Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: The Value of Cadence. Worthless? Or Useful? | How Civilians Can Be Prepared for War

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

>Join Jocko Underground<the Value of Cadence.How to be prepared for war as a civilian.The geopolitical situation between Canada and The USA.Overly aggressive Jiu Jitsu student messing up the vibe in class.Addicted to porn.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the Jocco Underground Podcast number 158 with Echo Charles sitting across me. E.C. As they said, it's weird because I don't even say that. For somebody that, really, I only say it here. Yeah.

It's not like I see you and I'm like, EC, what up? Yeah. Every once in a way. Okay. Well, something that I don't really recognize. Nonetheless, EC is here. Echo Charles.

We're going to get some questions. Questions from the people and we will provide courses of action or answers to the best of ability. Let's get to it. All right. First question. Hi. You used to be in the Canadian Armed Forces as an infantry reservist. I was quite disappointed to notice that in our army, there was no singing going on in boot camp. I was getting all fired up as a teen, singing some USMC marching song. It seems from an outside point of view that it's a big part of the spirit of your military culture.

What is your view on the marching cadence songs for Navy? SEALs and in the US military culture in general. So what's interesting is we, when I went through SEAL training, we did sing cadences. And what's funny, they weren't, they weren't motivational. Most of them weren't motivational at all. They were just funny. They were like random. No, they were rude kind of, you know, disgusting like little just immature boy humor, basically.

A lot of them were kind of like that. And there was a couple of them. One thing that was cool was that when you would go to PT. So you'd have a couple official PT's a week, like where you go into the grinder, have you heard the term the grinder. It's the big area where they have these little fins on the ground, like painted on the ground,

and that's where you stand. And then you would do PT there. And but when you'd run to the grinder, there was a cool cadence that you would sing when you came in there. And that was cool. And all the classes could kind of hear you when you were singing the cadence. You know, all loud and fired up, right? So that was cool.

That one was kind of quote unquote motivational to go in there. But most of them were just funny. Just most of the cadences. And we had a bunch of songs too. You would sing songs just when you're getting tortured. You were just saying like these crazy, funny songs about being a frog man. And, you know, they all had to do with. just craziness how do you learn these songs they just get passed down passed down because i remember um

not mcfarland is um admiral mccraven he had a speech and he talked about they started singing the songs when they're in cold mud yeah yeah for i always wonder like what songs are they seeing because they all know that they all you know because everyone jumped in the song yeah so it's like they're all they're all memorized you're you learn them you know but like one of them one of them It started off drink, drink, drink, drunk, drunk, drunk, drunk, drunk last night and drunk the night before, gonna get drunk like we never did before. Like that was the song.

Yeah, that's funny. And it goes on and on to tell these crazy tales of being drunk frogmen, right? So that's what it was like. There was no like, oh, I'm struggling on this run, but I'm getting, no, that didn't exist. And what's interesting is I don't think they even sing any of these songs anymore in Buds.

Partially because I think they were not politically correct. You know, you can imagine when the song starts off, drink, drink, drink, drink, drunk, drunk, drunk, drunk, drunk the night before, or drunk last night, drunk the night before, you know it's not going to, it's not a song about going to church. No. You see what I'm saying? So they were all politically totally incorrect. And I think that's why they stopped them. I guess, but I don't know. I don't know what happened.

But they don't, I don't think they sing them much anymore. Now, when I got to airborne school, because I went from Buds to basic Army airborne school, and they sang cadences there. And those were pretty cool, like, more like, you know, kind of, uh, air, air, uh, C-130 rolling down the strip, airborne daddy going to take a little trip, stand up, hook up, shuffle to the door, jump right out and a counter for it. So you play, you know, Army, you know, like singing some army cadence, fine. The best cadences that I sang was when I went to the, when I went to officer candidate school.

officer candidate school has Marine Corps drill instructors and they got it on they got some good ass cadences where you're like and one of the one of the best cadence memories I have was we're down at Pensacola Florida going through officer candidate school and we were running in the morning you know 430 in the morning or something we're running on a long run which long run there is probably like a few like maybe four or five miles something like that we're on this run and we go through the like the officer's housing area on this run where the officers are and they literally have signs that say you know no cadence and our drill instructor was fired up about something and so he's like he's like singing cadence that's saying like we're going to sing cadence and then he starts going you know get out of the rack and we're like get out of the rack and he starts saying louder and louder and we're so we're basically at the top of our lungs going get out of the rack and get out of the rock, get out of the rack, and as we're jogging by all these people's houses.

It's probably so annoying to them. But at the time, I thought it was cool. Right now I'm thinking, man, could you just be quiet? Like if I was living in one of those houses. But you could see, I bet you there's a chance he got in some kind of trouble for that. But he was fired up, you know? So there was some drill instructors when I was at Officer Canaan at school that sang some freaking legit, hardcore cadences.

We did have some cadences that were hardcore and buds too, that were just like but most of them were just kind of funny once you get to a seal team there's no more cadence like I don't there was no cadences in the seal teams

you don't really even run you don't run in formation in the seal teams you just run it's a race you're not seeing cadence when you're racing your friends like everything's just a race there's no motivation

there's no like who ya there's no like yelling there's no yelling in PT no one's like come on dude or come on get down like that doesn't happen Happen at all in the SEAL teams. Now, if you're a new guy and you're weak,

you will get probably some kind of hazing. You might get like literally yelled at. But, yeah, no cadence in the SEAL teams at all. So when he says, what is your view on the marching cadence songs for Navy SEALs? There aren't any. Once you're in the SEAL teams, there aren't any. At least I never heard any. Even, you know, occasionally, like at a reunion or something.

