The Tim Ferriss Show - #310: Hurry Up and Fail -- Tim Kennedy

Episode Date: April 22, 2018

Tim Kennedy (@TimKennedyMMA) is a former UFC middleweight contender who simultaneously served in the US Army as a Green Beret sniper and had tours in both Afghanistan and Iraq. He is a three-time winner of the Modern Army Combatives tournament, a grueling three-day event that tests mixed martial arts skills among other things. Tim is now a member of the Special Forces wing of the Texas National Guard.In his spare time, Tim heads up Sheepdog Response, an organization that trains civilians in self-defense and counter-terrorism skills, and Ranger Up, a military-themed clothing line. He's shared his martial arts and military expertise on several television shows, including the Spike TV series Deadliest Warrior, Hunting Hitler on the History Channel, and in the 2016 indie film Range 15. Tim is currently involved in an unscripted series from Discovery called Hard to Kill. Enjoy!This podcast is brought to you by Four Sigmatic. I've been drinking this company's mushroom-infused coffees and elixirs for years, and now I've got something new to share: Mushroom Matcha. It's a green tea designed as a coffee alternative, perfect for those of us trying to cut back on caffeine without losing its associated cognitive boost. And for the curious and disgusted: no, it doesn't actually taste like mushrooms.Four Sigmatic Mushroom Matcha includes L-theanine, a relaxing amino acid that results in a feeling of balanced energy without giving you the jitters, and astragalus, an adaptogen known for its immune system supporting and stress reducing properties. You can try the Matcha right now, along with a combination of Four Sigmatic's other flagship products, by going to foursigmatic.com/timtim and using code "TIMTIM" at checkout for a special listener discount!This podcast is also brought to you by WordPress, my go-to platform for 24/7-supported, zero downtime blogging, writing online, creating websites -- everything! I love it to bits, and the lead developer, Matt Mullenweg, has appeared on this podcast many times.Whether for personal use or business, you're in good company with WordPress -- used by The New Yorker, Jay Z, FiveThirtyEight, TechCrunch, TED, CNN, and Time, just to name a few. A source at Google told me that WordPress offers "the best out-of-the-box SEO imaginable," which is probably why it runs nearly 30% of the Internet. Go to WordPress.com/Tim to get 15% off your website today!***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Please fill out the form at tim.blog/sponsor.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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performers of all different types from every possible field imaginable. And today we have a polymath of sorts who I've been hoping to have on the show for a very, very long time. Tim Kennedy, at TimKennedyMMA on the socials, is a former UFC middleweight contender who boasts wins over such stars as Robbie Lawler and Michael Bisping. He is a machine. During his fight career, Kennedy simultaneously served in the U.S. Army as a Green Beret sniper and had tours in both Afghanistan and Iraq. He is a three-time winner of the Modern Army Combatives Tournament, effectively Bloodsport, a grueling three-day event that tests mixed martial arts skills, among other things. Kennedy is now a member of the Special Forces Wing of the Texas National Guard.

In his spare time, he heads up Sheepdog Response, an organization that trains civilians in self-defense and counterterrorism skills, and a ranger up a military-themed clothing line. He's lent his martial arts and military expertise to several television shows, appearing on the Spike TV series The Deadliest Warrior, Hunting Hitler on the History Channel, and in the 2016 indie film Range 15. He is also currently involved in his latest, which is an unscripted series greenlighted by Discovery called Hard to Kill, which we discuss. And Tim is an intense man, as you will note very, very quickly in this interview. I find him increasingly fascinating as I get to know him, and I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. So without further ado, please enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with Tim Kennedy.

Tim. What's up? Welcome to the show. So you sent me a photograph en route, or I guess just after arriving here, uh you had a gi on open and blood running down your face so where were you and what happened i was not but four miles away from here and we just had the ibjjf world jujitsu competition um this weekend and so last week we're doing very sports jujitsu training getting people ready for the tournament um i hate sports jujitsu um i think sports jujitsu is the abomination to what martial arts is where like it

takes something that's really cool and then they make it sporty you know it's like oh let's give some points to do some stupid things and then people you know the mutation that evolve like how it evolves it like it loses its balls. And I don't like things that had balls and then no longer have balls. They kind of go like the emasculated man. And that's what jujitsu has almost become. Like jujitsu to me is like I'm going to get in mount or side control. I'm going to pick your face up.

I'm going to smash it into this cement. And then I'm going to push your eyes out. And then I'm going to bite your cheek off. You know, that's jujitsu to me. Because, you know, that's the origin of it. The gentle art. Yeah. The gentle art. And so today we did combat jujitsu. So just to have a total paradigm shift, just to make people's heads explode, instead of like talking about, you know, getting four points for back control or getting four points for mount or getting a takedown and getting two, but it's like, find a place that you can hold somebody down and then

hit them. And that's it. I was watching a video in prep for this. I think it was from sheep dog response, which you can, we can talk about in a second, but you, you had back control on someone, you're right on top of them. They were all turtled up on the ground, and you sort of wiped your fingers on their eyes. And you're like, okay, yeah, I just took your eyes out. So something along the lines of like, old man jiu jitsu leads to old men dying or something like that. But there's just a such a huge delta. Yeah, between the two. I think you have to look at the origin of what things are and then the abomination of what they become. You know, what you see is these really, the genesis of a martial art was they had to learn how to protect themselves or they didn't have weapons. So they had to create something to fight the dictators that were killing them. Or there were the samurai that were really good at swords.

So then the ninjas came along to use stealth, because if you fight a ninja head on, you're going to die. So let's create something new. And then over time, that loses what it is, you know, you have to be able to competitively practice something to get good at it. So then you can implement sport. And that was that's what kind of differentiates a lot of these different jujitsu or a lot of these different martial arts are just really tiny little rules. Like what's the difference between judo and jiu-jitsu and jiu-jitsu and Greco-Roman wrestling and Greco-Roman wrestling and freestyle wrestling and collegiate wrestling?

So they're very small differences. That's to make them a sport. But if you take those rules away, you get back to what the martial art was, which was how to fight for your life and not get murdered. Yeah, and I think it's also misleading when people think of the term martial art and they turn it into some type of performance. Yeah, they are like body paint. I'm like going to start putting my chest all over this window. I'm like, I'm doing martial arts. And it's actually, when you go back to the translation from say, whether it's like Wushu

in Chinese or any of these, like Bujutsu in Japanese, I used to live in Japan. It's actually martial technique that then got translated to art. So it's, it's lost. It's, uh, some of its impact through a mistranslation, in a sense. And when I look at your career, I saw you fight live in some early Strike Force events when I was living in San Jose. And then became fascinated by your military career, which we'll talk about. Seems like you're very good at game time decisions and acting under pressure. So I want to talk about training though, for a second. Could you talk about what you say to yourself when you train?

And at least my understanding is it begins with hurry up dot, dot, dot. Yeah. Hurry up and fail. Funny enough, as I send you that picture of me dripping blood out of my face and like I've blood already clotted in my mouth, you know, and like it gets like stuck as it starts congealing, you know, it turns into that gelatin up inside of kind of weird cavities inside of your nose. So if you like cough, like chunks start flying. As I was trying to explain what it means to train,

so somebody came up to me at the end of practice today and they're like, man, I keep, um, getting tired or I keep quitting. Or I had a couple of people that just tapped from the position that I was in or that they were in. And, uh, so hurry up and fail is this mantra of, I want to get to the breaking point of where I can't go on any longer. And I want to stay there. Because then the next time I train, that wall has moved. I mean, ever so slightly, but it's moved. So then the next time I can go in and I can get to that point as hard and as fast as I can and I can stay there. So the next time it's going to move and repeat until finally, if you look back months later,

you've progressed so far. Today, I was at Onnit Academy and we did the exact same workout we did two months ago. Same weight. And what two months ago left us on the ground, like almost heaving in nauseous, couldn't stand up, about to throw up. Today, we blew through effortlessly

and Juan, Shane and I looked at each other like, what are we supposed to do right now? Cause we have an extra 16 minutes. Cause we went through it so fast. So in two months, there was a, such a clear change of looking back and seeing like, man, I got bigger, I got faster, I got stronger and I ultimately got harder to kill. So in jujitsu, it's the exact same. You, you rush to that breaking point. And by no means do I want to say something's going to break me because if somebody can break me, I welcome it. Like bring it. I see, I go all over the world to try and find people that can do that so I can find that point where I'm going to fail. And then the next time I do it, it's going to move, you know? So when you then fast forward to an example of

an environment in which the stakes are a little higher so i'd love to talk about hadja gracie starting with an r for the you non-brazilians out there it's chatting with uh mutual acquaintance actually before we get to mutual acquaintance i i owe credit to the person who made the introduction, who is Donald Park. Love that guy. Who I went to college with, who used to be a super lightweight blue belt that I could throw around because of judo. Now I can no longer throw him around because he's a black belt. And co-owner of a school, which is where you were training today.

