Jocko Podcast 236 w/ Jeff Higgs: You Will Get Beat Down. The Projects, SEALS, and Martial Arts

this is Jocko podcast number 236 with echo Charles and me Jocko Willing good evening echo good evening when I went through basic SEAL training there were two people recognized with an award at the end of training the first award was for the honor man and the honor man is the guy in the class I think it's for the best sort of overall performance which is mostly physical running swimming obstacle course pull-ups sit-ups or whatever whatever other physical events you do life-saving and not tying in buddy breathing and pool competency and you kind of have to just do good at everything and not just good you have to do really good and everything it seems like the honor man is gonna be one of those people who did some kind of athletics and in high school maybe even college in my class the honor man was a complete badass his name was Keith Chimaera total stud he and I don't remember everything about buds but I remember that he won just about everything although there was one other guy that was always right there with him but somehow keith must have edged him out enough times to become the honor man I never was close enough to the front of the pack to knew to know which of those two guys want but obviously it must have been Keith because he was just pretty much savage at everything and even after SEAL training he he pushed himself hard tried to maintain that edge and after his first tour at a team he went back to Budds to be an instructor and on January 10th 1997 keith was practicing breath holds during an evolution with the students in the dive tower and the other instructors were well they were working with the students and they were running the evolution and they weren't tracking Keith who was down at the bottom of the 50-foot tower holding his breath and at some point at some point he passed out and because he was just sitting down there almost in a meditative way no one really noticed that he had passed out he took on water by the time the other instructors recognized what had happened he was unconscious and he never he never regained consciousness and he ended up dying the next day January 11th 1997 a better man than me the other person the other award that gets given out at the end of buds is called the fire in the gut award and I I don't know if there's some kind of official definition for this award but it seems like the award was given to the individual that had to dig the deepest to get through the training and who in doing so also inspired and motivated the rest of the class and in my class cost 177 that was another badass man a guy by the name of Jeff Higgs and his journey to buds to basic SEAL training and through basic SEAL training is a pretty incredible story and because of that you know we're we're brothers but we're brothers not only because we went to buds together not only because we served at SEAL team one together but also through jiu-jitsu I'm I'm I'm pretty sure we both started the jiu-jitsu journey the same exact day and we are connected through our jiu-jitsu lineage because Jeff Higgs eventually got his black belt he gave the black belt - Dean Lister Dean Lister gave the black belt to me and I guess we should include that there's also a connected lineage here to echo Charles who then received his black belt from me and it's been a while but it's an honor to have Jeff here with me today to share his experiences his knowledge his outlook and his lessons learned in life Jeffrey hey thanks for having me thanks for coming all man always good always good to see you to hear you I heard you at some pretty I heard your voice at some pretty traumatic times and in my life so it's always good to to sit down with you obviously we trained a ton but let's start at the beginning but started young Jeff Higgs where were you born I was born in Rams you're in North Carolina it's a town like almost smack-dab in the middle of the state in rural area and what was uh what was the situation there no like what was your mom and dad doing there what was scenario at the time my parents were separated so I was you know I was you know my mom had me there and moved back to New York when I was about three so was she was she a New Yorker originally no my mom's from that that town and where was your dad from my dad was born in the Bronx grew up in Harlem and so then so they had they moved down there together or where they already split up and she took you down yeah they were split up and I wasn't born yet so I was born down there the rest of my family was born in in New York and then and then you moved back to New York at what age three my mom moved back so at this point I hadn't really met my father and my mom moves back to New York and then it was a kind of a whole family issue thing that I wouldn't want to get into publicly but my dad got custody of me and ended up growing there with my father and going to my mother's back and forth on weekends mm-hmm and then whereabouts in New York where you live in so I grew up on Staten Island in a place called West Brighton projects so that's where I lived with my father and my mom lived in another project called Park Hill projects so a lot of people are familiar with that Stapleton Park a hill all right next to each other like the wu-tang clan is from Stapleton from from West Brighton Mark mahomes area there was like the force MDS there was some people who had to come out of that area that had gotten Fame and then like I remember when I was a kid and I would take the train down to the city and we would go by you know I'm coming down from New England from Connecticut you know whereas in the sticks you know I grew up on a dirt road and so we'd be on the train me and my buddies and you'd be going through the projects for it's probably it seemed like about maybe 20 minutes of riding the train where it's just a building building bill building you can tell that they're in rough shape and you know I would always be sitting there on this train you know coming in from a really rural area and looking in there thinking that looks rough yeah the old projects very much the same in the northeast area you know there are rough areas so what did your dad do for a living my dad worked with like housing so he didn't know I have too much education but um you know he did what he could he worked in the housing department so he worked in the flight for the projects for the city like you know what I remember like as a kid he would take me into these uh big boiler rooms like we'd go down underneath the building and you know for it's winter in New York you have these boilers that heat the buildings and the boilers are huge you know you can see the fire in there and you'd show me how to you know show me the gauges and all that and how to operate it's pretty cool and and you what I know you have at least a sister what else do you have for siblings I have three older brothers and two older sisters so I'm the youngest the youngest yes we're all that were all of you co-located in the same house with your dad yes you know there are all kinds of situations going on there so I'm not really gonna divulge of my family is to writing a book or so yeah but but so it was pretty much some of the kids that were around some of the time year around sounds like you said weekends with your mom but the rest of time with your dad yeah and for the most part my my brothers and sisters we were with my father okay and I'd visit my mom on the weekends and then what were you doing like what were your interests what was going to school like okay as a kid I was very thin and I had like an an incident happened like I guess like in second grade or so I got really sick like I got sick in front of a bunch of people in school and I was just really embarrassed by it and I didn't want to get sick again so I stopped eating a lot so I was really thin but besides that and that and that went on for a long time I would so much so what grade was that that's like second grade so you got you mean when you say you got sick you mean you threw up in front of a bunch of people yeah we were doing like this play like The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe so I've got and I was just I told the teacher I'm like I do not feel good and she just let me sat sit there and then I was like they put out a bucket in front of me this is New York in like the late seventies really and then it came out just started you know going at it right there and everyone in the class just scattered and they're like just like point that mean and it was just like is it I couldn't do anything you know it's like I had no control and the body was just doing what I was doing and I was uh I just kind of toned down my eating and I would eat like just a piece of bread in the day but I mean besides that I was uh you know really bookish read a lot of comic books encyclopedias I was just reading all the time and pretty much like pretty much a nerd you know I would walk around and that was that's why I was a target in that kind of neighborhood you're definitely gonna be a target mm-hmm you know I used to have I used to carry this book in my pocket called the golden guide Gotham guide golden guide you can still find him and I even bought the book because you know just for a nostalgia sake but it's a little book of spiders of North America so that you know peevish decorum this is spider-man because I would I would come up you know I'm like this little kid like oh that's electrode Ekta smacked hands and like saying all these species names of these arachnids different types of arthropods and people were like this kid and I would collect spiders and go down and get ants and putting the web it was like pretty twisted yes looking back on it look but that's got to completely isolate you from like other kids especially in the projects yeah it's kind of weird especially like my dad said I was creepy you you don't do you think that like when you were sick in front of all those people when you kind of got called out it's funny cuz we're sitting here laughing about that but that kind of stuff leaves a mark on kids right yeah it leaves a mark on kids do you think that left a mark do you think that's what made you kind of become more into books because books couldn't laugh at you know I was I was into post before that but I think it made me more introverted mm-hmm you know because now the spotlights on but it's not for something good and everyone's laughing and pointing and like a lot of people just really discussed it it was just it was you know really stands out in my mind so then what was it seems like you know you're reading books you're kind of a nerd well what about like as you get older as you get into high school I mean damn you know like I said from me especially in the 80s you know like going down to the city in the 80s it was mayhem down there it was total mayhem yeah the drug dealers the the pimps the prostitutes like I remember we used to go out at night and you'd see like prostitutes at probably around 10 or 11 o'clock at night and they'd be out on the streets you know working and then we'd come back at three or four o'clock and when we go to see a hardcore show or whatever we come back later and there'd be those girls they'd be out there you know turning tricks they'd be looking like they'd been turning tricks all night I mean how does a how does a kid that's reading about spiders get through that without getting dragged into it oh I think one of the main reasons for my path in life was being the youngest in my family I could see different mistakes I'm not even gonna say mistakes but I just I'll say different choices that other people made and I'm like maybe I'll go this way I think when you're the youngest you may want to look to be distinctive because you're everyone's always telling you do this do this do this and you want to think for yourself mm-hmm so I think maybe that's that's a reason were you getting any guidance from your older siblings that we're saying hey you might not want to do this because the other thing man this is such a negative way to look at human nature but so often you see people try and drag other people down and I mean this was in the SEAL Teams this is where I know it from in the SEAL Teams where you know you'd have somebody that was trying to kind of move in the right direction the other guys would kind of drag them back down you know like they wouldn't want people to succeed and and that's not a blanket statement but I'm just saying it happens and and I could definitely see it happening within families where you know one sibling does start starts to do something well and the other siblings kind of grab them and drag them back now but I can also see sibling saying don't make that mistake go in this direction did you see either one of those or was it more just your perception of what to do and what not to do I would say my siblings my brother and his sisters have always been really cool with me you know I'm kind of like I feel really blessed in that sense you know they always steered me in the right direction and and the weird thing was around the neighborhood you know I was known as like little Higgs and my other brother was a similar age you know we were like you know that they were like oh you know look out for those guys so I mean we would sometimes I'd be walking by the lobby in my building and the guys the drug dealers right there I know the guy he lives up on that floor you know you just know he sells drugs he does his thing and hey what's up little head you just walk right by you know was never like I never really felt like I wanted to get involved in that stuff so I didn't really have too much of an issue but I could see all these things going on around and this is like in the in the 80s in New York City which is very different than it is now I would say you know was definitely a rougher time oh yeah when's the last time you were back in New York just this few months ago I see my brother so I go visit my brother and you know he still lives in Harlem so I'll visit him you know pretty much when I'm coming back from overseas or some I just stopped over there yeah yeah New York is a completely and utterly different place now than it was in the eighties nevermind the seventies I wasn't never went down there in the 70s but in the eighties for sure what about um you know one of the things you used to tell us stories me I mean you and I would sit down and talk for a long time we were going through training and you tell me stories about some of the characters in the projects there was I know there's a couple brothers that seem to have they seem to be they seem to have their own like world that you kind of brushed up into sometimes it is it was this like I mean I remember these stories bad give us a little hint of those guys what was their deal so these two brothers Mark and James they just I don't even know what started it just they just had it out for me mostly James and these guys would every time they would see me you know they were high on something and they would make this salad and when I heard that so that was like I you know I would start running I'm guessing like looking back they're seeing this kid with glasses on looking at a spider book in the corner of a building and they're just like Target and you know that's that's how it started and this I used to be in the corner just getting taking punches from these guys in it so it started with them what you're saying right yeah and and that's how you'd know that they were coming for you yeah and and it was also kind of a signal because in the projects you know each building is kind of like its own entity and like maybe a guy in another building it's like a signal to that person so you hear like ooh then way in existence you'd hear so weird thing going on so the funny thing is this is fast-forward a little bit but you know we are going through steel trading Jeff you would do that like it at moments of whatever like mill moments of chaos where they're trying to get us to quit all of a sudden you'd hear so I read just needs to be said though I was I told that story to someone and that person just started saying it over and over and then it's spread so then everyone was saying it so I wasn't like you know just randomly and this is someone started and then it just spread and then it's like bloods stt to the teams so uh so when you get to high school is your attitude changes your attitude the same through high school Harry - what happened in high school so when I was 12 my dad was a football coach you know I was doing like Pop Warner football and I was one of the worst on the team for sure and you know my dad was always trying to encourage me you know you got to try different things so try football try this try that and you know my dad one day I came home and he was blowing his nose and when he pulled the tissue away it was just blood everywhere and like you could see like chunks and stuff like like didn't look right at all like he knew something was wrong and he was like I you know I got a bad flu and we didn't really think anything of it and then finally you know I guess he went to the doctor and then we found out that he had leukemia so that was in November and it just got progressively worse so this is 83 late 83 and then he ended up you know going in the hospital to get chemotherapy back then was way more harsh and so you know from like November to like where he he died in January 4th and so it was just only a couple months of this but you know after school I would come I would just walk to this hospital that he was in it was on the way back home from the school and just watch I just watch my dad go from someone really big and strong and just watch him just shrivel you know going through this treatment so between the leukemia the chemotherapy then he got pneumonia from the just being sitting in the bed and hepatitis from a blood transfusion you know it's just a whole bunch of things happen and then you know he died so you said that that things changed did that change your outlook on things did you did you start to look at the world in a totally different way now yeah I would say you know everyone has that that um pivotal point in their life where like I guess you can say like innocence is lost like it's not like you know a fairy tale in life anymore you know I basically death was introduced really quickly you know early on in my lifes and I just saw it and that changed me because I became even more introverted more introverted yeah so I would have maybe a friend or two at school but you know I would just be into my own my own world pretty much and did that where you where were you living now I was still in West Brighton projects visiting my mom back and forth was your older siblings taking care of you er so that's where it's a little you know for my family dicey but essentially at a stepmom at that point and I was going between my stepmom and my mom's on the weekends you know getting involved in the you know right after your father passed away and then you're going into courts and all these during these rooms with these people doing psychological evaluation do you want to stay with now your your your stepmom or your mom and you it's just really confusing to me and just kind of overwhelmed that kind of like in a sense checked out so yeah it's what happened so are you - are you still participating in school like actively like okay I'm gonna graduate did you have some kind of plan are you are you studying at night anything like that I'm not a one thing about my schoolwork I'm not like the best student like going to school and you know getting grades and stuff like that more I just been following my interests now in listicle classes that I was interested in I always did really well in other classes I may not even care about the class you know but I saw I was I wouldn't say I was like studying but I would just follow my interests so your dad died when you were 12 so you must have been in like eighth grade seventh grade we're great is that yeah seventh grade seventh grade so that was really pivotal because you know you get taken out of school because your dad died and then when you go back to school in the seventh grade you're the kid whose dad died and I mean and you know and you know it and you know everybody else knows it and you're just kind of like you know to yourself more so I had some good friends like I used to I was into like I had some nerd friends you know like Dungeons and Dragons that kind of stuff you know so I would kind of hang out with them but it was only you know on breaks at school or something like that there would you do it like what would you do the rest of the day what would you do in the afternoon what would you do in the evening what would you do on the weekends come home like at that age after school come home watch like was it Thundercats oh yeah remember that remember that that we had to go picks picks picks like was that it was something to do win these prizes yeah yeah yeah that you got a phone-in