Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: How to Honor Your Commitments When It Gets Hard

Episode Date: September 22, 2025

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This is the Jocco Underground Podcast number 183 sitting here with Echo Charles. We've got some questions from you troopers and we are going to provide some courses of action, some recommendations on how you can handle these scenarios. Let's get into it. Before that, this idea of, and this is something to keep in mind, sounds obvious, but I think a lot of times we forget it, where if you have a course of action, you can get to a better place. Yes. And just knowing that, you're already better off. Yes. And just to expand on that point a little bit, one of the, I would say, very nice blessings that I've had in my life is that I always got a decent amount of gratification knowing that I was just making steps towards being where I wanted to be. So, for instance, when I lived in a 934 square foot house with my wife and three children, but I knew.

that I was going to own that house one day and I would be able to build a little bit of an addition on it. I was okay with that. Yeah. You know, like, so it was, I was suffering currently, but I knew that I was going in the right direction. And so that seemed to make things very good for me because I never minded, I was very good at suffering tactical pressure because I knew my strategic goal would be achieved. And that's why oftentimes when we answer questions here, I'll say, oh, if that's what's happening, you need to start to put together a long-term strategy. And maybe I need to make this more clear when I answer these questions. You need to plot out the course to escape the scenario that you're in.

And for me, if I'm in prison, it's like Shawshank Redemption, right? I'm in prison. I'll get gratification every day that I've whittled. the way just a little bit of that wall. You know, just that's, and I'm okay with that because I know at the end of this, I'm going to get out of here.

And so if you're, if you ask a question, what you want is an immediate answer that now your problem that took you three years, five years, eight years to get into, it's not going to be solved overnight. And you've got to take some level of gratification over the fact that,

okay, at least now I'm moving in the right direction. Yep. So yes, courses of action. Oh, yeah. Yeah, this idea of past, present and future, it's weird how we over-index so much on the past and the present. And for a lot of people, anyway, and not on the future.

So, like, you could probably remember freaking elementary school, junior high, high school. If you went to college, I remember those years and blah, blah, blah, I remember this happening. You remember so much about it. And, you know, you can think about it, whatever. And then we think about how we're feeling right now. And oh, I'm like, I'm miserable about this or I hate this, that this is going.

And then, but we don't, sometimes we don't expand that same energy for the future, for steps into the future. Right. Like if you were to consider, you know how they say the end of the old school. What's your five year plan? What's your 10 year plan, right? Like long term and short term like goals or whatever. Bro. I think, I don't know.

I'm thinking about myself, but I never really indexed on those a lot of the time. You know, and then the moment where I realized how important that was, it's like, yeah. Well, that's where I always say I got very lucky joining the military because when you join the military, it's like, oh, you already have a 20 year plan. Yeah. Or a 25 or a 30 year plan. But for me, I was like, oh, well, now I'm doing, know what I'm doing for at least the next 20 years. And for me, it was like, I'm probably going to be in this gig for 30 years. So here, you know, follow this path.

Yeah. And then you pick up little things, which are kind of the normalized situation, which is, oh, well, you're going to live in here and. in San Diego, you need to get a house here. Okay, that's just a normal. Cool, get a house. And then for some reason, I'd be like, oh, maybe I could get two of them or three of them. You know what I mean?

So you make these little things, you kind of grasp on. And for me, it wasn't so much like, hey, here's my five year, 10 year plan. I was like, hey, this makes sense to do. I didn't think about how it played out in the future, but I knew that right now, if I make these moves, these investments,

in health, in, you know, real estate, in, you know, relationships. I knew that if I did that now, I knew it'd pay off in the future. Yeah. So I had, I didn't have like, hey, I'm going to write this down. But I knew that the, these investments, these long, that the moves that are making are long term good moves. Yeah. I kind of always had that.

