight jackets.

However, attire wasn't the real problem. The problem was that I wanted to go into business for myself. I wanted to compete in the sport of business. I wanted that business to be in a world in which I was passionate about fitness. I wanted to be my own boss and feel comfortable in my own skin. I wanted to be in an industry where I wouldn't be judged not by the price of my suit, but by my work ethic and results. The realization of my path poured over me. I was attracted to the uncertainty and discomfort of being an entrepreneur, not because of the risk and reward, but because it would force me to push the boundaries of what I was capable of doing.

Perhaps I could sense that it was a pivotal decision. I knew that if I pursued financial services job, 10 years could fly by and I would regret that I hadn't taken the chance to do something greater. For all I knew, I could be the one sitting at that desk telling some recent grad to press his lapels better next time. I could never be that person and being true to myself was far too important to ignore. The decision was made. I'll never forget the call I made to my dad while walking to my car. I'd never felt as sure of anything in my life as I did at that moment when I pulled out my cell phone and dialed I knew that I needed to follow my passion my why and start my own business the phone rang a few times I was nervous as you can imagine

But not because I wasn't sure of my decision that was certain I just wasn't sure what my parents would say It rang again and he finally picked up Jason how'd the interview go? Hi dad. I have to tell you something I want to wear gym shorts and a t-shirt to work every day I want to improve people's lives. I want my hard work to be directly related to my success. I want to open my own gym. It couldn't have been more than two or three seconds. Okay, let's do it, he said. Yeah. Full support from the old man, huh? Yeah, man. My dad, my mom, they're the best. They're the best. I am I am truly blessed to have phenomenal family around me, which which came in there, but I mean, even 10, 10 fold that when Ava got sick. 10-fold.

And I forgot to mention this. Your dad had leukemia, a form of leukemia when you were 14 years old or 15 years something like that. When I was in high school. And he struggled with that again in the last couple years. But yeah, he did. And so he was definitely a powerful voice during when Ava was sick in the hospital. But in regards to this, like, it was just one of those moments in life you look back on.

And, you know, I really tried my best in that interview. And maybe some people listening can relate to this. I really tried to look the part. I wanted to get this job. And when this woman told me, like, hey, she said, you did a great job in the interview. You're charismatic, you're whatever. But when you speak to my boss, can you please wear a better suit? And I actually remember saying myself, like, really?

That's the takeaway from this? Like, your takeaway is that I'm being judged based on my suit? I'm good. Like, I'm out. And, you know, from that day forward, you know, it started a slew of a that just like took off. So I graduated from college in July of 2008. I had signed a lease on a building. It was like 1,200 square feet. It was this junky warehouse that just I fell in love with the same week, right? And then I won the CrossFit games like a week or two later. So when did you

get introduced to CrossFit? 2006. So when I was a junior, sophomore junior in college, junior, I was introduced early and and how'd that go down Austin Begeving who I worked with at Milpitas on the fitness he said his mom had been looking at a website and and you know we should try these workouts and so at the time I was doing I obviously I played football and then I got into more traditional like bodybuilding right before this I got introduced to Sancho and we Thai like Chinese kickboxing and obviously Thai kickboxing and I really got into that so I dropped from like 260 or 240 or whatever to like 2-15 because I was just getting lean. I was hitting tie pads and focus on it.

It was great. I was sparring all the time. It was awesome. And when he introduced me these workouts, what we would do is we would just kind of cherry pick off the website. And in the beginning, I didn't really understand what intensity was. I didn't get the idea of intensity. So we would do these workouts.

And they were like, eh, it's like, okay, cool. And then eventually the one that convinced me that I got really into was we would do 100 reps of bench press at one that. 35 as fast as we can. Echo and I actually did this like what a month ago at the origin camp That was the one that got me because I remember saying to myself like I'm trying to get as much work done in as little time as possible I'm racing the clock and so what I fell in love with with crosswood was a coach the community the clock and this idea of complexity I really like the idea of learning new skills whether that be a bar muscle up muscle up snatching It brought something to me that unlocked this idea where I was now a

learning, kind of like jujitsu where I was learning, but I was also able to train hard. And you got into it, obviously. Yes, yeah. So I got into it in 2006 and I pivoted what I wanted to do from owning a brick and mortar conventional gym to a CrossFit gym because I feel like it aligned with my why. Like this is nothing against the conventional gym. It's just at that point a lot of it was like, hey, what are your numbers? How much are you bringing in?

You know, how do we get more people in versus, hey, let's get some people in the door, but let's really make an impact on their lives. Let's have them walk away and be like I would pay double for this service because you're doing such a great job and I really connected with that idea of being a coach So I started coaching classes and then I opened our gym where were you coaching classes at? I had no crossfit gym? Yeah at the did you go to a CrossFit level one seminar and what? Yeah Yeah, yeah so I went to my level one and then I started coaching at the same gym that I was working at the conventional gym We ended up putting a CrossFit in there and so it just really I wasn't coaching for long before I opened my business because it just wasn't that is common at that point. We were kind of spearheading this movement along with many other

people in the Bay Area, and we were all trying to just learn from each other. And I remember my first location, I signed a six-month lease, and I signed it on the hood of this guy's truck. I'll never forget this guy. And he really gave me an opportunity. And the only reason why he gave this opportunity is because I went to San Clay University, and so did he. And I had no money. I had nothing to my name. And I think he just saw the drive, like, hey, I'm not going to let you down, man. Like, If you let me sign this lease, I'll take care of it. And I signed a six-month lease, and I just told myself,

I'm going to be successful enough to outgrow it, or I'm going to fail. And obviously, we just kept moving from there for it. So your training, when you were training now for the first CrossFit games, when was the first CrossFit games, was 2007, right? That's right. So now you're going to, so now you had some idea from watching it from the outside,

what it was going to be like. You knew you had to be prepared for basically anything, but you kind of also knew the core, methodologies and modalities of strength and fitness that you needed to be working on, how hard were you training? We trained like a psycho? Yeah, well, like back then, like swimming wasn't a part of the CrossFit games and the barriers, the margins were a little bit narrower than they are today.

But yeah, I was training hard, but at the time, training hard then was different than it is today. So I would challenge people on YouTube. So I would, I would like, back then it was like O.P.T and this guy, Bionic out of Florida, I would like do a challenge video. you can still find them on YouTube where you would do it. And then you'd say, hey, can you get better than this? That's what I was pushing myself.

And when I showed up from my first crosser games experience, the model just worked for me. I had good events. I was training hard, but back then it was just once a day. It was like a big deal. As I grew with the sport, because I competed for the next, about 10 years. So from when I started to when I retired from the sport,

there was a significant difference in the way people trained. Yeah. But this first CrossFit games that you got ready for, you were pretty much training once a day, hard, but you would say you're not going as hard as you would end up training later? Yeah, 100%. Yeah. I mean, when you think about like,

and this is some I reflect on a lot, is like anything in life that's like really worth something is you put so much work and dedication to it that when you achieve it, it's like, wow, it's that moment. The 2012 or excuse me, 13 and 14 games meant a lot more to me than 08 because in 08 when I won like it was great but I hadn't put in bulk of years of work to get me to that point you know I got you know I was pretty fit and I got lucky with some of the events and I remember we what events were you good at in 2008 that helped you win it so there

was a short hill run I didn't do that great I mean it was like it was like a chest to bar Fran that was the first year they ever introduced a chest bar pull up which was like unheard of at the time and getting your bar getting your chest from like your chin to the to the bar is much difference. And then they did like a burpee deadlift. I did good in all of them. But the way that that year worked, which was unique and it will never happen again, was it was called Every Second Counts. And the way they did it this year is that each one of the workouts had similar time domains. So nowadays, I would never fly because you want to work different systems. But what they did is they accumulated your time throughout the events. There was three events on Saturday and then one event on Sunday,

something along that line. And they accumulated your score. And then based on where you see, sat, that's how they staggered you for the finals. So in the finals, I started like a minute and 50 seconds behind the person in first. And one by one by one, they went based on where they staggered until they got to me. So I was like an eighth place. And then whoever won that event, won everything. Because if you caught up with the person in front, you won everything. So that was- And what was the final event? Oh, man, it was beautiful. It was beautiful. It was 30, squat cleaning jerks for time. And at the time...

With what weight? 155. Okay. And so it was a squat clean and jerk. And at the time, most people were doing a squat clean, stand, reset, jerk, right? For 30. I asked the question to Boz, who was a head judge at the time, can we basically cluster it? Yeah, thrust it.

He said yes. So from the get-go, so it was like Spieler started, then a bunch of other people started. I'm just watching them. I'm just like sitting there, just like, you know, chomp of the bit, ready to go. And I was not the favorite to win at all. No one even knew who I was. And I clustered or I basically squawk clean thrustered all of them. And I ended up winning.

And that was a cool moment for me. Could those guys see what you were doing and start to turn up their pace and start to cluster as well? A little bit. But at the time, it's like they didn't even know I was like relevant because everybody was watching Josh Everett at the time who had an Olympic lifting background. He was like in fourth place. So like he was the favorite going in. And I was kind of like, you know, I'm in eighth place.

Who the hell thinks a guy from eighth place is going to catch up? And so no one was really watching. I just remember, you know, it's like. And it was only 30? It was only 30. But back then. So what was the total time on that? It was like two minutes and 30 seconds.

So how did you make up a minute and 56 seconds in that short amount of time? I'd have to look back on it. But it's because, for example, Chris took six minutes to finish. Right? And then the other guy took five. I just did it significantly faster than them. And, you know, I just, it's so funny because after I won, you, you watch, there's a, there's a movie called Every Second Counts and you just see Josh Everett's face like,

what? Like no one knew. Like, it was a cool moment. Did Josh come in second? Josh came in second. And I think it was Jeremy Teal took third from, not mistaken. Now all of a sudden you're a freaking CrossFit champion. And this is, you know, I'm trying to think of how big CrossFit was in 2000.

It's definitely on the rise for sure. We had the CrossFit here at victory at that time. We started that well we got the thing in 2007 and we opened the gym in January 2nd of 2008 But so CrossFit's pretty big. Did you what was it like from like a Game changer for you as a as a person that was literally unknown? Yeah, and then you win the world championship. Well, so at that point, you know, social media wasn't super prevalent. There was blogs that were over available. I just remember I won and my friends and I went to In and Out Burger and we just like when I won the cross of games I won like $2,000 and a couple and like a pair of shoes and I was not doing this for the money, the fame, the fortune. I was doing it because I just wanted to test myself. I wanted to see how do I stack up and from that day on I just told myself like I just had specific rules when it came to training like I will never do this for the money and the fame. I'll do it because I want to see

where I stack up and I'll never say no to someone who wants to take a picture with me. Like those are like Like just simple rules because eventually that was going to end. And so I got home and our gym obviously got like an influx of members. But at the time, like you weren't making enough to live off of in CrossFit like you can now. And so I was still running a business and a training. And then, you know, I then competed in 09. I competed for the next 10 years. I worked for CrossFit, all that kind of stuff.

It just stemmed the whole lifestyle. When you say an influx of members, is it like crazy? At what point did you have to get a bigger gym? So we moved out after six months, but not because of the CrossFit Games. Like I think people have this misconception about people who become famous or do something. You might attract people to your business, but if you're not a good person or if you treat people inappropriately or if you're not a good coach, just because you're a good athlete doesn't mean you're a good coach. And I was coaching all the class at the time. And so we saw an influx, but not like gazillions.

It wasn't a game changer. No. I mean, it definitely helped, but it wasn't a game changer. And then from there we expanded in our second location and then we moved on from there. So now are you starting to think in 2009 or 2008, the rest of 2008, you're starting to train for it to win again. Yeah, that's right. I assume. Yes.

So did you change anything about how you were training? Did you learn anything? Like, what was the adjustment you made? I mean, you know, at the time, I was working really hard. You know, I was the only coached our gym and I just, we had to be successful. And so it was long days, you know, and I would just get in my training during off hours. So I'd get there for the 5 a.m. class, middle of the day, I'd hit a session. and then I'd hit a little bit of session because I was just at the gym all day long.

And so my training changed because instead of being at the conventional gym or whatnot, I was at a boutique brick and mortar crossfit gym with no one else around during off hours. So I would just train. And that helped me a lot. Going into 2009, though, I learned a lot of, you know, from a mental perspective. I ended up getting a mindset coach. This is later on in my career. I wish I had had one earlier because in 2009, you know, I wish,

went in there as the current champ. And I just, I became, you know, I thought that I need to fire myself up on, you know, hardcore music, this and that. It started off with the 7K Hill Run. And I was getting married the week later. And I just, I got on this hill run. I was the current champ. Just too much nerves, too much anxiousness.

And I ended up passing out. And I ended up getting back up. I took basically last night event. I ended up coming back and taking fifth that year. But I learned a lot about myself. Like I built some confidence up that like when when I passed out and Dave Cashers like, hey, if you don't continue like your games are done I felt good that I got back up and finished, but I had to ask myself, why did I even get in that place in the first place? That was 2000.

So I actually watched that video yesterday of you just gassing out. I mean, it's the definition of gassing out when you see you. So did was it you just ran so hard that you literally gassed out and you just didn't. I mean you fall down you fall down you fall down I blacked out yeah I don't think it has anything to do I think looking back on it was just that I had headphones on and I was listening to like Eminem and two I don't even know what I was listening to but I was listening to stuff that was like high adrenaline and I think I made this mistake I ended up making this mistake again the next year which I shouldn't have but I did where I thought that I had to like put myself in a state of fired up but you're going to be fired up

when you hear that 3-2-1-go gun go off. And I utilized too much of my adrenaline, and I just depleted all my resources. And I had false impressions of how well I should have done on that event. I needed to just chill. I ended up getting Poison Oak that year because we ended up, we crawled up one of the hills. And, I mean, it was gnarly.

It was a gnarly 7K Hill run. But I just, the learning lesson there was not that I went too fast. It was that I did not conserve energy enough for that moment and mentally I became just broken. But the cool thing is, number one, and again, this is in the video, you can watch this video on YouTube. I forget the link, but Castro comes over,

like you're laying on the ground. And in the book, you describe this. You're laying on the ground and you describe Castro coming over and being like, hey dude, if you don't get up, you're out. And you go back to him like, well, what's this phrase you say? I'm gonna do this absolutely.

And you can watch this all in the video. It's just like, and then you have to recover. You have like a half an hour to recover. Yeah. And then you're deadlifted, yeah. And then you're getting into the next part of the games, right? Yeah. So there was a, it was basically a very, you know what they say in fighting is, you know,

when a guy gets tested, like they really, you can have a guy that's a champ and he knocks this guy out in the first round, chokes this guy out in the second round, beats this other guy in the first round and then finally gets the championship match and they get tested five rounds not just five rounds but five grueling rounds and people say they get tested even if they lose they're like well he got tested he lost a decision but he kind of passed the test of he can he's going to be able to push through stuff and it seemed to me like that's what that crossfit games was for you because you for all practical purposes could have been like yeah I've obviously got something wrong with me and I'm out but you didn't you and you actually came back and came in fifth right

And I think you came in, was there 75 competitors when it started? And you came in 75th on the first event. Yeah. I mean, it's not something I think about that often other than every day. But the way that it went is they made cuts. So if I had taken last place in like day two, I would have won the game because I got last place with like, the way the point system worked was it favored the earlier events more because they had more competitors. And then throughout the weekend, they made cuts. So at the end, if you took last place on that event, it wasn't the same disadvantage than if you did in the beginning.

But in either case, right, I didn't perform. I didn't win. I took fifth. So I won what they called the Spirit of the Games Award that year, which was cool, which, you know, signified to me to your point. Like, I wasn't, I've never done CrossFit because I want to, like, make a buck or whatever. I did it because I just, I love the push. I love seeing, like, where do I stack up? Like, why do I do all these hard things?

It's because I enjoy, I enjoy that feeling of like accomplishment, you know? Not just at CrossFit, all the other things I've done, you know? So what did you change in your training? Oh, yeah, but so you got married, right? You're covered in Poison Oak and you get married? Yeah, that was, that sucked. Your wife's like, I'm in, who am I marrying? Dude, idiot.

Yeah. Yeah, so I had Poison Oak on my hands and, yeah. Good times. Yep. Good honeymoon, I'm sure. What did you change in your training now going into 2010? It was just more volume. You know, 2010 things really, you know, for anybody who's like a CrossFit historian,

which I don't know how many there are out there, but 2007. That's a good question. 2007, eight, nine, we're all at Dave Cashers Ranch. They ended up going back there during the year of COVID. But nonetheless, it switched to the Home Depot Center in Southern California in Carson. And at that point, like, we really felt we made it, man. Reebok came on as a sponsor. Progenics actually came on as a big sponsor.

And like the prize purse went from like $5,000 to $25,000. It was like, it was a big deal. And I get down there in the first event, you know, the national anthem plays. They have jets fly over. I am so fired up. And I went in there as a favor, right? Because I have a first and a fifth. And I learned a lot of valuable lessons that year.

You know, I think that my performance wasn't quite there. After that, I ended up really, you know, just. just creating a training environment that was conducive, starting doing double the days, and then boom, just had a lot of good years after that. Did you make any fatal mistakes in 2010? Yeah, yeah, yeah, for the first event. I just went out too hot on the first event.

Same thing. Oh yeah. What was the first event? I was called Amanda. So Amanda, here's the thing about it. The first event of the CrossFit Games 2010 was all about how fast can you move with complex movements and still be able

connect your brain with your body. So it starts off and it goes squat snatches and muscle ups. And it's nine seven, five. That's it. Nine muscle ups, nine squat snatches at, I think 135, seven, five, five. That's it. So I get through the nine-nine, I'm winning. I get through the seven-seven, I'm winning.

I get back to my five and my body just turns numb and I can't connect it. So I start doing singles, one, one, one. I get back. I'm still in the game. And then it's the last five squat snatches. and I just, dude, I just break down. I end up, they call them now the burpee bar chasers because what would happen is I'd receive it at the bottom

and then I just could not connect my brain and I just would drop it. I ended up taking like middle of the pack or like last place on that. It was bad. And I laid on that floor for a solid hour before they had to cart me off. Like I couldn't function.

I just, where I have had my faults in competition is that I'd rather, like, not die, that's an exaggeration, but I'd rather like black out than not go at my best effort. So this is like a pre-fontaine. You know who that is? Pre-fontaine? Pre-fontaine, the runner. He's like one of the most iconic American runners ever.

