Jocko Podcast - Jocko Podcast 13: Chechens VS Russians, UFC 196 Review, Supplements

Episode Date: May 2, 2021

0:00:00 - Combined Arms Operations In Urban Terrain - Manual about Chechens vs. Russians 1:23:30 - Thoughts on UFC 196 / Holly Holm vs Meisha Tate and Connor McGreggor Vs. Nat Diaz 1:36:40 - BUDS Training stories get people FIRED UP. 1:43:49 - Is Jocko Too INTENSE? 2:01:40 - Jocko's thoughts on MARSOC 2:05:55 - Is Shooting a martial art? 2:14:37 - What Supplements do Jocko and Echo take? 2:24:39 - Leading others to a STRONG finish.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 13 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. This is extracted from U.S. Army FM3-Tack 06.11. Combined arms operations in urban terrain. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the people of Chechnya began to seek full independence. By 1994, Cheshney had fallen into civil war between pro-independence and pro-Russian factions. In December, 1994, Russia sent 40,000 troops into Chesnia to restore Russian primacy over the breakaway republic. An attack was launched by 6,000 mechanized troops against the Cheshon capital of Grosny.

Instead of the anticipated light resistance, Russian forces encountered heavy resistance from the Chessians, armed with massive amounts of anti-tank weapons. The Russians were repulsed with shockingly high losses. It took them another two months of heavy fighting and changing their tactics before they were able to capture Grosny.

Between January, in May 1995, Russian losses in Chechnya were approximately 2,800 killed, 10,000 wounded, and over 500 missing or captured. The Cheshirean casualties were also high, especially among non-combatants. This war is a major and cautionary episode in military history. The large-scale lessons of Cheshire lie in these areas. It showed again the limited effectiveness of heavy weaponry in urban terrain and by extension the crucial importance of well-trained, well-led, well-equipped, and highly motivated infantry. It proved again that a society judged primitive or chaotic by Western standards can still

generate a tremendous fighting spirit and very effective military discipline. This is not a new lesson. So that's a little introduction to the focus for today. And that's this Soviet attack on Cheshneah, the breakaway republic. And it's just urban combat, the urban combat. And that's what I found it very fascinating and I remember at the first time I started to The first significant moment when I remembered Hearing about the lessons learned from Cheshney because you know you watch it you you you know we all watched it. I was in the military at the time, you know

But the first time I remember hearing about the lessons learned was actually when I was going through officer candidate school in Nineteenth eight and for what ever reason, one of the Marine Corps drill instructors had put this series of lessons learned of the Russian military up on the wall. And this is something I talk about occasionally is that the lesson that I remembered seeing there was that it was when they stopped shaving, when the Russian troops stopped shaving, it was like the beginning of the end. Discipline fell apart.

morale fell apart and everything turned into a disaster and there were a bunch of other lessons learned and i've looked for that specific document and i haven't been able to find it so i don't know what this specific document was that said that but i found others that are close to that but what's interesting is that now and this this field manual this army field manual that i'm reading from uh was actually published in 2002 so we had definitely looked at it at this war and it was brutal. And if you want to go into some dark places, you can go into some dark places because this is one of the first,

it definitely is one of the first where you had, you know, information warfare happening, meaning there was propaganda coming out, homemade propaganda. You can see it on YouTube, especially from the Cheshan side of just brutal, brutal, behavior.

Yeah. And they were doing that purposely to strike fear into the hearts of the Russian soldiers. And they, they, they, they were effective in doing that. They did do that. Yeah. It's crazy how they make those videos just available to everybody. They do. It is, it is crazy.

So, as we dig into this a little bit, this is still from within the FM3-TAC-106, but they're quoting lessons learned from the world turned upside down military lessons of the Cheshion War by Mr. Anatole Levin. And he said, it cannot be emphasized too strongly, therefore, that the key to success in urban warfare is good infantry. And the key to good infantry rather than good weaponry is a traditional mixture of training, leadership qualities in NCOs and junior grade officers and morale, implying a readiness to take casualties. So this is classic, this is what we, this is what Ramadi was all about as well.

You know, good infantry, which they absolutely had, great NCO leadership, which they absolutely had, the junior officers were outstanding, and the morale, which he says the morale is a readiness to take casualties. And that's one of the things that no doubt about it, Colonel Sean McFarland, that was running the brigade. He had to overcome that fear that many people had, which was when you push into these enemy-controlled territories, you are going to take casualties. It is going to happen. You cannot avoid it.

And that's something that we, SEALS had to deal with as well, because SEALs had been in, had been in Iraq for three years at this point and not had any seals killed in action. So this idea that we were going to push into this heavy urban fighting meant to us we were going to take casualties at some point. The U.S., back to the book, the U.S. will not always have the ability to pick and choose its wars. and the key reason Cheshnea is that there will always be military actions in which a determined infantryman will remain the greatest asset. And that is very near and dear to my heart, knowing that it's not the technology, it's not the drones, it's not the aircraft, it's the infantrymen, it's the soldier that makes the difference. and the leader, the leaders of those soldiers that make the difference. Now, here was the Marine Corps analysis.

First of all, strategic lessons. Military operations alone cannot solve deep-seated political problems. Okay. Military commanders need clear policy guidance from which they could work steadily and logically. Confusion generally. by missing or conflicting policy guidance is made worse by poorly defined lines of command and control. So those first two messages right there are all about clear guidance. And this happens all the time in the business world where you don't see clear guidance making it all the way down to the front lines through the chain of command.

Russian senior command lacked continuity and was plagued by too much senior leadership. leadership involvement at the lower operational level. Lack continuity. There's got to be clear message that every leader has got to be basically saying the same fundamental message. Contrary to initial expectation, operations were neither of short duration or low cost. When Russian security operations began achieving results, the Chessians started attacking targets within Russia.

it was difficult to unite police and military units into a single cohesive force. Distinct tactical advantages accrue to the side with less concern for the safety of the civilian population. That is something that we absolutely dealt with in Ramadi. Again, it's that the distinct tactical advantage accrue to the side with less concern for the safety of the civilian population. This was of utmost concern to every soldier and Marine on the ground in Ramadi was trying to protect the civilian population. And of course, the Al-Qaeda insurgents that we were facing did not care at all about the civilian population or any of their buildings or any of their lives or children

or women or anything else. Concern about civilian casualties and property destruction declined as casualties among Russian forces rose. So initially the Russians were also concerned about civilian casualties, but as they started taking casualties, got worse and worse. Here are some operational lessons. Having well-developed military doctrine for urban warfare

is not enough in and of itself. Got to have that creativity. Doctrine does not answer. everything. Situation-oriented training would have improved Russian military effectiveness. And we're going to talk about that later today, but situation-oriented training. And that is when you put yourself in situations and you make people have to think. It's not about executing pre-planned moves. It's just like in martial arts. It's not about being able to do a kata and do a movement. That's not what it's about. It's about reacting to another.

free-thinking human being, and in this case, a group of free-thinking human beings. How do you react in those situations? And they're in specific situations as well. Right, like those situations, like in jujitsu, we do situational training. They'll be like, okay, here, half-guard. If you get on top, you know, you start all over. If you, you know, tap the guy or whatever, you start all over. In half-guard, start all over, you know, in half-guard.

Inadequate training in the most basic maneuver and combat skills in inhibited Russian operations. So you've got to be trained up in the basics, no doubt about it. Urban combat is extremely manpower intensive and produces significant attrition of men and material among the attackers. Overwhelming firepower can make up for organizational and tactical deficiencies in the short run if one is willing to disregard collateral damage. So yeah, you can just bomb the crap out of places.

And you can make up for your tactical and organizational problems in the short run if you don't care about a collateral damage. You know, this is, we, we don't do that. We as Americans don't do that. We care about collateral damage. The sudden requirement to deploy to Cheshnea coupled with the unique supply problems posed by the weather and the urban environment overwhelmed the already fragile Russian military logistics system. And these are just bullet points, by the way, of the system. sounds stilted the way I'm reading it. I'm just reading bullet after bullet. A lack of high quality intelligence made operations more difficult and dangerous on the Russian

forces. The geometry and perspectives of urban combat are very different from combat in the open. Urban combat is much more vertically oriented. So in the desert, you do have elevation. you have hills, mountains, whatever, so there is some vertically oriented things that you have to deal with. But in urban combat, every foot can be separated by 10 stories, you know. And so it is a 360 degree environment.

Not to mention, you get subterranean situations. You have basements, you have cellars, you have underground sewers and pipes and things, tunnels that go from building to building. So it's a 360-degree, environment for sure. Fratricide was a serious and continuing problem throughout the campaign in Cheshnea because it was difficult to tell friend from foe. That's friendly fire. That's friendly fire. And this is, you know, obviously in our book, I start off. I mean, the first chapter is about a

fratricide that happens. So obviously we learned this, you know, in the, in the most horrible way. And anybody that's been in hardcore urban combat. And again, I'm not talking about doing an operation with, let's say, one unit against a bad guy in an urban environment. I'm talking about urban combat

where you have multiple units all over the place. Friendly units in buildings on roads, and they're mixed in. There's no way you can help, but they're mixed in with enemy. and it becomes very, very challenging. Standard Russian military unit configurations were inappropriate for urban combat.

Forgoing peacetime maintenance is a false economy. So there's something to think about. Going peacetime maintenance. When you say, you know what, there's nothing going on right now, we'll just kind of slack off a little bit. You know what? I don't need to train in the offseason. I don't need to prepare right now.

Guess what? You do. You do need to prepare right now. It's a lie to think you're going to get away with it. The potential of special forces for urban operations was never realized in Cheshnea. Well, we realized it in Ramadi for sure and how to work it. The nature of cities tends to channel combat operations along narrow lanes of activity. That's just a, I mean, they're called roads.

and just like when you're in downtown San Diego, in the gas lamp district, guess what? Things are channeled onto long, narrow, long, narrow lanes of activity. It's called a road. That's kind of an obvious one. Tactical lessons. Rigorous communication security is essential even against relatively primitive enemies. And this is what the Russians found out was that the Chessians, many of whom spoke Russian. They would listen to their radio calls.

listen to radio commands, they would actually get on the radios and give false commands. So it was just a nightmare for them. Now, in America, we have very highly sophisticated encryption systems. So this is really no factor for us.

Night fighting was the single most difficult operation in Chesnia for infantry forces. Again, this is something that we are very good at. We being America. We are awesome. fighting at night. We have incredible capability on our night vision. We do it all the time. And actually, that's worth mentioning. The reason that we're good at is because we do it all the time. We train it all the time. We do it all the time. And we're just used to be living in that way.

We're used to living in that green world of night vision. Tanks and APCs cannot operate in cities without extensive dismounted infantry support. Now in Ramadi, they absolutely operated and they operated with a, the phenomenal success, but they did have an infantry support, usually very close by. Although they did push and do incredible operations on their own as well. Forces operating in cities need special equipment not usually found in the Russian TOE, which is basically the table of organizational equipment, the list of normal things that they had. lightweight ladders were

invaluable for assaulting infantry. This is on my first deployment to Iraq. We actually, we just built little ladders. We built little two by four ladders because there were walls all over the place. So we just have ladders, have them hooked on to humvees.

