The Sevan Podcast - #395 - Jason McCarthy

Episode Date: May 11, 2022

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exclusively on fan duel casino where winning is undefeated 19 plus and physically located in ontario gambling problem call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca please play responsibly um i think so bam we're live guys last night's show awesome i'm so excited about it i i want you to know something real quick that i i think i was very clear about in the show and if i wasn't clear about let me quadruple down on someone in the comments said something in the youtube comments um i hope seven and i and i usually and i like to make a lot of mom jokes in the youtube comments that's like that's the whole reason looking for someone to do like a mom joke not what your mom said not when i was at your mom's house mom doesn't sound like that when her mouth is full

just whatever but um someone in there said something about i hope he's not a shrill a trill a zill a bill something for california hormones they are my sponsor but like i'm hi jason but i'm not on trt and i'm scared to death to get on trt and like but they're my sponsor and i love those guys and anyone who supports the podcast i don't even like as long as you're not hurting kids, I don't give a fuck what you do. If monster wants to sponsor me, fucking, they can jump on the bandwagon, but I ain't drinking that shit, but I would love to have them on and have like monster cans all over me and

tell you, Hey, this is the cause of root cause of diabetes and sickness. But, but, but fuck, if I'm driving from San Francisco to Los Angeles and it's two in the morning doing a massive cocaine run, I'm going to be monsters to keep me awake. Fucking knuckleheads. I just need to be able to tell the truth. That's it about your mom and anyone's mom. Good morning,

Jason. Hi. And the truth shall set you free. Yes. Good morning. Hey, speaking of the truth, one of the biggest problems that we have on the internet is a website called goruck.com. Hide your credit cards.

This place is so yummy. I spent way too much time on there last night. Is this the – I mean, this is a fitness man's wet dream. Can you go to Shop All and just look at this? This thing is crazy. What do you want to see? Let's go to the rucksacks. I was looking,

I was scrolling through Instagram and all God, isn't that nice? Yeah. Oh, it's so yummy. Hey, this is probably so. I can't believe I'm going to ask this. Do they come in like red? Like, I know it's supposed to be, but I thought I saw some red ones in different

color plates and I'm from California. You got to bear with me, Jason. Yeah, man. I mean, we've done all different colors. We've done school colors. We've done red. We do things like red or blue. We call them things like the American and the Patriot and stuff like that. It ends up being, you know, got to play the limited edition game from time to time. And also, there's real manufacturing constraints and stuff. But, you know, you see a lot of stuff like floral patterns out there in the universe. And like, you're looking at how we do floral right there, right? You got Tropic Multicam, you got Woodland Camo. That's how we do floral. And it's awesome. And it's badass. Is that named after Sean Woodland, that one? No, that's just the... Oh, good. Okay. Woodland Camo was the sort of the first uniform I wore in the army was with those. They're called BDUs, and it's pretty awesome. What's the craziest – oh, that's nice. Tiger stride. There you go.

I need to get brushed up on my animals again. I thought that was zebra. God, that's fucking nice. Oh, come on. That's old Vietnam-era camouflage pattern right there. This website is really nice. Oh, come on. That's old Vietnam era camouflage pattern right there. This website is really nice. Yeah. Thank you for the feedback.

All I see in life are problems, right? I saw 1,595 star reviews on that bag. That's all I saw. Oh. 1,595 star reviews. Sorry, what were you going to say? All you see is problems? Your wife must love you.

Your wife must love you. Oh, never with her. What a dick. Just with stuff like websites. Okay, okay, good. And, you know, it's great that, you know, people, we have this hobby called shopping in America. And I get it, right?

But if you buy something and that sits in your closet, my dog monster and I just might show up at your house and take that. Oh, good. Someone that's actually going to use it to get out there and whoop it on and get stronger and heart healthier and burn it down in your trails and your parks and your neighborhoods. Because that's what it's meant to do is get out there and healthier and burn it down in your, your trails and your parks and your,

your neighborhoods. Cause that's what it's meant to do is get out there and do something with it. That being said, I want to tell everyone today, Mr. McCarthy brings up an amazing point. Give something away today. If you can, I have, I had this brand new womb bike that my kids had outgrown and I never took them out to ride on because I'm a fucking horrible father. My kids had outgrown and I never took them out to ride on because I'm a fucking horrible father. And a friend of mine goes, hey, I have a I know you got a lot of shit. I have a four year old daughter. Do you have an extra bike? I just went into my shed, pulled out this brand new womb bike. It's like the super trendy bike for little kids. I drove it over his house.

Give your shit away. No, I. his house. Give your shit away. But I would buy something like that and it would be $300 and I would make sure I would, I'm pretty disciplined in OCD in a healthy way. And I would wear that thing because I spent 300 bucks on it every day for a year. Do it. Yeah, I'm going to. Get stronger. Your heart will get healthier. You might run into some other people that are out doing the same thing. You're getting physical health, mental health, social health going to get stronger. Your heart will get healthier. You might run into some other people that are out doing the same thing. You're getting physical health, mental health, social health, all of it. It's the trifecta, man.

I met this guy at the beach the other day in Newport, and he had been in a coma. I didn't realize that was two words until recently. He was in a coma for 82 days. He had a hole here and he had a hole down here he had them covered um he got in covid and he had lost um and i was like man you don't look like someone who who would be in the hospital and in a coma for 82 days he said well dude i lost 50 pounds when i was in there i was smoking smoking two cartridges of the Juul a day. I don't know if you know what the Juul is, but it's this fucking Satan nicotine hit. It's fucking the greatest thing in the world if you want to die.

And he had been shooting meth as a young man. And I was like, oh, I guess that'll do it to you. And so he said, I need to start exercising again. And I had just read Michael Easter's book. And I think maybe we had just had him on the show. So I told him the first thing and Michael Easter says in the book, like, Hey, this thing will get your heartbeat up, but you don't got to be running with it.

And that's the first thing I said, as I said, get a go ruck. And he said, how much should I put in it? And I said, fucking nothing. Just, I mean, you know what I mean? Just get the bat, like get the bat. I think you get fitter if you get right. How much does that weigh the bag's five pounds or so i mean yeah right i mean so yeah i mean the thing is is do the thing right the thing is move be more active and this is like yeah we we message this around rucking and stuff because it makes walking harder because walking is just not sexy even though it's the the most effective form of exercise on the planet for the most people. Yeah, I'm a huge walker. But it's like, do the thing, you know, be more active and we need a more active society. We need

a more active culture. We need a more, we need people to be more active, not just, you know, online with their thumbs either. It's so, it's so, um, pathetic when I go places like Phoenix or Los Angeles and they have these amazing sidewalk networks and there's just no one on them. There's just no, no, no one walks. I mean, I'm a crazy walker. I'm a walking machine. It's nuts that people don't walk. Are you a walker? I, my office is four miles from my house. I ruck to work or sometimes I bike to work. Depends on the time. The only metric I really track is my step count because I've just correlated with everything that I want to get out of life. I feel better.

I sleep better. All that stuff. And I'm also prone to a total idealist. So I could sit in front of a computer and just work on the mission at hand for forever. But, you know, you've got to have these checks and balances. And the community does that for me. People that I, you know, just sling some sandbags around with do it for me. But then the personal responsibility side of it is I got to get my steps in and get outside.

As Michael East would say, look at the fractals and do all these things that are great for your added benefits of just being outside and stuff like, and stuff like that as well. Plus it just, it makes me feel a lot better. And that's, that's good. Um, three out of four doctors say that while you're rucking, that you'll get 20 more, 20% more out of the ruck. If you listen to the seven podcast while you're rucking facts. Yes. Yeah. Facts and the truth shall set you free. Yeah, facts and the truth shall set you free. What what is what's the what's some of the crazy ruck stories you've heard? Like, has anyone done like like 120 pounds, like, you know, for 10 miles or like what's some of the crazy shit you hear? Yeah, I mean, so look, rucking is rooted in special forces training. When you look at this stuff online, you think that it's.

That's why Dave likes it so much right. My buddy Dave Castro loves that shit. Yeah I mean Dave's you know. Dave is great. And Dave I will always credit. He put the Castro ruck in the games a few years ago. And it was awesome. I've never seen rucking done like that.

With incremental increases. For time I thought it was awesome. And a great way to train. Yeah I mean that's. It's rooted in special, for time. I thought it was awesome and a great way to train. Um, yeah, I mean, that's, it's rooted in special operations for sure. And so it's you and you're by yourself and you have weight on your back. That's what it is. And the crazy story. So 120 pounds, like, yeah, that was part of our training for 18 for 18 hours, right. And the insertion and our final training episode. But the best things that I hear now, the crazy stories that really inspire me are the things that people, they felt empowered.

They felt more badass to put a little bit of weight on their back and go explore the, the, the, uh, the, the trails and the sidewalks in their neighborhoods close to home. And what happens is when you take that first step, what you'll find is you run into other people that are taking that first step too. You find more active people. And so the best thing that I've gotten is, you know, I'm the veteran space is near and dear to my heart. And I do get notes from time to time that I started rucking. It helped me get my mojo back after my transition. I was going to kill myself and now I wasn't. And this had nothing to do necessarily with being overweight or, you know, weak or anything like that. It had to do with kind of a sense of belonging. How do I

translate where I came from with this country that I love, that I want to be a productive citizen in and rucking became a method to kind of build that bridge. And I can attest because I walked that, a similar path without the kind of, I wasn't going to kill myself, but it was kind of a lonely world and trying to figure out how to walk into the next phase of life. And it turned out for me, I just needed to put a rucksack on. Man, you opened up a lot of doors. Now we're going to leave. We're going to swerve way off the path, uh, to, to be a productive citizen for this country.

It's so funny. It's such a trip. The journey that I've been on, I w I was raised in Berkeley, California. Um, for anyone who ever has any chance to spend in Berkeley, I highly, highly, highly recommend it. Even though the town is completely gone batshit crazy. I just went there this past weekend and they still have not recovered from COVID. Uh, and by that, I mean, not the virus. I mean, the, um, the, the mental disorder that it's caused. Yeah, it's crazy, but they have these Hills called the Berkeley Hills and I spent years walking them. And it's where I did all my work. When I worked for CrossFit, I just walked the Berkeley Hills and did phone calls for hours every single day. And in those Berkeley Hills, they have stairs everywhere in between like the, they're called hidden stairs and secret stairs. They weave

through the neighborhood between people's homes. It's fucking, and anything will grow in Berkeley. I mean, you, I could live off of the fruit trees that are just on the streets. It's absolutely a slice of heaven except for the people. But I was raised in Berkeley thinking with zero country pride, hating the flag, hating this country, being a professional fucking complainer, everything that was the opposite of what JFK said. Don't ask what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country. And then I had kids, and that – and everything changed. All of a sudden it mattered to me. Someone said to me the other day, and I don't mean to make this hyperpolitical, but someone said to me, how could anyone ever vote for Donald Trump? And I said, well, you would never vote for him for yourself.

