The Joe Rogan Experience - #1080 - David Goggins

Episode Date: February 19, 2018

David Goggins is a retired Navy SEAL and former USAF Tactical Air Control Party member who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is an ultramarathon runner, ultra-distance cyclist, triathlete and world record holder for the most pull-ups done in 24 hours. http://davidgoggins.com/

5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Boom, and we're live. Thanks for doing this, man. I appreciate it. Hey, thank you for having me. I appreciate that. You're the only guy I've ever had in the studio where when I showed up, you were working out. That's what I do, man. That's my life. That's my life. It's pretty crazy, though. I mean, how much time did you have when you got here? I got here about an hour early.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. We got a little early. So I got i got here shirt off doing chin-ups it was hilarious i didn't get my camera out in time before you saw me i wanted to take some pictures well maybe next time next time well i'll catch you after the show um you are a guy that for a lot of people, you sort of embody the idea of hardening your mind and figuring out a way to do things that most people think are impossible. You've sort of become that guy over your life, and you've become that guy for a lot of people, including me, online. We've talked about you on the podcast a ton of times. So having you in here has been uh it's very exciting to me i appreciate that thank you how'd you become that guy you know what i i grew up not that guy yeah

so a lot of people put a title on me they want to uh they see me now they see me now as the guy that with his shirt off who can do 4 30 pull-ups in 17 hours you can run 205 miles in 39 off who can do 4,030 pull-ups in 17 hours, who can run 205 miles in 39 hours, who can do all this crazy shit. But what they don't understand is they don't understand the journey that it took me to get to this point. And what got me to this point was I was just the opposite of what I am today. I was that guy who ran away from absolutely everything that I got in front of me. But not many people knew that. I had two people.

Like the real me was like this very scared, insecure, stuttering, got beat up by his dad, all this kind of stuff. And I built this fake person that walked around like my shit didn't stink. You know? Right. Yeah, so that's kind of how i did it and i through a process of time i realized that i was lying to myself and lying to people but that it's a fascinating journey though because you are that guy now i mean you genuinely are a legit badass

and at one point in time you were a legit terrified person yes Yes. So what was the process? Like, how did you step forth? Well, it's a long process. Right. My dad beat the shit out of me when I was growing up. I was the first black baby born in this hospital called Miller Fillmore in Buffalo, New York. My dad owned skating rinks. He owned bars. He ran prostitutes from Canada to Buffalo, New York.

My dad was a big-time pimp, big-time. Anything bad about a person, big-time hustler. He was American. You know that movie with D'Angelo Washington? He was that, but not that bad. You know, he wasn't that big. But that's what it reminds me of. He was that kind of guy.

And beat the shit out of me, the shit out of my mom. There was an incident one time when my mom got knocked out on top of the stairs and he drug her down the stairs by her hair and at six years old um i'll never forget this in my mind i was always afraid my whole life i was afraid but i had this fucking voice this this conscience that would always be battling me saying hey you got to get up and do something. I didn't want to do shit. I was just afraid, but that voice would force me to get up. And my dad, I'd try to beat him up, whatever, at six, and I'd get my ass kicked.

So this went on for several years. And I have a big time learning disability. My dad didn't believe in us going to school. So my dad, it was about the business, the skating rink and the bar. So the skating rink opened about 7 o'clock at night and this is when time i was able to walk so about five you know four or five six years old eight nine and i go to the you know skating rink seven o'clock at night and i worked the skating rink until 10 at night and then we would scrape the gum off the floors and

we cleaned the whole skating rink up and then then my dad had an office, and my brother and myself would sleep in the office. My mom would go upstairs and work the bar until 3 o'clock in the morning. And then they cleaned the bar up. So after all that shit was done with, going to school rarely happened. So when I went to school, I was all kind of, you know, my learning disability. I had social anxiety. I was just a jacked-up kid from living in this tortured home. From the outside looking in, we lived in an all-white neighborhood.

And then we would travel to the ghetto of Buffalo, New York, where the skating rink was at. So, you know, we worked around mostly blacks. And I lived around mostly whites. But no one knew what was going on in that house on 201 Paradise Road. You know, it's crazy. But my mom got courage to finally leave him when I was about eight years old. We moved to a small town in Brazil, Indiana, and that's when the real war started for me.

And Brazil, Indiana is a small town, great people, a lot of great people. And I say that because a lot of people get offended. And I'm going to get to the point where they get offended. There was about maybe 10 black families at about 10 000 people in the town and in 1995 the kkk marched in the fourth of july parade so this was a not everybody was racist there's a lot of good people some of the best people i knew was there but there's also a lot of racism there so me being one of the few black kids in that you know in that area you know it kind of haunts you i had stuff on my notebook you know nigga we're gonna kill you on my spanish notebook they had that on my car nigga we're gonna kill you this is early 90s and um so even though

i showed it didn't hurt me it was jacking me up so all the insecurities i have when i was a kid with my father i've moved into this area here and it just got worse and worse and worse. And this shit haunted me. And that voice that I talked about, it kept talking louder and louder and louder, but I was doing nothing about it. And I decided to make moves. And I cheated all through school. And it's kind of humbling to talk about my story sometimes, and it um it's also embarrassing but um it's real it's who the fuck i am it's what i am it's what created me and copy from the fourth grade to the to my junior year in high school on every assignment and i

want to get in the military i'm going to join the air force and the guy gave me an asvab test it's like a watered down sat and i couldn't copy on it because the guy gave me an ASVAB test. It was like a watered-down SAT, and I couldn't copy on it because the guy beside me had a test A, I had test B. The guy on my right had test C. So I looked to copy on this test, and I couldn't copy on it, so I got like a 20. And I wanted to be an Air Force pararescueman. It's guys that jump out of airplanes and save down pilots. It's a special operator in the Air Force.

And my score was so horribly low that we take it again. And he said, hey, I got like an 18 the second time, even worse. I need to get a 50 out of a 99. And so my mom and I, for a while, we lived in the government subsidized apartments, $7 a month, and also food stamps. And we slowly moved up to a $230 a month place. But at the time, you know, we were pretty poor. But my mom afforded enough money for me to go to see a tutor one hour a week. So for four hours a month, I had six months to study for my last test.

I was going to take the ASCII test three times. And I studied my ass off and passed it. And I got in the Air Force and realized there was more things in front of me. I was afraid of the water. Terrified of the water. And I learned how to swim. But what gets everybody in this training, in all special ops training, is the water confidence where they try to pretty much drown your ass.

You know, all of our lives we've been breathing. And they take that from you. And they want to see how comfortable you are in the water. And there's only 1% african-americans in special operations and i didn't know anything about african like a lot of them are negative buoyant which i am because the bone density i struggled but um six weeks into the program there was about 25 guys left out of about 150 i was there and i was never i didn't go to sleep for six weeks of the program and I wanted to quit so badly but I quit everything in my life. I copied through school. I wanted to prove people wrong And so here I am in this Air Force program starting to get a little more confidence

but this water was kicking my ass and Six weeks in the program the doctor gave me a blood test and was that sickle cell Sickle cell trait not the anemia but it still killed people but so they put me out training for a week and when you go from being very uncomfortable in that water situation and then now you're comfortable and i'm sitting back watching the guys drown i'm not you know i'm not part of the activities anymore for this week i don't want to get back in that damn water again so the fear overcame me and all my insecurities from my dad

from this small town, from everything started coming back and even though no one knew how fucked up I was kind of create this other person who was tough I lived with this shit all the time so me not wanting to go back in that water the doctor called me back up I thought I was going to get like a medical kick out of the military

so no quitting for me they'll kick me out so I can have some pride. The doctor said, no, man, we could put you back in the training. And I was like, fuck. But after a week, I'm like, you know what? I missed one week. There's only three weeks left. There's a good chance, you know, I could tough this shit out and go on.

But I went back to the CO and the command officer of the program. And the sergeant said, hey, you got to start from day one because you missed, you know, that week of training. And I broke. I broke. I couldn't imagine going back through that again. So I made up a lie. And I said, man, the sickle cell thing is really scaring me. It was the fucking water.

It wasn't sickle cell. And I pretty much quit. Even though they gave me a medical, I quit. So from the age of 19 to the age of 22, I went and did a job called TACP, where you control fast movers behind enemy lines. Cool job, but there's no water. I was afraid of the water, so I avoided it. And I gained 125 pounds in that time frame.

I went from 175 to almost 300, to 297 was my heaviest. And I started finding things that was comfortable. And the more things I found comfortable, the more uncomfortable my mind was. Because that voice I was telling you about, it always was there. I was just trying to avoid that conscience. I wanted to be left alone from that conscience and it wouldn't leave me alone so i got out of the air force and i started working for a job called eco lab where he sprayed for cockroaches at 24 and um spraying that different steak and shakes red lobster whatever from 11 o'clock at night to seven o'clock in the morning and what changed i came home

and watched this discovery channel show, class 224. I came home from steak and shake. I sprayed it down last, get a big old large 42-ounce shake, walk across the street and get a box of mini donuts from 7-Eleven, and I would drive home for 45 minutes this big old fat guy who, yeah, I worked out, but I was fat. I didn't run, didn't PT. I just hit the gym. So driving home, turn the TV on, and what comes on, Discovery Channel Show,

and that's where everything changed for me. I was taking a shower. I walked out, heard these guys, and I watched the show, and it made me reflect big time on the piece of shit that I am, and I'm exactly what people said I was going to be. So what was on this show that really struck home it was um I saw these guys going in the water so I was terrified of it I mean I can't even express have you had a big fear and I know a lot of fighters have fears

and stuff like that but they get over them but a lot of us have these fears that you just don't want to fucking face and um I have a lot of them. I had a lot of them. And that's what created the person who's in front of you today. And we'll get into that. But just a scared bitch is what I was. But I was watching these guys going through Hell Week, Class 224. And these guys ringing the bell, quitting, dropping their helmet down,

rolling out, a lot of guys just leaving. And it made me reflect on my fears my insecurities and i saw real men when i thought were real men who were staying who were overcoming adversity who were overcoming all these different things that i had blamed so many people in my life my dad my mom for not being there when i was 14 years old my my mom was gonna get remarried to this great guy he got murdered and then I moved back to a small town in Brazil and and I everybody was a blame my learned disability my my skin color you know me being everything and so I sat there for a while and I was like man I got a fucking I've got it no one's gonna fucking come to help me no one's gonna fucking come to help me it's fucking me against me period and I was like, man, I got to fucking, I've got it. No one's going to fucking come to help me. No one's going to fucking come to help me. It's fucking me against me, period. And so I

had to man up and I said, the first thing I started doing is facing every fucking fear I have, no matter what the fuck it is, man. And these things would keep me up at night. No one, people who are hearing this shit, they will never really understand and grasp when you face these things and so many things, how they keep you up and haunt you at night. I think there's a lot of people out there that know what you're talking about. I mean, and so that's what it did. And I had two options to either be that 300 pound guy who's prayed for cockroaches and made a thousand dollars a month. cockroaches and made a thousand dollars a month and at 24 years old knowing when i'm 50 fucking years old i can reflect on this and think about what guy i never became or i can totally just sack it up and fail and fail and fail until i succeed so i started calling recruiters up i said

i'm gonna go be a fucking navy seal and every recruiter so there's a weight and height limit to get in the military. And I was 6'1 and 297, and I had prior service, which was a big deal. So I called all these recruiters up, and all of them said, hey, how tall are you, blah, blah, blah, blah. They got into conversation to see if I was even qualified. And by the time I got to my weight, the phone would hang up pretty much, like, hey, you know what, call somebody else, try to get in the reserves. So I tried to get in the reserves, and I called this guy named Steven Salgio a recruiter up he said hey come on in he saw me put me through the weight standard all this other stuff and