yeah yeah someone had to phone in and call for fire by saying picks picks on the local TV station yeah I do remember that dang yet I don't think that was that was didn't have that echo did you yeah in the bill at all cuz you I think you might be younger yeah but and also I don't think they had that was like a local TV thing yeah they had like a little echo they had like a little call for fire so you'd be on the phone you'd have to call in while you watching TV yeah and it was like a video game of some kind where you had to drop bombs or shoot something but at a certain time as it was moving so when it moved you'd say picks picks picks that that was like fire it was like maybe the maybe the channel like on TV you know how it's like w lb n or whatever this was WPIX or something just say picks banks so now I know who's trying to call wait that was the other funny thing about mark and James is they'd see you and I remember that's why that's why to this day whenever I see you I go yeah and that's right because they'd see you and they call you out did you ever reconcile some kind of relationship with those guys no because those guys are more like you know cool guys in a sense you know they were popular people and I was there is just really no connection you know and and it was really weird cuz in the projects the the atmosphere you know it's like R&B jazz hip-hop but James was like into metal him they're like maybe like just a fraction of people in there that that were into metal and he was into the metal he'd have Iron Maiden shirts on and all that stuff and just becoming act and he'd give you the corner and just he'd started punching away and then asked me do you want the medicine or the treatment and both were the same movie yeah I remember you tell me you'd like be you think you have you think you would have made it past them or whatever and you'd be going up the stairs and all of a sudden you'd hear yeah and there was another one you told me about something like you were walking it was dark in your walk I think you were walking down the stairs and as you came down the stairs one of them whichever one was lit a match okay yeah yeah so that was James - in is essentially um you know every now and then you get blackouts you know the city and we had this big blackout back then and that's a problem because now the elevator might not be working so if you live on the 8th floor you have to walk up and there are some elderly people that live like 7th 8th floor and so we're like you know hey you know get a knife and you could make a dollar or two welcome people upstairs then so you know I was walking people I walked maybe one or two people upstairs and then I was coming downstairs and all of a sudden you tip out man and he just lit a match and there was there was James and then more punishment it's about magic wonder yeah take your breath away this is a Broadway play okay what's going on that at that time okay that part I never knew all I ever knew all I remembered from buds was it's about magic wonder - I've never heard I thought it was just what those guys made up like goose this yeah just sigh CONUS so these guys never you never reconcile with these guys there's no story of revenge where you went back not really you know and and I'd you know looking back right now I wouldn't even you know I don't really have anything for those guys you know I'm just I wish everybody the best so you know it's just past what music were you listening to back then I only listened to what was there so it was like a lot of rap music you know R&B you know just they music and I got introduced to other forms of music by first I played saxophone as he could so I played saxophone for like four years so I was like got involved with like Orchestra like I would my dad set me up for a summer program and I would go and play in a symphonic orchestra for over the summer said I'd like take out a bus you know and you know I take my saxophone along it was pretty cool that and also my dad liked jazz so that was also another influence on you know my musical tastes and then the kids some of the kids I played Dungeons & Dragons with there were some groups like one group was like the Brewster Street crew of those guys and then there was another group and these guys they were all into like metal and stuff because when you go to you know the schools over there kind of like is owned so they have people from different neighborhoods coming to the schools so these these were these kids were not from the projects and they listen to metal and like when we would play dungeon dragons that music was there and I was like it just became normal so I was like you know and and also I wanted to always wanted to try different things you know and see you know what's that like so it's kind of exploring and so I started listening to you know any kind of music I wanted to listen to I was interested in and I check it out now at what point did you start thinking about the military as an option okay after my father passed away there was a my father's good friend this guy James Harrison mr. Jim we used to call him he was his son came back from the Navy he was a regular guy in the Navy and he told me about the seals because I think I'd seen at this point I'd seen first blood you know I was like I'm coming my you know I started finding out about the different military units and so I'm like my original plan was to go and agree going the Rangers then become a green beret and then I heard about Force Recon then I'm gonna go on the reins and become Force Recon and then once I read about seals going to seals and become a seal like I wanted to be all the special forces but this you know Jamie his son that guy really changed my life because he told me about the seals and and I was like well wouldn't you know that Navy with a speedboat drivers I couldn't think of what in the Navy could be spec ops and then he started telling me about it and I was like man that's like I need to find out more about it and so I went to the recruiter and at this point I'm like you know mid-teens and I asked the recruiter about the seals and he said don't even think about it cuz you'll never make it and that was like that's when I was like oh yeah and then I started like really focusing on trying to get into SEAL team so mr. Jim was along with my father they would teach boxing to like the kids like troubled youth it's tough that these areas you know they had a heavy bag and my dad was a boxer and yeah mr. Jim started training me I said I wanted to go into seals and he's like hey you know if you want to get into condition meet me down here on the park bench at four o'clock and it's like mid winter in New York snow and stuff like that and he's like if you're not here at 4:00 on the dot I know you're not serious you know we don't have to talk about it again and I'm like alright and you know there was the first time ever like woke up early like that was four o'clock in the morning yeah oh he's a good test I got out there after would have failed before o'clock p.m. no problem mr. Jim yeah he started training me and it was like push-ups dips on the park bench and like when you go into the buildings and what's Brighton at least this kind of like this overhang doing pull-ups on that and it's like you know if you're gonna be a fighter you need to keep your hands up that's the first rule of fighting so you know we go out there was this field across the way and uh he'd happen you running laps around the football field with bricks in my hands and the goal was learned how to keep your hands up and you know the first few weeks is bricks you know I'd meet him like two three times a week doing this and then graduate it to like you know milk jugs pouring water in him and then the milks jostling around as you run around you know and he really just teaches really instilled in me you know like you have to train you know if you want to if you want to get something you're gonna have to work for it so I I worked with them and then at a certain point I was uh 17 at the time and I just chose to go live with my mom because I was like you know I'm just really curious you know there were a lot of things in my mind that you know I didn't really know my mom like I think I should I should have and so I wanted to know more about that side of my family so I went and moved with my mom and she wanted me out of the projects and so we moved down to Florida Daytona Beach so my senior year of high school was in Daytona Beach Florida it was a weird thing because my high school the first year of high school I went to art design in Manhattan so I had to take a bus a boat and a train to and from school every day so I take the three bus down the ferry take the Staten Island ferry across take the four of the five up to 57th and Washington go to school and you know I was oh drawing and stuff like that so um I got into this art school I went there for a year but it did it um I didn't do while I was coming in late and it just wasn't a good fit and I ended up leaving that school and then I went to my zone school Susan Wagner for two years so tenth and eleventh and then I won with my mom and moved down to Daytona Beach and I went to Seabreeze senior high school in Daytona Beach so my that was my senior year and when I was there that's when I enlisted on the delayed Entry Program and got into other Navy did you play any sports at any of these schools no did you what it's weird how you had that it makes me you think it runs deeper than I've even thought before like the idea of when you saw Rambo you're like you can identify with it even though you were a nerd playing Dungeons & Dragons and looking at spider books you see Rambo you're like okay cool that's what I'm gonna do that's a deep-seeded thing man I think looking back on it James had a lot to do with it mark and James cuz like getting beat up like that at a certain point you just like you know you've had enough and then you kind of I think in a sense can overcompensate so I started learning about martial arts another really big part of you know my story is uh my oldest brother was you know we had a big family incident he was out side and a guy in there's West Brian projects right near it is Malcolm Holmes it's another pretty rough area and my brother was there and this guy stabbed him with a buck double-oh-seven knife that's a big blade to the hilt and you know his heart was was beating you know moving the knife you know punctured his lung and he was in the hospital for a while he got out you know you know doctors saved his life and all he's got a really big scar on his chest but I mean I think he he got into kung fu' from that I would say and you know he went all the way to being an instructor in that but you know he would show me you know occasionally on on a weekends sometimes I would go with him and train you know I'm hung gar kung fu and I was never really you know I've never really got good at it but it did instill in me you know martial arts something you want to learn mm-hmm and so um you know I had those things going for me and I think between learning a little bit about martial arts and you know the beatings I was taken at a certain point I was like you know I can change it if I want so my thing was to become a seal I thought that would be my answer so that's why I went see so you the Florida what was it like on a school in Florida I mean sea breeze the high school sounds it sounds nice it sounds nice but what was it I mean was it nice or was it a jumper yeah it was pretty cool um it was uh definitely more laid-back than a being in New York I remember distinctly at that time Ted Bundy was in that area and the chaplain at our school was I think associated with Ted Bundy and I just remember he was getting the electric chair and and everyone in the school was like make sure you keep all your electrical components to flow so they have enough juice did you talk to when you talk to the recruiter so you had to talk to a recruiter again in Florida right you obviously had a change recur what the recruiter said you the recruiters were all about getting as many people in his pops and like you want to go see all right come over here and you look like I'd be a great candidate yeah that's where I was surprised the first guy told you he didn't think you're gonna make it although JP Danelle they laughed at him yeah they laughed at him maybe that's a good test and Dakota Meyer the guy said to for the Marine Corps said you we don't have what it takes anyways and Dakota Meyer signing up the next day or whatever right that's a good it's a little reverse psychology oh yeah but they told you oh yeah you look like be up great candidate for the SEAL Teams they're waiting for you yeah we have the the Thai ferret program and the dive fair program I don't deprive something similar today but you enlist for six years and if you make it through but straining and your SEAL training then you're on SEAL team if you don't make it you're still in the Navy persecutors I did the dive fair program too and it's funny too because when you taught when it seemed like six years it's well that's like an eighth or sorry a third of your life at the time right because you're 18 years old and you're saying I'm signing on this thing for six years and you and me I don't know about you I'm pretty sure you're probably the same way I had no idea whatsoever what the daily life of a seal was as far as I'm concerned at war I was like well it's got to be pretty similar to John Jay Rambo right yeah it's gonna be something like that we're gonna be out just hunting people down and killing them that's what's gonna be happening six years cool sign me up you have no idea what you're getting into which is kind of cool because I just about guarantee that anybody that had an eye anybody have thought about what they were getting into you thought it was gonna be way more extreme than anything all that you could have did anything it actually was I I mean I remember the stories of yeah when you're in SEAL training they bury you up up to your neck in the sand and let the tide come in and drown you and then they resuscitate you and then ask you if you want to quit and I was like yeah yeah that's the program that's you know what I remember is a guy that ended up he was actually ended up in a class behind us but I went through boot camp with him and he was a smart guy went to college great guy and he's telling me he goes yeah shields have 50% casualty rate like that like no one makes the retirement this is 99 you know there's no I mean I guess the Gulf War is about to happen but there had been a war in a long time and I think I think it came originally from World War two when like at Normandy the you DTS took heavy cab they took like a 50% casually rate but I thought that's just how I thought I was going in I'm signing up and I'm gonna get killed or wounded and I'm probably not gonna make it 20 years whatever same attitude oh yeah you definitely heard that they drowned you you definitely heard that they drowned you in training you're gonna get drowned it people are gonna drown you that's what's gonna happen you're like yeah that's what I want which is pretty crazy right yeah it seems like it even that's a good kind of screening process an initial screening process the crazy thing is so many people still quit that's what's crazy you know what you're signing up for you know what you're signing up for at least you have someone you're signing up to die I mean I can say I was signing up to die I'm like in my mind I was like okay when I sign this paper you know my life is no longer it is no longer a promise it's no longer even a thing yeah you I mean you are an adult even though a very young adult but you understand what you getting into and you know the chances of getting killed or or her really badly or you know can happen anything else from childhood Before we jump in Doug before we get the the ended boot camp hmm nothing of note on them at this point you said you finish up your senior what kind of training are you doing getting ready putting my backpack and sometimes I would run to school I'm doing a one incident I got saved at the beach so this I is this tropical storm coming in and I you know keep in mind I'm coming from the projects in New York City so swimming is not I'm not a good swimmer and I'm like well the best way to learn you know is to go tropical storm baby I just remember getting out of getting out and looking at the beach and just seeing the water like frothy and stuff and I was just like let's go for it and I just ran in and basically I was a drowning victim this guy came out getting out of water started yelling at me and stuff like that so then I came home I'm like you know I told my my i want to take swim lessons so then the only place we could find was the YWCA and this this I could I think she was like maybe a college student you know I just would see this girls writing notes and stuff on the side with a textbook but she was the guard there and she taught me how to swim so I learned the side stroke like basic side stroke not a combat swimmer stroke and a brush stroke crawl you know like the technique of it mm-hmm and while I was doing that I I got books on swimming workouts how to swim how to you know get um more hydrodynamic this kind of thing how much swimming did you do in the projects not really any I mean like in the summer there's a pool right near it the pool is three feet mm-hmm and then they have a little baby pool so that was another thing about mark and James when when the when I would go to the pool I mean I mean on several occasions I mean James if you're out there listening your home would kill me a couple of times and I'm not kidding he would you know there's like a ladder you could walk out he would get me under there and stand on me and hold me there like trying to drown me and the worst feeling I ever had was like just you know I'm in the water and like I'm bouncing like bobbing because it's too deep and I just hear and I look over and I see him on the side for you and then you jump in and come after them trying to get out you know trying to hop away and then I look over and then it's mark and then you know I would you know the lifeguards would you know have to get these guys away from me so yeah I did I was not a the swimming extent was like close your eyes windmill until you can't hold your breath anymore and then stand and hopefully there's a bottom to stand on how did you uh dude how did you not get freaking discouraged after you almost drown and you don't know how to swim and you must be at least seeing that the seal test to is who do we have to swim 500 meters 500 yards to like go to buds yeah how did you not say maybe I need to look at the Rangers or maybe I need to look at the Special Forces or something I was just really bent on the seals and that was just um that was the one back then like now there's a lot of information on SEAL team but back then you couldn't find anything there and and I remember you there are these books like I'd get like the Ranger book and then you'd open it up and you'd see like they had Green Berets seals Force Recon and then you look like when you try to find the seal book no one had it and it was like the mystery mm-hmm so I was like you know I think I want to I want to go with that one so you're how long were you in the delayed Entry Program for let's see I graduated high school like that spring time and I was in the Navy in August it was pretty quick yeah I went in pretty much right after high school so that that um I had like maybe a two-month period of really swimming that's what I was working on and you know I was doing push-ups and finding like the screening tests or working on pull ups and sit ups you know all the basics you need for blood running mm-hmm then you said you shipped off did you go to boot camp in Orlando right Orlando yeah how was that a shock to your system I think the main shock was just the first like wake up but then after that you know I was pretty smooth it wasn't really that big a deal I was in a Duke boot camp hey so I was in the new boot camp and it was like myself and this other guy's name was justice we were both going to the seals and so we were like old doser to seal guys you know over there we didn't we'd you know in boot camp my swim was still not qualifying so they were like hey you if you serious about this program you get up at 3:30 go over there to the pool and do your laps before you know the regular day of boot camp starts so I was like I did that throughout boot camp and really improved my swimming and there was a you know they had sealed motivators working there and there was a seal Vietnam vet you know rough dude there and uh he was uh he would kind of you know oversee the swimming he would watch me and stuff and he would be saying stuff like you'll never make it with that kind of structure just never make it and I had I had an issue with him because you know III my swim was like just on the edge I failed so I knew I could pass that I just needed to be faster push up some good sit-ups