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June 16, 2020 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:56:15
Joe Rogan Experience #1492 - Jocko Willink
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jocko willink
01:40:56
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joe rogan
01:12:19
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andy stumpf
00:01
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jamie vernon
00:05
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Speaker Time Text
joe rogan
If anybody's got the answers, it's Jocko.
Got any answers?
jocko willink
I'm not quite so sure about that.
I'm not sure how this movie ends.
joe rogan
This is the dumbest fucking movie ever.
Do you know Magic the Gathering is now racist?
jocko willink
I don't even know what Magic the Gathering is.
joe rogan
It's some dorky game that nerds play.
jocko willink
How is it racist?
joe rogan
I don't know.
I only saw the title of the article that they're trying to cancel Magic the Gathering.
I'm like, oh Christ.
I thought that's what you guys liked.
I thought they liked Magic the Gathering.
jocko willink
I have no idea.
joe rogan
Everything's problematic.
Everyone's getting canceled.
It's amazing how many people did blackface.
jocko willink
Yeah, it's very strange.
It's very strange.
It's very strange.
I mean, it was on primetime TV, right?
joe rogan
Yeah, a bunch of times.
Yeah.
I mean, like, in the modern world, primetime TV. Jimmy Fallon was doing, well, he's doing a Chris Rock impression, which, by the way, you used to be able to do.
When I was in high school, my friends were Mr. T for Halloween.
Nobody gave a fuck.
Nobody was like, Jimmy, what's wrong with you?
Everybody's like, oh, you're Mr. T for Halloween.
It was never, like, a problem.
It's a very strange thing.
You know?
Like, you can do whiteface.
No problem.
Here it is.
What is this?
Magic the Gathering.
unidentified
Invoke Prejudice card.
joe rogan
It's an enchantment card which restricts the caster's opponents only using summons that match the skin color of their opposing creatures.
Huh?
jocko willink
If you brought me on to talk about this, I should leave now.
About Magic the Gathering.
This is why I'm here, man.
We're in a bad way.
unidentified
It just shows how fucked up everything is.
jocko willink
There's a lot of thin skin out there right now, apparently.
joe rogan
I just don't, I mean, it seems like a perfect storm.
Like, if you wanted to engineer the downfall of society, you would do it in several steps.
You would have a reality show president, where everybody's mad at them, and then all the liberals get their feathers in a ruffle, and everybody gets real super uptight, and then there's this big divide between the left and the right that's kind of, you know, manufactured, and then you'd have this disease.
jocko willink
Just lock everyone inside.
joe rogan
Yeah, unprecedented.
Shut down the economy.
Force people to not work.
So if your business falls apart, you could be the most hard-working, diligent, disciplined person who's always at work an hour early, always has your I's dotted and your T's crossed, and you still go broke, and you're still fucked.
jocko willink
Then you have this George Floyd thing and then boom it just ignites the power keg the other thing that you have to wrap around all this is this social media which is You know I'm only gonna post things that are just gonna completely make everyone that sees whatever I'm posting emotional and and filled with rage whether you're on the left or you're on the right my goal is to enrage people and That's the goal.
And then that just gets spun up over and over.
So you're taking all these little incidents and you're multiplying times thousands and thousands of views.
And then on top of that, mainstream media is the same thing, right?
It's not like there's this huge difference between what the mainstream media shows and what social media is.
It's both emotional media.
Just trying to make people emotional.
Which is the worst possible thing.
No one makes good decisions when they're emotional.
joe rogan
No.
jocko willink
I spent my adult life trying to train humans to not get emotional in pressure situations.
Why?
Because it's gonna end up bad every single time.
Every single time.
And yet, that's what our society is based on right now.
It's based on these emotional reactions.
joe rogan
Yeah, because of social media, I think, and because of things like YouTube and user-created content where anybody can kind of make videos, so many things are vying for folks' attention that mainstream media has resorted to click-baity type shit.
Whether it's New York Times articles, which, you know, used to be beyond reproach.
They've gone social justice warrior and click-baity.
And all these other websites are 100% click-baity.
That's the only way they can get people to pay attention.
Like, I saw the dumbest fucking article.
I couldn't believe how dumb it was.
It was an article on Ozark.
It's like, has Ozark been canceled?
And I'm like, fuck, they canceled that show?
That show's amazing.
So then I click on the article.
The entire article is about a guy who couldn't find season one on Ozark because there was a glitch and then he found it.
And so it's not...
So the whole article was just bullshit.
But they got me.
They get everybody.
jocko willink
They got you to click.
They got their advertising dollars because they can show the engagement with the audience.
unidentified
Exactly.
joe rogan
Well, here's a good one.
CNN showed a guy got shot yesterday in San Bernardino.
A Hispanic man got shot in San Bernardino.
So that's the title.
The title of the article is, Hispanic man gets gunned down by the police in San Bernardino.
What they leave out is the guy had a gun and was shooting at the cops.
So this guy's got a gun.
There's photos of this gentleman with a gun.
And there's a cop on his knees about to shoot the guy.
The guy's standing in front of a gas station.
There's gas pumps.
I mean, maybe he felt like they wouldn't shoot at him because the gas tanks were right behind him, the pumps were right behind him, but why would they leave that out?
Guy with gun in gunfight with cops dies is the right title, not Hispanic man gunned down by cops.
They're literally trying to incite Anger and violence they know that you read that and you see Hispanic man shot by cops like these motherfuckers They're murderers they won't stop and they leave out this picture of this man with a gun pointing it You're looking at me like I'm going to say some kind of really profound answer.
jocko willink
I got nothing for you.
Because you're exactly right.
What do they set up that headline for?
It's to outrage people.
Anyone that actually opens it up and reads it would actually probably say something like, hmm, sounds like the cops did a good job on that one and killed a bad guy before he blew up a gas station and killed a bunch of innocent people.
But that's obviously not that.
I mean, think if you try to write a headline the other way.
Of how these heroic cops face man with gun, eliminate him before he can cause terror in this neighborhood.
That would be a nice headline to read, but you're not going to see it.
joe rogan
You're not going to see that.
Not today.
jocko willink
Because it's not going to drive enough people crazy.
joe rogan
Today, if your wife tweets, all lives matter, you can get fired.
It doesn't even have to be you anymore.
All lives matter.
Just imagine a time where saying all lives matter is so controversial that you could get fired.
jocko willink
Didn't that happen to a soccer player or something?
joe rogan
Yes.
A soccer player's wife tweeted something like that.
The guy who runs the Kings, or the guy who's the commentator for the Kings, they fired him.
jocko willink
You know, a lot of it is this, right?
So, people are feeling a certain way, and they're not feeling, like this girl that wrote All Lives Matter.
Do you think that was her clandestine way of showing that she's all about white pride?
You know what I mean?
No.
She was thinking, hey, everyone matters.
She's probably having some nice thoughts.
But then all of a sudden, no, this chick is evil for doing this.
And I think there's a lot of that.
I think there's a lot of people that...
I think most people are...
Pretty sane.
I think most people are pretty reasonable.
I think, you know, anybody looking at the George Floyd case is like, yeah, that's completely wrong, that's disgusting, it's horrible, it's heinous to watch.
I haven't heard anyone say anything other than that.
So, how are we just getting so completely divided on this whole thing and start attacking people, start attacking each other just over absolutely everything?
joe rogan
That's a good point because this is literally a case where no one Is saying there's nothing wrong with what that cop did.
No one.
jocko willink
No one.
Zero people.
joe rogan
Zero people.
But yet everybody's still at each other's throats.
jocko willink
Zero people have stuck up for that guy in any way, shape, or form.
joe rogan
Even law enforcement.
No law enforcement people saying, you gotta understand.
This is how you control a man.
You gotta lean on his neck for about 8 minutes, 40, 45 seconds, 46 seconds.
No one's saying that.
jocko willink
And unfortunately, you know what they're saying?
They're saying, defund the police.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jocko willink
They're saying, no more chokeholds, right?
Which...
joe rogan
I think is crazy.
jocko willink
Is crazy.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jocko willink
If you want to get someone to be under control and you can't choke them, you know what you have to do?
You have to hit them in the head with a baton.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jocko willink
Seven times and you got a risk giving them brain damage permanently injuring them if people know what they're doing I mean Obviously if people know what they're doing.
Oh, we'll put a joke on the wake up.
They'll be cuffed.
joe rogan
Yeah, we're all good Yeah, obviously You know it's the people that are doing it wrong is the problem the people that shouldn't be doing in the first place It's untrained people it's but if you're if you're not you're a cop and you're a fight for your life, and you can't use Chokeholds that's fucking crazy insane you're gonna get shot and killed or somebody else is gonna get shot and killed someone's gonna take your gun yeah,
jocko willink
and and the idea of defund the police and I I understand the premise okay, and this is once again where Many people that say defund the police, they don't mean, hey, just get rid of police.
Of course, there's a fraction of people that are saying defund the police means we don't want any more police anymore.
There's a portion of people saying that.
There's some people that are saying, well, if we defund the police, we can relocate some of that money and we can do, you know, better schools and we can put money into the infrastructure inside these neighborhoods.
But here's the problem.
You know what the police need more than anything else?
They need money for training.
And the way the police departments are set up, they do the most ridiculously minuscule amount of training for what their job is.
So, as you know, I was in the SEAL teams.
We would train for 18 months.
18 months we would train to go on a six-month deployment.
Cops, they train, they get like two hours or four hours of combatives training.
joe rogan
A year.
jocko willink
A year.