Yeah. Yeah. And that fundamentally, especially if that drives you, like makes you take these actual. Because there's a difference between, oh, yeah, I know that. but I don't do it, you know? I did have a commanding officer literally tell me, hey, you should buy a house. And then I had a friend when I came to San Diego,

back to San Diego from Virginia Beach, and I was looking for a rental property, and I saw him, and he goes, why are you renting, buy something? And I was like, well, I don't know. You know, he's like, do you buy something? And then those two guys combined, one guy was telling me buy a house, wherever you get stationed to buy a house immediately.

And then my buddy that said, why are you renting a house, buy a house? And I was like, oh, yeah. Long term, that makes more sense. Cool. So. Yeah. Yeah, man.

Just thinking, just thinking about the future. Mm-hmm. Just thinking about it. You got to consider these things because it's coming. Mm-hmm. Where will you be and what will you have done up until that point? Yeah.

The future is coming. All right. First question. Good morning. I've been training for my first marathon October since June. I've done several halves, half marathons before and lots of distances below that. I've loved running for many years. in my life and I'm happy I found it and helped me tremendously on my weight loss journey.

However, I despise marathon training. I truly do not think running this type of distance is for me. I realized this back in July, but I thought I just needed to push through and it was because of fatigue. But now it's impacting me more and more. I stop lifting weights because I no longer have time or energy. I'm eating a lot of carbs and sugar for fuel. I'm gaining not muscle, but I'm gaining weight.

My long runs take three to four hours and then I can't do anything for the rest of the day because I'm so tired. My question is, is it even worth doing this marathon? The only reason I haven't quit is that my cousin runs marathons and is doing the race with me. And I don't want to disappoint him that I don't love the marathon like he does. Any advice would be great. Thanks. Yeah. at a certain point specializing in something

makes you good at that one thing and not good at a lot of other things and that's true some people make that choice you know that's called professional athletes right and that's fine I've always leaned kind of towards I guess the term is general physical

preparedness right um GPP which means you can run not going to win the race but you can run the race you can lift you're not going to lift the most but you can lift some in calisthenics you can move like all those things you can you're you're good functional physical unit right okay so i hear you and clearly i think that's where you're headed um

and i think that's good i think you're headed back in that direction where you know maybe you'll run a little bit but you'll you know start working lifting again and all that stuff but you're the actual question is you say is it even worth doing this marathon this is kind of where i'm at um and you you you may have you you You may disagree with me on this one, Echo Charles. I'm not 100% sure. I think if you've been training since June, right? And now it's whatever, September, June, July, August, September.

You've been training three and a half months for this thing. You probably already paid for the freaking thing. You've sacrificed for it. And it's one of those things that many, people see as like a bucket list scenario and an achievement a bucket list achievement so I think a good compromise would be to back off the back off all the crazy running normalize your life at some level start lifting again clean up your diet and see how you feel and come October go out and run the freaking you know go out and walk the marathon you know go on just get it

done. You don't need to set any records. Whatever record you know, were you trying to do a sub four, a sub three, a sub three and a half, a sub five, whatever your thing was, just forget about it. Don't let your ego get involved. Don't get injured. You know, if like you get 12 miles in or 18 miles in and you are going to injure

yourself, not hurt, you know, not like you're hurt and you got some blisters, wow, wow. But if you're going to injure yourself, then don't complete the thing. Don't be stumped. Don't wreck your life. But go out there and give it a shot. You don't push hard. You've been training.

You probably get it done. If you're this deep into it, you'd probably be able to get it done. And then you can, you know, celebrate at the end and you never have to do another marathon. That's that, and you can get back to your normal activities. That's kind of where I'm at.

Now, this is a little bit, I'm assuming that you're, that you're, complaints about like being tired is like yeah you're you're not like exhausted level and that you're gaining some weight i'm not like you're not ridiculous and you're losing some muscle like you're not completely withering right i'm i'm taking your complaints to be moderate complaints because if you're obviously if you're screwing up your health and don't don't you know stop if you're

screwing up your health stop doing it but if your if your body is you know you know you're you know No, not optimum for what you want, but you're still kind of, you still can keep going, then I'd kind of look at doing it. I don't know, what do you, do you think I'm wrong? No, I think you're correct. Really? I kind of thought you might think that I was wrong on this one.