What's the name of the school? Grace Humaita. I think it's Hoyler Gracie. It's in his lineage, so I'm a Hoyler Gracie black belt, but Donald Parks and Paula Brandau are the ones that run the school. And it is a shark tank of passionate people that love family and martial arts, and that's what that place is. And for those of you who don't want staph infections, also very clean school.

Oh, it's one of my favorite things. I'm a huge germaphobe. Not I'm a germaphobe but like i'm a crazy clean person yeah and like you i walked in today and i could i could smell bleach god i love that smell you know it's like that means i actually have a huge infection on my leg right now because i was in florida i got my leg sliced open on the side of a boat after i smashed a window with a tomahawk and my leg got infected from it because the water, I'm not sure if you know this, in Miami is not really clean. Yeah, right. Yeah.

So I'm cutting my leg open so I can scrub it with iodine so this infection goes away because I also don't like prescriptions. All right. Well, I can't leave that and go back to Hadja Gracie immediately. So we'll get to Hadja in due time. So you're in a boat. You smash a window with a tomahawk. What the hell happened? The boat was on fire and it was sinking. I didn't want due time. So you're in a boat. You smash a window with a tomahawk. What the hell happened?

The boat was on fire and it was sinking. I didn't want to drown. So I smashed the window and then I tried to swim out. And then the glass in the window cut my leg. And then I got what I think is poop water inside of my cut leg. What's the context for that? Well, somebody had pooped in the water. I'm sorry.

Why was their broken glass tomahawk boat on fire to begin with um we're we're recreating um a commercial fisherman's worst nightmare which is being on a boat that's on fire that's sinking and uh you're gonna have to make a bunch of decisions at once uh am i gonna try to put the fire out am i gonna try to save the boat am i gonna start to get my rescue equipment am i gonna start trying to put the fire out? Am I going to try to save the boat? Am I going to start to get my rescue equipment? Am I going to start trying to find my beacon? Am I going to start deploying the boat? The life,

the life boat. Um, am I going to get my immersion suit? Am I going to like, so you have a whole bunch of really bad options to choose from. And all of all of those bad options might dictate whether you live or die. Um, this is for the TV show that you're finishing up.

What's the name of the show? It's called Hard to Kill. Aptly named. Yeah, but not me. It's not about me being hard to kill, which I hope I am. The hard to kill, it's to pay homage to guys and gals

that do these jobs that are in freaking sane. Like imagine we're sitting here talking right now. Some random dude just like started repelling down the side of this window to clean our window. Like people do that job. That's kind of crazy. And they do it when the wind's blowing 30, 40 miles an hour.

You're like, we're like that little crane right there, which doesn't have an American flag on it. That, that you don't seem pleased about that. That vexes me. I want to go tear that thing down like Hulk style and start throwing those construction

guys off until they put up an American flag. Oh, they got their little brands up there. Whatever those are. Don't care. If you're listening right now, and you're a crane operator, I implore you to please put an American flag on your crane. We want to see it.

All right. I'm going to grab my hamstring. to please put an American flag on your crane. We want to see it. All right. So, I'm going to grab my hamstring. This is the most action-packed podcast I've ever done already. I'm just going to drink some more water. How did Tim Kennedy pull his hamstring? He was doing a podcast with Tim Ferriss. They're really intense.

You have intense podcasts. So we find these jobs that are super dangerous and people do them every single day and they embody the spirit of the American people. They do something that provides, that puts food on tables, that put gases in cars, that delivers medications to people in nowhere Alaska. And these are brave, courageous, fearless people that do the jobs every single day. And then we find in that job their worst nightmare, their worst case scenario, their worst day. And then I go and I do that. So I learn about the job.

I learn about the people. I learn about why they do it and then ultimately how they survive or sometimes even perish. And I go and do that thing, um, which is dumb, you know, which, which leads me like I'm 20 pounds lighter than I normally am. And I'm, I have a bunch of jacked up cuts all over my body right now. And I'm trying to march, march on. You seem good at marching on. And I mean, a common thread that occurs to me, at least one thing that fascinates me

about people in those situations, situations, anyone in very high pressure situations is the internal monologue, sort of the self-talk, which I'm going to use as a segue to Hodger Gracie. So Hodger, for people who don't know who he is, chatting with a second mutual acquaintance who I'm not sure if he wants to be named or not, we can talk about who he is afterwards, but he said you could consider Hodger one of the, many people would consider him one of the top five jujitsu competitors of all time. Would you say that's a fair statement? I'd put him top three.

Top three. I'd tie him with three other guys. All right. Just out of curiosity, who else would be up at the top in your mind? Fortunately, Ryan Gordon right now is definitely up there. Lovato. And without a doubt, I'd have to include New York. I can't even remember his name right now.

I'm sure somebody from the internet will recognize who. Oh, wait a second. I know who you're talking about. You're talking about Marcelo Garcia. Yeah, Marcelo Garcia. Yeah. That was the Marcelo team. Yeah, the Marcelo guillotine.

Yeah. Like, yeah, loose hand, high elbow. Marcelo's amazing. Yeah. But Hodger's in there. Yeah. And you fought Hodger in MMA roles, or under MMA roles. When you're walking out to enter the octagon

to fight someone like that. And just to flash forward, I mean, the, this, the story as it was retold to me, having seen the footage, but it was retold to me by another high level,

uh, jujitsu practitioner. He said, not only on the feet, did you effectively beat the shit out of Hodger, but on the ground also, you were able to do that. So two questions when you're walking out, are you saying, hurry up and fail to yourself on the way out of Hodger, but on the ground also you were able to do that. So two questions.

When you're walking out, are you saying hurry up and fail to yourself on the way out to the octagon? No. On game day, when I'm putting rounds in my magazines, so when you put your body armor on, put your helmet on, do a commo check. Do a what check? A commo check, like a communication with the radio on all the different

channels and we have like your primary uh secondary contingent and emergency channels then the very next thing you do is you chamber a round into your pistol because if you do your rifle first you'll forget to do your pistol so you do these things in these pre-mission checks in a very specific order so you never miss something so so i'm in a gunfight with my rifle my rifle runs out of ammunition somebody's charging at me i go to transition i forgot to put a round in the chamber like you think you'd never do that but like you're about to the helicopter's getting spun up you know guys are putting their gear on you can forget so you do things very meticulously um when i put that round in my chamber of my pistol before I start putting the round in the chamber of my rifle,

which is the last thing that I do before I start taking tape off of charges or making sure all my grenades are prepped properly, it's like not today. That's what I'm telling myself. I can fail all the time in training. I can rush to failure. I can hurry up and fail at every opportunity when I'm getting ready. But when finally bullets are going to fly or I'm going to walk into that octagon or I'm going to kick that door in, not today. Not a fucking chance are you going to beat me on that day. Is that what you repeat to yourself when you step into the octagon and you're waiting for all

the announcing to complete or is there more that goes through your head? I'm actually waiting for the first time I make a mistake and somebody thinks that they're going to do something great. You know, that like, I'm going to get hit the first time. Or in Hodger's case, I shot an inside single on him to put him on his back, which nobody thought in my right mind I would do. And he got my back. Hodger Gracie's best position. Hodger Gracie, if he gets on your back, you're going to sleep, period. I got there and I was like, hell yeah. Do you know what's going to happen? I'm going to get out of here. I'm going to start punching you in the face and think about that. What's that's going to do to him psychologically, psychologically. I'm in the, he's in the best position that he could possibly be in the thing that he's the best

at. And this little hairy handed monkey that's in front of him gets out and starts punching him in the face while he has his back. No, he just, that was the end of the fight. I was three minutes into the fight and there was nothing he could do psychologically from that point forward because I already beat the thing he did the best. Right. So even in my failure, I was like, hell yeah, here I come. You know, like I wish I had blood dripping out of my mouth and sending him pictures later of it. Cause like, that's, that's the opportunity to really thrive, to grow and, uh, just scare the freaking shit out of somebody. Yeah. I see the, uh, I don't consider myself a fighter at all.