That's complete insanity.
joe rogan
Insanity.
jocko willink
It's complete insanity.
The thing I've been saying is cops should train one-fifth of the time.
One-fifth of the time you should be training, whether it's two hours a day, four times a week, or whether it's one day a week, where you're going to go and you're going to go through scenarios.
You're going to do combatives.
You're going to work with simunition.
You're going to do de-escalation drills.
Because it's really hard.
I mean being a cop is I think is the hardest job in the world and by the way They're not gonna have to worry about defunding the police because no one's gonna want to be a cop anymore Who is gonna be fired up to be a cop right now?
Who's gonna think you know what when I grow up?
I want to be hated by entire you know by a massive portion of the country I want to be viewed as someone that's a that kills innocent people The recruiting in cop for police is gonna go down so hard.
It's gonna be ridiculous It's gonna be ridiculous and then who are you getting there?
You're gonna get people that are Worst level people worst level humans are gonna show up to be cops so the training piece though They should do very, very scenario-driven training, right?
Where you come into a room, and this isn't like super expensive stuff either.
You come into a room.
There's a person there.
They appear to be compliant.
You learn how to talk to them.
You very quickly learn that instead of yelling them out of the gate, you say, hey man, what's going on?
Hey, what's your name?
You know, what's going on?
We got a call here.
Is everything okay?
You immediately de-escalate.
Then you learn what to do when they don't respond the way you want them to respond.
Then you learn what to do when they start to do something drastic.
What's the best thing for you?
And you play through these scenarios.
It's just like jujitsu in the fact that What makes jujitsu good?
What makes jujitsu good is we can go hard against each other over and over again and Not really get hurt not really get killed so you get really good at it That's what you need to do in training for police You need to go through these tough scenarios over and over again because you do get better at it You do get better at it you become You learn how to mentally detach and not get emotional and realize that there's other things that are happening when you see the George Floyd case A couple of the other cops too,
I think two of the other guys were complete rookies, right?
They had been on the force for a very short period of time.
No one in that group of four, obviously you got the killer himself.
He's actually conducting the act, but all the other guys are not paying attention.
They're all emotional themselves.
Hey, stay back.
And they're probably watching him saying, why isn't that guy moving?
And they're just caught up in it.
Whereas if someone would have showed up on the scene or one of those guys had been through some good training in their life, they would have said, What's happening here?
Hold on my partner over there has been on this guy for two minutes.
He's not moving anymore I'm gonna walk over and say hey man, let me take over.
I got this deep go over there decompress This takes training you have to train people and I got I saw this over and over again in the SEAL teams training guys I You get a young kid that's coming through training for the first time and they go into a room and they're getting shot with simunition bullets or there's someone yelling and screaming or that we put we put Arabic women coming walking out of rooms We'd have people get blown up with wounds.
We would do this to them over and over again.
So they realize okay I just got to relax.
I got to take a step back.
I got to detach from this situation so I can process what's happening and I can make a good decision because as I said earlier No one is making a good decision when they're panicked when they're freaked out when they're scared as a jujitsu guy When someone puts hands on you, you're not actually scared, right?
You're like, oh, okay.
I know what to do here If you don't know jujitsu if you've never had someone grab you before or you haven't had someone grab you in 17 months or 14 months no one's laid hands on you because you got a badge and a gun so people when you tell them to do something 95% of the time they go okay Yeah, I don't want to get in trouble, but then somebody grabs you you're instantly your your emotions are spiked your adrenaline spiked and The only way to overcome that is through consistent training That happens on a regular basis.
You can't just train somebody one time.
It's like ring rust.
You know, you can't just train somebody one time and, oh, now I don't need to train anymore.
No, you need to do continuous training.
So that fact right there, if we want to help the police through these situations, we need to invest more money into them.
We need to get them better training.
We need to pull them out of the field to train.
And pull them out of the field to decompress.
unidentified
Because...
jocko willink
You ever done a ride-along?
joe rogan
No.
jocko willink
Like, you...
Whether you're doing a ride-along, whether you're going into any situation where you're thinking you could be killed, and even if it's just a remote chance, but you're doing that all the time.
All the time.
And you're hearing...
You're seeing on the news.
You're, oh, you hear this.
Oh, your buddy got shot.
Your buddy got whatever.
This other guy got, you know, his gun taken away.
Like, that stuff happens.
That stuff happens.
People get killed.
I mean, there's been...
I think there's been 31 cops killed this year.
31 cops killed this year.
And a lot of those, that's not including, you know, like a car accident or COVID. There's been a bunch of died of COVID. But just people that have been engaged with bad guys and they got killed.
So you're a cop.
When another cop gets killed, you're thinking that could be you.
So that's your mindset, and that mindset builds, and that mindset builds, and you're working 10-hour days, and you're working 12-hour days, and there's no training, and there's no breaks.
Where do you end up?
Right?
Where do you end up?
You end up being a little bit paranoid.
You end up being a little bit angry.
What happens when you get in a fight with your wife?
You know?
It's like all these things, you add them together.
It's a freaking hard job.
And from a, from a, like an entire Systemic way of training and recruiting and and keeping police Ready to do their job Whatever that job entails because let's face it most of the time that a job entails Well,
I guess most of the time it entails hey, I'm gonna go have a bad I'm about to go have a bad relationship with another human being That's what's about to happen right whether I'm pulling you over Whether I'm I've been called to your house because you were yelling and screaming and people heard your wife screaming or whatever That's what's happening.
I'm showing up in a bad relationship.
You don't like me and I already don't like you That's where we start That's where we start.
So we got to train people for that.
We also got to train them for all the times that they go in to help people, save people.
They're the first people on the scene at car accidents.
People are bleeding out.
We got to train them for that.
And then they have to also be trained for, hey, this is a bad guy that's going to, this is the guy that you just talked about at a gas station with a weapon that wants to kill a bunch of people.
You've got to be prepared for that whole spectrum as a police officer.
And yet we send them to a three month long police academy, and then we send them out in the street, and that's what they do.
Day in, day out.
Day in, day out.
joe rogan
It seems to me that they need to be vetted to Much better than they are now just like the seals like you can't get through buds unless you are a superior human being You have to be able to tolerate a bunch of shit that most people are gonna fall apart during and This is this seems to me.
jocko willink
There's a great way to weed out people that just don't have it Yeah, there's Well, one thing that's interesting, just from a physical perspective, most police departments don't even have a minimum physical requirement to continue to be on the force.
You have to be at a certain level to graduate from the academies, but oftentimes there's no standard beyond that.
joe rogan
Yeah, I've seen cops before that were like, this is hilarious.
Like, what is going to stop someone from closing the distance on you?
Like, you ain't getting to that gun.
jocko willink
Yep.
But the mental aspect is stuff that you can get better at.
joe rogan
Yes.
jocko willink
You can get better at it, but you only get better at it through training.
joe rogan
Right.
jocko willink
And you only get really comfortable through training a lot.
And yet, we put these people in these horrible positions over and over and over again, and we don't give them the proper training.
joe rogan
And now there's these politicians that because of the current social climate, they're encouraged to want to defund the police.
That's a great way for them to get brownie points from their constituents.
The people want the police defunded, which is the dumbest idea I've ever heard in my life.
It's so crazy that this is actually gaining steam to the point where in Minneapolis, because they're trying to quiet down the mob, they've actually gone ahead and done it.
What the fuck is Minneapolis gonna look like in a year from now?
It's gonna look like Mad Max.
I mean, it's gonna be crazy.
jocko willink
Yeah, it's gonna be, it's gonna be crazy.
It's gonna be, you know, criminals will go there to commit crimes.
If there's no, if there's no police there, are you crazy?
joe rogan
By the way, this Jocko energy drink is the shit.
It's very legit.
Yeah, I just don't understand where they think this game ends.
I don't think they've planned it out.
They're not playing chess.
jocko willink
The other thing that, you know, you're talking about this brownie points for the politicians and there's brownie points and there's people trying to create sides.
It's my side versus your side and that's a completely political thing, right?
And all that does is increase the divide between the police and the civilians.
And this reminds me a lot of Of a counterinsurgency, right?
So, counterinsurgency, the insurgents are, you know, bad guys inside of a country.
The country's not bad.
There's some bad guys in a country.
So, what you have to do is you actually have to go out and build relationships with the good people inside that country so that the good people inside that country can help you get rid of the bad people.
What happens if you go out, and so this is Ramadi, Iraq.
This is my last deployment to Iraq.
There's a bunch of Just totally normal, good people, Iraqi people that are living in the city of Vermont.
What do they want to do?
You know what they want to do?
They want to send their kids to school.
They want to run their little market.
They want to do whatever they do.
That's what they want to do.
They have the same goal as a normal family.
They're just a normal bunch of people.
And inside that group of people, there's a bunch of bad people.
These are insurgents some of our foreign fighters some of them are foreign regime elements from Saddam, but they're bad and they want to create chaos and mayhem so Americans we go in there if we go in there super heavy-handed and while I go to capture or kill one bad guy I Kill or maim a couple of those normal civilians what happens?
Well, a couple of those normal civilians family go, wait, you guys aren't good.
You guys are bad.
You guys just killed my brother and he didn't do anything wrong.
And then we do it again.
And each time that we do this, we're creating more animosity from the local populace, who, by the way, like I said, they're just good, normal people.
So what we had to do is really focus on going out and building relationships with the local populace.
How do we do that?
And one of the things, this happened after I left, but you remember the surge that took place and they sent a bunch more troops over there.