but my pull-ups were like on the edge too and so I remember like getting I got seven and then I got eight was like right here and he just counted seven and I tried again and you like with pull-ups once you fail you're not going the dog and I just stayed on the bar and he said all right recruit jump off the bar and I yelled out so you'll stand quit and he just he just laid into me screaming it's tough so I jumped off the bar and then I I knew I had to walk on the pull-ups so they had a gym there and what I did was that I was during boot camp all this happened yeah I don't they taking a screening test a one time yeah I took it my I think like two to three times so then the the because if you don't make it for buds you know there was you conic okay now you can go divert or EOD so I ended up working on a pulldown machine and that's how I got my pull-ups so then by actually by the by the end of boot camp I passed the tests and ended up you know with orders what so then you get two buds do you remember checking into buds yeah that's another thing so when I was in boot camp and I get to yep back then you had to go through your source rating so I was in engineering so I had to go to Great Lakes and go through engineman a school this is like the trade that you're gonna get if you don't make it through SEAL training you're gonna work in the job in the regular Navy and so I went to Great Lakes and went through a and a school and my vision didn't qualify for buds day so this is kind of like gonna maybe put me in hot water with some people but essentially I ended up passing the vision test through some nefarious methods how'd you do it so essentially what happened was I had orders to yo D training because your vision wasn't good enough right for but so everything well it was good enough but my vision you know I you know glasses so one of the one of the guys there that Worthen one of the dive motivators Steve Collins that another really pivotal person in my life he was like hey man if you really interested in going the shield training you know we can work on switching your orders and you'll have to work as a you know for us as you know the dive motivator Shaq I was like yeah of course and so I did it and I had to wait like it was like months like gonna say like at least six months day and I worked for these dive motivators just slowly seeing for your vision test and here's the deal they have the medical was right near it and the vision tests that have to take is right there on the wall so every day I'm just looking at it and memorizing all of the you know the letters and numbers mm-hmm and I ended up passing the test so you that's awesome and and this whole time you're obviously working out and getting in shape and these guys are telling you what to do and what to be prepared for and all that stuff yeah that was another big deal like George white Steve Collins instructor Roberts these guys really made a difference because they were like hey you know they weren't like you know showing me everything but they're like you have to do this this is gonna help you you need to run you need to do this and that and what was really bad was at a certain point you know team guys work in that dive motivator Shack they don't want to do it and so they're like Higgs he's a blue and gold some judy judy T trunks so I'm looking like a seal right I got the blue and gold you DeeDee trunks and the boots on and everything and dive socks and they're like you're gonna give the test so for six months I'm working at the dive motivators and pretending to be a seal yeah yeah pretty much they're like hey you know Higgs what's what's it like it's a team and they're like let's not talk about what you have to worry about is getting through the screening test so I would run that they would do that runs they would do the push-ups all the stuff I would test them and just record it and six months of that and then when I get the buds you got like dozens and dozens of guys you're like hey that's the dive motivator guy I'm just saying so you check into buds I don't worry you know what's weird is I don't really remember you know some people have really good checking into bud stories or whatever like they check in and they get immediately told to hit the surf in their dress whites or whatever for whatever reason man I don't really even remember checking in a bus I think it was a weekend I think no one cared you know and I was the biggest thing for me as I was kind of surprised you know I expected to walk through the quarterdeck and just get ripped apart and start becoming a different you know you know like the James Bond movie echo Charles you know where the door opens and there's people training and they're doing judo and they're shooting guns what's happening but instead I open up the door and there's the two new two other guys that are going through training and they're sitting there all scared looking and there's no one around and I said I'm checking in the buds and they're like okay now you can just sign this and then you come back on Monday and I was kind of let down as very anti-climactic some people get a much but how did you was anything cool for you yeah I think um I showed up on the quarterdeck and someone was getting hammered there because I showed up during the day during a weekday and guys getting hammered and yelled at and instructor to just look at me and like you know here I'm like gosh yes and they just saying good we'll be seeing ya you know and just walk off you know and I'm like oh really so then how long did it take for you to class up oh it was I went through I don't know if they do this these days but they had the fourth phase when I was in fourth phase and you just wait there into your class up so I originally classed up with buds class 1 7 for how far did you make it in 174 all the way to the day before hell week and then what happened so you have like basically you're going through first phase like the conditioning phase of buds doing lots of long run swims PT's Oh course all that stuff and um I ended up doing this one swim like a week before that last week and on the swim my-my-my facemask one of the one of the lenses fell out and I just the water was it was a super choppy swim so every every stroke might taking on water and then I have no you know it's I can't really see much and it's making me go slower for my swim buddy and everything and I just felt sick on the swim like nauseated and really weak and tired like not normal and when I got out of the water you know we just got hammered because we failed the swim and then I had to go in and you know do just getting hammered and so it was uh that was like on a Thursday it's in the weekend and then Tuesday comes along and then we got to do the two-mile swims ocean swim and then on that swim i coming back past the swim when i came out of the water I couldn't stand i was just falling and i was crawling that would stand up and fall over again and the instructors just swarmed on me and just started trying to have i mean i'm trying to do push-ups or whatever but I just couldn't and then then I start laughing like it was funny I was like my first experience of being inebriated because I was basically you know find out later add hypothermia so I got I had a 91 degree core temperature at that point and day so they brought me you know to the hypothermia chamber and that's basically a hot tub and get my body temperature back up and then it's like you know you're feeling better yeah all right this is seal training so go get wet and Sandy you know right after coming back to normal and then they're like that night I just remembers you know mine in the rack and thinking like you know medically I'm having some issues here and how am I going to get through there's another swim and then they just longer you know so I just remembered tossing and turning and then of the everyone in the class was like trying to help me out so like you know back then you got to take pantothenic acid pills like this B vitamin that's supposed to increase thermogenesis to make your body heat up and so uh and then you need lots of calories so what we did on this one swim before it everyone came in put Vaseline all over it then my wetsuit and then drink a bottle of olive oil for calories to help burn during the swim and well that's not a good idea I didn't quite finish the bottle of olive oil but I can tell you right now it's not a good idea so one you know we're doing swim inspection and the instructors are you know checking knives co2 cartridges and the instructor looks and they see the Vaseline on the end of the sleeve like what is this and he pulls it up and he sees it Vaseline take your wet suit off and then roll around in the sand and then put the wet suit back on and then do this one and so uh I did so it's like this two-mile ocean swim just like every you know at a certain point it's just the sands just destroying your skin and everything and this is seal training yeah so I came out and I had hypothermia again and you know at this time it was a lot different because I was like you know I was like my body's not working the way I wanted to you know it's I'm not quitting it's like I don't even have control of the situation and essentially uh at that point they're like you know you can't continue in the training you're gonna get killed you know they had a someone a few classes ahead who had died out in San Clemente they you know he did a swim a four mile ocean swim came out of the water and just fell down and in making so like you know and this guy's his body temperature was only a few degrees below mine so they were like you know you're medically dropped from training and so I was a that was of on that Friday then the hell week starts for that class I was in that Sunday and I just remember being in my room like with the lights off and like you know feeling of could I you know and all the class was going through hell week and I just I wasn't allowed in and you know there was some you know when I when I was medically dropped I just started to do my own training because I was you know now I'm an X Division so I got the the Navy garb on the white had the dunker G younger jams dungaree clothing and I'm doing watch one of the instructors came by and said hey I always I knew you'd quit sooner or later now as I didn't quit it's like yeah you did and then walked off and that just like got me angry so I was like I'm gonna do my own training so I started doing I would join the class and run behind them you know I was just being a part of the class doing cadence and everything and I went got wet in Sandy and then instructor Dumas remember him there he just pulled me aside and I was like it's over son it's over and and that was it and so I had orders to some ship in like Louisiana or something like that and uh but the instructors that saw me getting wet in Sandy they were like oh look at this kid you know and there was an instructor named chief small and he said if you want your writing requests for captain's mess and I'll try to get you in training I'll put in a good word for you and get you back in the training and I was like yeah and so I would write the request but now I'm in X Division so I'm working for that guy powered mmm-hmm and this is an old Vietnam vet rough I mean it's hard for me to do just as what this guy you know what this guy was like and he would just take my request and throw it in the garbage and he just kept doing it and he would just just yell at me you'll never make it through this program son get the hell out of here and uh the guy chief small I told him about it he took it up to the CEO and um I got captain's mast and Lieutenant Zinke was I think part of that and those guys they said hey we're gonna give you another chance cuz I was explaining you know I didn't quit the training I got medically dropped like hey if you can gain weight cuz I'm like at that point I'm 6 1 but I wait I've looked at my medical record I weighed like 153 and you know that's just not enough mass to get you through the cult of being a fraud man it's just not gonna it's gonna be tough so they they're like hey it was Christmastime Merry Christmas you're back in training go get wet and uh I started up in a class 176 like a couple months later so that that time I was uh that in-between time of classing up I just focused on gaining weight so I would uh was really strange for a lot of people you can order pizza inputs like when everything's over you can order pizza in buds and and so I would I was like you know I have to gain weight so you know on some time off I got a big thing of that weight gain powder I got a bunch of milk like whole milk and I would order two-for-one Domino's Pizza hmm and I was just constantly drinking the milk with the weight gain I would eat a pizza before I went to sleep with the weight gain and the milk sent my clock for 3:00 in the morning and eat the other pizza you know this it got disgusting yellow and at a certain point like I'm not a pizza fan anymore but I ended up by the time I classed up I was like like 170 you know I'd gained weight and I'm then I classed up in Boyd's class 176 and then and came to more difficulties with pool comp and then I got rolled into 177 your class and I wasn't even poke on it was it was um uh like dive buddy cuz I was like already breathing or something yeah I was with Matt okay did both you guys get rolled for that yeah so so you you didn't get rolled into our class until now second phase yeah die face so I went through hell week in 176 the hardest hell week that that ever really existed in butts yes that's a seven six guys know this stuff so then you rolled into our class and yeah the no one really told no there was no heads up whatsoever about like the pool comp and all that stuff that's something no one really knows they know about it now but back then they had that Texas Chainsaw Massacre poster in the medical area and it said but it was crossed out it's crossed out uh Texas it said buds pool comp Massacre and it had like a mask on one of the guys that was getting his head sawn off with a chainsaw and that's what pool comp is you know you're gonna go down there and you're gonna get annihilated I tell you I mean it's it's really hard to do it justice like basically it's not a matter of pain it's a matter of dealing with not being able to breathe like if and and you're on compressed air if you hold your breath and rock it to the surface you're gonna embolize it and hurt yourself badly you know so you have to have that control and the instructors are taking your mask off tying your your gear and knots and you have to get these knots out I mean the other thing is though they're using the old regulators from the 50s like Jacques Cousteau so you can close it and you can't breathe so they they're taking this regulator out that filled with water and then you got it you got it turn your head get the water out or blow it out and their Tiny's see these knots in you have to get it out it's just it's horrific and it lasts a long time yeah it's 30 minutes your first breath is Walker so because when they rip that regulator out of your mouth the hose fills with water so when you put it in your mouth you can't just Oh No well your first breath is you gotta like absorb the water and get it out and then you get a breath so you're you're in full panic mode as you're trying to get the knot untied you finally get it untied and now you're just just dying for air and you put that thing in your mouth and you still have to clear that thing it's it's really it's where I failed I failed pool comp my first time and then I don't know when you with us in the dip tank cuz over the weekend myself and a few other guys that failed did you pass it the first time when he went through with 177 did you pass pool comp no I did not oh no and what happened with you remember Anson Davies yeah we got out on that weekend because you know we had failed you're on the wall of shame and we went down to Mexico to do dive training yeah and we we were like I was so weird was you know in Mexico the the beach had all this life on it that you don't see here you know but it's essentially the same Beach just further down but you know we did uh we kind of like worked on it ourselves for a bit and then came back and I just remember that that Sunday night thinking of everyone's just tossing and turning in their bed cuz you're like am I gonna make it through this the next day you know and I was able to you know I did it yeah yeah we what we did and I'm not sure how you weren't with us but it was me and like three or four other guys that failed pool comp on Friday and we went in the big dip tank and we straight-up drowned each other we were just murdering each other in there and clear and stuff and man I was so horrified of not making it and of getting role you know cuz I don't even think about getting rolled it's like as far as I was concerned if I got rolled that seemed like just death you know it seemed like the worst thing ever but we pool comped each other so hard that all of us made it the first time on Monday morning like it was no factor so that extra a little bit of training weather in Mexico or weather in the dip tank I also they let us do it like the instructors I don't know how he did it I don't know what happened that we had all the gear like we got full scuba tanks with air and brought them into the dip tank and just murdered each other I don't know that's not legal you know like that's not okay you can't do that that's like if you if they change yeah they're just like there's an opening right there if you take the opportunity good on you if you don't so sorry so sorry yeah so we end up you end up in our class and that's funny I actually thought you did everything with us I thought I thought you got rolled into 177 I thought you went through hell week with us I didn't remember that I remember that you got rolled in in you know die face cuz yeah so then we did San Clemente Island chewing tobacco yeah that's not a fun that they found guys you're not allowed to have chewing tobacco out there and they found somebody had smuggled a bunch out a bunch and so they made everyone in the class take massive chunks of chewing tobacco and then we did like a thousand eight cow bodybuilders which is like an old-school Burpee and like me I did I never chewed tobacco and never smoked a cigarette and and all of a sudden I got a big mouthful of this yeah I haven't dipped since that was my one and only jealousy that was your opportunity does it like Jam you know like when you dip and you haven't ever does it like you feel like actual effects right like way strong like it jams you up kind of hard they dip yeah that stuff makes you feel sick yeah maybe I feel sick yeah burning in my mouth yeah yeah but you know how like okay let's say you never smoked a cigarette ever and then you straight up smoke a whole cigarette you're gonna be like buzzing kind of hardcore right were you buzzing from the dip is what I'm saying I didn't know that and pain in this thing like this is horrible yeah but yeah like like you said Jeff it cured me of ever wanting to do that well I think it's important to know like you know in SpecOps a lot of guys are gonna use dip chewing tobacco because of that reason it's like a little bit of you know yeah what do you meant anything else from saying company Island besides good times and flights I'm on fire requested to do a touch-and-go you do they still do that like the fried frog he'll they still do frog he'll they still do flights they still got a flight tower out there you still be touching goes the whole nine yards yeah it's good times make you tough so then you get that we got on with buds you check in a SEAL team and so one it's 1991 when we get to SEAL team one yeah it's early 1991 did we go too did we go to Airborne School together yeah went to get our airborne on Fort Benning yeah so that's different too nowadays but back then you went to army jump school there's what Benny showed you and that's where seals get like a horrible I guess kind of a horrible reputation because like you're coming out of buds day you'd go to Airborne School which airborne is a very conventional school to go to like every one of the like a lot of it not everyone but a lot of people go to the go to the army jump school so there's no super high standard for physicality or anything so when you get down you're fresh out of seal training and you're down there just feel like you can do anything and of course the the black hats which are the instructors down there they did you know they call everyone Navy if like all every guy that's not in the army that is called you Navy I never that come on over here Navy beat your boots that was another thing to make you do squats they say beat your boots and you basically got to hit your boots but it's pretty fun school I had a good time yeah yeah airborne was cool and then um and then we check in a SEAL team one and you and well we went through sqt together or stt used to be called zeal tactical training yes that was just learning all the