You would vote for him for your country. You would vote for him because you want what's best for your kids. And because I'm not fond of a lot of the man's characteristics, but it's so – it's unbelievable how many people don't think like that, what they can do to make where they live a better place and and i think that the one of the first places you have to do that is take care of your health not i think i know i know if you're not taking care of your health you are a um you're the anchor on uh on on society you're i think churchill said something like the greatest treasure a nation has is the health of its people he said that some some quote yeah well he well he would know too because his health wasn't so good yeah man um and and you need a mission like that for a sense of belonging and you and i've heard you talk about that in some of your other podcasts um you talk about as a young man you went on a trip uh like sort of like a sojourn like a soul-searching mission but what you didn't accomplish anything and i always felt like that about the CrossFit games too. People always ask me now that I got

fired from CrossFit and I'm not there anymore. People say, don't you want to go to the games? I, as much as I love the games and I love the athletes, if I don't have a mission, I'm not interested in going there unless I have a mission. Is my mission to collect autographs from every athlete? Maybe. Is my mission to make sure the tv show and the cameras are working properly maybe but i need a mission i can't go i can't go i'm not i'm not um i don't want to just go and just not have a mission i don't want to i want to have a purpose we all need that yeah i mean you know it's like go go find yourself go take a trip fly into istanbul on a one-way ticket figure it out it's it's not where you find yourself, right? That that's not, at least that's not how it went for me. It was just kind of being lost in new places all the time and chasing dopamine hits from, you know, wherever

the party is. Yeah. And it's, it's just kind of, you have to, you have to find some adversity in your life that that'll teach you who you are. And then you can go have fun and party. And it's like, you have some perspective. But yeah, I didn't find what I was looking for because I didn't find community. I didn't find people that I really wanted to spend consistent recurring time with. And I'm going to think about the people on that trip zero when I'm on my deathbed. I'm going to think about the people that are near and dear to me. And yeah, you know, you and it was also just a crazy time for our country because it was right after 9-11. And I didn't know how I wanted to serve or if I had the courage, frankly, to serve how I knew I needed to.

And so it was kind of a, all right, well, let's delay the inevitable. Let me just go think about this. Right. Which is just a way to prolong everything and do what you know you need to do. We don't suffer from a lack of knowledge. Were you raised in a home full of, was your mom a Democrat? So mom, mom was 17 when she got pregnant and barely 18 when she had me moved down to Gainesville. Um, my family, that's Florida, correct? Yeah. When I was, she, she moved down, she played tennis.

So moved down to Gainesville with, with her when I was three. Um, my, my family was super fractured politically. My, um, one side was very Republican. I don't mean conservative, although they were maybe a little bit closer back then, but they were very conservative. And my other grandmother who was very influential in my life was very liberal. And I kind of, that's kind of the story of my life is I just got, I got it from all different sides, but I also learned that I can love people that are at this huge extreme of, of the political discourse. And we didn't really talk about politics all that much, but I mean, I love, I love my grandfather. I love my grandmother on both sides, all sides. And they

had, I mean, their political beliefs just are span the whole spectrum and I love all of them. Right. And were you, were you raised any were you raised in a in a the reason why i'm digging in here is when you said it's i look i i heard your story about um 9-11 happened and how you were enraged and how you wanted to contribute and i'm just i'm trying to figure out how, um, that, that never entered my mind. Um, when not when nine 11 happened, I'm wondering where, where that comes from. And I'm thinking maybe that it never entered my mind because of the way I was raised, but, but I'm trying to think where I think that that could be right. I mean, you know, I was, I was taught that America is a

great country and, you know, I was taught that the flag means a lot, but it was also at a time, you know, it was also a different time because, you know, the eighties and the nineties, there was no real like the military. I mean, the cold war was different. It was kind of the CIA more than military special operations and bearded dudes and NVGs and stuff just wasn't a thing. And, you know, my, my grandparents without coming from a specific kind of military vantage point, I mean, did hugely praise our country, you know? And, and so it's like, look, these are the opportunities that you have because you live here. And that, that makes, or obviously it left a mark an impression that you and in sebastian

younger came from it from the other side right the the liberal order as he describes me and he expected his dad to support his kind of absolute independence like do whatever you want and his father told him you don't know your country nothing whatever might be wait you lost me who's sebastian young he wrote a book called tribe right he produced a film called restrepo um he's he's one of the the great war correspondents of our ever like you know and he and he's he's very liberal another guy i just love the guy want to hear what he has to say about stuff came at it from a different perspective he was a journalist right i ended up being a soldier and you know i think that maybe you found out through your kids which is a great way to do it also like serve america serve your kids yes those aren't those aren't different no like service is not just in that badass camo that you saw on our

website there's a million different ways to do it. And we get into this problem cycle of, I've got to do this, or I've got to do that in order to serve my country. I don't think that because I served in the army, that makes me no better than anybody. It was a privilege and an honor. My sister is an inner city school teacher in DC. God bless her. I can't do that job. That's not for me. There's all different kinds. You've got moms and dads trying to raise healthy, strong kids. That's a fight worth fighting right now. And it's hard. You know, it's hard. We, I got crazy kids. I see your kids too. I got, my kids are crazy, man. How old are your kids? 10, seven and five. Oh, wow. Wow. And you know, they're, they're growing up getting kicked

outside. Like, Hey, and it's not quite the same as, you know, when we were kids and it's come back, come back when the streetlights come on, it's not quite like that, but it is, Hey, go outside. You got to breathe some freedom. And we got it extra thick here in Florida, which is awesome. And you know, it's like, go explore, go, go, go burn some energy off. Like this is a normal thing. You know, our two younger ones are both boys and they're just pure chaos. I see your stuff with your kids. It's like them. If you try to sit our youngest down and say, Hey, you know, read this book all day, he'll go nuts. You know, he's five. Yeah. You can't leave three boys in a house yes yes swing yes

swinging yes you cannot leave the boys inside alone they'll they'll they'll take our while you're while you're taking a dump they'll take apart the refrigerator i mean it is it's like living with monkeys yeah it is i i feel it It's great to go outside, climb ropes and do stuff. When we were I went to Africa several times with Greg to build schools there with Greg Glassman, the founder of CrossFit. And one time we were sitting outside of in front of our hotel room drinking a cup of coffee in the morning and there were like, I don't know, 100 monkeys. And they were the zoo monkeys, but they were free in the zoo in Kenya. The monkeys can come and go, you know, and they were over at our hotel and they were surrounding us and we were throwing macadamia nuts at them and shit and they were coming down and greg goes wouldn't it be awesome to just get a box of

lighters and give it to these guys and i was like oh shit oh dude they would burn kenya down in 20 minutes they're so mischievous have you had any time with monkeys have you ever been anywhere where there's monkeys jason i mean vietnam's got them and yeah so i've i've seen that they're batshit crazy aren't they yeah checking your windows on your hotel room at night like they're coming in you're like who the fuck are you does does i saw jimmy letchford on your instagram account does that guy work for you or does or is he your friend jimmy yeah jimmy's great he runs our growth wow he was one of the best people i ever worked with in my whole life i like like if i he was the people if i showed up

at a meeting and he was there i was like it was as good as like the like having a pretty girl in like one of my classes like i was so excited when i saw Jimmy, he's a, he's a cool dude. I'll quote you on that. Jimmy is as good as a pretty girl. Oh man. He's such a cool dude. And it's always safe wherever he's at that, that, that man can handle his business. There's a calm to him.

That's a man. Well, you're stoked. Can you pull, there's a, um, uh, in the notes I sent you, Matt, there's a video of Jimmy drinking from a horn on Instagram. Did anyone beat him? No. No, no one did beat him. And there was $1,000 if you could beat him? special skills i mean that is a superpower that he has he harnessed it he harnessed it i mean he's basically on that video if you were listening to the audio like he's talking shit right now about i don't know what the fastest anybody else has done this but this is about to be the fastest and everyone's like yeah yeah yeah and man there there are some great stories of um

of of him and dave him and dave are friends they're they're close friends but there were something i learned being this um a liberal goofball coming from berkeley and getting immersed with all these mill guys is like, they can come close to fighting and then like an hour later, like be friends. Like if that, if two, that happens to liberals,

we don't talk for six lifetimes. Yeah. So there's this cultural team room environment, right? And the team room in my case, it was 12 guys on a special forces. And you were, and you were green beret.

I was. Okay. And so, you you know you shut the door and it's not that rank doesn't exist it's just the this is how the tip of the spear always sharpens iron sharp sharpens iron right and it's just i mean anything that anybody does is is terrible like you're the worst ever that's the dumbest effing idea I've ever heard. Right. And you see if someone will back down from it. And if they back down, you know, that they don't actually, they're not fully committed. And so there's always this banter. Everyone's always

trying to one up each other. And it culturally, what it does is it creates, it creates an environment of like brotherhood and camaraderie, but it also makes everybody better because you're accountable to them. So you've got to kind of learn how to operate in that environment. The love language in the team room is great. I still hearken back to it. And it's very much like things can go to blows fast. And then it's like, all right, cool. Right. We've settled this for today. Tomorrow's a new day. We've settled this for today. Tomorrow's a new day.

There's this famous tennis academy in Florida. There's a guy, Nick Boletari, I think, who owned it. He was Agassi's old coach. Yeah, okay. And he sold his tennis academy down there to Under Armour. I think Under Armour maybe has sold it to someone else since then or something. But basically, it's not just a tennis academy now. It's i think everything like i think kobe trained there as a kid and like it's like basketball tennis it's this crazy academy anyway so we went down there in the early years of crossfit and there were like 15 crossfitters like back in the spieler days right i don't know if you

have you been around crossfit for a long time yeah okay um so uh so we went down there and and um and i think um uh they were dave's athletes right because he ran the games but i think jimmy was like running the operation like he was coordinating it with the um the people at ball terry's camp and basically it was like a three-day workshop and they took crossfitters through the spectrum it's like um it's like the combine and but but um for their athletes and they started taking the CrossFitters through it. And, of course, CrossFitters were just destroying every record. But there was a team-building event, and we were in a small room, and they had to do some role-playing. And in the role-playing, there were certain rules you couldn't say.

Like you couldn't attack someone's character or something. And it was supposed to be team-building, so you guys get closer together. And the first two people to go up there were Dave and Jimmy. Now, Grant, we're visiting these people. We're fucking visiting these people. They're taking us to a team building event. And within fucking 30 seconds, they have to jump in between Jimmy and Dave

because they're about to start fighting. They're in each other's face just fucking going off. And I had never seen anything like that. I was like, holy shit it was nuts those people there must have freaked out yeah and dave right away broke the rules like i was i forgot what you're not supposed to say to your teammate but he went straight there like fuck you you're not gonna tell him what to do he was like jimmy i think jimmy maybe grabbed him it was it was awesome anyway i'm gonna call j I'm going to call Jimmy after this.

Ask him that story. Yeah, I'm leaving some stuff out purposely because I just – it shouldn't be said, some of the exchange. But it was fucking brilliant. And I was scared of both those guys. God bless Dave, right? Yeah. Dave can handle his own. I have no doubt.

I don't fight dudes with cauliflower ears. No, no, no, no, no. Jimmy walks into a bar and he switched bars. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Swinging knuckles this day and age. dude with cauliflower ears no no no no no jimmy walks into a bar and he switched bars yeah yeah yeah swinging knuckles this day and age like that's some proof of bravado man we need to find new rites of passage because that is not that's a great way to end up you know bad stuff like you never know what someone's capable of unless they have cauliflower ears in which case don't fight them yeah every day i rub some sandpaper on mine

you have cauliflower ears because i'm 600 podcasts in um what um uh uh yeah i know i know but i i have to leave this unsaid i and i i i apologize i apologize um you know who needs a ruck? And maybe he hasn't already. Like 300 million people? Sorry. You're right. You're right.