Part of the reason that they sent that surge and part of the reason that that was allowed to happen was because the Battle of Ramadi, where I fought, went very well.
And since it went well, people said, well, maybe we can pull this off.
So they sent more troops.
And one of the directives that General Petraeus gave He said there can be no more drive-by counterinsurgency and what he meant that by that was when you go to a neighborhood You can't just drive through the neighborhood in your Humvee in your bulletproof Humvee with your windows up drive through show of force and then leave you That doesn't work.
What you have to do is stop your vehicles.
You have to get out.
You have to talk to the local populace.
You have to ask them what's going on.
You have to ask them if they need anything.
You have to build relationships with the local populace, the good local populace that just wants those insurgents out of there.
And that's what I don't see happening and the more we Increase this divide between the police and the civilians The worse that's gonna get and so the police have to start doing a better job of outreach of hey Well, you know I asked you if you did a ride-along They should be offering ride-alongs all the time till the total local kids 17 year old kids 15 year old kids.
Hey come and see what my job is like come and help me out That 15-year-old kid, he knows who the bad actors are.
He knows who the good kids are.
You know, bring that kid along on a ride-along.
Let him see what it looks like from your angle.
Get out.
Meet the parents.
Meet the families.
We're failing to build relationships between the police and the civilians, and that causes these problems.
joe rogan
I think you're 100% correct, but I don't hear anybody repeating what you're saying.
That's what's terrifying to me.
I think everything you're saying is logical.
It makes sense.
It comes from experience.
I don't hear anybody saying this.
jocko willink
Yeah, and well, I think maybe it's because people just don't recognize what's happening because they're too in it, right?
They're too in it.
They're they're wrapped up in it and And that's another part, you know, I talked about recruiting who you recruiting recruit those kids Recruit those kids, but you have to build a relationship with them before you can add before anyone's gonna go into the police and look the I think it's the LA Police Department, if you look at the LA Police Department, compared to the racial makeup of LA, they're pretty equivalent, and they're pretty equivalent on purpose.
They do that for a reason.
So you gotta get that, you gotta continue to build those relationships so that we talk to one another.
You know, we actually communicate with each other.
Because anytime, you know, I'm allowed to sit over here in my area, and you're sitting over there in your area, We're building animosity.
We build that kind of animosity between each other and now the littlest thing the littlest thing I mean there was a woman that was killed in Minneapolis like two three years ago.
Do you remember this one?
Yes female like a yoga instructor Called the police the police called the police to report a disturbance police showed up and There's no video no footage.
She gets killed by the cops She gets killed by the cops It's insane that these things happen.
But we also have to remember...
Like I said, what is a police officer thinking about?
And what kind of training end would give them?
And what kind of psychological screening, to your point, what kind of strike?
And it's not just a one-time psychological screening, because guess what?
People get burnt out, and it happens at different times to different people.
You take 35 guys in combat, I've got some guys at the end of a six-month deployment, you know what they're telling me?
Can I stay longer?
I'm doing fine.
You get one month into that deployment, and you've got other guys that are saying, hey, do you need anyone to head home early?
That happens.
So you think in a police force of a thousand people or whatever size your police force is, you're gonna have some people that are Steady, mentally stable, they can deal with it.
They can be in an officer-involved shooting today, and tomorrow they can go back to their job and be perfectly fine.
There's other people, they can never work again after they're in an officer-involved shooting.
What kind of investment are we making into this psychological health of police?
And look, I hope it doesn't sound like I'm sitting here Just putting it all on the police because everyone is playing a role in this and one of the things that you need to look at as well is how to get arrested, right?
There should be a public service course on how you should get arrested This is what you should do if the cops are pulling you over if the cops ask you if the cops approach you about something Here's what you should think one of the things you should think is okay This cop may not be bad.
This cop may be looking out for my welfare right now.
That's a great hopeful thought.
The other thing that you have to think is kind of worst case scenario.
This cop might be agitated.
This cop might be looking for somebody that fits my description.
This cop might have just been in a fight with his wife.
He might have just lost a partner.
There's a million bad things.
Use that scenario in your head.
Use that scenario in your head to contemplate how you're going to interact with a police officer.
Which is, you know what they're looking at?
They're looking at your hands.
You know why?
Because that's where the threat comes from.
The threat comes from your hands.
So when you're making quick movement with your hands, don't do that.
Listen to what they say.
Move slowly when you move.
This should be public service.
The police should be putting out, hey, if you interact with the police, we hate to have to say this, but since our police sometimes are in bad situations, here's some things we recommend and we highly suggest, and we beg.
We beg that you do this.
We beg, because what happens to these cops when they kill somebody?
What happens to them?
Their lives are totally destroyed.
joe rogan
Well, that was the thing about that guy in Minneapolis.
He'd already killed people.
He'd already been involved and I think it's at least two shootings and he had more than a dozen complaints against him.
jocko willink
Yeah.
joe rogan
Not good.
jocko willink
Not good.
joe rogan
I mean, it's obvious by the end, by the end result.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's the type of guy he was.
It's pretty obvious by the fact that he was able to do that to a man.
The guy's literally calling out to his dead mother.
You know?
I mean, the type of man that can stay on someone's neck while they're doing that when all that guy did was have a counterfeit $20 bill?
That's it?
jocko willink
This is where when you talk about psychological screening, and that's why I'm saying it has to be constant.
Because people change, right?
And red flags.
I mean, like you said, hindsight's 20-20.
We're looking at this case now.
We're going, oh, who the hell lets this guy continue to police?
And by the way, interestingly enough, if you talk to internal affairs at police departments, the vast majority of the complaints that they get about police are from police.
So they report each other.
That's a little known fact.
Most of the reports don't come from the civilians out there saying, hey, this happened or that happened.
Most of the time it's cops saying, hey, this guy was out of line here.
joe rogan
Well, that's a good sign.
It doesn't look rosy.
When I'm looking at the future, I don't see a way during this climate.
jocko willink
What scares me the most...
I don't see a way if we don't talk to each other that that's where there's no solution Because you know look for every 10 viral video that you see of a of a cop hitting somebody with a baton or a Rioter throwing something through a window for every 10 of those viral videos.
There's another viral video that has You know the guy with the free hugs t-shirt on that's out talking to the cops and saying hey You know I I get it and they're communicating with each other and talking and when you communicate with people It's just like a hostage rescue basic technique you want to humanize you want to humanize instead of dehumanize And right now, we're just dehumanizing each other completely.
And that's what scares me more than anything else, is if we can't talk to each other.
Because, look, you take the most hardened soldier in war, some badass soldier that's done four deployments, six deployments, whatever, and you put them into a room with a kid and a mom, an Iraqi kid and a mom, or an Afghan kid and a mom, and you put them in that room and say, hey, sit here for 15 minutes and find out what they're about.
Here's an interpreter.
That guy's gonna come out of there going, yeah, I get where they're coming from.
And same thing vice versa.
You take a hardened jihadist and you say, hey, talk to this guy over here about what he's trying to do inside your country.
Well, just just just talk to him when you open up the communications and are you gonna get some extremists on both ends?
Yes, you will so maybe I shouldn't have said the most hardened Soldier and the most hardened because you know what the most hardened soldier becomes a killer Becomes a killer that that happens happens all the time.
You know, I I I shouldn't say it happens all the time.
It happens from time to time.
That's how you get the My Lai Massacre.
It happens.
The most hardened jihadists, they're not going to change their mind.
They're not going to come to any rose-colored view of America.
Barring those total extremes, you've got people.
You've got other human beings.
And if you can get them to talk to each other, they can find consensus.
They can find common ground.
But if they're not talking to each other, then we don't make any progress.
And to your whole kind of point about what's happening right now, there's less and less communication between people.
Open communication.
Because if you talk to someone and they say, the cops did this, this, and this.
And you say, oh, okay.
Explain to me what happened.
Tell me what went down.
And then you say, hey, let me tell you what it's like for a cop, being a cop, when he sees that, when he sees something going on.
You know how many domestic violence cases happened and the person shows up and they're getting assaulted by both parties?
unidentified
Mm-hmm.
jocko willink
So, maybe that's what this cop was thinking when he showed up and saw your mom in this situation and did this to your dad.
Right?
Like, this is real conversations, but we don't have them.
And not only do we don't have them, it seems like there's forces that are actively trying to prevent us from talking to each other.
From sitting down at a table and saying, hey man, tell me what's going on.
joe rogan
What forces?
jocko willink
Who wants the country to be divided?
It's the people that you're talking about earlier.
How do they score points?
How do I score points with this group?
How do I score points with the other group?
It's by making everything as divisive as possible.
It's horrible to watch, man.
It's sickening to watch.
joe rogan
I was reading a whole series of tweets where there's a journalist that was talking about how Cops shooting black men is a real problem.
But another real problem that's not being discussed by this Black Lives Matter group is black-on-black crime.
And how do we stop all the murders that are taking place in Chicago?
This is something that should be discussed.
And this guy was getting attacked.
And another journalist was literally tweeting at him saying, you have been told not to discuss this.
But yet he ignores these commands that he should not discuss.
It's a very real issue.
As if somehow or another bringing up another issue that is also a problem.
Diminishes the original issue of this guy getting killed by cops.
Which, of course, it doesn't.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
But the idea is that there's problems.
There's real problems.
It's not just the cops killing these people.
Look, the cop killed this guy in Minneapolis.
He didn't do anything in Seattle.
How the fuck did that shit happen in Seattle?
Well, it happened in Seattle because of this reactionary world where one person does something somewhere.
It gets through social media.
It gets through the mainstream media.