to get into the class I had to get into I had to lose 106 pounds in less than three months so I was like fuck that I can't do that I grabbed my chocolate milkshake and went back to Ecolab. I'm going back to work, man. This is my life. So in this job, you're looking for cockroaches, looking for rodents and stuff like that. And this next morning or this next night, I went to work and I don't like cockroaches too much. I hit the mother load of cockroaches. And this restaurant got full of cockroaches and rodents and everything else. And I sat there and said, this is my life. I said, this is my life. You are exactly who the fuck. This is it. And I said, this ain't going to be it for me. So in that restaurant, I quit my job, left my canister in that restaurant, my spray canister got back in my eco lab truck

and i went home and i started working out like somebody i was i became the most obsessed person on the planet earth and i was basically i had to invent a guy that didn't exist i had to invent a guy that can take any pain any suffering any, any kind of judgment, be called nigger, be called whatever the fuck in the world and be able to stand in the fucking room and say, go fuck yourself. I had to build this callous mind and I built it through suffering. I built it through downright fucking just crushing myself. If it was raining outside at three o'clock in the fucking morning, if it was snowing, the first instinct is don't go out there and do shit. My instinct was we got to fucking go out there anything that was fucking horrible in my life that I would normally say no that was

inhumane to most people I had to go do it and I started callous in my mind at this point in my life and I lost the weight I lost the weight and I went the weight, and I went back to recruiter. I got into that class, and I went through three Navy SEAL hell weeks in one year. Only guy to ever be in three hell weeks in one year, to my knowledge. The first one I didn't make it through. The next two I did. And I just didn't stop anymore from there. And I started realizing through this through this process that the fucking mind

is what you created and I started opening different doors that I didn't think were even there that I didn't think even existed and the more doors I opened up the more I started realizing that my potential is damn near endless and it changed my whole mindset so I went from David Goggins

and I created Goggins. And that journey is a priceless journey that it's hard for me to even explain to people because it sounds so quick and easy. Like, I lost this weight, and I went through three hell weeks. I went to ranger school. I went to Delta Force, Lexington, whatever it is. It was brutal. It's a brutal journey every fucking day.

Are you happy? If anybody knows my life story, and I'll to give you a just a snippet of it where i'm at today is in front of joe rogan telling you my life to get through where i became to get through where i'm at now there's nothing but pride i have for myself that i can't really i can't really show people because i have this face i have this face that they see like, are you happy? What's wrong with you? I'm driven. I'm obsessed.

And that's what you see. That's it. People need to hear this story. This is an exciting story for people because there's a lot of people out there that feel trapped and they feel stuck. And they feel like they can't do anything. This is who they are. You're a guy who felt that exact same way but figured out how to not be that person and be a person that you would admire How did you what were the first steps like you had some slips before right because you you quit because of the water thing

Right, but then when you went back the second time you decided you're gonna lose all that weight and you quit that job Did did you was it just straight forward from there or were there some days where you just failed and then you picked it back up again so my first run when i decided to lose the weight i was like i said 297 i was about 32 body fat and i went my idea was to run four miles for my first run i didn't know how bad it's gonna hurt me i used to run before i was fat and i was like it i can do this i ran a quarter mile and walked home i walked home and sat on my couch and cried i went to my mom's house who was about 40 about maybe 20 minutes down the road and cried and getting her couch saying i can't fucking do this i don't know what i'm gonna do i uh just got

somebody pregnant my life was this fucking i was I was making $1,000 a month. My rent was $8,000 a month. And my mom just kept fucking with me. And kept fucking, you're not good enough, man. This isn't for you, man. These guys are the baddest motherfuckers on the planet Earth. You're not that. And what it was, and it's kind of funny, I was obsessed with Rocky.

Rocky 1, in particular. And when I was a kid, I'd come home every day, and I'd watch this fucking show, Rocky. Rocky won in particular. And when I was a kid, I'd come home every day and I'd watch this fucking show Rocky. And I would fast forward with the little VHS tapes to round 14. Round 14 fucked me up like nobody's business. Why? The song came on. So when I broke the pull-up record, I listened to the song for 17 hours. It's minutes and 13 seconds and i'm able to visualize and dream like nobody's business and i know that i can create a vision that many people can't and i work for it so the vision i had was when apollo creed beat the fucking shit out of rocky beat the the shit out of him, he kept fighting. He was a dumb fighter, couldn't read, couldn't fuck, that was me. Couldn't read, couldn't write, just punchy, everything about him.

And Rocky beat the shit, or Apollo beat the shit out of him. He was in that corner and everybody was saying, stay the fuck down. And him getting up, him getting up, Apollo Creed raised his arms up in the fucking air, turned around, thought he won the fight. He turns around and sees this guy getting up, and it was the face of Apollo Creed that changed my life. The face of Apollo Creed. It was like just by that motherfucker getting up, not winning, just by him getting the fuck up. Apollo Creed was champ. He was the best.

Rocky had taken his soul, had literally taken his soul his head goes down he looks I'm like who what the fuck are you I want it to be that not Rocky I want to be the guy that people looked at I don't give you like me or didn't like I don't care but I said this motherfucker is gonna keep coming after whatever the fuck is in front of him I wanted that I wanted that I wanted that worse than anything in the world so that is I kept picturing me falling down and getting up and every motherfucker that called me nigger I was dumb even myself even myself I wanted to feel something besides the feet. I wanted to just go the distance.

And that going the distance pushed me to a point of where now I go way past the distance. So you go the first day, you run a quarter mile, and then you walk back home, and you're upset. How do you move forward? So basically what I did was I came home, and I had a talking milkshake i sat down and i gave up i said this ain't gonna fucking happen man i could lose 106 pounds and i can't even go a quarter fucking mile i started being able to take negative shit and be happy and this whole i say what if a lot it sounds corny and it sounds weak but it's true one of the recruiters said there's not many black navy seals matter of fact i was a 36 african american seal in history it's in over seven years because the fucking water you know i mean people

get mad at me it's fucking true just get over it and so i was like man what story would it be if my fucking fat dumb lying to be friends with people insecure ass can overcome this shit and that what if mentality like that that dreamer mentality just would always fuel me it was just fueling man what if i can be what if i can be a SEAL, man? What if I can go from running a quarter of a fucking mile? Now I run 205 miles. What if I can go? Just what if I can go?

And how would that feel if I'm graduating? Because I don't forget at the graduation thing I was talking about, 224, like the video I sat down and watched. This command officer stood up and he said to the graduation, guys who are graduating buds, like 18 of them, he said, we live in a society where mediocrity is often rewarded. And he went on to say something about these men detest mediocrity. And I wanted to be a man that detests mediocrity. It got me in a lot of trouble in the SEAL teams and going forward in my life because I just I started looking down on people for not going hard as fucking shit and I started to create

different things but that's for a different day but I just believe that you know my whole mind changed that is a problem that a lot of people who work hard do have you get angry at people who don't work hard to the point where you you know you want to insult them you want to you want to smack them and it's really because you're scared of seeing that yourself yeah that's probably the truth that's probably the truth so I guess a lot of my life I would see people and it probably was a direct reflection of who I was and I would get mad at them but in reflection is probably just be getting mad at myself yeah that's for me 100% when I when I see people that are half-assed and things I get mad at them, but in reflection, it's probably just me getting mad at myself. Yeah, that's for me, 100%. When I see people that are half-assing things,

I get terrified of seeing that in myself, and I get mad at them. Right. And it's not a good way to handle it. No. But it's natural because you're just terrified of seeing that trait. Right, and it costs me. So you come back, you do the quarter mile, you walk back home. How do you regroup? So what I did, I sat down there and I put Rocky in. I got my milkshake, put Rocky. I said, you know what?

I was big time in Rocky and Platoon. Why Platoon? I love to see people who were getting beat down. And there's scenes, there's scenes that just drove me and people in my hell weeks, you know, I was in three of them, they'd always hear me singing these songs, humming these songs in torturous situations. When everybody's quitting this fucking code, I would be somewhere gone, somewhere fucking gone, somewhere fucking dark as shit.

There's a scene in Platoon when Elias, when Barnes shoots Elias, and, you know, they think Elias is dead, and the choppers are tanking off, and Charlie Sheen's asking, you know, Tom Barringer, where's Elias? Where's Elias? William Dafoe? Oh, I found him back there dead somewhere. And through the woods, the Viet Cong is chasing Elias through the woods, and they're shooting him in his fucking back. And all he wants to do is get to the fucking chopper.

He's getting shot in his back. He's getting up. He's getting shot in his back he's getting up he's getting shot in the back he's getting up and you see this guy just fighting I love the fucking guy who just fucking fights and so I put these things in as reminders that you're gonna have to fucking suffer man this fucking 0.25 man this is man you're gonna have to fucking suffer to to to go from this fat insecure motherfucker to one of the best guys on the planet earth this journey is gonna take something that is gonna be incomprehensible to most people and these different visualizations how i visualize them in my self-talk it became so nasty and dirty that I almost liked the fact that I went.25. So it became from being defeated to like, man, all right, motherfucker,

maybe tomorrow I'm going to go.75. You know, it just became this different mindset. I turned negatives into positives. So I would take it like, who would even think about doing this? So I would sit on my couch saying, who at 297 who can't fucking swim that great, who's scared of the fucking water, would have the fucking balls? Who had the balls to fucking man up, quit a job, and go and just put everything on himself?

So it's how I started talking to myself and putting myself in a whole different category. And that would fuel me the next day. And I just kept using that as fuel and fuel. No one would do this shit. No one would would do this shit you're the baddest motherfucker around you're the baddest motherfucker ever lived and I had I just kept fueling me with the with the right kind of message that I needed to hear that I was never telling myself and through time it became reality to myself so you start out on the first day and then do you start running again the second day?

Yeah, the second day we're right back after it again. But I started realizing I can't run that far. Right. So what I did was I became damn near a professional cyclist with the miles I put on the bike.

So I never, whenever I watched TV, I had to be doing something. So I was riding the bike. I rode a bike a lot to lose the first initial kind of weight because my bones were just hurting so bad. My body was just broken.

And I learned to get over that also. And I tried to swim a lot. I wasn't a great swimmer, but putting fins on kind of equalized my body. I wasn't so negative buoyant. So I started fitting a whole bunch. And I spent hours in the pool, hours in the pool, trying to get more and more comfortable. Not because I was going underwater. I was so scared of the water that I had to live in the water. I had to become

one with the water. So going to the pool used to scare me. So I went to the pool an awful, awful lot. And then the bike got easier. I was able to run more. I went from like one mile. One mile was a great accomplishment. Two miles. And then from two to three was a big one. Then I went from three to six. And then like they have a warning order that they give people to get ready for buds. And the whole thing was running six miles five days a week.

And that was my goal. And so I just kept, I failed. I go back to scratch. I use some positive motivation. I have like one day where I was like fucking defeated. But I started realizing this is part of the process. This is part of the journey. I had to realize this is part of my process versus just saying, like I used to,

I'm just not good enough. If I'm not good enough, we always say that shit. I'm just not good enough. And then we try something else. I'm going to fucking make myself good enough. And that became my mentality. I'm going to make myself good enough. And that became my mentality. I'm going to make myself good enough. And so I misunderstood a lot, but that's all it came down to.