Why – two questions. Why doesn't the liver king have a ruck? And what's the difference between a ruck and a weight vest in terms of anything stimulus culture effectiveness but but let's start with the liver king then that guy's made for a ruck do you know who that is let's get him one that's the jack dude in texas who just eats raw meat do you know him this is his shit right here this ancestral supplements i don't think so will you bring him up let's send him one yeah he has this thing called the barbarian and it's basically he puts 20 pound ankle weights on his ankles and he carries two kettlebells and and he and he and he and he pulls a sled yeah and he pulls like 170 pound sled

he's awesome he's awesome he's he's he's a one man. And people are always fixated on the fact that whether he's a juicing or not, I could give two fucks. I want to he's just working in every video. He's working. Yeah, that's sweet. Yeah, he's a good dude. Brian Johnson. Brian Johnson. Okay. Afterwards, I'm going to connect you to him. you to them okay great so second question weight vest okay so you know my my past same as same as dave same as jimmy's i mean weight vests are worn you know because you have body armor on both sides right so they're to protect you from bullets is what a weight vest is i mean this is this is sort of you know murph lieutenant michael murphy medal of honor recipient you know god bless him and his family i mean he called murph body armor when he came up with this you know because you're training as you fight so there's a couple problems

first off do the thing i'm not here to sit and say don't don't do the weight vest i think i think we're born to carry we need to carry more load more of the time to get better in our lives there's a couple negatives to to weight vests um the first is is that if someone and i was just chatting with kelly starrett about this this this past i guess weekend his quote was basically people that have worn body armor their whole lives have the worst posture on planet earth right it just sort of takes everything and you just go down you know and and that's true like you have to kind of i mean mean, I start to think about, it just compresses everything and brings your, your whole kind of body. And it's harder to breathe,

of course, because your, your stomach has got, you know, weight plates or, or actual armor in the front. It's just constricting. That's what it is. So if you take that same amount of weight, say, say you want to, you know, ruckmurf instead of doing it with a weight vest on, you put 20 pounds on your back while you're running, running will be simpler, right? Simpler, meaning simpler to breathe your chest. You can open it up more fully. And when you stand with a rucksack on it naturally, you know, put the weight high and tight on your back, but it'll naturally kind of posture correct because it forces you to put your shoulders back, which too many of us don't do because we're staring down at our phone or our keyboard. And that becomes the habit that our body learns.

And it's a, it's a negative habit. And so this is posture corrective. So if you do that while you're training as well, you're just adding resistance plus posture correction. And the better you, your form is, you know, the, the, the more power powerful you can be all that kind of jazz. So you think, so it's better for form. It's better for training. It's better for carrying. It's better for your body, your skeleton, your muscles. Yes. So, I mean, the, the short of it though, is look, I mean, body armor, if you are going to fight with body armor on, you need to train like you fight period. The end, you need to learn what it's like to have constricted breathing because it's worth having

that plate on the front. It's worth having your magazines in the front and in the, you know, on the front of your, your body armor. But I think for most people, it's just become kind of a cultural thing where you want to wear the weight vest because it's a simpler way to kind of have weight on your body, but, or it just became kind of popular. And I get that. I think it should be popular. I think Memorial Day is a great day to kind of remember those who have sacrificed for our country. Day to day, like walking around your neighborhood and your sidewalks with a weight vest on, I'm just not going to do it.

I don't, I don't want to do that. It makes me feel, I mean, I wore that as a, I wore it for real. And it makes me feel kind of like a poser. Like, I don't want to do that. And there's a better way to do it. The better way to do it in every way unless you're training like you fight is to put the weight on your on your back and to choose the weight wisely though people say rucking okay great rucking but rucking is 20 pounds or rucking is 100

pounds you need to scale that just like you would any type of weighted movement to where your your body is and what you can handle safely uh there's a guy um um his name's thomas delour do you know who that is he's on youtube he's got a huge youtube following he's the keto guy so him and dave are are actually um getting ready to do do in June, I don't know if I'm supposed to say this, a 50-pound go-ruck for 50 miles fasted. So basically, wake up in the morning, don't eat, and then do it. And they've been training for it. And Dave asked me, hey, do you want to come along? And I said, yeah, I would come along, but I'm'm just gonna wear the ruck empty oh this guy yeah yeah this guy

i'm just gonna wear the ruck empty it's gonna carry a sweatshirt in there it is um when people get one of these things is it okay just to start with it empty i'm a very delicate man i'm a very i'm off I don't buy that But second off People should be more active Do the thing If weight is the impediment Don't let weight be the impediment Do the thing

Man you're a good dude Honey you should love me I would love to hear you talk to your wife Honey you should love me no matter what Don't let my breath get in the way Don't let it stop you Don't let my anger management issues get in the way love me don't let me stop you from expressing your love towards me i'm gonna try that on my wife today you are a good dude um uh um so tell me about this event you just did um and in jackson everyone

was talking about it. Was it kind of like a who's who? Was everyone and their mom there? There were a lot of people there, and that was kind of the point. So it's called Sandlot Jacks Fitness Festival. And about a year ago, we started – well, in the middle of the pandemic, we started hosting driveway workouts. We just invited people to come out outside. It was great.

Like at your house? Yeah invited people to come out outside. It was great. Toss them. Like it's your house. Yeah. And our driveway, come out when we're done, we'll drink some beers or whatever. Talk about the world. It's awesome. Right. Social fitness wrapped into all this, which to me, you know, as I mentioned, I'm, I'm kind of in the mental health veteran space, you know, I guess it's in vogue to say you're an advocate for mental health. So however you want to slice and dice that, like, I really believe that there, there is a problem, but I don't think that going to the shrink with the waterfall in the background is necessarily the only solution. I think we need, we need stronger communities and we need more interconnected people that, that also prioritize

health. So like real health, you know, come out, do the fitness, do the, do the strength, get stronger, get heart stronger, all that stuff. And, you know, the more that I saw, cause I had the same reaction to a lot of the people. Um, we, we ran 700 live events in 2020 and we ran like 550 in 2021, right. And so I was out in San Francisco birthplace or the site of the first go rock challenge in 2010. Um, and I had someone show up to my challenge. It was going to be like a six hour challenge. And you know, his heart rate is just through the roof. I can see he's almost hyperventilating at the very, very like, Hey, do some pushups and some squats, right? I'm like, dude, what's going on? He's like, I haven't left my apartment in three weeks. Cause I'm doing my part. Right. I'm door dash and Sandy

wipe. And you know, this is my part. And I'm like, man, it doesn't look like I was, I was as empathetic as I could be. And, and gave the, gave the guy a hug. Literally. I'm like, dude, you're, you're done here. And he hated you for that. Cause you touched him and breathed on him. You're done here. You know, like you need to, you him and breathed on him. But go on. You're done here. You know, like you need to go outside and go for a walk. It's okay. Do your part to take care of your own health. And so anyway, that kind of, I just became really averse to that.

Not in just a divide and conquer kind of way, but just in a way of how do we bring people together that are into health and wellness and fitness and celebrate this way of life and do it outside? That was kind of the big thing. And so we just started planning this festival called Sandlot Jacks. And it was meant to be a community of communities. So we invited all sorts of different. That's Melissa Urban, right? I mean, she's the whole thing. Yeah, I thought she was locked up in a basement somewhere no hell no melissa worked out five or six days five or

six days a week throughout the pandemic she calls going outside and hiking her that's my yeah but okay well i people were sending me uh throughout the last two years people sending me her post and she she seemed like she was like locked up in a basement somewhere maybe i misunderstood absolutely not she was outside you know she was at the gym working out and she was outside in the trails of utah she's she's great people okay um if you if you say so but i got questions great um i i need to have her on i need to have her on but yeah she she's a great she's great people anyway i'll sync you up if you'd like um she's not better than jimmy she's not better than jimmy jimmy's great people too like we actually had so fun fact to connect those two because they both live jimmy's right outside

park city and melissa's in salt lake we had my wife and i had mel on our podcast, but we did it in Jimmy's kids playroom. Like, Hey, Jimmy's kids. So she came over, it was, you know, just worlds colliding. But so back to the fitness festival. Yes. The idea was basically look, bring all these people from all over all different kinds of people that are into fitness. What does fitness mean? Right. Go outside, be active, be active with other people even better right and and live that life so we had you know the ready state was there with with the starettes we had savage race race built an obstacle of course rogue fitness with their bill and katie showed up they did strength they brought some of their their challenges to life you know we had of course

go ruck was there and we did a bunch of a bunch of events including the first ever go ruck games and you know you had people with axe throwing competitions you had a skateboarder mike v was there right led a kind of skate skateboarding session the point is is we think about fitness too often there's kelly with jason kalipa two great dudes like tim kennedy was there and jason kalipa grappled with tim kenn. And, you know, just like. Was that impromptu? Was that just like. That was impromptu. I mean, so the full story is Jason Kalipa has wanted to do that for a long time.

And he said as much. He's like, I've been wanting to grapple Tim Kennedy for two years now. And all of a sudden, they're like trying to rip out the mats underneath the rogue rig that's set up. And the team came over and Jasonason kaliba told a great story he's like i was expecting them to say hey get away from here and the team was like oh you need some mats cool we got some extras right over here just bring them out over here you guys can grapple until your heart's the light and they did and uh you know they were just great sports about it so all these different kinds of fitness right like routinely try new things right i think that's a

thing that we all believe in but what does does it look like? Cause too often times you, you, you talk about, well, I go to the CrossFit games, but I don't want to anymore because I don't have a mission. And the CrossFit games is just CrossFit. And there is a place for that. If that's your, if that is your temple of fitness, then go to your temple of fitness, watch the people do the things, meet the people. That's great. Where do people discover new things now, though? Right. How do you kind of stumble into? I believe that more people should do yoga. I believe that more people should try grappling. I believe that more people should try skateboarding, like hot Pilates, hot Pilates, hot Pilates. Try it. Try it. Instead of making fun of people are saying that's not for me or whatever, or just, or worse yet, just because

we're getting such the marketers of the universe are so good. Now you get targeted as the person that likes this thing. And that's the only ad you ever see. That's the only thing that's in your ecosystem. But I believe that people are more united by this curiosity to try new things. As long as they can bring their friends with them, the social part of fitness is like, let's go try this thing. That's how all the best decisions are made, right? It's like, Hey, let's go do this thing, you know? And, and like, sure. Be the kind of person that says, yes, sure. I'll go do the thing. And so that was kind of the impetus for this. And we also stacked a bunch of Ted style talks. We call them fit talks. So we have 30 plus of those. Michael easter was the mc wow you know we we also had you know

because what is fitness we also had the ceo of niantic the company that created pokemon go his name is john hanky great people lives um lives in the san fran era his offices are right there like so is that fitness seven billion kilometers were walked in 2021 alone playing pokemon go and other 90 games is that fitness seven billion you know that's the thing where you like use your phone and like you find these characters like in a 3d universe that's kind of in your universe oh yeah yes so it's it's like you know it's but you have to walk in the world to play it you have to go yeah so he calls it accidental history you know and and um you know you go wait why does he call it accidental history. Wait, why does he call it that? Explain that to me.

Sorry, I know that's a bit off. So there will be these kind of portals or these pokey stops, these gyms, whatever they are, inside of the game. But that could be a monument that's close to you. Like everything in D.C. is a great place to play. Like the Lincoln. The Lincoln is a pokey stop. So you have to go up to the Lincoln and there you are and you're staring at Abe, right? God bless him. You're staring at him and you're catching, you know, your Pokemon or whatever, but there you are. And then you look off to the left. What's that? Oh, it's the

Gettysburg address that's inscribed in the wall there. Maybe you take the time to read it. Whereas you, it took you to that place. And there's And there's all sorts of those all over our country. There's great parks. There's great, why did this exist? There's a plaza in downtown Jacksonville where JFK spoke. And there's a kind of a plaque that talks about in the civil rights era. And this is where he gave the speech. And there's all sorts of that stuff in and around our country. We just, our blinders are on and we don't see it. So the accidental history part is it takes you to these cool parts of town or these cool things that you didn't know were there right in your neighborhood, right? Like you want to take this exotic trip to Iceland.