It becomes this huge inflammatory subject.
And then the next thing you know, windows are getting smashed.
Things are getting lit on fire.
Cars are getting turned over.
Blocks are getting taken.
And that's where we find ourselves.
jocko willink
I think it was May 29th.
There was a cop killed, I want to say in Texas.
He was killed when they rolled into a scene.
They got they got a call.
Hey suspicious person running through the neighborhood.
They roll up on the scene They start a couple a few cops are now searching for this guy and they see a building with an open door They go okay, let's that maybe he's in there.
Let's go clear this building with an open door They go in this building with an open door their shots fired one of the cops killed one of the other cops so just Friendly fire, death.
That right there, if you take that and you just extrapolate that over how hard it is to be a police officer, that you can be going into a building and you shoot one of your friends because you think they're bad.
That is a real problem.
That's how hard this job is.
My point is that's how hard this job is, but we have to do a better job of explaining that.
We have to do a better job of explaining how hard this job is.
As far as the, hey, don't talk about black-on-black violence.
I was trying, I was talking with my podcast bro, Echo Charles, who's a black guy.
And we were talking about that, and I said, you know, I think it might have a little bit to do with this.
If you're watching UFC, and there's two guys that are fighting, and The round ends.
Like, just at the end of the round, all of a sudden, the referee comes in and, like, punches one of the...
Like, just...
Muay Thai kicks a guy in the head and knocks him out.
Everyone would be completely, utterly outraged about this, right?
Because...
unidentified
Of course.
jocko willink
That guy wasn't in the game.
What's that guy doing?
unidentified
Right.
jocko willink
So I think there's a little bit of that.
That's...
The referee is supposed to not do that.
unidentified
Mm-hmm.
jocko willink
And when you see a cop, the thought is, hey, that guy's viewed as a referee.
That guy's not supposed to be doing this.
So I think that is kind of where some of that outrage comes from, because this is a cop.
This isn't supposed to be happening here.
This guy is not supposed to be killing people.
And he did.
joe rogan
It's also that the cop is just a person who has this extraordinary power and extraordinary responsibility, too.
What's terrifying to me is that when I'm looking at this idea to defund the police, and then I'm thinking, what do these neighborhoods look like if you wind up doing that?
And then how do you get back out of that?
What do you do, refund the police?
Do you ramp it up and do it better next time?
I mean, this is a long process.
You're looking at a lot of trial and error here over, you know, perhaps multiple years before they figure out what they fucked up.
jocko willink
Yeah, and I know there's some city, I think it's in New Jersey, that- Camden.
Yes, that completely dismantled their police, but then they rebuilt a new police department.
And I actually get that.
Like, you could get a department that was so completely and utterly corrupt that you said, you know what, we're getting rid of all of them.
joe rogan
Did you ever see Cocaine Cowboys?
Great documentary, but one of the things it talks about is the corruption during the cocaine era of the 80s, where the entire graduating police force, from the police academy, the entire graduating year, everyone was either murdered or went to jail for corruption.
Everyone.
The entire graduating class.
That's how bad it was.
jocko willink
So, if you have that kind of problem, I get it.
You might want to dismantle that police force.
You know what happens in the SEAL team sometimes?
Sometimes there's a platoon that's so bad.
They just dismantled the whole platoon.
joe rogan
How often does that happen?
jocko willink
Very rarely, but it does happen.
joe rogan
Really?
unidentified
Yep.
joe rogan
And what causes something like that?
jocko willink
Usually they're, well, the problem is bad leadership.
It's always bad leadership.
Because you can take a bunch of knuckleheads and you give them a good leader and they'll do fine.
So it always comes down to the leadership.
Sometimes they'll replace a leader, but if the and usually when they replace leader You'll watch the platoon will turn around almost instantly because someone steps in and says all right Here's what we're doing.
joe rogan
Here's how we're doing it And they they make that change, but sometimes you have just Like a bad platoon and they say you know what you guys are done It seems incredibly difficult to be a good leader one of them one of the more interesting things about what you're doing with your platform whether it's your podcast or the Instagram videos you put out you're showing what good leadership is and There's not a lot of people when you look at if you get a thousand people
How many of those people are going to be a real good leader?
jocko willink
Well, this is what's this is what has become my career after the SEAL teams Because I got very very lucky in the SEAL teams very very lucky first of all my whole career was just luck I was the luckiest guy ever in the SEAL teams and I happen to be in the right places at the right times and I got some great experience and In some very tough situations and then the last thing that I did in the SEAL teams for almost the last three years I was in was I ran the training the Tactical training not the training
where guys carry boats on their head and carry logs around but I didn't do that I didn't I went through it, but I didn't run that training I ran the training where Everything I was talking about you're running scenarios.
You're putting people in bad situations.
You're using simunition You're doing all these things so I got to see over and over again Leaders get put into pressure situations and how their leaders responded in that how the team responds to that leader and what these different things wash out how they wash out and what's interesting is and what I really realized when I was in that position is that their Leadership is a skill and you can get better at it now just like fighting just like jujitsu There's
certain people that have a natural propensity to be good at you got some let's say someone's really strong, right?
They're gonna have an advantage.
Let's say someone's super flexible.
They're gonna have a little advantage Let's say someone has they're big right these things are advantages in fighting Leadership it's the same thing.
Let's say someone is super articulate.
That's helpful Let's say someone doesn't have a bad temper.
That's very helpful, but everyone is at a different level Well, just like you can take a bunch of different sized and shaped and athletic ability people and you can make them better at fighting You can take a bunch of people with different levels of leadership characteristics and you can improve them and then there are actual Moves there's actual moves that you can do as a leader that are just like a jiu-jitsu move Oh Joe comes to me and he's yelling and screaming at me that he didn't get the I didn't give
him two extra people to go on his job Instead of me going hey Joe shut up.
You don't know what you're talking about instead.
I actually listen to you, right?
I listen you say well Hold on.
I didn't know you needed that many people.
What do you what do you need them for?
So I show a little sense of urgency I kind of reflect what your emotions are so I'm not just Creating a fight between you and me because if you and I are fighting you and I are not finding a solution So I'm gonna reflect a little bit of your emotion and then I'm gonna diminish it a little bit so you and I can have a real conversation so there's moves that you can do and As a leader that function like a jiu-jitsu move and they're very very powerful and the more of them you learn the better off you'll be and You need to practice
them.
You won't be good at them out of the gate It's gonna take some just like if I showed you an arm lock and you never done jiu-jitsu before You're not gonna be able to just get on the mat and do it to somebody you're gonna have to try it a couple times You have to learn little nuances to the move so there are ways that leaders can get better and yes, there's absolutely Natural leadership qualities that make people just a natural better leader But they even those people can improve so your question of out of a thousand people how many?
Really good leaders there are well you have to ask Okay, you just talking about how many people are just naturally born great leaders You're probably your suspicion is correct.
It's not a huge amount But how many of those leaders can you improve?
Exponentially in their ability to lead and that's what you don't have a company echelon front That's what we do all the time is we go and work with companies.
We work with leaders That is exactly what we do and we take Companies of I mean we work with companies that have 150,000 employees and you start getting everyone all the all the leaders aligned and getting the frontline troops understanding where the where the leadership is and what they're thinking and So you can become a much much better leader over time now How much of this do we see in the civilian sector how much even more directly how much of this do we see in the political world
the answer is An unbelievably small amount.
I mean, it's a ridiculously small amount.
It's a ridiculously small amount.
Why is that?
I bet there's a lot of reasons.
First of all, who at this point In the world thinks that that sounds like a great job, right?
Hey, I'm gonna go get attacked from all sides.
I'm gonna have my personal life picked apart I'm gonna get you know make I'm gonna work really hard and really not I'm gonna pay cap on how much money I make there's all kinds of reasons why becoming a politician is Doesn't look like the best job for most people that would look and say, hey, would I rather be the CEO of a company and make a ton of money and create a huge product and leave a big impact and influence thousands of people that work at my company in a positive way?
Or would I rather go and get ridiculed and get broke down and have to try and get my job again in four years or two years or whatever the case may be?
That's a tough job, too.
And a lot of people say, why would I jump into that game?
I know I say that.
Why would I jump into that game?
Why would I want to go and be a politician right now?
Right?
It's crazy.
Like, for me to want to go into the political world, there would have to be complete and utter chaos in America.
I mean, way beyond where we're at right now.
joe rogan
Have you thought about this?
jocko willink
Yeah, I mean, I'm telling you what I think.
Because people ask me, oh, you should do this, you should do that.
I say, um, you know, we're not at a point where we need this.
joe rogan
We might be about four days away from it.
jocko willink
We could be.
I think the answer, you know, let's get Dwayne The Rock Johnson.
joe rogan
I agree with you.
jocko willink
He's the guy that could really, I think, unify people.
And I think he would have to run as an independent, and I recommend he does it right now.
Right now.
He should be like, yeah, you know what?
I'm in.
I'm in.
joe rogan
I think he would win.
jocko willink
I think he would win.
joe rogan
I really think he would win as an independent.
jocko willink
He's obviously a smart guy.
He's super articulate.
He listens.
You can tell that he listens.
I mean, when you see him interact with people, he's very genuine, how he interacts.
He's built businesses, right?
He's built big, well, really productive businesses that are doing great.
I think he'd be great.
joe rogan
He's got a fantastic work ethic.
jocko willink
He got a fantastic work ethic that he, you know, he built.
He came up from nothing, right?
He had seven bucks in his pocket.
We all know the story.
And he has more bucks in his pocket than that now.