I made myself good enough. And the days I couldn't run that far, the next week, I would do two a days. So on the running, if I ran a quarter of a mile, I'd wait a fucking couple hours. It'd haunt me, bother me. I'd try to run a half a mile the next time same day you can do more than this if I had to walk, I had to walk it just became a process of grinding and grinding

and grinding is not even a good word for it it's not even a good word for it and just going further and further and then when I got through running I'd go to the bike, I'd go to the pool if I got tired somewhere, my legs got through running I go to the bike I go to the pool if I got tired somewhere my legs are tired I go to the gym and I developed this crazy workout where I was doing volume like two three hundred reps of like very lightweight people I say how you know how come you don't have any

like loose skin my workout routine the gym became sick it became sick I was just doing two three hundred reps, 400 reps on like chest, just like for one simple exercise, the bench press. And I rack it, get back on it, just rep it out, trying to burn as many calories as I can, build that muscle mass. And I just became, just became obsessed with it. So when you're doing this, are you worried at all about repetitive stress injuries or the fact that your body's not conditioned for this? And you're doing this are you worried at all about repetitive stress injuries or the fact that your body's not conditioned for this and you're basically taking your body where you had abused it right and now you're you're forcing it to live like an elite athlete right i didn't care i didn't know any better i didn't think about it wow i didn't i i didn't know that working out that hard

would fuck you up i didn't did it fuck you up oh yeah yeah that's one reason why i went through three whole weeks so i don't talk about a lot but um the stress of my life getting to 24 caused me to have some serious psoas issues i didn't know anything about this the psoas muscles what we use is your hip flexor muscle and basically under stress it starts to tighten up and i was i stuttered for from the time i was in third grade time I was in seventh grade white blotches on my skin I was just I was a nutcase and so the insides of me are also getting fucked up so in this process um my psoas muscle got real tight to my t12 I can show you the bump in the back of my head after this show's over, but I started growing this fucking large tumor-looking bump in the back of my head from my body compressing. So I'm six foot one, but my

muscles were like five foot nine because I just started just the muscle tightness from my psoas going to my T12. I was just getting tighter, my quads, everything getting tired from just stress, just stress in my life. So the more I stressed my body with the workouts, my lower body became out of balance. So I had a bunch of stress fractures, a bunch of injuries going through buds. And how I got through buds was they gave me my third time was my last time going through hell week. I basically put a black sock on at four o'clock in the morning and I would get duct taped. I had numerous stress fractures on both of my legs because my Because my body was literally like coming in on itself and my legs were like I was I was pronating it really bad and putting

Stress on my stress on my shins and so I would put duct tape I would duct tape my feet and I was show you the top of them where I have pressure ulcers That were the size of quarters from you you know, how the ankle joint. So the foot goes to the shin and how you move this with a tape was so tight. It just created a nice ulcer right there. And I just just kept going through it. So you just use that tape to just support your ankles. Right. So I basically cast myself.

And for the first 30 45 minutes the pain was excruciating but then it would go numb and i would go numb and then that's how i got through wow did that do any long-term damage oh i yeah i've been out for five years so i retired from i did 21 years in the military i did time in the air force and i did about 16 years in the navy how old are you 43 sounds like Force and I did about 16 years in the Navy. How old are you? 43. Sounds like you're 30.

That's good. That's good. You really, you look very young for your age. Whenever I'm stressed, I get after it. I fix whatever's bothering me. So I basically over the last five years, everything I've done in my life, I did it being very unhealthy. I'd never talked about it. I just kept going. And it cost me pretty much, I was choking my insides out. Adrenal issues, tons of adrenal issues, thyroid issues, anything with the endocrine system pretty much shut down

on me. My organs were pretty much shutting down. And I went from a guy who could run 205 miles to a guy who couldn't get out of bed. The doctors were trying to search what was wrong. That's why I figured out the psoas muscle. No one figured it out. I hit it by accident. I've missed two days of stretching out in five years. What happened was all the shit I did to myself, the stress I was under, physical, mental, all kind of shit, it just choked me out from the inside. Doctors put me on all kind of shit. It just choked me out from the inside.

And doctors put me on all kind of medication. And the medication started doing the exact opposite. Like what kind of shit? I was on DHEA. I was on some different things for my estrogen, different things for my, I was on anything to do with your, like with your endocrine system.

Thyroid medicine. Good God, I was on cortisol all kind of shit to get my stuff i i'd like this lump in my throat from like the heart was always i couldn't run down the street my body was just jacked up couldn't sleep my whole body was just down shutting down i could give you a lot more than that but just give an example i was fucking dying and so i couldn't do anything i went from a guy who was this guy to a guy who can't do shit and doctor like i don't know what's wrong with you man you know your labs are this is it ptsd is it what's going on i knew when any of that shit so i sat in the bed one day and i realized man my life is over this is it but it gave me time to reflect on everything I had accomplished I've

never taken time to reflect on the kid I was to the man I am now so honestly the time I wasn't working out it was the best time of my life because I got a chance to really reflect back and be proud of who I became I never took time to do that it was like one after another get the fuck after get after get after you ain't good enough motherfucker get after it get after it and um i got halted so anyway this process went on for a while more medication this isn't working that's not working no doctor can figure it out i'm like fuck it i saw this doc about eight years before this happened and he was like hey man you're so fucking tight i've never seen anybody in my life as tight as you.

You need 50,000 hours of stretching. He used to throw out some crazy number. I was like, whatever. Stretching, you know, stretch. Stretching's bad for you. He thought stretching was bad for you? Yeah, stretching's bad for you, man. Why'd you think that?

I read some article. You know, man, fuck stretching, man. I worked out so hard. I didn't have time to stretch, man. I was running 150 miles a week. I was biking to know, man, fuck stretching, man. You know, I worked out so hard. I didn't have time to stretch, man. I was running 150 miles a week. I was biking to work, man. I was getting after it, man. I was working a full-time job.

And stretching and doing that. So my body was literally getting tighter and tighter, not just from what I was doing. Everybody thinks, oh, because you ran this. No, it wasn't that, man. And so I said, no, I'm going to try to stretch out. So I don't do anything for like 10 minutes or you know i don't do no six minute abs bullshit so i started stretching out one hour hour and a half long story short man i shaved my head almost every morning and that bump that was on the back

of my fucking head i started realizing it was shrinking for some fucking reason i don't know why because i shaved my head back and i was like it's getting smaller smaller that bump got healthier i got smaller that bump got i was like oh hold up motherfucker what's going on that's so as muscle started getting more and more stressed out more and more relaxed and over a period of five years i'm the best shape my damn life right now from stretching out wow that's all it was i went from like i can't even count the medications i was on now i'm on a very low dose thyroid pill period do you ever do yoga all the time man all the time and i i if i were to tell somebody one thing right now man that that's so has muscle and getting that hip flexor opened up because we're all stressed the fuck out.

It's so much worse than others. It changed my life. Yeah. How do you say Nick Gregorius? How do you say his last name? The Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt from England? The Greek fellow? He has a great quote about yoga.

He said, Yoga is a martial art you do against yourself. Yep. It's a great way of putting it 100% that's what it feels like when you're in there right 100% and so you how many years ago was this was five years ago you couldn't do anything and how long was there a period where you couldn't work out at all there was about so I always try to do something but I couldn't run hardly at all I could run maybe half a mile and all that heart shit would happen and my heart would get afib and all kind of stuff would happen and I started just stretching and also I tried to do pull-ups every now and then but everything

was just I didn't have the energy I didn't have anything I mean nothing was processing right for me so did you think that you had just broken your body oh yeah pushed it too hard 100% I I sat back in that bed that night and I had a lot of time to reflect. I said, you know what? I was actually kind of proud of myself in a very sick, twisted way. Even though people don't understand it, I had to do what I had to do. And, you know, and I did it. Like, I didn't tell you how I got into ultra running.

You know, there's a lot of things that. So I pushed it extremely hard. I went way beyond what I thought was capable. Like my first ultra race I did, I was heavier. I was in Iraq. You know, the Marcus Luttrell lone survivor. I was in buds. I was in three hell weeks, as you know, as I said a million times.

And I knew a lot of guys that died in the operation. I was at free fall school with Morgan Luttrell, who was his twin brother, during the Operation Web Wings, where Marcus Luttrell was the only survivor. I knew Marcus Luttrell well, and I was about 200 and some odd pounds, and I didn't run hardly at all at this time. I was a SEAL, but I was like a bodybuilder. And I did elliptical trainer 20 minutes on Sunday. That's all I did.

That's all I did i fucked that cardio stuff i was never about it until this happened so that happened and i was like man i gotta find a way to raise money for these families so i googled the i i found a foundation special operations warrior foundation and i googled the 10 hardest races in the world i do nothing about ultra running. The first I'd ever run was 20 miles at one time. And so what came up was the Badwater 135. 135 mile run through Death Valley in the summertime. I thought it was a fucking stage race.

I didn't know people could run 135 miles at one time. I had no idea it was even possible. What do you mean a stage race? Where you run like 20 miles, camp out, and then run 20 more until you get 135 miles. Right. So I wanted an ultra runner to know what an ultra runner was. I called the race director up, Chris Costman of the Badwater.

And he said, are you an ultra runner? And I was like, I don't know what that is. He goes, have you run 100 miles in 24 hours or less? I was like, no. But I said, I'm a Navy SEAL. I was in three Hell Weeks. I was a Ranger. I gave him some resume. He didn't give a shit. He said, I'm a Navy SEAL. I was in three helwees. I was a ranger. I gave him some resume.

He didn't give a shit. He said, I don't care. You got to qualify for my race. And the deadline was up in two months for this Badwater race. And basically, he said, there's two more races you can do to qualify. And I might consider you in my race. We select the top 90 athletes in the world. And you're not even an ultra runner.

But I like your cause. I like what you're doing. He said, I'll call him up on a Wednesdaynesday and he goes there's a race on saturday in san diego san diego one day where you run around a one mile track for 24 hours so many miles you can get if you get 124 hours i will consider you in my race i did the math it's 14 some minute mile fuck it i can do that. Dumb shit thinking. I'll tell you that right now. It was rough.

First thing I've been in my entire life was this race. So I have my wife at the time. She's now my ex-wife. We go to Walmart, get a blue lawn chair, Ritz crackers, and mile plix. That's what I'm going to have for a 100-mile run. So show up at the start line of this race. It was the AUA National Championships. It's like the best ultra runners compete against each other to see how many miles you can get in 24 hours. And I'm this big bodybuilder looking guy with his shirt off. How much did you weigh back then?

I would say I was at least 230. At least it may have been more. Than jacked? Yeah, I was ripped the fuck up. I was big old chest out They I was I was jacked up. There's a picture of me He definitely didn't look like someone who could run a hundred. No, not at all So basically I start running and I get to about mile 40 mile 50 and I'm feeling pretty good I get to mile 70 and It was the the worst pain of my life. I sat down this blue lawn chair at mile 70 and it was the worst pain of my life i sat down this blue lawn chair at mile 70 and my the rich crackers after mile 20 became risk cracker balls i wouldn't hydrate incorrectly i didn't know

what to do i was drinking mild plex for my nutrition because i couldn't eat these rich crackers have very minimal water if any at all and i was just dying so i sat down this blue lawn chair as I was watching these runners go around in this circle I was all dizzy and lightheaded hadn't gone to the bathroom. It's been about 12 hours I went 70 miles about 12 hours was as good and I looked at my ex-wife now and I was like I am fucked I started seeing like three of her and once my body stopped my mind just went off and and once my body stopped, my mind just went off, and I had to go to the bathroom,

and the bathroom was like 20 feet away from me, if that, and I couldn't, and so I sat there and peed blood down my leg and started crapping up my back, and we had 30 miles to go, and my feet were broken. I was just in the worst shape, because once you stop running, not running like that. I mean, I hadn't run in almost a year i was just doing bodybuilding stuff in 20 minutes on the elliptical trainer no running at all i probably ran no shit no shit no more than 50 miles the whole year

that wasn't my thing i wanted to be like jack you i i didn't want to be cardio guy i wanted to be ripped big navy seal guy and um and the day before this race it's funny this guy named joe burns who put me through my hell weeks a seal guy he's one of the hardest guys out there he was in the gym the friday before i did this race and he was doing a full body squats deadlifts power cleans i said fuck it man you know he's a guy that approved me to do this race. He gave me the approval to go do this race and signed off on it. So I'm in the gym. I went in there and did a full body, hardcore squats, deadlifts, and everything with this guy.