They call him pre. And he would run so hard that sometimes he would win first place by a great distance. And sometimes, including in the Olympics, he would, be. fall apart, you know, like he would literally just gas himself out and wouldn't, you know, would come in fifth or something. Yeah. The guy that it would be just, he would just kill. He would just kill. So it sounds like you had a little pre-Fontaine going. I did. I did. After that, after that year, though, I ended up having a good run. So after that, it was like, I took a first, a fifth, a sixth, a sixth, a fifth, a fifth, a second, and a third. And then I went team for

year. So you, you, in 2011, you renamed your gym to NorCal CrossFit. Is that right? 2000 so no no um so in 2008 it was crosswood sanclair right then we opened up another location we called that cross from mountain view then we opened up another location we started saying hey if we have all these different locations right because we had some key talent what should we should we should put them underneath one umbrella so we called it norcal crossfit and we kept it as norcal cross i want to say it was like maybe 2010 11 through 2016 and then at that point we said hey we want to be in control of our own destiny we also are not only offering at the time crossfit we're offering a variety from services so we bring

granted at NCFIT. And I learned a lot that experience. A lot of mistakes were made. But that's why we were in NorCal Crossways to be indicative of multi-locations in the Bay Area. And then we rolled out NCFIT. And at the time, like 2011 and 12, we also then started expanding globally with Western Digital, which that was a whole other. What's Western Digital?

This is a company, right? Yeah. So they're a giant company that just acquired Sandisk a few years ago. They make all kinds of different products. And they have locations all over the world. So what happened with that is, from a business perspective, let's just talk about 2011, it's like 2011, 1112. We'd open up multiple locations in the Bay Area.

I then started doing corporate wellness. So I would show up at these companies at like 5 a.m. and start bringing kettlebells and dumbbells. And what we found was that the connections that were being fostered in our gym, we could bring them to companies because I'd shared suffering in that connection. All of a sudden, you're having HR talked to legal. And instead of them just leaving like an email on the debt or an email there, they'd be in the gym and they'd be like, hey man, just letting you know, I shot you an email.

Boom, it increased productivity and it created really strong connections. So we ended up doing a deal with GoPro. We worked with Twitter. We worked with all kinds of companies. But Western Digital at the time it was called HGST, and then it became Western Digital, was by far our biggest partner. And for 10 years, we service their locations all over the world. So in 2011, 2012, we expanded from maybe four brick and mortar, I want to say, to 20.

and so I ended up traveling all over the world, Singapore, Thailand, Philippines. Were all those other additional 16 were all those just to service Western Digital? That's right. And so I ended up, so we ended up owning multiple locations and then operating many. And we ended up getting other corporate wellness accounts. And so, yeah, that just was a super interesting relationship because I ended up learning how to how to connect with people from different countries. You'd be out in the Philippines. We had three locations in Malaysia.

just it was really cool and that we fostered a strong culture for 10 years and we had to hire people so you know we were hiring a lot of people and that that was amazing how many people did you end up working or worked in the company I think at our largest we had about 140 employees now we're you know a little less than half that and things have just evolved yeah so but yeah from that from that point on, you know, essentially the way our business was ran is NC Fit. We owned an operated brick and mortar, then we operated some. And then we rolled out a digital model to serve as gym owners and coaches, which really has done well for us over the years.

Now in 2013, you got second place in the CrossFit games. Yeah, that was a big deal. And what was going on? Did you modify your training? What was the deal? How did you do so well that year? And why didn't you win? Oh, dude, I thought I was going to win.

Damn it, Rich Froning. That's a good reason not to rip win. 2012, 13, and 14, I was able to represent the United States on Team USA, which is really cool, too, with Rich. But anyways, it was just a good year. I won this half marathon row. I won a lot of events. And it was just a really good year because in CrossFit, a lot of times when you win an event, it happens very quickly. Like, you don't know you're going to win.

You just, boom, make it. But that year, there was multiple events, one called the Burden Run. and where I knew I was going to win before I won. And so it was just like a lot of... What's described the burden run? So the burden run was it was a three-mile run. You came in, you flipped what they called a pig, which was like a multi-hundred-pound item across a football field.

You carried a log like 200 meters, and then you pulled a sled. And when Dave briefed it the night before, I just had this vision of like what it would be like to walk in the stadium first. And I knew that if I went into the stadium first, first, a soccer stadium, I was going to win the event because I wasn't going to be out pulled on a sled. And so it just, I wasn't going to allow it to happen. So I had this vision. And I ended up getting there first by a decent margin. And so I said to myself, hey, don't get, you know, don't get too comfortable. Take that sled, get it halfway and then take it all in. So I ran in there, boom,

I grabbed this sled. I went as hard as I could halfway. And then I looked around. There's no one else still in the stadium. And the way that worked was like a win was a win. Didn't matter if you finished in 10 minutes or whatever. It didn't matter as long as you won. So I took a moment to kind of take it in to realize all the hard work I'd put in and then finished it out. So that year was a lot of those type of events. I just felt really good. Rich had some incredible performances right at the end, caught me and took first. And yeah, I mean, obviously that sucked, but I was still proud of my achievement because at that point, right, I had fought so hard for so long. I'd won my region every year. I'd won all these other events. I'd won all these things, but I couldn't get back

on the podium for multiple years. So to get back on the podium was an amazing, amazing accomplishment. And the following year, I got back on the podium and my kids were able to get on it with me, which was really cool. And Fronings is an animal. He's okay. What about your fuel intake? What are you doing at this point? By the way, I love food. I love Rich. I was just with him last week at the Roguing Motational. I actually just met him for the first time at the CrossFit Games. I was just a freaking awesome guy, total stud, super nice and humble and cool, just a great dude for sure. Dude, 100%.

When it comes to fuel, you know, I think that back then, so there's been evolutioning crosshoods. So in the early days, it was like, dude, just train your face off, go as hard as you can, which was obviously what I did, and then you're going to do well. Then it kind of evolved like, hey, it's all about pacing. You know, I had a coach called Chris Hinshaw who really taught me about pacing and cadence, and that really helped me with my running to get my times down. then it evolved like okay no longer do you want to smash your face pacing is important but now what are you feeling yourself with and how's your recovery

and so it evolved kind of after my time but during the time I was training so much typically three times a day that I just kind of ate what I what I feel like I could so my morning session would typically be fast at cardio which I still do today you know 30 to an hour of just like hard cardio just right in the morning then what what's your cardio variance what do you do Like typically I just like the bike. I like any type of bike. Sometimes I'll run, but sometimes I'll row. But in general, I'll just bike.

I just like it. Outdoor bike or like a bike in a gym? Like a like an air bike or even like a concept two type bike. Just something to get my hurry elevated. Typically what my mornings look like today are my daughter and I train in the mornings. And so I'll train her and then I'll go ahead and do some cardio. And then it'll just kind of jumpstart the day. Nothing crazy.

I don't like lifting and getting too wild that early. I need to kind of prime up. But anyways, back to the day, I would do a midday session, which is like very CrossFit. So I'd have a crew that would just come. We would just create this atmosphere, just this fun atmosphere. And for any future CrossFit are listening to this,

you know, the money, the fame, it doesn't come fast or easy. Surround yourself with like-minded people where you could really enjoy the experience because that's what you could do for a long time. And that's what we had in NorCal. It was just a group of just hard chargers just got after it. So I would do that for like two hours midday. And then in the evening I would work.

So hold on. Midday workout is a CrossFit-esque workout you're saying. Yeah. Meaning like a Metcon, meaning what like, and how is it taking two hours? Because typically what we would do. So you have the fast food card in the morning and then midday, you would do like a cross-de-session. So we would do it as like we'd warm up with like a hard e-mom. Then we would get in some type of strength.

then we would do some type of like, you know, three minutes on, one minute off for 10 rounds. And so by the time you're done with all that, especially a strange session in the middle, you're like two hours, 90 minutes. And then in the evening, I would work stamina work. And this is where like countless times my wife and I would like, she'd come into the garage, she'd be like, Jason, dinner's ready. And I'd come in, sweating my ass off just with my, you know, and, because I would be working stamina. So I would do like a 20-minute e-mom of strict hand-hand push-ups or a 20-minute e-mom of strict checkups. test of our pull-ups, something where I was trying to enhance my gymnastics stamina.

What was your area of weakness? That, yeah. Gymnastics stamina. Yeah. So it wasn't just like, so the way I think about it is not just like contractile potential, it's not just like a one time like pure, like I could do one muscle up. It's how quickly do you fatigue out, right? Like think about the same thing with push-ups. Like it's a muscle stamina issue. Like you could perform one really well, but if I actually do a hundred, what happens? So when you start adding in, you. these e-moms every minute on the minute, you start creating goals based on that minute.

And now, of a sudden, you could adjust that minute goal as you improve. So an example, every minute on the minute for 10 minutes, 10 chest of our pull-ups. This is one I would do probably once or twice a week. And once you accomplish that, then you could add to 11, maybe 12. But now you're using the clock as an indicator of your success instead of just arbitrarily asking questions. Okay, so this is your three workouts. Fasted cardio in the morning, kind of a little bit chill, not like relaxing, but it's not, you're not going psycho. A long workout in the midday, that's going to be CrossFit kind of based and kind of long for CrossFit, like maybe multiple CrossFit workouts.

Like if you think about it, what you just said is kind of multiple CrossFit workouts. That's right. And then in the evening, it's this stamina situation that usually is. are taking around 20 minutes. Okay, so you're freaking tired. And are you doing any, are you doing any stretching? Are you doing any ice bath? Are you doing sauna?

Are you doing anything like that? Yeah, so the cold and hot therapy wasn't as popular. Like now I do, right? So I have a cold plunge. I have a sauna. Obviously, I do a lot of jiu-jitsu now. My training's different now. But back then, I wouldn't really expose myself to hot and cold.

I wish I had. But I would just like listen to my body. And I would just say, what does my body need? And if it needed broccoli and rice, great. If it needed just like peanut butter and honey, which is like my go-to before workouts, great. But I would just try and be really in tune with what I was feeling and how I want to do.

And that's the way that I trained. And I would program for myself so that if I was feeling good, like I'm going for PRs. If I'm not feeling good, like I'm just trying to get through it, have a good session. But I wanted to align my expectation with how I was feeling. It was really important to me.

And where are you getting your protein from? You know, obviously. And are you thinking of it? about it. Is it a big deal? Are you like count, did you ever count like macros? Yeah. So over the, over my span of career, I've done like hardcore zone. I've done full paleo. I've done full carnivore. I've tried every nutritional plan you could think of. But what I ended up coming down to is like I think about like a discipline bucket. I only have so much discipline in my bucket. I was using it very, very, very for all my training, my business, my family. I was really using a lot of

discipline. When it came to food, I was just fueling my body with what felt right. Yeah. And when you're working out that freaking hard, I mean, you can pretty much eat whatever you want. Doesn't really matter. Yeah. And as long as you're getting enough protein. That's right. And so I, you know, I was fortunate that Ashley would always have great meals at home. I'd always have access to protein, et cetera. But I think at the end of the day, it's like, you know, for me, like nutrition could have been optimized for inflammation. If I could look back on it because, you know, what you're trying to get down to you is how fast I recover. So if I was able to recover faster through, you know, anti-inflammatory type foods or not, you know, if I have a slight allergy to gluten or dairy,

I just didn't even think about those things. I didn't care. I should have cared. So 2014 is your last, is that the last time you did the individual competition of CrossFit? That's right. And how did you feel that year? Because you got third place. Oh, I felt great. That's a good run. Oh, it was great run. So every year my wife and I would have a conversation. And we'd say, you know, hey, what are we doing this year? Because it wasn't just me. She made just as many sacrifices as I did, if not more. And so the way that my season ended up being was it was a lot.

From 2011 until 2016, 15, like, I competed year round. The reason why is that I was invited to compete for Team Jose. So what would happen is you'd have an online open, which is like everybody does it. You have to perform. Then from there you go to regionals. then from your region you go to the games and then if you perform well enough of the games you get invited to go represent your country

and I did that for multiple years in a row so it was a lot on the family and you know for me I remember specific times where like there were sacrifices that were made you know we would go to parties and something and I would be like Ashley I got to go home like I gotta go sleep and that is a drain on our relationship

and so that year in 2000 going into 2014 we had our talk like after the games we'd always go and like go on a vacation We just sat down. We're like, hey, where are we at this year? She's like, Jay, I just can't do it anymore. Like, so from 2012, she'd be like, ah, I got a little bit more on me.

13, she's like, ah, I got a little bit more on me, but not much. 14, she's like, dude, I can't do it anymore. And at that point, you know, like, I never got into this for money, fame or whatever. My relationship to my wife is the most important thing. And so I chose to go team the following year. And the team was great. Yeah, yeah. And so talk about that team.

Well, first of all, you got third place in 2014. And, I mean, that's freaking badass. Like just being on the podium Against the best people in the world is It's insane Yeah, I mean that was a good year So I won my region So I did well in the open

I won my region Took third at the games And then our team ended up winning For Team NSA So that was like a good run And then the following year I ended up going team Our team was just absolutely killing it

We had the best team It was incredible We won our region We won everything It was great And then we get to the games And we're like multiple days into the games and we're doing really well. We're up by hundreds of points.

It looks like we're the, you know, it looks like we're the winner. And one of our teammates tore ACL and I did not do a good job detaching, which we could talk about that from a leadership perspective. And there's some things I wish I had done differently at that moment, but I was so invested in a winning. I was just, I was emotional. I was, my ego was in the way. It was just all kinds of stuff. She tears her ACL and we end up taking 10th that year because we just couldn't continue competing. That was, that was heartbreaking for everybody. So how did your emotion and your ego plane to that? So, you know, we're on the field and we're up by, like I said, hundreds of points.

Miranda's doing what they, if I'm not mistaken, it was a power claim. And she catches it a little bit off. And her knee buckles. And they diagnose her with the torn ACL like immediately. And at the time, like, you had just spent so much time and effort for this moment. And victories right over there. And victories right there. and like it was very hard for me not to be like well we could compete with five people

still put her in you know wrap it up let's go like I was just thinking like how can I still have her on our team how can we still win because that was the goal like and I just had blinders on you know I just I was so competitive I'm a pretty competitive person and I couldn't I couldn't detach from my perspective my perspective was dude I came here to win I didn't come here for second I came here to win and every year at the games I was my perspective I'd dance and important as a competitor. And her perspective was probably, dude, I just tore my ACL and I need surgery all this stuff and I probably wasn't a great friend then, right? You know, obviously my ego got in the way because I feel like we were the best team and obviously that happened. And then I was

emotional. And, you know, I just had such a tight relationship with the crossage Q team that it allowed me just access that maybe other athletes wouldn't have had. And, you know, I just, I wish I had that situation differently, but as a competitor, all I want to do is win. And looking back on it, what I needed to do from a leadership role, because I was playing a leadership role in that team, is like, just take a step back, just take a deep breath and be like, dude, you know, like, am I detaching from my ego, my emotion, my perspective? And I wasn't. I didn't even know about that theory back then, but looking back on it now. What would you have done, what would the call have been? Like, okay, hey, we're out? Like, the call would have been, um, I would have regrouped

us, I would have sat down and said, okay, what are our options? We would have been told our options and we would have done the best we could given our options and not have been emotional about it. Not have tried to call Dave Castro 40 times. Not have tried to, you know, you know, change rules for us or whatever. So you just freaked out. Yeah. And a lot of that had to do just like the current, it was just, it was looking back on it, it's funny how your how your perspective shifts as you get older. But that was a defining moment. That really was.

And it was a defining moment for Miranda because she went on to go create a beautiful business. Had we have won, I don't know if she would have started that. And secondly, had we had one, we would have probably started training

for 2016, hard. And that was when Ava got diagnosed. So I would have been out anyways. So it's a very interesting, I mean, it's just, yeah. What business is Mariana? Amanda go into.

She started a company called street parking, which is for, you know, at home, garage jimmers. Primarily, a lot of her bases with women. And she's just done amazing. And what, where do people find that if they want to check out street parking? Is it streetparking.com or something? I believe so. But you can just look up. Just look up Miranda street parking.

Yeah. I think her IG is fearless Miranda. Okay. Yeah, you just mentioned 2016. You know, this is kind of what I opened the book with. or open the podcast with and it's what the book opens with. I got a little excerpt here. I want to read from the book.

You're talking about the fact that you're tracking, you know, Ava every day you're kind of watching and paying so much attention to her health and her kind of vital signs and all that stuff. And you say this. One day we saw a shift. We noticed a very subtle change in Ava's vital signs and without hesitation called the doctrine. Unfortunately, it quickly became clear that this was not the good kind of shift.

What had started very subtly turned into a sharp, severe drop in blood pressure. With a quick turn of his head, the doctor momentarily shifted his attention from Ava and looked at us. Even before he spoke, his eyes made clear to us the seriousness of the situation. His words were clear and direct. If Ava's blood pressure doesn't come up in the next two minutes, I want to prepare you for what will happen. I will call a rapid response team. We will need to act without interference. It will be a lot of people.

I gripped Ashley's hand firmly. Two minutes later, he called in the rapid response team and 20 emergency medical clinicians rushed into the room. I've never been more frightened in my life. The lead doctor to whom I will forever be grateful spoke with clear yet undeniable urgent direction to the entire team. Each member had a specific responsibility. It was the most inspiring expression of teamwork I have ever seen. Ashley and I could only stand back and watch. We held our breaths not speaking a word.

It was obvious that our daughter's life was not in our hands. but theirs we quite we quite simply after all our watching and reading and waiting had no control after what seemed like a lifetime of intense discussion followed by quick action infusion and medication the tone changed eva was rolled out of the room and taken to the ICU but the frantic pace had noticeably slowed the tone went from life and death to one of optimistic concern i remember looking at Ashley as we went upstairs asking did you hear how their voices changed she responded yes definitely the whole situation only lasted 10 minutes but in that 10 minutes we experienced nearly every human emotion possible that to me you know when I read that I was

it's um emblematic of what you're going through as a dad the whole freaking time yeah you know that's like one moment but there's also weeks that are like that there's also 20 seconds that are like that like it's a nightmare yeah and you know i mean it's it's it's tough you know because when you read that it just brings me back to that exact same situation but it's the greatest gift the cross the games ever gave me was the ability to create a mindset where i had to go find a coach to learn how to use positive self-talk to learn how to understand what's in my control versus how to my control and those were skills that transferred not only on the field but in real life and i'm very grateful for the cross-the games for that and

And the positive self-talk thing is just so important. And in this particular case, like, it was just so heavy. It was so heavy. It was so bad. It was just a lot. You know, we had, my wife and I spent months and months and months in the hospital. And, you know, we've, we've gone through our fair share of not that good of times. That was, that was the worst.