So, and most important, I think he's just a popular guy.
You know, he would get up and when the country's going through hard times, you know, I was talking to a friend on the way up here and They were saying, hey, you know, people want leadership and they're looking for it and they're not hearing it.
And a lot of times people don't even recognize the fact that they don't have leadership.
You don't even recognize it.
It's a leadership vacuum.
So they don't even know what they should be Thinking.
Let me give you an example.
Let's take a SEAL platoon.
SEAL platoon raids a house, there's some explosions, there's some gunfire, and no one's really sure where it's coming from, and no one's really sure what to do.
Now that individual, a lot of the individuals in that platoon are just kind of holding on security.
They're not really sure what to do.
And they're not really even recognizing that there's a leadership vacuum.
But then someone comes in, the leader, the platoon chief, the platoon commander comes in and goes, everyone get to the roof right now.
Everyone goes, oh cool, now we know what to do.
So, same thing happening in America right now.
There's no kind of voice saying, hey everyone, this is what I just saw on this video.
This is what I just saw.
This was a heinous crime.
This, obviously, we have some deep-rooted problems that we need to fix.
Here's the way I'm gonna move forward.
Addressing these problems, getting to the bottom of them, and here's how long the timeline is gonna be.
And by the way, my ears are open, and you know where the place, you know where I'm coming right now?
I'll be in Minneapolis tomorrow afternoon.
That's, you know, like, oh, we got a problem like that?
If we have a problem like that, I am going on the ground.
I will be there, I'll be there, I guess I'm the president, so I'll be there in, what, two hours?
I'll be there on the ground.
I'm gonna find out what's going on.
I'm gonna meet with people.
We're gonna talk.
I'm gonna listen.
I'm gonna find out what this means.
I'm gonna get to the bottom of these problems.
Then you can actually speak from a position of, okay, I just spoke to these nine people.
Matter of fact, they're coming with me.
We're going to come up with a plan.
We're going to come up with a plan together.
You know, that's another huge leadership.
Everyone thinks in the military that the leader's sitting at the top going, all right, gentlemen, here's what we're going to do.
We're going to approach this building from the west.
We're going to assault the front door.
No.
That's not the way it works.
That's not the way it should work.
The way it should work is, I say to you, Joe, I say, hey, Joe, here's the target I want you to go after tonight.
Come up with a plan.
And you say, okay, cool.
And then you, if you're a good leader, you get with your team and say, hey, guys, here's the target we're going after.
How do you all think we should do it?
And now you all come up with your own plan together and And then you come back to me and say, hey, Jocko, here's how I want to do it.
And I say, looks good.
And maybe if I've got to make a little adjustment, I say, hey, make this little adjustment here, or maybe use this weapon over here, or whatever.
I make little tiny adjustments, but it's still your plan.
And from a leadership perspective, that means you and your team are totally bought into the plan.
You made it up.
As opposed to me coming down and barking orders at you and telling you how we're gonna do it.
Doesn't work.
I mean, I can force you to do it because I outrank you.
No, I order you to do this.
That doesn't fly.
You know how many times in my entire military career I said, hey, I'm the boss.
You better do what I tell you to do.
You know how many times I said that?
Zero.
Zero times.
No one thinks like that.
So, in a leadership position, what you have to do is say, hey, I'm going to come.
I'm going to find out what's going on.
I'm going to talk to people, and we're going to put together a plan to figure out how we're going to get this solved.
This is not acceptable in America.
joe rogan
That sounds fantastic, but what if you're a Republican and they're Democrats and then you get on the ground and you have a mayor that's non-compliant, you have a governor that disagrees with your strategy.
They don't want you there in the first place.
They want to work it out themselves.
They want to defund the police.
They're voting unanimously to defund the police.
They don't like what you're saying.
jocko willink
Cool.
Okay, if that's where we're at right now, let's come up with a plan.
Let's see how we get through this.
Here's some things I'm worried about.
Because if you're telling me you want to defund the police because you think that this police department is completely and utterly corrupt, okay, let's explore that.
Because you could be right.
You could be right.
This is where a lot of leaders make a mistake where it becomes an ego thing.
Especially like you're talking Republican and Democrat.
So that means if I'm a Republican, no Democrat can have a good idea ever.
And if I'm a Democrat, no Republican can have a good idea ever.
That's completely wrong.
That's completely wrong.
So even right now, like when you threaten me right now, right now, you're like, hey, what if I tell you I want to defund the police and I tell you I don't want the cops and you tell me all those things as a good leader, you know what I'm gonna say?
All right.
There must be something really bad going on here, beyond even what I just saw on this video.
I'm coming, and I want to hear what's happening, and I want you to tell me what your suggestions are.
And if your suggestions are to defund the police, let's explore where that plays out.
Let's see where that ends up.
Because as we start peeling back the layers, even the most ardent anti-police person, you're going to get to a point where you say, okay, when one of your constituents' house is being broken into, Who are they going to call?
What mechanism are we going to put in place for security?
How are we going to keep people safe from crime?
And then they've got to answer that question.
And maybe they come up with a good answer.
I don't know yet.
But as a leader, you have to listen to other people's ideas.
And you absolutely have to do that.
There's a saying from Patton, leader on the front line is always right.
The leader on the front line is always right.
So I've always tried to embrace that theory, not just from a leadership perspective, but even from a human perspective.
You know, when you want to tell me something that I don't know about, I'm going to listen to you.
I'm actually really going to listen to you.
I'm going to try and ask myself, well, Let's see, Joe lives in this city and Joe's here with this community and Joe is telling me right now that we should have no police here.
Well, could he be very emotional?
Yes, he could.
Does that mean I should not listen to anything he says?
No, it doesn't.
It means I should monitor your emotions and I should take that into account.
But I should also be saying there's got to be some core of truth to what he's saying.
Now, is it possible that Joe's just a bad actor and just evil?
Yes, it is.
How do I know that unless I listen to you?
Their answer is you don't.
joe rogan
You know what I'm hearing right now?
Jocko and the Rock 2020. That's what I'm hearing.
Come on, son.
jocko willink
I think, yeah, well, I really hope it doesn't get to that point.
joe rogan
What you're saying all makes fantastic sense, but the problem is everybody is so partisan.
It's so difficult to get people to work together, and people are so, they have so much invested in keeping this party divided by these party lines.
Keeping the country divided by the right and the left.
It's so nuts.
jocko willink
It's completely nuts.
It's completely nuts.
And when you hear the extremists on either side, you should say to yourself, you should say to yourself, they want us to fight.
Right?
It's like, you know, here, I'll drop dime on myself.
I'm a big, like when I was a kid in the SEAL teams, I was an instigator.
If I could talk smack to two different people and let them start to get escalating like they wanted to fight, I would do that all day long.
Especially once I started training people with Jiu-Jitsu.
You know, I'd be the guy that was saying, oh, he thinks he could take you now.
Because he trained for two weeks, you haven't been here.
And he'd be like, what are you, he said that?
You know, I would do that all day long.
Escalate.
joe rogan
Why did you do that?
jocko willink
Because it's fun to watch people fight to the death.
unidentified
That's what I did when I was on Fear Factor.
joe rogan
I was always instigating people.
It's fun.
jocko willink
Yeah, there's some level of fun to it.
joe rogan
Yeah, but fighting to the death is a different kind of fun.
jocko willink
Yeah, but...
When you recognize that when people on the extremes are telling you extreme things, that what they want is to create a divide.
That's what they want.
So that you just go, you know what?
I just can't have that, so I'm voting here.
Or I just can't have this, so I'm voting here.
It's a nightmare.
joe rogan
It is a nightmare.
It's a very difficult one to get out of.
You need real leadership to get out of it.
And that's just absent right now on both sides.
jocko willink
Totally absent, and there's no middle ground.
joe rogan
No.
jocko willink
No, there's no one that says, well, you know, I... You know, I like some of Trump's policies, right?
Someone says that, it's like, oh, just destroy that person.
joe rogan
You must be a Nazi.
jocko willink
Yeah, or, you know, I agree with...
Nancy Pelosi on this thing, you must be, you know, a communist.
You know, either way, but that's the way, that's where we're at.
That's why, unfortunately, well, fortunately, unfortunately, but if The Rock was going to run, I think he would have to run as an independent.
joe rogan
Right.
jocko willink
To just say, listen, I'm not down.
There's some things I agree with over there.
There's some things I agree with over there.
So you know what I'm doing?
I'm going in the middle, which is where most of America is.
So if you want to vote extremist, you can go to this side.
Other extreme, you can go to this side.
Everyone else vote for me.
joe rogan
When was the last time someone even won as a governor that was an independent?
Was it Jesse Ventura?
jocko willink
Possibly.
unidentified
Minnesota.
jocko willink
Yeah, possibly.
joe rogan
Might have been him.
I mean you never even hear about it.
jocko willink
Yeah, well there's a whole like money thing that happens, right?
There's a whole money thing where if you're not a Republican or Democrat You're not going to get those big coffers full of money to put paid advertising out and get people in the streets to vote for you Yeah, you don't have the machine behind you.
joe rogan
You know the DNC behind you or the Republican Party Yeah, it's um, it's a real weird situation we find ourselves in with no clear path to sanity There's no clear path to sanity if we don't talk to each other and right now we're not Yeah,
jocko willink
we're not I've seen a you know the people are so Just angry and just angry when you talk to him about this stuff Just anger comes out.
It's horrible.
It's horrible to watch.
joe rogan
I Yeah.
What disturbs me is that I don't see...