Because I knew he was going to come watch me in this race. So I've always been about, all right, man, you're going to see me come in here and jack this weight. And tomorrow you're going to watch me do a hundred mile run We could think about that. So Basically, I paid for it. So he came out there with my favorite thing chocolate you know mini doughnuts because you knew my story of my past life and But the six mini doughnuts out there and I'll have my hat pulled down and at mile 70 man. It was torturous and with blood down my leg and 30 miles to go,

I started reaching the cookie jars, man. I started pulling off all kind of stuff. I reached in my mind and a lot of us, when we have bad times in life, even the hardest person in the world, we forget how badass we are during that hard time. I have a thing where I take a couple seconds to reflect on, hang on, man, you've been through this, you've been through that, you overcame this, overcame that. I don't ever close my mind to the fact that this can't be done. And I knew I had to get up. I needed nutrition. I needed hydration. I needed to stop being dizzy. So that's the first

thing I did. I didn't panic on i had 30 more miles to go to get 100 i started about the process slowly but surely i was able to stand up and i was literally hobbling around this track just walking no running at all i couldn't run my feet were in the worst pain it's the worst pain i've been in my entire life nothing in any training is even comparable to this last 30 miles and what happened was my ex-wife looked at me and she's like man you're just we agreed i'm not gonna make the time i was going way too slow and at that time at mile 81 something clicked that i'll never probably be able to do again with my mind body spirit soul everything just connected and my mind knew i wasn't fucking

around anymore it knew I wasn't going to quit it knew that guy was dead and buried and gone and I was going to die out here on this fucking one mile for whatever reason why I was going to get through this motherfucker I didn't give a damn it made no there was no fucking crowds there was no trophy at the end there was I wasn't even in a race in my mind there was was nothing. It wasn't about nothing. There was no nothing. It was a bunch of people who didn't know who the fuck I was. And it was me against me.

And I used all these different dark places to start bringing out light and just fucking going deeper and deeper. Ended up running the next 20 miles. I ran 101 miles. And I ran the next 20 miles, ran, at about a 10-30 pace. And I did 101 miles in 18 hours and 56 minutes Sat back down that blue Porter potty now my chair that got from Walmart and that's when the body realized I was done and This great feeling came over me, but also the worst pain in my my life i that's when i took a humongous

shit on myself literally like i like a fucking log up my fucking back pissed so much blood down and my wife was she was a nurse and she was freaked out i couldn't get up i couldn't stand up she backed this camry on the knoll of the grassy area i was at and we were both lifters at the time so she was decently strong. I put my arms around her neck. She got me to the back seat of the car, let the windows down, kind of smelled like horrible shit.

And I had this poncho on it because it was November in San Diego, so I'm sitting there, jackhammer in the back of this car. And she was terrified. I need to get to the doctor. I need to get to the doctor. So I said, just take me home.

So we lived on the second story, or the second deck of this apartment complex in San Diego. I got to the first deck. So I get out of the car and I could stand up, but with my arms around her neck. So I was just leaning down because I was going to pass out. Got up on her neck worked up my way up the railing Grandma, you know got my eyes on her neck again walk to the kitchen area, which is right in the front door I was laying on the poncho liner crap was everywhere. I Managed she helped me manage to get into the toilet into the tub and it's like dirt was coming out of my penis This looked horrible. This just gross thing the world is the worst pain I can ever ever ever be in in my life. And the craziest thing, I'll tell you a story because it's right now.

I'm not sadistic. I'm not crazy. People may think that. They may want to put a title on me after hearing me because it makes them feel better. Because they think, wow, this guy must be some special or just fucked up crazy dude. No. I'm a guy that came from nothing. Anybody's capable of doing shit like this.

Anybody. And I sat shit like this. Anybody. And I sat in that tub. She put the water on me. She called my mom up. And my mom was dating a doctor at the time. The doctor said, you need to get him to a hospital now. She came back in. All I want to do is call Chris Costner on the phone, the race director of Badwater.

I said, I fucking did it. So she said, I'm taking you to the doctor. I said, no, let me sit here and enjoy this pain. She said, what are you talking about? I said, you know, I go, I need to go to the doctor. I realized that, but I never thought it was humanly possible to do what I did. I went 70 miles and at 70 miles, I was dead. I was at 100% what I thought was 100%. I went 31 more miles after being in the worst physical shape I've ever been in in my life. And all that pain and suffering and thing was going through my fucking body. And I sat in that tub and the wires hit me.

And it was the most amazing feeling of accomplishment and I didn't want it to be numb I didn't want people to give me drugs and to numb this fucking pain I did this and as crazy as it sounds it was the most amazing moment of my entire life

to overcome such to come from this kid who was mentally tortured himself and was tortured it's all to this kid to this guy now who was able to overcome such amazing odds and obstacles and i called chris costum up the race director of bad water and he said the idea of a 24-hour race is to run 24 hours you only ran 19 and he put doubt in my mind that he wouldn't let me into Badwater. So a month later or so, about a month and a half later, I went to this race called

the Hurt 100. It's a 100 mile race in Hawaii, 26,000 feet of climbing. That was all he said? That's all he said. That's so crazy. I mean, he's a hardcore dude, but he didn't know how fucked up I was. Right. And he said, he didn't say, he didn't say, no, I was. And he said, he didn't say,

he didn't say no, I'm not going to let you in. He put enough doubt in my mind and said, man, I got to do more. So, I was broken,

I was broken bad. And like, How long did it take you to recover physically? The funniest thing about this, I don't tell this story very often. I had signed up for, I'm getting to that answer, it's right now.

I went on deployment and me and my wife and my mom signed up for the first Las Vegas marathon down the strip of Las Vegas. And that incident happened. So I ran a hundred miles before I ran a marathon. Two weeks later, roughly December 5th was this marathon that we all signed up for i couldn't walk i could not walk i was fucked up so 10 days or two weeks after this 100 mile in one race i did um this marathon december 5th in las vegas i said you know it's the first one i can't run maybe i can walk with my mom so I tried to go out to this little knoll around our grassy area in San Diego. I tried to run. Legs were broken. I said, fuck, I can't even, I'm jacked. Can't do shit. So I said, you know what? Maybe I'll watch you guys do the marathon and I'll cheer you guys on, whatever. And I said, I'll try to walk with my mom. December 5th happened. That gun went off.

2005, 14 days after, I broke myself off. And I qualified for the Boston Marathon. I ran a 308. That's crazy. And what's funny about it, I know people are here to say this motherfucker. Even when I tell you the story, I want to drop so many names. Google it. Look it up. I don't give a fuck. it almost seems like i'm making my own story up it does it almost seems like it to you it does like when i tell it if i were to hear somebody like let's say i listen to you know

listen to your joe rogan's podcast i heard some black dude from fucking brazilian talking about this happened this happened three whole weeks r of school ran 100 miles broke my feet broke my body I buy this mother is the biggest fucking liar on the planet ain't nobody do that shit is he might tell my story it almost sounds like some made-up shit so yeah sounds so crazy as you ran a hundred miles before you ever ran a marathon right then you didn't run again at all and you still qualified for the Boston Marathon so you ran a 308 right for the first marathon you ever did ever did two weeks after you ran 100 miles right with no training and nothing in between but it gets better than that you can see my training log that actually

posted up so that's when I started training for the hurt. So basically what happened was after that, I had about four weeks. What did it feel like to run that.308 if you could barely walk? When that gun went off, something went off in my head and I didn't feel that much pain at all.

Afterwards, I did. But something happened where I was like, the gun went off and that thing came back. Like, all right, man, what if? Because I wanted to qualify for Boston. That was my goal.

But I was jacked up, you know. And I didn't run as much as I should have at all over my Iraq training. I hit the weights. But my goal was, when I signed up for it a year early, I wanted to qualify for Boston, which was a 310.59. And I was like,

what if you can qualify for Boston, man? So what helped me out, I just ran 101 miles. What the fuck is 26 miles to me now? So the mindset going into it was like, I ran 75 more miles than this so i i use it to my advantage so after that happened i ran with my feet pretty much broken i would go to the physical therapist and they had this compression tape compression tape helped

because my feet were pretty bad off and i would run 70 80 100 mile weeks and then I went to the Hurt 100 racing Hawaii 26,000 feet of climbing over 100 miles probably one of the top 5 hardest 100 mile races in the world I wasn't even a real runner I had banked a lot of miles by the last

2 months but I wasn't a runner went out there and got through the race did it in 33 hours was the ninth place finisher not many people finished that that year and I qualified for Badwater and got in and I went on to lose weight and train hard and I got fifth my first year and went back my second year and got third when you say you went you lost weight like what were you eventually weighing so I went to the race about 190, 195.

So you lost quite a bit from your bodybuilding time. Right. That's over a short period of time. Right. How did you lose all that weight? Once again, I just worked out hard. I stopped taking my protein so much. I got off.

I was on this stuff called Nitrotech. And I got off all the protein stuff. I just started. I stopped hitting the weights so hard. And I just became a running fool. Became the Black Forest Gut, man, pretty much. Pretty simple, man. That's what happened.

Now, when you say you were using compression tape on your feet and that your feet were jacked up, what was the extent of the injuries? So basically, because of my pronation that I never figured out because of my psoas muscles. I always had issues with stretch fractures, shin splints. So I put a lot of pressure on the inside of my ankles. And so there's this tendon that goes up the backside of your, I don't know if it's your fibula, backside of that little bone, the backside of your foot. It goes right alongside that bone. bone on the backside of your foot. It goes right alongside that bone. And that thing was just so flared up on both sides that even this flexing my foot was just killing me. So I realized when you cast that thing up, casting my feet always helped me out because it locked my foot into a position that wouldn't make me pronate as much. So between the casting of that, and if you watch the Badwater video of 2006,

you'll see me crossing the finish line with this compression tape, literally like flying on my ankles because I went to the race with compression tape on my ankles. And so basically, I'd have that on my ankles. I had inserts in my shoes and also this wedge on the back heel of my left foot so then it would keep me from pronating that heel so much so I had all that on just to go run and I ran my ass off and went to Badwater 2006 and with uh compression tape on my feet and walked a lot but I got third place do you always run with regular running shoes i do yeah so now i don't have those issues anymore all the stretching has opened my body up to where

you know how it should have been so my alignment is pretty good it's not perfect so now i just run in regular running shoes now you know no more compression tape no more none of that stuff so if you see now if you look down there you'll see the compression tape and you'll see my ex-wife here in a second taking the compression tape off of me. She's doing it right now. See her right now?

See the tape? Yeah. So that's the tape right there that I had to wear every day of my life to run. Wow. So as you see, the story may be

kind of unbelievable, but there's some proof right there. Fuck, man. So that's how I... That was so painful. Yeah, I was pretty fucked up. As you see right now, me trying to get there. Fuck, man. So that's how I... That was so painful. Yeah, I was pretty fucked up. As you see right now, me trying to get up.

Oh, man. Yeah, I'm pretty destroyed right there. What is the most amount of miles you've ever run? At one time? Yeah. 205 in 39 hours. Wow. Yep, nonstop.

Yeah, I've had quite a few people on, I've met quite a few people now I've met quite a few people now Over the last year or so That have run ultras Courtney DeWalter, you know who she is? She won the Moab 230 Yeah, I heard about her 240 rather

Heard about her Yeah, she beat all the men by 22 miles Something like that Some crazy thing She was first place winner She beat everybody else Second place winner And with her, I mean, you would never believe it.

When you talk to her, she seems so normal. Right. She drinks beer and eats nachos and eats candy. That's ultra on her, man. She's just silly and she's fun. Yep. And there's no demon there. No.