Well, would you think that I would think? Like, oh, dude, don't do it. Like you get, you know, you're losing weight, you're gaining fat, you're losing muscle gaining fat, you're tired, your energy's low. Like, I know those are all red flags in the, in the Echo Charles book of Rest and Recovery. That is true.

But those are all. separate issues though so running the marathon okay first off yeah I you're you're not wrong because I would never be in a position to run the marathon I don't see that as any type of bucket list scenario which you know that's that's but that's a preference thing you know so let's say it was something that I was like no hell yeah I'm down for this I want to have done it and you know bucket list scenario I I agree with you I think if the if training like this is a problem then solve that problem if you gaining weight because you shouldn't be getting weight not you

You should not be gaining fat from this. So then solve that problem. So that's a diet problem that you just need to solve. It's not that hard. You can actually just look it up. Be like, hey, I weigh this much. Freaking, I run this much. I'm gaining fat.

What up? What should I be eating? They'll give you some guidelines. Not hard. So if you just treat each of these little issues as individual issues and you solve, I think you're absolutely right. But you're gonna run it, you'll be absolutely fine.

You don't even have to train this much. I mean, the only one concern has, he's got a weight, lost journey written in there. So I don't know if he's one of these dudes that, you know, used to be 500 pounds and now he's, you know, 380 or something. Yeah. You know, that, you know, if he, if his weight loss journey was he was 250 and now he's

190, like that's, that's a lot. That's no factor. Yeah. And if, if, just like I said that if he, if he's risking, like legitimately risking his health or, you know, do the injury or something like this. No, brain. Shut it down. I, I personally don't think it's worth it.

Oh, of course. No. 100% not worth it. It's not worth it. So if that's the case. But, um, But yeah, all things being good to go, aside from these things, yeah, no, do it. Even if you have to freaking jog and then kind of walk the thing.

Yeah. Yeah. So I don't see the marathon as being the problem. I see these little individual things as being the problem. And also like eating a lot of carbs and sugar for fuel. Like at what point, you ever had that thing where you got like open mat tomorrow? And you're like, well, you know, Saturday night, I got open mat tomorrow. You know we're going to be getting after it.

Mm-hmm. How's that thing looking over? You know what I mean? So now if you're running all and you're feeling, that's another thing is like you're feeling tired, but your diet is junk. Mm-hmm. And that ain't good, you know?

I had a freaking cookie, like a big chalk, not a milk cookie. Yeah. But a big-ass freaking, for breakfast, like, for breakfast, bro. A lot of times.

And, uh, pancakes are. So yeah, my, one of my kids brought by like the, you know those places that just make like sick cookies. Yeah. So one of my kids brought one of those things by. And they're like, oh, you got to have this guy. And so I was like, cool. You know, I was like, no, no factor.

Bro, I ate a cookie bomb. And apparently these cookies have like a thousand calories per. Oh, I know what you're talking about. Yeah. I didn't know that. And also, you know, like a discipline and freedom. Right. Okay, here's some freedom.

Right. Got broke out the milk. Yeah. That's real. I ate this big ass chocolate chip cookie bro. I felt like I got hit upside the head with like a baseball bat. I just got tired. And part of it's because I don't, you know, that's not normal for me to just gut bomb a thousand calories worth of sugar.

Yeah. But dude, I was like, it was gnarly. And I fell, I fell asleep, you know, like sat down on the couch for a little while. Because I got done working out, ran, took a shower, gut bomb. sugar bomb and like I was sitting there and it was you know it was on a weekend and I was like well and I just like fell asleep just insulin bomb so so that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko underground podcast so if you want to continue to listen go to jocco underground dot com and subscribe and we're doing this we're doing this to

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