When we need them, we just pop them off. Like with spare wood that was around. Just spare wood, little two by fours. Trained snipers were essential, but in short supply. We had plenty of snipers. Obscurance are especially, useful when fighting in cities is smoke grenades and other ways of blocking vision but yeah

that's one of those things when when I was a kid in the seal teams and we would learn like hey you got to throw smoke and once you throw the smoke you can run away and he kind of it almost seems like a joke almost I mean right that almost sounds funny when I say that like Batman kind yeah it's almost like Batman or James Bond you know he's got the little smoke button it's freaking real it's real like you throw that smoke out you let that smoke start to pour out And then all of a sudden you can get out of there. Huh. And it's, again, it's one of those things that it almost seems like a joke when you first hear about it.

When you're a kid, you're like, wait, really? That's a real thing? No, it's a real thing. Recovering damaged armored vehicles is especially difficult in cities. We absolutely learned to that. The insurgents took out dozens of tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles and home vs, and it was always very difficult for the engineers to get in there and get those things out of there.

A failure of small unit leadership, especially at the NCO level, was a primary cause of Russian tactical failures in Grosney. So when you hear me say leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield, that is what I am talking about. That is exactly what I am talking about. And it's the same thing in businesses. It's the same thing in teams, and it's the same thing in life.

When we talk about leadership, we're not just talking about the overall person in charge. We're talking about leadership at every level. Both sides employed commercial off-the-shelf technologies for military purposes. Be ready for that. You know, in Ramadi, the enemy absolutely used, you know, little Motorola walkie-talkies. They had Motorola base station set up. I mean, they were using it. Tactical communications proved very difficult in Grosny.

Again, you can't change the laws of physics and radio waves. Cannot punch through more than, you know, a couple, two, three buildings. So once you get a couple two or three buildings away, you're not going to be able to talk to the other units, you know, maybe four or five buildings. And the only way to do is get on the rooftops. and so, you know, I was almost always on a rooftop because I was, you know, my main role was usually to make communications with the various troops that were out there,

Army and my guys. And so I was almost always on a rooftop with a big old antenna sticking off my shoulder. And that's when, you know, when one of the guys needed to talk to me, they knew to go to the rooftop and they'd catch me. The cabs of supply trucks must be armored. No doubt about that. Bunker-busting weapons are,

invaluable for urban combat. This is something that we used a ton of was the Carl Gustav 84 millimeter. Big Thunder. Helicopters are not well suited for urban combat. And there's no doubt about that one. Again, in Ramadi, we found that anytime helicopters came into Ramadi, they received so much small arms fire

that they left immediately. It was just too hot for them to go into these situations. When a helicopter comes in, what does it take to, you know, take down a helicopter? I mean, you could take one round, right? It's almost like a human body. You know, there's some... Oh, you hit in the right spot. You hit in the right spot.

You could take it out. But, so it's really hard to put like an absolute on that. But, you know, generally they can take, they can take some punishment, especially the Apaches, which are, you know, pretty well armored, but they're not well armored enough to get in there and do what they would want to do. Right. So they end up just taking so many rounds that they couldn't stay. Yeah.

Like if you hit in that rear propeller. Yeah. Maybe. You hit it in the weak spot. There's going to be issues, which I won't talk about. All right. Now we, that was the Marine Corps analysis. And again, this is all from the same manual.

But I'm going to go into, so they covered what the Marine Corps analysis had. And now this is the U.S. Army Infantry School analysis. This is Russian Army lessons learned from the Battle of Grosny. You need to culturally orient your forces so you don't end up being your own worst enemy simply out of cultural ignorance. Many times Russian soldiers made serious cultural errors in dealing with the Chessian civilians. Once insulted or mistreated, the Chessians became active. fighters, or at least supported the active fighters.

Russians admit they underestimated the effect of religion on the conflict. So you got to know your enemy. And you got to know your friends. And this is something that they definitely, they definitely make that important in the U.S. military, that, you know, you've got to understand the local culture. And there was a true hero named Travis Patrick. who we will have to do a show on at some point. But Travis Patrickwin was with us over in Iraq in Ramadi,

and he was just incredibly smart guy. And a former SF guy, he was then he became a captain in the army. And he spoke Arabic. And he's the guy, really, that started saying, look, this is what we got to do to make friends with these locals. And he ended up producing this actually pretty famous PowerPoint brief that just had a bunch of stick figures of, hey, this is the local guy, this is what he sees you as, this is what you see him as. But this is what he really is and this is what, you know, and it was a great, a great document, a very simple document. Brilliant in its simplicity in the way it explained.

and it ended up being circulated all over the place. And that was written by a guy named Travis Patrick who was just, again, it's a hilarious guy, very nice guy, and really had a vision of, in a full understanding of the Arabic culture, the tribal culture, the sheikhs that were there in Ramadi. And he did an amazing job moving that whole, scene and that whole piece of the battle, he did an amazing job moving us forward

and making sure that we were culturally oriented to understand the locals. And unfortunately, after we left Ramadi and they were still there, Captain Patrick and Travis Patrickan was, In a vehicle, I think he was heading south on a road called Sunset and hit an IED, and he was killed in action. And it was a tragic loss of an incredible, not only incredible soldier, but just an incredible human.

Someday we'll go into some more depth about Travis Patrick and because he really had a huge impact. Next bullet point, you need some way of sorting out combatants from non-combatants. the Russians were forced to resort to searching the pockets of civilians from military equipment and to sniffing them for the smell of gunpowder and gun oil. This was crude and not very reliable. Trained dogs were used to detect the smell of gunpowder explosives, but were not always effective. Nevertheless, specially trained dogs were probably the best way to determine if a person has been using explosives or firing a weapon recently. What was good for us was working along.

alongside the Iraqi soldiers, they could tell. They could tell where people were from. They could tell where their accent was from. They could tell with a couple questions. Who could tell? The Iraqi soldiers, when we went to speak to some random Iraqi civilians,

they could tell. I wouldn't be able to tell in a million years. Just like if you took an Iraqi and transplanted them here and putting them in a room with a guy from New Jersey and a guy from Southern California and a guy from Georgia, they wouldn't be able to tell where any of these people were from. But any American could talk to any of those three people and immediately know where they were from.

Yeah, gotcha. So we used the Iraqi soldiers to help us with that and also our interpreters. We had interpreters that were fluent in the language and generally came from either Iraq or some other Arabic-speaking country. And so they had the same knowledge and they could do the same thing. The psychological impact of high-intensity urban combat is so intense, units should maintain a large, that will allow them to rotate units in and out of combat. If a commander does this, he can preserve a unit for a long time. If he doesn't, once it gets used up, it cannot be rebuilt.

So that statement about the psychological impact of high intensity urban combat. And there's so many little things that make this true. You know, I already talked about the 360 degree threat. there's the IED, there's the civilian populace, there's the close in fighting, there's all these things that make urban combat the most intense kind of combat psychologically. And you have to be careful with your troops

to make sure that you give them enough time out of the fight that they can maintain a long deployment in that sort of intensity. And the Russians did not always do a very good job of that. Next bullet. Training and discipline are paramount. You can accomplish nothing without them. You may need to do the training in the combat zone.

Discipline must be demanded. Once it begins to slip, the results are disastrous. That is something. I believe in across the board. I think you mentioned that before, too, by the way. I may have mentioned that a few times. There it is again. Training and discipline are paramount.

Discipline must be demanded. Once it begins to slip, the results are disastrous. You have to hold the line on the discipline. You have to. The Russians were surprised and embarrassed at the degree to which the Chessians exploited the use of cell phones, Motorola radios,

improvised TV stations, lightweight video cameras, and the internet to win the information war. The Russians admitted that they lost control of the information coming out of Grosny early in the operation and never regained it. As expected, the Russians reiterated the need for large numbers of trained infantrymen. They said that some tasks, such as conducting log pack, that's logistics, operations, could only be conducted by infantrymen. The logistical unit soldiers were hopelessly inept at basic military skills such as perimeter defense,

establishing security overwatch and so forth, and thereby felt easy prey to the Chessians. So that's something that our troops in America have really done an outstanding job of adapting to the logistics support people being combat ready. Because every time you're, you know, if you're a supply guy in the army

and you've got to bring whatever it is, water, food, ammunition from Baghdad to Ramadi, that means you're doing a combat patrol. That means you could likely get attacked. And so America did a really good job of getting their folks trained up to run these convoys and, you know, the logistics teams that supplied

the war fighters, the front line troops, they came under all kinds of attacks and did an outstanding job. So all you folks that are listening that were running those logistics convoys, thank you. And you did an outstanding job, and I know there was huge risk every time you rolled out the front gate. Next bullet.

They found that boundaries between units were still tactical weak points, but that it wasn't just horizontal boundaries that they had to worry about. In some cases, the Chessians held the third floor and above, while the Russians held the first two floors and sometimes the roof. If a unit holding the second floor evacuated parts of it without telling the unit on the ground floor, the Chessians would move troops in and attack the ground floor unit through the ceiling.

Often this resulted in fratricide as the ground floor unit responded with uncontrolled fire through all of the ceilings, including the ones below that section of the building still occupied by the Russians. Entire battles were fought through floors, ceilings, and walls without visual contact. That's got to be scary, right? Yeah. Ambushes were common.

Sometimes they actually had three tiers. Cheshins would be underground, on the ground floor, and on the roof. Each group had a different task in the ambush. the most common response by the Cheshans to the increasingly powerful Russian indirect and aerial firepower was hugging the Russian unit. The hugging tactics caused the Russians to, sorry, if the hugging tactic caused the Russians to cease artillery and air fires, it became a man-to-man fight and the Chessians were well equipped to win it. if they didn't cease the supporting fires the Russian units suffered just as much as the Cheshin fighters did sometimes even more and the morale effect was much worse on the Russians so there's I mean it's very simple oh if the if the enemy is going to use or if the Russians are going to use

big bombs and big artillery and big bombs from the sky to defeat us we'll just get so close in we'll just close the distance and be so close that if you want to drop bombs, you're going to kill your own people. Both the physical and mental health of the Russian units began to decline almost immediately upon initiation of high-intensity combat. In less than a month, almost 20% of the Russian soldiers were suffering from viral hepatitis, which is a very serious debilitating with slow recovery. Most had chronic diarrhea and upper respiratory infections.

that turned to pneumonia easily. This was blamed on the breakdown of logistical support that meant units had to drink contaminated water. Unit sanitary discipline broke down almost completely. So that discipline, like I said, it starts with the shaving, and the next thing you know you're not boiling your water, and the next thing you know you're crapping all over the place, and the next thing you know other people,

you're making other people sick. And it starts with the discipline. according to a survey of over 1,300 troops, this is a Russian troops, made immediately after the fighting, about 72% had some sort of psychological disorder. Almost 75% had an exaggerated startle response. That's like when there's a loud noise

and you shudder from it. About 75% had an exaggerated startle response. 28% had what was described as neuro-emotional and almost 10% had acute emotional reactions. The Russians recommended two psychophysiologists, one psychopharmacologists, one psychiatrist, and one medical psychologist at each U.S. core-sized unit. That's a huge recommendation for mental health. Although they're experiencing Afghanistan prepared them somewhat for the physical health problems, they were not

prepared for this level of mental health treatment. Many permanent combat stressed casualties resulted from soldiers not being provided proper immediate treatment. Again, this boils down to how harsh that urban combat is. And they were not ready for it. They were not ready for the psychological damage that that urban combat does to the soldier's mind, how it gets in the head and you've got the startle response and the emotional acute reactions. It's a nightmare. It's a nightmare. That acute emotional reactions, that's like what? They'll break

down. Breaking down. Yeah, breaking down. Cheshans weren't afraid of tanks or BMPs and BMP is like a Bradley fighting vehicle. It's basically an armored personnel carrier for the most part with a big gun on top. They assigned groups of RPG gunners to fire volleys at the lead and trail vehicles. Once these were destroyed, others were picked off one by one.