That was the worst because it was, like, really clear to me that, like, something was really, really wrong. and all I could grasp onto was the lessons that I had learned through overcoming adversity in the gym, which is I think why everybody should work out, and then also on the competition floor, which was you got to find the small nuggets. You got to find something to hold on to, and you got to understand what's in your control. What was in my control at that moment was obviously supported my wife and supported my daughter the best I could, but a lot of it was out of my control, and I can't focus on that.

I need to focus on the positive, which was the tone change. and we decided to connect on that. You know, Ash and I, we connected on that, and it helped us. And we ended up spending, you know, some time in the ICU and it wasn't ideal. So when Ava gets diagnosed, how long was it from, hey, we're 99% sure that she has leukemia to like she's getting? And did she get both chemo and radiation treatments? Yeah, so not radiation. By the way, I should acknowledge the fact that Ava is now five years out of,

of treatment so she's cancer free. I just, for anybody listening, he's like, oh, what's happened? When she was diagnosed that night, they knew it was 100%, right? But I'm trying to grasp on it or whatever I can, right? So I'm like, are you sure? She's like, I'm 99.9% sure.

I'm like, are you sure, though? Like, of course you're sure. They end up doing a bunch of blood tests, et cetera. So the way that it works with leukemia is for women, for girls, it's a two and a half year treatment plan. For boys, it's a three-year treatment plan because statistically the leukemia comes back, in the testicle. And so for two and a half years, you go through this treatment plan. And it definitely

is like, it's pretty aggressive during the phases, right? And it's, it's chemo. Yeah. So she's taking medicine that's going to like hurt her to the point where she's barely getting by to try and kill the cancer. And it's just a nightmare for you. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, luckily, you know, there's a different aminop therapies and different things that are coming out, which we try and stay up on. but yeah she was she was given a lot of chemotherapy a lot and she was given a lot of steroids and the steroids were the worst part for sure how come dude it just made her a different girl you know like i truly feel at this moment in time like where i'm sitting right now i feel more blessed than ever before i just i'm so blessed because our business got crumbled um crippled by covid and now we're

out and Ava and our family is just thriving. They're just amazing. And during that time of steroids, it was just very difficult, you know, to have your kid tell you, like speak to you in such a way that like just broke my heart, man, you know? And it was a lot. It was a lot to overcome. But, you know, there was a light at the end of the tunnel. So were they given them, were they given her steroids or do they give people in the

situation steroids because they're taking such damage from the chemo that they have to try and build them back up type thing? Yeah, I think that's part of it. And then all of a sudden they have something called moon face where like their face looks like absurdly wide. Obviously they lose their hair, which by the way, you know, it's interesting. When Ava first lost her hair, it was more traumatic, I think, for us than it was for her. Because she was, she was four turning five. So she was, in my opinion, like, and I wrote this in the book, I believed that if someone was going to be diagnosed leukemia,

I don't ever wish it on anybody. But for us, we were as well prepared as we could have been. We were financially in a good position. Fitness was on point. And we had a family support system that was just unparalleled, unmatched. And, you know, when it came to the age, it was a good age because Abe was able to understand a little bit of what was going on, but not understand fully the gravity. But it reinforced how good humans are, man. When you would walk around with the kid that's bald, who people look at them like, oh, that kid has cancer, like they're sick, you saw a side of humanity that was pretty magical.

I mean, the things that people did for us were very touching. Now, when you're on this two and a half year cycle, it's not the whole time, right? You're doing cycles like you'll do six weeks of chemo where you're getting crushed, or is it the whole time? It's basically the whole time. So there's different flows. Like there's like induction phase and this phase and that phase. And there's different types of chemo's like one was called the Red Devil.

And you knew that when that was going to come up, it was going to be nasty. And you do it multiple times? Red Devil? Well, the Red Devil, I think only happened once. But like Vin Christine, for example, is a very popular chemotherapy. That would happen. Vin Christine? Yeah.

That would happen many times. The reason why it's a, the reason why chemotherapy is the reason why kids get so sick. So when you look up the statistics of ALL leukemia, statistically, we were in a pretty good spot, meaning like if you look at it, the survival rate is pretty high. As long as you pay attention as a parent, as long as you're on point, you know, like I was advocating for my daughter every single day because we were her, we had, that was in my control, right? What was in my control is advocating?

But the reason why we would be in and out of the hospital so much is that when you look at her blood markers, if her A&C dropped below a certain amount, it meant that she was more susceptible to getting sick. And so as soon as her blood markers drop below 500, you had to be in the hospital until they got out of that. Because if they, especially if they trigger a fever, you had to go in immediately because your body was fighting something. And it might take you a week to get out, might take you a day, might take you a month. It just depended. So that's why I'm very grateful for our family because they were, they stepped. that big time and watched our son. Yeah, no, there's an awesome section of the book where you talk

about basically, as soon as this happens, you call your team together and you just say, I'm, I'm going to take care of my daughter and you guys got it. And you call your dad and like, hey, I'm going to take care of my daughter. And he's like, well, we got this. And basically, the support that you're talking about was coming from both your work relationships that you had and your family relationships. and you were able to really just like focus on taking care of Ava. That's a huge piece and it's a beautiful part of the book for sure. Yeah, I mean, that's why I think people need to work hard, right? They need to work hard on their relationships.

You need to focus on them. They need to work hard at their work to build a hedge to become so successful, so, you know, important to the company that they want to help you in return. And obviously with your family, just holding strong relationships and having your fitness on point. You know, your fitness has to be there. Every day when we were in the hospital, I'd go to the parking. garage, I'd bring my truck out there and I'd put a bunch of weights and I'd hit a hard workout. I had to stay within six minutes of the room.

So if I was running, the furthest I was able to get, okay, maybe like seven minutes. So the first I was able to get is a mile. I would tell myself because when the doctors were doing their rounds, I had to get back in time to be able to talk to the doctor. But I would go out to the garage or the parking garage. I'd come back with just energy, enthusiasm. And that's what workouts do. And if you're not training right now, you've got to start training.

You never know when life's going through your curveball. And the best thing you do is be as fit as possible and work on these other areas. And I was very grateful at the time. The team we had then and the team we have now, I'm blessed to have because I just wrote an email and say, hey, man, I'm out. I don't know if it's going to be for a day, a week, a month, a year, but this is my only priority. That's it.

And so I ended up deep diving into cancer research, leukemia research. I wanted to try and take everything I was in my control and try and focus on it. Mm-hmm. How long were the chunks of time that Ava would spend in the hospital? I mean, it varied from two days to a week to a month. I mean, we spent birthdays, Valentine's. I mean, I remember one time my wife and I celebrated Valentine's Day in the hospital. It just varied.

And then we ended up going back for some stuff. They thought she relapsed. I mean, it's just a lot. Yeah, it just varied. This is also the time when you started Jiu-Jitsu. Is that right? So, yeah, which, so when I, so, when I, So when I found out Ava was sick, I retired from the sport of CrossFit.

Because what I said was like, you know, you're a business, your family, and your fitness. For me, fitness took on a different lens. I was no longer trying to be the fittest on earth. I was trying to just use fitness as a way to clear my mind. And I found Jiu-Jitsu. I used to sub-lease some space to a jit-soo school and I loved it. It was like human chess. I would watch it.

I'd be like, dude, this is badass. I love it. But I couldn't do it because I didn't want to get injured for CrossFit. I did like a one private one time. And so when Ava got sick, I said, I need to find something to clear my mind. I need to find something to give me an hour where I just, this is like months after she'd been sick. And I found Jiu-Jitsu. And, you know, I created certain protocols around it where, you know, I was, I still had access to my phone.

I was still doing this, this, this, this, this. But long story, I started off with privates. And then I ended up at a place called Heroes, which is in San Jose. And then from there, I just moved on. I've been doing Jiu-Gitzi now for like seven years, and I absolutely, absolutely find it as a critical component in my life. Were you surprised the first time you got choked out or submitted an arm-locked? Were you surprised at all, or do you kind of accept that that's the way things were?

I accepted, but, you know, we were talking about this a little bit off air. I think that, especially coming from a CrossFit background, I didn't realize my own strength. I didn't realize my own ego. And I probably wasn't a great training partner. I probably wasn't. And my advice to my earlier self or anybody who is in things, and wants to try jih Tutsu is like maybe start with some privates, start with some fundamentals,

and just like walk in the door and say, my goal is to be a good training partner today. And that's my goal. Because what will happen is if you're new and someone feels your strength, they're going to ramp it up. Then you're going to get scared and you're going to ramp it up. And then it just turns into this like very non-beneficial training session. Yeah. Things can escalate quickly. Very quickly.

Especially in the white belt world, which is when you begin jiu-jitsu, you know, even when someone's a blue belt, they can still ramp it up for sure, but they're going to be at least a little bit more composed. But two white belts going crazy is I think I usually say like the first year, your chances of getting hurt in the first year are 10 times greater than in your probably fourth year. Your second year, it probably goes down to like 50%. And then in the third year, now you're in a pretty good spot. And like, I mean, once you've been training for, I don't know, what do you think? Seven, eight years. Like, you shouldn't be getting.

hurt you shouldn't be getting hurt like you look can shit happen yep you can slip and you can get twisted or you do something that someone didn't expect like you can you can definitely get hurt it's a freaking contact sport but the early days the white belt warriors and having someone like you're freaking explosive ass freaking getting crazy that that's definitely a good a good time to get hurt and so to your point if people know that they're going to be you're not being a training partner and just like anything else in life you you're you're part of a team and you're you're gonna be able to improve because the people that you work with not working against them so being a good training partner I love the idea of putting that as the primary goal

I didn't know what you were going to say when you're saying that like hey walk in the gym and like I thought you're going to say hey is to use technique or is to learn the technique this is actually the best priority I've heard the priority you go into a gym for the first time is be a good training partner that should be your goal and that's a really good place to start and that means not trying to not tap out that means not trying to rip people's arms off that means not worrying about any of that stuff because man you get the escalation of white belt warriors bro you got problems yeah I just I think I summarize it like that for myself because coming from across the background I get a lot of attention from people who want to try jihitsu and I just trying to remind them like

dude your goal just be a good training partner because if you just say that what does that mean It means focus on the fundamentals, focus on technique, focus on trying to give and receive, and especially when it comes to training with other belt levels and maybe opposite sex. Like if you're really focused on being a good training partner, I think only good things will happen in the future because it also allows you to train with everybody in the room and not have people not want to train with you because you're not a good training partner. Yeah. And I think that's really important.

It's to create a culture of one that we're all trying to rise each other up. I'm not trying to kill you. And there's a there's like a counterpoint which people might throw out which is like, well, if it doesn't work. You know, if I'm not, I want to give them a realistic training. So if I'm not going as freaking hard as I can, then that's not realistic training. Here's the deal. The people are learning jiu-jitsu.

They're not in a street fight. And as you get better, you definitely escalate. I mean, if I'm trying to arm-lock Echo, echo is going to give me 100% resistance so I can't arm-lock him. And if I don't do it correctly, it's not going to work. That's what we want. But this isn't like, this is after years and years of training. This is after making sure that my technique is good and that his technique to escape is good.

Right. So, yeah, it's definitely, that's probably the biggest thing to watch out for. Which means, though, that you guys are good training partners. Oh, for sure. So, for example, like, if we're rolling, right, we, if I'm rolling at my current level today, like, it's much different than it was before. But if you and I are trying, or let's just say you two, are trying to roll together, like you are being a good training partner by putting on the pressure and he's been a good training partner by not letting you. Yep. Because in, you know what I mean?

Because if you want to compete in the future, people aren't just going to give up your arm. So I think as long as you create that as like the overall theme, that's something I have been reflecting on a lot is like how can I bring more value to you and you in turn are going to bring more value to me. Yeah. Yeah. And you really shouldn't be hurting your training partner. And if your training partner doesn't tap, it's one thing to be like, well, you know, Echo should have tapped. That's why he's hurt.

It's like, no, actually, that's wrong. If Echo's not tapping because he's feeling stubborn or he doesn't want to tap or he's ego is in the way, I need to support my ego and be like, all right, I'm not going to hurt my freaking training partner, and I'm going to let this go and we'll carry on. Right. And let's face it, we all know.

You know what I mean? You know what I mean? You know, like when you got caught, when you get caught, you're like, we know, you know. Have you ever had one of those situations where you're rolling? I was overseas somewhere and I dropped it in a gym and I was having some good roles, right? And I get this guy in a good spot. I mean, he's a higher belt than me.

And I get him a good spot. And he's like, okay, let me tell you what to do for here. Classic. And I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm right about to bring it on. That's a classic meme in jiu-jitsu. That's a very common theme in jiu-jitsu. It's like you get there and you're about to choke him. They're like, you know what you want to do here is you want to make you, you want to put your elbow

A little bit there. Yep, there you go. And they tap and they go, good job. Yeah. I'm glad I could teach you there. Yeah. That's a very common thing. But man, the lessons learn from jihitsu.

Like if you're listening to this podcast, you probably already know about Jiu Jitsu because these guys talk about it all time. But I'm telling you, as a guy who dedicated his life to being the fittest on earth for almost a decade, pivoting into Jitsu has been incredible because something for me is every time I train when I'm thinking about like a class, when I coach classes, it's, can people get a good workout? Can people learn something new and have a great.

great time. Like, and it probably, it's in this order. They need to have a great time. Because if not having a great time, they're not going to come back. They need to go ahead and have a great workout, which is pretty straightforward. And they need to learn something, even something very basic. But when in jiu-jitsu, it unlocks the brain like earlier on in CrossFit did for me. Like, I strived for years to hit my 300-pound snatch or my whatever, and I would constantly be refining the techniques. But eventually, you're making 1% gains here and there, or even no gains. Like, For me, I'm probably never going to hit a PR again on an Olympic lift. And that's okay.

Because in jujitsu, I could unlock my brain, learn something new almost every single day, learn new threads, new ways to get into different things. And so it's connecting me in three ways. I have a hell of a time doing it. I get to get in a good workout, which I also think you should be doing cross-sfin stress conditioning, which is we could talk about. And then I learn something new every time I'm on the mats. Yeah.

Well, going to that piece, number one, yeah. I mean, Dean Lister will teach an arm lock. He's so funny. He saw me. He could teach me an arm lock this afternoon. An arm lock, like, from the mounted position, like a bit, and I'll learn something. And I'll be like, dude, why don't you show me that? He's like, I've showed you that a thousand times.

But, you know, like you're not ready to learn. The, when you said you should do strength and conditioning and jujitsu, this is something I used to get asked a lot, like almost people, almost with a little bit of distance. disbelief like but do you you still work out even when you or do you work out on the same days you do jih Tijuana i believe that's a little bit of the magic honestly i think that's a little bit of the magic of being being able to limit the injuries because i think if you if you work out all the time like i never stopped working out i never stopped working out at all i always worked out and did you jih Tzu personally i like to work out before i do jih Tutsu i think that's my that's my

preference everyone some people might have different preferences that's my preference I feel like I'm a little bit more fatigued when I go to the gym I'd rather be fatigued when I'm doing jujitsu I also feel like I've you know I'm sore but I'm like I've moved my body already I've moved my body through space yeah yeah so I feel like a little bit warmed up you know I might be tired I might have doms right there's there's nothing worse than doms um you know when you're you can't even get up and down off the mat you got doms that's that's painful but I'd rather be there than get done with a hard jiu-jitsu training and then go and try and work out. But you were saying that strength and conditioning and jiu-jitsu is a good combination. Yeah, I mean, so, you know, it's funny.

The first, I think it was the first time I met you. I finished rolling. I'm like, hey, dude, so, Jocko, let me ask you a question. Do you train, like, do you do like CrossFit stuff, strength conditioning stuff and jiu-jitsu? And you said to me, you're like, yes, but not the same intensity as you. Yeah. And I walked away, I was like, no, that's the same intensity as me.

I'm like, I'm like, calculating. It's like, I'm like, I'm like, okay, what did, how am I going to reflap? You know, and so the way I've kind of like taken what you said and his idea of RPE. So well, just real quick, I meant that when I do jiu-jitsu, I'm not doing it at the same intensity as you. When you're doing jiu-jitsu, like even as a purple belt, you have more white belt in you than you have black belt in you at this time. So you're, when you train. It's a much harder workout for you than it is for me. And look, and you've seen me train.

You've seen me train a thousand times. I mean, when I'm done training, I'm dripping in sweat. Right. I'm very tired. I don't know how many calories or whatever I would burn, but it's a hard training session. I am definitely tired. I can just about guarantee I'm not as tired as you would be after, you know, a session.

Because I am going to be using more technique. I'm going to be in positions where I can relax more. I'm going to be in spots where I know how to avoid needing to put a lot of strength into a move. So, yeah, I definitely trained jih Tzu, but I mean, like at that time, I only watched you. But then, like, I trained with you in camp in Maine. And I'm like, yeah, you know, we get done. You're obviously in better shape and stronger and faster than I am. But you're also breathing harder at the end of a five-minute round.

Why? Because you're working harder because I have better. technique in jujitsu. Just like if we did when you and I were like sprinting, you're stronger faster than me. You're beating me and I'm still breathing harder than you. That's the way it works. So yeah, just to clarify that,

when you're, the better you get at jujitsu. And that's why the strength conditioning is so important. But I'll only finish your thought there. I was gonna say this, I, with MMA fighters, when I was training a lot of MMA fighters, I was always encouraging them to train Jiu-Jitsu every single day. And some of them got it. Some of them didn't.

The guys that got it were the guys that realized that a training session in Jiu-Jitsu doesn't have to feel like you just did, you know, a Fran pyramid. Right. It should. As a matter of fact, if you do it right, it actually kind of shouldn't feel like that. Are there days when you're getting ready for ADCC? And I used to train Dean for ADCC. He'd feel worse than a Fran, a Fran ladder.