Well, not, I mean, I'm not an accomplished fighter in any capacity, but I enjoy interacting with people who are very good at combat sports. And you mentioned Marcello earlier, so I've had a chance to spend time with Marcello simply because his school in New York City is co-owned with a dear friend of mine named Josh Waitzkin, who, for those who don't know the name, was the basis for searching for Bobby Fischer, both the book and the movie. So he was formerly considered a chess prodigy. And what, what they did and continue to do at that school is they videotape, uh, training sessions, uh, sparring sessions with Marcello. And this was also including during his competitive career. And people were like, that's ridiculous. How would you possibly like show your whole hand on video? That's crazy. And all these other people really secretive. And Marcello's thinking was like, that doesn't bother me at all because that's my game. It's

like, if people try to enter my game, I'm never going to lose. I will always win. Like, yeah, you want to watch my stuff and try to play that hand? Like, yeah, sure. I would love for you to do that. And he's the sweetest guy ever. So I'm using a tone that he would never use. Who are fighters past or present who really impress you? Are there any, they could be well known, but I'm particularly interested in names that folks might not recognize. It's like the two or three guys in the marquee lights that have really been seen before. Jeremy Horn. He was an old school guy, but one of Chuck Liddell's first losses, if not his only loss by submission, was to Jeremy Horn.

Yeah, Chuck's an NCAA wrestler, the Iceman, like putting everybody to sleep. Just cool, calm, collected, walks out, and you can't take him sleep, uh, just cool, calm, collected walks out. And, you know, you can't take him down. He's just going to hit you with these bricks for hands. And, um, it gets on top of Jeremy and Jeremy just holds onto him, puts him in a head and arm choke in the guard and puts him to sleep. You're like waking Chuck up because he's so unconscious. Um, and that was, he has a really unassuming body shape. You know, they called him Gumby cause he's just, he doesn't look like me. Like you look

at me and you're like, Ooh, I don't want to fight that ape. You know, like, um, you look at him and you're like, well, you can babysit my kids. Can you walk my dog? Um, So he's one of those guys that was just so disarming. Carlos Condit is another one where, especially at his prime, he looked like the idiot kid next door that you'd want to mow your lawn and house sit and clean dog poop out of the back of your house. You're like, he's just such a nice looking, pleasant New Mexico kid. But when that bell rang, it was just pure violence everywhere. He would elbow in you, spinning kicks, submissions, grapple.

It didn't matter where the fight went. He's just going to fight. And there's no, you, you, the only way you can beat him is like just being inches or seconds ahead of him in something for the whole entire duration of the fight. Hard to do. Yeah. Really hard to do. Cause you're not gonna knock him out. You're not going to submit him. You just have to out endure him, you know? And when I say endure, I'm not talking like Lance Armstrong on a bicycle bicycle i'm talking like getting punched in the face for 25 minutes that's a really dumb way to out endure somebody well so this do i put jacare in that in that short list too of best grapplers the i think i don't speak portuguese so i think that's the crocodile isn't it yeah jacare guy's an animal yeah i i remember hearing stories i

didn't see this personally, but of him in jujitsu tournaments, literally just ripping the arms off, like the fabric arms off of geese because of his strength and grip strength. What a beast. Yeah. So that leads me to, to a quote.

And if this is a misquote, please correct it, of course, but here we go. Quote, my entire life revolves around the concept that I want to be the hardest person someone ever tries to kill. If you're going to come and think, oh, I'm going to kill Tim Kennedy. You might be able to, but it's going to be the nastiest, most evil, disgusting,

violent affair that you could ever imagine occurring. How do you develop, I'll keep this really broad, but mental toughness and where does that fit in? Or what mental slash psychological advantages do you have in life or in battle? And how have you developed them? I hate, there's so many like metaphors and phrases and little cliches of, you know, it's not the size of the dog but the the size of the fight in the dog right right um it's not the size of the it's not the size of the dog in the fight it's the fight of the dog in the fight all right the fight in the dog yeah um that is developed right you know so bulls in the 60s and 70s they had bucking bulls they are hard to ride you know um so then what

they started doing in the 70s and 80s they started finding mexing bulls and they are hard to ride, you know? Um, so then what they started doing in the seventies and eighties, they started finding Mexican fighting bulls. These are mean, nasty bulls, and they were breeding them with the bucking bulls. So the bucking bulls are big, powerful bulls. And then what would happen in the eighties and nineties, what guys used to be able to ride like 60, 70, maybe even 80% of the time that successfully get their eight seconds. By the 80s, it was down to 50%. Right now, it's down to like the 20s and 30s. The bulls are just bigger.

They're meaner. And they buck just as hard. And the cowboys are not only scared of how hard they're going to buck, but when they get thrown, that bull is turning around to try and murder that cowboy because they're now they're mean so it can be trained it can be in a bull's case it's actually bred right you know but in special forces there's a lot of different special operations units you know navy seals and marine recon even i'll even give a nod to the Air Force with their JTACs, you know, the Army Rangers, Army Special Forces, the Green Berets. In the process, once you get past selection, the next six months to 10 months, they pretty much just tear away every level of who you are,

of your ego. You know, if we're going to go like Freudian, they're just stripping away everything down to the most raw element of you as a human and that you're worthless, that you're, that you can't do anything. And you are so exposed and you're so vulnerable at this point that then they can start building a fresh foundation and they start putting in the cornerstones of never quitting of always working hard of planning relentlessly and strategically looking for every opportunity to never have a fair fight. So, cause we still, we feel so vulnerable and we feel so exposed. Like anything could hurt me right now. You know, like, fuck, if you fart on me, I might die. So I have to have every single advantage strategically. Like I need to cheat in every way. So I never have a fair fight. If I'm like, if I'm going to go and kick a door in, and there's four bad guys in there, cool. I'm going to have 250 dudes with me. We're all going

to have better guns. We're all going to have better ammo. We're going to have better sites. We're going to have aerial support. You know, While that may not always be an option, that's what we want because we never want to fail again because we'll feel so raw and exposed. And that's different from all other special operations, and I think that's why Special Forces specifically has been so successful and so unheard of, you know, so unremarkable that nobody knows, you know, the quiet professionals, which is our motto means that we're still successful. What was the motto? The quiet professionals. The quiet professionals. Yeah.

Well, let's talk about how the military entered your life. And I don't know the exact timing on this, but it's, it seems like you're, let's start with, and then, then you can sort of place us nine 11. So it seems like your life changed quite dramatically around that time. Could you tell us who is Tim Kennedy at that point in time? Do we have to? And what, and, and,

and what, what then happened starting at nine 11? All right. Well, I'm just going to just tell, just tell your story. Yeah. Mom,

if you're listening, please stop. Um, I'm at the pit. Yeah your story. Yeah. Mom, if you're listening, please stop. I'm at the pit. Yeah. We're Chuck trained out of San Luis Obispo. And I'm training, you know, sweaty, stinky. And this pretty good looking girl walks in. And I was like, hey, girl, what's going on?

She's like, hey, I'm looking for a guy that fought. He was like the fourth or fifth fight that fought a few weekends ago at the WC, the World Extreme Cage Fighting fight on, I think it was like on Halloween. I was like, oh, I fought that night. She's like, oh yeah, I remember you, you look familiar. And like, I totally didn't remember her.

And she tells me that she tested positive for HIV and that we had a huge orgy that night. And she's trying to contact all of her partners that she's been with in the past few months to, to have them go get tested that they might have AIDS. That pretty much personifies who I am. At the time, at the time.