Oh, this is Battlegrossi. Some facts. The Russian forces lost 20 of 26 tanks. 102 of 120 BMPs in the first three days of fighting. Yeah.

So imagine you've got a convoy of 12 vehicles with a tank in the front and the tank of the back and the Chessians take out the front and back. So now guess what? You're stuck. And then they just sit there and pick off the rest of the vehicles. This is also

important. Cheshins chose firing positions high enough or low enough to stay out of the fields of fire of the tank and BMP weapons. So you know the angle of fire can only go so high and so low so they just stayed out of those two angles, Russian conscript infantry sometimes refused to dismount and often died in their BMP

without ever firing a shot. So this is a nightmare. Your vehicle gets hit and if you know anything when your vehicle gets hit or like your convoy gets hit, get out. In other words, if the vehicle can't move because it's trapped by other vehicles or trapped by the road or it's trapped by whatever, get out of the vehicle. Get out of the vehicle and take down a building. Get out of the vehicle and move to cover. Get out. But get out of the vehicle.

The vehicle is just a bullet magnet at that point. And an RPG magnet. So just get out of there. Russian elite infantry did much better, but didn't coordinate well with armored vehicles initially. So I can tell you that we coordinated with the armored vehicles beautifully. And we loved them. We loved the U.S. Army.

armor that we worked with absolutely loved them and we coordinated with them and we worked together with them in a beautiful manner. Cheshins were brutish, especially with prisoners. Some reports say the Russians were no better, but most say that the Chessians were the worst of the two sides. Whoever was at fault, the battle degenerated quickly to one of no quarter asked, none given. Russian wounded and dead were hung upside down in the windows of defended Cheshon positions. Russians had to shoot at the bodies to engage the Cheshans. Russian prisoners were decapitated, and at night their heads were placed on stakes beside the roads leading into the city,

over which Russian replacements and reinforcements had to travel. So you know, you don't think of that in this day and age. That's something you read about in the history books. You remember it from the history books. But there it is. I mean, this is 1994, 1995, 1996. Heads on stakes. Both Russian and Chesian dead were routinely booby-trapped.

The Russians were not surprised by the ferocity and brutality of the Chessians. But they were surprised by the sophistication of the Chesh and Ushch of booby traps and minds. Cheshins mind and booby-traped everything, showing excellent insight into the actions and reactions of the average Russian soldier. Mine and booby-trap awareness was hard to maintain. As you look at this more, I mean, they booby-trapped. Anything that they talk about, um, how they showed insight into the actions and reactions of the average Russian soldier, they knew what would attract them.

They knew what they couldn't keep their hands off of, and that's what they'd booby-trap. Some little shiny object, some little, something that looked expensive or something that looked worthwhile, it was booby-trapped. Now, that kind of wraps up that first book, but I pulled out some other little articles that I thought had some good information.

This one here's Russian tactical lessons learned. from fighting Cheshon separatists by Timothy L. Thomas. This section. With regard to general ambush guidance, Kozlov offered the following. First and foremost, mobilize your will, knowledge and experience, no matter how difficult this may be,

in order to reestablish command and control, repulse the enemy attack, seize the initiative, and report the situation. that is a powerful statement and it's a powerful statement on how to react to any situation first and foremost mobilize your will I love envisioning the will

as like a military unit first and foremost mobilize your will bring it to bear wake up will it's time to get it on yeah in college in football they'd say Well, I heard this other places too,

but they'd say buckle up and guard your grill. What was it? Buckle up and guard your grill. Yeah. So it's like, you know, get ready to go. Mobilize your will, your knowledge and experience, no matter how difficult this may be, in order to reestablish command and control.

So you've lost it. It's saying mobilize your will, reestablish command and control, repulse the enemy attack, seize the initiative and report the situation. Has some damn good advice. Some damn good advice. Moral psychological support also was a training area for improvement. A particular concern here were the mood swings

that were observed among Russian servicemen during combat. So they're seeing these drastic mood swings. And so much of this was psychological. on the Russians. And Russians are hard people. I mean, we're not talking about soft people. These are Russians. I mean, Russians are hard people.

The end result of such training would be to improve the servicemen's fighting spirit. Use of common sense and rationale to overcome confusion, the ability to act boldly, actively and decisively in battle, and the ability to achieve one's assigned goal. Again, this is talking about training, the mind to think, to use common sense. And this is what you want to do with all your people. I don't care what business you're in, whether you're in a war, whether you're in business,

whether you're in some kind of team. Train the mind to use common sense. Train the mind for the ability to act boldly and decisively. You've got to train the mind. You've got to free your mind. Now, that same article pulled out Russian lesson learned from Spetsknot's GRU reconnaissance point of view. And the authors were K. Nikton and S. Kozlov. They called this one section, the Commandments for Servicemen in Cheshneya.

And what they actually were was cultural tips on cultural sensitivities for Russian soldiers. And they are as false. And when I read through these, this is a directive on how to treat other human beings that you're dealing with. Cheshin, Russian, American, subordinate, superior, doesn't matter. What was the title of that again? Tips on cultural sensitivities for Russian soldiers. One, always maintain your authority among the local populace.

The Chessians are very critical of people who try to create a false. authority for themselves. A so-called patronizing attitude towards others usually afflicts those who cannot gain authority through other means. We talk about this all the time. You don't run around throwing your rank out. Makes you look like a jackass.

Next, avoid unwarranted confiscations and unlawful requisitions of food and property. That one makes pretty easy sense. Don't steal from people. next one be fair every local inhabitant must be dealt with firmly but fairly injustice gives rise to negative attitude in any person so be fair reward a chesian who performs his assigned task well to accomplish a task that you need to get accomplished choose the most authoritative person among the local inhabitants and get him to carry out the task if he does the job right and does it quickly you should reward

the elder by giving him additional authority and by giving them some kind of gift. Reward your people when they do a good job. That's all we're saying here. When dealing with Cheshins, display a calm, display a sense of calm and self-worth. You will achieve more through this than through screaming obscenities. Never beat a Cheshion. And it goes on to say Cheshins are a proud people with a very intense sense of pride and self-worth. Therefore, you will achieve.

nothing by humiliating them, by screaming at them, and by abusing them, you will only embitter them. Right? This is how you treat other people. And it goes on to say, even in casual conversation, do not give orders and do not use profanity that you might normally use as interjections. So this idea of yelling and screaming and you think people will do what you want them to do doesn't work.

Next, respect Chesh and women. girls, old men, and children as if they were Russians. Always remember that Cheshans respect manly qualities, therefore never permit any disrespect or vulgarity with regard to their women. Never allow yourself to curse it defenseless people in revenge for the outrages of militants against Russian women, old men, and children. So keep yourself in check and make sure you're not blaming people for something that somebody else did.

study and be respectful of national traditions, the more you know about the Cheshins national traditions, the more you will understand their behavior. That means you will be able to predict their actions. At the same time, a person that respects the local traditions will be respected himself. Gee, what a novel idea. Know who you're dealing with. Respect what they do. Always remember that the above-mentioned commandments apply to the fullest extent.

ostensible to local inhabitants, and they do not apply at all to the militants. Never forget, you're in a region where there are insurgents against whom you are at war. Therefore, you can never be certain that the person with whom you are speaking is not helping the militants. Under conditions of guerrilla warfare, it is better to turn down an invitation into someone's home and risk offending the host than it is to take advantage of his hospitality and ending up being an easy catch for insurgents. Again, I think those were just like rules on how to treat other human beings in the world and be

successful with it. Now we get to another little excerpt that I found. And this is from Soldat Udachi, which is a, basically it's a magazine. It's almost like a soldier of fortune magazine. And these were some of the, some of the rules. for a soldier in a zone of armed conflict. Fighters can be anywhere posing as peaceful citizens in the daytime and changing into killers at night. Don't accept someone's friendly just because they speak Russian and wear camouflage clothes.

This is perhaps my favorite one right here. You don't get a second chance in wartime. Never lose the feeling of danger or of the strength of the spirit of the Russian soldier. never leave a base without the commander's permission in the field never touch bright or expensive objects as they may be mined in the mountains whoever is higher is stronger take the high ground or the high ground's going to take you pay attention to the flanks as the basic maneuver of the insurgents is to get around your back and envelop your force always check your flanks i'm going to burn through some of these now these are Tactical observations from the Grosny Combat Experience by Brett C. Jenkinson, who is a major in the U.S. Army. He wrote a really good article. Worth checking out. Google it. But I broke down some of these Cheshion lessons learned. This is from the Cheshine side. Hit and run tactics confused the Russian units.

Targeting Russian radio operators destroyed Russian command and control. small units provided good mobility and more an effective basic maneuver unit. Hugging, which we already talked about, which was staying 50 to 250 meters of the enemy, was the most effective way to avoid enemy artillery, mortars, or close air support. Synchronized ambushes confused the enemy to the point that he did not know where to shoot back. As a result, Russian units would start firefights between themselves. destroying the lead and trail vehicles and then each vehicle

in between could easily isolate Russian armored columns shooting enemy soldiers in the legs caused snipers to engage other soldiers trying to evacuate the wounded and on leadership a loosely organized unit that allowed greater

freedom of action was effective to defend Grozny a little bit of freedom on the battlefield goes a long way now the Russian lessons learned training and preparation are the most important thing in winning battles urban combat training must be longer than days or weeks to be effective urban combat maneuvered must be tailored to fit the enemy situation task organizing into small squad-sized combined assault groups worked better than large units russians underestimated the cheshen will to fight lessons learned

from successful tactics should be integrated into follow-on missions To be successful, one must adapt quicker than the enemy. For the leadership perspective, again, this is the Russians. Adapted lessons learned from previous urban battles proved invaluable. The greatest challenge to leadership was maintaining morale. High casualty rates destroyed the already low morale of combat units. Another challenge to morale was the Russian soldiers' fear of enemy mistreatment if captured. And this is an important one.

to justify the nature of Russian military intervention in Chechnya resulted in low morale. So the troops on the ground not knowing and not understanding why they were there, not understanding the strategic and important or the vision, hurt their morale big time. Now, I have a couple excerpts here from, this is from an article that was in the LA Times, January 13th, 1995 by Sonny Ephron. captured Russian soldiers paint bleak picture of Cheshon conditions. So this is Grosnia,

Grosny Russia. Russian troop morale is so low, conditions are so poor and losses are so heavy that the Russian attempt to take Grosnia is floundering. Two Russian soldiers captured in the capital of the breakaway Republic of Chechnya said Thursday. The soldiers are against this war, and so are our commanders,

said Alexia, a 20-year-old junior sergeant, was caught while trying to steal food from an empty house in Grozny after you're gone five days without a solid meal. We are forced to fight. The two soldiers said Russian positions had frequently been bombed by Russian warplanes. Many soldiers had been killed by friendly fire from the Russian side, and constant vehicle breakdowns made it impossible for them to pick up their dead and wounded. And this is, I haven't found the book yet, I'm sure I will. The book that takes you into the battle onto the ground.

because I've been talking to all the strategic stuff. And generally I don't like to do that. I want to hear from the person on the ground. And this is where you start to get it. You start to see what the Russians, what the frontline troopers were thinking and what it was like for them. And here you had him saying that many soldiers

have been killed by friendly fire from the Russian side. Constant vehicle breakdowns made it impossible for them to pick up their dead and wounded. In a company that had 100 men, now there are only 50 left. In our battalion, out of 350 men, over 250 had been killed. The soldiers' accounts indicate that the new official figures putting the Russian military death toll at 394 soldiers are vastly understated. Chesh and sources put the Russian casualties at about 3,000 dead. These Russians are worse than fascists, said,

Grigory A. Smyranoff 50, whose beloved cherry tree was decapitated by the rocket. Four young guys have been killed on our street. They weren't fighters. They weren't against anyone. I apologize for what Russia is doing here, Smyranoff said. I'm embarrassed by my country in front of the whole world. A month after President Boris Yeltsin promised the Russian public, that law and order would be restored in Cheshnia, and that the illegal armed formations in Grosny would quickly be disarmed.