Awesome. Have you been to the hill that's right next to your house ever? Right. Do the things and do the things, do all the things, be more active. And this is just kind of a way to discover more things that are out and about. And it also brings people together. A lot of the game dynamics are that you have to play with other people in order to be successful. So there is a social component to it as well.

And it's saved a lot of lives because, you know, it gets people out and about. What is fitness? You know, what is fitness and how do we reach more people through that and inspire them to do it? And it's not some people are going to respond to the Dave Castro's and some people are going to respond to the Tim Kennedy's and some people are going to respond to, well, I need to just go walk more and I'm going to go catch some Pokemon. And that's great. Let's do let's do all the things.

But let's celebrate being active. And so you had the first go rut games there. We did. What are the go rut game? Like what was the actual event? If you could share that with me, we had all of the, this infrastructure that was there. So we had the three brands, kind of the pillars of it, which is savage race was an obstacle course, right? It's like, I was tested on obstacle courses in special forces training. That's kind of, you are in the military, right? Rogue, strength and conditioning and GORUCK rucking. So weighted carries.

And you take those three things and you say, okay, so our roots in GORUCK are in special forces, special operations. How are you trained? Training is a test. So how are you tested? how are you, how are you trained? Training is a test. So how are you tested? And that, that is a broad test because you're, you're not really, nobody cares what you can do fresh. It's, it's all about grit. It's all about kind of what can you do? That's a little bit of a curve ball. That's not exactly, you know? Yeah. So that's the confidence course part of it. So

I'll tell you how the game started. So they showed up Friday afternoon and said, all right, here's your brief. You're in this field. But tomorrow morning at 6 a.m., we'll meet you at the beach. Here's your start point, start location. So the cadre who were there, you know, decorated combat veterans of special operations are like, OK, so now here's your here's your rucksack. It's 45 for the males, 30 for the females now get in the water. So they get them out to the, to the ocean and there they are. They're in the ocean. He's like, you know, there's, there's a flag out in the middle. It's like, all right, we're going to sing the national anthem now. So they're singing the national anthem, you know, with, you know, their, their salt water and all the stuff in their, in their shoes.

And then it's like, you line them up, put them in the prone position in the sand, right? It's like, all right, unknown distance, unknown time. Ready? Go. Oh, with these rucks on in the water. 45, 30. Okay. Yep. So male, female. And so, oh, by the way, here's a, here's an additional curve ball. It's an individual event, but here's a curveball. So up there, you'll see two flagpoles.

One is for the males. One is for the females. If you're in front, if you're in the lead, carry that flagpole. What they didn't know is that it was a custom Rogue Fitness build that weighed 18 pounds. So then you get into, okay, this is an individual event, but there's a team dynamic dynamic sort of right so you get people out in front and they established crews basically you know the the stronger were out front and they just rotated it right but then they got to the halfway point and they they staked the flags in the ground and then it's a release rock and you know they they went back and it ended up being a 12 mile rock on the beach that was event one what is a release rock

meaning halfway through the race, you get to take your ruck off and just your free. No, no, no, sorry. So, so they were the constraint out of the gates was the flag was in front. Okay. So, so you ended up having say four or five or six people right in front with that flag.

Once that flag was planted, it's like now whoever finishes wins this event. Wow. So 10 of us will be running, 10 of us will be running against each other, but no one can pass the guy with the flag. Correct. Wow. The flag weighs 18 pounds. And so I might run with it for 100 yards and then pass it to you, and then you pass it back to me, and we're kind of taking turns.

But it's an individual competition at the same time, right? So the thing that's it's it's uh the idea did people do that did they pass the flag off to each other they did they did and they they said like look this was great it was almost like there was a camaraderie to it despite the fact that this was an individual event that's just one curveball that we throw because when when we were tested special forces assessment, it was basically take all instructions from the whiteboard. And the cadre would write something on the whiteboard

and be like, this time, this place, this uniform. And you show up and it's like, the whiteboard says something new. You got to go back and you start it out in your uniform. Then you got to go put running stuff on. And then you got to bring this amount of weight. Then you got to bring that amount of weight. It's just kind of, it's a constant unknown.

Yeah, there you go. That's what the beginning of the go-ruck games was like. Um, and so then the next phase moved onto the field and it was a lot of strength and conditioning stuff. So, you know, carry this thing for how long can you farmers carry a couple of, uh, you know, sandbags or, you know, what's your pull-up time or what's your hundred pound, one miler ruck time. And then, so that was a day, that was the end of day one, day two, they started out in the final event of the kind of combine style qualification was they, they just raced on the obstacle course. So it was a 17 obstacle obstacle course on a quarter mile track. obstacle obstacle course on, on a quarter mile track. So these were stacked against each other.

Um, these were stacked and, and so it's, it's for speed. This sounds expensive, Jason. For whom? For you. Well, like I said, we already had all this infrastructure built out, right? So we had this whole, we had this whole festival that was already in place where thousands of people paid to be there and their brands and partners and sponsors. So it wasn't just this, hey, show up and watch these people do this thing. All the people could do the things as well. I mean, Jason Kalipa taught classes. Kelly Stott taught classes. You know, Jimmy and Ryan Mannion led the Mannion WOD, right, for Travis Mannion Foundation.

Yeah, wow. Street parking was there. They led classes. Go Ruck led classes. There were all these fit talks that you could go to to listen to in between your training. Melissa Urban taught yoga classes, right? Mike B taught skateboarding classes. But then, you know, one ticket to the amusement park gets you all the things.

You can ride the roller coasters. You can watch kids ride the roller coasters. You can watch kids ride the ride, the rollercoaster, take your pick. Right. So then you've got to watch part of the go-rut games, which was stacked into Saturday night and then Sunday. And then it led to, it started out more of an invitational style. So there were like 42 and 37 or something competitors, male, female, and then it turned into the top eight bracket. So one versus eight, two versus seven, three versus six, four versus five, single elimination. And that was strength and conditioning kind of challenges. So a little bit of obstacle course, a little bit of strength stuff, and you got to ruck

on your back. And we whittled it down to the finals. And then the final competition was grappling. And it was simple. It's like, hey, here's the ring. Get them to submit or push them out. And so GoRuckuts never done this before. This hasn't been done like this as the final decision of something.

It has been in some other competitions, of course. But how do we honor our roots? We were tested in that, right? At some point, exercising has to have, like, there are evolutionary reasons why exercising is important and it makes you harder to kill. It makes you a better hunter, all those kinds of things. So, you know, what does that look like? That's something that we were tested in because obviously we were trained enough to go to war. And this isn't just about that. It's about the mindset of defending yourself, or it's about the mindset of, you know, yes, this is a competition.

Yes. You will put your hands on the other competitor. This is what it looks like. And there's a, there's a judge in this, there was no kicking or punching. That wasn't this it's grappling. And so it turned out great. A lot of high, high energy, Hunter McIntyre, one on the male side, Katie Knight, one on the female side. And it was, it was an enormously awesome moment. The whole, the whole games was just great was it was hunter dominant hunter was pretty dominant yes because he just come off of setting that high rocks world record which was crazy yeah i mean look there there could have been the luck of the draw there were a couple competitors that likely would have beat him in grappling but

grappling was the final two you know know, he came up like the, the guy that he grappled against was a cross country runner by trade, you know, and FanDuel Casino's exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling winning, which beats even the 27th best feeling saying I do. Who wants this last parachute? I do.

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you better believe American Express will be right there with you. Heading for adventure? Please play responsibly. a nice place to settle in enjoy your room upgrade wherever you go we'll go together that's the powerful backing of american express visit amex.ca slash ymx benefits vary by card terms apply ran a 90 minute 12 miler with a with a 45 pound rock i've never heard of that that's insane right that is insane but but hunter you know hunter has that background as well and you know i a part of me i social media will warp things for all of us and i think it's really important to remember that and he's got kind of a persona hunter does online and i was like i'm probably not going to like this guy and he showed up and i just that dude's awesome he He was just great. Like he was DMing me stuff on, on Instagram. Like what kind of shoes do I need to bring? And I'm like, dude, Hey, check it out. Like there is,

there is deliberate mystique to, to this whole thing. Like, I'm not going to tell you what shoes you're going to, you're going to wear, be ready for anything. And after we kind of settled that, um, like I met him in, in the dude, just the dude just works and he works really hard. And obviously he's trained to a, an enormous level. And it was great to watch him do it. And he,

you know, at the end, he said, he's going to come back next year and defend his title. And that's, that's great. Cause you know, there's people kind of know what it is now.

So, you know, they kind of got to train and grappling's on the table. It's not something we're not the grappling company. We're the rucking company, but grappling's on the table. If we're trained in, in this form in special forces, other than sort of tactics and, you know, tactics and some other stuff like that, like we're not doing that here. Um, it's, it's fair game. Um, he, he's an open dude. I hate to keep going back to

how cool Jimmy is, but one night, Jimmy and I was fucking late. And Jimmy and I were in D.C. and we'd been working all day. We wanted to go to a bar and the only bar that was open was a gay bar and we went in there and chilled. And it was like fucking nothing. Great. DuPont Circle or U Street? Great.

It wasn't. Oh, or maybe, no, maybe it wasn't D.C. Maybe it was Seattle. I think it was Seattle. I apologize. But anyway, it wasn't even a second thought to us. Like, we don't give a fuck. And hunters like that, too. There is a freedom. These are men who are sure of themselves in all situations. And there's a freedom around them. Like anything kind of goes, you can talk about anything. You can explore any idea with them. They're just, yeah. Hunter's an amazing, amazing, uh, he's a free, he's a free, he's a free man. I really enjoy him. You also have to, when you have that mindset, you have the freedom to not waste your time judging other people or trying to tell them how to be happy.

Right. Right. That's, that's an enormously liberating way to live your life. And you know, that's, it's great. I, I, I respond. Those are my kind of people. Yes. Um, when you, when you, uh, there's this idea that you presented about being afraid but wanting to do something. And in regards to 9-11, can you explain to me that fear? Like is it just like, hey, I don't know if I should be joining the military and getting a gun? But there's another part where you say that you had also resigned to being killed when you went overseas, that you had accepted that. Well, that was the evolution. You know, I mean, there, there was not an acceptance that that was a real possibility, even though you, you mentally, there is, it's a difference between assuming

something or reading in a book and living it. Right. I mean, it's a completely different type of thing. And, and I think a lot of us are, a lot of us are crippled by, by the wrong things there. It's normal. It's human fear is a big one, right. You know, and, and it's, a lot of stuff stems from that. Like, what are we so afraid of? You know, like how, how do we, rights of passage have been burned down. Go find a rights of passage. It's very counterculture right now. You're going to fail. Michael Easter talks about Misogi's, right? Find something, make it hard, don't die. 50% chance of failure. And, you know, I mean, this was something that I believe that

deep down in America is selves at this, but deep down, every person on planet Earth wants to be tested. We have it inside of our DNA. We want to know what we're made of. It's just so easy not to do that now. And so at a time when, you know, our country was so charged about war and it turned into the Iraq war and not just 9-11 and all the politics got involved. But then at a human level, you know, watch the news hour or whatever. And at the end, they just show the faces of the soldier, sailors, airmen, Marine that died that week. It's very sobering to watch that and still to say, well, this is a, I don't know my country, nothing. This is worth fighting for. And with that,

there are costs and that might be me. Right. And so eventually I just, it got to the point where, you know, I'd applied other places. I'd applied all the alphabet soup agencies, the CIA, the FBI, all those three letter type places. And I just, I knew I needed to join the military. It's just where I was. I was 22, man, you know, 22, no attachments, no dependence, no, no nothing. Right. Like it wasn't like I was 35 and I have a family and you know, I I'm going to what, like, it wasn't that I had no real excuses. And I knew that I would have read it for the, for the rest of my life rest of my life if I didn't sign up. That was my path, though, man. Like, it is a product of how I was raised, my reaction to the thing. Other people poured their hearts into other things after 9-11. Like, great.