stuff that you actually where I wanted to actually learn I'm sure we all just wanted to learn how to shoot move and communicate out of patrol explosives like this is when you start doing cooler stuff besides key being wet and Sandy yes and then from there we roll into our platoons your and my sister platoon you call it brother pretend okay fair enough well know where they call it sister platoon they do they never call it brother platoon hmm I mean like stores they'll do that too that's our sister store yeah we never saved another store even in the teams where there's no females and we say brother what's up with that I mean we say sister so you guys are in our brother platoon apparently now or system and we're doing work up you know it's a different environment I remember your platoon your platoon had some let's just say pipe hitters in it right um you guys had some heavy hitters that pull - yeah more Sullivan in my 1st platoon we had great guys my first Atun but the guys that you had in your platoon were harder I'm straight up there's no real other way of putting it they were harder on you guys for sure yeah I mean I'm lucky in the sense that I wasn't the main target I mean I was targeted I mean there was a situation we had down and in Panama like with the hazing that was really extreme you know and you know some some injuries happen I got choked out at least five times that night at least there and yeah beaten you know it was that platoon was pretty hardcore yeah I've told a story on this podcast couple times about like when I got to the team and um um sitting out by the pool or I'm out doing a workout on the pull-up bar and this giant human like barely human goes lumbering out across the it's probably 200 year maybe even a hundred yards from like the team area to first lieutenant where the engines are and it's a guy from your platoon you know who it is the biggest guy in your platoon yeah and he's carrying a gallon of milk with him and so he's lumbering across this giant guy with this whole body tattooed no shirt on and he stops like at the 50 meter mark and drinks a half a gallon of milk he keeps walking and I'm like how am I gonna survive in this environment because it was just it was a very hostile environment back then you know very hostile and in the SEAL platoons and and you know what a lot but not a lot of it so let's just say some of it was wrong some of it like some of it got taken to a point where it was not good for morale it wasn't good for unity you know some of the hazing got to a point where you're like hey that that's not that's not okay like that's wrong some of its good you know some of it's okay you know welcome to the teams and it's a rough environment if you screw up you're gonna pay but yeah some of it went overboard but yeah you had a you had a you had a hardcore platoon and when we when we got overseas we were you know what I remember is on old an old master chief who seemed like the oldest guy I had ever seen in my life which was Steve Bailey you know and he was probably like seven years younger eight years younger than I am right now he's probably like 40 but he seems so old and he's like does anyone here want to learn how to fight and I'm like yep me and I I don't know if we were to get when that happened but we ended up in the Kwan's in hut with mats on the ground that he knew enough jiu-jitsu he was like a white belt no I my recollection is different so the first deployment overseas that platoon that we were just talking about we went to Guam and then flew straight to Thailand okay and we were in Thailand and that's where I met Steve we're talking about and basically I got introduced to jiu-jitsu there and then we got back to Guam you know continue the training okay well it's kind of weird 1991 mm-hmm and I got introduced to jujitsu Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in Thailand yeah in 91 and then actually as 92 yeah there and then coming back to Guam started at the Quonset hut yeah so so that must have happened cuz you went right away to Thailand yeah I'm in SIL and Guam you everyone comes back from Thailand including Steve Bailey and then when he came back he must have said hey who wants to learn jujitsu I raised my hand you know he I think he he's who wants to learn how to fight cuz I think him asking who wants to learn jujitsu would have been the most you know would have been like oh is this a language is this up I don't even know so it was more like hey who wants to learn how to fight I'm like of course and then I just remember him just choking us out I mean and everything just like with three or four different moves you know I was like oh he knew it may be an armlock and Americana may be like the sit up sweep he didn't there wasn't a ton of different things I can do how to take the back but it wasn't this it seemed like a little imited number of moves that jujitsu was it wasn't as involved as it as it is now for sure were you already making the connection I didn't even make the connection I thought oh there's in my mind I thought jujitsu was seven moves like I you know or whatever maybe when you get advanced there's 12 you know what I mean I just thought okay there's seven moves here they are practice them and then you know jujitsu I didn't I didn't make the connection between that what we were learning and this whole freaking crazy sport although my training with Steve was a really pivotal time in my life you know he introduced me to jiu-jitsu that's really changed my life in a really awesome way but also like there was a lot of striking - we did a kickboxing and you know III that's what actually solidified my my journey in jiu-jitsu because you know he had a few black belts that had trained under him other team guys and we would do we were doing sparring at this point when we'd come back home and I would go down there and like for two years at least a trend three times a week there and it was one day striking and then the next day we do ground and I got and then like on a Friday we do like just sparring it so it's like SEAL team all the other guys are black belts and I'm like the new guy and it's just like the goal is to knock the new guy out you know and and um I got my jaw dislocated by one of the guys I came in on him and he turned around it's big hook kick right my chin and I fell forward he turned his back no hooks or nothing I just put the choke on and I choked them but then after that I couldn't remember what day it was my back teeth weren't touching and um I had my chin was just swollen and I had to like wait around for a while so I had like the wherewithal to get back home but that was like kind of like pivotal because I was like you know even when I was hurt did you Jitsu goes on fuel and sometimes when you don't have your senses if you can just feel what's going on you you have a chance and so that was a big lesson for me and that's after we got home so after we got home you were state you were staying engaged in jiu-jitsu when I got home I didn't and I think part of its because I just thought like I said I thought I know the seven moves of jujitsu so I'm good and I wasn't another platoon and so I'm just like okay cool I know did you in my mind I actually thought I knew jujitsu like I'm good I know I know everything you know look it's like I know the alphabet right I know these words so I'm good and then but you kept training at what point did you find Fabio alright so it had been I was getting out at that time okay so we do we both do another platoon right I'm in an art platoon so I'm on a ship you go back on a SpecOps deployment to Guam did you go to Guam so you go to Guam and you're training that whole time yes and then you come home continue the training yeah and at that point I was like hey you know do they have like any kind of you know like any other places I can train you know I want to learn more and I'm thinking about you know getting out and he's like well you know Steve was like you know we should um maybe check out a tournament and I'm like all right yeah okay and I was the same way and I'm thinking you know at this point you know I know jiu-jitsu and he wrote a letter to me he wrote a letter and sealed it and he said when you get up there at the tournament give this letter to hoist and I went up there and um I met hoist and gave him the letter he opened it and he said well you've been training with Steve for two years you're a blue belt now and so I got my blue belt from Royce Gracie has never had trained with him at all but got my blue belt there to do the tournament because like two years you know go in the blue belt division but I had never trained with the key like when I got there I was like you know everyone had diesel and I was like we'd always done nogi mm-hmm and my first opponent was Craig Cole Fabio's first black dog on hearing and I think it was maybe the worst I might have been a record for the worst loss in jujitsu because I didn't get tapped out but it was like I just never been swept that many times because he had the key and I'd never seen those sweeps because I was always going noogie and and it was like literally like 30 nothing like just I was just getting thrown around and then I remember back then like my defense forearm lock when the someone gets mad it was to put your arm up and when they go for it yank your own without as fast as possible and he almost caught me with the arm up but when I'm trying to get my arm out and then all of the friends are on the side like yelling break it and it's called jiu-jitsu and yeah it was probably including Fabio if he was there on the side Fabio was reffing Oh Jack that's gonna work out good so then after that you know I was like hey you know is there that I came Fabio Santos is opening a school down in San Diego and that's where you've been trained if you want to go down and train under our system so I was like yeah you know I would definitely explore it and you know when I went back I told Steve would happen and he was like you know well you know expand your horizons learn as much as you can and so I started with Fabio and I were trained at Steve's and then at a certain point I'd um I'd gotten out at this point and I'm now getting ready to go on to school so I had the GI Bill and I'm I started working at Mesa College like it's local junior college was it like 1995 yes and so 90 I started at Fabio's in 95 during the spring time okay it sounds like very very early at Fabio's like those those are some good times - yeah and then and then when you got out what was your plan when you got out I didn't really have a plan you know I was just like um I mean you realize coming from where I were I did I haven't really seen much I mean I've been in the teams by me like haven't you in like I didn't even go to school or anything after I went in right after high school so I was like really curious about just exploring so it's like go to school I'm gonna try anything I can you know just looking at the world seeing what everything is about you know I think people who do come from areas like the projects in a sense you're kind of sequestered and you're not maybe seeing the big picture of things and I will say that's something for everyone you know you're you're in your environment and no one ever sees the whole picture maybe we see most of the pictures but not the whole thing and so I think at that point I wanted to just kind of explore life and that my plan was if I don't like it I can go back in see lips so so then how many how many hours a day were you trained in jiu-jitsu when you got out well what I did was I wanted a way to be able to train a lot so I ended up working at Fabio's essentially you know like cleaning the match doing the intro class running the students around you know the morning and the night class so it's just there are all the open hours a month my roommate John and we basically were like Fabio's assistants the road right now at some point I guess it was in late 95 or early 96 you came to my house you came to my house and said hey bro you wanna you wanna go train and I was like yeah I was like of course so we go across the street to the girl to the to the park across the street from my house in Coronado from my apartment in Coronado we go down there and do you just you just you know you're like let's roll and so you know I attacked you or whatever and you were just triangle armlock you know whatever choke back you just annihilated annihilated me and it's actually it's crazy right it's like you had gotten so good and I just remember saying alright give me the address this place I'll be down there is it open today because I'll go down there today if it's open today and if it's not open today then I'll be down there tomorrow and I went down there and I said I remember talking to Fabio's wife and I said oh yeah I'm here I want to sign up for unlimited classes and she's like well do you want to try it first and like no I just want to sign up for unlimited classes and she's like okay so that was that and then we then it was on with the old school the old school route at Fabio's which was a beast crew yeah you Dean Lister Craig call Craig call James Nielson right some beasts in there Greg Mac ended up showing up along the way along the way who else dr. Mick Brent was there too brent was there remember Kim yeah I see Kim at wrestling tournaments sometimes he's a referee at risk wrestling tournaments Louie Lewis Lewis Lewis the Korean dude from Oh Lewis yeah yeah he was we use it because he was a judo guy originally but he used to go hard yeah especially like early when he showed up he would he would go hard he was there to use there to win everyone it's you know I look at that now in hindsight you know having have some had some judo experience as well judo the the the way people attack is I would say they're trying to make you tap they're they're not looking for you to tap like you know I've I've even traveled in certain areas in Asia you can no one taps to chokes it's just all you caught me in a choke I'm going out there just not going to tap to a choke so I think the judo guys anyone who's a judoka when they get they go for their taps like if you stand up in the guard and the guy has your arm they're gonna try to break it so that if the fight does continue now you have one arm mm-hmm so if you don't tap they're still going to win because you have one or at what point and I think Fabio used to say this he used to say you're the only person Jeff that went from jiu-jitsu to capoeira what when did you start getting into capoeira oh that was like maybe a year after I got out and essentially it's just like I've been saying I want to explore and try different things you know I've never been the type of person that okay don't do this I'm like well why not you know so I was experimenting and I was like it's a good way to get good condition for jiu-jitsu you know one learn something different and that that's another thing I remember is when you came to my house to fight me I was like what how would you uh you know if you if we were gonna fight how would you what would you do like how would you start it and you did some weird kappa Wetty stuff yeah I started doing comfortable yeah and I was all confused and I'm like oh man I don't even know what's happening this is horrible and then I'm in a triangle tapping out and we were competing a lot back then like every opportunity we would get we would go and compete and one of the most well it might be it's definitely the top probably five that I've been at live matches was we were at neutral grounds oh yeah which was in the ghetto and in like Inglewood or something I mean it is a nasty part of LA and it was uh it was like in the backyard of some crappy you know house and they had a cage there and there's freaking rabid pit bulls in the alley and everything and we roll in there and I like we all had matches and they set up it wasn't a tournament was just like one match and God think about those matches there was so you had a well Dean had a match against the the Armenian dude that was like a grown man and he I thought Dean I thought he like I thought the guy died of exhaustion or something in the ring I don't know if you remember that one it was mayhem and Armenian guys are cranking the Armenian music on boom bah season stuff it was it was so crazy there was not dude and the cool thing is that's like the Karo Parisyan crew like that's them so like when Carl Parisian was like oh yeah dude it was one of like the old-school guys they had that that in they were all kind of linked to judo gene LeBell so it was just like really cool to be a part of that but you had a match at neutral grounds perfect in the two against a bow Hershberger who was this he was he was like Hickson's as far as I know he was kind of Hickson's premier purple belt at the time and at this time like purple belt was kind of yeah if you were like purple belt was the highest level that Americans had at this point right and so you had this match against um against that guy and he was a great guy I mean he's a great competitor he competed all time we team all time but you but he was a lot bigger than you a lot bigger than you you know he was probably like what do you think 200 220 or something like that big guy and you guys threw down you know jiu-jitsu match and you know he was kind of on top and kind of as far as I can remember sort of dominating the match and then there came the triangle out of nowhere and that was kind of nuts man you won that is their video that anywhere oh no video have them maybe a couple of pictures of it you know what competition you know I look at the competitions are I think it's really good to test your skill against other people in competition basically you're looking at someone who has the same skill level but you don't know their game mm-hmm and it's up to you to try to negotiate and you and have your jiu-jitsu when the situation so I you know the tournaments are good I think but um you know I've because of Steve because of where I grew up my focus as far as your q is self-defense that's my main focus you know I look at the matches like this person won today but then if they repeat the match what happens then and repeated again and again and again that's how you find out who's there who's the best you found out who's the best right there you know so I I kind of I want to keep my you know my humility I guess I would say as far as like fighting is concerned anyone can lose at any time so you know make sure your techniques on point and be aware yeah that's a weird thing to is it's it's a cool thing about jujitsu it's like you can go so hard you can go as hard as you can you know like that's the way Jitsu works but then there's the other thing is it's as close as it is to a fight it's not even a real fight it's still not a real fight and well then what do you have in those other arenas what can you do what can you how can you what can you create really is what it boils down to there's a creativity aspect that's another thing that you kind of excel at with jujitsu is there's the creative aspect of kind of creating moves and creating series that work really well together how much how much you went to like I remember you know when I would see you cuz because eventually you know we weren't all training at fabio's anymore and we were training at different places and so when I see you it always be like you'd be deep into yoga you'd be deep into kettlebells or you'd be deep in a Bulgarian bag or you'd be deep into Sambo you were always going down these different paths to add to your to add to your repertoire of moves and movement and strength and conditioning yes is that just still something that you're always doing yes I mean one thing that happened a very pivotal thing you know when I was in school the thing I focused on first was trying to get some type of work so they had the San Diego Community College fitness specialists I've they had that the first year I was in that first class and so I did that to become a personal trainer the way personal training set up you know if you work for like an organization like ace or something like that you always have to upgrade your your training and so what I did was album I would go outside of a sand sea oh you know what's this like what's this like and I saw this advertisement for circular strength training and I went to Bellingham Washington and I did the CST course with Scott Sonnen and you know how it's why is that relevant to what we're talking about Scott Sonnen is the guy who kind of coined the term the saddle and he's a Samba instructor distinguished master of sport American and he basically developed that leg lock game of the saddle which everyone does today especially you know if you're in nogi that's a big part of the jiu jitsu I don't think he gets the credit for it but he even had a video that came out that didn't really go over to I guess like as far as like it is everyone knows it now mm-hmm but he doesn't get the credit for it so I am I did want to mention that I trained with him with the clubs and did that certification