It was unclear whether Russian forces could sue. break through the fierce Cheshon resistance. I don't think they can take the city, said one Cheshan fighter. They can destroy it, but they can't capture it. The two Russian prisoners who had entered Grosny on December 20th looked exhausted, filthy, and frightened. If their condition is typical of the rest of the enemy,

it is not surprising that the Russians have not yet attempted another all-out infantry assault on Grosny. Frankly, there is no discipline, no anything in the military now, the prisoner said. The soldiers are weakened. They haven't washed for a long time. They are hungry and unshaven. Even a soldier, when he wants to describe how bad things have gotten, he says that the soldiers are dirty, hungry, and unshaven. There were times where more of us were getting killed by our own people than by the Cheshavent.

We don't even have time to pick up our dead. Just no time. We're either fighting the Cheshion or our own air force is bombing us. The prisoner added that they'd been ordered to kill everybody from kids to old people, not just Cheshans, but also Russians. This is a nightmare. The two soldiers said they went into a house in northeast Grozni neighborhood to look for food because they hadn't had a proper meal for five days. they'd been surviving on dry rations that were never enough and were delivered to their positions irregularly.

As the prisoner spoke, Chesh and fighters gathered around them to listen. Upon hearing the Russians admit that they had broke into the house, one man shouted angrily, looters. All we wanted was something to eat, muttered the prisoner. Now, we got to remember we've got a, you know, this is the,

This is the Soviet Union. This is Russia. So they have their own media. And I found this article. And I shouldn't be laughing because it's horrible. But this is the Moscow Times talking about the other story of Grosny. The city of Grosny is cold and dirty. Again, this is some kind of a state-approved message.

There is no water, no electricity. At night, the streets are illuminated only by distant fires sparked by Russian shelling and the occasional flares. The air is full of sound, constantly thudely, of artillery shells, the screams of Grodd missiles, and a crackle of machine gunfire. The only source of heat in the burned out basements of Grosny are from homemade furnaces that Russian soldiers had fashioned from bricks of destroyed buildings. At night, officers and soldiers huddle around them, their faces dirty and covered with sweat

since they rarely have water with which to wash it. It almost looks like they are wearing the kind of camouflage paint that is issued to soldiers in Western armies. these men are by and large normal decent people they believe that they are doing their duty in Cheshnia that's a little bit contrary to what we just heard from the prisoners of course now the prisoners those guys are in a duress situation too

because they might get their heads chopped off at any moment so they're probably making the case the best they can that hey you know yep we're not in support of Russia they're just trying to stay alive they insist that back to the article they insist they do not intentionally attack peaceful civilians but are instead waging battle against an organized and pitiless enemy. The conscripts who are risking their lives in Chesnea might as well be considered volunteers.

This is the paper, you know, saying that these poor guys that are fighting, they should be considered volunteers. Even though they're conscripts that are being forced to fight there, they might as well be considered volunteers. Russia has not declared a war or martial law, so nothing threatens deserters except the moral condemnation of the comrades they leave behind. the army's morale has been steadily improving as it becomes more experienced in street fighting again there's countless documented cases of the morale completely falling apart and being one of the premier causes of the loss of the battle its casualty rate is falling and is able to inflict increasing punishment on the chesian fighters the military is confident of victory among these soldiers you hear a different opinion about the war than what you read in Moscow.

Many reports in the media about Chesnia campaign are obviously biased against the military. Some may even be censored. When I was in Chesney on January 22nd, a crew from Russian television was in Grosnay's shooting a report for the evening news program. The report included graphic footage of the bodies of Russian soldiers

who had been mutilated by the Cheshans. However, the host of the program refused to air it without even seeing it. Of course, only a fraction of the Russian army is fighting in Chechnya, but they have been sent here, there, from virtually every military district in the country. Eventually, they will return to their bases and tell their stories to the rest of their comrades in arms.

And those soldiers will put a lot more stock in what the Chechnya veterans have to say than they will in any press reports or human rights activists. So there's the official Russian version. brutal. In your experience, has that ever happened here?

Like, you see your stuff in the media and you're like, dang, that's not how it happened. It definitely happens here. There's no doubt about it. The way that the media portrays things is very wrong. You know, often very wrong. I think one of the classics

that I've been telling lately or talking about lately is that they never portray the Iraqi people as normal human beings that just want to live normal lives. They never portray the Iraqi people like that when that's what they are. The vast majority of Iraqi people

are normal people that want to have a job, raise their kids, let their kids go to school, improve their lives, do better. That's what the vast majority of Iraqi people want. But, you know, when's the last time you saw an American family on the news that was going to the store to go grocery shopping and then come home and do some yard work in the afternoon. Right.

No, they don't show that because it's not news. It's the same thing in Iraq. They don't show that. Yeah. So we always get this impression that, you know, that everyone in Iraq is some kind of militant. Right. Or they're just tired of us being there kind of thing. Yeah, it's not true.

Not true at all. Interesting. So that's one of the biggest points I can think of where the media can just do they just get it wrong. Yeah. They just get it wrong. And it really leaves people in America thinking, well, God, why are we there? Yeah. It's so crazy that we would do.

You know, why they don't want us there. No, actually, they do want us there. But you don't show those people. Right. You show the protesters because that's news. Yeah. It's not news to interview someone that says, yeah, it's great having the Americans here. Hopefully they can maintain the peace.

That's not news. Yeah, isn't that crazy how, sure, that's not news? And that kind of makes sense. You know, why would you report on an American family? You just, you know, the dad went to work. You wouldn't report on that because that's not news. So that makes sense. But the fact that you're not reporting everyday stuff is essentially changing the accurate message into a message that's inaccurate.

Then that's something, you know? Yeah, it is. It is. It's horrible. It's horrible to see. This is just another little section. the Russian counterinsurgency operation in Cheshnea, Part 1, winning the battle, losing the war by Matthew N. Janko.

RPG and sniper fire focused on exposed Russian troops, small groups of 10 to 20 Chessian fighters moved in and out of buildings and the surrounding mountains to engage heavily armed and armored Russian troops. The Cheshion teams would attack in shifts. Some attacking while the others rested so that a force of no more than 50 held entire battalions at bay, bottlednecked in the narrow streets and cities, or the treacherous deflays of the mountains. The Chesian utilization of information and space and their highly sophisticated networking allowed them a tremendous advantage in terms of physical combat and even more important advantage

in terms of psychological impact on their enemy. rather than a group of rag tag and sergeant fighters fueled by hatred and national fanaticism, the Cheshan fighters were highly trained, disciplined, well-equipped, and knowledgeable of the terrain. From the individual up through the army level, the Chessians held the advantage in all but air power and fire support. And we already talked about how they overcame that. The Chessian fighters proved better trained, equipped, technically skilled and fed, and demonstrated remarkably higher morale and motivation in addition to an intimate knowledge of the hazardous terrain.

So it's just incredible how over and over again they point out on both sides how big of a factor morale is. So if you're in a leadership position, whether you're working with a team, whether you're working with a company, whether you're working with a business, morale is so important. And you have to pay attention to it.

Yeah, it seems that, kind of at a glance or something it seems like morale is kind of this extra thing you know oh what you don't feel good you know business is business you know you don't feel good about it but man that's it's kind of the fuel you know you don't have the fuel it's

why even do it yeah I wouldn't say it's the fuel I'd say it's the fire there you go right right yeah throughout the first Chesian war Chesian fighters many of them former Soviet soldiers with combat experience in Afghanistan dug into the hills and

fought a defensive and fierce war of attrition with the Russian troops not unlike their former Afghani counterparts. Although both sides engaged in acts of brutality to weaken the enemies resolved to fight, Chesh and fighters far outdid their Russian counterparts in these grisly psychological tactics. They hung Russian wounded upside down, wounded and dead upside down in the windows of defensive positions, for example, forcing the Russians to fire at their comrades in order to engage the rebels. Clearly, that's the second time we've talked about that.

Clearly, that had a huge impact. I can't even imagine what that does to you psychologically when you want to shoot at the enemy and you've got to shoot at one of your brothers who's either wounded.

I mean, he might be dead, but he's possibly just wounded. Yeah, and either way, he's right there. You got to shoot it. Yeah, it's the... Both Russian and Chessian dead were routinely booby-trapped

by the Chessians who showed sophisticated insight. into the likely actions to reactions of the average Russian soldiers. We already talked about that. In addition, Cheshan fighters used dirty tactics collectively learned from dozens of asymmetrical guerrilla conflicts before, such as instructing

snipers to aim for the legs of Russian troops, injuring but not incapacitating them, and then shooting free range at the subsequent rescue parties that were sure to come. Some snipers aimed specifically at the groin, dealing a crippling and humiliating wound and a

humiliating wound that resulted in a slow, painful death. And we experienced this in Iraq too, where, and part of it was like rumor mill, whereas people would say, oh, man, because there was a, I remember in Fallujah, there was a sniper that shots a couple guys in the groin. And then, you know, one person got shot in the groin in Ramadi. And I just remember everyone thinking, oh, they're going, this is what, and it's psychological. It's a psychological attack. Cheshins routinely dressed in Russian uniforms to gain access to bases and used these opportunities to launch surprise attacks from behind enemy lines.

Each Chessin took seriously the notion that the center of gravity in the war was no longer the enemy's army, but rather the enemy's people. Tactics were devised to attack the psyche of the Russians aimed at creating a constant level, high level of psychological stress on the Russian servicemen to undermine. their morale. So the Cheshans were attacking the morale, attacking them, doing things that were attacking them psychologically. Hardened by a united sense of purpose in driving out the invader, the Chesian troops terrified and terrorized the Russian troops, slowly bleeding out their morale and willingness to fight. The Russian troops, many still in their teens, were woefully unprepared and undertrained in comparison. The result of such a disparity in morale and military expectations had tragic consequences.