Find your path. Sometimes it's an external thing. And we saw a lot of that with COVID, too, right? Like, I don't want to do this anymore because I've realized that I'm going to die. And my time here is finite. And I realized that too. But the big thing that I learned to trust was myself in this process because the regret inside of me was mounting. And what really happened was I read, um, so Iraq confused a lot of things because I wanted to go to Afghanistan because that's where bin Laden was.

Right. And yep. And I heard you say that just for the people listening that that and I've heard a bunch of men say this. You that was the you saw it on TV and you're like, OK, I want to jump on the team that goes and finds this guy and puts an end to him. Yeah. Amen. Yeah. And and so revenge was my motivation, plain and simple. And so revenge was my motivation, plain and simple. That was the catalyst. And so what happened, though, was eventually I got so much. I knew that the regret kind of matured and you start or sorry, the revenge sort of matured. It's like, oh, do I really need to do this? Look, Iraq, I don't know.

Is this worth fighting? And like you can come up with a million different excuses for anything that you want to do. Oh, I shouldn't start this thing because I've got a presentation tomorrow. Whatever stuff. These are voices that we all hear. And I just knew. I looked myself in the mirror and said, I will regret this for the rest of my life if I don't sign up.

And so I did. I enlisted with a college degree and I, you know, made it through special forces training and all that stuff. Um, but what happened was revenge was not the enduring part of this. It was this kind of love of, of camaraderie and service and serving, having a mission and purpose with, with other people. And yeah, I mean, I had the flag on my shoulder and, you know, I wave it proudly. I wave it proudly today as well, but I didn't really fight for the flag at some point. You know, it's,

it is, as you hear, it's about the person to your left and the person to your right. And that lesson is worth reminding because I believe that that's true for every single person. It's about the person to your left and the person to your right. And you can have all these ideals and all of this stuff, but you love your family. You love your kids. You love your parents. You love the people that are good to you in your life. You love your network of friends. Take your pick.

Everybody's a little different. But it's those people that are worth fighting for. However, whatever your path is, that's freedom. Go fight that fight, your path. You've got to find it. And if you get, you see something, you're inspired by something and you start to say, man, I'm going to regret not doing it. Go do the thing.

Go ask the girl out, go, you know, go do the damn thing. And, and I just, I was really surprised at how much it unlocked the answers for me to walk that path that I needed to walk at that time. And the answers were not what I was expecting. Like, you know, I got a little bit of, I got a little bit of war on that's fine. Right. But it was really about, it changed my heart, this idea of service and community. And so all these things that we do at, at and through go rocker in some way, because of my time in, in special forces, but it's really because of the way that special forces changed my heart and the people that were responsible for that, who I owe everything to

people, the, the, the guys I served with and the way that they taught me about what matters in life. And I hear UFC fighters say that too, by the way, I hear UFC fighters say, I said, why do you do it? And I was 19 years old and I was terrified of fighting. And I knew I had to, I had to face that fear before I was too old. This isn't the window small. I hear a lot of them say that. Look, isn't that great though? Walk your path. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's fear that, but it's their fear that, that draws them to it. It's not that they think they're the toughest.

Well, they think they're tough. They do think they're tough, but they're scared to death to get in the ring and fight. And so they just start – they point it over there. Public speaking was like that for me as a kid. I mean it still is. Like I say that all the time. The podcast. It's always scary.

It's always scary when the fucking – we're live. Oh, shit. Well, if it's not, then you're doing something wrong and i'm scared of heights scared to death you have to jump out of planes to join where i wanted to go but you have to do it and so you know you just kind of follow the guy in front of you it's going to be okay right you you learn how to like confidence is earned just put the mask on follow the guy in front of you it's gonna be okay this is this is the difference between you know buying a rucksack and using the rucksack to go to where we started this out with.

Sure, buy the thing, but do the thing. That's where you get the confidence. That's where you become more active. That's where you start to be around more active people. That's where you find your tribe. That's where you find your community. When you start being active, guess what active people want to do? They want to be more active.

Then you're doing more other stuff. All of a sudden, you look around and you're like, these are the best years of my life. And I'm with these great people and we're doing this great stuff. And it's a really fulfilling feeling. And I just think that we need more of that. pole i would fish the i would fish the ocean fucking dry like if i buy a pair like i bought a pair of running shoes that were like i don't know i remember i'd never gone jogging before and 10 years ago i bought a pair of jogging shoes and i ran three miles every single day until until i didn't until the shoes were dead i can't imagine spending 300 on a fucking ruck bag and i would be like i'm gonna fucking out ruck the bag i'm gonna fucking kill this fucking bag that's the whole point of getting something like this in my opinion it's the motivation there you go yeah you just want it to sustain and yeah and that's the you want kind of habits

and all these things to form that are good and positive and what i believe though is the world doesn't need another training plan frankly the, the world, you need a friend. You need some accountability from a buddy. You need someone- Like a guy named Dick Butter. You need a guy like Dick Butter to rough a 5K. There you go. Who's roughing today gonna do a 5K on the trails at lunch? Amen.

Go join Dick Butter. Yo, Dick, you just had the CEO of GoRuck call you out. You're fucking, you can just kill yourself now you've lived the dream no it's great go yeah go do it man it's awesome go do the thing go do it um you were you wrote it you wrote a book and um every guest i have on i read their book and i didn't realize you had a book until uh yesterday so this is a first that, but I'm going to read your book and then I'm going to ask you to come back on. Can you, can you, um, um, why did, how not to start a backpack company by Jason McCarthy? Why did you write this book? So this was as much internally focused as anything like we, it didn't really promote it. We haven't, I mean, it's like, so look, here's the, I bought the audio version yesterday, by the way, at Apple. Here's the, here's the problem

is that as you scale, you know, all of a sudden everybody that's on a new team thinks that that was just built off of magic and everybody's out there claiming that their life is so easy and look at how slick and polished everything is. And that was not my journey at all. It was, it was messy and raw and hard and difficult. And it was like a knife fight every day, waking up to a knife fight to get through my, my transition out of the military, to get through starting a business. I had no idea how to do it. I don't know anything about business, right? I mean, I didn't go to school for it. I didn't work in it. And I, I'm getting out of the army and my life's kind of collapsing a little bit. And, and it's like,

you know, follow the energy and believe in the people and walked in the path and try to give more than I got. And it's kind of like, you know, I just wanted that to stay so that as new people would come in to go rock or to wherever, like really internally focused. It's, it's look, this was not like the beer fridge was not always stocked. You know, there wasn't always this kind of unlimited fun budget or whatever the case may be. Right. We didn't have eaten piece of cheese and a bag of salami in there. Yeah, man. I mean, you know, I invite people over, beg them to come over. I'd buy, you know, put DiGiorno's frozen pizza in the, in the oven and buy them beer. And I'd get these business school students to work on GoRuck for hours and hours at a time. And like, there was just a lot of hustle.

And so in the early stages, I got everything wrong. I had to keep pivoting. You know, we started two and a half years of manufacturing to learn how to get a rucksack. It's really expensive because we cut no corners and built it in the States and it's really expensive. And then nobody wanted to buy it because we had a marketing problem. So like, what do you do? Like, well, we had to, you know, go back to what I did know, which was not Facebook ads and Google search engine optimization. I knew how to train others and I knew how to kind of whoop it on. Right. And so started an event called the go ruck challenge. And, you know knew how to kind of whoop it on. Right. And, and so started an event called the go rock challenge. And, you know, it's kind of started this community journey, which is really

the only reason why I'm still at go rock. I'm not really in the business of selling backpacks. It interests me zero, right? Like if you see an ad for go rock somewhere on our anywhere, like that ain't me, babe. Right. That's not my, that's not my game. I want to bring people together and encourage each other to, to be better people. Not just me sitting in somewhere ever right now I'm in the, you know, the kitchen in my, in our, our scars repair center. Right. But like, not just me sitting wherever I am saying, Oh, go do the thing. It's like, you need to go sync up with the other people, go do the thing. It's like you need to go sync up with the other people. Go do the thing together.

Whatever that thing is. Maybe you start out rocking. Maybe that turns you on to yoga or it turns you on to mountain biking or it turns you on to, you know, whatever. Go do the things with active people. And so it's kind of just, look, it was the middle of the pandemic. And I had this old journal that I kept when I drove around to 48 states with my dog in 2010. And it was the middle of the, of the pandemic. And I had this old journal that I kept when I drove around to 48 States with my dog in 2010. And it was miserable. Like it was a total and colossal failure. And the journal lives forever. Like it's, it's, it's in there as,

as it was written. And I bookended that journal with, you know, some, some commentary to sort of set it up and then it kind of close it out. And that's the, that's the book. And it's got five star at, five star at Apple when I downloaded it. Sweet. It's it's I'm excited. I'm excited to check it out. It's you're when I hear you talk, I hear this like journey of a healthy. I was going to say man, but a healthy human i had joe salatin on are you familiar with him he's the sort of the the godfather of homesteading he's like the guru of homesteading i don't know joe sorry um and uh he was talking about what he'd

like to see from millennials and i was kind of like fuck millennials like like i don't like let millennials go smoke weed and chase pussy. Like I'm – or whatever young men do if they still do what I did. But I want to see like more – I want to see like – I want to see Bill Gates ruck. I want to see Donald Trump ruck. I want to see Joe Biden ruck. I want to see like – and I want them to do what you say. I want my leader to sound like you. I want – it's so motivational what you say. I want that. I want my leader to sound like you. I want you. It's so

motivational what you're saying. Like you, you, you have this story about how it's just all about you. And it's kind of like, I don't care if my family is concerned about me dying. I'm going to go on this mission at 20 years old and I'm going to fight this war. And thank God you didn't die. And you came back and you brought back the lessons that you learned that actually have nothing to do with war. And now as a mature man, you're going to impart them on the world. Hey, it's time to better yourself. It's just it's so awesome to hear it. I would hear that.

You know, Greg Glassman sounded like that, too. Like there became a point like he didn't give a fuck about CrossFit. He wanted the planet to be better. He wanted people to be better. He didn't give a fuck about the CrossFit games. He wanted people to be better. Like, look about the crossfit games you want people to be better like look the thing is is we need more mentors and we need more rites of passage yeah and you know i kind of got both in one package and frankly look man i got this

do you think that do you think that if you don't if you do you think that if you don't put your life at risk it's not a real rite of passage? I know a lot of people will say, no, no, you could. But I put – I was homeless, and that was my rite of passage. I don't think it's binary. I don't – You don't? Okay. Well, I think that we're – I think the scarier you make your rite of passage, the better you turn out.