I'm like waiting to meet a demon. Right. You know? I'm like, where's your demon? Right. Like, how are you getting through that? Her demon's a quiet demon. Right. It's there. It has to be there. Oh, yeah. There's, where's your demon? Right. Like, how are you getting through that? Her demon's a quiet demon. Right.

It's there. It has to be there. There's something there. It has to be. There's no other people that, everybody I know that can do that as a demon. A lot of us don't want to admit to shit. Yeah. We got them.

Oh, 100%. It has to be. Yeah. So when you do this and you qualify and you do that race in Hawaii right they just let you in after that no so the race in Hawaii yeah I actually called the race director up and there wasn't like a big time like I didn't have 100 mile race I believe I had and you know 100 mile you did the Boston Marriott or you did the Vegas Marathon yeah so I did a hundred mile 101 miles the Vegas Marathon. Yeah, so I did the 101 mile Vegas Marathon, went to Hurt 100, did that 100 miler.

And all this is in a very short amount of time. Yeah, so November was the first 100 miler. December was the 26th miler in Las Vegas. January was the next 100 miler in Hawaii. Do you know how fucking crazy that is? Like, say if I was your friend and I called you up on October 20th, and I go, hey, man, how many times have you run? You're like, ah, I run every now and then. You want know how fucking crazy that is? Say if I was your friend and I called you up on October 20th and I go, hey man, how many times have you run? You're like, I run every now and then.

You want to see something crazy? I don't know if you can pull it up or not, but if you can pull up my race schedule for 2007, just pull up David Goggins' race results. You're going to see something real crazy in a second. This is going to... I got to show you proof because why? I know my story doesn't make any sense, but just look at the dates of these races.

We're going to show it to you in a second. just look at the dates of these races and we're going to show it to you in a second it's um just look at the 100 miles and 50 miles back-to-back weekends how many weekends there were between races so if you look right here you can't really see it so if you look at 2007 you gotta go all the way down keep on going 2007 see those races there okay get right there so 100 miler hawaii oh jesus christ uh two weeks later three weeks later another one that's Keep on going, 2007. See those races there? Okay, get right there. So 100-miler Hawaii. Oh, Jesus Christ. Two weeks later, three weeks later, another one. That's 50-miler.

50-miler a month later. Then you're looking at, what, 14 days later, another 50K. 50-miler a month later. Then you look at less than a month, another 50-miler. 53-mer in June July was another hundred miler bad water was literally bad water was a month after I did that hundred miler 135 miler Leadville was less than a month after bad water the plain 100 was three weeks after Leadville Angel's Crest was to attend a week after that hundred miler their bear

100 was what 13 days after that hundred miler she's and then I ran the 200 in it said touring 3.5 but I didn't ran tour is 205 miles around there but what's not in there was that McNaughton race I did in 2007. That 150 mile race I also did in 2007 that wasn't listed. That was just my 2007 year. That's insane. Do you think that is what fucked your body up? No. No?

No. I still run the same mileage now. What fucked my body up was Hell Week. Really? Oh, yeah. You don't go through three Hell Weeks in one year. What happened was when I realized that my body was really jacked up was I was a big-time squatter. Loved squatting.

And I went through the first hell week, got messed up. Second hell week, I got all the way through. Then third hell week, I got all the way through. Then my third hell week, we had a guy die on Thursday. And then that hell week ended, and I graduated. How did he die? Pulmonary edema. It was a cold. His name was John Skopp. Cold as fuck hell week and i graduated how did he die pulmonary edema it was a cold name was john

scopp it cold as fuck hell week the pacific ocean is never warm and it rained the whole time the whole time it just rained and he um pretty much just drowned in his own fluid pretty much we were in the pool doing some evolution he sunk to the bottom um his temperature was hot he he missed a lot of hell week for getting pulled out for different stuff he wouldn't go quit and um he ended up dying in hell week but um yeah so anyway after hell week ended um i want to go back to the gym you know so second phase happened dive phase like i could get back in the gym start jacking my weight i love jacking weight and i realized i couldn't squat so i went from squatting a lot to I couldn't even squat the bar because my lower back was all fucked up.

And I was like, I don't know what's going on. It was because this muscle. So in Hell Week, your hip flexors are so, and I went through so many of them so fast. And so the hardest part of BUDS, I went through three times. Not the Hell Week part. That's one of the hardest parts. But it was the initial part of the

what everybody sees on TV the log PT the surf torture the daggone boats over your head all that shit I went through that person three times in one year and

over a period of time my hip flexors got so tight that it just jacked me up it jacked me up from my hip flexors. So always being so cold and so stressed out and everything led up to it. But this really was the part that I noticed I

could squat before Hell Week or before my first time going to Bud's. After Bud's, I couldn't squat anymore. Do you just think it might just be because your body was exhausted? No, because I for 12 years so I would I would go back and tough it out like like with Joe Burns He was squatting so I said fuck I'm gonna squat with Joe Burns But I just couldn't squat because that that muscle was attached to your t12. So what was it doing to is it locking up? It was just pulling so it made my hips feel like I couldn't sink my ass. I couldn't sink. So it was just incredible pain.

And then with the weight pushing me down and then trying to push up, the pain was just too much. So this is all range of motion issues. All range of motion issues, yeah. Wow. That's an important thing. For my friend Cam Haynes, who doesn't stretch, he's another friend of mine who runs ultra races. He ran that Moab 240 he's run the uh Bigfoot 205 he's run a few of those right um I know he's listening go stretch

dude yeah support man yeah well especially if you're working that hard right if you're doing that much yeah you're you're definitely locking up he could barely touch his toes yeah that's not a good thing that's not good right no no no it comes back to hurt you inside pretty soon now how flexible are you now because i would imagine you're probably a fucking ballerina at this point because knowing your brain i'm trying to get there i'm trying to get there so i stretch every night for at least two hours there's a thing that people say that always piss me off like because i'm pretty flexible they say oh you're naturally flexible people have a natural threshold like no they don't like a doctor told me that i go you don't know what you're talking about i'm like you don't know what you're talking

about because most people don't push themselves past that pain that stretch pain all right people want to put a title on you man it's easy for them oh you're just fucking natural exactly you're natural exactly no you don't work hard enough motherfucker yeah people built like chimps aren't usually flexible right you have to you have to force yourself to do that's right and uh i know it because i had a friend my friend tom radogna he was a football player jack big thick dude terrible flexibility he was taking taekwondo with me right and over the course of a couple years i saw that dude eventually develop a full split there you go and he just did it through his mind he just was everybody else was done training that guy would be on the mat constantly stretching always working out because he had built his body up so strong from all those years of squatting and lifting

that he just you know he was all tense everything was just like this super powerful right but all like very tense that's why i stopped you know that's why i never stretched because i wanted that strength yeah yeah you want that tight muscle but no i don't think it's stupid yeah i i think you're not supposed to stretch before you do big physical activities because I think it does weaken you somewhat. But I don't think being flexible overall makes you weaker. Not at all. Yeah.

Not at all. Well, it certainly doesn't for martial arts because you need that flexibility to have leg dexterity to be able to kick. Right. It's got to be fluid where it's not tightened up by the restriction of the motion of your body. I get it. It's got to be fluid where it's not tightened up by the restriction of the motion of your body. I get it. It's truth. I just think people are, for whatever reason, and I'm one of those, I drone on too much about yoga. I'm like one of those vegans.

It's like, you got to do it, man. Just try it. I get annoying, like a born-again Christian or something. I'm getting that way now, man. I'm getting that way now. For anybody who does anything hard, like if you do anything like weightlifting type shit or martial arts type shit where it's just everything's explosion. It's lifting. It's heavy.

It's push, push, push. Right. Yoga just will balance your shit out. Yeah, it will. Yeah, it will. It really will, man. And it's all these people that resist it. Like, there was some article recently that something along the lines of hot yoga is just trendy nonsense.

I read that. And then even in the article, it talked about that there might be some benefits in terms of like the strengthening your arteries. And they didn't even mention heat shock proteins. There's a study going on right now. I believe it's at Harvard. Right. One of my friends was telling me about it where they're trying to find the benefits of 90 minute hot yoga classes because they think

it might mirror the observed benefits of sauna which they already know for a fact has big benefits because of your body producing heat shock proteins to deal with the heat. That's why I put that sauna in here man. I go in that fucker all the time. Well no one can tell me it doesn't work. It's big.

It's proof positive. It changed my life. It wasn't a medication or this or that. It was stretching. Yeah. It was yoga, stretching, all that stuff combined. Changed it. Well, I just think it balances out your body in those static poses where you're just holding the pose and it just works

you out in a weird way. 100%. You just don't get lifting weights or hitting the bag or anything else. You're just not going to get that kind of working out. I can't agree with you more. And it's so difficult. That's what's crazy. You switch your ass off.

You're in there with a bunch of housewives and shit, and you're like, this is like the silent struggle. It's humbling. Nobody knows. No, it's humbling. If you see two doorways, and one of them is like fucking C.T. Ali Fletcher's fucking super pump iron addicts gym, which is hard work. And then right next to it is the yoga studio.

You're like, well, once you get done with all that hard work, you'll go over to that yoga studio. No, there's two different kinds of hard work going on. It's no joke. Two different kinds of hard work. Yes, sir. So what do you do now in terms of like you got over this five years ago you're in this bad situation where your body's not working right now everything's working great again well i had two heart surgeries also whoa yeah so you know what's wrong with your heart so i had a

hole in it so you know you're not supposed to have a hole in your heart and be a seal and it was born with it i was born with it it went undetected and me pushing so hard so in 2009 i was training for this race across america and um i just couldn't go anymore another pitfall in my life was the hole and i was pretty much off active duty seal for three years you know i had two hearts them trying to fix it so the hole was significantly large. Like how big? They say it was as big as a quarter. I'm like, how the hell is it as big as a quarter? Yeah, that's a pretty big hole in your heart.

Because they had two helix patches. I'm like, that's impossible. The helix patches are in my heart, so the two stents. What is a helix patch? It is like a little mesh. Like what they do for hernias? Maybe something like that. So they went up through my femoral artery and they placed this patch.

To go through your artery? Yeah, they went through my femoral artery. Like with a camera? Yeah. Whoa. No, the camera was down through my throat. Whoa. And they put this catheter through my femoral artery that went to my heart.

They went and they took this helix patch they placed it in there and then they found out six months later that the hole wasn't covered up enough yet because the hole was i mean and the helix patch was very damn big so they put and they go back in there in 2010 how does the patch adhere to your heart i guess your heart heals around the patch so but how do they stick it in place i i guess they put it where the hole's at, and then it kind of like inflates where the hole is at. And then that thing goes in there, and then it kind of covers the hole, and then the heart. So there's two things in my heart right now that the heart just kind of covered up. Whoa.

Okay, so here's it. So there you go. Jamie's got an image of it for us. Whoa. Yeah. So it's go. Jamie's got an image of it for us. Whoa. So it's attached to this little probe. Right. And then they put it over the area where the injury is. Wow, that's insane.