He'd feel terrible. Like we'd completely deplete all of his energy. And same with MMA fighters But you should be able to do Jiu-Jitsu Where it's almost No impact on On your Metabolic capacity

15 minutes later Where you're like oh if I still had to do something Like if I got done doing a Fran ladder Right and then someone said hey now we want you to do Whatever some some you want your buddy carry echo right this hill I'd be like, damn it. But if I got done rolling, on a normal day,

no, look, if it's a Sunday open mat and all my psycho friends are there and it's like a bloodbath, cool, I might be a little bit tired. But on a normal jiu-jitsu day, when I got done training jiu-jitsu last night, if someone was like, hey, you got a buddy carry echo up this hill, I'd be like, cool,

it's going to suck, but it wouldn't suck because of jiu-jitsu at all. It would just suck because Echo's heavy, and that's a big hill type thing. So you should be able to train jiu-jitsu in a way where it's, it's not negatively impacting your your strength and conditioning kind of at all, kind of at all.

Now look, like I said, are there times if you're competing, look, when I competed all the time in jiu-jitsu, it was like, we trained hard where you're leaving tired. Yeah. You're leaving, you're working really, really hard. That's part of it too. But a normal, you should be able to supplement your life with jiu-jitsu at a level where it's not making you. excessively fatigued for everything else that you're doing in your life.

Well, and I had to take that to heart, right? So what I did is I went home and I said to myself, how did I take what you said to me? And I didn't take that as like, you know, Jocko doesn't train hard. I took it as maybe I need to regulate my intensity on the mats and in the gym better. So I thought about RPE, rate of perceived exertion. If I'm hitting a 10 every time I roll jitzu,

and then I'm trying to hit a 10 every time I'm doing CrossFit, I'm just too fatigued. It's too much. I need to back that off. But you brought up a really good, point. I think this is something I think we need to talk about more in Jiu-Jitsu. So I've been doing it for seven years. I feel like at this point I've been exposed to a lot of the best guys in the world. Not all of them, but some of them. And when I look at them, they're so in shape, right?

I mean, you look at all the top guys, right? Andre, like this last fight between Andre and Gordon, right? You look at the two of them. They're just monsters. And they are doing a lot of strength conditioning, I think, outside of the mats. But I bring up this question of like, if you're really good in your gym and you're one of the best guys, how often, if ever do you redline? And how often should you be redlining? And I think that's where off the mats comes into play. So meaning if you're like really technically sound like you, the better you get at jujitsu, the worst it allows you to be at your strength conditioning because you're so technically advanced. And that's cool. And that's great until you meet someone who has the same technical advantage.

Then it goes down to your strength conditioning. So my recommendation for jiu-jitsu and CrossFit is to do both, right? So I do it almost every day. And then I add in jiu-jitsu three times a week. And the reason why I think that it's so important. Rookie numbers. Yeah. But it brings up this really valid point that, like,

if I could take you off the mat and match exceed your heart rates that you're getting on the mats, add in some strength work, add in some stamina work. Now I could redline you on an air bike or hill sprints and that is going to only increase your ability to perform when you meet someone on the mats like one day. 100%. I had a guy one time. I caught him a submission, tapped him. And he says, you never would have got that on me if you weren't so strong. Oh, dude.

And I said, that's why I lift mother. Because that's the truth, you know. Like it's 100%. You want to be in. good shape. The other thing is you're going to want to do workouts because they will work out parts of your body that you don't use regularly in jujitsu. Like if you're doing ghi jih Tzu, like your grip's going to be good, right? So you're going to get a good, you probably don't need any extra grip work. But how often do you get this particular like sweep where you've got

to put pressure with your, with your, uh, your, your right leg a little bit and you're going to pull with your whatever muscle and it's sort of more like a clean. Yes. Even though you're on the floor and you're grabbing a guy and you're pulling him, that's like a clean that you just did. Well, you don't do heavy cleans on the mat. You don't get to do that movement 28 times. So when you get to do it in the gym, you're like, boom.

Oh, I got some, I'm going to build up my strength. So when I do that, execute that movement on the mats, it's going to be good. You know, I've been training some of the guys at Caioteras for a while. And Mason Fowler actually has a fight coming up, depending on when this is released, with Gordon Ryan. That's a big thing. It's gonna be a cool fight, right? It's in December.

It's a UFC fight pass, Gordon Ryan and Mason Fowler. And Mason told me something last week. He's like, hey man, I'm just letting you know. Since we started training there, this is, it's probably been like two years. He's like, I haven't had to have the same major injuries I was worried about before because you've been helping me strengthen all these areas.

And I think there's like, it's counterintuitive, right? I've heard people say, oh, I tore my ACL, I never am gonna squat again. It's like, well, what if life demands you have to squat? What if you want to sit on a toilet and get back up again? There's just this, it's so counterintuitive to say I injured. Now I'm going to never use it again. Instead, let's spend time strengthening up the muscle groups to support that joint.

Say you could be better prepared outside the gym. And ultimately, that's where my journey has led me to over all these years. Like, what can I do in the gym to help me perform on the mats and outside the gym? Yeah. So everybody trained jihitsu and workout. That's the basic concept. Echo Charles you support this protocol yes sir I do you put more focus on you're very good at resting here he's I monitor the rest you definitely no no like legitimately

I'll say like hey are you training tomorrow and you're like no I already lifted or something like that you say that to me yeah and and that's because you don't you are focused on making sure you get to recover from your workouts yes I mean echo's pretty jacked have you when back in the day when you competing yeah would you we follow the same protocol okay so not to get into a whole long thing so oh there there are many like little approaches and you know you can focus on this focus on that or whatever and if I want to do a comparison to you you're it seems like it anyway it seems like your approach to like

working out fitness capability all that stuff it was like anywhere anytime I'm ready to go kind of a thing I don't care if I'm level 10 ready level 9 level 8 but I will be ready Mine was a little bit more towards the other side of the spectrum where it's like, I want to be level 9 and 10 ready. And if I'm not, I got to basically be in a situation to be level 9 and 10 ready to do whatever it is. Is this even a train jihitsu? No, but it's all part of the whole training system.

So, okay, so you know how you'll be like, yeah, if I'm not feeling good, I'll still go train and get the best I can. Okay, cool. And I'm like, hey, if I'm not feeling good, let me rest. So when I go train, I can get the most out of a level 10 workout. You see what I'm saying? Rather than a level eight kind of workout or level seven, six level. Because you feel the same way as I do.

Like, jiu-jitsu shouldn't impact where you're like, well, I did jiu-jitsu today. I'm not going to squat because I did jiu-jitsu. Or I squatted so now I can't do jiu-jitsu. Right, right. So it's going to depend on the day that you ask me that or whatever. So it could be if I'm focusing on like the lifting part of it or it'd be like, hey, I don't have that plan for the workout today. So it's a little bit mentally since my approach is like, okay, this is my rest. I'm focusing on my rest kind of a thing.

Even do I need the rest in that specific days? I'm going to throw off the whole thing? Probably not. But in a way, I guess you could look at it as I've committed to the rest part of it. You see strong. We committed to rest sometimes. It's part of the system. That's the best way.

I've never heard anybody refer to it like, hey, I've made a commitment. I've committed to rest. I say recovery, but yeah, whatever, whatever you got to go. But that is a different approach is what I'm saying. So like, and I've always been like this. And for better or worse, like where if I'm like, hey, I'm like really tired right now and I know I have to go level 10 in this workout, like, let me, I'll do this workout tomorrow. Because I can get level 10 tomorrow.

Today I'm only going to get like a six. It'll be kind of like a wasted workout because if I do the workout right now, tomorrow's another day given the workout I have today. You and I talked about this too. Like you shouldn't dread your workouts. Yeah. And a lot has changed since we had that talk, to be honest with you. And as you get older.

Because yeah, we were talking at camp, just about a bunch of stuff. And he was like, hey, your workout shouldn't stress you out. And my workouts kind of stress me out a little bit because of that reason, too, because it's like there's certain, I would say pretty much every workout. I have to go like PR level attempts, you know? And I'm not saying one rep max necessarily, but if I'm doing like a set of 15, if I'm doing five sets of 15, that first set,

like if I don't get my standard or a PR, it's like I've literally felt a loss that death. And to the point where it kind of does stress me out, like if I'm like, shit, did I drink enough water before this workout? I better drink some more water, you know, like, and it does actually stress me out. It doesn't give me like anxiety level stress or nothing,

but it's like, it is like an added like, enemy in the room kind of a thing. And he was like, Jason was like, hey, they shouldn't stress you out. You should just go in there like benefiting essentially the workout for the sake of the workout. Like a workout benefits you regardless of the numbers you put up or didn't put up kind of a thing. And I was like, huh, that's a good way to approach it.

Although when you're younger, those things kind of, I think, mean more to you anyway. And then when you get older, you're more mature about it. And it's like, okay, yeah, this shouldn't stress me out. Like I'm a healthy person. That's really what's important, not how strong. my shoulder presses you know kind of a thing yeah so I mean things change but that's that's how I've always approached it so if you're like yeah you can't just throw in an extra 10 sets that's not part of this program right here because I'm

trying to optimize this stuff so you can't just throw in oh yeah you're training right now I was like no because they train here and it's gonna throw off the whole system but you know I'm asking you about jiu jitza yeah yeah I did I think mentally I just associated all together I think you're kind of one of I think you yeah I think you have your plan and you don't like like to deviate from your plan. I think that's basically what it boils down to. That is it and I basically explain like why that is why I'm trying to search my brain.

Like why am I so committed to my plan? Because deviations from the plan can still make the plan remain effective. But for some reason, yeah, it's like I'm less comfortable deviating. But you used to train a lot more jiu jitsu. Yeah. You used to train seven days a week. Yeah, because that's like when I cared about like, you know. Well, you don't care about jih Tijitsu anymore?

Not as much, no. Yeah. I mean, I care about jujitsu in and of itself, but like the fact that I got like two days of training in one week versus six or seven. No, I don't care about that as much. No. And even the fact like, I think when you get older, that's natural. You know, the fact that like, okay, I got tapped out by three people today versus like zero. You know, like you care way less about that later on, I think.

I think in my experience. Okay. But, you know, with certain individuals that can vary. For sure. Text me in the future. Let me know how that goes. Yeah, if that happens for you. You know, the goals change, right?

I'm sure your goals have changed too. Like, and for you, it's like a workout should enhance your day. A workout should enhance your life in your day. And if it's not, then you got to reframe the way you look at it and understand the why behind it. Like, why am I doing this in the first place? If it's to make me a better husband, a better dad to show up more, to be able to go run, jump, climb.

Like, what is my why? And is this workout in alignment with it? So, for example, if you're wise to be jack to, look the part to be able to go do all these different things in jitsu whether you get 15 reps or 10 reps it doesn't really matter you're still going in there you're clearing your mind you're showing up better when you leave and i think that that's what i reflect on because i've had to evolve you know 10 years ago it was setting PRs and and that was my goal and it was an extreme case now earlier today i was in the hotel i got after my workout do i was sweating my butt off i felt great i left there fired up

charged up i walked here dude i'm feeling great but that it's just you're just evolved earlier years but my why has changed okay so once again train jihitsu and work out that's there's a there's this idea that um this guy Tim Tom Tim the engineer anyway he he said he was talking about his dad and his dad used to be heavy into wrestling and working out and stuff and I forget if the dad said this or he said this because he watched his dad kind of do this where similar to kind of what you're talking about where like And you know, once you get injured sometimes, you're like, well, I guess I'm not doing that anymore, you know.

And same thing with like those hired, like, let's say a PR approach where it's like you're trying to do your, get your best lifts every lift. So after a while, those best lifts, the numbers start to go down a little bit. So that can easily lead you to think, well, let me not necessarily strive for those because I'm older now, you know. And you essentially let those, like you slip essentially. Like you actively lower the standard. Lower your own standard. Exactly right. Actively where you allow it to happen like consciously, you know.

So I think that was a big part of my stress too, where I'm like, shoot, I'm not getting these numbers for the reps I used to get. So yeah, it'd be easy for me to be like, I had no big deal. I'm getting older. Or it could be like, no, I'm going to keep fighting for this thing. But the more that that would happen, and there's all kinds of different reasons. But the more that that would happen where I wouldn't get the numbers, it would stress me out. Like I'm freaking slipping.

And I'm, you know, so that would be part of the stress. But at the same time, it's like there's way more to it than that, you know. Well, it's going to naturally happen, right? Like, as you get older, things are going to change. And so your perspective on it has to change. Like, for example, when I finish competing across, I'm like, dude, I am always going to be able to clean and jerk 315 pounds. Always. That was like my mindset.

And now, like, I could barely clean 315 pounds. And then I'm gonna, you know, five years from now, I might barely be able to clean 225. But I have to keep reframing in my mind like what is like as long as I'm accomplishing my goals outside the gym, I'm good because otherwise you're chasing a ghost that's going to be, you're chasing something that's just going to stress you out for a lifetime. Like I'll never be able to, when I'm 50, I'm not going to be clean and jerking 315 pounds. So I put them unrealistic goals on myself and that's just going to set me up for failure. Yeah. And that was that was really the value that I got from it because let's say at the end of the day, it'll come as no surprise.

It's going to be a balance, you know, because you, and you have to be honest with yourself where it's like, hey, am I backing off on these numbers because, yeah, I don't have to like put in that kind of work anymore? Or is it like, hey, let me embrace the things that I can do. Right. Still do my best and accept like a certain level of honest acceptance that like, hey, this is the reality of it.

And I'm not going to be a competitor level. I'm not a competitor anymore. But at the same time, I'm not going to be a slacker anymore because sometimes Sometimes it's like an excuse to slack, you know, like, hey, I'm older. I got a family now, you know, so I don't have to work out. You still can. You still totally can, but you don't because you use it as an excuse.

So I was trying to, it's like a weird balance between those two, you know. Yeah. And I think that you highlighted that you can still go hard and not have to be stressed about not getting the numbers kind of a thing. And I was like, oh, yeah. And that clicked with me. When people get injured, they'll all say like, oh, what do you do? How do you what do you do when you're injured and I have a real which I think is a simple but good answer do what you can right so oh you hurt this arm cool do kettlebell snatches with the other arm do Do squats like to work start working on those one arm pulse like there's a bunch of things you can do when you can't use one arm at all

Yeah, there's a bunch of things you can do when you can't use your knee there's a bunch of things you could so there's all the like you like you you you're like I remember I had neck surgery Which I was like dude you know I'll be back in three days right well what I didn't know is that when they cut open your neck the back of the back of the back of the back of the back of the back of the back of the back of the the neck, they're cutting through a bunch of muscle there. When they go through the front, there's not much muscle that they cut through, but I had one where they cut through the back of my neck. Well, your neck, your neck muscles are keeping, they're on a hunt, they're on all day long. Every position that you're in, there was like one position that I found laying down where I could put my head a certain spot where I could finally get those muscles to relax a little bit.

And so, because you're, it's keeping your head right, balanced. It's like constantly balancing your head. So your muscles are like firing. You don't even know it. They're firing all day long. Well, those were just in agony because they got cut open and sewed back together. But I remember, so I couldn't do anything. And I freaking got up and I walked down to my garage and I literally walked around in circles for like eight minutes.

And I was like, that's my workout. You know, like that's it. That's what I got done. And I was in agony from just my head trying to balance while I was walking. And that was like the day after I got surgery. And then, you know, okay, do what you can. The other thing is what I think you've got to be careful of is, well, you know, I used to be able to freaking clean 315 and that's my lifetime. That's the standard.

And then one day you can't get it. And so you're like, you know what? I'm out. I'm not doing cleans anymore. That's, that happened to me with overhead squats. So I hurt my arm, you know, really bad. And oddly enough, I hurt my arm, my main training partner of my life, Dean Lister, who is not. He never hurt me before.

He was showing a move and he freaking hurt my arm. He felt terrible about it. I felt angry about it. But anyways, it was I had to go get a sling because I couldn't, I couldn't handle the weight of my own arm. So for months I couldn't straighten my arm out and I couldn't lock out. Which I tear your, what, do you know what happened to? No, because I didn't go to a doctor. I just freaking dealt with it for months.

Take it up. But I'm sure it was some kind of a injury. Sounds sick to say. Yeah, it was an injury. And I heard pops and I couldn't straighten my arm. So I'm sure it was whatever. And this is the time that he said to me, I didn't know your elbows weren't flexible.

And I was like, bro, elbows are bones. They're not flexible. But so I couldn't lock out. So I could not do anything even close. I couldn't do a PVC pipe overhead. So I was sitting there doing like one-handed kettlebell goblets, squats, whatever that might be. So I was doing that for months.

And when I finally could straighten my arm out, I was like, you know, I tried to, like, do the PVC pipe. And I couldn't really get in position because now my mobility had been impacted. And, you know, I thought to myself, this is how it starts. This is the beginning of the decay. And if you accept it, it will be a downhill, like, rush of destruction. And so I just was like, okay, we're starting with the PVC pipe it is. And I started and coming back, coming back.

And that's what you, that's what you have to do. You can't let the movements go away. You can't lose the movements. Even if they're assisted and light and they hurt your ego, you got to do the movements. And the cool thing is you can build them back. You will build them back. It's going to take persistence, going to take hard work, but you can build them back. Don't submit to the loss of movements.

Keep doing the movements, whatever they are. Learn new movements. There's all that research coming out now that when you learn new things, it's really good for your brain. Yeah. Instead of just doing this, I have a problem with that.

I'm very habitual person, right? Yeah. So I'll do the same workouts. You know, they'll do the same things for months. And I'll be like, oh, you can't keep doing this. You've got to do something else. So I think it's important to remember that, you know, don't keep, do, always do what you can. And what's that saying you have about zero?

Like, don't do zero. Never get to zero. It's like never zero mentality. Like one thing I just wanted to add to what you're saying is like focusing on what you can do and not what you can't do is like the immediate mindset shift when you have an injury. Like imagine like with your bison. What you can't do is X, Y, Z. What you can do is a ton of other stuff. But the idea is like you can never let your momentum.

get to zero because an object as it's moving, right, if it just keeps moving, even a little bit, man, even just a walk, it helps you earn your confidence so you can keep moving. But as soon as you stop for a day, a week, a month, it's very hard to get back into that momentum. But if you just don't let it stop and you just get in a little walk or you, or you do your eight minutes around the garage or whatever it is, that's the key. So it's the never zero mentality that I think is important with training. Yeah. I have another thing. I wrote in Discipline and Freedom Field manuals, this is a pretty good rule.

When you start feeling tired and you need a day off, don't take it today, take it tomorrow. And listen, I'm not saying don't listen to your body. If you're exhausted, but a lot of times, and even if you say, look, I'm really tired today, but I'll take a day off tomorrow if I'm still tired, but today I'm just going to go there and do something. I'm, you know,

maybe instead of doing my freaking max squat, I'm going to go there and do some lighter weights and do a, you know, higher rep workout. So I'm making sure I not get hurt. but I'm still gonna go in there and do it. And then if I still feel tired tomorrow, cool, I'll take the day off. I'll eat a stake and take the day off.