How's that? I'm going to go – I'm going to go out on a limb and say that. It could be, but there's cost to that as well. For sure. For sure. The thing for me is that I've, you know, I mean, I served with a lot of great people and they're not all here anymore. And I've, I've, I've served with people who have taken their own lives later on in life. And, you know, deep down inside of myself,

I just feel like I owe those, those to whom much is given much is expected. And what am I going to do? Like, I need a mission and purpose as well. Like, what am I supposed to do? Like, I need a mission and purpose as well. Like, what am I supposed to do? Like sit at home and run better ads on backpacks? That's just, that ain't me, babe, you know? And, and so it's like the best thing that we can do is to pay that forward and to give back. And that's, that's a worthy mission and a worthy purpose. And that's the one I want to keep fighting until, uh, till I die with my boots on moving forward. Why did you, how long were you in the military? Five years, 2003 to 2008. And do you remember why you got out?

Well, that's a long story. I'll give you the condensed version. So my wife was a case officer for the CIA. She was posted in West Africa. So she was posted in Ivory Coast, like the economic capital, Abidjan, doesn't matter, West Africa. And we were married that whole time and never lived together. So I was in Iraq when she was there. She was in Darfur doing that stuff. And I was in Colorado and I was training all over the place. We'd never lived together. And you can't

really be in two different organizations and make anything work. We'd known each other forever. So there was kind of a well to go to there as, as friends and all of that. But we just had to, we had to be together and in the real world. So I left the army and then, um, moved to West Africa. No shit. And did you get, get did you end up what did you do for work there well that's kind of what the inspiration for goruck was is that early on she said oh you when you come here because i was a dependent there which was not something that i don't like the word even right it's right it's like hard hard to go from Green Beret to dependent. And, and like she, I am for hugely strong, empowered women. We need more of those two, right? Of course, of course you were

raised, you were raised by your mom. Like me, like we know, we know no other kind of woman. It's, I almost feel bad for women when they're like, women need to be strong and empowered. I'm like, what the fuck do you mean they need to be? They fucking are. Yeah. We need more of them though. And we need more role models like Emily and my mom in order to be out there. But so M was like, Oh, you should do the go-ruck thing. And so I had made her this go bag or this go-ruck with supplies and said, Hey, put it into your car, put it in, leave one at the house in case, you know, she goes sideways down there, which they love a good coup in Africa. So that's, that's a thing, you know? And so she did that.

It's like, well, why don't you do the go rough thing while you're down here? What that meant was go around to the people that would, would be in need of security consulting services and help make them more prepared. Special forces, way of life, mindset kind of stuff. But, you know, it kind of just didn't, it didn't work out for lots of lots of different reasons, not the least of which was that our marriage relationship kind of came crashing down and I moved back and she stayed there and then we got divorced and then we separated and then we got remarried some years later. And now we have kids running around and it's it's kind of a messy, long story that's that's kind of a metaphor for a lot of our lives, I believe. And it's, we're, we're happy and it's great. Can you tell me when the very first time you met your wife? Yeah, I was, it was the summer before sophomore year in high school.

She showed, she showed up at a tennis camp, the ATP headquarters actually in Florida. And it was like a week before it started. And I was like, who is this girl? And I went and talked to her and she's like, Oh, I'm going to bowls. And I'm like, what? I'm at bowls. What grade are you? She's like, I'm going into 10th grade. I'm in 10th grade. Right. And I just loved her from the first time I saw her. She's just a bundle of energy and joy and just kind of electric. And so talk about fear and cowardice. It took me, you know, about a decade to finally ask her out, but I eventually got there. It's great.

Good for me, right? So you saw this girl at a tennis camp at 16 years old? 15. 15. But you didn't. But you didn't have sex with her until 10 years later. That's right. Wow.

For me, it was five years. My fucking wife, I courted her for five fucking years. It was crazy. And same similarities. We didn't get married, but we had all. But this is going back 20-some-odd years, right? I met her – I'm 50 now. I met her probably when I was, let's say, 23. But, man, it was like – it was a five-year courtship.

Then I dated her. Then we broke up. Then we dated. Then we broke up. And then it was like, holy shit. But I'm telling you, it's like it is it outside of anything to do with my kids. My relationship with my wife is my crowning achievement in life. And you wouldn't have the relationship without the kids, without your wife.

So, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. That's true. But even if I didn't have kids, I would see it that way. Like I just it's a long relationship with one partner. I don't know if that one's for everyone. I think a lot of the other things you've talked about is for, is for everyone, but I,

I can't believe the rewards it has at 50 now to have had someone in my life that whole time. To get kind of sappy of sorts. Right. It's like, you know, I, I get a lot of,

you know, we all have self-doubts, whatever it is, they manifest differently, but we, we all have them because we all play the compare game and we all play the, you know, Oh, I don't have this and I don't have that. Right. It's just, it's natural human nature. You've got to kind of recenter yourself and say, this is what I do have. And I can't tell you the number of times that I've sort of said, you know, Emily loves me. And that's like enormously grounding for me to go off and do these other crazy stuff. I get an enormous amount of confidence from that in a way that, you know, is irreplaceable. It's irreplaceable in my life. And so I agree with you.

I think it doesn't mean that any of this is easy. It doesn't mean even though we've known each other since we were 15, it's not like, Oh, this is just so easy for you guys. Then like much the opposite, it can be almost because, because you go back so far, you get complacent because, you know, you know, this is how it's supposed to be. Cause it's always been like this or you know it's just you have to kind of keep reinventing yourself and in doing that you have to kind of keep circling back to those that you love the most and that you cherish the most and that for me is her um so she when you that that mantra you have of Emily loves me.

So she believes in you and you feel that. Yeah. Yeah. Did your mom believe in you? Yeah. I mean, my mom was the, that, my mom will tell you she had no idea what she was doing. I mean, remember, she brought me to college, right? I mean, she was 17 or 18 when she had me and what she brought you to college, the other kids are

bringing backpacks and pencils and she's got a kid. I was the unofficial official mascot for the university of Florida women's tennis team for three years. Not many kids can say that. Right. That's awesome. And and my mom just and you're not even joking you were no i was i would hang out underneath the bleachers you know the the players would take me to a place called wilbert's to go get snacks was she embarrassed was she embarrassed was she ever like oh or i mean imagine the confidence you have to have you're around 18 year old girls you're in college and you got knocked up and the dad's not around and you're fucking bringing your kid to 10 i mean that that's that's hardcore it's hardcore fucking hardcore she could easily have been like just giving up i mean this is

embarrassing yeah i mean i think it took her a minute right yeah it's okay things take a minute sometimes yeah take a couple deep breaths and the is, is no one gave a shit. 99% of people didn't give a shit, but we think they do. Well, it goes back to those people that are right around you. Those are the ones that do care. Like all the haters on all the feeds and all this stuff. It's like, you know, it affects me from time to time as well. But it's so easy to be a critic now.

What do you mean? What do you mean it affects you? What, what affects you? Oh, you, so we come out with something, we try to do it and just, you know, it just gets, Oh, okay. Why do you do this? Why does this cost that? Why did you cancel this? You know, you suck all these things, whatever. Right. Right. And you always got to kind of consider the source. And, you know, when you go back to the people, like sometimes it's a problem of communication. I didn't communicate this well enough or whatever, but it's really the people around you that you need to value and listen to them and to their opinions the most. And they're the ones that will love you unconditionally or almost unconditionally. And, you know, like take, take greater value out of that than you get sucked dry from all the negativity that's out in the world. So we all

got to kind of recharge our batteries. And I think it starts, starts very close to home and heart. Is she like your mom, Emily, Miss Emily? In some ways, yes, but in some ways, no. I mean, they're both empowered women, right? I mean, they're, so I don't know. Like, it's just kind of yes, kind of no. I don't describe them as the same person by any stretch. But, you know, the, the odd part is,

is that Emily worked for my mom for years as well at the, at a different tennis camp, you know, in, in Florida. And, you know, when I was gone, cause I was up visiting my dad in, in Ohio in the summers and Emily would come over and watch my half sister and half brother. So my siblings, I mean, she was like the babysitter too. Right. So this, this cowardice and this fear of, of asking the girl out, like it was, it was real fear and real cowardice all wrapped in one for a decade. Can you, do you guys play tennis still you and Emily? We don't really play much tennis. So my senior year of college, I tore my rotator cuff

pretty bad. i just played through it because i wanted to finish and and stuff like that so it it kind of hurts to to serve um we've played a couple times but we don't we don't get after it all that much my kids want to learn now so m's like hey we got to get the kids out like all right maybe how about we sign them up for grappling first so we did that um i absolutely did you tear your rotator cuff of playing tennis did you sustain that injury okay interesting and what did you sustain it serving yes oh man okay uh so um during during this so-called uh pandemic one of the only place sports i could find um uh that they didn't require my kid to wear a mask or any activity was tennis.

And I'm not a sports guy at all. I have zero really interest in sports. But I took him there and he's been playing tennis for three years and my other boys have been playing tennis for two years or something like that. And I had no interest in tennis. There's some sports that I truly think are just absolutely stupid, golf, tennis, baseball. And since my son's been doing tennis, I've just been fascinated by it. You know, of course, like I think it's stupid because I have no idea what it is, right? So now I'm close to it and I'm fascinated by tennis. And I'm, I heard you talking about this on one of the podcasts you did also. It is a, and I, I have no, I have no experience of this myself, none, And I have no experience of this myself, none.

But the tennis coach is brilliant with my son. I mean, he is so good. He's so stern. It's unbelievable. And I've heard him tell my son, who's like probably six at the time, this is a lonely sport. You're out there by yourself. Like he talks to him about the mental game. And one time he said to him, and I heard you sort of touch on this too if you're on the court you can still win it doesn't matter how many fucking points you're down it's not like basketball where there's a timer if you're on

the court you can win and that's why it's a mental game and then another thing i heard him say is the greatest tennis players in the world only win like the four greatest tennis players who have ever lived have only won 55 percent of their points. And it's like, holy shit, that game is gnarly, right? It's for mental giants, right? I mean it certainly requires a certain – You're not buying it. You're like, fuck that. I played it.

It's for pussies. So look – So I certainly requires a certain. You're not buying it. You're like, fuck that. I played it. So I did learn a lot. I threw you an alley-oop. I thought you were going to dunk it. You're like, no, no, sit down. Look, I learned the only, the only thing I'll caution against tennis is that because it's an individual sport at a very young age, you've got kids that are creating tennis parents and the tennis parents and the

tennis parents are just like swarming on top of this and it's so much pressure. So like, I think that's good. Right. I can't, I'm for rites of passage. I'm for the right kind of pressure. You've got to expose your, your kids to some stuff. I mean, it is, it is a, it's like mental warfare going into, like you're at a tennis tournament and there's kids around and there's seeds and there's all this stuff and all the doubt starts to creep in

and you get out there and people start cheating. You gotta go get line judges. Yeah, the cheating's crazy. They stop cheating and then the line judge goes away and then they start cheating again. And it's like, it's a lot. it's a lot of that kind of, of pressure on a kid. And so it, it certainly helped me develop this kind of, Hey, I can come back from anything.