Yeah, atrial septum defect that I had. Atrial septal defect. So basically everything I'd done, I'd done. Thank God for medicine. Oh, shit. That's crazy what they could do. I'd be done. That's so crazy that they could do that. Yeah I was out for um I was off active duty for three years so I stuck I was in a recruiting area for three years trying to get back on active duty and

that's that was my life for three years so they put that patch in yep and now your heart's 100% it's 100% it's 100% wow yeah that's incredible yeah i was uh losing you know blood and i was this i was a bad off which is amazing that you were able to do all that with a hole in your heart that's what the doctors were saying you know because they didn't know i was a seal so i went in and the doctor that found the hole or he like so they gave me ekgs all this stuff once again man you it's after ran like 205 miles, you know, right? Hey, man, you're in great shape I'm like man, I just don't feel good like walking up the stairs is making me jacked up. So The doctor doc Shrek he's like, you know gave me a cage. You go to the doctor get an echocardiogram

So I'm in there getting echocardiogram just chilling out in in there. And the guy's talking to me, has his little wand in my heart. We're bullshitting about stuff. And he, when people get quiet, that's fucking not good, man. So he's in there, just had his wand in my heart, chilling out. Yeah, man, what are you doing? Yeah. Yeah. What's going on? And he says, I'll be right back. He goes gets a doctor doctor comes in puts the thing on my heart the doctor gets another doctor now I'm just freaking the fuck out I'm like okay because when it comes to your heart

it's a big deal so they come back in they say hey we can stop the echocardiogram when they talk to you in the hallway you have a hole in your heart and the guy didn't know that i was he knew i was a navy guy but i don't think he was a seal because not many black guys are seals and he had a conversation about you know we gotta fix this real quick i said yeah i mean then i came up i was the seal he said man you could have died jumping you could die diving you could have died

and all this stuff because basically the hole in your heart if it gets plugged with something like anything like you know let's say you get a bubble from diving or something like that you're gonna die right so i i i call it luck i call it luck wow so i uh i got through two surgeries they put me back on i lost they give you the first one and then how when do they realize that it's not not good enough so they take you back in, and you've got to get a bubble study, a bubble test. So they literally send bubbles that way, safe bubbles that way, to see if the bubble goes through your heart. So they have this echocardiogram again, and they hook you up, I think, to IV or something like that, and they throw these bubbles through your heart, and they see if it goes through.

After six months, when it should have been healed up, the bubble went through. So they had to tell me then, hey, we got to, you know, you're not good to go. So I had to take a year before I could have another surgery. Why did it take a year? Because that patch had to be completely, completely healed before they can go back in. But all this time, you knew you had a hole. Right.

So they knew I had a hole because of the heart surgery. Right. But all this time, like when you're waiting for it to heal, you know you have an extra hole. Yes, I know I have a hole. What were you allowed to do with your body then? Well, at that time, they go, you know, do how you feel comfortable. And so, you know, the hole is not going to kill you right now but you can't dive you

can't jump you pretty much wasn't a seal anymore so i was a recruiter for a period of time um so basically i was crazy about that is before my second surgery i was actually training for delta force i was i i wanted to go to delta and was rucking, ruck running a lot. And before my second heart... When ruck running, you mean you're running with a pack on? Yeah, a pack on my back with some weight on it. How heavy is the pack? 50, 60 pounds.

And you run with that on? Well, you're supposed to hike or hump, like ruck humping. Right. I ran with it. Because, you know, that's what I did. Right. So the day of heart surgery i did a ruck run jesus because i knew i was gonna be out of commission for a while so fuck it man i get my

last one in dude jesus christ so all i could do i have i have my training log so after my second heart surgery all i could do was walk so i became an ultra walker fucking walked my fucking ass off and i over a period of time It took a year for that thing to heal up and the hill You know my first bubble study after my second heart surgery came back negative or positive the bubble went through again Oh, no, and they're gonna crack me open. Oh, man over that period of time My heart healed around that thing nicely and I passed a second bubble test So the first bubble test was how long after a year it I passed the second bubble test. So the first

bubble test was how long after? A year? It was so the first bubble test after the first surgery was six months. And then you had to go through a full six months after that for it to totally heal then you have the second heart surgery and when does the bubble test fail after the second heart surgery? It was about six months. Jesus Christ. And they said and the doctor looked at me and said you know I'm sorry to inform you man we have to crack your chest open the next time they're really getting there and so i sat back thinking this could be a third heart surgery and then um that one they said we have to wait for six months to see if this thing's gonna close up right and i came back thinking man i'm about to get cracked the open and that bubble got pinned up, man.

Wow. Didn't go through. Maybe you forced it through with your mind. I know, right? Pulls that bitch up. When you're visualizing. That's it, man. That's something to visualize.

Holy shit, man. That is crazy. It's crazy you went on a ruck run with a hole in your heart, too. Well, I did it for several years, so I said, fuck it. I might as well keep on going, man. That's amazing. Now, after all said and done everything's good now yeah everything's i mean i'm sure something must pop up in my fucking ass not to do that you know everything's good right now i'm always waiting for the next thing to pop up and i handle the same way i was attacking but yeah as of right now i'm

the best shape my 43 years old just turned 43 februaryth. I am in the best shape of my life. I'm not knocking on wood because life, fuck it, life comes at you, dude. So, fuck knocking on wood, come at me. I mean, I would think that you would be a go-to guy for injuries. Yeah. Like, if anybody's had them. I've had them all, dude. I've had them all.

I've had them all. When you broke the world record for chin-ups, didn't you rip your arm apart? Pull-ups, yeah. So, if you pull up the picture, man, there's a picture of my hand. You'll see. I don't know. What is it? Pull-ups are hands out.

Yeah, hands out. And chin-ups are hands forward. Right, hands forward. So I fell twice before I finally got it the third time. And the first time, I ripped the shit out of my forearm. And then the second time, you'll see there's a picture of my hand, and it's a third-degree burn. So that's my hand. Oh, Jesus, man.

What in the fuck is going on? It looks like you got bit by a wolf. So what's funny about that is you see that that doesn't create after one pull-up. So if you can imagine the pain, because you have one contact point. That's it. Running, you can overcome it because you have these big, giant legs, and it's different. When you have these little, fragile, punk-ass hands touching the bar, imagine 4,030 pull-ups, how many times you're coming on that bar, coming off.

And I weighed 207 pounds at the time. So I was a bigger guy.'m like 195 or 185 now so I was almost I was 22 pounds heavier so I was a lot bigger there I am right there bam you look pretty thick get that shit man so you were doing it in sets of five sets of five so as you see I have these different people who are witnessing you you have to have your your your number there to make sure that you're, you know, qualified for the Guinness Book of World Records. That's 1450. I have a long way to go.

I have another 4,015 pull-ups to go right there. Jesus Christ. So, yeah. And how long did you do this over, 24 hours? It was seven. So I broke it at 17. Wow. And I was fucking over it.

What did it feel like on the last chin-up? You know what? Actually, there's a video that we have, and I was chasing this guy named Stephen Hyland. So this guy named Stephen Hyland had the record. And the video is my last three pulls before I broke the record. I'm talking so much shit to this motherfucker. I'm like, hey, motherfucker, you thought I wasn't going to get it, huh? I told you, bitch-ass motherfucker, I'm coming after motherfucker. I'm like, hey, motherfucker, you thought I wasn't going to get it, huh? I told you, bitch-ass motherfucker,

I'm coming after you. I'm here now. It's just me talking shit. It's a cool video, but I felt nothing. I was just happy. I didn't have to do any more. I did 67,000 pull-ups in nine months

in training for a record for 4,000. And the failures, so I did the first time in September, failed miserably on this day, so I did 2,588 or some shit like that. Failed miserably for millions of people. Two months later, November, tried again, failed again. Two months later, in January 19th, I finally fucking got it. So after I got it, it wasn't like I'm happy.

It was like, I ain't got to do more fucking pull-ups anymore. Roger that. That's all it was. I had to fucking check that bitch off, man. But you were doing them when I got here today. You know why? Because now it's a part of me, dude. It's a part of me, man.

I don't like doing them, so we're going to knock some out. You don't like doing them, so you got to do them. That's my whole life. Isn't it like when someone gets drunk on a certain whiskey like if they smell it they'll get disgusted like like jagermeister or something like that if they smell it no oh right is that what it's like with you with chin-ups with a lot of pull-ups with a lot of a lot of things yeah right i don't like running i don't like and people don't believe it but you know i was i was a big guy twice in my life so hence the reason why i just don't like running, man.

It hurts. It's brutal. It sucks going out. And I'm going to be gone for two hours. I'm going to be gone 39 hours running on a one-mile track. Who the fuck? I'm not crazy, man. That shit sucks.

I mean, people put me in this category of, you must be some crazy guy who loves it. No, man. No, that's why I do it, though. That's the only way to callous your fucking brain, man. It's the only way to get hard in life. People take these classes on mental toughness. Like, even Seals, they have a class about visualization, self-talk, eat an elephant one bite at a time, breathing control. Yeah, I roger that.

You got to put yourself in a hellacious situation. It's a lifestyle. How are you going to react? How are you going to react? How are you going to react? Like all that training goes out the fucking door when you're in the fucking cold water and you're fucking miserable. And it's the first hour of 130 hours of hell week. And that first wave goes over your head and you're the coldest you've been in your life. And your mind goes from hour one to hour one, fucking 30, all that fucking self-talking shit dude you ain't thinking about anything about getting the fuck out of here but if you live this shit on a daily basis and know how to calm your

mind down the self-talk will help all that stuff will help but usually we react we have pain we have suffering we react and we react about get the fuck out of here we got to go it's those people who are able to control that fucking feeling of fucking flight and say nah motherfucker there's a way through this it's not gonna be here forever I'm not cold right now

I went through three of them I'm not cold now I'm in a nice warm studio with you you gotta think about that shit this shit's gonna end it's gonna end but we don't know that

we don't think that at that time it's gonna last forever and then you get to sit back on Friday with everybody walking across the you know back on the grinder all the 16 17 18 guys that graduated hell week and you get a chance to watch these guys victorious and then you get the chance to think about that you take that hot warm shower first thing that comes to your fucking

mind is why the fuck did i quit so what keeps me going i've quit several things i know what's on the back end of fucking quitting. It's a lifetime of thinking about why the fuck did I do that? And I ain't fucking doing that no more. There's something about talking to a guy like you that a lot of people hope that you're going to say some magic thing that's going to click in their brain. Everybody wants it. And it's going to change who they are. Like, what is it?

What is the thing? thing that's going to click in their brain everybody's change who they are like what is it what is the thing that's why people go to these self-help conferences and they take these classes and they hope that someone's going to say something that changes the way their mind works it's hilarious to me it is it's kind of hilarious to me too but what is also hilarious is that what you're saying is that you have to do those things you have to suffer you have to live in it you have to be comfortable in it and then maybe some of that shit will help you a little bit along the way period and i went to i was uh when i was a seal recruiter i got invited to mit smart ass motherfuckers there man I'm not that I'm a cigarette animal I'm a knuckle dragger and um there was this guy there I forget his name but

he was like the top head head guy old white guy you know all all geniused out and we were on this panel and they were asking us all these questions about the mind mental toughness and shit he was answering them and I wasn't answering many questions and i'll never forget he was just answering them off of theory he never put his fucking ass in shit you read a bunch of fucking books and you think that you know how the fucking mind works and shit i had gone through hell since a kid and then all the way up until now right so i know so that theory is Yeah, there's a lot of good stuff out there you can read from people, but I had lived hell. And when you put yourself in hell,

that's the only time you can figure out how the fuck to get through that motherfucker. You can't read somebody else's book about some theory on how to do shit, some guy who sat up in their nice warm office and wrote some book with a nice cup of coffee in the fucking hand. No, I want to see that guy who immersed himself in fucking hell. And he thought about quitting and leaving and his wife and his kids. And why am I here? Is it worth it?

All this crazy shit is still said and found out a way to get through it. So basically, that's that's the bottom line of it all. We all want to read about how we can quickly get somewhere. That's why the six minute abs and all that shit is so powerful. You may get some results from it, but they're not permanent. The permanent result comes from you fucking, I say it all the time, you have to suffer. You have to make that a tattoo on your fucking brain. So when that hard time comes again, you don't forget it.

You may forget it for a second, but you can go back in the cookie jar, I call it. It's something that we've all endured. I call it the cookie jar, and we often forget how hard we are, but you got to reflect back. Take a couple seconds to reflect. I've been through endured. I call it the cookie jar. And we often forget how hard we are. But you got to reflect back. Take a couple seconds to reflect. I've been through this. I've been through that.