That's cool. Because it's real easy to, you know, feel tired. And we all know this. All three of us all know this 100%. You were tired. You didn't feel like working out. You considered not working out. You went and did the workout.

You felt freaking fine. And you might have gotten a freaking sick workout. Maybe even PR. That happens long ago. You know, the area I think about is like, if I'm not feeling it, you have to listen to your body, but after your warm up, so that's the way I do it. So, like, let's just say it's like, dude, I'm not feeling it. Like, I've been traveling or whatever.

I'm like, all right, go into the garage, go to the gym, get on the bike. You're on the bike for 10 minutes. If you still don't feel like doing something, chances are you probably shouldn't go too crazy. Just do a little something and leave. But 99.9% of time after you're on the bike for 10 minutes, your body starts getting a little bit warmed up, you'll be ready. Yep, yeah. Mobility protocol 17 alpha like sometimes I'll get in there and I'm like well I'm gonna go do something and that's what I do I go in there start warming up and I'm like yo this is this is not smart and it's like okay cool you're gonna spend you know a half an hour doing some mobility doing some kind of Something to keep moving and not let it get to zero not let your momentum get to zero that's good stuff that that

Field Manual protocol is a good one it pays dividends 100% And yeah, the hardest part about Jiu-Jitsu, the hardest part about lifting, the hardest part about writing, the hardest part about

executing a project is walking to the gym, walking onto the mat, opening the door to the garage. Like, it's always getting there and just freaking turn off your brain and start to go start executing.

Yeah, it's like the cure because really the problem, a lot of the time, and this is part of your whole point where the problem, most of the time, isn't your physical.

Like, you know, listen to your body. That's a physical. thing like, hey, your body's not working. You're training too much, right? But especially when you've got other stuff in life going on, that mental momentum is a big thing.

So if you're focusing on this and stressing about this, and then, frick, now I've got to go freaking do squats right now. Like, man, I'm not. And meanwhile, so you go in the gym, you haven't warmed up nothing, no adrenaline, no blood flow, you know, whatever. Your mind is still on the freaking book or whatever you can do. And so your body is kind of like, hey, we're not really ready for this right now. but your mind is the thing focusing on the wrong thing.

So just that's a good protocol too. Warm up. I use the first set. I do, okay, I'm going to do one good set. And if my body is like, hey,

we're not doing this, then it's a little bit more of an indicator. But once you get that first set in, it's like, what do you do then? Like, let's say you get the feeling like you do your first set and now you're like, yo,

I'm definitely not feeling this. Do you just do a lesser workout? Or you just abandon and try again tomorrow. I've done that before. I get pissed if I have to do that. I get pissed if I have to abandon. I do my work because you know the warm up takes what 20 minutes before you start your work sets and now I'm gonna abandon this I I gotta be honest with you I'm I'm too what's this I have the sunk cost fallacy at that point

I'm like I'm just gonna do this shit anyways I can't do that you know I just want to say like for me it's like as soon as I walk in the gym or the garage like literally immediately I'm on the bike and I don't do anything else like immediately I might be like on my phone whatever but I'm moving immediately because I just can't even if I sit in there for two minutes I'm like, dude, you know what's the even worse than the workout, though, is the pre-plunge. Dude, the cold plunge. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. On that one, like, I'll walk out of my house, and I wish, like, I have my care. I wish I had a camera show me, like, I'll walk out of my house. I'll just, like, I'm in my mind. It's like, I'm getting in this damn thing.

I'll start taking off my clothes and, you know, my board shorts, whatever. I'll just walk right in and just get it and get the hell out. But if I sit there for even a second, it starts creeping in on me. I don't plunge before I work out. No. Yeah. But you do? No,

no, no. I'm just saying the mental state before a plunge versus the mental state before a workout. He's comparing it to. I can't like I was inspired this one time. I was at the beach and this guy comes to the beach starts walking in Santa Cruz. I watch him.

He starts walking. He does not skip a beat. He takes off his clothes just like gets to his boxers or whatever. Walks in the ocean, turns around and walks back. I'm like, dude, that's the mentality. As soon as you stop. Yeah. Yeah.

don't want to you don't want to stop I have that like every once in a while I'll go because we're talking about like a workout stressing you out for me like when it when it's like kind of squat season and everything and I'm just like those some of those squat workouts I will warm up for a really really excessively long time like an idiot just like I don't want to start this first yeah it's going to blow down to and I'll be like stretching and getting out the mobility ball and freaking getting out of this. Trying to get primed. Yeah, yeah.

It's such a lie. And what I realize, though, is I always tell myself like, okay, you know, just start your watch because once you start your watch, it's going to be over in this amount of time. And that's all there is to it. Nothing can stop. You're going to have to do it anyways. So just freaking shut up and press go and let's do this.

Do you've you done the 20 rep back squat program? Yeah. Dude. I have a modified one of that that I did where I would do this is, this is probably some kind of an ethical violation in the world. But I would do that. I would do three sets with 20 minutes of rest. So I would do 20 ret squat, lay on the floor for 20 minutes,

get up, do it again, lay on the floor for 20 minutes, get up, do it again. And that was just, it was, there's times when I would be doing that where I would legitimately like want to, I'm serious, I would want to cry. And I would also, I would be saying to myself,

like I don't really care if I'm strong. I don't really like it doesn't mean anything. This doesn't, this is meaningless. Like, what am I trying to prove? Like, this doesn't matter.

You don't have to do. Like, I would be having those kind of conversation. That's the only thing in, with everything I've done in my life, that's the only time where I've been like, hmm, this,

you probably don't need to do this right now. Like, there's no reason for this. Like, I've done a lot of stuff where it's like death, I could die. Where it's like, oh, I could die.

And I've never had a fault like, like, you know, you don't need to do this. I've never even fought that way. But the 20 reps squats? 20, 2020, dude,

for anybody listening though, if you are going to get into the 20 rep back swap program, do you want you to get up to heavier loads? I mean, those reps ranges could take you up to like three or four minutes with that bar on your back. Just be aware of it. It's a lot of load for a long time.

You have to make sure you stay engaged the whole time. Yeah. It's very, very difficult. And especially like rep, I would always feel like when I got to 13, I could see the end. Yes.

Like, you know, but it's like nine, lot nine to 14. You're like, oh my gosh. Those, yeah, those nine to 13 or something like that. Because you're not sure if this is worth like what you're doing.

Like you're wondering. You start questioning life. You know, you're saying yourself, 10 is pretty good. Like I could just get to 10 and we could kind of call it. Maybe I can break this up into two. All kinds of little mental arithmetic that you're doing to freaking try and get out from

underneath that thing. But that is, super squats. Yeah. Super squats. bro um you know check out super squats that's that's the book that give you we'll give you the guide on on the 20 rep squat workout and the eating protocol of a gallon of milk a day yeah dude i knew some people who did that the longest i've heard is a week to drink a gallon of milk a day and do the

20 repack squat program uh i think it's twice a week um longest i heard is a week with the gallon of milk a day whole milk that's a lot of milk that person's getting large you're you're getting it The thing though that that 20-ref squat, like what it releases into your body, what your body does to try and cope with this scenario is the time under tension. And you know, when you think about training protocols, like your body needs to be stimulated in such a way. Like the effective dose is one that stimulates your body in such a way that says, wow, I want to create an adaptation. That was very difficult. I need to get fitter. And that's why CrossFit I think has done so well is that it, it, it, it, it, high.

highlights intensity. Now you can go overboard, but when you highlight intensity, your body says, oh my gosh, I want to create adaptation. Same thing happens with time and attention

and 20 more back squat. Your body is just such under fatigue and tension that it then creates strong adaptation from it. So that's why it's beautiful. And what's the percentage? There's some percentage when you're doing a squat,

like the amount of muscles that are engaged in your body is like the largest percentage of muscles that you can get engaged in your, I guess if you did overhead squats, right, that might be more. or maybe like a clean and jerk.

I mean, obviously, but it's a different kind of. It's more dynamic. Yeah. But overhead squat, you don't get the tension though. So that like over because of the balance, I mean, you got to be really, really, really good at it. But back squat is like the most stable versus. Well, the overhead squat, if you know it, if you do it well,

the problem with overhead squats is if your position is not appropriate, you could, you could not load it up enough to create a super strong stimulus. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. their range like yeah well yeah and just I mean just physically like your shoulders at that in that position is not as stable as the ball bar being on your back yeah still I mean dude you look at some only lifters like my best overhead squat was I think like I'm right below 400 pounds and that's that's that's that's that's still a lot because yeah it's a lot but let's for sure you still get it

over your head how so that was the hardest part you just a back rack split jerk it right and now you're sitting there like oh yeah and again yeah good and impressive, but comparatively speaking, you can't say like, oh, yeah, you get more, you can get more tension, generally speaking, on an overhead than a regular back squat. The idea is the thing about like moving a load along a long distance and moving it pretty quickly is kind of how you produce a lot of power, and that's where you can see some effective workouts. Oh, for sure.

For sure. So getting back to getting back on track here a little bit, 2000, so 2016, obviously you're going through your whole situation with your daughter. 2017, you kind of touched on this, and it's in the book as well, like where now you've got 2017, you rename the gym to NC Fit because now you've got other things that you've got going on, right? So essentially in 2017, you weren't just a CrossFit gym anymore. You had this kind of corporate training and corporate wellness that you're doing. You have other services inside your gyms that are not specifically CrossFit. So you got a lot of stuff and growth. I just

wanted to ask you about as you grew what you said the biggest you got to is 140 people or so um what was the leadership what what leadership challenges did you face when you were doing this yeah I mean many many I think that so when I graduate in college yes I got a degree in business management but I learned a lot from the people that were like you know took me underneath their wing at the gym but when I graduated you know in 08 um I started the company and from that day basically forward. I was the boss. I was running the gyms. I was running the business. And I wish I had spent more time developing my leadership skills. I think I learned a lot as I went. I think that I had aspirational aspects of me and I had grit and hard work. But I think that there

was many things I could have done better as a leader to empower others, to be more decisive. I think that there was just quite a few leadership journeys that I think I could have. If I had other people impact me. Like, for example, I talked about going to the FTX. If I had gone to the FTX before all this, that would have been helpful because you're not just leading locally. We're now leading internationally with different cultures, with different languages. And it added a lot of, we expanded. I think we probably, we did what we had to do, but we expanded very quickly. And with that came a lot of, you know, I think we could have done a better job creating who are we, where are we going, what are we doing in a shared mission and vision? We didn't do that well enough.

And when we rebranded from NorCal Cross NCFIP, my biggest takeaway was that to me, we were still a CrossFit affiliate. It was all the same. I was thinking, well, guys, like, we're just branding to be in control of our own destiny and to be more, you know, align with what we're offering in the gym. But the staff didn't see it that way. And I didn't do a good job explaining who we are and where we're going. I just said we're no longer this, we're this. I just thought they just assume we're the same. But what I should have done better as a leader is sat them down, which I ended up doing like six months later, and said, hey, this is who we are. This is what we believe in. These are our core values. This is this. And even since that day, that was like 2017, man, today, more than

ever, we now have a shared mission of where we're going, which I don't think we did a good job of back then. I just, I took it for granted having the team on the same page. I took it for granted that they were just passionate about CrossFit helping people, but they weren't necessarily, I could have a better job of them being passionate about our business and where we were going. So going into 2018, and this is actually when this book came out in 2018, but you had started writing it in 2000, I want to say 2015 or 2016 is when you started writing it. You kind of got redirected, obviously, attention in other places with your daughter, with your business. The book ended up coming out in 2018. And the book, you know, obviously it's called as many reps as possible,

but it's a book about this philosophy, right? And you take this philosophy of as many reps as possible, which we've touched on a little bit. And you make that a philosophy not just for a type of workout, but for how you're sort of going through life. And that's what the book is. The book is a bunch of, and I've only read a tiny fraction of it today, so get the book, so you can get the details. But the book is a bunch of situations that you were in that you utilized this mentality, which is a basically a workout, a type of workout mentality, but you applied it to other things that you had to do in life, business decisions, you know, getting through these terrible situations with your family and getting things back on track. So you end up applying this

and that's what the book is about. So I wanted to just go through this real quick. Sure. The, the actual Am rep, Amrap mentality and what it means. You say in the book here, the MRAP mentality is a high performance mindset that embodies five major components. It is the tool I use day in and day out to accomplish goals of both large and small. This mindset is a major contributing factor to the success I've earned in competition and in business. It is also one of the most important approaches my wife and I took when figuring out how to manage Ava's battle with leukemia. I hope you find it as meaningful and powerful in your own life. Here's a short recap of each facet of the MRAP mentality.

Now again, you've already, you introduced these in the beginning, and then you give examples. But this is the recap, and I just want for people to understand these things and how it can help them. So the first one is know your why. Your why is the foundation of the Amrap mentality. It is the deeper meaning and purpose that drives you.

Your why guides your actions and keeps you on course. More than just fuel a strong why demands intimately knowing and understanding who you are, what you do and why you do it. Your why may change over time, but one thing remains constant. Without a strong why, you can get lost, distracted, or end up chasing the wrong things.

So important to understand deeply why you are doing what you're doing. And again, this doesn't just apply to as many reps as possible, which is what the workout is. Yeah. The workout as many reps as possible in a certain amount of time. You got, you know, whatever the exercise. or exercises are you got this much time you can do as many as you possibly can and in order

to make that happen in life you got to know why you're doing it next one focus on what you can control and you've mentioned this a few times today in life business and competition things can generally be divided into two categories what's in your control and what's not in your control when you boil it down there are only a few things that are in our control the good news is these few things are some of the most powerful your mindset actions reactions preparation, hard work, perseverance, among other things. When you take your valuable energy and move it toward focusing on what's out of your control,

things can go badly and fast. This is a weak mindset. You're at the mercy of other people. When it comes down to it, you will be more successful and happier by focusing on what you can control. Yeah, this is a big one. This is a big one. Probably the biggest one. Yeah, it definitely is.

And one thing that I would say I word a little bit different. I think about it a little bit differently, as you say when you pull it down, there are only a few things that are in your control. I always look at it. Like there's only a few things that are really, truly completely out of your control. Like most things,

you can have an impact over. Like, you can set yourself up and you can control a lot more than people think. You know, one of the examples I give on this is like, you're supposed to do a mission and you're going to take helicopters to do the mission. And bad weather comes in,

so the helicopters can't. fly so you can't do the mission I have no control over the weather right so how can that be my fault but if you actually look at it like okay well what what can I do we're planning to take helicopters on this operation hey in case there's bad weather let's have vehicles on standby okay now all of a sudden bad weather rolls in and we can still take the vehicles we can still go do the operation there's all kinds of situations where if you abandon control you're giving up something that you could you could almost certainly impact.

And then you get to a point there's some things that are legitimately, you have no control over, like your daughter getting leukemia. You just have no control over that. The only thing you control is how you respond to it. And, you know, those are the things that you talk about. And when you focus on the wrong things, you focus on the things you can't control, it's going to drive you crazy. Yeah.

And something that someone can do, that's a tangible, tangible takeaway from this podcast is, obviously what Jock was talking about, the way I look at it, and I first did this with competition is I would take some of that stressing me out. Let's just say it's the CrossFit games. And I'd say I'd take two circles and I'd put on the left in control, put on the right out of my control. And I'd say, list all the things that are in your control. Did I double knot my shoes? How do I eat? How did I warm up? How did I, you know, what music am I listening to? What all those things, right? Tons. Take things that are out of control. What your competitors are doing. What the events are going to be. The temperature outside. Whatever. And take and then, and then

choose like every day. So I would actually have it like all my refrigerator choose to focus on the circle on the left. And you could take that for a number of situations in your life, but that was helpful for me in the beginning. Since then, I don't necessarily use that diagram as much, but it was really helpful for me to actually list it out. And it's like, oh, wow, there's a big list that's in my control. Let me, let me pay attention there. Yeah. And you really do see people get driven crazy by things that are out of their control. And it's terrible. And you cannot let that happened. But even like the example he just gave, um, uh, hey, I've got this where I'm, I'm doing a competition. The time that you put the time that you freaking passed out from competition. Sure.

You could have been like, well, you know, I just had a reaction. That's not on me. Instead of you're like, no, I, what can I do to change that? How can I adjust my mentality? How can I make sure this doesn't happen again? Like those are instead of just throwing your hands up like, well, you know, I, I don't know. I guess it just, that's just the way it is. I went too hard and that's just the way it goes. and I just passed out. Like, no, you looked at that and analyzed and said, how can I make sure that doesn't happen again? As opposed to just saying, that's just the way I am,

which would have been a, hey, this isn't in my control. Yeah, it is. Right. Just got to learn how to control it. 100%. Next one, work hard. Yeah. Hard, smart work is the currency of the AM rep mentality.

If you are not ready to put in work or if you're looking for shortcuts, this mindset is not for you. Roll up your sleeves, ditch excuses, start grinding. There's no better way to accomplish your goals than to work really hard. It sounds simple, but a lot of time we need to stop talking and start doing. So let's go. Yep. Check.

Yep. Check. Shift gears. And this is something that might take a little bit more explanation. And you cover it really well in the book. But shifting gears in the Amrap mentality really means being invested and active in the present. When you're at work, be at work. When you're at home with family, be with your family.

When you're working out, work out. Don't be one foot in one foot out. This is the connection between. your body and mind, be all into your current activity. And when it's time to shift gears to the next thing, be all in there too. When you're thinking about one thing but doing another, you will not achieve optimal results. Yeah. So this one really hits home for me. So the way I like to look at the Amaran mentality is I like to look at it like riding a bike. You need to be present and focus when you ride a bike. If you're not, you're going to tip over. You need to work hard and to pedal. And then depending

on the terrain, you might need to switch gears based on the hill. When I think about my day, I think about it in terms of switching gears. So, for example, I got up pretty early. I went and worked out. When I'm there, I'm am wrapping. I'm present. I'm focused. I'm not thinking about this.

I'm thinking about that. Now, I'm here. I'm only here with you guys. You don't see me on my, not that I would, but I'm not distracted on my phone. I'm not thinking about business. I'm just here with you guys.

After we're done, I'll switch gears again to something else. And so the way I like to segment my day is, you know, in the morning, I'll train up with my kids. Then I'll switch gears when they go to school to business, then I'll switch gears to train,

then I'll switch gears. And the one foot in, one foot out mentality was causing a lot of, you know, I wrote this in the book, but like my wife and I were walking down the street one day. I'll never forget the look she gave me and she's strolling our daughter.

