Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: "Up Before The Enemy". Disciplined? Foolish? Or Not That Serious?

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

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This is the Jocko Underground Podcast, number 184, sitting here with Echo Charles. We have got some questions from you troopers out in the world, and we will provide some guidance, some courses of action, and some recommendations. That's what we got. Let's get into this. A lot of times these questions, by the way, a lot of these questions, the concept that underlies the question. Can be applied to all aspects of life. Exactly, right?

So it's like one of these little tasks. I know I do this work. I'll read the question and it'll be like, oh, this very specific person at this very specific place said this and does this. So what should I do? And I'm like, wait, wait. All you got to do is switch out the details. And you're like, bro, that's me all day. Is what I'm saying?

Anyway, that's a good beneficial way to look at it. All right. First question. I spent a lot of my days on the road for work, oftentimes needing to be at work at 4.45 a.m. I always make sure to get a workout in before work because I believe I believe I. I perform better and I'm just an overall better human being after a workout. Even if it's just an average hotel gym, you'd be amazed what you can do with a 20-pound kettlebell. True that.

But this requires me to get up at 255 a.m., which is very early. So am I disciplined or am I crazy? All my coworkers think I'm crazy. Perhaps I'm a little of both. It would be interesting to know how much sleep this guy's getting. And it would also be interesting, I guess even let me put a question even before. I don't want. How much sleep does this individual need? Right? Because there's certain people leave need different levels of sleep. Everyone's different. My family is a good example. My,

I don't need a lot of sleep. My oldest daughter doesn't need a lot of sleep. My middle daughter, you better get, it's going to take some activity to get her out of bed in the morning because she likes to sleep. My wife, she likes to sleep. She'll sleep a lot. She'll be no factor going about at 8.15, 8.30. You know, she'll look at me all tired. Like, oh, what time is it? I'm like 7.45. And my son was kind of in the middle, didn't need sleep, but liked it if he got it.

But if we're getting up at 4 o'clock in the morning, go surfing, no factor. So everyone's a little bit different. And I wonder where this individual is on that spectrum. And then is he meeting the sleep requirements that he has? And how does he feel about it? Because if you're waking up at 255 and you're having good days and you're feeling strong and you're doing good, then that's, I mean, who, you know, all good. All good. Here's the thing you might want to pay a little bit more attention to is what is happening with your strength and your conditioning, right? Is it improving or not? Because if you're working out and not getting any rest, as Echo Charles is probably about to go on a 38 minute rant for recovery. Yeah, rest and recovery, then you might not be getting stronger. You might. be getting weaker, you might be getting sick all the time, that kind of stuff. Now, there's been recent research, and Huberman has been talking about this, the fact that

if you don't get like a proper night's sleep, but you get up an exercise, it kind of counters your lack of sleep. Have you heard this research? No. There's like research done. So research was done again. Do I have the literature in front of me? No, I don't.

But research was done. I saw it on the, I saw it on Instagram, so it must be true. No, but Huberman. And I did like chime in to the comments. when he posted something about it. So if you only get four hours or five hours of sleep one night, but you get up and you work out, it makes up for the fact that you didn't get great sleep.

But if you continue on that path, it's going to end up being negative. So you'll get diminishing returns at some point. So I think you need to, for the question here, you need to be very honest with yourself. Are you performing optimally? Like, are you getting stronger? Are you getting faster?

Are you getting more flexible because you're doing these good workouts? What about and the other thing is like what about your health markers, right? Because sleep impacts your like your blood work can be bad. Your cholesterol can be impacted by the sleep that you're getting. So I would do a little bit of research. Be honest with yourself and dude, if this guy's going to bed at 8.30 at night or 8 o'clock at night and get. in what, you know, six solid hours? Seven hours?

Solid, bro. All good. I don't care if you're getting up at 255. All good. So pay attention, how you feel? Are you like falling asleep in meetings? Are you falling asleep while you're driving your car? Because that's not good.

And you probably need more sleep. But if you're feeling good, are you drinking freaking 19 cups of coffee? You're drinking 12 goes a day and having five servings of brain power? from jaco fuel a day because you shouldn't be doing that so if you're staying pretty naturally you're not Odeeing on caffeine and you're getting enough sleep good to go you're you're just disciplined not crazy maybe a little crazy but yeah all good in a good way yeah yeah is it beneficial is it useful for you for your life so that and because

people will say every once in a while I'll come across somebody who will be like I get up at three, you know? And it's like, it's almost like a, like I'm better than you kind of an attitude. Not you, but, you know, every once in a while, you know. But it's like technically if you just kind of look at it, it is different. It is different than normal people for sure. So that's why it seems weird or crazy or whatever. But if you just shift your schedule, because people would give me flack for like staying up super late when I used to stay up to like 5 a.m. and stuff.

And it's like, well, what's really the difference? I just shift it. You know, like guys who work. graveyard shift it's essentially that yeah you know it's not that and then they're like oh you sleep in so late you know like i'll sleep until noon sometimes one sometimes p.m and i oh i'm a slacker no no no i my whole schedule is shifted is you're saying yeah it sounds crazy just because you're comparing it to the norm and you're a slacker oh but those are two different things you see what i'm saying though all this guy did is not necessarily a slacker a normal person not necessarily yeah i've i've said this a million

times like people like just because you get up early I'm like no I don't I don't care like you get up at 10 cool you know is you're getting getting after it that's cool you get up earlier than me cool I got that's awesome my most important thing I think usually is I tell people just make try and get up around the same time every day if you're getting off in random places 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 underground.com and subscribe. And we're doing this. We're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms.

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