Yeah. I graduated from high school a few years early, was done with college a couple of years early, you know, like 18, I'm an EMT firefighter. 19, I already have my undergrad. I start grad school, 9-11 happens. I got two girls pregnant, girls walking into the, like I'm in just a talented, wasted piece of shit. Like I'm wasted potential in every single sense of the word. And at the time that all of these things are going wrong

and I'm having this realization of, I have to do something. I don't know what that is. A bunch of planes start slamming the buildings, you know, to the Pentagon, into the two towers, into some random field in Virginia. And, you know, and I'm just sitting here watching live these things happen and realizing what a waste of a human I am.

Everything was about what jeans am I going to wear or if I'm going to bring a good bottle to someplace to impress somebody to be able to hook up with somebody else. Um, and this, it was like, there's this horrible, humiliating slap in the face of you're a piece of shit. What are you going to do now? And then what happens? So I walk into the recruiter's office and I, I say, put me on the fastest course I possibly can to the worst place I can go. You know? All right. So,

so you do that. What, what do the people around you think of that decision? Um, my mom was scared. My dad was proud. My brother was excited. Um,

all of my friends were just like me, so interested in themselves that it didn't matter what I was going to be doing. Right. They're too self-absorbed to really have that much interest. Um, my, my dad, he, he wasn't proud yet. Um, he was exhilarated in the sense that I had a chance, you know, you'd be in a way you'd been given a second chance. Yeah. Like a reboot. In this case, it was probably my 50th chance. Yeah. You know, I, I came, yeah. White privilege is a thing. And I had every opportunity to succeed in anything I did. Um, you know, I was top 10 in the world when I was 22 years old as a fighter, um, 21 as a fighter, anything I could have done anything. And, um, and I was just wasting everything. So then at this point it was my dad finally be like,

okay, we, we got another chance, you know, let's see how this goes. So, so if you could walk us through sort of what happens in the weeks and months after that. Because I'm very, I mean, I have friends who are both active and at this point certainly more on the civilian side from military, but I've never experienced it myself. So what happens from that point forward? So, you know, to get to special forces, there's a lot of tests from intelligence chat tests, you know, your, your ASVAB, your GT, your, um, GT test. What are those? It's your general technical knowledge. So it's, there's high IQ people

who can do amazing things on, on questionnaires. And then if you hand them a puzzle, they kind of look at it like, or if you hand them a transmission, and you say, break this transmission down and put it back together. That's just a different type of mind. Special forces, they want smart guys that are physically capable, that have a very, very high acumen

in general technical ability. So there's some tests that when you take the ASVAB, which is kind of the general military intelligence test that has subcategories that one of which is your, your GT score, your general technical knowledge. So make sure your scores are good. You have the proficiency to learn a second language quickly, or you already have a second language, which is required in all special forces. And then you go to basic training as an infantryman. If you finish basic training, you go to airborne school. You finish basic training, infantry school, and airborne school.

Then you go to special operations preparation course. And this is the trigger. This is the opportunity for the special forces to get rid of you. This is it's run by senior special forces, NCOs, and they it's their first access to the fresh population of potential candidates that are going to go to selection. If you don't pass SOPSI, then you don't get to go to selection. If you don't go to selection, then you go to the needs of the Army. You can go back to being infantry, or you could go to EOD, or you could do anything else. You just can't be a Green Beret.

What does EOD stand for? Or what is it? It's getting rid of bombs. Explosive ordnance disposal. I got it. Guys would go to psychological operations, civil affairs, just kind of any other kind of high-speed, cool job, but you're just never going to be special forces.

I think we got there in April, and they froze guys going to selection in May, June, July, and August because it was too hot and a bunch of Green Berets keep dying in selection, well, pre-Green Berets. So they wouldn't let us go. So they had us for four or five months of all of these recruits coming in. And the 500 of us, they sent 91 of us to selection. Everybody else went away.

Washed out a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah. And of the 91 of us, 88 of us got selected and then went to, when you get selected, that just means you get to go to the Q course, which is somewhere between a year to two years of training to show up on the team and then realize that you know nothing and that you're a piece of shit and that you have everything to learn the day that you walk through the door. So when you got into say the Q course, what were you best at and what were you worst at?

Where did you excel and where were you deficient the most? If you remember, they love the gray guy. Like they always say, be the gray man, be the man, be the guy. You know, there's 200 people in formation, be the guy that nobody knows the name of. Yeah. Um, which means like if you're going to run a PT test, there's the guy that goes the fastest and the guy that goes the slowest. You want to be the guy that just passes that nobody knows about. Why is that? Like being so unremarkable is, is it, especially in special operations, it's a, it's a trait that's really hard to find that, um, is that for blending in later for being inconspicuous later? Yeah. And also we don't want showboaters, right? You can go to the Navy SEALs and we don't want failures.

You know, you can go to the Air Force. So we want that sweet middle ground. We want the gray man that can do anything, that will always pass. And you forget about the moment you take your eyes off him. You're like, I'm looking right at you, but where'd you go, man? I know you're right there. Right. Like, you know, you cross the finish line. You're like, all right, great job. What was that dude's name again?

Right. That's the guy that we want. Cause that guy's priceless. So were you that guy? I was not that guy. I was the guy that would finish first. I was the guy that was biceps the size of my chest. Yeah. And competitive shooter, a professional fighter. Like, they knew who I was. So it took a lot of practice and training and pain to kind of get the gray man mentality. I wanted everybody to be like, oh, look at Tim. You're like, great. Look at that, guys.

Be like Tim. But that's just not how it is in that culture. So how do they beat that out of you? how do they beat that like they you just you said it yeah they beat it out of you so if you're in seer school um you're talking about being a gray man yeah like if you're the tallest that's what is that that's uh help me out survival evasion resistance escape um it's it's a month- long torture school where, uh, you want to be the gray man. If you're not the gray man, you're being beat. You're like, I'm not, you are being beaten like phone books, hoses, starvation, cold

water, um, locked inside of cages, locked inside of boxes that you can't take a full breath in, locked inside of a box that you can't stand up in, that you can't stretch in, you know, being pissed on, getting put in a pond that's frozen and making them, making you squat. So your tiny little dick and the balls, which are essentially up inside of your stomach are barely touching and breaking the ice.

And you have to stand there in that half squat with the water, just playing with what's left of your, you know, tiny penis. And with, with somebody making fun of you while you're doing it, you're like, Oh,

look at his little dick, you know, and like, why are you taller than i am tall and they bit you again so they beat it out of you yeah i mean you you'll get good at it yeah i'm trying to think about it had a segue here uh mental tough. Now it can be taught. When, when is it considered graduating from say Ranger school? Like what, what is that moment? Where does that come after, uh, that, that particular, so there's a bunch of phases in the course. Um, once you get selected and you start the Q course, you have small unit tactics. So it's learning how to be a guerrilla war fighter. And then from there you have to learn your job. So you're an 18 Bravo. I'm an 18 Bravo special forces weapon sergeant. I have to learn everything about every single foreign weapon. It's like how to assemble and disassemble a dish cut and a, an American M two and then a AK 47 and M four and a M 21 and M 14.

I need to know all of these weapons, how to assemble, how to disassemble. If you put all the parts into a box, I can pick all the parts out and figure out which gun is which and then put them together. I can close my eyes. I can do it with every single American gun. So that if you send me to a country and all we have access to is local indigenous guns, that's cool. We're good with these and I know how to work it and how to clean it and how to operate it. So that's my job. Security, the security of my team, also an 18 Bravo skill set. And then from there, you go to-

What does security mean in this context? Like right now in this room that we're in, where would I set up early warning? You know, am I gonna bribe the bomb that's on the street corner that's watching the front door or the guy that's at the front desk that let me in here and

push the elevator button like is he gonna have my direct cell phone line if i go to dominican republic to do a counter human trafficking mission right who am i bribing how am i protecting my team how am i protecting or if i'm in country i'm a fine afghanistan or if i'm iraq like what is the outside court on you know how what kind, if I'm gonna level all the bushes and then I'm gonna put up high fence and then I'm gonna have mines in between the high fence and the mid fence. And then from the mid fence to my security positions

where I have machine guns positioned with interlocked in sectors of fire. So by the time you get to my little hut in the middle, like it's been a pretty bad fight, you know? I'm supposed to be able to think of all that. Like I'm a security consultant, but for 12 special forces guys when everybody around us wants to kill able to think of all that. Like I'm a security consultant, but for 12 special forces guys when everybody around us wants to kill us.