but then afterwards we went and trained together and you know I learned some things about the basically the thing I learned is no martial art has all the answers and if you understand the counters to a martial art you can counter it if you are on time and you do the technique right and you know from his end Sambo judo I think he did a Systema as well I don't really know too much about that but I was concerned with learning Sambo and he was like hey you know you can even if you like compete in Samba but you're gonna have to get your throws together cuz I was just purely jujitsu and I was like all right yeah we'll want to get back home I'll do some judo I'm like yeah I'll do some judo for like two weeks and then I'll be ready for Samba and I've gotten to judo and I learned and judo is its own thing mm-hmm and so I never really I never really had much contact with Scotts on and after that but you know he foreign for him I probably have never done judo so then I started training at judo America and continued on in judo so I think it's very important if you are a true Jitsu cut you definitely need to learn some type of stand up fighting whether it's striking or throwing wrestling learn something that you can do stand up because if you cannot get the takedown were you gonna do block punches with your face so you don't want to do that and so where's it all lead to where does it lead to you what are you doing now well I was uh teaching jiu-jitsu at Studio 540 and doing a lot of privates personal training it's people probably know right now studio 540 is defunct but I'm still continuing on with personal training and jiu-jitsu privates and also I travel so at a certain point you know mark mm-hmm we uh another mutual friend that started with us in jujitsu another team guy he had a school in Coronado and invited me to come you know train there and teach there so I started doing that and a Russian guy came in a judoka and he was curious about jiu-jitsu and started training with us and then he said hey you know we need to see we want to see some jiu-jitsu in Russia and he said hey if one of you guys want to come out you know come on out and teach me and I'll set everything up and there were no takers I was like yeah well I'm not doing anything I'll go and so I ended up going to Vladivostok and so I've been going there like you know once a year every two years and work with those guys um I had a guy that I uh that I worked with in Germany Ramar he owns a tensho it's a really great school in Hamburg Germany so usually on this trip I'll go to Russia Vladivostok fly away across to Moscow and then over to Humber of Germany train with those guys then I stopped over in New York visit my brother and then all the way back here where you have you learned a new Russian in every country I've been and everyone speaking English I'm really had home incentive to really learn much how long do you usually stay in Russia for usually two weeks so your true your training in Russia with mostly judo based no guys ditch Sambo guys just fighters nice lot Vladivostok team jiu-jitsu jiu-jitsu guys yeah okay yeah I mean jiu-jitsu is a worldwide martial art right now that's everywhere well I guess I thought that cuz you said when the guy came to your school he was a judo guy yeah he was at judo guy and and basically in the judo world all this and you know that jiu-jitsu guy you know they're they're learning like if you go on the ground you're probably gonna get tapped out and so he wanted to learn something a bit about BJJ and so now one oh and and the issue there is their training with dole instructor mm-hmm they're just going off video and there are some hardcore highly skilled guys over there and and women I mean like this it's uh I mean in this area where we're training before class they have a Samba and they have judo men's and women's you know and and everyone's going hard so I mean I think everyone needs to especially here Brazil get ready because in Russia they're like they're doing I think that it's Russian Federation on Brazilian jiu-jitsu but they allow all the leglocks hmm so you have guys who are highly skilled at Samba learning and and if you're a highly skilled at Samba if you're a master spore in Samba you're probably a master sport in judo or at least a black belt because the styles are very very similar except it's you know Sam of course has the leg locks so you better be prepared because I think you know over time they're used to something that you're not used to and it can make a difference when you say they're used to something I'm saying like do Aggie tournament and all leg locks are allowed or got it got it yeah in ten years what's gonna happen yeah when those guys can pee here yeah and they're gonna have to at some point in America open up leg locks for the game it's just it's silly right well the issue is it's a sport and they're looking at you know long-term health of people and I can tell you when I'm in a Samba class like looking at the Samba fighters in Russia I think everyone has at least one leg rat yeah don't you think it's a little bit too like the culture over there is a little bit different just in terms of like yeah Russian culture is very different why cuz they're getting nuts more often like the guys relay but like you say you see everyone with a leg wrap meaning they kind of maybe have an injury or hurt legs yes leg locks and stuff yeah that's what I was thinking - I was like wait but like we have like no ghee has leg locks here yeah so we don't have that much of that but then how you say like Russian they go hard so consider leg locks is being a complete part of the the jiu-jitsu culture or Sambo and all this but they go hard yeah that's when you're gonna see that yeah and and also what is complete I mean if you look at you know having um trained in judo Nell your con owes original vision was you have a style where you can strike you can throw oh you're still moving on the ground I can submit so it's I think it's in Paris whether you learn wrestling judo samba you need some type of stand-up art mmm you know that's the full complete system yeah it's tough to uh like the kids that wrestle like you like if you if you start jiu-jitsu I'm not saying you're not gonna be able to pull this off but if you start jiu-jitsu at whatever you know 24 or 31 or whatever you start later in life to get the reps in for the takedown game when you're a little bit more fragile and compared to a kid that wrestled you know six years old eight years old ten years old through high school had you know hundreds of tournaments hundreds of hours in the on the mat doing takedowns and by the time like that's why the UFC is so dominated by wrestlers because they are they have that in thing just embedded they don't they don't need to learn that that's embedded in them they know how to get that takedown they know how to get out takedown they know how to scramble there's a huge part of that that wrestling comes in and that's what's when you start taking that and you just make replace wrestling with Sambo and now you've been doing that your whole life which has takedowns yes it also has submissions it also has knee locks and fault locks I wish that there was just something like unified grappling that's that's a vision you know that was kind of happening at studio 540 yeah all different kinds of black belts from all over coming together to teach their jujitsu I mean because but beyond that right what you need is unified grappling where the whole world says these are the rules like these are the rules the whole world so wet in the Olympics there's no more judo wrestling at freestyle wrestling Grieco it's just like grappling unified grappling if you were if you want a like if we're gonna get invaded by aliens that grapple if we're gonna compete with them we got a unified we gotta unify this pretty quickly otherwise they're gonna have a leg up because they've been out there you know in there planet sir and there they've combined it all together they got a unified grappling potentially this is what are we gonna tell the aliens Jeff hey no no reaping here hey no what is it no guillotines you know no guillotines from that position we can't tell that to an alien they don't care there's they're there to win that's very true unified grappling free the world you know on that subject this might rub a few people the wrong way but I think when I look at you Jitsu one thing I think that can really help is to make a rule set of that switched like in other words if I pass your guard that's three points make that an advantage and make actual submissions like if you have to escape it those are the points we what finishes fights where you could actually have killed this person chokes make those four points and if I see I have the choke on and you're trying to escape and you get out as four points and then this way people are going after submissions more rather than because I had a judoka judoka buddy Ross and he would do jujitsu tournaments in the black belt division he's a judo black belt and he would win some of these tournaments you know 5050 I would assume but basically he's like I'm gonna throw and stay on top and stay out of submissions and basically he could do that at will cuz he's like a legit judoka and that's that's a problem realized you do it this way that's just an advantage but you now you're forcing people to go for the submission more yeah well maybe that's part of the unified grappling rules is chokes four points arm locks shoulder locks type stuff maybe three points BJJ doesn't like leg locks too much make that two points here's the only here's the only argument I'll say against that if you're in a fight and you get across side you get past someone's guard that's a real problem like if we if we go to a real fight that's why I think it's so advantageous well that's why I think it's a big deal because they say oh if you pass the guard if we you want a fight you're got a you're in a much much much worse situation than you were in a second ago right so that's and if you're mounted even worse right half guard a little bit but so I think there's there Elian if you give up the back obviously in a real fight that's the that's the biggest problem so you remove the striking but if you added the striking in those positions are in some ways even more important even more relevant so I'm not leaning philosophy I didn't say the relevance of the of those positions or any less I'm just saying for a sport to get people to go more for submissions rather than cuz they're a we've seen it mm-hmm bunch of guys who wrestled in high school I got to take down advantage I'll take this person down wiggle a little bit to make sure the ref thinks I'm still doing something they stand us up I'd do it again and they won and they never submitted anyone yeah and you attempted a submission yeah you feel cheated you're on the bottom doing gar the whole time and couldn't do anything because you got stalled out yeah installing is a real thing there you can't if someone's stalling that's like a hard thing to undo you know I mean without strikes yeah yeah and then you had the strikes in yeah that's a whole different thing so you're talking about essentially like with the philosophy you know of fighting yeah you know it's kind of key to that but for the sport you're you're absolutely right like even if like even just stalling in general like even if you're just up by some points that you got from all your cool takedowns or whatever and then they take you down and you're now they're only kind of they're only the only thing they can do really is tap you out because there's maybe a minute left they can't score 14 points in a minute to not get tapped out if someone's just my whole thing yeah your mouth you just like the draw and you just don't want to get get tapped out that's hard for the guy it's hard to tap someone out like way harder to tap someone out when they're their whole thing is just not to get tapped out so yeah it can be like an issue for the sport I think what philosophy do you follow you know you still get the same result of guard passing in positional dominance because well what kind of arm walks are you doing when you're in someone's guard there you know I'm not gonna do a Kimura to you if I'm in your guard since you still forced to I mean those principles of also Comey those are all positions right of pinning someone those are still gonna be important I mean in judo there's no there are no points for guard passing it's just pin this person I know if I have you pinned if I want to I could bash you or I could go into submissions right yeah so that the advantage for guard passing or whatever isn't the points it's because you're now you're cross-eyed there's your advantage so it's it's sort of like so use it then yeah it's not such a great you know use it but you're not giving points for that getting stuff over here that's the Jeff Higgs way yeah and I'm not change you know I'm you know it's just the thought you know maybe it's nothing thought but the idea is to keep the purity of going for submissions in jujitsu I mean I think with rules that we're seeing in BJJ judo is even worse because it had a longer history of taking dangerous moves out mm-hmm and that's what I see happening in BJJ yeah well I think the ultimate role set for grappling is no striking that that's it no time limit no submissions are barred just you're not allowed to punch or strike the other person or kick them other than that you can get after it and you can go as long as it takes which means people are gonna have to you know get up yeah yeah come on let's face it I mean the sport thing you know you can't make the audience know you know five well I don't know if I'm somebody smart people do to other sports that take a really long time and they've managed to televise that baseball game takes many hours to write so you would occasionally you'd get some weird match that goes like nine hours before someone taps out from dehydration that's what I want to see I want to see someone tap out for dehydration you know what I'm saying cuz you're not allowed to get a drink you got to go in hydrated you got to go into fuel in your system yeah so yeah it's not that different I think than baseball but yeah because baseball you have like understood little breaks that's why we can hang out right that's why it can last so long yeah edge it sued on no time limit jiu-jitsu tournament there would be like a limitation just by Nature yeah just by the limitations of humans for the audience remember then I'm gonna be happy about that because at any moment the match could technically turn around for that for one of them I so know that as you run three matches at the same time so two of those matches are gonna at least one of those out of three is gonna be kind of exciting at some point so just running three matches you focus the television over there I got this solved what did I have name for this what was I naming it you know no unified grappling yeah but there's just like no no time limit death matches basically because it's the only way there's one way to win cool make the other person tap out yeah that's the one way you win yeah that's a game changer yeah remember the Hickson tournaments that were like that it was you but you could also win by 15 points yeah so those those those matches would not go along hmm those matches would not go long you could win by 15 points or submission and those matches would be like seven minutes four minutes 10 minutes occasionally there'd be some you know 20 minute match yeah rarely but the Gracie tournament is similar I mean they they give you points for guard pass mount and back control those are the only points and you know the rest is continued until someone gets submitted or or 15 points yeah because 15 points does show you win and if you beat somebody by 15 points that means positionally if you were in a real fight you would if you destroy them yeah it's horrible when you get somebody that's really good like positioning like an MMA fighter to roll with and in like I'll do this with Taylor we got a guy here named Taylor Johnson he needs to savage wrestler and he savage and everything but you know he gets a position on me and I'm just thinking if he if we were in a fight right now he would just he would be just killing me he would be punching me in the head until I was dead repeatedly like repeatedly dead so yeah if anybody wants to get ahold of you like anyone who wants to get a seminar because that's another thing you know you mentioned it self-defense and how that's kind of what your focus is it's really solid like you have your own little techniques in there you got moves I know you do weapons stuff if somebody wants to get ahold of you to get some kind of training what do they do who do they contact I guess they could contact me well how would they do that so this is an issue Jocko sent me a text last night and said do you have Instagram and I said no I don't have any social media mm-hmm and basically I can give you my email you can call me and leave a message do you have like an email that could be open to the public because you don't wanna be giving out your email that's you know you're you're doing your normal personal business on to a bunch of people all right well let me let me let me make one right now and then I'll set this email up all right so we will put that out in the future yeah and I'll post it how to get in touch with Jeff Beck or you got anything else no that's it it's good good to see you again yeah and then great to be here thanks for me on yeah man any other any other closing thoughts anything I missed well I think right now it's a really important thing we're looking at the talking about the world situation right now and I think it's really important you know with all these things going on that we somehow get some cohesion because I mean looking at jujitsu SEAL team all these different ways of destruction it's a lot easier to destroy than it is to create and you know as we have to start thinking on a species level I don't really want to get preachy on people but I mean just something I see if we don't do it humans in general are getting so good at war and destruction that we're gonna end up killing ourselves and really all around us you know you have the universe we there's a wake-up call now the whole planet got caught off guard with the virus luckily I mean there are a lot of people have died from it but um the death rate is not like 50% or higher I mean what if Ebola was as contagious as this virus so we have to be smart with what we're doing basically nature given us human species a wake-up call on got to start being aware of what's going on outside of our little bubble the human bubble that's uh basically what I wanted to say there's like a um this is you know physicist you familiar with all the Kardashev scale no so a physicist was um astronomer looking out into space you know with his equipment and what do you look for in space for life and so he started coming up with things that he would look up look for and he came up with these levels type 0 type 1 type 2 type 3 and humans right now we're a type 0 civilization civilization right type 1 is when we actually have a really good control of the planetary systems and then type 2 is one we have control of the energy of the Sun and type 3 the galaxy you know this is all hypothetical but the issue is you know with our capability at war right now we've got to be really careful because if we don't reach that type one level where you know at a certain point we're going to be able to give there's going to be food everything for everyone you see I'm saying like over time humans make things easier mm-hmm and one of the one of the issues we have is all resources and stuff like that that are if they're in low supply here you have that starts causing skirmishes and stuff like that so what I'm saying is over time those problems are gonna be solved but before we reach type 1 a certain point weapons and and how to fight that also starts to spread and then at a certain point we can end up destroying ourselves before we even reach type one civilization and type one type one allows us to leave the planet I just yeah of course we'll be at a point where uh you know we're not even type one now and we've left the planet leave the planet and stay somewhere note everyone has harness the energy of our planet like all the energy not just like oil or whatever it's like basically utilize 100% of the energy available from our planet whatever that is that's type-0 type-1 that's type one we're not even there yet on this thing how do you know the second I was gonna say you just figured it out are we eating you know we hang out at the same spots you know so essentially I'm getting at you know we don't want to get caught off guard and I see there's a lot of separation right now and a lot of social unrest we have to get through that to a point where we start to unify it's very very tough to do but hopefully it can happen what do you see as like when you see the the dis unification