I mean, in the past when there's been disputes or things have been wrong, it seems like there's a clear path to sort of work things out.
It doesn't seem like a clear path.
It seems like every day it kind of gets a little worse, like people get ramped up even more.
And then there's this event that's looming on the horizon, this November event, this election event.
And no matter what, whether it's left or right, whether Biden wins or Trump wins, there's going to be madness and chaos.
jocko willink
It seems hard for me to understand that Biden could maintain his health through a presidency.
That seems very challenging to me.
I mean, it seems like he's been going down with his coherence level.
You can kind of see it over even months, right?
joe rogan
Yeah.
jocko willink
He's on a really, really rapid downward spiral.
joe rogan
Well, it seems stressful for anybody, except Trump, for whatever fucking reason.
That guy eats it up.
But for most people running for president alone, just the grueling, just the schedule that's involved, and traveling, and doing all these speeches, and It just breaks them down.
I mean, one of the reasons why Hillary lost was she just wasn't willing to travel as much.
There was all these different events that she was supposed to go to.
She just couldn't go.
She couldn't take it anymore.
She thought she was gonna win anyway, so she just stayed laid back.
jocko willink
Yeah, yeah.
It definitely is a brutal thing, but it's really also just completely insane that the two candidates are these two people.
joe rogan
Well, yeah.
First of all, the best the Democrats could do.
I mean, they had all these other people that were well-spoken, seemed like young and healthy, and there's so many.
jocko willink
That is hard to comprehend.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jocko willink
Right?
joe rogan
Extremely.
jocko willink
It's really hard to comprehend that.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jocko willink
That you're looking at this group of, whatever, we've got 350 million people, 320 million people in America, and this is who you end up with?
joe rogan
Yeah, I mean, fucking anybody but Biden.
Anybody.
I mean, we don't even know who his vice president is, right?
That's going to make a big deal.
That's going to be a big deal.
Because the vice president is compelling and interesting, and he says he's going to pick a woman.
Whether he picks...
The problem is he was going to pick Klobuchar, but Klobuchar was responsible for a lot of those guys skating in Minneapolis.
So, well, that's not good.
And then if he's going to go with Kamala Harris, Tulsi Gabbard kind of took the legs off of that lady.
So then who's left?
Mayor Pete?
He seems like a guy who's just, you know, like he's got a playbook.
He's kind of like following this Obama playbook, and I just don't feel it from him at all.
At least he's gay.
We'd have a gay guy in office.
That'd lighten people up a little bit.
I believe that.
If we had a powerful gay leader, I think it'd be great for the country.
One of the things about Obama being in office, besides the fact that he's very articulate and educated and just a well-spoken statesman, is that it's like, hey, look, we're making progress.
We have a black president.
I felt that.
I felt like a wave across the country.
People are like, you can be president in this country.
Even if you're born out of a single mother family and you're a black guy, as long as you got the goods, you can make it.
This is great.
This means we really are living in a meritocracy.
And it would be great if there was a gay guy that had the same experience.
Like all the people that are homophobes, like, yeah, but that fucking Mayor Pete, he's got me.
Yeah, I'm not, the Bible says, but you know what?
Fuck the Bible.
I'm voting for that guy.
He's better than Trump.
I mean, that would be great.
But he's just, I don't think he's the guy.
Maybe he's the guy someday, but he's also a young guy, right?
So who else?
Who the fuck is there?
Especially since it's gonna be Biden and he said it's gonna be a woman.
He's definitely not gonna go with Tulsi.
She's too fucking dangerous.
The Democrats are scared of her.
She doesn't play games.
jocko willink
Which is so crazy.
joe rogan
I know.
She's got everything.
Everything they want.
Woman of color, congresswoman, served overseas, two deployments.
She's got everything.
jocko willink
She's super articulate.
joe rogan
Super articulate.
jocko willink
She's level-headed.
joe rogan
Super level-headed.
Very intelligent.
But she's just not corrupt.
unidentified
She's got this one problem.
joe rogan
That's the one problem.
I mean, other than that, you look at it like, Jesus Christ, this lady, she's willing to talk to people on the other side.
She's a stateswoman.
The way she speaks, she speaks like a leader.
jocko willink
Mm-hmm.
joe rogan
They won't even consider her.
She's too dangerous.
So who else is there?
jocko willink
I'm going back to DJ, Dwayne The Rock Johnson.
joe rogan
Yes!
That's what I'm saying.
Independent.
jocko willink
As an independent.
joe rogan
Dwayne and Jocko, 2020. Come on, man.
jocko willink
We need you.
It's very horrible.
And when I see all this divide, this is one thing that just...
Two have been in the military and have been on the battlefield and fought alongside guys of every background.
Every background that you can imagine.
White, black, Mexican, whatever.
Puerto Rican, Asian.
Everyone's out there.
Everyone's out there.
And by the way, going to memorial services for these guys overseas.
There's not one thought in your head.
There's not one thought in your head that's thinking oh Underneath the flag on that coffin is that a black guy or is that a white guy?
Not one thought in your head is thinking that in any way shape or form all you know is that that person Took a bullet got blown up.
That could be me.
They took that for me and to come back here and and now see this this this country being ripped apart It's that's the most horrible thing for me.
joe rogan
This is something that gets discussed a lot by guys in teams and By different guys in the military period that when you've served overseas with with these guys that racism becomes the the least The least considered thing.
It's your brothers because you're literally the consequences of your actions the consequences of your day-to-day existence is so so dire life and death It's the the most drastic consequences that we are aware of there's nothing you're losing your life Or you're not or they save you or they don't your brothers you're all together and But in this world,
the consequences are less grave, and the requirements of people are less extreme.
You're not as tested.
Your character is not as exposed.
You're not as vulnerable in that sense.
And because of that, I think people are more outraged, and they're finding more reasons why we're separate, more reasons to divide us, more reasons why they're different from us, whether it's because of ideology or skin color.
You know, Sam Harris has a podcast where he's discussing all the different things, and he brings up one really great point, a podcast that's out now.
He said, could you imagine a world where we think of color the same way we think of hair color?
The color of people's skin is the same way.
Could you imagine a world where I don't trust redheads?
Those people with dark brown hair are fucking creepy to me.
All the people in my neighborhood that are blonde, they're all shady.
That seems so preposterous.
Well, one day, the goal would be so great.
If one day, that's how we feel about all skin color, that it's no different than hair color.
It's just characteristics that you were born with that you have no control over.
Who you are is what's important.
That's it.
jocko willink
Yeah, and I think that's the position that the military puts you in.
It puts you in this position of, look, I got to rely on this guy.
I got to rely on this guy, and if they're reliable, I'm down.
I'm good.
If they're not reliable, I got a problem, and it doesn't matter what color they are.
It doesn't matter what they're...
It doesn't matter any of that.
It's like, is this person going to be there?
Is this a good person that's going to be there to back me up?
And that's all we care about.
And so, for me, this is like super regressive to be going through this, to watch the country go through this and think, how did...
Wasn't I just ten years ago like overseas with a bunch of guys and we didn't care about any of this didn't didn't didn't enter into our minds We're not looking at it all the time and I guess part of it is because You got a beer you're in a fight you're in a struggle and and right now let's face it in America There's not a lot of struggling happening.
joe rogan
Well, we're kind of making our own struggle right now.
jocko willink
Exactly.
joe rogan
And I think one of the things you've talked about that's very important is that a lot of this divide is because of this really shitty way of communicating, whether it's through social media or whether it's through reading stories or watching videos.
It's a terrible way to not just get in for information, but it's a terrible way to interact with people.
The way to interact with people is the way you and I are doing it right now.
Just talking to people.
And I think the vast majority of problems would be solved amongst reasonable people if they just talked through.
They just talked and tried to figure out, you know, hey man, I didn't like that you did this.
Well, alright, well, I was thinking when I did this, you're right, here's why I did it, and this is what I was thinking, and I was wrong because of that.
And if people could just say that, and people could accept that, and people could shake hands or hug it out, Rather than have a fucking Twitter beef that leads to a gunfight.
I mean literally that's the way we exchange information with each other back and forth through social media is the absolute worst way people can talk.
You're not looking at each other.
You don't get any social cues.
You don't feel any empathy towards that person.
You're not in front of them.
You're not there.
And you're looking to see how many people agree or disagree, who's liking or disagree, because it's a public thing, right?
So how many likes do they get?
Their thing got 400 likes.
Mine only got 20. Shit!
Am I wrong here?
It's just a terrible way for us.
It's a newfound way for us to communicate and a terrible way for us to communicate.
We're not designed for it.
This is not how we evolved.
We evolved to communicate with social cues and to look at each other and be around each other.
You could say something to a person and you're both laughing or you see it written down the same way and you're like, that guy's a fucking asshole.
jocko willink
Even from a leadership perspective, we'll talk about this a lot with, hey, I'll send you an email that says, hey, Joe, can you get this project done next week?
Thanks.
And you're in a bad mood when you read that.
You're going, who the hell do you think you're telling?
But if I was like, hey, Joe, can you get this project done by next week?
We really need it.
And I'm looking at you and kind of give me a blank stare, and I explain it to you a little bit more, and all of a sudden it turns into a perfectly good conversation.
But when I send you that email, or in this case, Tweet right then you you hate me.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's like we got management to do right now you gotta When you want something out of someone or you want you want some things to get done You got to manage that person's personality and mood and you got to manage the relationship that you have with each other and you have to be Proactive you have to you'd have to call them.
What's up, man.
How you doing everything good?
You good?