According to one Russian participant, the men on the ground shaken and angered by their losses were just taking it out on anyone they found. There was revenge in the air for those comrades who had been killed. And now you end up with, so the Russian troops get so frustrated, they're so psychologically damaged that there's going out in terms. taking it out on the local Cheshion, which are some of these are Russians. Some of these people are good Russians. And they're taking out on them. They're taking out on anyone that could be an insurgent. And now what happens? Now everyone starts turning against you. It's a nightmare. Without recourse to set peace conventional battle, the Chesh and Churgeons had arguably achieved the acme of skill by subduing their enemy largely before the fighting began. At the same time,

The Russians, with their vast superiority in military firepower, failed to use it, use it, to tactical and strategic advantage. By employing air and space power thoughtlessly or unimaginably, the Russians' power was less effective or even disastrously impotent. So a lack of imagination, a lack of creativity. brutal, brutal war and a lot of lessons learned. And I can tell you that there's a lot of lessons that were learned by those Russians on the ground that were absolutely implemented by American forces in, I know in Ramadi, absolutely, the amount of similarities for that urban combat and the things that we watched out for,

because of the sacrifices made by the Russian soldiers, I'd say it had a huge impact. And I'm glad that we were able to take away some lessons and take those to the battlefield in Ramadi and do things like protect the local populace and do things like understand their culture. And do things like not take out our aggression on the local populace which only turns the local populace against you.

And it was that professionalism of the U.S. military, of the U.S. Army soldiers, of the U.S. Marines, that professionalism to maintain that discipline throughout the battle. That was absolutely critical in bringing about the victory. It's crazy how all these strategies and tactics are, it's all the same. The patent book, like all the books, these messages are, it's all the same. It's crazy. It is. It is, it is all the same. It is crazy how similar they are

and when they just completely line up. And again, it's amazing how the tactics from the battlefield field reflect the tactics in business and reflect the tactics in human life. Yeah, you know, which kind of gave me an eerie feeling is one you talked about the Chesnian rebels. There were the rebels, right, some Chechnya rebels, how they'd attack the Russian morale, right? So what gave me an eerie feeling is that's what you get with like guys who abuse their girlfriend or their wife.

that's what they do. They attack their morale. Yes. I don't know why they gave me that feeling, but it's like so. Because it gave you that eerie feeling because you understand how devastating that is. Yeah. And it's not exactly. Yeah, that's the perfect way to put it. Because it's not this thing where it's different than chopping off the guy's heads

and putting it on stakes. That's something for sure, but it's way different. It's on this weird, like kind of covert level, but still so devastating. So it's weird where it's, man, it's bad when you see a guy doing that to like to a girl. Yeah, it's, it's horrible. And also, and you mentioned this earlier, the morale piece is something that gets ignored so often. Yeah. Especially in the business world where people just their morale will take a beating, the market's bad, all these things.

And if you don't prop up that morale, you don't protect the morale, and you don't defend the morale, and you don't strengthen the morale, that's when you could what's what's what happened to the Russian soldiers the morale fell apart yeah and a lot of times if the morale is down like in a company or something the leader if he's bad he'll kind of blame them like you guys have bad attitudes

you know we're trying to do some business here and you guys have bad attitudes but it's you know yeah that's a leader that's going to be opposite there a leader that's not taking ownership of the situation which is why ownership is so important because the minute you start blaming, I mean, you're just putting a nail in the coffin. When you start blaming people for bad morale,

you know, it's the, hey, the beatings will continue until morale improves. Right, yes, exactly. It doesn't work, you know, the beatings do not improve morale. Would you say, kind of off the top of your head, would you say that that's more common than not, that just that whole thing where, you know,

just to blame people in general. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, it is absolutely a very common problem in leadership. Yeah. That's why our book is done really well because people say, oh, man. Yeah. I do that.

Oh, I can't believe I do that. Yeah, because we never hear any of this stuff, like growing up. You'll say, okay, don't blame, but it's not like a real strong message that you're sent growing up. I know I wasn't. I don't think that people have isolated and focused on. ownership at this level, I think that's why the book is done very well. I think that's why people continue to contact me and say,

hey, that you guys, thank you for writing this book. It's changed the way I've done my business. It's changed the way I'm treating my wife. It's changed my family. It's changed my outlook on my physical failings. So when you take ownership to that high level and that intensity and you call it extreme ownership, yeah, I think it has a huge impact.

And I think that we are the first people that have said, you know what, this needs to be the focus. This is the game changer. This is the fundamental principle in life that is going to turn you from failure to success. It's not when you say, hey, this person didn't help me and this person went against me

and this person sabotaged me. That's great, but it doesn't matter. When you take ownership of everything, if somebody's sabotaging me, I got to own it. I got to figure out how to stop them. Yeah. And it's just so when you when you kind of know that or you kind of get wind of that, it almost seems so obvious. Like yeah, well, what was I thinking? If I'm going to blame someone to know of course they're going to blame me back. If I, if I get belligerent towards someone, of course, I can get belligerent back. But you don't,

and you already knew that really if you're asked, but it's almost it's almost like you don't think if I take ownership, everyone else is going to start taking ownership. I don't, you know, you don't really think about that that much, even though after you know it, it seems real obvious. These things are simple, but not easy. But not easy, yeah. They really are.

And ownership, when you take ownership of problems, when you take ownership of your life and when you don't have anybody else to blame, it hurts. Yeah. It hurts. It hurts the ego.

It hurts the mind. It hurts. So people, even though it's really easy, yeah, I'm going to take ownership of everything. It's hard to do. It's difficult for people to do. And when they do do it, when they do step across that line and they do take ownership,

they absolutely see things turn around. And I've heard that, you know, I mean, thankfully for the internet, thankfully for Twitter and Facebook and all these things, people hit me up every single day and say, either, hey, this changed my life. But sometimes it's just something minor, they'll say, had some issues at work today,

took ownership of them, problem solved. And you're like, okay, that's great. What would that person have done a month ago before they read the book? They would have blamed somebody else. They would have shifted the problem. They would have ignored it. They would have cast blame somewhere else.

They wouldn't have solved the problem. So when you take ownership, it allows you to then solve the problem. So that's what you got to do. So now what is time for? Questions from the interweb? Yeah. We actually have a current event question, which technically has never happened.

Well, I would say it's not, I'll explain why it's not a current event once you ask the question. Right. Because it's not. Yeah, it is. All right. All right. What are your thoughts on the Connor McGregor versus Nate Dia's fight and the Holly Home versus Misha Tate fight? That's UFC 196.

this past weekend, Women's Bantamweight Championship, Holly Home, Prismisha Tate, and then it's like a super fight, right? Yeah. A superfight and Atea is, and Connor McGregor, who's a champ at

145. And here's why this is not a current events question to me. Because this is just a question about fighting. It really is. Because, and you could say this at any time, these were good examples, and we'll be talking about these

examples in one year, five years. And there's other fights that are similar examples. Holly Holm, who is a world-class kickboxer and boxer. And a very good mixed martial artist. However, not that great at Jiu-Jitsu. Not horrible. I'm not trying to bag on her because she is awesome. And a smart fighter too.

Very smart with a great coach, great corner. She lost to Misha Tate, who is. is definitely not as good of a striker, but who is better on the ground. Yeah, and she's real well-rounded. She's extremely well-rounded. Yeah. She's extremely well-rounded.

And she's also gotten beat twice by Rhonda Rousey. And the strategy in those fights that she had was awful. In the Misha Tate Ronda-Rousey fight. Yeah. For some reason, Misha kept clenching and grabbing and trying to take the fight to the fight. the ground against Rhonda, which was just stupid. She's clearly a better striker.

So, I don't know, I think that might change the next time they fight. Misha will hopefully have a smarter game plan than trying to grapple with Ronda. There's no reason for it. She's a better striker. She needs to take advantage of it. Yeah. On the other hand, with Holly Holm, she does get the grappling going. Yes.

And not easy, you know, Holly Home's good at avoiding the takedowns. Awesome of avoiding the takedown. Man, so good. But yeah, finally does it in the fifth rush. She had her at the end of the second round there. But, you know, kind of, you know, the time ran out. And then, yeah, managed to, in the fifth round, managed to get it to the ground and immediately finish.

Yeah. I mean, she managed, and it's key that you said that she managed to, like, get it to the ground because it wasn't a beautiful takedown or anything. She got in on her finally. She had gotten stuffed a couple times. Holly was doing a really good job of keeping her at bay. And Holly was obviously scared because even the second round she got, once it was on the ground, it was just domination by Misha.

And then Holly didn't want to go to the ground with her again, but then she let her get in. And then, like you said, Misha just forced that thing, kind of dragged it in an ugly way, just kind of made it to the ground. And once you got on the ground, she got her back, boom got her back. And then when she got her back, she got the choking. Once she got the choking, Holly kind of tried to flip her off.

And even that was a little bit of a mistake. If Hollywood had just stood and shook her off, like a really good experienced jujitsu player might do. But she didn't. She flipped her over and landed on her back. And then Misha had the choke in deep and finish her. And Misha's, I mean, Misha's been in some scraps before she. She is a scrappy, tough.

She's got a big heart. She fights with a lot of heart. I give her some props. I mean, so does Holly, of course. I mean, Holly went to sleep. She didn't even tap. She was like, what? No, I'm not tapping.

And you could see her instinctively started throwing punches at the end, I mean, into the air in the different direction. Because that's her training instinct. That's crazy how you see that all the time. Even when guys get knocked out. You ever see you guys get knocked out and then start grappling with their eyes and with her. or with a ref or something like that, just kind of unconsciously doing it. Yeah.

It's kind of a compliment, I would say. You know, to their skill like that's all automatic it is. So automatic that she's just throwing punches at the air, even though she's asleep. Yeah. So yeah. So in this case, straight up, yeah, jujitsu works, right? Yes.

Okay, we'll talk about, to give us a debrief on the McGregor-Diaz fight. See, that one, I think it was, there is a lot of components, I think, to that. There was. I think that. But just give us the outlook of what happened. Just, okay. Yeah, they fought, they fought at 170. And Nate Diaz is either 155 or, I think, sometimes, 145.

He's fought, he's fought it, well, no, he's fought at 170 before. Yeah. But, but he's, his normal weight for fighting is 155. Yeah. So, McGregor's normal weight for fighting is 145. Yeah. He came up 10 pounds, but due to the late nature of the bout, they actually ended up fighting at 170. Yeah. So they fight, and it was a little battle, and I think from what I saw, it was close.

But I think Connor McGregor caught him like some solid ones. Call him a couple solid ones in the beginning, yeah. And then, yeah, it shifted. And then Nate started catching him. him and jamming him up. And I think that's really what did it because he started beating him up. And then Connor went for a takedown. And that's what you typically what you do. When you go for that takedown, the way you did, that's when you get beat up and you go for the clinch.

You know, to avoid getting beat up. Yes. Even in boxing, they do that. You know, you get beating, you go for the crunch. So that was kind of what that kind of was. And in MMA, you go for the takedown. That's kind of what it is. So he did.

And that's the thing. Here comes the jiu-jitsu, right? where Nate Diaz. So the reality is Connor McGregor couldn't that wasn't an option for him where sure he went for the takedown but going to the takedown is even worse now because

Nate Diaz is one of the he's a really good jiu-jitsu guy really good and Connor McGregory is still working on his jujitsu good from what I hear, whatever but not like Nate Diaz Nate Diaz is like levels above him. Absolutely. So it goes to the ground and it really showed So not only is Connor kind of beat up a little bit and dazed, now he's on the ground.

He has to do jiu-jitsu now, which is, that's a double, a double strike on him. So, of course, he takes a couple more shots and then they choked him out pretty quick. Yeah, he brought him that jihitsu skill. And one thing that Diaz is pointing out the whole week when they were getting interviewed and everything, he says, you know, I have better training partners than you. Look who I'm rolling with. And look who he is rolling with. He's wrong with his brother Nick.