And at the time, like I was competing professionally, we were opening her nationally. I just had a lot of my mind. And I was thinking about walking on my hands at the CrossFit games. And she asked me a question. I just remember looking at her and saying like,

I just like, I have no idea what you just said. And I remember the look on her face was like not one of upset, but just one of like, she was just disappointed, right? I said to myself, like, I got to get my stuff together. Like if I'm going to be walking with my wife and daughter, I need me present and focus here because what was happening is I was taking calls of Asia and hitting assault bike intervals. Like I wasn't doing, I was not reaching my potential in any area because I wasn't optimized in that specific area. And that's what switching gears is. Yeah. It's a, it's prioritized and execute what we call prioritizes.

You've got to focus on what you're doing right now and you've got to focus your resources on that if you're trying to do three, four things at the same time, you're going to fail at all of them. It's going to be a disaster. The last one is re-evaluate. Moments of re-evaluation in the Amrap mentality are those times when you need to take a step back to re-examine your why and your focus. These are major milestones and they usually occur during usually occur around big changes. Having the ability to reevaluate is essential and shows a tremendous amount of self-awareness. Over time, your goals and your why may change and that's okay. It's important to stay connected to the world around you and not stay locked into something that no longer is right for you.

As the saying goes, timing is everything. It's no different in the Am rap mentality. Your why when you're 20 may be very different than your why at 30. Take time to honor your why by reexamining it over time. So taking that step back and actually looking at what's going on, if you don't do that, you're going to have. problems. Yeah. The way I like to think about that is like I like to do micro check-ins with myself. So like let's just say I'm in the sauna or I'm on a bike ride and I'll say, hey, how am I doing as a husband, a father, as a business owner, as an athlete, whatever, micro,

like daily. And then every now and then you have those big check-ins, like the ones I was talking with my wife about the cross-a-games. Those are big moments where you say, hey, do I need to reevaluate the whole thing? An example for, you know, maybe you lose your job. Maybe you get married. Maybe you have a kid. That would require you to kind of reevaluate everything. But these micro check-ins help me. So I don't wake up a year from now and say, damn, you know, I was a bad dad or whatever. Name the thing, right.

I could have been better here, here, here, here, here. This one's more of a macro. Yeah. And I looked at this too is also almost as if you're debriefing, right? Debrief is a huge way to improve what you're doing. And if you don't debrief after you do an operation, if you don't debrief after you do a project, if you're not debriefing after you get done with a fight, you're not learning anything.

And so for me, this was also like looking at what you're doing and saying, all right, let's do a quick debrief on my performance as a dad, as a businessman on that project, on that workout, whatever the case may be. So you can say, oh, I hear some adjustments I need to make to get better. And just to close out the book, and again, the book is, there's so much good information. And actually one of the things you've got in here is you've got a bunch of little,

they're like mental dreams. to go through and it's sort of it's almost like I guess for a lack of a better word it's like meditations on like hey think about this for the next eight minutes write down these what what you discover you got a bunch of these little drills basically mental drills to do and some physical drills to do as well for sure so and then on top of that you have a bunch of anecdotes that describe how well this am rap mentality has worked for you in a bunch of variety of different situations. So get the book.

I'm going to close it out with this. This mindset is not a gimmick. It's not a cheap trick, hack, or shortcut. I'm not telling you that the MRAP mentality will magically transform your life while you lay back and sip frozen margaritas. You will need to work. And for this thing to really fire on all cylinders,

you will need to be the hardest worker in the room. But you should want it that way. When you learn to enjoy the labor, the success is even sweeter because you've earned it. So there you go. That's what this thing gets into. Now, you got tested with the AMRAP mentality, as you already mentioned real quickly, when COVID hit in 2020. Yeah.

So what happened to the businesses when the COVID hit? Oh, man, that was big. You know, I think that adversity, you know, micro dose of adversity in the gym, I think can really help us outside the gym. And that's why I expose my children to all kinds of sports because I think they learn how to overcome these little things. And then in life, when something big happens, they're better prepared. But for us, yeah, I mean, who'd have thought that COVID would happen? And at the time, we were their own operating or running, I'd say close to 30 brick and mortar locations. We had many, many gyms utilizing our resources and tools.

And it was a lot. And when you think about brick and mortar, when you think about the businesses hit hard as through COVID, I imagine brick and mortar gyms, but I had to be one of them, right? Well, it was definitely one of the biggest ones. Because you couldn't do food to go. You couldn't do any of that stuff. And then even, especially in California, different, different, you know, areas have their own rules.

From a leadership perspective, from a, from a core perspective, we chose to abide by all city and county guidelines. Now, was that the right decision? I don't know. I don't know if it was or wasn't. But that's what we chose. And we could have gone the other way, right? We could have not gone that direction, but we chose to.

So we had some locations shut down for over a year. and big rents. And so our business has consolidated tremendously. So through that, you know, obviously our brick and mortar condensed down. We did what we had to do to retain our team to take care of our team. We grew digitally, but we consolidated brick and mortar. Luckily, we still had the corporate wellness that was pumping globally, but we switched to digital for a lot of that.

And here we are now 2023 and just the business has evolved, right? But that was a very, very difficult time for us. and many gym owners in our space. Yeah. So what did this switch to digitally? What does that look like? What was this the NC Fit app? Yeah, so the NC Fit app was, you know, so NC Fit, again, born in NorCal, we service gym owners

through our app, which gives them session plans, programming, all the stuff that we use in our gyms, it gives it to them. And it's a really valuable tool because what I recognize as we grew globally was that we wanted to have a similar experience from one gym to another. and we weren't giving them that. We were just giving them the workout, but instead we gave them the workout, the warm up, scaling, timeline,

you name it in a daily video. So that's what gyms were using. So that business stayed pretty strong. But then we rolled out an end user app to help obviously generate some revenue, but also help our members who couldn't come into the gym. We gave them an app that they could use when they were at home.

So that's kind of how we pivoted there and got through that. And now I'm very fortunate it that although we've consolidated, our brick and mortars are doing really well today. And then there was also like craziness going on in the CrossFit world. Yeah. And, you know, a lot of that, I mean, frankly, I wish none of that happened at all. Right.

You know, we had a lot of gyms that looked at us for guidance during that time. And they were part of the NCFIT collective. And there was some stuff going on in CrossFit. And, you know, a lot of gyms were looking at us like, hey, what are we going to do? What is the next step? And my heart has always been in the right place. Like I have tried from day one, anybody who knows me, to try and support gym owners and coaches. I want to see them make money, provide for their families and do what they love for a living.

And, you know, during that time, I just try to do that same thing, try to provide whatever I could. And yeah, we rolled out a license program during that time, which since then we've kind of decided isn't the vision for we want to go as a business. We learned a lot of that experience. But during COVID, it was a trying time for. cross in general but now I think they're at a good spot yeah no I mean cross foot's doing really well right now they brought in dawnfall we had Donfall on the podcast former Marine great dude and they're really focused they're focused on like really helping out the affiliates like it used to be very very

laissez-faire meaning like you just open a gym and if you've been if you've got a cross at level one cert you can have a gym it could be it could be freaking literally in a tent right or it could be in a 20,000 square foot, you know, Metroplex. Is that a word? It could be anything in between. And you could have coaches that were that, you know, failed gym class. And you could have coaches that were Olympic lifters.

Right. And everything in between. But now it seems like, well, that's one of the things that they're focused on now is like really helping out, putting investments into the affiliates so that the affiliates are more supported. That's what they're looking to do. A good way to think about CrossFit is it's a license model, meaning you pay a fee to utilize the mark. And in 2008, I was very, very blessed to be able to utilize this mark and this methodology and be a part of the sport that changed my life forever.

And Greg Glassman was the founder of a methodology, in my opinion, has been incredibly impactful across a variety of things, not only across many entrepreneurs and businesses through the CrossFit space, but also, obviously, I think gymnastics has gotten a little boost. I think Olympic lifting has gotten a huge boost. I think he's... Powerlifting. Power lifting. I think he's one of the biggest reasons...

Everything's got a huge boost. Why you go into a conventional gym now and that space looks different. Where you go to a hotel gym and you'll see kettlebells. A lot of that is due to his innovation from, I don't know, 15, 20 years ago. And with the license model, it was always Greg's idea that the cream will rise to the top and I'm just going to provide this methodology and you do you.

And I think for a long... time that worked really well. It gave guys like me the opportunity to build a business with paying a very nominal license fee and the barrier to entry was very low. But with the barrier to entry being really low, it also allows for people to get in who are just kind of hobby mindset. And so that's where you see this discrepancy over the years, right? You have some people are treating it like a hobby, some people look at it as a business. And now I think with Don and others, they're trying to create a streamline approach to CrossFit because I think there's a stigma about CrossFit. When when people hear it, whatever that stigma is, you might have an impression. And I would assure you

that if you actually went into a gym, if you went into an affiliate, that really cared. And I'd say basically all of them do. And you actually spent time there. You'd probably have an amazing experience. And I think that more people should look at that opportunity. It's like jujitsu. You go into jitza you have one experience. Maybe it wasn't the perfect experience. I think jiu-jitsu could change your life. I think Crosswick could change your life too. You see you go find the right gym and go spend some time there. Yeah. And I think just like in Jiu-Jitsu, leave your ego at the door.

Because if you bring your ego in, and I think that's what, you know, one of the bad raps for CrossFit, you know, in the past decade has been like, oh, guys are trying to do stuff that they're not capable. Guys and men and women are trying to do stuff that they shouldn't be doing, that they don't have the proper technique for. and they're pushing themselves really hard and they're trying to execute things when they're fatigued that they shouldn't be trying to execute. They shouldn't even try to execute them when they're fresh,

much less trying to execute them when they're fatigued. And when people let their ego come in both as a coach and as a trainer, as an athlete, if you're my coach and you have a big ego

and I'm an athlete and I, maybe I don't even have an ego, but you're telling me you can get this because your ego wants me to perform well, when you should be saying, hey, Jocko, you're,

your form's starting to fail. You need to back off. Or if my ego is saying, hey, you know what, don't worry, coach, I can do more. That's when people, that's when you get hurt. That's when you get hurt. So I think they've now got a great focus of making sure that that doesn't happen. Also opening it up for like normal people.

Because I think when you see a kind of stereotypical CrossFit person, everyone pictures, oh, someone that's just jacked and, Looks like they're an incredible athlete. It looks like they were a freaking college track athlete or something. When the reality is most CrossFit gyms are normal people that are out there trying to get in better shape. And what a great way to get in a better shape. What a great way to meet new people. What a great way to get to be part of a community.

It's all good. And I think some of those stigmas, I think CrossFit earned some of the stigmas that they got. And now they're in the process of getting rid of those stigmas by changing and, evolving to where the egos much less and more focused on, hey, we got normal, this is for normal people. I mean, what I would say is that CrossFit is, in my opinion, the most effective training program ever. I mean, at least for me, it is building people in our gyms, including myself, who are capable

outside the gym. And I think that they could lift, they could pull, they could. but you need to enter it and just detach from your ego. Just go in there and maybe try a few different affiliates. Find the one that works for you, just like finding a jiu-sibing. But I think once you try it, if you're interested in higher-intensity training,

cross-thous way to go. And you will find coaches who just deeply care. And I think that's what makes it special. So I do think, though, that as an overall ecosystem, we are getting better. There was a time where maybe it wasn't as good, But now I think you see coaches maturing. I think you see athletes maturing.

I think you see the leadership maturing. And it's at a really good spot right now. And I'm excited for the future of it. Yeah. Yeah. What else you got going on? Well, you know, so. You're wearing the train hard t-shirt.

What's train hard all about? So train hard is something that we've been talking about forever. You know, it's it's kind of a culmination of, it's a culmination of all of my training. Right. It's for 20 years trying to meet with the best. coaches in the world to be better at power lifting, Olympic lifting, all these different things. And then my exposure through, you know, different law enforcement groups we work with or through jujitsu and saying like, what program am I fired up about right now? Like what do I love? And CrossFit

with the higher complexity movements is phenomenal and we do it at our gyms. But for me, train hard is a new program that is designed for people who want to act apart, look the part, and never hit zero. And what that means to me is act the part means that you could protect and provide. And so as a dad, this is where I'm out on my journey, right? I'm 38 years old. I've been training a long time. I used to want to be the fittest on earth. Now it's like I want to be able to jump, climb, and push, do whatever I need to do to protect myself and my family, including jiu-jitsu and other things, right? That's important to me. My son fell into a bonfire last year and I jumped up and was able to push them out. That is a skill that I was able to develop because of the gym. But I also want to

be able to provide. And I think this is not just talking about like hunting. I'm not referring to it only that way. I mean provide experiences. I want to be fit enough for my family that if my kid asked me to do anything, I'm game. You want to go jump in the ocean. You want to go climb something. You want to go play baseball. Let's go. I want to provide experiences, but I also want to provide financially. And I believe that if someone comes in is using our programs or is training hard, they're going to show up differently when they're at work. And that is going to help them provide more for their family. They're going to show up with more energy, more self-confidence. They're going to look the part. And I believe that's going to help them in a long term to provide financially as well.

So that's what we're about now at train hard. And we're launching in January. It's an online program, three programs. One's mainly strength conditioning. One is more of a functional style bodybuilding and one is your never zero program and it's designed for people who align with kind of where I'm at on my journey today and that that launches in January yeah along with what we're gonna be working with your team for the yeah we're doing uh we're doing something a little little something called the deaf reset yeah yeah you're doing freedom reset and what it's you know we did it last year and it's it's you know it's like it's a reset button right sometimes you got to hit control all delete you know

this stuff because you're a computer nerd yes sir right echo charles yes so sometimes everything's getting all jumbled up jammed up yeah yes and so it's not functioning the way it should you hit control all all delete do a little reset yes so that's what this is and and you know we did it last year it was kind of like i didn't know what to expect of what the response would be but man you get to see people just hit that reset button and really make an awesome transition and get on the path. And you know, you hear me talk about the path, the path in life, the path of discipline. I can tell you this. If you're on the path in life, your life is better.

This has just been proven to me over and over and over and over and over again. If you're on the path of discipline in life, your life is going to be better, 100%. And so that's what the deaf reset is. And what we're doing is it's pretty cool. We got you are participating and you've got a bunch of workouts ready that are fully scalable. And what's the minimum gear needed for the workout program? Yeah, I mean, a set of dumbbells, if you have access to a jump rope and a cardio piece of equipment would be ideal. If not, you could identify adjustments.

But we are going to add a load in there with the dumbbells. If you don't have it, you utilize a backpack or something else. but it would be nice if you had a set of dumbbells, a jump rope and access to a form of cardio. And we're going to be putting out five workouts a week. They're all going to be e-mom-based. So for people who are interested in doing this, I love e-moms.

I think e-moms are the best way to train. Not the only way to train, but in my opinion, I love them because it's you against the clock. And you can set quantifiable goals and then race against it. It also helps us never zero mentality where guys, all you got to do is show up, hit the workout. It's going to be 30 minutes or less, every day and that could be a thing that you do along with whatever else you want to do for that day,

but that's the idea. How come you like e-mom better than am rap for a workout for this particular occasion? I mean, that's a great question. There are going to be am raps within e-moms. So let me give you an example. It would be minute one and two, steady state cardio at a moderate effort. Minute three and four, am rap, so as many reps as you can, of three dumbbell deadlifts, three lunges, and three push-ups.

You do that as many times as you can in the two minutes. You then rest a minute. So I love AMRAPs as many reps as you can within a time frame. But I think the reason why e-moms work so well is that it gives some like calculated rest in there. And it allows you to gamify it a little bit more because you have a minute-by-minute case where you could identify and just take a deep breath and say, how am I doing on this workout? Okay. Let's get back at it. Do you ever do those e-moms where you, I mean, I know you do.

but one minute, the first minute you do one rep, the second minute you do two reps. What do you think of those things? I love them. Like death, they call them death by, right? So it's like one,

two, three. I mean, the funny thing about those is like, so an example would be like, I don't know, one clean and jerk at 135 the first minute. You do it,

you feel like, all right, like I'm feeling good, right? You go two, you're like, this is easy. Three, four, five. All of a sudden it gets like,

let's just say seven. You're like, oh, okay. And it just escalates quickly. So yeah, I do those. But here's the thing about e-moms, which is why it's my favorite. Let's just say you want to learn a new skill.

Let's just say it's the muscle up. And you said, I want to do one muscle up every minute on the minute for 10 minutes. You do your muscle up, you come down. You have plenty of rest. But it gives you an opportunity to reflect and say, how did I do? Did I utilize my hip? That I drive out of the receiving position. That I hit good positions.

And then you could change it on the next one. Said this way you don't finish an AMRAP for 10 minutes. and then look back on your workout and say, wow, I wish I had done this, this is different. So that's one of the reasons why, like, e-moms, is that there is small calculated breaks that could give you a second to correct something that's going on. Or inspire you to keep those same numbers.

One of the workouts, for example, in the deaf reset is going to be, you know, max push-ups in 50 seconds or a minute, max sit-ups and max squats, and then a minute rest, and you'll do that for 20 minutes. Well, if in the beginning, your first week, if let's just say you get, I did this yesterday, I think I got 30, 30 and 35 or something like that. At the end of the four weeks, you can go back and try and test that and see if you can improve that. But it gives you a quantifiable number to fight for.

Yeah. That's going to be good. So you're going to be participating in the deaf reset, given those workouts and making videos and talking about various protocols for working out. That's going to be cool. Eschon Front is participating as well. So we're doing like leadership things and making leadership kind of challenges and stuff like that and some some educational videos and bringing people to some of our online training for that. And then I'm going to be doing sort of talking about discipline as as a broad thing and also talking about nutrition and and that level as well. So that's going to be a good time.

Yeah. It's going to be a good time for the death reset. We're putting out a warning order. This is another thing that I learned from last year. You know, I'm probably the one of the most guilty people of this of like, I don't do New Year's resolutions because like I'll just, I'm just doing it right now. Start today. Don't like I've done that my whole life. I've been saying that.

Like, dude, I'm my New Year's resolution. What? Nothing changed. There's nothing different today, tomorrow, whatever. But I'm telling you, I saw such a great impact last year. So. And also I thought about this. When you're doing a mission, do you just like ran?