Hey, this is, this is possible. Just stay in the fight, keep fighting because it can, it can literally change like that. Right. And that's, that's true of that. That's where hope comes from. Right. When all the chips are like, they're all down. Right. And that's, that's true of that. That's where hope comes from. Right. When all the chips are like, they're all down. Right. It's like, do you still have hope? Will you still fight with a heart full of hope? And like, we need that. We need to believe in ourselves and

we need to believe that we can come back from anything. We just got to have a plan to do it. And like, continue your journey, have faith in your cause. If you're if you're doing it right, just keep doing it. Keep doing it better. The cheating is crazy. Not not not because in tennis, not because cheating is crazy, but everyone can see. So there's like 50 of us there and there's a kid cheating and we're all just watching him cheat, but you're not allowed to say anything. I told my kid, I said, hey, man, there's a lot of reasons you shouldn't cheat, but you should never cheat a say anything it's it i told my kid i said hey man there's a lot of reasons you shouldn't cheat but you should never cheat a fucking a whole crowd of people is watching you everyone thinks you're an asshole i mean it's horrible everyone's like thinking like this 10 year old kid who's cheating is an asshole there shouldn't be a group of people ever thinking

a 10 year old kid's an asshole right he's just a 10 year old kid yeah well i mean maybe it's right i mean but it's like you know dogs become like their their owners and tennis kids are kind of like mirrors of their parents a lot of times i've seen that and you know look too often people they sort of say man my kid's gonna be so awesome and is gonna get you know it's gonna be a professional and it's going to do all these things like, like, that's great. Maybe that happens. It probably doesn't, but there's a lot of life lessons that you're going to get out of competition and team sports and individual sports and rites of passage, which I keep bringing up and all those things. When you are forced and have the opportunity to apply your practice and your training and your dedication and your

commitment. And then you compete competition breeds excellence. And so the life lessons will endure though, you know, and the life lessons are like, is that okay? Do you feel good about that? I was, you know, if someone has to say, man, I cheated my whole youth to become this, whatever. I mean, I don't know. I don't think that's that great. You sort of learn that that's okay. It becomes a life pattern. And so we need more people to kind of say, Hey, that's, that's actually not okay. Right. And parents are, parents are there. So you got to kind of, I mean, kids are independent, but if, if, if you're a kid is a rampant cheater in tennis and you don't say anything and you know it i mean come on right

well at the tournaments you're not supposed to you're you're not you're well uh i think i think specifically it's called league play what my son does he's only seven it's not it's not actually a tournament it's league play but you're not supposed to no one's allowed to say anything it's it's whatever yeah i mean but tell your kid when you get home oh yeah yeah for sure for sure i mean this isn't just every day is its own day it's like you're seeing the habits and the patterns and you know it's interesting to me that you don't play anymore i always think of like tennis is a lifelong skill i'm giving my kid like something that they'll do their whole life i mean i certainly can play i've played a few times. It's, it's, it's still there now.

And maybe you will want your kids start playing. Maybe when your kids start playing, maybe I think it is. I think it's a good life skill. I think, but look, you look at our kids. I mean, I think you can learn a lot of great life lessons in on the mat with jujitsu as well. I got a little bit of exposure to that in, in, um, in the army with combatives and stuff like that, but that was my only exposure to it. And, you know, I just think there's something, what do, what are the habits and the way of life that we want our kids to have? I want our kids to find their path. I want to, I want to make things that they will respond to that are hard, that give them the opportunity to learn who they are and the kind of stuff that,

that they like my youngest kid, that kid needs to get his ass beat every once in a while. Right. Cause he's a super dominant little, like just kid full of chaos and wants to climb all the trees to the highest and do whatever. Those are the kids that are prone to becoming bullies. Right. When, when you're, you're able to just kind of do this and he's he's obtuse to everything like he needs to be on the mat and get humbled and he's doing that and it's really good for him he respects how old is he five yeah that's my kids do that too uh four to seven days a week they go to jujitsu yeah i see it's great as well yeah i could skateboard around town ride bikes all over the place and stuff.

And it's just, look, exposure. I don't want to overschedule the kids to where all Em and I are doing is carting them around. And then you've got to get help to cart your kids around to all the things. How do we let them also exercise some freedom? Use their imagination. It's like, Dad, you never let me use my iPad. Well, sometimes they do. Right. But I'm like, Hey, even better. I let you use your imagination. Right. Right. And my oldest is kind of starting to get it. It's great. Or my oldest boy, we had an iPad. So the kids, the kids would do jujitsu, right. And there'd be a one hour class

and then some two kids have to wait. And then there's one hour class and one kid has to wait. Right. And we had an iPad. And the only time you could use the iPad is if your other kid was in a class and you were waiting to go. And then my wife dropped the iPad and it broke. This is like over a year ago. So I went on Amazon and for 20 bucks, I bought a backpack that was full of crayons and paper. It's like just a backpack full of crayons paper and that was it i just brought that and my kids never asked for the fucking ipad again that easy gone done they haven't used an ipad since their crayon and paper kids it was crazy it was it's i was like what the fuck it's like back in the day when you read a book and you got the free personal pan pizza at pizza right and you show up and they have the coloring the coloring paper and the thing

that was your ip iPad back then. That's old school, man. It's awesome. Yeah. It's so good. Yeah. Uh, do you have, so, so what is next? So the backpack company, it's rolling, right?

Like, yeah, it, it, it seems, it seems, um, and, uh, it seems just like a steady trajectory. You've had, I mean, clearly it's been a hard road to tow and you stayed with it. Did you ever try to quit? What, Go Ruck? Yeah. Were you ever like, fuck, I've done way too much money in this. This thing just can't get off the ground. I quit.

I mean early on, I mean it kind of caught fire early on in 2010 after I put every dollar dollar into inventory and then go rock challenge started. And then I just started running these kind of team building events based on special forces training all over the country. And I was just too busy to having too much fun with real people in the real world to kind of even think about that. It's the, it's the more kind of the business side of it. That's not quite as fun. Imagine that. But yeah, we've never taken any outside investors. We're 100% independent. Private equity does not own us. They don't make our decisions. They don't tell us which gear, how to cut corners. They don't tell us that we shouldn't focus on people and just focus on digital optimization. Well, we don't have those

people doing that. And we're kind of using it as a way to bring people together and get people outside and active. And hopefully we inspire more people to do that. And that's the goal and the mission and the purpose. Is it hard not to sell? Not to sew? Sell?

Oh, you mean, what do you mean? Uh, um, the, the, the kid who started rx bar right he starts this bar and he's you know he has asperger's or whatever he has and uh he starts this barn's parents basement and he does crossfit and next thing you know six years later someone offers him fucking 600 million dollars for it i mean yeah is is it hard not to um oh i'm not to sell the company. Right. Oh, I see. And then just ride off into the sunset with your kids and tell yourself you're going to do good for the world with your $100 million. But are you happy? I know.

I know. How do we want to measure these things? Well, it's just about getting security, right? It's just about getting security at some point. Yeah, but the problem is, is, is too oftentimes what you do is we've got an entire nation that's got more security than ever. Right. Like, is that, what's that correlated with? Like every single measure of human health is worse, right? Every single one. And everything is even worse than it was two years ago.

Every single one, obesity, childhood, obesity, suicide, children's suicide, depression, anxiety, loneliness, all of it. It's all worse. We have more money than ever. And so look, again, this is more complex because yes, I like to win. Yes, I want to compete, I guess, right? Yes, I believe in the business side of GORUCK. I believe in capitalism. I think that you, money is like oxygen to a company, but I don't want to do that at the expense of what, what gives me fulfillment and mission and purpose out of life. And so those are trade-offs in a balancing act. And, you know, we're having a great time. I have plenty of security right now. I mean, and not, not financially, so to say, but just like, we're,

we have a great business. We have a great community. We have the ability to kind of, um, exert our freedom, like the, the, to, to think for ourselves and to act on those thoughts. And that's, that's a lot of fun, man. It's a lot. Yeah. Where's your headquarters? Is it in Florida? We're in Jacksonville beach, Florida. And is there,. Yeah. Where's your headquarters? Is it in Florida? We're in Jacksonville beach, Florida. And is there, is there like an actual building? Like where is actual building? Yeah, we have our, our distro center is, is downtown. So that's where all our inventory is. And then we have kind of a, an event slash headquarters space out at the, out at the beach. And we also have, so we, we offer a lifetime guarantee on all of our gear that we build.

And so we have a bunch of sewing machines here that'll either repair anything if you break it or they do customizations and stuff as well. And that's, I like to be next to that because it's where the action is. And do you sew? I don't. Did you ever get into it?

I know Dave's big into sewing. He's got a sewing room in his house like yeah yeah i chatted with i've chatted with dave about that i mean he was doing gear modifications on on the teams and stuff um you know i just i didn't uh it was something where that just never really crossed my thing i mean riggers learn how to sew i think they learned in the army or learned in the navy rather. Right. Right. And like that stuck with them. And, you know, that just was not, I went in straight infantry and stayed in the infantry. So, you know, I was, I was dealing with machine guns, not sewing, sewing machines.

Right. I was, that's a good, I was doing machine guns, not sewing machines. doing machine guns, not sewing machines. But I did get really good at learning how to break stuff, which is a really productive thing for any manufacturing company. Because at some point, everything breaks. You just got to know how much it can withstand. How anti-fragile is this thing until it's not? Because everything's got a breaking point. Every person's got a breaking point. Everything's got a breaking point. So really examining and questioning how things are going to fail. I mean, we just had so much gear across the board, the best stuff. And you see how it performs and why it doesn't and where it's going to break and where it's not.

And so, you know, that's kind of the cultural ethos that we have internal on the manufacturing side for sure. I like that. I think about that um every time like i open and close a car door i'm like it really only has so many opening and closings eventually doorknobs or whatever right right they can build them better but they build them you know planned obsolescence is a thing and that's the in theory that's the goal of brands to represent something that's more that will well well, if you buy this brand of, you know, doorknob, it's going to last forever. Whereas if you just buy it off of whatever,

and it's four bucks, you're going to get X number of turns and you're gonna have to replace it. And we've become a very disposable place, you know, just our way of life a little too much for, for my liking. And so since the beginning, it was always, you know, get something and love it, you know, like a favorite pair of blue jeans or whatever, whatever it might be. And when they rip or when something happens, like fix it, fixing things as a lost art. And I think it's better for us to, to, to value things of quality. And I think it's better for the environment. And I think it's better for everything. Wow. Yeah. Um, uh, zippers. I, I, It's funny. Sometimes I'll spend more money replacing a zipper on a jacket than the jackets were just because I just love the jacket so much.

So zippers, interestingly, those are the weakest part in anything. It's just you can't kind of, and they're going to be the first to break. You can't make them better. I mean, YKK is the best zipper company in the world. YKK builds the machines to build their own zippers. I mean, that's how into it they are. And, you know, those are the ones and you reverse coil them or do you, you know, there's all sorts of stuff and we've kind of seen it all in terms of, you know, how to put zippers in the right places and where should they be? Cause if, if, if you have a piece of bad-ass American cast iron and you're slamming that down on the ground and there's a zipper between that cast iron and the ground, that zipper is going to get crushed. Right. So how do we build training tools that don't do that?

You know, and stuff like that. And that's, that's actually what we saw. We learned so much when Dave put us in the first CrossFit games, because the athletes were done and they just flung the rucks off, which is, you're absolutely not allowed to do that in the military. You've got to control your equipment and all this stuff. And like, here they are just like doing, and it makes perfect sense. Right. They're crushing all these zippers because the, the, the iron is just crushed.