Yep, got it. So you've done SUT, small unit tactics, guerrilla warfare. You've learned your job. Then you go and you apply it in a phase called Robin Sage, which is the coolest phase there is. Robin Sage. Robin Sage.

You go to a country called Pineland and you are embedded with 11 other special forces guys. Is that a nickname for a real country or is it a simulation? It's a simulation and it's very Vietnam era simulation, um, or North Africa or North Iraq pre-war with the Kurds about to fight Saddam. Um, they put you in and they have a hundred role players that are your indigenous fighting force, your militia, and you're trying to train them. You're trying to prepare them. You set up a base of operations that they're going to be fighting out of. And you start running operations like military operations to overthrow a government to

battle a local other insurgency a competitive warlord so that we have a hope of implementing democracy and then help them write a constitution and then help them put people into government that can run the country appropriately. And there's very intentional design problems that come up in this phase. But it's a full, you pack your rucksack with your food and your water, and you jump out of an airplane into the middle of a forest, and you link up with the local G's, and you start conducting this month, two-month-long exercise. You finish that, you go to SEER school, you graduate SEER school, you finally get to go to being awarded your green beret.

And then you step into an ODA and they're like, you suck. What's an ODA? Special Forces Operation Detachment Alpha. It's the A-team. I got it. Where the ODA is the A team. And they say, go sit in the corner and open your eyes, open your ears and shut your mouth. And you do that for like a year. And then you start, get to start work. So you get to start work at what point? So I was doing some reading and again, correct me if I'm wrong here, but so I, I'm the guy who wants to grab, once you graduated rangeanger school place that starves you and denies you sleep for over two months took a fight six days later in the ifl why would you do such a thing i'm stupid

i think we have a reoccurring theme here right where he's like god you're just a dumb person like you're a smart person, Tim. And then across the table, there's this other person that's super stupid. I mean, it seems to have worked for you so far. Hurry up and fail. Yeah. Right? I graduated from Ranger School as an honor grad, which is of the 400 or 500 people that went, the 200 or 300 that graduated. There's three that are selected, one for the NCOs, one for the officers,

and one as an overall, as the best rangers of that class. So I graduate. I actually fought in the Army Combatives Tournament, which is one of, I think, the most grueling unknown tournaments in the world. I fought that the Friday, Saturday, Sunday. What is it?

It's a three-day tournament. You weigh in on Thursday. Friday, it's all grappling. Who are the contestants? The contestants are combat arms of all branches of service. So Navy SEALs, Green Berets, Army Rangers, 101st Airborne, 82nd Airborne, infantrymen, you know, like Marine, anybody that kicks ass for a living can come and fight in the combatives tournament. The unknown Kumite of the military. Yeah.

So first day is all grappling or so you, it all grappling. So it's like a grappling tournament. If you win that day, you go to the next day, which is... Are the rules sports jiu-jitsu? Are they different? Similar to sports jiu-jitsu, there's no pulling guard. You can slam. You can knock out people. With a slam or a throw.

With a slam or a throw. So very combat-focused focused grappling you win that you move to the next day which is pancreas rules which is limited striking you can kick to the head open palm to the head close fist to the body knees to the body and then grappling all submissions are in if you win that day then you move into the third day which is full mma rules and it's like a ufc fight um but you're in your uniform so you're still fighting in oh right in your gear in your gear the whole time are there any rule differences between the mma rules per se in this tournament and regular mma rules they're no they're pretty similar to to like ufc got it ufc rules got. More so than like a pride. So you're not allowed to kick on the ground.

Yeah. So that was the day I went to ranger school. I weighed in on Thursday. I fought Friday, Saturday, Sunday, one, my third army combatives tournament.

And the only person ever went at three times. And then Sunday night I checked into ranger school. I went to ranger school, graduated honor grad. How much later was that? That was the same day. Oh, okay. I got it. I went to ranger school, graduated honor grad. How much later was that? The same day. Oh, okay, I got it, I got it, okay. Yeah, like finished Sunday from the combatives tournament,

iced my hands, and then checked into ranger school that same day and started ranger school that Sunday night. Two and a half months later, I graduate from ranger school, honor grad, and then eight days later, so I'm fighting Dante Rivera in the UFC school or in a grad and then eight days later so i'm fighting dante rivera in the ufc or in um the ifl so now did you did you say like that's really but but did you go into that that particular fight did you commit to that fight because you wanted to win because you wanted to see if it was possible to do such a thing

after the experience of ranger school, did you just commit so long ago that you're like, Oh shit, here it is. No, I guess I'm pre-committed. Why, why do, yeah. I mean, aside from the, you're saying stupid, but I know you're not a stupid guy. I mean, so what's the, what was the thought process? What were you hoping to get out of that? Like right now, if somebody kicked in the front door of this room and 10 Mexican cartel guys ran in, Sicario's with their masks pulled over, what do you think I would do?

What do I think you would do? Yeah. I think you'd probably go straight for it. For sure. Right? I'm tearing out eyes. I'm biting out cheeks. I'm taking this glass right here and it's going through the first dude's eye.

I'm going to take that stand right there and I'm going to use it as a baseball bat. I'm going to make it a choke point right there by the hallway, you know, where it's like we're in Thermopylae and see if you guys can get past us, like the 300. That's just the spirit of the fight. And I think you have to test the spirit of the fight. When I graduated from ranger school,

then I got the call a couple of days later, could you fight in the IFL, which was a new promotion that was on Fox. I knew I was gonna already be heading to combat. And the reason I had to go to ranger school was I had just gotten back from Iraq and my boss, John McPhee, the sheriff of Baghdad, he told me I was a piece of shit. And he said that I had no business being in a unit like the

one that we were in because we were in a very special unit within special forces. And that I didn't have the leadership and I didn't have the experience and I didn't have the military bearing to be in that unit and that I could maybe get a chance if I went to Ranger School and I graduated honor grad. I knew I was going to be heading back to combat, so I not only needed to prove to him that I was a good leader, but I was also tough enough and I deserved to be there. Just if I can pause for a second why why did he say that what were i mean with with the degree which you're comfortable disclosing i mean what what happened that would lead him to say that there's a lot of little things um we're on a a night where we're trying to kill one of the most evil dudes in all of the war we're in a war for 16 years uh zarkawi um remember the deck of cards? I do, yeah. Yeah, like he was an ace. He's a bad dude. He had strung up Americans from bridges and set them on fire.

You know, he drug dudes down the road, strapped behind a car that he had stolen from the Americans. He was notorious for posing with pictures with Americans, dead Americans in front of him, holding their guns like he was an African trophy hunter. Even the movie, The American Sniper with Chris Kyle, Chris Kyle was going after his henchmen, like lower level guys. My unit was going after him. Zarqawi. Yeah, going specifically after Zarqawi. And there were nights where we're supposed to have eight helicopters. So the whole assault force is going to be going right. And then air or the mechanic or something came up and we only had six. So my team sergeant's like,

all right, here's the new load plan. Um, Tim, you're not going to go little check on my ego. You know, like that, that sucks. Why can't I'm, I'm, I'm faster. I'm stronger. I'm, I'm, I'm definitely the, the juggernaut of the team. You know, like I'm out shooting you guys on the range right now. I'm out fighting you guys every morning and training. Like, why am I not going like, like a little petulant child, you know, like a spoiled bitch, brat, redheaded idiot. Retrospectively looking like that's what I sounded like. You're like, no, John, why can't I go? So there was lots of little tiny things that I did there. Um, that he was giving me a chance to, to prove, okay, got it. When you guys get back, I'm gonna have all your gear clean.

Everything's going to be ready to go. Um, so you can drop your gear off and go straight to bed and get some sleep after a long night of gunfighting um but instead i'm bitching that i don't get to go like a bunch of examples like that i could probably tell you 10 yeah um or the spirit of me i just want to be in the fight right but it's a team right right um like we're only as good as our weakest link and I'm being the weakest link, you know, how much of the, and we're getting exposed here. Yeah,

no, no. I mean, if I, I'm fascinated, I told you, I'll tell you whatever. Yeah.