Randomly start the mission because you just thought of it? No, you actually prepare so we're doing like a warning order We're gonna put out the word this is what it is is what you need to be prepared for so like Everyone's listening this today that's gonna do it you just heard it jump a jump rope and set of dumbbells you can get a set of dumbbells At a for for a dollar 50 yeah like you might have to bargain with the kid and maybe give him two bucks But I mean you're talking like a 20 pound 30 pound 40 pound maybe probably even 30 I'm thinking it did It depends on what you're, obviously your fitness level, right? But like, yeah, as high, the highest you would want is like a set of 50s. That's the highest.

Yeah. And when you say a set of 50s and I start thinking about doing like like thrusters with 50 pound dumbbells. Yeah. E-moms? Like I'm thinking 30s. Yeah. You know what I mean? Because that's, so probably most people, if you have a set of 30s, 25s 30s,

you're probably going to be good to go. So there's a little bit of the warning order right now. Get yourself a jump rope. Maybe start practicing jump rope a little bit. Or find. and find and identify another cardio, right? So if you want to run, run. If you want to get a bike, get a bike.

But we want to have some type of cardio implement if you have access to it. If not, you're just running outside. Okay, so running outside is an option? Yeah. Okay, cool. What's another, do you, is there any exercise that you consider a cardio exercise that you could supplement? I think running is going to be your best.

I mean, if you can't jump rope, you can do plate jumps. You could just jump in place. You could also do up downs, which is kind of going to, to be it's not going to tax your chest as much but you can get your cardiovascular like response but i think the idea would be probably some type of running or biking is kind of like the the goal or intent even like a skier or something like that yep when i was training dean lister back in the day we used to train in a place called city boxing and they had the they had above the mat there was pipes and there was lights and they were at different heights and so the the light

was a little bit taller. Like you had to, you had to set your jump. But basically those are the two kind of cardio implements I used with him. Well, one of the main cardio implements that I use with him. Touch the pipe. And he would just have to sit there.

Just touch, touch, touch. It's like you're jumping, you know, six inches or maybe it was even like, once you put your hand up, it was probably like four inch jump. But you do that for a minute. Jump, jump, jump. And then sometimes it was touch the light. And the light was like a, you know, a higher jump that you had to, like explode for one was just like a pop

Bob Bob Bob and but you combine those two things together that can be good so what you're saying like maybe you just get a little like maybe jumping up on a curb You know jump up on a curb do that for well you know for your cardio if you can't run But uh so there's your warning order for deaf reset it's gonna start January 1st man It's gonna be one of those gigs I know you could start today if you really care you start today Well guess what plan today get a jump rope start learning out a jump rope Jump rope jump rope um wear shoes

especially if you're beginning. Yeah. Like I work out barefoot, but if I'm going to be jumping rope, I'm getting the sneaks on for it. Yeah. Because you don't want me cracking them up. No.

You don't want me cracking them up? What's up? Can't remember the other day? Actually, a few weeks ago, when we were doing a video and I come in with regular shoes on, by the way. And he's teasing my shoes.

He's like, well, my man, we're here with a foot locker shoes. They're like regular shoes. Like vans or like regular Adidas like shoes. regular for working out and then yeah that it started to like provide some perspective I don't know why I flashback to that yeah but it was weird out you were teasing me about regular

shoes they weren't even like like crazy shoes black and white yeah exactly right you're like it didn't make sense but now it makes sense yeah a little bit more that's what I was laughing it yeah there you go with the white vans they weren't white they weren't even white vans they were black adida shoes there's normal trim that's it normal shoes there you rolling in there. So that's cool. And we'll have like a web page. We're going to host a bunch of videos on that web page.

Again, this is just like, how can we hook people up? When I see the impact it had last year, it's going to be awesome. And there's like little challenges. One of the challenges is, and I think this is pretty awesome. Burpees. In 10 minutes. Every day, it's either you do 100 burpees or as many burpees as you can in 10 minutes. That's a great little.

mechanism for life it's such a good mechanism for life actually you have one of the things in in your book is max burpees in six minutes this is a similar thing but it's one of those things where if you can't find 10 minutes in your day bro you need to read you need to read everything in your whole world 100% you can't get 10 minutes to do some burpees and it's a good number you know like that's a good pace and if you can beat it cool so go as hard as you can if you get done in seven minutes man that's great if you do 100 burpees in in six minutes and 48 seconds that's awesome if you can only get 32 burpees in 10 minutes cool by the end of

of death reset you're guaranteed to be doing a lot better that's one of the things that's one of the like additional little challenges and again burpees are no joke no you can you can have a devastating workout with burpees in three minutes yeah like it's because you're moving your whole body right I mean one of my go-toes is 15 burpees every minute on the minute for 10 minutes it's like that's like my jam it's it's my go-tie to if I'm traveling, if I'm doing anything. It's just like it just resets me, push me in a great spot and it just,

you're drenched at the end. Oh, you're drenched. You ever do burpee pull-ups? Yeah. That's another. Or burpees to a target is also another example. So like back what you're talking about a training dean, instead of just doing jumps, which are still great,

you do a burpee, but you hit a target. For some reason, it's so much harder. Oh, yeah. Because you're like having to extend or whatever. But I mean, the thing that it is, like, yeah, well, that's because by the time I get to burpee number 62, my vertical jump is a one millimeter. Yeah, yeah.

It's just, you know, training doesn't have to be that complicated. I think that people complicate it. And the reality is you have to move, you have to move every day, you have to get after it, and you have to identify what your why is for training. And for me, my why is evolved over the years,

and this is what I'm expressing now. Like, I'm competing in jiu-jitsu. I'm going to compete in a tactical games. Those things are like, you know, kind of like pillars that I'm looking for, but on a daily basis, I just want to be able to show up for the family and just be that guy.

It's super important to me. Yeah. So that's death reset. We'll be doing that January 1st. A little warning order will be coming out here shortly. Check out. You have a podcast too. Yeah, the Jason Cleepa podcast. My co-host and I gave, we just riff about being a dad where we're at in our journey. And it's just evolved over the years. It used to be called Business of Fitness for years. And it was all about talking about what I've learned running gyms. And now it's the Jason Cleep podcast, which allows me to talk about anything that I want to talk about. Chuck. And then, you know, one thing I wanted to mention is you are still involved. Like you, like you said, your daughter, thank God is recovered and she's cancer free right now. But you're still in the fight and you're helping other people out. You got two things that you support. Well, I guess you support through Ava's Kitchen, Ava's Kitchen.org. You support something called N-E-G-U.org.

That's right. Never, never ever give up. which is actually local to the Southern California area. The founders, they're incredible humans, and we've been supporting them for many years. My wife does an annual fundraiser called Davis Kitchen. Every year, chef Michael Mina and a bunch of other chefs that are very popular, they come and host a live auction where they cook in front of you. We've raised millions of dollars for kids fighting cancer,

and it's been one of the most impactful things I've ever done in my life, and I know for my wife, too, where you could give, You know, when we were in the hospital as months, we just saw a lot of stuff, right? And we want to do our part to try and impact families and provide them experiences. So we fundraise not for the cure, but for the care. And not that the cure is bad, but where we fund right now through Nigo is for the care. So sending people at Disneyland, you know, giving breakaway adventures. We host events all the time, things like that.

So avaskitchen.org, you can check that out. The next event will be in March 2024. and we'd love to see you there. So awesome that you guys are still helping out. Very cool to see. What else? Does that get us up to speed? I think that gets us up to speed, man.

I mean, yeah, I mean, I think if people want to go check out, you know, what we have going on with, with Trainhardt. The best place goes to TH.fit, trainhard. Dot, but it's a TH. Fit on there. We will have the book. We'll also have, obviously, access to our newsletter. You know, we've been investing a lot on our weekly newsletter.

It's just an opportunity for me to talk to, you know, just people, primarily men, but also women as well, and just share things that are firing me up, right? Lessons I've learned over my life. And as I evolve, the newsletter evolves. And so if you want to join the newsletter, we'd love to have you on there. Check. You also have jasonclepa.com. Yeah, I'd go to, you can go there, but I think th.fitt is great. It'll, it'll, it'll, is the main place. And then you're on Instagram. Yeah, Jason Cleep on Instagram. You're on Facebook. You have your own Twitter or sorry you have your own YouTube I looked at your Twitter yeah it's which is at Jason Kleepo you your last post was in 2020 so I got to get on that you haven't been on Twitter much

but you're on on the gram yeah the Instagram I think is the best place because it's a way that I could actually like engage with people message with people share content it's important to me and then obviously newsletters a deeper level and so is the podcast so awesome echo yeah you got any questions? Yeah. So let's, oh, first thing.

Here we go. Here we go. What do you got? We got to rewind a little bit. Back to football days. I gave you the opportunity on football. Well, kind of.

But yeah. Okay. So you played guard, you said. Yeah. But then you mentioned briefly pulling guard. Oh yeah. So they had you come in for pulling guard or

was it like, yeah, you just pull a lot. No. So in our offense, I think it was the West Coast offense. Wait, wait.

You know what pulling guard is? No. Well, I know what it is. It's called when you pull guard. Not in, not in, Not in Jiu-jitsu.

No, no, no, it's different. There's a, if you're a guard, that's your position and you pull. That means you essentially go off. When the play starts, you go off the line and go to the outside as an outside blocker. You pull, with one side or the other. Jocko, it's the best. But it does require, like, if you're a pulling guard, like, that's kind of you're a specialty kind of guard. That means you're more athletic than, let's say that you're quicker.

So it's like a little bit of a humble brag when you said he's pulled the guard. No, no, no. He's a little bit of a humble guard. No, no. My favorite thing we did was pull guard because to your point, you'd be on the line, right? And it'd be like, all right, so the play is whatever. And you'd have your running back, go around the outside, and you would pull and get in front of them. But man, sometimes there's just opportunities just to light people up because they don't see you coming.

And then I expect you. And you're just, boom. Like after the game, you'd watch like tape. He'd be like, wow. I mean, obviously, sometimes it didn't work out as well. But what was your 40 when you were 260? I think I got down to up. Or, you know, I want to say, I mean, who knows if the, you know, we were using like the finger timers.

I want to say I got down to 4-9. So I got below a 5. And, you know, I think, like I said, if I had applied myself differently, maybe my journey would have been different in football. I think I had a lot of potential. I just, it was my own fault. Just didn't. But, you know, my journey was also different. You know, from there, I found CrossFit and all these things.

And it impacted my life tremendously. Yeah. So you were more athletic than your typical guard, you would say? I don't know. I would just say the offense ran a lot of pulling stuff. Yeah, yeah. I happen to be the guard. Okay.

But were you a hell of fun? That was the question. Yeah. So, but were you a good 260 or kind of like sloppy 260? Like what up? I'd say it was a good 260 but could have been a great 260 if I had worked harder. Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay.

And then back to the pancake mix. Oh, is that still like what up? Like what are we at on that? I feel like we need a bladder. Batter blaster. You know what? We should Google that after. should Google that after this show and we should look at what they say. I don't think it's

a thing anymore. That's too bad because like when you think about it, especially with the advent of protein pancakes and like all this stuff, right? And pancakes, let's face it, bro, those are delicious most of the time, you know? So if you combine like a protein batter blaster pancake pack or something like this, bro, I'm telling you, I'm down. I'm a fan. Maybe we should start. Jason's ready to invest. We should create our own pancake batter. It could be something. It could be something even like you I mean I don't know I'm not very I'm not up to date on the pancake market really but anything simple like because I we still make pancakes yeah you know in the morning what are we put milk in the pancakes by the hell yeah

oh yeah but at the at the same time as as good of an experience that is I'm just saying general marketplace kind of status is like hey if it's super fast and convenient like in a bottle pancake mix in a bottle or a blaster or X Y Z container or something yeah you can just use it away next Jocko fuel product protein pancakes. How's that milk train treating you? I like milk.

So I like the Jocko Fuel products. I like your guys as, well, we talked about this. Like I do men's club workouts. Like on a weekly basis, we just go do hard stuff together. And I'll have 20, 40 guys show up and just go do hard stuff. And it's one of the best things I've ever done in my life. I just, I love it. So I think that more men need to have that shared experience with each other,

especially right now. Anyways, I'll roll out the Yeti cooler and I'll have the mulks sitting there. And it just, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, I like that product. And then obviously I take some of your other, obviously, products, but the mulk after workout is great. Joint Warfare is my favorite problem. Yeah, that one's a huge subscription thing.

People subscribe, which is, to me, that's an indicator of how well or how much people like something is they subscribe to it. So Joint Warfare is like our biggest subscription thing because people get on it. They don't ever want to get off of it. I was saying before we started recording, because I had a protocol shift,

because I'll have a go on the way to train jiu-jitsu. When I got done, I used to just go straight to mulk, but now I'm having a hydrate when I get done, and then I get home and have a mulk. And that's like a trifecta of glory right there. Because I sweat a lot, and, you know, I get done training. I mean, I swear, I probably sweat out five pounds. You know, when I train jih Tjitsu, I probably on,

yeah, I probably sweat out five pounds, at least. Yeah. And so I need to rehydrate. and the hydration is just so good. And it just nails it, you know, get home, feel freaking GTG. If you have a workout and you don't sweat. Now, you say you sweat a lot. So maybe for the average person,

maybe doesn't sweat as much as Jocko. If you don't sweat, did you still get in? Do you still feel like you got in a good workout? Oh, yeah. There's certain workouts where I'm not going to sweat as much. Like if I'm just like deadlifting someday, then there's probably, I might not sweat at all. You know, I might be because I'm just doing like, you know,

triples or something like that. And I'm taking long rest. Yeah, and the weather and all the, yeah, plus the weather, if it's cold, you know, I might not sweat, but I do break a sweat pretty easily. Even if I'm just like just doing something like a heavy lift day or something like that, I'll still probably, at least at a minimum, break a sweat. And then in the freaking summertime, it just gets ridiculous. It's just like a disaster of sweat. Yes. It's just gross, you know.

Why do you ask that? Just because for me, it's like, it's this weird mental thing. that like I feel like if I don't sweat, I didn't work out. And I'm not, it's just a me thing. Like, you could still get a great workout. And obviously, we're in California. So the weather is pretty normal. If you're in the middle of, you know, if you're in Minnesota.

Minnesota during the winter. You're not sweating for six months. Yeah. So, but I think for me, it's like if once I start sweating, that's when I feel like my body's getting primed and ready. You know, when I look at a warm up, it should be doing two things, increasing core body temperature and taking my body through a full range of motion. That's what I need to be.

That's what I'm thinking about. Am I priming my engine for when I'm ready to perform? Are you doing the same warm up every day? Well, when I was competing, it would be the same. How long would it take? That'd be like a 15-minute warm-up. What I would be trying to do, like I sometimes would bring certain machines like a GHD to warm-up areas because I had a specific protocol that mentally and physically

will put me in a state. Because what you want to try and do when you're competing is you want to try and, you want to try and replicate. So your body starts saying, okay, I'm getting primed and ready. So if I always had the same protocol, it'd be like nutrition. People eat a certain way.

And then like three days before an event, they change it because they want to eat clean or do whatever. It's like, dude, what are you doing? Just stick to the plan. If you want to change it, change it months in advance. So your body can get adjusted to it.

Same thing goes for warmups. I would have the same warm up every day. 10 hip extensions, 10 GHD sit-s, row. Repeat, three rounds, move on. And it would just... Move on to what? I would just move on to like,

more skill specific for that day. Maybe it's gonna be, but it was always the row and the GHD was like my go to. Roe like as in concept two row or? Yeah, like a 500 meter row, GHD sit-ups to basically open up my hips and get my like my quads firing and then rotate over to engage my posterior chain

and do hip extensions. So I'm testing my midline, I'm opening up, I would do that and I would just repeat that for like three to five rounds. And then once I was ready, then I moved on to my legion. more specific for that day. Maybe it's opening my lat on a front rack position.

Maybe it was, who knows. But when I did that, it mentally put me in a state where I was ready to crush. Are you doing more mobility now? Not really. I think that I think that deep tissue work and rolling is one of the most underutilized tools ever. I think quad smashing with a kettlebell and smashing in general is highly underutilized and everybody should be doing it.

What is smashing? So you just take a kettlebell and you just put it right on your quad. And you just let it rest it there. Just sit down on the floor and just put it right, put it right at the dimple right above your knee and just breathe and let it get deeper. Then move it around and basically start to break things up. The way that it was described to me is if you look at your skin, you look at your muscle and you look at your fascia that's on top of that muscle, you want your fascia to just to smoothly go over as if you're ironing it out with a foam roller. and you can do that with the foam roller kettlebell barbell so I do that but I really use movement as a way to increase my range of motion so for example you know overhead squatting with just a light bar just to kind of sit down at the bottom make sure my hips and ankles are still there I want to make sure that I'm still doing those seven days. Check.

Echo Charles. Yeah. Any other questions? That was the thing about the sweating because I was literally just thinking about that when you're because you say sweat every day. It's one of your protocols right. sweat every day and then and I did a workout and usually I start sweating a little bit and then I'll do this like conditioning thing on this as far as generally typically speaking I'll do a conditioning thing at the end and after the conditioning part that's when the sweat just like

yeah drenched in sweat but the other day because it's getting colder I did the whole same protocol and I'm like wait I'm not even sweating that much and I'm thinking like it literally doesn't feel like I worked out that hard but I did the exact same thing as I always do but I was like oh no because it's cold right now cold you know so So to answer your, as far as your question, do you feel like you work out? It is a feeling, huh? It's like a feeling. I feel like even though you literally, same output, same output as you always do, but you don't feel.

I mean, even like, even like, for example, earlier today I'm in a hotel gym and I'm getting after it. And it was pretty hot in the hotel gym. Yeah, yeah. And so I started sweating sooner than I would if I was in my garage or out of gym. Yeah. And I'm like, oh, I'm getting a good one right now. But I know I'm not. Like it's all the same stuff.

It's just a psychological thing. You just got to be like, hey, man, just chill, dude. You're funny. Did you ever use a heart? rate monitor? I have in the past. I think there's value to them for sure. One of the things I think is really interesting about heart remoders and Tim Kennedy uses his a lot for rolling jihitsu is how do I take an athlete on the mats or the heart rate, take them off the mats and replicate, if not enhance that heart rate doing other stuff. That's something I've been thinking about lately.

What does he find, what does he find when he uses it? Is he finding like, is he working really hard? Is he finding out that it's, that he's, that he can rest more or he should be resting more? more or he should be putting out more? Like, what's the research that's going on? Yeah, I got to ask him what his data is showing him at this point, but I know that he wears the hurry monitor like regularly and he's trying to get in specific zones. I've never really like trained heart rate wise. I think about more as a breathing cadence, especially for like long distance running.