like what do you see as things to move in the right direction of becoming unified again well I think one of the main reasons is not thinking on a species level and you know when I'm talking about this I feel kind of funny because it feels like I'm talking in the clouds or something like that but I'm just being really genuine and sincere about the human species looking at itself as a species and not as so separate you know in my travels I've been came from the projects came out to came here and became a seal in uh San Diego my travels in jujitsu learning their judo traveling around the world I've seen all kinds of different people you know in SEAL team Southeast Asia bent down Central America South America Russia and I see everyone really wants the same thing basics of life you know and and if you if you're in the military going to Russia it's kind of a big deal in the sense because they were like the great enemy and I see like a family's over there just like everybody else everyone's trying to live their life the best they can and the separatism that we have is making a big problem we're gonna end up killing ourselves before we reach a level where everything can be better for everyone that way I mean before I even continues that sound like kind of wacky no no you know what it is actually like you make a good point where I say and people got to point this out like people like that's I mean that that's obviously like good that you say that people do say that everyone's worn out but that's not a lot of time not what you hear so when like what you're talking about is essentially like you know how if you have you know you have kids all right where let's say you know I don't know you have a goal to get somewhere to do something or really just a general goal as a family where it's like okay our job as parents is to maintain this household make sure you guys are prepared for life when you grow up and when you do that you're gonna be successful in whatever way you want to be and then you can sort of do the same and around we go right same kind of a perpetuate that species exactly right so you know in a small smaller analogy is like a family situation but currently in our family the whole world we're kind of infighting you know the brothers and sisters will fighting and it'd be like hey he took my thing no no he hit him he pulled my hair so he goes well you pull my hair back even harder oh and now they're fighting and then you're like hey don't yell and then the wife is like hey don't yell at her like that you didn't have to say you know so we're all in fighting we're forgetting about like we don't forget about I think we get distracted by just a little micro feeling or the the short-term things that go on and we start to forget about you know progress you know I mean I just I don't want to come off sounding high-minded or anything like that you know I'm just looking at the world per se what has just happened not just our country but all over the world like this virus has come out and everyone got caught with their pants down what kind of prep was made everywhere now what if that virus was more deadly mm-hmm what we have to be smart yeah what would that would that unify the world against a common enemy or would it separate the world more and here's remember I had sort of gotten named Peter Atia he's a doctor and he was a doctor in a in the trauma center an ER doctor in Baltimore and so I forget the statistics he was dealing with something like 18 puncture wounds a day so that's shootings and stabbings this is Baltimore you know one of the worst crime rates in it's actually one of the worst crime rates in the world I don't know if you knew that it's in the whole world it's one of the worst crime rates so that's what he's dealing with and what he said was when you have a family come in that's gone through this kind of trauma usually it's the loss of someone because these puncture wounds or you know stabbings or not everyone's as hate to use the word not everyone's as lucky as your brother was taking a seven-inch knife to the chest and surviving right most people are gonna die from that and that's what happens so what he said was if the family is tight their tight-knit family and they and this horrible event occurs this pressure will make them even tighter however opposite is also true if there's fractures in the family those fractures under that pressure explode and it destroys the families so I think what you're seeing right now and what you're talking about is let's face it in the world as a species there's fractures right there's fractures with different countries there's fractures with different cultures and all of a sudden we just got put under pressure by the disease and what we're seeing now is we're starting to see these fractures expand and what I will from my perspective the thing that we miss and I keep trying to say this in different ways and maybe I mean I'll keep trying to say it you know within the military what you end up doing is you end up dehumanizing the enemy and it's kind of a goal right kind of a goal to say you know what I'm gonna have to go kill these people that's what I'm gonna get told to do I'm gonna go kill these people so you know what I'm not even gonna call them people because there's some part of your subconscious that says hey it's not okay to kill people so you know what I'm gonna call them animals I'm gonna call them savages I'm gonna call them whatever I'm gonna call them Krauts right World War two I'm gonna call them gooks in the Korean War we're gonna give them names that's not people so now we start to dehumanize them and now officer it's a little easier makes that job a little bit easier to kill them okay so that's war that's what happens there well what happens when you start looking at of the different culture and you start doing the same thing because you're like well I got to take care of the P we're gonna we're getting pressured by this disease we're getting pressured by it and I'm gonna take care of the people are with me and what do i do how do i how do I be mentally okay with that I got a good solution for you I'm gonna dehumanize the other people and now we get separated and now we don't talk to them and so that's why when you talk about Jeff when you go these other countries and you start talking to people all of a sudden they're not Russians to you they're whatever Ivan you know who they're a person with a family and it becomes they become humanized to you just like when they meet you and they go you know they have this horrible vision of what Americans are like and then they meet you and you're cool and guess what you all do jujitsu and you like foot locks and it's like all of a sudden it becomes human but we don't do that we don't humanize each other on a broad scale which is very strange right now because we should have the ability to do that better than anyone right now right because we've got all these communication systems set up where we should be able to say hey everybody look let's let's be together but instead we show each other the worst part of our of ourselves and and we place blame instead of taking ownership and that's kind of how we do so instead of us unifying as you said Jeff this pressure that gets put on us by something like this virus all of a sudden we become more fragmented and when we come fragmented the ability to communicate with each other goes down instead of up and the possibility of someone actually saying hey hold on a minute you know other human or other thing wait maybe you have some of the same whatever you just said Jeff about like hey everyone's pretty much got the same goals right like you said like hey I want my kids to have a better life than me I want my kids to do better than me I want them to have a nice be able to be able to have their own family and kind of repeat what we did here that's kind of a common theme and it's the same thing in Iraq you know whenever I explain on Iraqi family to people I say oh if you want to know what an Iraqi families like it's very easy for me to explain it's like an American family like if you have you asking some Iraqi dad what his goal is his goal is to take care of his kids you know build up a house build the business or their kid that's what their goals are the same thing when you ask an American dad that same thing so it's across the board we get in these situations where instead of where we're all like a mass dehumanization mode well Howard the relevance to jujitsu is there is definitely a clannish aspect to all martial arts a trained Taekwondo your training boy died you know you're nothing you know this kind of attitude of well and from my experience going and learning a different martial art starting from ground up you see that the martial arts also all have the same goal of I get into an altercation I can take care of myself you know so it's I think learning this stuff has has kind of it's changed me in a way where I'm trying to instead of compare and contrast and trying to see how we're more similar rather than how we're more different that's a way the way to say it yeah and the other interesting thing about let's face it if you if you know jujitsu more Thai boxing wrestling Taekwondo ninjutsu can call you if you know if you know 27 different martial arts right and somebody introduces you to the 29th if you have an open mind you will learn something yes from that other thing right it's kind of like I mean back in the day Jeff you and I lived through this where it was a jujitsu move or it was bullshit if it wasn't a bit if it wasn't a jujitsu move like this is a jujitsu move then it's bullshit right that's that's the old mentality like that is not a jujitsu move so therefore it can't work and it shouldn't be part of the system it shouldn't be part of the world that's a bad attitude to have and it's the same attitude if you look at another culture and you're like okay well there's a lot of things that in that culture that is doesn't make sense to me what does make sense what how do you open your mind to say okay well at least if I don't want to be a part of that culture what can I take from it what can I understand from it how can I relate to it so it makes me and my culture a little bit better but more understanding have a better grasp on the world and we we don't do that just like the old-school martial arts and specifically the old-school jiu-jitsu was if it's not part of this then it if it's not jiu-jitsu don't don't do it doesn't work and it's don't bring it in here and that's the way I mean I think I guess you could say like Bruce Lee you know he was kind of an early adopter and you know if it doesn't you know he had some great quotes of which I can can't think of any right now but it's some work what's useful discard through there you go thank you absorb what's useful discard the rest so that's the attitude to have and yet what we like to do in martial arts and in life is discard everything else we're not listening I don't want to know what you know what you know doesn't make sense to me and I don't want to be a part of it I hope you know I'm not and I don't have any misconceptions like you know we're all gonna be holding hands singing Kumbaya and all this stuff I'm not saying anything well I don't want don't hold hands with people but over basically at what I'm saying is over time what people have now they didn't have a century ago you know humans progress over time they get better all people do this and the same thing with you know our war and stuff like that we got to find answers or we're gonna end up destroying ourselves or in the fights against ourselves something else gonna get us and this is a warning sign from nature you know there's a whole universe out there I mean when you start studying things in science like astronomy and stuff like that and how really big and expansive you know reality really is we're in a really little small space now I know maybe to some religious people you know science perspective is not really that great but um I'm trying to deal with what we know with some certainty you know what I do know certainly is we're in this life right now we want to make it the best we can before it's over and so that's that's why I was uh I wanted to put that point out in an honor on on a personal level like it seems like you're doing your best to kind of reach out the world and make that happen through through jiu-jitsu through martial arts yeah I I have to say even SEAL team I mean getting in SEAL team coming out of the projects I don't know anyone from the projects this ended that was in the teams during that time and you know I was definitely unique in that aspect so um you get introduced to all different people and you know when you travel around the world same thing and are we going to keep doing what we're doing because I think the path right now might not be the best one and again with humility because I know when you start talking like this people are like you know shut the hell up shut the fuck up whatever this whatever the case when you when you look at the is the the idea I think I think here's here's the crazy thing the most simplistic thing that you've said is the thing that people have such a hard time with which is looking at all humans as one species that's why when you put that video out last week a couple we stand about everyone being human I was like you know that was a cool thing that you know it's it's uh you know especially right now in the state of the US what's going on you know it's really important that we stay smart you know because there is still this virus out there that we have to be aware of I was you know in my studies I have a book here on pandemics mm-hmm when you look at the 1918 pandemic you had three waves some say maybe in a fourth wave if you do the research but the first way was regular flu that started at March 4th 1918 and then over the next few months in the fall the virus mutated and then kill upwards of 50 million people that's a possibility mm-hmm so we have to be smart with what we're doing I understand the social aspects that we're looking at - that's important but um you know the health of the planet - is also really important gotta look out for each other gotta look out for each other it's true I think that's a good place to wrap this up a little bit I have a question okay I said you saw that video that chuckle made a few weeks ago where'd you see that video YouTube oh you sons call you out or one of those guys you have social media but you're always on private you're that guy buddy I stand corrected he's a darker yeah yeah okay I dig it I dig it what do you think you think you could make an Instagram all right yeah or you just have no interest in it whatsoever that has been my main thought regarding social media I mean like just the idea of like let me take a picture and put it online and show everybody what I'm doing just I have no really um no affinity to do that it's a I had a Facebook page I started I actually opened it up and then I never touched again I was having a weird conversation with my two daughters the other day sure and what they were they were basically saying they don't like Instagram because and and it's you know how you hear people say like oh it's comparative you know you compare you enough comparing yourself with other people and all in silence oh yeah you know oh you compare with this you compare with that you compare with you're basically comparing your life with the absolute best view that everyone else has of their own life you know that they're posing in front of the Lambo or whatever in order to look cool and and I gotta admit I don't really think of that you don't I mean I don't really think like I'm not really out comparing and me probably because like almost fifty years old and there's an you know it's kind of like um it's an old man that doesn't care anything but you know when you're younger you're like wait a second how is that person how's that other person that's my age or a little younger a little older how they have this amazing situation going on and I'm over here you know with not an amazing situation yeah so I'm not worried about you getting caught in that trap jaw I think he'll be okay to Instagram that's the one you just put up yeah you take it you can put you put words under it too you know you can film videos the videos can be ten minutes long there's something called IG TV expert oh yeah so I'm feeling like pretty sad right now explain well the funny the really funny thing is when I got on this path god I hate even using that word I well I started social media um Tim Ferriss when I got done with interviewing with Tim Ferriss he's like do you have do you have social meeting like no he's like you should get him like no and he goes mm you really need to get it and I said kind of like okay I mean he's a really smart guy and does really well with what he does I mean amazingly successful guy and just cool before our work yes yeah so he's telling me like you got a guy that's done what Tim's done and I'm just becoming a civilian kind of and he goes yeah you need to get Twitter he goes just get it and I said he said I'll show you how to use it he never showed me anything but the good thing is you know what he knew that I didn't know is that you there's nothing to show like this is how you make it work you put up put little words in here and and the thing that you'll find interesting I guess if it's using the right way I mean I've made all kinds of incredible connections through social media all kinds I mean I would say 50% of the guests on this podcast and I've had some amazing guests were through social media they DM door they emailed or they contact or whatever and I'm talking I'm getting the World War 2 veterans on here and Vietnam that's I mean incredible people that it's an honor to be able to have them on here a lot of them come from social media so I it's a great tool it's a great way to communicate with other people and just like everything else in the world if you do it if you go too far with it it can absolutely turn it into a negative yes and there's some pitfalls to like people will tell you stuff on on social media that they would never tell it to your face just every day Oh smack talkers care what it yeah exactly yeah so there's that if you go in knowing that okay that's the thing then yeah then you might not hit hit the some of the people dude have you ever had a hobby before yeah okay so let's say your hobby is knitting right and you get home and you're like okay I'm gonna knit some yarns or whatever and that's kind of your thing there are some people there hobby what they do for fun is get on social media and trying to basically terrorize other people troll yeah trolling I understand all of that stuff you went up it's just like I've just never felt like I want to do that really let me take a picture of myself and then post it for everybody in the world to start looking at it just seems like a to me yeah yeah in that way it is it is what I see it's a change in society it kind of almost takes away on anonymity you are everyone's a star in a sense yeah yeah but a lot of times like if you have a business or something right and you know how like you're like okay I want to go to this I don't know chicken restaurant or something or maybe even a place where maybe the experience there is more significant like um I don't you a martial arts place or whatever and you know you can go to Yelp or not an old-school Google Yellow Pages whatever and you don't have the number how we're talking about yellow pages right now and you know they're like okay well now I got a drive down there too just to check it out I'm not even committed to you know so if you have an Instagram for example um you know you can see pictures of the place you can see descriptions you can see comments of people that you know may or may not like it or whatever so you can you know it is useful in a lot of different ways other than everyone trying to be a star even though I think that's one of the more prevalent uses for Instagram yeah by the way you know waiters the whole thing is you don't have to post a picture of yourself no you can post a picture of a knife or a picture of wall or a picture of a plant or your line of a star or or sweaty single single one or whatever you're gonna do you're gonna do that so you don't have to necessarily you know just pose for pictures for yourself with your shirt off or whatever yeah flexing you know but yeah that's but you are right though that is true but then again you know what if you posted this one let's say you're doing a seminar you post one picture of the cool picture of the seminar or whatever and then someone's like hey you know your shoulders look real solid you've been working on so the next one you might be a little bit more compelled to post a picture with me maybe like in some good lighting or something you know and then the comments start rolling he seems that you see the slippery slope though but this and there's someone that says yeah but he's got skinny wrists right and then