Someone might reach back into the freaking well and break out. Like I was at a bar like a Coronado bar and some of the old timers were breaking out some old bud songs and it was like, hey, I got some Vietnam guys singing. I'm joining him. That's what we're doing. But other than that, there was no cadences in the SEAL teams themselves, only in basic SEAL training. My view of U.S. military culture, cadences, I think it's cool. like it. I like it. I think it's cool. And the Marine Corps drill instructors that I had at OCS salute because they were legit. And they had some really good cadences. They had some really good

cadence. What is the color? The color is blue. It shows the world that we are true. What is the color? The color is red. Shows the world the blood we shed. Like they had some cadences that you'd be pretty fired up. I would be fired up for. right on down the line. So that's my opinion. I was never, you know what's funny is I would, like, you know, you'd have guys sing cadences in your class. I would occasionally sing a cadence and I would,

I would do funny cadences too. Like, yeah, now that I'm thinking back to it, I would do funny cadences and some of the cadences I would do is I would just make noises. Because sometimes, you know, cadence just sounds like noise. So I would just be like, I lo bole be la ba, and everyone would be la ba And I would just do that.

You know, just kind of like joking about the whole thing. Everything's a big joke, as BTF Tony once said. Yeah. So there you go. That's my opinion. Is there a practical value for that?

Did you find? There's a practical value in that you stay in step. So one of the most common in seal training, left, left, left, left, right, left. Left, left, left. I don't even remember the rest of it, but you're just telling like, so everyone's in the same,

you're not tripping over each other. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like there's like, because in football, we did that too. Literally my first year of football, I had 10, 11 years old, all the way up to college. But we do it only in that initial warm-up lap that we like slowly run around everything. Now, okay, that reminds me. I sang cadences with my children. Like if there was something going on.

We spent a lot of time camping. as kids. Sure. We would do beach camping, which is pretty much for me, would be like putting my children through buds. So I would run down the beach with them and call Cadence with all these little girls,

like little girls and little boys just singing Cadence about killing bad guys. I got in trouble in high school for singing Cadence now that I think of, I was on the soccer team, got in trouble for singing Cadence about Ho Chi men as a son of a bitch. Okay.

Yeah. There you go. You can't do that. I'm like, Ho Chi men is a son of a bitch. Yeah. Fucking communist. Well, hey, man, you know, I agree for sure. Um, I think there's, I think it's not really about that.

But the, the, the actual practical, isn't it to build like, this is what it felt like when I was. Oh, camaraderie. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's fun. Yeah.

I was like, um, so, okay. In football, real quick, when I was, like, because in college, it was, it was the same thing, but it's a little bit different. I'd already been on teams and whatever. But as a kid, I first joined football, and we do this first lap. And before the, in the beginning of the season, or kind of before the season starts, they just give you a helmet.

You don't have pads and stuff. So we run this lap. We all get our helmets, right? It's the first real team uniform element that you get to the helmet. And we're the Kalaa Rams. Yeah. So we got the ram horns or whatever.

I remember this is the coolest shit ever. So we run our lap and, yeah, they do the cadence. But it's a cadence that everyone, like, no one knew it. No one taught it. But everyone, the other guys that have been there, yeah, you just like listen and repeat. Yeah, exactly.

But this wasn't a repeat one. This was like, if I remember correctly, he was like, it's like, we are the Rams. The one guy would say, we are there. And then the rest of us would be like the mighty, mighty Rams. And they'd be everywhere they know, people want to know. You know, so it was like a kind of a song, you know, kind of a thing. And I remember thinking, I didn't know the words, but everyone else kind of knew the words. I was like, oh, I'm part of a team.

Yeah. This is freaking sick, you know. And we'd all just run in step, like in that little perfect little group. or whatever. Yeah, bro, I felt it. You did. I felt it. You were 11.

You know what I'm saying? Like, it's cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I would think, bro, I'm joined the United States Navy to become a United States Navy SEAL. And we're in basic training, whatever. Like, this is all new to me, we'll say. And boom, that cadence starts freaking sounding off. Bro, I'm kind of in the same mindset as when I was 11.

Yeah. now 23 or whatever. I don't think about it. Well, then again, I don't know. You just remind me. I went through Navy boot camp too, which I forgot about. And there was some kind of cadence in there as well, but I don't remember much about it. Like you had to be in step.

You marched in Navy boot camp. There was a Ranger cadence that I heard one time. And it is like the most over the top killing cadence. And the chorus was just ching, chiching, chiching, chiching. And I'm sure someone listening, this will remember it and be like yeah that was a gnarly case it was about just killing and murdering everybody there you go I'm telling you bro but but you know the seal teams was a bunch look were there some serious ones there were a few but not not most of them were funny that's what I remember the

most most of them were just funny this is what I suspect I think that it probably builds cohesion even like on a subconscious level oh for sure and then even all you got to do is kind of test your own brain and be like, is there an element of pride that of or with knowing the words to any of it? No matter how just funny they are or whatever, you know, like is there an element of pride that you feel? There's certainly an element of unity.

And hey, I get it, man. I get it. There's, it's fired up even with like little kids run down the beach and they're calling cadence. Like that's cool. Yeah.

It's cool to have a unified crew. Yeah, yeah. And it was fun and buds. You have a unified crew. But what's funny. is that you have a unified crew and you're making fun so that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the jaco underground podcast so if you want to continue to listen go to jocco

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