So when I was really running with the track coach regularly, we would utilize time and breath as like indicators. Like how, what is your cadence? What's your breath rate? and how are you performing? Those were things I was seeing about because I wouldn't be able to have a hurry monitor or whatever, necessarily all the events in the games.

Nowadays, people are a little bit more technologically advanced and they start using it, but five years ago wasn't the case. What's your favorite emum? Like number, just bait your jam, email. Dude, well. I mean, I think the 15 burpees every minute on the minute for 10 minutes. There's also one called Death Row. That's pretty gnarly.

it's 20 Cal row and 15 burpees the next minute for 20 minutes. And so that's that's tough. So how does that work? It's alternating. You do the row and then on the next minute. 15 burpees. Phase burpees. So it's like an e-mom alternating.

Yeah, but I mean on that one, the goal is nice deep breaths, get your hurry under control, and you're going like 50 seconds at each one. And so if you try and go too fast, you know, the thing about e-moms, the thing about workouts is you want to think about it almost like you're breathing like you're swimming. So when you're swimming, you find your breathing cadence. It's very important. As soon as you get out of your cadence, you can freak out really quickly. Same thing goes in workouts. You've got to find the cadence and you need your brain to feel like it's going to get oxygen. If you, like in jih Tzu, if you breathe, breathe, and you stop breathing, your brain

freaks out. But if you find a nice cadence, it's going to help you keep your heart rate more lower. So that eMOM is a good example of that. That's different than like a minute in between sets. So, because like, It's a hell of a lot. Yeah, because it's basically nonstop. I was going to say, because he says it's like swimming. It's like drowning. Because even what you were saying earlier, you know, the first, like, if you're doing

five reps of something, the first time you're like, oh, this is so easy. By, you know, you fast forward seven minutes. It's taking you that whole time. And by the time you get done, there's like four seconds left. Yeah. You ever do that one, Kelsu? Yeah. That, to me, is a savage workout.

So it's five on the minute, five burpees. max thrusters with 135 and you got to go until you get to a hundred thrusters. Wait, so you go five burpees and then the thrusters. So check it out. The watch starts, beep. You're going to do five burpees and then you're going to do as many thrusters as you can in the remaining whatever 45 seconds. And this is a destructive, destructive workout.

Yeah. Like if you get 10, 135 is heavy thruster. Yeah. Yeah. It sucks. and it takes like a half an hour to do this workout. Because for me, I was getting like, I'll get like four in the beginning. And then I'm getting like three.

And sometimes you get like a single. Yeah. And you're like, I'm a loser. So wait, after the first minute, you just start again? Yeah. Oh, damn. So basically the thing about it is, I mean, even if you're, I'm saying if you're pumping, but let's just see you five burpees that takes you about 15 seconds.

Let's just say 20 seconds at the most, right? And then from there, you have another 40 seconds to get in, you know, five to seven thrusters. And then you restart again. I'm over here to tell you I'm getting five to seven. I'm not getting five to seven or whatever it is. It depends you got your knee sleeves on and weight belt on. You're ready to go. Don't depend on nothing.

You get down to minute like nine and you're like, bro, I'm doing it. I've done it where I've been getting like singles. Yeah. You're just freaking exhausted. You're like, you know, having a breakdown. That's crazy how like a workout, just that small shift in. So, okay, so think, go back to your. 15 burpees every minute on the minute.

Yeah. That's different than do 15 burpees. Okay, okay, so we'll do this. So let's say on average, give or take, you do 15 burpees, how many, how many seconds do you have left? 15 burpees takes you about, it should take you about 45 to 50 seconds

if you're doing it at the cadence that I'm referring to. Okay. That should be like up, down, down. And you're trying to keep your hurry under control. Because otherwise, if you just do 15 burpees of fast you can, it's going to take you like, I don't know, 30 seconds. Okay.

So perfect. So how's this small, the small shift, this part is interesting to me. So on average, you got 15, 10, 15 seconds rest between burpees if you're doing it on the cadence that you're talking about. That's a different workout than you do 15 burpees, rest for 15 seconds, 10 sets. Totally different. It's a different workout. Because you could take a minute to do those 50 burpees. Yeah.

Like, you get those little things. That's why the clock. That's why for the deaf reset, it's so important that we're incorporating e-moms. Em-moms are so underutilized by the general population. They're incredibly important because it's now you against the clock. Yeah. Even when you're like working, you're against the clock. Dude, think about it.

Like let's just say the first time you do it. If you do this with me right now, I'd be like, hey, you know, echo. Let's do 10 burpees every minute on the minute for 10 minutes. I'll do it with you. And I'll talk to you about breathing cadence. By the time you get to minute seven, you're going to be exhausted. But you've got to fight because you, that clock's going to keep. going yeah at a certain point you're not you might not have rest anymore the actually this was a basis

of a lot of workouts i used to do with my kids oh yeah when my kids my kids the the five burpees max pull-ups five burpees max push-ups five burpees max lunges like i would do that with my kids when they were little i think it mentally scarred me that makes sense to me completely yeah i i was not the best uh you know dad at this point but It's a great thing. That Kelsu of five burpees and then whatever for the rest of the minute is fucking savage. But think about what you did with your kids.

Think about the gift you gave them. Like, yes, there's always ways that we can. You might want to check with them on that gift. There's always ways we can improve, right? And I think we all want to be the best we can. But like we're trying to provide them for a world that's going to be tough. And if we could utilize fitness as a resource, that's great.

You know, like if you get them in the garage and you're fighting for five reps, you only get four. You know, you got to overcome that, right? Or you want to keep pushing. Or like for me with Ava, we strength train every morning. That's what we prioritize because she has other stuff going on. And, you know, it's a time that we can connect. I think every father should.

The thing about here's what's interesting about fitness compared to anything else in life. If I say, hey, dad's working hard. It's very hard for a child to understand what working hard is if you're talking about behind a computer or at work. But when you see your parents sweating, getting after it, dude, they just know what hard work is. So if you could do that with your kids, I think it's really important. Yeah. Yeah. So echo, anything else?

I don't want to stay here all day, but so we'll catch up after. Call it for this one. We'll call it for this one. Yes, thank you. Jason, any closing thoughts, bro? No, I just, I really appreciate the relationship we've developed over the last couple years. You know, it's been a, it's been a big goal mine for like, I don't know, I probably messaged

you first time, like over a decade ago on social media. Like, hey, man, I'd love to chat with you about jujitsu and fitness and whatever. And here we are, you know, so I just wanted to say, like, if you have goals, when the time is right when things when the when the universe aligns and if you continue to put in the hard work like opportunities will present themselves yeah we got it scheduled seven years ago and here you are uh yeah man awesome uh thanks for coming out bro and it's you know thanks for sharing the information i i what you're doing appreciate what you're doing to help people get stronger get faster get healthier it's just cool to see your path and share these stories and and also obviously thanks for

what you and your wife do to help continue this battle against cancer. Saving lives, man. And you're saving lives on all front. And it's much appreciated. Thanks for coming out. Sorry, it took seven years, bro. That's it? Yeah.

We'll do it again seven years from now. Right on, right on. I'll see you at the deaf reset. Let's go. Let's go. And with that, Jason Kalipa has left the building. Can see lots of working out involved. Yeah.

Lots of being on the pan. If we're working hard, if we're getting our as many reps as possible, we need some fuel. Or if we're doing every minute on the minute too. We recommend Jocco fuel. Yes, sir, we do. Yeah. I kind of went through my protocol, which is a really good protocol at this juncture in time. What protocol?

Oh, the Jocco fuel protocol. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's go on the way to the gym. It's get done training. this is jujitsu because I don't in the more in the early morning I don't I don't have any any thing besides water oh natty just going in go natty in the morning that's an early morning huh it's cool but for the for the jihitsu protocol go on the way there get done with

the training hydrate gonna need it awfully sweaty get home mulk by the way might be having dinner in like an hour but I'm still having a mulk agree Because I need it. I'm going catabolic. 100% of good. You heard Jason talk about joint warfare. You're putting strain on your joints. You're going to need that joint warfare.

So there you go. Check it out. Check out joccofuel.com. Also, you can get this stuff at vitamin shop. You can get at Wawa. You can get a GNC military commissaries. Cometaries, Hathes, Hanifers, Dastores in Maryland, Wake Fern, ShopRite,

H.E.B. down in Tejas. Leif posted up like a full, full like entire sedent. scenario of jaco fuel at H.E.B. So appreciate that. Everyone down there in Teosk getting after Meyer up in the Midwest. Same thing.

Harris Teeter, Lifetime Fitness Shields. And look, you've got a little gym. Like what Jason has? He's got gyms. And guess what they sell at his gyms? Jock Fuel. Why he wants his people to be stronger, faster, smarter, and better. So if you want to do that at your gym, your CrossFit gym, your Jiu Jitsu gym,

your powerlifting gym, your Olympic lifting training facility. your gymnastics gym, whatever. Your global gym. Maybe you got a global Metroplex gym. You still need some of that Jocko Fuel. Email J.F Sales at joccofuel.com. You can sell the goodness to your people. So there you go.

It's true. Also, origin USA. We're doing the jiu-jits. You're doing the ghee and no geese. So when you put on the gebe, best make sure it's a origin geet. Trust me. Once you go origin, you don't go back

to these other sweatshop, abrasive straight jacket geese yeah in fact brad part of the freaking half of jujitsu is making your ghee not feel like a straight jacket that's half of what jujitsu is part of the gym brous so don't just out the gate purchase a straight jacket

geet the origin gear that's the luxury gear right we're not doing that no all made in america by the way all made in america by the way so origin USA you can get by the way you can't wear your gear to the grocery store I mean you can technically you can't wear it to the club you know you can't wear it to the club you know you can't

We're even really, honestly, you really shouldn't be wearing it to a restaurant on a date with your wife. Now look, it might look good. Yes. And your wife might be kind of down for the cause if you post up in your ghee for date night. But there's also a decent chance that would just annoy her and make her think that you're weird. So that's why we have jeans. You can get origin jeans. You get origin boots, training gear, right?

The RTX gear for training. Got everything, everything that you're going to need for that one. Which is, by the way, 100% accurate. that origin jeans are my date night standard uniform 100% accurate. I'm not saying like sometimes. No. It's the standard uniform. Yeah.

Origin jeans. And what is your wife assessed? Massively approved. Approved. Yes. Kind of a big way. Very much. All right.

One time I wore jeans to, I think it was to recording. And so I was leaving my standard recording uniform of shorts, by the way. I was wearing jeans. I don't know why. She thought you were my kids thought I was like going somewhere for you know That's the same way with my house when you see me put on jeans they're like oh You know big time. By way everything that we're talking about you look you can make clothes right if you let's say you want to be like a t-shirt you want to make t-shirt sales or you want to sell your Shorts or whatever you can do that and you make them in China and you're supporting sweatshops we make everything in America

We grow the material in America We weave the material in America. This is 100% American made. This is how we maintain national security in this country. This is how we maintain economic security because we have forgotten how to manufacture. We're bringing it back. So origin USA.com. Get yourself some American made goodness.

There you go. It's true. Also, jaco's store called jaco store. Disillian equals freedom. Look, deaf. When we say deaf reset, you know what deaf stands for? D.E.F. discipline equals freedom.

It's true. Discipline does equal freedom. I had to have a discipline equals freedom talk with one of my sons recently. Long story, I'm not going to go into it. We're good to go. Hopefully it was assimilated. But nonetheless, you want to represent while we're on this path that Jason was

talking about that we're talking about. You want to represent, discipline equals freedom. That's where you can get your shirts. So there you go. Hats. The whole deal. Also, subscription. If you want a new shirt every month,

discipline equals freedom still, just in a different. flavor from time to time every month new shirt new design maybe you get tired of that chocolate uh and vanilla and you want to get some mint chocolate chip sure and then that's what the that's what the shirt locker is and for t-shirts sure it's actually more than that you got now you're going to get the mint chocolate chip then you're going to get the other one then the next one the new one the other one the cotton candy just map cotton candy whatever you know whatever you need oh yeah so it's like a gift like a christmas gift every single month yeah people seem to like it anyways called the

short locker if you don't know new design every month subscription does Amazon ever deliver anything to your house does Amazon yeah yeah yeah from time to time sure whenever Amazon shows up at the house yeah I always asked my wife oh you got me a present yeah and it'll be like cleaning whatever yeah some duct tape yeah yeah like dishwashing liquid you know what I mean yeah I do know what you mean actually in some ways like oh you give me a present she says yeah and I open it up and it's like deter laundry Yeah, she's just looking at you like, hey.

Yeah, getting nothing. But if you're on that Sherlocker, when the package shows up, you know, kind of a big deal. You see the little X flag on it right there. That's when you know. That's when you know. So check it out. Sherlocker.

That's on Jocko Store. Jocco store.com. That's where you can get. Subscribe to the podcast. Oh, don't forget about if you need to eat food, look, we're drinking milk, but we still want to have a steak. Go to primalbeef.com or go to Colorado Craftbeef.com. Just the best steak delivered to your house.

By the way, it's also like burgers. You ever had a really good burger? Yes, I know. Let's face it. Burgers is a, I mean, I bet if you assess death row meals, a good percentage of my hamburgers. Am I wrong? I don't think you're wrong.

No, I think you're correct. And I'm going to tell you right now, if you're on death row right now and you're listening and you want to have a death row burger for your last meal, go to Colorado Craftbeef.com or go to primalbeef.com and order yourself some ground meat. And you make it with that 100%. You are actually correct even in practice. So not last night the night before, all the primal beef, all of them, the burgers that I had.

I took them out. They were getting thought out. Hey, I'm going to make as many burgers as you need to for whatever kids. And then I'm going to make the rest for chili. So I'm like, cool. Right, just I took all of them after they would thought I would, you know, when you take the paper off of them. Yep. You know, I took them all.

I just bound them all together, mashed them up all together and did this one big, huge burger ball. Put some seasoning in there. Then I made a bunch of like thicker burgers. Zero burgers for the, or zero amount of grumpy for the chili. It was all burgers. Death row burgers. Now that you mention it. Death row burgers.

Oh, yeah. We got it going on. You stack the double thick one. Yeah, all day. What's the seasoning scenario? Oh, it was, I don't know the name of it. Okay. We'll get back to you with the death row burgers.

Yeah, so there's two methods of seasoning. I don't want to go too deep into it. I'll go kind of deep into it. There's one seasoning that my younger brother, Yata, turned me on to. I forget what it's called. I'll show it to you later. I forget what it's called, but you just put that on it. That's it.

All required. The second one is the seasoning from Costco. They don't sell it. You can't buy it anywhere unless you sometimes can find it on eBay, but it's from Costco. I don't know what it's called either. And it's out of business now? No, it's like, I think it's like their seasoning that they use.

Like if you go to Costco in the place where you get the stakes, it's for steak. You can say, hey, can I get a little container of that seasoning? And then they'll give you some. And then, but that's the secret one. Who, put a little bit of that on it. Oh, man. All right. Well, make yourself some death row burgers.

Primalbeef.com, Colorado, craftbeef.com. Great companies, doing the right things for the right. Also subscribe to the podcast also jocco underground.com. We got that little other podcast that we do Adjacent materials Q&A all the time cost $8.18 a month unless you can't afford that and if you can't no big deal Email assistance at jocco underground.com because we own that platform and no one's gonna kick us off YouTube. We're on there subscribe to that we also got psychological warfare. We got flipside canvas dot com Dakota Meyer making you cool stuff to hang on your wall a bunch of books obviously as many reps is possible by Jason Kalippa the audio book is available for sure so check that out also I've

written a bunch of books you know leadership strategy and tactics field manual there's a new addition of that I'm getting feedback people are really finding that to be pragmatic and helpful in their world final spin little novel stay clean written a bunch of other books you guys know kids books get your get the kid books for the kids that you know do that get the kids for the kids that you know that's my recommendations a way the warrior kid one two three four and five get Mikey and the dragons and then of course about face by Hackworth which I wrote the forward for the new version extreme ownership

dichotomy leadership they're all there also Eschlam front we have a leadership consultancy we solve problems through leadership go to Eschlamfront.com for details we just had a sold out show down in Dallas we're gonna have another sold out show in San Diego next so if you want to come to one of our events or you want to do a field training exercise which Jason talks about today go to ashlawnfront.com for details we also have an online training academy you can't leadership isn't an inoculation you get one shot now you're good to go you need to train just like going to the gym you don't go to

the gym once you go to the gym all the time so if you have questions about that or you have questions about leadership we have questions about life or you want to take courses about leadership go to extreme ownership.com get enrolled if you want to help service members active and retire you want to help their their families You want to help Gold Star families. Check out Mark Lee's mom, mama Lee. She's got a incredible charity organization to help out all these people that have served. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's Mighty Warriors.org.

Also, Heroes and Horses.org. Micah Think has taken our veterans up into the wilderness where they can get lost up there so they can find themselves. Also, Jimmy May's organization beyond the brotherhood.org. So check that out. If you want to connect with us, well, Jason, he's at t-h-dot fit. He's also at on Instagram, on Facebook, on YouTube. He's at Jason K-H-A-L-I-P-A. And that goes out, echo Charles.

And I'm at Jock-O-W-L-L-L-L-L-N-L-N-K. And just be careful because there's an algorithm that literally wants to steal your life from you. Steal your life, steal your time. He wants to take it away from you and have you scrolls, through a freaking screen looking at dumb shit for 38 minutes. You can write a book. You can do a workout. You can do jiu-jitsu.

You can go surfing in 38 minutes. Or you can freaking look at a bunch of dumb shit on a little screen that's breaking your brain. So just watch out for the algorithm. It's a monster. And thanks to all of our military out there right now, the world's a freaking tinderbox right now. And it can explode. at any moment and all of you in our military are out there standing the watch we appreciate and thank you for your service and also thanks to our police and law enforcement firefighters

paramedics EMTs dispatchers correctional officers border patrol secret service all first responders you're in the same scenario right now here at home thank you for protecting us on the home front and to everyone else out there the clock is ticking time is limited you don't get a reset You don't get another chance. Be nice. You could live this life and just get another chance to do it again, but you don't get it. It is what it is. So what are you going to do with it?

How many reps are you going to get? I recommend you know your why. You focus on what you can control, your work, hard shift gears, re-evaluate, and I recommend you get as many reps as possible. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko. Out.