all of a sudden you're trying to have a wrist workout oh yeah yeah me and then of course that guy's now your enemy cuz he's talking trash to you you know so you're now you're back and forth with him and now you gotta check to see what your friend said about that guy saying you know so it's a thing you know you gotta watch out back in stone I think you'll be all right bro yeah it's like in a sense like a public record cuz at a certain point right you're dead but the 3d stuff is still there it's like a record maybe a hundred years from now they're they can access who was this person what was this person like what are they into it's like a historical account of individuals yeah no doubt about it voluntary yeah yeah I got some friends that that have died and their social media pages are there and I'm so happy that their social media pages are there cuz it's like yeah I can go on they're still alive yeah still hang out a little bit you know so there's definitely a positive in that regard yeah was that your question neck on you remember what your question was oh actually you know what my question was key remember when you were doing the eight pull-ups the pull-ups and you're like I got the eight like almost got what's the qualified thing for full UPS how many of you have to get back then was eight oh okay so you had to do 42 push-ups 50 sit-ups eight pull-ups then you had to run a mile and a half in Boots and long pants for I think 12 minutes and 30 seconds and then you had to run you got do you swim using side stroke or breaststroke 500 meters I think in the same time like 12 minutes and 30 seconds something like that and this is all in one go or is it like day one you do this like one after the other swims usually first then calisthenics stuff and then the run at the end got you yeah those those let that level of qualification is so not bad yeah yeah like if you're a guy sitting there going what I can do a pause yeah you're totally wrong not totally wrong you're gonna get destroyed if you take you 11 minutes and 30 seconds or whatever run in a mile and a half and you think you're gonna make it through buts you're not even close yeah there I mean back in the day and I'm surprised they haven't changed it and they have changed it now like once you're in the pipeline you compete against everyone else so the way it works now Jeff is what you get two buds in order to go into a class they give everyone in the class a screening a physical screening test the top 165 people go if you don't make it you don't go into class and if you don't make it I think two times you're done so it's a competition just to get into class see who gets the best score so any pull-ups ain't getting you nowhere is it like the enhanced screening test cuz I remember Ken the budge you got another screening test when I in 74 where everything was higher like 75 push-ups like 12 pull-ups or something like that I just know it's a competition so the max the minimum fluctuates because if there's a bunch of studs in your class and you're not going to pull up like oh yeah sorry you're not in class yeah it's like later the crazy thing is no matter what they do to those standards the same know where people quit but it's the weirdest thing it's definitely the cold the cold water the cold water the lack of oxygen in the sleep and the lack of sleep and then and then those are that right there is 90% of the quitters I think then you have some people that you know whatever they got some weird they'll get in their head psychologically and they look man you know you gotta recognize that they're gonna try and make you quit yeah so if they see some kind of weakness that they see they can trip you up and they might here's the thing you go up or you go down you know they might be like hey no one's gonna want to have you on this in a platoon listen man you seem like a good guy right little ego up whatever you want opportunity if you got a team I wouldn't want to work with you you don't look like you can carry your weight and like you're actually by staying here yeah the rest your boat Pro crew you're putting them at risk in the SEAL Teams so even a good like if you're a good-hearted person that has good intent you want to take care your teammates the best thing you can do to take care your teammates right now is quick yeah Jim you know mentally frustrated so they're gonna figure out a common at you yeah and when you're cold wet and tired yeah that's the other thing you keep you know people when you're cold wet and tired man those scripts this option start popping up in people's heads and they start you know maybe they weren't thinking about it but now they're thinking well I really don't want to let my teammates down and that hot coco looks good over there I'm gonna go get me some hot cocoa yes we had in our flesh Swiss Miss hot cocoa and Krispy Kreme Doughnuts oh that's an electric blanket sitting on the beach so you're sitting in 58 degree water jackhammering freezing cold and there's some quitter up there with an electric blanket on and a hot cup of cocoa they're calling you out I laughed at that craziness it's so you if that quits he doesn't just go he doesn't just leave he's still there they'd be very green make us they make a positive spectacle out oh yeah well here's the thing though and they treat him like a bro - they don't they're not harsh on okay they're not like they're not like I'll get over your quitter they're like it's okay yeah they're done all psyops of everybody to me that's the worst Martin there because if you're just like oh yeah you're here's all the quitters on display look at them enjoying their hot cocoa it kind of creates this divide like oh I don't want to be that guy looks nice no I think that guy's my husband actually you know my yes okay yeah he made a decision yeah you know this is probably a good decision it's good decision for the teams he really cares about the teams because he doesn't want to bring the teams down not look at you trying to hurt the teams see I think I understand you a little bit more now just a little bit I get it Jack all right so um I guess we're all probably gonna start training in jiu-jitsu if we're not already yes I guess we're probably gonna be swinging some kettlebells working out trying to get better trying to humanize each other yes we're just moving in a positive direction yes sir what do you got for a second Charles well we're gonna keep ourselves in the game with what jaco fuel supplements supplementation important you know specially when your body starts falling apart right okay joint warfarin krill oil super krill oil he tries to get a problem your joints go out right you're gonna be thanking you know what and you're taking the krill oil and joint oh yeah no super grill super killer yes sir cuz the krill oil is made with a regular krill red natural has not been screened supercro they made it through the training yes sir and they're ready to hook you up it makes sense to don't get regular krill which is also super Krell yes sir also discipline both kinds of discipline by the way the supplement discipline okay for your brain or your body - but you know all these things are gonna keep you in the big time jiu-jitsu or otherwise so Jeff kovat before at the end of at the end of January I went to Seattle New York San Francisco Los Angeles Washington DC and Austin Texas and in each one of those locations as shook hands with one to two thousand people and bro hugged fifty percent of those people I did not get covin matter of fact it never even liked it never even got after my immune system at all I got the test I'm not saying that it's like this genetic thing but it's now proven that if you're healthy right if you workout yes if you eat clean yes if you take vitamin D sure also this will in back to the discipline thing we do have cans of discipline RTD cans stands for ready to drink in the industry yes sir those are good those are that I'd say actually in what I'm on both I'm be honest with you mmm the cans and the powder yeah there's something really good about just cracking open a cold camp it's true and oh yeah Pete guys thanks for the refrigerator by the way I mean you know Joe's head is on it which you know makes emotions about that whole thing but overall good big hit at my house Radley sent me this refrigerator with Jacko's head face on the refrigerator and very strange you want to talk about strange tunnel Cove it's strange right the world strange we got strange people running for president when your head starts showing up on your friends refrigerators that's some strange sighs that's some strange time yes sir it is get some milk get some protein in you proteins better than yeah protein for protein which by the way the have you tried the protein that make Jeff because if you haven't tried it it's 100 percent guaranteed to stop Spanish flu it's guaranteed to stop there this room it's the lab tested the whole you don't have to worry about it I'm one of those what it was it made of well this I don't know all the ingredients but I will tell you this it's clean protein in the form of a dessert that's what I do know I don't know the ingredients we're gonna have to contact Brian what's made out of I'm one of those wacky vegans okay yeah you're not eating because no cuz it's got a Cassie and it's got the milk protein in it Oh Matt and egg protein so you're just out across the board yeah you're gonna have to uh well you're gonna have to eat something else we inside unique Ovid I want a can of that stuff oh yeah yeah you'll go out and style also tea chocolate tea yeah I want something a little lighter that some that I like that yeah and you know since you are a vegan it's not only vegan but it's also organic sort of certified organic you see think I'm playing around over here I got your back I got your back rigged I'm I'm gonna stop you from catching Spanish flu probably we prevent Kovan from getting in your system and I'm gonna protect your feegan rights right over here yes is there such thing as vegan rights it's just regular rights right yeah yes sir isn't the vegan rights a thing I'd not that I know of but I don't know maybe we could start a movement anyway so these vegan rights a thing not that I know okay oh man just like there's no keto rights there's no other dietary philosopher and arguments that no vegan is a dietary change sorry and it there's a philosophy behind it for sure oh yeah 100% I dig it too but oh I don't think you can choose that kind of philosophy and then gain sort of you know more rights or lose right never that matters oh boy I'm gonna start a keto right movement all right well I'm going to Paleo rates over here right on straight up okay I got start paleo first yeah anyway speaking of a thing Jiu Jitsu right anyway everything we just talked about you can all vote you can get on Origin mancom or you can get it at the Vitamin Shoppe yes sir the vitamin shoppe be what was the first one origin main calm origin main yep main like the state mister domain origin man because of your origins yes also at origin mein kampf jiu-jitsu keys and rash guards okay these keys and rash guards are made 100 percent of America 100 percent even the cotton that they grow to form the material even that grown in America 100 percent 100 percent it's a big deal so yeah when we go back to jiu-jitsu we need a new key if you don't have one already even if you do have one grab an original yeah that's why you know one thing about jiu-jitsu I wanted to say to for all those people who are like sweating the load about you know I haven't trained in a while you know I am had an injury from the military that just got worse doing jiu-jitsu my neck got hurt really badly so I was supposed to get fusion on a c5 to c7 and I was out for two years I just didn't train so when you come back you know Jiu Jitsu is not going away so when you come back you will get better all those techniques you've been working on that stuff's kind of just just standing in your mind mixing and matching and forming into new things you'll be better once you get your conditioning back yeah don't do not sweat it like a lot of people like I'm looking at these I haven't trained in a while yet but the conditioning thing that's gonna be a thing especially if you like to go hard right you're gonna jump back in there try to go hard in Braille you're gonna yeah when you come back come back smart just nice and slow easy get it actually and I think it's also while you're not rolling do your conditioning yes no it is a lifestyle you eat right train right you know you got to have your conditioning going on so you should be doing that in other words stay on the path and also when you come back you don't necessarily have to ramp it up you could just go 17 rounds deathmatches come and get it anyway yeah so yeah I get or Jinky if you love you know when you get back into it if you haven't already got back yeah yeah anyway a lot of stuff on there or do you mean calm boots boots jeez oh yeah t-shirts all ain't it all made in America in the good old US of A it's true also chuckles the store it's called Jocko store merchandise super original yeah creative whatever but hey man it works jockle story easy to remember that's where you can get t-shirts discipline equals freedom you know this one that I got on good you know represent oh you know a lot of cool stuff on this hand I got on yeah def core all day to the core all day all day yeah doctor so doc calm if you like something a man get something also subscribe to this podcast you can scrapped her wherever you can leave a review we will laugh at your review if it's funny and if it's cool yes and if it's not funny it's not clone doesn't have any layers well we appreciate it cool still what's so cool would you uh like when you're looking at comments and stuff you get a lot of do you get some negative stuff like people trying to fire it up on you for this podcast yeah almost none it's really cool everyone's super stoked on it but yeah you know some people give some feedback that might be considered negative but I look at it with an open mind and I say hmm maybe there's some adjustments I could make maybe I could do a better job we also got the thread we're almost out with a new thread with a new name and all that stuff I'll let you know grounded podcast where we talk about jiu-jitsu or your kid podcast where we talk about being a warrior kid don't forget if the warrior kids soap including killer soap Irish oats Irish Oaks ramped rinsed calm or on the jaw closed or website you can get yourself some soap so you and everyone that you know get clean so the byline is is uh what's this called the the standard operating procedure is I do a little bit of a build-up and then I say stay clean and you just took my byline yeah men so normally I would say hey so everyone so you everyone in you and your family can stay clean and echo usually goes like this but can you you took the glory amen good I like if you said that clean which is also you know the precursor to stay in Crete yes yes yes for those of us who are not clearly quite yet going down quick um so yeah we got a bunch of podcasts we got a YouTube channel that you can subscribe to if you want to see echoes if you haven't seen this yet Jeff echo puts ridiculously crazy amounts of explosions and fire and Terminator heads into his videos because he's all into you know whatever that's called CGI well I just watched uh terminated the other day and that was what I studied in school - what terminator video terminated III Avenue true Media Arts degree so my specialization was 3d animation Oh both Maya and light wave and digital video so video editing and compositing and stuff he's kind of like um you know the enlisted guy that doesn't like the officers because they think they know what they're talking about because they went to college he just he I felt it even exude that at all like respect you know he's appear we're peers in that way oh yeah we're peers now that degree you have doesn't mean anything apparently we're peers see how I like the instigator yes sir alright so we got a YouTube channel we got psychological warfare we got flip side canvas comm where you can get visual representation of the path got a bunch of books the code leadership strategy and tactics way to work at one two and three miking the dragons discipline equals freedom Field Manual extreme ownership for the dichotomy leadership a salon front my leadership consultancy EF online komm if you want to talk to me and hang out with me and hang out with everyone on the Echelon front team go to EF online.com and come and ask questions we solve leadership's leadership problems that's what we do every day come and check it out we're on there EF online comm the muster coming up Phoenix Arizona September 16th and 17th in Dallas Texas December 3rd and 4th extreme ownership comm for details we do we usually do an introduction of jiu-jitsu at those things I'm not sure what's gonna be happening because of the current kovat environment cuz you know what Jeff you know what we do we try and be smart yeah so we're gonna try and be smart and we may or may not do that EF overwatch if you need people leaders at your team go to EF overwatch comm where we take leaders that understand the principles that we talked about in this podcast and they can take them and bring them to your organization also America America's mighty warriors dot org momily that's mark Lee's mom and she has been on a mission on a mission since she lost her son on a mission to help service members their families gold star families around the world if you want to donate or you want to get involved go to America's mighty warriors org and if you haven't had enough of my plodding platitudes or you need more of echos misplaced mentions then you can find us on the interwebs on Twitter Instagram and on Facebook echoes out echo Charles I am at Jocko willing Jeff is gonna make some kind of social media of some kind and we will tag him and he's gonna post a picture of his face yeah if you want to youtube if you want to see what Jeff looks like on YouTube you can come on here and check him out where you probably already know what echo Charles looks like and apparently echo Charles does not look like he how he sounds you know what's pretty funny about that I do have a client that I do private with and I don't think he's ever seen the YouTube channel he just watches he just listens to the podcast and he's like he doesn't think he doesn't has no idea what you look like and he's like he thinks that I think he thinks you're kind of a small guy yeah for sure apparently EKKO Charles sounds like a skinny white boy hipster hipster hipsters often say like this yeah pretty hip I guess but yeah that does not surprise me I said no I should Craig man this guy's pretty big guy yes we'll get that we'll get your social media we'll figure it out hopefully if not we'll get you an email and if not we will find an address that people can write you letters - they're gonna mail Compubox yeah and if not we can get smoke signals going yeah - Jeff fix Jeff you got any last words yeah first and foremost uh thanks for having me on I really appreciate it and I do want to say thanks to a family Fabio for showing me and jiu-jitsu teaching me all my training partners and Steve I will kind of leave that a little bit anonymous there but big changed my life from him and also James Harrison who was uh my father's friend and really kind of was a mentor to me and uh gave me kind of still discipline me on what it takes to overcome your life's difficulties yeah that's awesome and you know that that just you know it's a it's a great reminder that when you're going through life if you make a little effort make a little effort to help somebody out you know you can actually change the trajectory of their entire life and we all have people like that that did those things along the way and clearly that's a great example so be cool to people help them out and with that thanks Jeff for for coming on thanks for your service in the team obviously your dedication to jiu-jitsu and thanks for being my brother for the last thirty years and like hopefully we can squeeze out another thirty yeah I'm sure we will but there's no guarantees as you once said to me this is true time will tell and to everyone else that has served or is serving thank you for keeping the world safe for freedom into the police and law enforcement out there firefighters paramedics EMTs dispatchers correctional officers Border Patrol Secret Service thanks to all of you for holding the line despite low pay and high risk despite the lack of appreciation that you receive know that most of us are grateful for what you do to keep us safe and everyone else out there just remember that life is not easy at all there's gonna be challenges you're gonna get beat down there will be punishment and you will fail sometimes and that's okay that's okay as long as you get back up and no matter what remember what my brother Jeff Higgs says simply do not quit and until next time this is jeff higgs and echo and Jocko