He's going with Jake Shields, who's a beast on the ground. I mean, he's running with all those little badass wrestlers, too. He's got... Yeah, you've got crone up there. I mean, these guys are getting after it. You know what I mean? Yeah. And so, I mean, I don't know.

I mean, he trained with Gunner. What's McGregor trained with Gunner? Yeah, he's good, too. Gunner's good and everything. But the thing is about the jujitsu and about the training, the guys that you're training with all the time, the guy that you train with every day, that's what makes you good.

Not the guy that comes out for a two-week camp or a four-week camp or a six-week camp. That does not make you good at Jiu-Jitsu. It might sharpen up one or two things, but it's not the life. Right. It's not the deep, daily grind with the masters. You know, that's what's make you really good.

Yep. So I think that, Like I said, I mean, it's definitely showed that jiu-jitsu definitely works. And it also shows you how hard it is to get good at. How much harder it is to get good at. Mehta, no, she was not dominating, but she was surviving on the stand-up. You know what I mean? And this is a world-class striker.

I mean, she's definitely a better striker than Misha Tate is a grappler. I mean, Misha Tate doesn't have any tremendous accolades as a grappler. She's a high-level MMA grappler, but she's not a world champion grappler. And yet, you know, she was able to hang because striking is a, for the most part, from a thought perspective, is a linear thought pattern of throwing strikes at another human. Grappling is infinitely more complex. Infinitely, it's infinitely more complex. And so you have to learn it earlier and if you want to make something of it. I mean, because striking has an element of luck to it.

I don't care what you say. Striking has, I mean, when two MMA fighters go in the cage, there's not a guy that says, hey, I can definitely knock this guy out. There's absolute luck. There's, you know, knockouts are seldom even in boxing. Where the whole object is to punch the other guy in the head and knock him out. whereas a rear naked choke is a rear naked choke. Yep.

It's a rear naked joke. It is a very, very assured weapon to be utilizing in those situations. I remember one time I was talking to Hannah, Hennar Gracie. He just made a real small short comparison to, I think he was boxing. He said, the average person can walk into a boxing gym and rock someone. And knock him out, he used the word he and rock someone. if he just swings for the fences, right? And that is possible.

But Jiu-Jitsu, you can't really do that. You can't really, a new guy, come in as a white belt and just go real hard. And just somehow catch someone. Yeah, and this one of these submission olds. So, yeah, and once you learn that, and the other guy doesn't know it, and he hasn't learned it or hasn't learned it even close to how much you've learned it, it's that easy, really. It's the, and really the best way to say it is you have that much control over the fight.

You do. Now, the thing is, I don't want to make, like, all of a sudden, Jiu-Jitsu by itself is the all-powerful thing, because you can't discount the dozens and dozens and dozens of Jiu-Jitsu people that have been beaten in MMA. They've been beaten down. They've been knocked out. They've been out their shot stuffed.

So there's no doubt about that. that but it's it is definitely the skill that you have to have in this day and age for mixed martial arts

for sure I mean without it you know you get beat and without it what you have is UFC 1 and UFC 2 when Jiu Jitsu just beats the other

martial arts whether it's wrestling whether it's boxing it doesn't matter you know but you do have to train everything I mean and Jiu Jitsu takes the longest to learn, there's the most to learn, so you should start with it,

but you've got to know how to box, you gotta know how to wrestle, you gotta know moitai. And that's the way it is. Yeah, and when you have that much of a discrepancy between like a certain element of people's game, like,

and I think Jiu-Jitsu tends to be the more prevalent because a lot of times people, people be like, oh, well, certain guys, like let's say like a Choccaladell or Clay Guida, they're like, hey, these aren't, well, actually, we'll just say, Chuck Liddell. He's not necessarily a jiu-jitsu black belt and he was champion or whatever, but

the thing is he had wrestling background, so he had grappling, but he knew about jujitsu. Thoroughly. He knew about where the arm bar comes from, where the chokes come from, how to defend the choke, all these things. So, knowing Jiu-Jitsu saying, like, you need to know Jiu-Jitsu, doesn't

necessarily mean you've got to be a black belt in Jiu-Jitsu, or you have to have the slickest, sharpest submissions necessarily. You just have to know Jiu-Jitsu. And if you don't know it or know very little, I'd say the chances of you getting exposed is really high. Yeah. I agree with you.

And I think these just so happened last night that those fights exemplified that. I agree with you. Got to got to know the jih Tzu. As I was listening to your recent podcast, I thought that of a few topics you could discuss, that would be good and helpful for your young guys who want to join the middle. military and go special ups. I know that buds and other training are just

baseline entry level schools, but in my experience, those stories are what get guys excited and fired up. So, you know, Guy wants to hear about bud stories and what it's like going

through those stories, through those types of training, because it gets people excited and fired up. Well, there's actually kind of a reason why I don't sit around and talk about buds, which is basic seal, basic underwater demolition seal training. There's a reason I don't sit around and talk about it a bunch. One of those reasons is because buds is not the seal teams at all, and it doesn't mean anything. And I try and say that as often as I can because I don't want people to get the impression

that the SEAL teams is the little initial training that is barely even a fraction of your career in the SEAL teams and it has nothing to do with what you actually do when you get in the SEAL teams. I also don't want, and this isn't intentional, this is more of a response to the question, but I don't tell stories to get guys fired up to join the military about Buds

because that isn't what the SEAL teams is. That's not what an SF ODA team is. That's not what Ranger Battalion is. Ranger Battalion and SF is not the selection course that you go through to get into them. That's not what the job is. And you shouldn't be joining the military and shouldn't be trying to get into special operations because you want to do that training. You should do the training because you want to do the job.

you want to do the actual job of being in special operations and being in special forces and being in Rangers and being in Marsok and being in the SEAL teams you should want to do that job and if you want to do that job

what it really boils down to isn't running or rucking or pull-ups or swimming or any of that crap it boils down to whether you have the two wills that I talk about that war is determined by and that is the will to kill

because that is the entire premise of your job if you're in the military at all you may be somehow supporting that if you're in the military but the ultimate goal of the military is to kill the bad guys and if you're going to be in special operations

you're going to be on the tip of the spear of that So you absolutely have to make sure that you have the will to kill. And you also, obviously, if you're going to join special operations or you want to be in the SEAL teams, you have to have the will to die. Not that you want to die, not that you want to be a martyr, not that you're freaking suicidal or anything like that. but you absolutely have to make sure that you have the willingness to die. And I would say put your life on the line, but no, I'm going beyond that.

I'm talking about the willingness to die. Because if you join special operations or you join the SEAL teams, or you join any of the combat arms in the Army or in the Marine Corps, you will be asked to put your life on the line. And you've got to be ready. To do that, you've got to have that will. You've got to be ready to make that commitment. And I mean, the training, if you have that will to kill and you have that will to die,

the training? Run, swim, do push-ups, do pull-ups, dips, do rants, do rope climbs, do flutter kicks, all that stuff is the easy part. And so if you're sitting there and you see seal training on TV and you think, oh, that'd be cool. Don't think about that as what being a seal is because it is not. That is just the selection. It's just the weeding out of the week. If you want to be a seal, it means you want to be a commando.

It means you want to go into harm's way. It means you want to meet the enemy on the field of back. battle. That's what being a seal is. And that's why I really don't sit around and tell Bud's stories. I don't think I have too much more to say about that one. I'm sure at some point I mean, there's funny things that happen in Buds. I mean, of course, but there's just compared to like what happens in a seal platoon, there's just no big deal. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting how you put it. Don't focus, don't do it because you want to go through that training. Yeah. Do it too, because you want to do the job. Yeah. That's a big, that's a big mistake. Maybe I can help some people out

that are out there right now thinking, oh, I'd really like to go through that training. No, don't do it to go through the training. Go it, do it because you want to do that job. Yeah. Is it true they take a pin and they stick it in your skin and clip it or pin it on your skin? Did you do that? Well, when you get your trident, yeah, it has like three little prongs that go out the back of it to stick it under your uniform. And when you get your trident, yeah, they put it like into your skin, yeah. Like you're standing there with no shirt and they're like, oh, like, and then they like punch it in.

And then, you know, everybody, when I went, when I got my trident, the whole team lined up and everyone punched you right in the chest until you're just bleeding everywhere, the big bruise on your chest. Yeah. Next question. Do you have experience with people telling you that you're too intense or that you need to work on not being so upfront and straightforward. Sometimes it's called working on your how. I think it would be great to hear how you could apply this using extreme ownership. In the business

world, there is a big push on diversity, which is wonderful, but often it comes with also diversifying away from intensity and male aggression, quote unquote. I'd love your thoughts. Well, this is, it's kind of interesting to get this question. It's kind of strange to get this question because all the time when I talk about leadership I talk about how often do you hear me say take the indirect approach to something I always talk about the indirect approach because the direct approach is is not jujitsu the direct approach is beating your head and punching someone in the face so I'm always talking about using the indirect approach so by its very nature indirect is not straightforward.

It's not intense. So, no, I don't have people telling me I'm too intense or I'm too straightforward. Why don't I have them telling me that? Because I'm not. I'm not. And I'm not saying that I'm not intense. I'm not saying that I'm not straightforward. But I'm very, very careful not to go too far with either.

This is like a fighter that's swinging too hard or being too predictable or just stand and trade and take damage and do damage. That's the direct approach. The direct approach is I punch you in the face and you punch me in the face and we play a war of attrition. I don't want to enter into a war of attrition. I do not want to enter into a war of attrition. I want to use maneuver warfare. I want to move. I want to slip unseen into the weak areas. and set my bombs and have them go off. So I just got this, asked this the other night by a relatively new client of mine,

you know, are you going to get in their faces and get in the faces of the leadership and tell them straight up that they need to get their act together? And you could see that this person was very excited by that idea. And he was one of the senior leaders. And that was that you had this idea that I was going to come in and just get in their faces and tell them how screwed up they were. And I said, no, I likely will not do that.

And then I said to him, I said, look, what if I told you that you were all screwed up and you're a failure at your job and you're a weak leader? Would you then feel like you really wanted to listen to me? Would you be open to my suggestions at that point? Do you think I'd be an efficient coach? Do you think I would even appear as an intelligent human being? if the best I could do to coach you was to tell you that you sucked as a leader and you were a failure at your job and you're screwing everything up. And obviously the answers were no, no, no, of course not. I would be a horrible coach.

I would be a horrible leader myself if that's what I resorted to. And most importantly, if I want you to change and the way I'm trying to get you to train is by change is by being abusive and begging you to send up your defenses and not listen to me. What the hell good am I doing? Why would I do anything that's going to inhibit my goal, which my goal is to get you to change, get you to be a better leader? So if I slap you in the face with aggression,

or with straightforwardness, that makes you defensive, how does that help me? The answer is it doesn't. Now, again, that doesn't mean that I'm never straightforward and that I'm never aggressive, but I calculate those moments. I calculate those moments. There's a reason why we sugarcoat medicine for little children.

Right? There is. Why is it? So they take it. It's so they take it into their system. And it's the same thing with adults. And people say, don't sugarcoat it. Don't, you know, just tell me how it is.

They don't mean it. They want it sugarcoded. Because they want to accept it into their body. It's just like Jiu Jitsu. You need to use Jiu Jitsu. You need to set things up. You need to manipulate. To get people to do what you want them to do,

especially if it has to do with them changing themselves. One of the worst ways to get someone to change is by telling them exactly how you want them to change. I mean, of course, there's a situation we have this beautiful relationship and you've built it with someone and you have this intimate trust with another human being.