I've been, and then you're going to hold it against me and everybody's gonna be like, I will not be friends with that guy. I'm not going to hold it against you. But so as a, looking back then, how much of those instances, right? So you're not part of the load plan. Do you think it's because you weren't qualified to be part of the load plan versus i want to see how tim responds both yeah i'm sure it was both i mean there were times where i know he specifically

put me on a load plan that i didn't need to be on just to see how to perform and the very next day wouldn't put me you know like okay i'm not gonna put you on the helicopter assault force the half i'm gonna put you on the gaff the ground assault force and i was like i don't want to be on just to see how to perform. And the very next day wouldn't put me, you know, like, okay, I'm not going to put you on the helicopter assault force, the half, I'm gonna put you on the gaff, the ground assault force. And I was like, I don't want to be on the ground. You know, like, how about you shut your face, you go out to that M250 machine gun, you start doing the headspace and timing, making sure it's clean, making sure all the ammo stack perfectly. So when you're on it, and if you get in a gunfight, everything's going to go so perfectly for you, but instead you're bitching. Right, right. You know, and I know he did that. So then he gives you the kind of verbal report card that you described and you

have this IFL coming up and you feel like you need to show what? I think I needed to show myself that, that, that, that, that spirit of the fight. So I come back. I not only graduate as honor grad, I also get the leadership award, which is like the thing I wanted the most. So all of ranger school is like,

hey, you're the best leader of this whole entire class. But I get back to the team. I got a little bit more military bearing. I got my ranger tab on here, sewn with white thread because I graduated during winter. Like we walked through snow, which rarely happens. So like feeling pretty awesome. But I haven't lost my fight.

Like I kind of wanted to show him that I'm still that same bulldog. You know, I'm still that same pit bull. I still have the things you liked. Yeah. Like that. I haven't changed as a person. And I'm like, who is this Dante Rivera? you know, a Henzo Gracie Brown or black belts that, you know, is undefeated. Neat. I'm gonna, I'm gonna pound him into oblivion and I'll

come back to the team on Monday and start getting ready to get, go to Afghanistan. All right. So you've been starved, denied sleep for two months. You take this fight, you go into the fight. What happens? Um, I pound him into oblivion. Uh, he, he, he quit. He, he tapped from strikes. I put him in every single position and I, for around and a half, I just punched him in the face from our feet, from the ground, picked him up, put on the back of his head. And, um, when guys graduate ranger school, a lot of guys don't walk for, for, for months. Like their legs are so destroyed. Um, they're so malnourished. They're so sleep deprived, deprived. The inside of their legs are so chaffed and rubbed raw. Um, like they don't, they'll actually get, um get in the military, you get like a medical release where you don't have to show up for PT test or any physical activity, physical training in the morning because they know you're so jacked up.

And they'll give you that for months after ranger school. So I wanted to go into a fight a week and a half after graduating ranger school and scare the living crap out of everyone you did yeah a couple of questions that i think are tangentially related but i was actually very curious to talk about a few things briefly out music. What have you used and why? I used to walk out to the funnest, most disarming song I possibly could. Do you really want to hurt me? Do you really want to make me cry? And I'd sing it to him as I was walking out.

I was pointing at him. And I'd get in the ring, I'm still pointing at him, you know, like maybe batting my eyes, maybe blowing him kisses, you know, like just to mess with him. Right. And I do a bunch of different songs like that all the time. And then my friend, Nick Palmashano from Ranger Up, he was like, hey, man, do you know the origin of the song Rooster? Alice in Chains? Yeah. And I was like, I, man, do you know the origin of the song Rooster? Alice in Chains?

Yeah. And I was like, yeah, right. It's like the rooster. He's like, it's about a machine gunner in Vietnam. He's writing to his dad who was in Vietnam and would carry the M60 machine gun for the 101st. And I was like, no. Are you serious? Like the, the, you know, the forgotten war with the forgotten soldiers, the most, the time when the American people were so disenchanted with what

the military was doing, fighting for freedom, trying to destroy communism. And I was like, okay, I'm going to walk out to this every day. So the, the last, the last half of my career, I would always walk out to that song, the rooster. And as a as a hob homage or a tribute to not just Vietnam, not just BWs, not just machine gunners, not just infantrymen, but like everybody everywhere that's ever fought in a fight to for something that's bigger and greater than them. With no thanks and no appreciation. Because I wasn't there fighting for me. I was there fighting for everybody else besides me at that point.

And we were chatting a little bit before hitting record today, and I asked you what would make this a successful interview, looking back a few months from now. And I might get the exact words wrong. You said it'd be, it'd be nice if people would stop dying. He talked about helping people become harder to kill. Yeah. So how, how, how do people listening, how would you suggest to people listening who may be, let's assume they're in not cash potato shape, 150 pounds of weight,

but that they have their non athletes who are in reasonable shape, but have no military experience. Uh, haven't been exposed to any, maybe real, but they would consider physical hardship in a long time. How does someone like that, if they think to themselves,

I would like to become harder to kill. What would your program or recommendations look like for them? One of the hardest things about me trying to inspire or encourage people to train as they look at me and they're like, that guy's freaking savage. You know, he's a special forces sniper, Ranger qualified green beret that's been to combat 12 times fought in the UFC, ranked top 10 in the world. He's a black belt in a handful of martial arts.

You know, but I'm the exact same person as every, as the other 7 billion people on the planet. Right. Like I didn't grow up with any kryptonite in the fridge, you know, like there's nothing that is different about me. Any in any way, shape or form. Um, I just work, you know, I just, and I'm just fighting at this point, I'm fighting for not even 1% to get 1% better. I'm fighting for percentages of a percent, incrementally decimals, the tiniest little bits just for that much of improvement. I long for the day where I would get dramatically faster in a month, that if I was 20% body fat, I could be 18% body fat. Do you know how freaking cool that would be if I,

right now, if I could just lose 2% body fat, meaning you're envious of the people who have more as a sort of percentage to gain if they started doing things in terms of training and so on. But you just said it. Yeah. If they just started doing things, that's it.

All you have to do is start. So like everybody. So where do I start? Man, anything you can get up. If you, if you don't walk around, if you haven't gotten up and walked around your block a couple of times, do that. If you haven't Googled where the closest martial art gym is, whether it's judo, whether it's jujitsu or it's Muay Thai, whether it's wrestling, it doesn't matter. If you haven't done it, try it. You know, if you've never gone to the shooting range and shot, give it a whirl. If you've been eating to the shooting range and shot give it a whirl if you've been

eating fry food for like three meals of three dinners out of the week try two right you know like just anything will make you just that much better and then those little tiny decisions start building on top of each other and then sooner or later you look back and you you don't even recognize the person that you are. There's such this beautiful change where like, Oh my God, I can, I can see my dick, you know, like I can see my feet or my wife for the first time in five years. I saw her look at me when I got up and I walked out of the room and not like

looked at me like, thank God that guy's getting up and leaving. But like, God damn, that guy looked good. Right. You know, like when it was the last time in some people's lives that they felt that way about the person they've been living with for 10 years? Right. You know, like make that girl fall in love with you again, you know, and press the fuck out of her. You know, when was the last time that you picked up both your kids and like ran to the

play gym with them hoisted on your shoulders and like put one up on the other one. The other ones you're holding the hand, you hand them on the play gym. Like that's some massive masculine shit. You're just playing with your kids on a play gym with them hoisted on your shoulders and like put one up on the other one the other ones you're holding the hand you hand them on the play gym like that's some massive masculine shit yeah you're just playing with your kids on a play gym yeah you know but there's this opportunities and there's so many of them for us just to embrace our potential which is usually i mean you know more about it better than almost anyone on the planet because you've pushed that limit so many times in so many different ways, both intellectually and physically. Like, there's so much unrealized potential. Back to me at 21 years old, little piece of shit, self-absorbed, ethnocentric prick.