Channel: Jocko Podcast

Views: 184,833

Rating: 4.8705244 out of 5

Keywords: jocko willink, podcast, discipline, defcor, fredom, leadership, extreme ownership, author, navy seal, usa, military, echelon front, dichotomy of leadership, jiu jitsu, bjj, mma, jocko, victory, echo charles, flixpoint, new york, martial arts, sambo

Id: sM22h9ccPvQ

Length: 173min 12sec (10392 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 01 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/EchoWhiskey_]

Dude when they kept making that "EEEYYOOHHH" noise I almost spilled my molkshake

[u/danlson381]

JEEEEFFFFFFFY!!!!!

[u/standardmethods]

I don't recall hearing so many belly laughs from Jocko as I did in this.

[u/media_mute]

Jeff seems like such a great guy- all the stuff he's been through just made him nicer where as I'd have probably been bitter. the way he said thanks to the people who had helped him- it was pretty special

such a humble & motivating guy

[u/[deleted]]

"When your head starts showing up on your friends' refrigerators these are strange times"

[u/revmhj]

As a guy who formerly dipped a lot of Copenhagen, I can’t imagine making a bunch of guys who have never done it cram their mouths with it and do exercise. All I could think was that the leadership could figure out who brought it by looking at who wasn’t barfing. But I guess those up downs were worse. Haha.

I miss Copenhagen.