There's nothing we can do to build better zippers so we had to kind of reconfigure where the zippers go and where they don't go and we had to fix a back panel on that to make it so you could wow that's really cool that's fascinating and you know because the first athletes that did it like hayley god bless her i mean she was just bloody at the end of the the ruck run and it was like man we gotta we gotta save the athletes from themselves and i say that with love and reverence for how hard they train. And so we changed the whole back panel and put some different support on it. So you can actually ruck with the stuff, you know, shirtless now, which I never got to do in the army or never had

to do, I should say. And, um, you know, like it's stuff like that, where you learn from different, that's how knowledge happens, right? You take different communities, you plug them into your existing way of thinking. And in the end, if you're really critical about it and you really lead an examined life and you examine the outcomes of what happens in that's iron sharpens iron, right? And that's go back to that team room vibe. That's something that I'm really comfortable operating and thriving in. And so, you know, we we've learned so much inside of, of the space with those athletes and it's, and it's great. Those two examples you gave

and maybe I'm, I'm wrong and maybe I'm going to speak in crazy hyperbole here, but those two examples you gave about, um, two things you learned from the CrossFit games that if you ruck with your shirt off that, um, that the ruck would cause damage to the body and cause you to bleed and you address that and then the fact that if the ruck is thrown and the plate inside lands on the zipper and bends it that fucks the zipper up we got to figure out a way that you can throw the ruck without the weight hitting the zipper

those are things and listen carefully people I'm saying something crazy here if you don't own the company if someone doesn't own the company if someone if it no if someone doesn't own the company someone those things i think go unaddressed there's no one the most caring loving hardest working person who works at fucking nike doesn't fix that i i i willing to bet two inches of my dick on that.

Because why would they? Why the fuck would they? It's not theirs. Do you agree with me, Jason? I mean, you don't have to use the Nike example. But, like, you're not going to get that. And that's sort of one of the sad things that happened at CrossFit. There was a – when Greg owned it, there was someone, like, who fucking –

and that's the same thing with Dave. They felt like he owned the games. There's people there who like care, like it's their, that's your baby, right? Well, it's, it starts as a revolution. It turns into a business and then it becomes a racket. And that's kind of the evolution of too many, too many things, you know? And so I can't speak to where people aren't empowered or not are, are empowered at other big places. But I mean, I see it whenever we try to work partnerships or whatever you deal with middle management, nobody's empowered to do anything. So it just, all good ideas go to die and who is actually empowered to do something. And I think you do have companies where someone's head of product and they can change things. It's just Nike's lead times are three years or something like that.

Crazy. So if you've got the system in place, you can't change stuff fast, right? Because you're just – But I would even speculate that no one there even – you can't even care enough. I think the only way some – and maybe I shouldn't use Nike's example. Any company – I shouldn't pick on them. But any company, the only reason why they're going to change their zipper is because they saw GoRuck do it where someone gave a fuck. I just don't think people give a fuck.

Yeah, that's probably right. Yeah, I just don't think – and that's not a dig at people. But if it's not yours – like I never go out and fix someone else's windshield because it's not my car. It's your car. But when it's my car i give a fuck and i fix the windshield well even more than that for me is i just what i never ever wanted to be was the special forces guy that started the company that people in special forces like cringe when you hear the word like that the fear of that negative response from the community that i just

revere. And so in order to do that, you have to, you have to have a good reputation and to have a good reputation, you have to continually sharpen iron, iron sharpens iron. So sometimes you got to be your own harshest critics and you got to make sure to have other people around that are, that are empowered to be critics as well. And like all in the name of, it's always about solving the problem better. And that's what the team room does. It's always about the problem at hand, how to get better, faster, stronger, work better together, how to train harder, how to be

more anti-fragile, how to be more resilient, how to be more, better, faster together. And like take that ethos. And that's a culture that I love being around. It just motivates the hell out of me. And so that's the culture that we, we have and really try to exemplify and go rock across everything that we do, whether it's events or, or gear. Um, I've had you for an hour and 42. I want to ask you a question before I forget. I don't see where I wrote it down here, and I hope I can – Ad lib it, man. Okay, I'll try to ad lib it. Get after it.

I know it's in here somewhere. It has to do with being a professional. It has to do with being a professional. And I tie this to the fact that the reason why in the military and special forces you might see this type of thing that I claim doesn't exist at Nike but does exist at GORUCK where someone cares enough to make these changes. Even if they don't affect the sale of the bag, he just wants the bag to be better. And so even if like, like no one else is going to run with their shirt off, no one else is going to throw them, but he doesn't care. He's still going to fix them. There's something about that, that maybe you can only learn when your life is on the line.

And there's this really bizarre thing that people would say over the years about Dave Castro and the way he ran the games, that he wasn't a professional the way he did things. And it was so crazy to me because I was next to him so often. And what I realized is it's not that he's not a professional. It's they've never dealt with a professional. They've never seen a professional. They've never seen someone who cares so fucking much that political correctness is out the door and everything is mission critical everything is about accomplishing the fucking goal in the best way fucking possible and at any cost basically right and because you could tell um his it was uh everything was life or death and there was a little bit of that that bled over you

know it took him it bled over into that you know i mean he was even running the crossfit games when he was deployed so uh i mean it was fucking nuts what he would do and um do you do you do you know what i'm talking about about that like and i and i heard you talk about in a podcast about being professional do you sometimes think oh shit it's the real world doesn't understand what professionals Do you know what I'm talking about about that? And I heard you talk about it in a podcast about being professional. Do you sometimes think, oh, shit, the real world doesn't understand what professional is. They think it's putting on a suit and working at Goldman Sachs or fucking approaching a magistrate. That isn't professional. It's fake bullshit.

It's posturing. I think it's how you carry yourself and what values you want to uphold and, and which ones, you know, how you go values. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know what I mean? This, the relentless pursuit of excellence really matters to me. I know it matters to Dave too, right? I mean, he's just obsessive over the thing that he's responsible for. That's, you know, and the thing is, is that at least I'll speak for myself is that you got to still take inputs in like, this is the source of knowledge, right? If, if you refuse to listen to, I'll give you an example, cause you brought up my grandparents in politics earlier. My grandfather was, was a, you know, always voted Republican, but I remember distinctly, he was

watching the democratic national convention and Mike big, why are you watching this? And he's like, well, I kind of know what, what I think and what I believe, but I want to hear what they think and what they believe. Right. Right. That left a really strong impression on me. And that is how, that's where knowledge comes from. Go read a damn book sometime, right? Make it a book about something that you don't know about or that's out in left field or bring that knowledge into your life. And so when you do that and you're willing to do that and you live around people that hold you and themselves to a high standard, you develop a value for living that way of life, the relentless pursuit of excellence. And so at times you can get so tunnel vision focused on my way is the only way because you can't do this off of consensus. It's only coming from you. You have the vision, you have

to execute it, but then you have to branch it out to other people. And people are always the hardest and the most rewarding parts of life, but you still have to let the inputs in then you have to branch it out to other people. And people are always the hardest and the most rewarding parts of, of life, but you still have to let the inputs in and you have to say, okay, so I'm being criticized for this. Do I believe that that's valid criticism? Yes or no. When you pass that through that big muscle between your years and when you have perspective in life, because you know yourself, you know what right and wrong look like because you have real experiences. Sometimes you have to say, actually, I'm fucked up and they're right. Right. And you have to adapt your path. And other times you say, nope, Charlie might continue mission. This is the correct path. We're just going to have continue our journey, have faith in our cause. And that

that's hard to, you have to believe in yourself to do that. And Dave clearly believes in himself and his vision for what the CrossFit games are, were, became all that, all that stuff. And, you know, I, I share that sentiment in terms of the direction of the relentless pursuit of excellence in like how to make gear better, how to make the brand better, how to respond, how to get people out there in the universe to respond to message better. Like, is it working? It's a really powerful question, right?

You have all these meetings about all this stuff. Oh, this is good. And this is great. Hey, is this working? Like, what's the intent? And is this working? And well, it fails when you do this. Well, can we do it better?

What's the toughest way that we can build this? Are we doing that? Is this the right seam? And, you know, I almost use this as a crutch sometimes, but this idea that I don't know how to sew, right? It's actually come in handy a lot because I'll meet with people that really know how to sew. And they're like, well, you can't do it because of this and this. And I'm like, look, man, I don't know how to sew, but I know that this right here needs to be a lot tougher. And what happens is people will come back and they'll, they'll take it. It's like, shit,

I got to solve this new problem now. And they'll go back and they'll figure out some new stitch or some old stitch repurpose for this exact thing. And it's like, okay, now it's tougher. Like, okay, great. Load it up. Let's go, let's go do, you know, get, get, get the, the, the fight club together. Let's do 500 sandbag burpee tosses with, with this sandbag. Let's, let's, let's know how tough it is. Right. Not just think, let's know. And it's, let's go drop it off the top of the building.

Let's go do that. See if it still, you know, stuff like that. And you gotta just, you gotta, you gotta do it. And then you gotta prove it over and over and over. And that's kind of the, the other part of the culture is nobody really cares what you did back then. It's like, are you like, cause sometimes people get complacent. Sometimes when you're not scared to jump out of the plane, you're actually a huge danger. You have to have that, that small dose of fear or, or fear, and you have to learn how to control it. You have to be motivated by something

other than I'm great. I'm doing this perfect. And I'm just going to keep doing it because I'm like, that doesn't work. You actually lose the edge that brought you to the point where you were able to serve like that. And it's, it's a risk to others. So you have to stay humble, but you have to believe in your, your mission. And those are like, I'm not perfect. I don't know any, anybody that is, it's, it's a constant kind of probing, but you have to be willing to sort of say you're wrong. And you have to be willing to trust your gut both. Yeah. Uh, you, you don't want to be so confident that you don't triple check your, uh, parachute, right? Amen. It's good to be afraid

that your parachute is not going to work. Leverage that fear, leverage that ego. Or, you know, you're, you're, have you functions checked your rifle? Have you cleaned your rifle? Have you, you know, have you replaced all the batteries in your everything? Like is, you know, your, your, your, your night vision, your, yours, whatever, whatever it might be. Like, are you ready in every single, you do that before every mission? Like, Oh, I didn't even turn it on. It doesn't matter. Like it gets drained. You're going to put fresh batteries in might be like are you ready in every single you do that before every mission like oh i didn't even turn it on doesn't matter like it gets drained you're gonna put fresh batteries in everything before everything you know god i love that and that's that's just part of the deal god i love that uh mr uh jason mccarthy thank you um i i i wanted I wanted to feel like this podcast started getting shot out of a cannon, and I feel like it did, and I feel like we kept the energy up the whole time. I'm so pumped to have you on. Thank you. You're a cool dude.

Fun chat. I like the shotgun approach, man. Okay, good. Keep it high octane, right? Yes, yes. Brought us some new stuff. It's great, man. I really keep fighting the good fight. Love seeing your crazy-ass boys out doing crazy-ass boy stuff. People need to follow that lead.

It's okay. Let your kids go do all the stuff. This is healthy. Go live this life. It's fun, fun too this is a lot of fun to do it like this go outside do the things be active encourage others to do it invite other people to come do it with you and lots of please and thank yous if you don't say please or thank you yes lots of sorrys yes if you can't say please thank you make eye contact say sorry you can't let uh please, thank you. Make eye contact. Say, sorry. You can't let someone walk through the door before you, then you might as well just do 10 burpees. That's, that's the rule around here. I probably should do 10 burpees. They're so good at it too. The guy probably should do 10 burpees for that. I'm like, yeah, probably

you don't push your brother in the back. Have you, have you done sandbag burpees? They're, they're great. I saw it. Well, so I'll tell you this. I saw you doing – is that the one where you throw it over your head? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you did 14 in a minute. So I don't own a sandbag, but I actually saw that last night, and I was going to do a 60-pound D-ball toss over my shoulder. And if I beat your score, I was going to post it on Instagram, and if I don't, I'm not going to. So I'm going to try that today. You need a sandbag. Let me know. We'll send you whatever

you want. You're a great dude. All right, brother. Great to meet you. Please extend my love to Jimmy Letchford, one of the greatest men. And he taught me a lot and it was an honor working with him over at CrossFit.