Like they have to get a good feeling out of you Yeah, and you gotta say this is I gotta ask you this favor.
I need this thing from you and And then you're rolling, and everything's good.
jocko willink
Exactly.
joe rogan
If you don't do it that way, then people go, fuck this guy.
Oh, this guy just wants things from me, or this guy's annoying, or, you know, this guy's treating me like a bitch.
jocko willink
Exactly.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jocko willink
The world, through Zoom right now, so, we're doing a lot of Zoom meetings, so my company, Eslon Front, Just the video alone increases your ability to communicate, right?
Massively.
It doesn't get all the way there, but just being able to look at someone and have a conversation with them, as opposed to either just A, hearing them on the phone, or absolutely.
So that idea of, hey, I'm actually going to sit down and talk to you.
I'm actually going to sit down.
Hey, I'll meet you.
We pivoted, obviously, once we used to go into, or we still do, but going into businesses and working with them.
Shaking hands.
How you doing talking to him and then all of a sudden in three days we were doing everything online Everything hey to meet me on this zoom call and you can get there you can get 97% Effectiveness just by looking at someone and talking to him you know like I said There's a little percentage that you're still not gonna get but if you think you're gonna communicate effectively through social media tweets You're just freaking wrong.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's one step below email, right?
Social media tweets is one step below email.
Email's one step above that.
Phone calls is one step above that.
Zoom is a step above that, another layer.
Person to person's the best.
jocko willink
Person to person's the best.
joe rogan
That's what we're designed for.
Everything else is just...
And that's what's leading to all this fucking madness and chaos.
A lot of it is fueled.
jocko willink
It's weaponized by social media tweets and Yeah, because by the way, when you send me a tweet to be an asshole to me, I actually just retweet that and tell everyone what an asshole you are.
unidentified
A bunch of people retweet it as well.
It's freaking mayhem.
joe rogan
Oh, God.
jocko willink
We're not working together.
We're not working together, right?
That's another thing that COVID did, right?
All of a sudden we took everyone and isolated them.
You're not seeing them.
You're not talking to them.
So now everyone is almost strictly communicating by these methods that you're talking about.
This is horrible.
Horrible for society.
Horrible for society.
The...
The idea of coming to work in a place, the idea of, hey, I'm going to show up and work at a place with other people, that is such a huge part of getting back to where we need to be.
When you pull everyone out of work, and even worse, even just beyond COVID, You know, what happens?
We've moved all manufacturing overseas, right?
So all those people that used to go and work in the same place every day, that used to show up and have a common mission and a common goal, they don't have that anymore.
Much of the middle class doesn't have that anymore.
They used to have it, they don't have it anymore.
And that's, interestingly, China's middle class is growing right now.
Why is their middle class growing?
Because they're manufacturing.
They're making things.
They're filling that void of people that have that level of skill set of, hey, you know what?
I just got out of high school.
I can't afford college.
So what am I going to do?
Right?
Oh, well, in China, well, you can say, okay, well, I guess I'm going to work at a factory.
Hey, it's a horrible sweatshirt.
It's whatever.
They need to improve their Their conditions, but hey, these people have a job, they have a purpose, they're moving in a certain direction.
In America, we've kind of, on a massive scale, gotten rid of that class of people's purpose.
joe rogan
And that's a big focus for you, right?
Your company origin in particular.
jocko willink
Yeah.
unidentified
Oh.
joe rogan
Which, by the way, I got the boots.
They're fucking dope.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
You guys make great shit.
It's like really high quality, really beautifully manufactured stuff.
And there's something very valuable right now about American made.
It used to be, it was very divisive.
Like if you said American made, like what are you, xenophobic?
You don't like foreigners?
What the fuck is wrong with you?
But now you realize like, oh, well with COVID, You know, we were cut off from even getting goods and supplies from other countries, and then we were getting so much of our medical supplies from China, and then we're getting so much of our vaccines and medicine, all these different things manufactured by China.
You're like, hey, why don't we do that here?
Well, we used to, but it was cheaper by like a dollar a thing to send it over there.
Like, oh, Christ.
And people are realizing now there's a great benefit to making things here in America.
And it's not just this idea of national pride.
jocko willink
National Pride's great, but also like you don't you don't have to go anywhere to get things and you keep jobs here Yeah, and I think Kanye West is looking to build same same thing as we're doing he wants to manufacture stuff in America Why because he knows when you have a bunch of underprivileged kids the best thing you can provide a bunch of underprivileged kids is Jobs Jobs that they can entry-level jobs.
I know when I was a kid It was almost like, hey, if you're not careful, you're gonna end up working in the factory, right?
That's what's gonna, you know, you can end up working in a factory.
No one wanted a factory job.
The thing is, so that kind of became a mantra.
Oh, you don't want to work in a factory, you better go to college.
Well, there's, first of all, factory work has changed.
There's jobs that people do in a factory that takes a massive skill set.
And the boots, you know, the origin boots.
We were probably...
A year two years three years from losing the knowledge of how to actually do that and luckily my buddy Pete has started you know Grabbing people that know how to do it and passing that information down to the next generation so we can actually be a self-sufficient country and we can bring back those jobs of people that look that's a that's a Proud way to make a living these are craftsmen like you said these are crafts men and crafts women by the way our factory is
mostly filled with women and And they're out there.
They have a skill set.
They're learning a skill set.
There's upward mobility as you get better at your job, as you can do more things, you can make more money.
And by the way, you're making something.
You're making something with your hands.
You're producing something here in this country.
That's just like, well, it's like when you go hunting, when I go hunting, you get something for yourself.
There's a certain feeling of being self-sufficient.
And America on a large scale, especially during COVID, we look up and say, wait a second, we can't even make that stuff?
We don't even know how to make that?
That's a nightmare.
joe rogan
Well, the boots in particular.
Think about it.
If you started from scratch, like if I started from scratch, I don't know shit about how to make a boot.
There's a long learning curve of figuring out how to make an excellent boot that fits right, is well made and durable, like those boots that you guys sell.
I was going over.
I was looking at this thing.
I'm like, they fucking put some time and effort into this thing.
This is a really well-crafted piece of art.
It's functional artwork.
jocko willink
That knowledge because that's not that's not that's not our generation that learned that right we're we're pulling that information from the old shoe dogs up in Maine that are 60 years old 70 years almost you know out of the workforce having to bring them back into the workforce to to Educate the younger generation on how to actually do this.
We got a kid up there name is Cameron Oh, he's 22. He's a young kid.
And he has learned now how to weave the material for our geese.
So he's the guy that knows how to weave material.
This is the...
Bro, this is so complicated when you see all these different pieces of string coming together, get this big machine with...
joe rogan
So he's got like a loom?
jocko willink
Yeah, we've got looms up there, but we had to get the knowledge, right, from the old timers that said, okay, let me show you how to do this.
And like you just said...
How long would it take to figure out a loom on your own?
First of all, I think I would fail because I don't think I'd have the patience if I just had this machine to look at.
So capturing this knowledge so that we can become a self-sufficient country again, it's got to be paramount in what we're doing.
And it's not just...
It's not just, hey, because I'm pro-America.
Yes, I am, but if we want to get rid of the kind of social unrest that we have right now.
Hey, and Ramadi, you got a 15-year-old kid that's putting a roadside bomb in the road.
You know why he's doing that?
Is he doing it for some big ideology?
No, he's not.
He's doing it because he's gonna get paid $50 by the insurgents.
He wants a job.
He wants a life.
He wants to make money.
What happens in America?
What happens with kids in the inner city that are underprivileged when they don't have a job?
What are they gonna do?
What are they gonna do?
They're gonna fall into, oh, maybe I'll sell drugs, maybe I'll commit robberies, whatever I'm gonna do, but they're not doing it by choice in many cases, or if they're doing it by choice, it's because they don't see any other choices to even make.
So we've let our manufacturing go away, and now we've got...
Voids we've got voids where people don't have an ability to make an income and that's That's that's that's just a complete loss of pride Right if you don't have the ability to earn money to take care of yourself to take care of your family If you don't have that ability, what are you gonna do?
joe rogan
You're gonna figure out how to make it happen It's so short-sighted, too.
I mean, it was all done for just a small amount of profit per item.
A small amount of profit per item, and it cost the country so much.
unidentified
Yeah, and then the...
jocko willink
Then the narrative became, we're not able to do it.
That's why we don't do it.
We're not able to do it.
That became the narrative.
Well, you know, even the big corporations would say, well, you know, we'd love to make stuff here, but it's impossible.
It's impossible.
joe rogan
Well, that's ridiculous.
jocko willink
Completely and totally ridiculous.
joe rogan
It's also like, when you go through Detroit, and you realize that Detroit at one point in time, in the early 20th century, was...
One of the richest countries in the world, or excuse me, one of the richest cities in the world.
You go through it and you realize, this is where they were making all the fucking badass cars.
All the amazing American cars of the 60s and the 70s, they were all made right there.
And then they fucked up.
Someone made some decisions to save a little bit of money and make a little bit of money and completely short-sighted, didn't look at the economy as a whole, didn't look at the nation from a position of a patriot, someone who looks at the country as a whole.
What's best for the country?
They just said, what is the best way that we can maximize our profit?
Well, we need to set up factories in Mexico and China and all these other places we can get people to work for nothing.
You can't buy a fucking cell phone that's made in America.
All the people that design and engineer cell phones for Apple, they're right here.
They're not making them here.
There's not a fucking single cell phone that's made in America.
Try buying one that's made with all American parts, all American labor in America.