And then remind yourself, I'm a bad motherfucker. And then you can get through that shit. But if you don't believe it, you haven't endured shit, you're just blowing smoke, man. And you're not going to get through anything. What was this guy saying? What was his theories that he was throwing out there? His theories was about, I forget exactly what it was, but it was something about what the mind does under stress and how we can't.

He said how we can't do something. And I did it. I did what he said we couldn't do. What was he saying you couldn't do? It was something about if you're born a certain way, it was something about if you're born if you're born a certain way somebody if you're born a certain way you can't become this way it was totally saying that who i am now like i had to be born with some not genetic power or some some gift from god but i had to have some kind of special gift had to have some kind of special gift had to have some kind of special

gift i forget what set me off but it was like we had to be to to be somewhere you had to be born with it what was the concept and i know what i was born with and i know the battle that i had in my mind so when he said it i just sat there looking my face and someone in the crowd asked me a question and i totally contradicted everything he he said I was like nah man I mean I fucking know for a fact that you can be this fucked up dude like really fucked up dude and with the right mindset it sounds so easy with the right mindset doesn't sound easy it just I know what you're saying. It sounds like a simplistic answer. You can.

You can. But you have to go into those dark chambers that we often shut off and you got to open them up. You got to open up and fight that fucking demon. Get in there. Talk to that motherfucker and say, what's up? We all like to take this four lane highway.

The easy highway. It has fucking signs. It has restaurants. We all love this four lane highway. The easy highway. It has fucking signs. It has restaurants. We all love that four lane highway. We always step over the shovel. And all I did was I picked up that fucking shovel. And that shovel, I made my own path. And you may have big boulders and shit. They may be getting 200 miles up the road faster than you.

But going through this path of life, this journey over here that you make yourself, that's incredibly difficult. What comes out the other end of that motherfucker is some glorious shit that you can't even explain to people. And we're afraid. Bottom line is most of us, even the people who have all these theories and shit,

it's easier to accept the fact that I'm just not good enough. I wasn't made to do that. And yeah, some of us can't be LeBron fucking James. But I'll tell you right now, man, we can do a lot of shit when it comes to this pure arm guts and willpower and getting through shit. We have a lot more with a lot more than we think we have. Yeah, the problem with a guy like that with his theory is his theories are based on results. And those results are based on human beings.

And most human beings, there's certain people that are born with certain gifts like a guy like lebron james obvious physical talent you know john jones and mma obvious like physical talent but there's when you look at someone who's super successful you always assume that it has to be because of some sort of physical gifts because people look at themselves and i'm sure this doctor this old dude probably had like a little gut and probably that's exactly how he looked little tiny arms and weak shoulders and probably thought well there's certain people that are just mesomorphic and probably broke it down all these scientific terms right you know they they just have a fast twitch muscle fibers and they'll say all this crazy shit

that is true at the very highest levels of the winners right but it doesn't mean that you can't become that no it just means that it's too painful for most people to go through so very few people ever get there so if you look at the actual results he would be correct but he's not correct because he doesn't take the shovel exactly that. That's the moral of the story. There's not some easy, lit up, street life path with nice smooth roads. That's right. It's a difficult motherfucker where you're going to fail and you're going to be in your head. You're going to be saying, I'm not good enough.

And it's how you get through that. It's how you get through that on a daily basis when that thing is saying, man, I'm 43. I've done so much. You start to become civilized. The refrigerator gets full. You start making money and you start, I'm not getting cold anymore. I'm retired. At 40, people shouldn't be playing basketball or football or being in the middle.

You start to believe this shit. And it becomes in your fucking mind like there's people who are retiring you know at 40 something years old or 30 something years old at 43 i'm still putting 100 mile weeks still doing thousands of pull-ups do thousands of push-ups because i'm not allowing myself to become civilized the worst thing that can happen to a man is become civilized you lose that fucking fight you you you lose that why the fuck am i doing this shit i'm good you ain't good man you ain't never fucking arrived and that's just my mentality you may have more but you never fucking arrived you want to be uncommon amongst uncommon

people period uncommon amongst uncommon people is one of the greatest ways to put it that's it like if you're the if if you're like me, what got me in trouble with the Navy SEALs is I wanted to be one so bad. So bad. I fought my ass off. And I saw them as uncommon people. Very uncommon. But once you become a Navy SEAL, you're all Navy SEALs. So guess what happens?

You're fucking common again. I wanted to be uncommon amongst uncommon people. I wanted to be the guy. I don't care if you fucking like me. I don't care if you don't understand me. I didn't give a fuck. Once I went through this fucking journey, this path of life, you ain't got a whole bunch of fucking guys that don't fucking like me. I don't give a fuck.

I'm a warrior. Period. There's a lot of guys that have been in a lot more combat than me. A warrior is not always that a warrior is a motherfucker who says hey i'm here again today i'm here again tomorrow i'm gonna be here the next day i'm 50 years old i'm still fucking getting after it it's a person that puts no fucking limit on what's possible and that's what got me in trouble a lot that's why i went to ranger school as a seal that's why i try to go to delta force twice you know i i've been i've been through all these different training programs because i

was looking for in the military where i saw is in the training these people get their ass handed to them after they get out a lot of them get civilized i always wanted to go back into training no matter where i was at i wanted to go back to war. No matter where I was at, I wanted to go back to war. And the war was in that training program where you see guys who can quit, guys who are brutal, guys who are suffering, guys who are – you go – so as a SEAL, you don't volunteer for ranger school. I did. I put in seven chips, got turned down, got accepted. I went at 28, 29 years old.

And they go, why did you go? Because I started becoming civilized i started becoming complacent i i needed to get my fucking ass kicked again and when you go as a seal going down to you have no rank in ranger school you could be a major you're just fucking joe brown you're nobody and you're not eating you're not sleeping so i always would put myself i would immerse myself in shit like that even Even I would climb the ladder and I'd intentionally fall back down that motherfucker to say, all right, man, getting soft, dude.

Getting soft. Kick your fucking ass again. And I, you know, it's kind of the process. Did you find resistance from that amongst other guys that didn't like that you were making them uncomfortable? Because that is something that people, there's a natural instinct that people have when someone's working harder than them

to somehow or another diminish that person. Well, I know that a lot of guys don't like me for a lot of reasons. And I realize that. I am a guy that doesn't care if you like me or not. And when you're an alpha male and you're against other alpha males, and we eat our own.

Alpha males eat their own. i love that shit let's fucking go man i want to eat hey man i'm all about that kind of mentality but i would sometimes take it to another level you know i wasn't part of a of a good old boy network i didn't want to be part i wanted to be david fucking goggins for for too long in my life and it got me in trouble for too long in my life, and it got me in trouble, for too long in my life, I wanted to be accepted. Growing up, I lied. I fucking did what I could. If you fucking like UFC and I didn't, I love it. I love it, man. Let's go fucking watch it, man. Be my friend. Be my buddy. That fucking weak ass shit, I found out through this path of life, who is David Goggins? Who am I? this path of life who is david goggins who am i to going through all i did it alone there was no fucking trophy on the fucking wall on the mantle that trophy's in my fucking brain no one helped

me get there no one paid my fucking bills no one did shit for me no one ran those fucking miles lost that fucking weight went through i suffered on my own and developed this man who said it's who i am man a very competitive ultra competitive dude that take it what you want, man. I call that personal sovereignty. Exactly. There's not a lot of people that have that. That's me. There's a lot of people that change who they are

depending upon what people want from them. And that's me. Yeah, that's important, man. And most people struggle their whole life to find out who they are. Struggle their whole life to find out who they are struggle their whole their whole life to find out what defines them what they actually enjoy and what they don't you start putting yourself in situations that suck you'll find yourself yeah you'll find it real quick that

is the thing right and that's one of the things that i've gotten from paying attention to you is that you what you're preaching what you're talking about is finding yourself through struggle that's it. It's the only way to find yourself. You don't find yourself. If you like bench pressing and you bench press all the fucking time, what are you finding out? If you like to swim, that's all you want to do is swim, what are you finding out? People talk about triple down on your fucking strengths.

That's the fucking weakest shit in the world. No. Triple down on your fucking weaknesses. Right. That's the fucking weakest shit in the world. No. Triple down on your fucking weaknesses. Yeah. Find out something about yourself. You already know the good shit. You already know the happy shit. Right.

That's why on my Facebook page, everybody goes, why don't you talk about good times? You know how to get through that shit, motherfucker. You don't need a fucking, you don't need no one to tell you how to get through. It's happy. Right.

That's easy shit. Right. I'm going to tell you how you can help yourself get through the times that suck. Real life. This is real life. 90% of your life will suck. 10% will be fucking happy. You may be a lucky guy and have a lot of fucking money, have a great ass woman, all this shit.

Trust me. One-on-one with that fucking guy, he's missing something. His life still sucks because he hasn't faced something that bothered him his whole fucking life. Something is still eating that motherfucker up. Almost everybody. Everybody. Eating you the fuck up. But maybe you found a good way, how I did growing up, on how to ignore that voice that's saying,

you ain't facing some shit. Period, man. I'm not special. I just stopped listening. I listened to that voice. This is why I talk so fucking aggressive. People say, man, do you believe in God? You cuss so much.

When I say fuck, it's letting you know what I'm thinking. If I try to make it all pretty and shit, that's not what my life was. It was a violent, violent struggle daily to get where I'm at today. I'm not going to water it down. I'm not going to water it down. Shit wasn't fun.

It ain't fun today. But I'm happy. Don't you think that your happiness is probably elevated by the amount of pain that you've gone through 100 so the amount of suffering that you understand the amount of pain that you've gone through makes you appreciate the happiness and the beautiful moments with much more intensity that's what weak people miss about my story weak people hear this soft kid oh my god he must be miserable oh my god what the hell is wrong with him you're missing the fucking story. You're not listening to the story, man.

Look what I overcame. If that doesn't put some badge of honor tattooed in your fucking brain for the rest of your life, you can die today talking to Joe Rogan. You're missing the story, man. Am I happy? What the fuck do you think? Don't misunderstand the passion in which I speak for not being intensely happy happiest person in the world but I'm not done so I'm not gonna speak to you like oh man everything is great no I have a lot more shit to do a lot more shit to do

what this is in the same use of the word that you used, the warrior's mentality, the warrior's life. Right. This is the way that you can keep balanced and sane and keep a good grip on who you are. Period. And there's a quote that was said. I don't know who said it, but it was a great quote. This guy said, going into combat, going into war, of the hundred men that go into war 10 shouldn't even fucking be there 80 of them are just targets 10 do most or nine do most of fighting one is a

warrior and it's a true quote to life i saw it going through training i saw it everywhere i went there's so many people who just show up to life that shouldn't even fucking be around. And there's a few people who do all the work. I wanted to be part of that nine, and I'm working towards being that one. And that's just how I live my life. Now, what are you doing with your life these days? Right now, I keep the same. I'm very routine.

I get up every morning. I run. I go to the gym and then at nighttime I stretch out I am um just trying to develop a business costing me a lot of money trying to do that I'm just getting out I'm a I'm an introvert so I never want to get on social media I I'm not big on that I'm I'm big on being with yourself I believe all these fucking cameras and phones and shit, it takes you away from the most powerful thing in the world, which is your fucking mind.