Like, unrealized potential. There's like 120, 140 million Americans right now that just have total unrealized potential. Like just go, just go. Whatever that is, just start. So if they wanted to, for instance, develop on top of some of the physical training, like the ABCs, the basic literacy of survival,

let's say they live in an urban environment. What might those be? I mean, taking a two or three day CPR class, EMT stuff. You mentioned active shooter defense, which I think is particularly relevant in some respects. But what would some of those ABCs be? If someone's like, you know what? I really want to spend, let's say, a weekend, like every weekend for the next eight weeks amassing some of these skills? I mean, I'll just say A and B. A is keep the blood in the good guys. And B is let the blood

out of the bad guys. That's it, right? If they're innocent people, they're cops, they're firefighters, they're school children, a bunch of people dancing at a nightclub, and somebody comes in and starts trying to shoot people. We want to keep the blood inside of those people, right? The blood, we don't only have a finite amount of it. Blood stays in the body of the good people. And then the bad guys, you want all the blood in them, out of them, in whatever way you can. I don't care if that's a knife. I don't care if that's a gun. I don't care if that's a brick. I don't care if that's a gun. I don't care if that's a brick. I don't care if that's a bottle. That person needs to stop hurting people. So yeah, that might be CPR. That might be learning how to put her on tourniquet. That might be learning how to prevent it from happening entirely, which is situational awareness.

My good friend Shane and I, when we go out to eat here in Austin, we almost play games. Uh, we're biometrics and atmospherics where we're, we're sitting in a restaurant and we look at everybody in the room. We, the first thing we do is, is identify potential threats in our threat assessments. And, um, then we figure out where the guns are in the room. Who's the guy that is wearing the come and take it shirt, right? That has the fanny pack or that has that bulge on his right hip, or that has that appendix carrier. It's like, dude, that guy is not dirt diggler. He is not that big. There's something in the front of his pants. Um, and then we start making assumptions about who's in the room. Um, the two people are sitting together that kind of

are awkwardly interacting. Okay. Is this their first date? Is this a business meeting? Um, is the first time that they've ever been alone or are they married and they're not supposed to be, uh, they're not married to each other, you know, for the first time. And we start making these assumptions and then we develop another skillset, which is I go up and I start chatting these people up. I'm like, Hey, what's going on? Is that your truck out there? Man, I love those rims. You know, like, and in a disarming way, start eliciting very passively information out of them to confirm or to prove us right or wrong in kind of the assumptions that we've made thus far. So it's developing two things simultaneously, but that is the first element of being safe

is being aware of your surroundings, knowing where I'm going to run, knowing where the out is, where the exit is, where my car is parked, knowing where I'm going to run, knowing where the out is, where the exit is, where my car is parked, where a threat is going to come from. What's the most likely course of action? What's the most dangerous course of action? If I'm at a taco place, you know, it's going to, the most dangerous course of action is somebody coming and setting a bomb off. The most likely course of action is just somebody coming up and be like, Hey, give me the money in the register. You know, but I need to think about what the different degrees are of what the threats possibly could be.

And then, like my kids never know that all this, maybe they have a clue, they're smart, but they never think about this stuff. They just know that they're safe, that I have a way to get out. The backpack that's right here next to me that has a gun in it that has two tourniquets and

it has an IFAC in it. What's an IFAC? An individual first aid kit. So even all of us right here, I have enough stuff if all of you guys got shot to plug your wounds. I got my backpack right here and a good gun with an extra magazine. What type of gun is that, curiosity? It's a Glock 43

but I got good frangible rounds and a couple extra magazines. So we'll be alright alright it's tricked out though good sights good trigger good barrel because I don't want to fight fair because I want to cheat

in every way what makes me think of I think I'm getting this right I think it's Hackworth that makes sense right that's a real name sounds like a real name yeah

if you find yourself in a fair fight you didn't plan your mission properly yeah I think my my favorite fight in the world would be the dude's laying on his bed asleep and uh there it is yeah just right right behind me just in case i make any odd moves uh so what are um do you find it what is is your emotional state when you're doing these types of checks? Is it playful? Is it serious? Is it stressful? No, it's living. It's freedom. It's freeing.

So like I have this huge level of awareness, right? Where it's kind of like I'm a radar, like ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. And when I see something that's off, so in the military, everything's uniform, right? Everybody wears the same thing. Everybody dresses the same. Everybody makes their beds the same. And that's so when you look at something that is off, your eye catches it right away. That's why everything's uniform in the military. Do you know that?

Yeah. So it's easier to see when something's wrong. It makes perfect sense. Because everything else is the same yeah right it makes perfect sense so have you ever done like work counterfeiting stuff i'm sorry counterfeiting so like if if um if i was trying to find the easiest way to find a counterfeit bill is to put it with a whole bunch of bills i know are good so your eyes like well that one's the one thing that sticks out that one looks weird right you know the colors off or the the dimensions aren right, or the paper doesn't feel right. Or compared to these other hundred bills, this one, that one's wrong. So it's the exact same. Well, what you have to do is you have to train your

mind what normal is. So like in Austin, we're in South by, I kind of, as you know, like we've got a little bit more traffic, we're talking about it. That is a very casual way of being situationally aware. That's setting up the sample of what is normal. So then when something is off, when something's weird, when something's just a little bit awry, my eye goes from awareness to assessing. I start looking specifically at that thing, that guy that's wearing the white Muslim prayer robes that's sweating.

Everybody else, they're holding beers or like, hey, here, let's do a selfie. Okay, let's hashtag South by Southwest. That's normal. We know that's normal, even though, unfortunately, that's normal. That one thing looks off. We can see that very clearly because we know what normal is for this, for what's happening around us. So the first thing is kind of be learning about cultures, learning about the areas that you're living, the demographics, the socioeconomic classes, um, the races that should be there. And I do that to everywhere I go. You know, like I just came from

Ocala, Florida, like that was the last place that i was in and i know that percentages of races who should be there with the what kind of kinds of cars people should drive um you know that it's 73 white and of the remaining 27 half of them are mexican and then the the other remaining like 13, 12% are split between black and Asian. Where do you get that information? It's not like the State Department stuff, Wikipedia? Yeah, it's on the census. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's all available online.

And it's like one little search. And that's just a couple of quick little numbers so that you can kind of wrap your head around. But if I go to Walmart, I'm gonna have a different crowd than if I go to Target, right? Two different people shop there, different socioeconomic classes. Different types of cars are supposed to be parked there.

But in the parking lot, where am I going to find the drugs? Where am I going to find the guy that has the guns? The guy that's parked in the back trying to get a blowjob? The guy that's parked around the side of the building where there's no lights and maybe a camera that's busted because he's about to do a drug deal? So just knowing kind of like how people work. So, okay, I'm not gonna park there. I'm gonna park here. Like, it's just really simple stuff.

So then when I say it's freeing, all of that stuff happens so effortlessly now that now it's just like, I'm just at lunch with my buddy Shane and we're just talking shit about people. Right, right, right. You know? And it just happens.

It just happens. Why did you re-enlist talking shit about people right right right you know and it just happens it just happens why did you re-enlist uh in the special forces the date i have is april 16th 2017 why'd you re-enlist um man i don't like losing fights yeah i, I imagine. Yeah, I've lost a few. Yeah, some close ones too. They, I mean, they, like a thorn, like a burr in the back of my neck. They're just always just irritating.

I hope to the day I die that they irritate me. And we're losing a war. You know, I fought in places like Ramadi and Sadr City and Baghdad and Fallujah. And those were cities that, like, good friends of mine got hurt in. And I was fighting next to Iraqis that wanted freedom so badly. You know, they wanted to have a chance at just living. Muslims, Christians, didn't matter. Just give us a chance.

And all of us are fighting together for that chance. And then all those cities that we fought and that we won, ISIS comes in because of policies, because of presidents, because of secretaries of defenses and bad decisions, bad war planning, and we lose ground. And like, I can't explain to you how bad that hurts guys like me to see things that they fought for and they bled for and they got blown up in, um, just given back to an enemy that's even more evil than the evil that we want it from. You know, like I'll take 10 Saddams over an ISIS. And I see Mad Dog Mattis is coming back as Secretary of Defense.