I don't think I have that with anybody. But there have been situations in my life where I've had, oh, just complete, utter trust with, you know, maybe there's three or four people that I have that with in my whole life, that I can just say, listen, man, here's the deal. Don't get defensive.

Here's what's going on. Here's what you need to adjust. Very few people do you have that relationship in life. So you got to use that nuance and that maneuver warfare. And it's the same thing with aggression. It's the same thing that we just read in this article. Don't yell at the Chesh and people. You're not going to be able to get what you want.

them and like I said it doesn't just apply to those people it applies to all people you got to bring people in and you got to manipulate them and I know that again that has negative connotations but it's what you're doing you're trying to get someone to think a different way that's manipulation you can call it influence you can call whatever you want but that's what you're trying to do and the most difficult way to manipulate someone is to slap them into face with aggression so there's a little dichotomy here of course because you know I always say the default mode has to be aggressive. But I don't mean necessarily overtly aggressive. It means

that you're aggressively forcing things to go in your direction through every means necessary, through overt and covert and clandestine. And honestly, the preferred method of all is covert. The preferred method for me to get echoed to do something different is for, for echo to never even think I had an opinion on it is for me just to sneak in there behind enemy lines, plant the seeds, and let them grow, and let echo come to the conclusion that you're going to change the way you're doing something. You're going to think differently about something. That's leadership. That's real leadership. So that's what you're going to. That's what you're you've got to work on.

If somebody is telling you you're too intense and you're too aggressive, guess what? You are. You're giving away your greatest weapon. You're advertising your attack. Surprise is one of the most key components in a battle. And when you tell people aggressively, and overtly what you're doing

you're giving up that element don't do it I'm asking you not to be a manipulative person behind the scenes with weird plans but that is what I'm asking you to do that is what I'm asking you to do

because that is how you get things done That is how you get into people's minds. That is how you lead. Not by yelling. Not by being overly aggressive. Not by being so intense that people don't want to listen to you. Because intensity is a form of emotion, right? And the minute you come across as an emotional intense maniac,

people are questioning already your validity. This guy should too intense. Don't be that guy. manipulate influence be clandestine covert and that

is how you win the reason that I was kind of laughing I was reading this question is that it kind of makes sense from someone kind of from the outside and the main time's one me personally where I would view you as being intense or aggressive

or is like when you're just talking about something that you're never doing it towards anybody you know like you'll never lose I've never then I've known you since 06 I think something like that yeah and I've never seen you lose your temper

get mad I mean kind of at one time it's funny I was talking a lafe about it we've never really seen you get mad but maybe one or two times you have this aggressive and intense persona for sure. And when you talk about things for sure. But yeah, when you're dealing with people, it's real, like, basically the way you'd want to be engaged. With another human.

Yeah. Yeah. Who wants to have somebody get aggressive with them? It's never, it never, the only time it works is like if you're handling a prisoner. Like literally, if I'm handling a prisoner, I'll be aggressive with them. If I'm trying to get command of a chaotic situation and there's another aggressor in the situation,

I might have to be more aggressive than that person. But any normal situation dealing with human beings, aggression isn't a attribute. It's a negative because all it does is make people defensive. Now listen, it doesn't mean that you're sitting back and you're shirking and shriveling up. No. But it means that you're finding the balance with another person and you're working with them and conversing with them to bring them along into your way of thinking. That's what it is.

And, you know, when somebody asked me a question like this, it really signifies to me that it makes me nervous because I think to myself, I say this all the time. I mean, I say use the indirect approach. Don't get people's defenses up. I say this all the time. And yet someone can still come back and say,

you know, people are telling me I'm being too aggressive. Like, they're not even taking ownership of the fact that they're being too aggressive. Right. Right? It's like the other people are weak. Yeah, yeah.

And therefore, since they're weak, they think I'm too aggressive. I can't believe how pathetic they are. That's the reality. That's what's going through someone like this mind. Like, sometimes it's called working on your how. You know, he's kind of saying, oh, they've got a euphemism for it. And in the business world, there's a big push on diversity, but it comes with diversifying away from intensity and male aggression.

I mean, you can guarantee what this. this guy thought I was going to say, like, no, you got to just stay the path. You got to, if people can't take it, you got to crush them. No, no, actually, that's a complete wrong answer. Yeah. If people can't take it,

it's because you are being too aggressive. Yeah, the way you're giving it is wrong. The way you're giving it is wrong. So that aggression needs to be channeled in such a way that it's being utilized to further the goal. To further the goal. And you know who you get aggressive?

with yourself. You get aggressive with yourself. That's who I get aggressive with. You know who I'm straightforward with? I'm straightforward with myself. That's who I'm straightforward with. I'm the one guy that I'm allowed to get aggressive with, to be straightforward with,

to put things in, to not sugarcoat anything. I'm allowed to do that with me. But I'm not allowed to do it. with another human because it's not an effective way of leadership. It just is not. Yeah, it's funny. That's absolutely true. And with you, what I said is absolutely true.

I don't think I've ever seen you get mad at someone else. But at the same time, and I think a lot of people who may not know you good, but have experienced being around you, I would say that they all feel this same way. And that is that, yeah, fucking Jockel's cool or whatever. But if he were to, like, lose his temper on me, I'd probably die. Yeah, good. Good.

And they're right. Like, I'm glad I'm not losing my temper on people. Right, yeah, yeah. That wouldn't be good at all. Yeah. That'd be bad. I have, you know, that would not be good for people. No, no, no.

I don't think so either. That's that dichotomy, though. Right. That is that dichot. The sense of safety, yet the sense of impending doom is there at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it does genuinely surprise people.

Yeah. Because I look like a serial killer. I'm a big guy, whatever. And they expect that I'm going to be aggressive in implementing this. And you know, you got to get your shit together. Right? but it's just not, it's just an ineffective way of leadership. If that was, if that was leadership, leadership would be easy, right?

I'm just going to yell at everyone. They're going to do what I say. I'm just going to yell at everyone and then they'll do what I say. That just does not work. Yeah, it's crazy, though, because just the way you talk, a lot of the times, not all the time, but just the way, maybe it's like just how you sound. I don't know, your voice, I don't know. It's probably everything really is you do sound intense, even though you're not being intense,

you know, you just kind of seem that way. For all these reasons, of course. Well, it's like you said earlier, when I'm talking about something that I care about, yes, I am definitely going to be intense about it, especially when it's something that is impactful to me. Yeah. And something that means something to me.

And to me, leadership does mean a lot to me. Yeah. And trying to help people lead is an important thing to me. I enjoy it, and I like to see people succeed. So therefore, when I talk about it, Sometimes I get a little bit fired up and I get intense with what I'm saying. That isn't scary. That just kind of, it's like indirectly scary.

So it's not, I mean scary. Okay. I'll just, I'll use the word scary. It's indirectly scary. Where when you do it, it's like, oh, I'm not scared of what you're doing, but you kind of can imagine. You're like, oh, right. What if, you know, you're kind of like, you're like this raging hurricane that when it comes by, it turns into like a warm, gentle breeze.

You know what I mean? That you're kind of like. And maybe. that's probably part of the advantage. Part of the advantage is people, you know, I said this, I think it was Tim Ferriss, I said this too. You know, people are surprised when I can sit there and have a conversation with them and I'm not aggressive

with them and my mind is open to what they're saying. Yeah. That's part of the game. Yeah. All right. Next question. Okay, Jocco, your reaction to, Marsock, right?

Marsoc, M-A-R-S-O-C forming Marine Corps Special Operations Command. Yeah, so that's a new thing. So, and this is the question that he's asking. So Marines think they're seals now, or yeah, we should be, or we should have been Marines all along?

So this is a question about, like I said, the Marine Corps Special Operations Command. It was formed in, I don't know, 2005, 2006, maybe. And if you don't know, the Army has its own special operations group. The Navy has its own special operations group. The Air Force has its own special operations group. And the Marine Corps did not. What is Force Recon?

Have you ever heard of the- Yeah, Force Recon. Yeah. Force Recon was a part of the Marine Corps, but it wasn't broken off. and it didn't get the extra money and the extra funding and it didn't fall into the chain of command of special operations. Gotcha. And so when they made Marsok, it did.

So now they took a bunch of the Force Recon guys and put them into a group and have their own funding and everything else. So the bottom line is on this is that the Marine Corps is awesome. And I love the Marine Corps. And I think that this was long overdue. I think that the Marines,

Marine Corps as a whole is likely the most capable fighting unit the world is ever known, to be honest with you. I mean, maybe the, in addition, the airborne divisions from the Army are also just highly capable. But the Marine Corps with its air, ground, sea, it's got command and control, it's got integrated intelligence, it's got everything. and it can use it all together. And so that makes it just an extremely effective and efficient fighting force.

And they are highly disciplined. They are highly motivated. There's an incredible esprit decor. So for me, this was long overdue. And I think that I actually did a turnover with the initial kind of Mar-Soc group in 2004. in Baghdad. And I had worked with the Marine Corps on, I had worked with Force Recon on multiple deployments

when I was a younger seal. And they took a bunch of those guys, a bunch of just legendary Force Recon guys and put them into this first Marsok company. And they were awesome. Awesome warriors, awesome guys. And I think they actually have one thing that, that's a huge benefit to them is in the Marine Corps,

you're in the Marine Corps. Every Marine is a rifleman. They have the opportunity to work with big conventional infantry companies and platoons and battalions. So their guys will be very experienced. And I think that

they are going to be, I mean, I think that the Marine Corps Special Operations Command is going to be an extremely capable force in the future. And I am glad. to say the least

that they will be defending our country and freedom around the world for many, many years to come. Yeah, that kind of goes along with what, how you were saying, or a lot of these points that these books

make about how the discipline and the training are so paramount, you know, in success. Now you have yet another division that's going to get some solid training, you know? Yeah, for sure. There's no doubt. The Marine Corps will put these guys through outstanding training. Yeah.

Next question. Do you consider shooting a martial art and how has your firearms training been like or unlike martial arts training? Well, shooting is absolutely a martial art. I mean, maybe not the way people picture martial arts nowadays. Because when you picture martial art, people picture, you know, a guy with a guy on doing karate. That's right.

That's the generic picture. To me, that's not martial arts, actually. To me, martial arts is the art of war, the art of the individual warrior skills that it takes. And firearms are absolutely a martial art because it's something that you train. It's something that you get good at. It's something that you need to maintain your skill at. And it is absolutely a martial art. And to me, it's another piece.

piece of the puzzle. It's another thing that you should, you need to know how to do. And just like tactics that go along with shooting are an important part of being a warrior, you need to know how to shoot. And the training is very similar in my mind to martial arts training. In that, it takes repetition. You have to know what the basics are and you have to repeat those basics and then you get more advanced and it's it's about movement and getting efficient with your movement. And then you want to train it very similar to the way that you train mixed martial arts or martial arts in general. And that is, you know, you're going to have different threat levels and how you're going to deal with them and you want to deal with your weak side. You know,

can you shoot with your offhand in various environments, in the low light, in the dark, in the rain and the, you want to mix it up so you're used to all of it. You want to be used to people at close range. You want to be used to people at further range. And then once you get all those mechanical skills down, then you want to train your mind around this thing. You want to train your mind around this skill so that your mind knows how to utilize this skill when things are unexpected.

there's chaos and when there's mayhem going on. And that's one of the things that I really like about sim munition training or paintball training or laser tag training is it allows you, it allows you to have somebody else shoot back at you, which is just like, you know, just like rolling in jiu-jitsu or sparring more Thai or sparring MMA is you have to react to the person.