So I try hard to continue to grow that. I'm trying to break a record again. I'm trying to cross Death Valley as fast as possible, top of Mount Whitney. And I'm constantly trying to put goals in front of me, but the biggest thing is I'm trying to find more of myself. And the only way I can find more is to silence the world out as much as I can because it's getting busier every day It's getting faster and the faster it gets the more you are

Missing who the fuck you are So I trapped my own mind a lot and say look man. I put my phone away I put shit away and I go dark I go dark a lot And it's because I have to find out I'm on a journey of life and we all have a different journey. And I want to be in my fucking pine box. And I believe your spirit lives forever. It has to, it's too fucking powerful. No way in hell that thing just dies when you die. I want to be able to look back on my life when I'm all dead and be so fucking proud of myself forever this is all

temporary shit to me I want to be forever proud of who I was as a man and change who I used to be the liar the insecure guy the guy who can whatever I want to be proud when I if I die now if I die at 80 if I die at 90 100 I want to look at myself and say proud of myself don't you think that also like we what we're saying that because you've gone through so much struggle you appreciate happiness true happiness do you think that you appreciate discipline because you weren't disciplined do you think you appreciate the hard work you put in because you used to be weak yes i appreciate self-discipline yes i never had and the crazy thing about what you know you say that i didn't have a motherfucker come wake me up at three

o'clock in the fucking morning say hey you gotta get your shit in I had no trainer I have a nutritionist it was the self-discipline that I had to survive to not survive I was weak to thrive No one say hey man, you're 297 pounds man I'm gonna help you out. I'll help a man. You're fucking you're not smart. I'm gonna help you out. I want to help. Hey, man, you're fucking, you're not smart. I'm going to help you out. I had to work at all this shit. I had to overcome, and it self-disciplines everything.

If you don't have it, I don't look at you right, because I know you're capable of more. It's not discipline so much for me. It's all on you. It's all on you. It's all on you. The self part is what's big. We need someone to hold people accountable. Fuck that shit, man.

Fuck that shit. We count on people too much to get us through shit. And we look to our right. We look to our left. We're looking for help. And if you can build that self, you can build that total accountability in one self and it's not about being selfish i'm trying to create a better me so hopefully people who are hearing this are taking it the right way can say i can run a mile anybody running 205 fucking miles doing fourth i'll be in a city about all that shit shit doesn't matter i want you to see how

fucking far you can go and that's all it's about yourself. And that's where it all comes from. Well, listen, I guarantee you've already done that. What you experienced from watching that television show and what, what got you out the door, what got you to sort of take the first steps to change your life, what you experienced by watching Rocky, what you experienced, Rocky, those moments of inspiration, those are critical for people. They need to know that someone's done something, that someone's done something that's greater than what they can imagine themselves doing, and they want to take a step towards trying

to be better. That inspiration is gigantic, and sometimes it comes across as corny. People read too much of it online. It becomes, it drowns out. You lose, the meaning gets lost. And there's a lot of posers. There's a lot of people out there that are pretending that they're trying to offer up inspiration or a true, honest account of their experiences. But really what they're trying to do is say something that's going to get likes.

They're trying to say things that they think people are going to go yeah double high five right you know there's a thing that people are doing when they're just trying to just get social cred that's it that's what social media is man i'm gonna paint you the picture of my fake life right right right i paint you a picture of my fucking real life yeah period like Period. Like it or not, man. But that real life is fuel for people. Right. It's fuel for me. I mean, I love that shit. I live off of it.

There's a lot of people that I follow online, and you're one of them, that I can get something out of that. I could watch a short clip of you talking. I'm sure clips of this podcast, people are going to play these clips and go for fucking crazy runs afterwards. Right. Well, I hope so. Fuck yeah, they're going to. You don't even have to hope. people are going to play these clips and go for fucking crazy runs afterwards. Right. Well, I hope so. Fuck yeah, they're going to. You don't even have to hope. It's going to happen.

That's good. That's good. What is this business you're doing? Well, it's my own. Goggins LLC. Basically, I'm investing in myself. I'm investing in myself. And I hope that this story can change somebody's life. not to be me, because it ain't about me.

And I try to be as real as I can because we're all fucking suffering in this world. We're all hurting. And I try to take away all titles you want to give me and let you know that I did not come from that shit. That's why I have to be so authentic and so real about my own insecurities, my own faults, just being a fucked up person. I'm not the best at anything. I'm not gifted. I'm just driven. And it's all about trying to share that message with people.

This is all about, you know, I speak to a lot of people, and that's what I do now. And how are you doing it as a business? I do some motivational speaking. But, you know, right now, I'm not really trying to make a lot of fucking money. I'm just trying to build the brand as authentic as possible. Because I don't want to build it too fast. Because my biggest fear in life is people can read right through a motherfucker that's not real. I do it all the time.

Like, a lot of people have these great quotes and they mass produce. I can't mass produce something, man. Right. And they have these great quotes and they mass produce. I can't mass produce something, man. Right. And they have these great quotes and shit. But are you living that motherfucker? What you just quoted and how powerful it may sound. Are you getting up every fucking morning? I'm not working out, whatever.

Are you really getting the fuck after? Are you just talking to motivate people? Right. And I don't want to be that guy. Or are you talking to pretend that you're really getting after it it and a lot of people make this big money over here the side which i haven't made a lot and they they they talk this shit and they're off this and it's gone right they're not authentic at all man you have it's all this shit right and i read it all i'm like man this guy ain't bullshit right bullshit man Bullshit, man. Fucking wake up, get after it, live what you're saying, and then it comes.

People can see. When I talk, the reason I talk so fucking dispassionate, because I'm reliving my fucking life. I'm reliving this morning when I got up. I didn't want to do that shit. I'm reliving everything I did, and I can't speak to you like all calm and shit. Shit sucks. It sucks, man. So whenever I start talking about, like, after this podcast, you'll see, man, God, you're all calm and shit. Shit sucks. It sucks, man. So whenever I start talking about like after this podcast, you'll see, man.

God, you're so calm right now. What the fuck is wrong with you? I'm not going back through that shit, man. I'm not going back through the suffering and shit that it took to become who I am today. So I'm slowly trying to build this brand to the point where I can slowly, hopefully make people from motivated to driven because motivation is crap. It's shit. People right now, maybe listening to this shit, they'd be motivated to go run.

If it's cold somewhere where they're at, a lot of motherfuckers will shut that door, go back inside. That's motivation. It comes and go as how you feel. If you and your wife are good, if you and your kids are good, if you're good at work, you're motivated. I like a motherfucker whose life is imploded ain't got shit in life and says i still gotta fucking get after it today man that's what it's about so that's when you move from motivation to driven to obsessed and i want people to realize once you get to this person over over here the driven obsessed part

you're unstoppable this commitment that you have to authenticity is one of the reasons why people are connected to what your message is that's one of the reasons why what you're saying you don't want to grow it too fast you don't want it to be bullshit you're terrified of that thing just like we were talking about with weak people you're terrified of seeing that weakness in yourself right you know we all see that we've all seen motivational things that are bullshit we've all seen motivational things that are bullshit We've all talked to people that are talking and you realize there's nothing really that they're connected to they're not really connected to their words their words just a bunch of words they've pieced together because they sound like something that someone who's You know enlightened on the subject would say right?

Yeah, it does it doesn't doesn't connect at all Right. Yeah, it doesn't it doesn't doesn't connect at all. So your struggle now is to try to figure out how to stay you and get the message out, but still be fully connected to that message. Right. That's you know, it's not so much a struggle because I'm not really about. I'm not driven by the business. I'm not I'm not doing by trying be, I make a very small salary from being retired from the military. That's all I need. So I'm not fast to, I'm a minimalist motherfucker.

Give me a backpack, a fucking ground to sleep on and a pull-up bar and a fucking, some running shoes and a Subway sandwich or some shit and I'm fucking straight.

So it's, I believe in patience. I'm a patient dude I can watch the piece of grass grow for 20 years because I know that it's just how you get somewhere in life by being that monk-like mentality and being able to watch something grow very calmly patiently and that's all I'm doing right now. It's not about money. It's not about people knowing me. I don't care if you like me. Whoever wants to hear this, it's out there.

It's out there. So your goal is to grow this? Right. Slowly. Very slowly. And your goal is to grow this in order to impact people? Period. That's it.

It's not about me. What do you get out of impacting people? That's a good question. I don't get anything out of it. It's not about me. What do you get out of impacting people? It's a good question. I don't get anything out of it. I'm a tool. But you must get something. There must be personal satisfaction. There must be a connection to those people.

It must be enriching to you. It's hard to connect with people because there's quite a few now that are coming in. Right. It's my duty. It's my duty to share my, it's kind of like, it's somebody who discovered a new earth, you know,

and discovered the people in the water source and the food source. I discovered a whole nother part of your fucking brain that a lot of people don't even know about. It's my job by being a fucking on this journey being a discovery person being the person that maybe i didn't discover this part i discovered a very important part that i haven't met many people that have discovered this part i'm sure there's a lot out there but it's my job now to take these weak people in the category that I was in and say uh-uh stop reading the bullshit stop listening to the bullshit and if if my story of success can impact somebody it is my

job it's my duty to share the story as much as I'm not really fond of it I I'm not I'm the kind of guy that wants to sit in the fucking room and just be me just be me alone by myself it's who i am but i have to get uncomfortable and tell people all this shit you think it feels good telling people i had a fourth grade reading level in high school i stuttered i lied to people to be their fucking friends it doesn't feel good it doesn't feel good at all but maybe somebody's doing the same shit. And maybe they can realize, wow, that motherfucker was a piece of shit. And he fucking now is a Navy SEAL, retired guy, and runs these miles, and was 297 pounds, and pathetic fucker.

And wow. And people say, why are you talking? It's the fucking truth. I was a fucking pathetic motherfucker, man. People cannot say that to themselves. We have to choose these great fucking magical words that make people feel good. Tell yourself the truth. If someone calls you fucking fat, they may be bullying you, but you might be fucking fat.

Someone calls you dumb, it's mean, but you might be fucking dumb. It's life, man. Take it for what it's worth and change it. And that terrible feeling when someone does tell you that you're fat, you can use that as fuel. As fuel.

Period. And that's all this is about. And where it goes, if it goes somewhere, whatever. You know? I don't give a shit. Well, you said something that I think of when I run,

and it's that most people quit at 40%. That's it. That's my 40% rule, man. I love that quote. That's my 40% rule, man. And I really developed that through my heart surgeries, and I developed that through that first 100-mile run. I thought I had given 100%. I was on that chair at mile 70. I was fucked up. I thought I had given 100%. When I was on that chair at mile 70, I was fucked up.

I thought I'd given 100%. And to go that last, I go, man, I wasn't even near 100%. So I came up with this thing called the 40% rule. It's basically where you, it's like a car. You put a governor on a car. And let's say the car can go 130. That governor stops the car at 91. And you're driving thinking,

man, I want to fucking floor it, but I can't go any faster. We do that to our brain. We put a governor on our brain. The second we feel pain, discomfort, suffering, all those words that we hate to say because we're in this happy, peaceful world we live in now,

we stop. We slow down. And if you can get through these different barriers and gain 5%, 2%, 3%, that 40% becomes 60. That 60% becomes 70 and 80 and 90. And then you'll hopefully one day near 100. I don't know many people who probably at 100. I mean, we think we're there, but there's so much more. Isn't 100 a death's door, though? I love that. I think it's true. I think that's 100% true. I think when you were laying in that tub, you had knocked on the door. That is 100% true.

No one has ever. That is 100% truth. I didn't give 100% in that 101-mile run I did for the first time. So that's the scary thing. That's the scariest thing in the world. I didn't die. You probably gave 99.99999 and died with your life. I guarantee it.

I guarantee it. Man. Dude, I don't know how to end this any better than that. So let's just wrap this up. If people want to find your stuff, what's the best place to go and look for it? I'm just at David Goggins, man. Social media on Instagram, Facebook. I don't tweet that much stuff out because

I write these I write messages and I always link that, you know, on Twitter to my Facebook and Instagram, but it's just at David Goggins. It was an honor and a privilege, brother. Thank you very much, man. I really, really appreciate it. Thank you. David Goggins, ladies and gentlemen. Go go after it you motherfuckers come on

that doesn't fire people