And I see not just him, but other people being put into positions of authority within my chain of command that believe in winning. And I like winning. You know, as much as I don't like losing, I really like winning. And this is going to be a chance for us to be winning again. You know, in a year, what was the ground that ISIS has had, they have lost 99% of it in one year. That's winning. What do you attribute that to? To kicking ass. Like it's plain and simple. If you, if you take a bunch of pit bulls and you put them in cages and then you let chihuahuas out, like they're never going to go and, and you're supposed to be catching wild boars. Um, that chihuahua is never going to do anything, right? It's going to, maybe it's going to go and you're supposed to be catching wild boars. That Chihuahua is never going to do anything, right? It's going to maybe it's going to bark and it's going to run back.

But if you open those cages, there's only one thing those pit bulls know how to do is just kick ass. And that's all that happened. We're just like, okay, we're going to go. I saw that you killed some of our green braids in Southeast Afghanistan. Cool. We're going to drop the biggest bomb that's not nuclear that we have on our arsenal on top of you, you know, which is what we did. It's like, oh, you killed some green berets in, uh, in Niger. Neat. We're going to fly in 800 shooters and wipe all of Boko Haram, Al Qaeda, and ISIS off of the map entirely in your country. You know, it's like, oh, you had Fallujah, Sadr City, Ramadi. Not only are we going

to take them back, but we're going to take them back and we're going to put conservative Muslim leaders in there that are so far from fanatic radicals that girls get to go back to school. I mean, the things that would just irritate radicals so bad, they have freedom again. And so what I attribute it to is giving the guys that know what they're supposed to do the opportunity to do it. That's it. How old are you?

You have two kids? I have three. You have three. How old are your kids? 16, 15, and two. What do you say to them? I don't know the nature of the re-enlistment in your activities, but if, if you're going to be at risk, how do you explain the decision

and so on to them? Um, I'm at risk. I'm deploying two times in the next year. Um, like one time really, really, really soon. And I'm like, I'm glad we got to sit down and chat because I'm gonna be gone for like the next year. They know that this is what I was made to do. And they love it when I get to do it. They're proud of me in the sense that if they walk onto a military base with me, everybody is walking up to say to shake my hand. It's different than being in Austin where people want to come up and take selfies. It's like, they want to come up and shake my hand cause they know what I've done and they know what I'm going to do. Um, and that makes them proud of 15 and 16 year old girl, you know, like that's awesome. A two year old is just like, I have poop in my pants. Different conversation. Yeah. Um, but he, you know,

is he going to understand dad being gone for six months? No. You know, he's going to be pissed. Um, he's going to take it out on my wife. Um, my girls are gonna, they're going to be pissed. but they also know that I would rather be fighting that there than in front of their school. I've tracked down guys that were riding down the street on most cycles throwing acid on little girls that were walking to school because they didn't think girls should go to school.

I want that to happen nowhere on the planet and in the places that it does, I want that to happen nowhere on the planet. And in the places that it does, I want to go there and stop it from happening. Like, I don't want that to be here. That's on a rise in the UK right now. It's increased by almost a thousand percent as people trying to prevent girls from going to school, specifically with acid.

You know, like, okay, send me to the UK. I can fix this. You're not gonna like okay, send me to the UK. I can fix this. You're not gonna like how I'm going to do it, but, uh, I can fix it. How do you, how do you think about risk? Uh, and maybe that's not the right word, but you get deployed ostensibly something bad could happen to you. Uh, how do you, how do you think about that yourself? When we're stripped down and you go all the way back to the most raw exposed version of that special forces soldier, and they start building those cornerstones in the, in the foundation, um, we are risk adverse. We're trying to set ourself up for

success in every imaginable way so that we, that we can't fail. And when, if, and when things start failing, um, there's so much training and there's so much rehearsal and there's so much practice and there's so much strategy and there's so much preparation that, that quote of, I'm going to be the hardest person somebody ever tries to kill. Imagine fighting 12 of me, you know, or 24 of me, you know, 36 of me, you know, with an AC one 30 flying over us and an F 16 and a couple of patches on standby, you know, like you're not going to deal with one of me. You're going to deal with me and all of my friends that have been born and bred to do this one thing, which is give people a chance to fight for their freedom.

You don't want to fuck with us. We really like that freedom thing. Do you have a contingency plan for if something happens to you? Yeah, you do. Yeah. Yeah. Mike,

my family will be very well off, probably better financially. But more, I mean, like, all the guys that we're with, they know. I mean, these are horrible conversations to have and things that, you know, I don't want my family to know. But, like, if I break my back or if I'm so badly burnt, um, to what degree are they going to try to save me? That's a conversation we have, you know, like maybe don't put me on that bird. Maybe just let me die right here. You know, but that's a conversation for me and my friends. Right. Um, you know, I've had dudes be like,

all right, listen, all I want you to do is take my cell phone, smash it on the ground, go take my laptop, smash that on the ground, and then make sure my body goes to my wife. Which is funny, but these are conversations that we have, and everybody's is different. But as a team, you know, sure as shit, I'm going to make sure that dude's like, I'm not only going to smash his laptop, I'm probably going to microwave it. And then I'm gonna throw it in the ocean, right? Or the river or, you know, tigers. So yeah, yes, we have contingencies. If you could put one word, question, short message, anything on a billboard, just to get it out to millions or billions of people, metaphorically speaking, what might you put on such a billboard? One word? No, no, it could be one word. It could

be a sentence. It could be a question. It could be anything. It could be a long quote that you like. It could be anything. I just want people to work. We're in a society of a culture of entitlement where it's like, everybody wants to fast, easy, quick fix for everything. You know, like, Oh, I'm sick. Give me a prescription. You know, like I'm, I'm, I'm fat. Um, give me that quick, easy diet. Um, I'm not successful at work. Just give me that promotion, even though I deserve it. Like everything is just on the far side of hard work. So that's what I put. Everything you want is on the far side of, of work. You know, like freedom, the only place freedom exists is on the far side of hard work. The only place success exists financially, sexually, um, relationships emotionally. It's, it's on the far side of work. Like if you,

you want a good marriage, fucking work for it. You want to have amazing sex? Cool, work for it. Unless you're this fictional character and you're like, well, I don't even know the movie. He's like Dirk Diggler, right? Dirk Diggler.

Was that based on a real guy? Was he even good at sex? I don't know. But I guess I'll tell you what, somebody that really wants and is committed to being good at it is going to be good at it. And that goes for everything.

Success, sleep, even sleep. You want good sleep? Earn it. Go work for it. Put your iPad away. Go eat a good healthy dinner. Work hard all day long for 12 hours. Play with your kids and sweat.

Fuck your wife. Give her 15 orgasms so you fall over into bed and you just out for eight hours that's some good sleep right there you know like so on the far side of hard work everything you want is on the far side of hard work we could keep going for hours and hours and hours and i think that we might i was going to say we should do a round two but it might be a year from now uh i'm okay with that uh i'll be like a pretty when i come back from combat yeah because like you're such a like right now we're like having these nice essential conversations but we're i mean we're kind of getting philosophically yeah projecting what what we'd be doing or billboards of inspiration. I'll be a raw asshole

in a year from now after being overseas. Open invitation. I'll talk anytime. Different conversation. Where can people learn more about you? What would you like them to check out? Where can they do that? Freedom's awesome.

Believe in it and go vote for it. And then you can find me, TimKennedyMMA is me for everything, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. I try to get on there a lot. I am pretty exposed. So if you want to, like this is not a, you'll get a very honest conversation out of me. Yeah.

In every way, probably to too much of a degree. Are there any websites you'd like people to take a look at or anything you'd like people to look up? Sheepdog response is, is like our motto is, is make you harder to kill. And we're trying to make people, you know, the A and the B keeping blood in the good and letting blood out of the bad. We're trying to teach people how to do that. Ranger up is one of my companies. We make satire military shirts and jeans and we'll be shoes. I mean, they're like, well, I'm an entrepreneur like you, you know, but it's, uh, nah, just, just go, go work for freedom. I work, I'll work for my companies. I'll work for my wealth. I'll work for my everything. I'll work

for my freedom. You know, you go work for yours. Take it. Tim, thank you so much for taking the time and everybody listening, everybody watching, we'll provide links to everything we've talked about as per usual in the show notes of tim.blog forward slash podcast for this episode, every other episode. And until next time, A, work hard. It matters. And thank you for listening and thank you for watching. Hey, guys, this is Tim again.

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