It's no longer just a kata. Right. it's no longer just shooting paper targets that don't shoot back and don't move. So I love to take it once you've got the skills down and then you learn, you've got the fundamentals down, then you take the advanced fundamentals,

and then you begin to train to simulate combat. And this is, I'll tell you, I had these, I got these laser tag guns for my son. And I just got two of them. first, but that escalated very quickly. Because they were awesome. There were these little Nerf laser tag guns and you could shoot each other at, I don't know, maybe a hundred meters, which is a pretty good shot. It was like a pistol. And so when I got these and as soon as I got two of them and I realized

how good they were, I bought two more so I could go against my son and his friends and they could go against each other. And I taught my son like all the basic military. maneuvers that he would need to know. And this is when he was maybe eight years old. And we would play this game all the time, you know. And so I taught him how to cover and move. I taught him how to get elevated positions. I taught him how to do individual movement techniques where you don't show your face

at the same spot like twice in a row. Every time you get up, you move a little bit. And he realized that that's how you win in these little games. And they're real. those are the real tactics. Yeah. And so I had, speaking, speaking of the Marine Corps, I had a friend that was, was, came over the house one time.

And he was, you know, a Marine. And we got in the conversation and all of a sudden, you know, my son comes out with the laser tag guns. And my son's like, oh, you know, do you want to go? And the guy's like, you know, yeah, of course. do it. So my son looks at him and says indoor or outdoor. And all of a sudden you could see there was something going on. And the guy goes, outdoor, outdoor. So my son, you press the button on the thing and it counts down for 10 seconds and then it's on. So wait, so you go find cover or

something like that. So 10 seconds. So 10 seconds, my son hits the thing. My son takes off out the door. So I'm watching a guy and a guy that's doomed because, you know, you're going against a train. The killer. So the guy comes out and it's dark, right? But the guy comes out of the door and I'm watching him. He's kind of crouched a little bit. And all of a sudden his gun, because it all is, in this one system, it all takes place inside the gun. You don't wear a helmet.

You don't wear anything. You actually are shooting the other person's gun. And when it's shot, when it gets shot, it goes, and it shakes and the red light flashes. So he walks out and sure enough, my son had run around the block, gotten to the, an elevated position. And as soon as he came walking out, my son started drilling him. And the guy's like, he freezes. It's interesting.

Like he freezes. He doesn't even think to myself, oh, I'll take cover. No, he just froze and got drilled. And then as soon as he's standing there, he's kind of looking around, looking around, looking around, finally he sees my son. He starts to point the weapon up towards my son. My son just disappears. And

then the guy's, the guy starts kind of walking over in that direction. And then 15 seconds later, my son, pops up on his flank and drills him again from behind another fence and a hole in the wall. Anyways, he ends up killing him. And then the guy's, okay, let's go again. And my son beat him like three times in a row. And it's because he had the basic, the basic skills, basic infantryman skills is what it was.

You know, he would shoot and then move. And that's what it boils down to. So that kind of thing is very important in as far as being a, martial art and you should train you know that's another thing you know i said this to sam harris when i was on his podcast you know yeah maybe there's a no chance because you live in a in the bubble and you live in a great neighborhood and you're well-protected you have a alarm system in your house and all that and maybe you're never going to have a problem and that's great i mean there's always a chance i would never believe that you're never going to have a problem but there's always a

chance that somebody's going to confront you that's evil is going to enter your world and you want to be ready for that. Now if that makes me sound paranoid, okay, let's just say you're not paranoid and you don't think it's ever going to happen, but it is still highly valuable to train in these situations because they make you a better person. They make you sharper. They make you smarter. They make you more prepared if something does happen. it's just good to know this stuff. And it makes you a better person more reliable. It's a real skill set.

You know, I always was kind of bummed out about basketball or football or baseball because those are, there are life skills involved in them. I don't want to say that. But the skill itself of throwing a baseball, of shooting a basketball, of throwing a football is not as valuable as a skill as number one a martial artist you know moitai boxing

wrestling jiu jih Tzu because those are real applicable applicable to life 100% and it's the same thing with shooting a gun I mean that is a real

applicable skill that you may need at some point in your life and you should have it yeah what supplements do you and ECHO take what supplements do you take

well my number one supplement is steak steak yes beautiful steak that's the number one um well there there are a couple things that i take number one i take krill oil i've taken it every day for probably 10 years maybe a little bit longer and i take glucosamine and i've taken that every day for 10 plus years i got i had with My shoulder was bothering me many years ago, and someone said, hey, take curle oil, take glucosamine. And I said, actually, know what it wasn't krill oil. It was fish oil at the time.

But at the same time, I just started taking both. And within a short period of time, my shoulder got better. And it had been a nagging nine-month injury. So I don't know which one of those two did it, but I'm never going to find out because I'm always going to take them both. I eat a lot of coconut oil whenever I get the chance I like dipping things in coconut oil coconut oil. If you get a taste for it, it's a really nice tasting thing. Yeah. Yeah, so that's the supplements that I take.

People ask me, you know, oh, what do you do? You know, because I'm 44 years old, old man, right? But I don't feel 44. Yeah. I feel 24. Nope, you don't feel 44. I feel 24. And actually, the thing that originally turned me on to fish oil was there was a guy that was a badass guy.

And he was 54. But he was a competitive power lifter when he was younger. And he was in really good shape. And this is probably when I was, well, what was I attended at that? 15 years ago or something like that. I was like 30 years old. And this guy looked young and healthy. And I said, you know, hey, what do you do?

Like, what's your main thing to keep you so young and healthy? And he said, I take fish oil every day. I said, okay, cool. And I'm just like, let's try that. Yeah, we'll get on board that train. Yeah. So. Yeah, too bad I asked you for some today.

No, no krill oil. We'll get you some krill oil. Right on. Thank you. Yeah. People probably want to know what supplements. you take. People mainly would ask me that in college.

It's when everyone wants to say, hey, what's something? Because they think for some reason that supplements give you big muscles or something. They don't think about that whole working out thing. Yeah, the whole working out thing. I mean, yeah, that was secondary. But, yeah, in jiu-jitsu, they care less about muscles. So they'll be like, you know. It's actually you get kind of teased sometimes in jiu-jitsu if you have big muscles.

It's weird. You don't get teased, but you lose crissue. credit for your skills based on your size. Yeah, that too, but you kind of do get teeth. Every person I ever roll with, you know, you get done rolling. They're like, man, you're strong. I'm always like, you're damn right. Yeah, yeah.

And you're weak. I've been training for 20 years too, by the way. Yeah, that has nothing to do with this. I take the only supplement I take, I do take a pre-workout, which is, I mean, I'm going to be honest, I don't know if I should take a pre-workout. Pre-workout is just, you know what that is, right? It's like a stimulant. It's caffeine, right, basically. There's caffeine in it, typically in NO2 nitric, nitric oxide. It basically makes your, it vasolates you, so your vessels get dilated. So you get more of a pump. It gives you energy. It's just like, it's basically

stimulant energy. So, you know, if you're not in the mood for working out, but, but yeah, so yeah, that's it. That's pretty much it. It's funny because a lot of people, they think that if you take protein powder, it'll make your muscles big. Like, it'll help you get big muscles. But no, like, if you take your favorite supplement, which is steak, just eat normal, you know, and if you're working out, you're going to eat a little bit more. That's how you get big muscles. Work out good and have the correct workout for muscles, which is a different kind of workout than if you want to, you know, get conditioning or something like that. And then eat enough. That's, That's what you got to do.

And eat right after your workout. I know you got to do that, too, I think. No, actually, I think I don't. There you go. And actually somebody put on Twitter that that, I was right. There's like something about testosterone release or HGH, or there's some kind of something happening in your system. We'll research that one and get back to you. I don't want to have an uneducated argument right now at all.

Joe Rogan and them call it bro science. Yeah, exactly. I don't want to get going down the bro science road right now. That would be wrong. Last question. Jocco, I would enjoy hearing your thoughts on leading others to a strong finish in both a deployment and in the civilian life. This is something that I saw in combat, even though my first deployment to Iraq. And it's something that I try to train out of people.

and that was a tendency to relax once a target was secure or the vehicles were loaded and we were leaving the target area people would have a tendency to let their guard down but you can't let your guard down then or ever really and in training when I was running training we always hit the platoons hard on target but we always we always hit him even harder after they left the target once they were patrolling back to base and their mind had already gone home and then turned off and that's when we bring it to him we'd hit him from multiple angles with all kinds of mayhem because I wanted to instill into them. I wanted to instill that attitude,

the muscle memory, to always keep going and always stay focused. Because that's the mentality that you have to have is that it's never finished. It is never finished. You always have to do more. Another mission, another task, another goal. Have that attitude that the enemy is always watching and waiting

and looking, looking and studying you for that moment of weakness. Looking for you to exhale and put your weapon down and close your eyes. And that's when they attack. So my rule is don't be finished. Be starting. Be alert, be ready, be attacking, be relentless. Let the enemy stop. Let the enemy rest.

Let the enemy finish. But you don't finish, don't stop, don't rest. Not until the enemy is completely destroyed. And even then, even then, when the enemy's gone, That's when you turn that focus inward on yourself and you take the opportunity, not to rest, but as always, you take that opportunity to make yourself better, faster, smarter, stronger. And with those goals, nothing is ever finished. So thanks to everybody for tuning in to the podcast and listening to it.

thanks for subscribing and reviewing and spreading the word telling other people about the podcast thanks to on it.com for the support and what do we got with amazon.com for support um the i put a a little link on again both the websites where you can um like if you shop at amazon it's like an affiliate. It's like just a way to support this podcast. If you shop on Amazon, you click through there first and it kind of gives us a referral kind of fee, you know. Oh, so all these books that people are buying from the podcast?

Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, if you click through the website, you get, you know, we'll get like a little percentage or whatever. It's like a referral thing. And your book is actually on there as well, Extreme Ownership. Nice, nice, I like that.

But yeah, that's a good way. Good deal. Cool. A couple ways to support the podcast. Appreciate all that support from everybody. There's, I know, Echo's running this thing. He's paying for server costs and all this stuff, equipment, and whatnot. Me, I'm just showing up and talking.

So, appreciate the support. so Echo's not coming out of pocket for the gig. If you want to connect with us, if you want to continue these conversations, if you want to ask questions, and we've got some great questions tonight for sure. I agree. If you want to know what we're up to,

you can connect to us through the interwebs. On Twitter, I'm at Jocco Wilink, and of course Echo Charles is at Echo, Charles. And I'm going to start a Facebook page, I think. And

Echo Charles is going to start a Facebook page. Chalko for podcast, Facebook page. That'll be good, I think. And thanks for leaving reviews of the podcast on iTunes. That's kind of how another way that the word gets spread.

And of the book, Extreme Ownership on Amazon.com, that also helps us. And if you want to support, this podcast you can get some supplements from joccofuel.com you can get some gear and clothing from origin usa.com you can get a bunch of cool t-shirts and whatnot from jocco store.com and you can check out my leadership consulting company at echelonfront.com and everything is available at jaco.com and finally if you really want to help me get out there in the world in your car in the train

at your apartment, at your house, wherever you are at work or at play. Get out there and get after it. So until next time, this is Jocko and Echo. Out.