What?
jocko willink
No such thing.
joe rogan
Doesn't exist.
jocko willink
And what you're going to be told is, It can't be done.
joe rogan
That's hilarious.
jocko willink
Cannot be done.
That's what's cool about Elon Musk.
He's like, oh, watch this.
joe rogan
Yeah, exactly.
jocko willink
I'll make cars here.
I'll make them awesome.
I'll make rocket ships.
Whatever the hell else that guy's making.
joe rogan
Fucking tunnels under the earth.
Yeah, we need a couple more of those dudes.
Yeah, it's...
It's good that people are opening their eyes, though.
It's good that people are realizing because of the pandemic and because of the fact that all goods and services that were being imported on a daily basis were shut down.
And also people are terrified of getting things over there.
What are you going to spray everything down?
Everything's infected.
I'm scared.
What do I do?
But the medicine is the craziest one.
The fact that we rely on China for some ungodly percentage of all of our medicine.
Like, holy shit, guys.
Like, is this the right way to do this?
Just for profit?
jocko willink
Yeah, it seems like we got a little bit lucky with COVID. Yes.
unidentified
Like, right?
jocko willink
A little bit lucky.
Because it turned out to be not bad.
joe rogan
Did you ever get the antibody test?
jocko willink
No.
joe rogan
Fuck, I should have tested you today.
jocko willink
Sorry.
joe rogan
Because you think you might have had it, right?
unidentified
I'm...
jocko willink
So...
The end of January, right?
Right as this thing was kicking off, I did a live tour.
I did Austin.
Then I did Washington, D.C. Then I did New York City, Seattle, San Francisco, and L.A. Every event shook hands and bro-hugged between 1,000 and 2,000 people.
That's what I did at the end of January.
I went to the absolute ground zero locations for COVID and just bro-hugged and talked to a bunch of people and shook hands and just got after it.
And then I got sick.
Yeah, like a week later, something.
Two weeks later, I guess it was February.
I was sick.
And I was like, hmm, gee, I wonder what that is.
And then March came around and we started hearing...
joe rogan
What kind of sick?
jocko willink
The sick.
joe rogan
Coughing?
jocko willink
It wasn't real bad.
It wasn't real bad, but it was, you know, it was bad enough that, you know, I think I might have skipped, like...
I'm just gonna stretch today cuz I really feel like crap for a workout type of thing so I didn't get I wasn't down hard I wasn't in and I didn't miss any I didn't miss anything but I felt bad and so I figured that was my that was my COVID experience my wife got sick my son got sick two daughters in college and my young daughter Didn't get sick at all.
My 10-year-old daughter didn't get sick at all.
joe rogan
Sounds like it.
jocko willink
Did you have it or not?
joe rogan
No, I didn't.
I'm making a fucking text right now.
I'm going to get a doctor in here in an hour and a half and we're done.
I'm going to make this happen.
Because I want to find out.
You would be the only guy that's tested positive if you did.
No, we had Tim's buddy.
What's his name?
Ben?
He didn't.
False positive.
Then we tested him again.
jocko willink
Yeah, I think it would be...
I think it would be crazy if that travel schedule that I had sitting on all those airplanes from and to and from all those different airports in all those airports That's just that's just crazy.
joe rogan
Yeah.
All right.
I'm asking right now.
Can we get one to three-thirds?
I'm gonna make it happen.
jocko willink
That was another you know, we're talking about egos The the the scary thing about the whole COVID unraveling was that The leadership wouldn't say, hey, you know what?
I actually think I was wrong about this and we're moving in this direction now.
Not just leadership, but everyone.
Everyone just, hey, no, you know what?
I think I was wrong here.
Maybe we need to adjust this.
So you didn't get to see that.
joe rogan
That's a great point because that really was a failure of leadership because it was very clear at some point in time when they found out, when they did the large-scale antibodies test, particularly in California, and they were like, Jesus Christ, hundreds of thousands of people have been exposed to this.
This is not what we thought, and the amount of people that are actually sick.
Instant result back.
jocko willink
COVID inbound.
joe rogan
The amount of people that actually tested positive for the antibodies was way higher than they thought it was.
And the amount of people that were actually hospitalized was way lower.
And then they looked at the average death that people died.
It's actually older than the average death that people died.
jocko willink
Yeah, yeah.
My son pointed that out to me.
joe rogan
Yeah, we shut down the fucking economy for that?
jocko willink
Yeah.
I guess I was a little bit whatever.
I was pretty cavalier through the whole thing.
joe rogan
Our buddy, Dr. Pete.
jocko willink
Yeah.
joe rogan
He was- Peter and Tia was a little nervous.
jocko willink
Well, he was way nervous because he was in early, right?
And when you saw the early stuff, when you're like, hey, it's one out of every ten people are dying.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
Right.
jocko willink
But even he was making adjustments.
He said, wait a second.
In Italy, there's different cities.
That was, I think, where he started changing his attitude.
He said, wait a second.
In Italy, there's different cities.
And in some cities, they're really compressed together.
And people are old people living with young people in the same place.
And, oh, wait a second.
We need to separate this out.
And then it just...
Hey, it wasn't as bad.
Thank God.
joe rogan
Yeah, thank God it wasn't as bad.
And my buddy Andrew Schultz had a great point.
He said, basically, COVID exposed weaknesses in both business and in people's health.
That's what it really did.
The lockdown did.
Because there was businesses that literally couldn't survive a week without money coming in.
Well, that's a badly managed business or a business that has a very small and narrow profit margin.
And then there's people that literally can't survive any sort of disruption in their immune system.
Their immune system is shattered.
One of the things that came out of it that I found out from Dr. Rhonda Patrick was that 70% of America is deficient in vitamin D. 70%.
29% is severely deficient to the point where they have medical issues because of a deficiency in vitamin D. Yeah, you gotta get on that.
jocko willink
You gotta get on the vitamin D for sure.
joe rogan
Gotta get on the vitamin D and the best way to get it is to get out in the sun.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
And that's the one thing you weren't supposed to do.
The whole thing is fucking madness.
It was a perfect storm.
jocko willink
Yeah.
It's like when the plague, the Black Plague, they thought it was cats.
They thought cats delivered the plague to everyone, so they killed all the cats.
But it wasn't the cats.
It was the rats and the mice.
And so when you killed the cats, guess what happened to the rats and the mice?
They went insane.
So almost the same kind of thing you see unfolding.
And no one's saying, hey, you know what?
Actually, we're wrong here.
Hey, you know what?
And what about the masks?
So this was crazy.
I got some buddies that texted me.
They said, hey, there's this thing coming.
You, Origin, you guys should start making masks just to cover your face.
And I said, okay, I don't know anything about this stuff.
I talked to my buddy Pete.
I said, hey, it sounds like we're going to need to make masks.
And he says, okay.
So we start thinking about, hey, how would we make these things?
And then a couple days later, the government, the government, comes out and says, masks don't do anything, don't wear masks, don't get masks.
So I talked to Peter, I said, hey man, it looks like we don't need to do it, because it looks like it doesn't help at all.
Five days later, they're like, everyone wear a mask at all times.
And by the way, we're going to pass laws that require you to wear a mask.
I'd call Pete.
I'm like, it looks like we need to make masks, you know?
And we ended up making a couple hundred thousand masks.
And we were sending them to...
This is the weird thing.
We're sending them to hospitals.
We donated thousands of masks to hospitals.
And...
And then, you know, two weeks later it was like, no, actually they don't do anything.
I still don't know.
joe rogan
It's hard, the problem is people get shamed.
And the World Health Organization came out and basically said the only reason you should be wearing a mask, what is the CDC? Fauci said US government held off promoting face masks because it knew shortages were so bad that even doctors couldn't get enough.
jocko willink
So is he just saying that now?
jamie vernon
This morning or today.
jocko willink
So guess what?
We all got lied to.
joe rogan
We all got lied to.
jocko willink
Held off on promoting face masks because it knew shortages were so bad, even doctors couldn't get enough.
joe rogan
Recently, the CDC said the only people that should be wearing masks are people that are treating COVID patients.
And that regular people shouldn't be wearing masks.
And then the World Health Organization said that asymptomatic people, it's extremely rare that they transmit to other people.
So we were worried about asymptomatic people, which is the reason why we kept kids out of school.
jocko willink
And we were worried about overwhelming the hospitals, which is why we did all this other stuff as well.
joe rogan
Which is what drove me crazy about my kids' school.
I was like, hey, you fucks, this doesn't even kill the kids.
It's killing, the kids get killed by the flu.
Meanwhile, you don't even scan the teachers or the staff or anybody.
People have the flu, they don't want to miss a day of work.
They just fucking show up and give it to everybody.
That's normal.
And kids actually die from the flu.
And it's not a small number.
It's not a small number of people that die from the flu.
Last year was 62,000.
I mean, it's not as many as COVID, but then you're hearing two camps.
You're hearing one, the COVID deaths are actually underreported because a lot of people die from COVID and they don't even register it.
unidentified
Okay.
joe rogan
Boy, I guess it's worse than it is.
And then you're hearing, no, no, no.
Actually, we're getting incentivized to report deaths as COVID. Elon Musk on the podcast said if you got killed by a shark, but you were COVID positive, they were listed as a COVID death.
Obviously, he was being facetious, but not entirely, because there's a lot of people with leukemia that also had COVID listed as a COVID death.
Obesity, heart attacks listed as a COVID death because they tested positive for COVID. Cancer.
Also had COVID. COVID death.
I mean, fuck.
jocko willink
That's really disturbing.
You know, when you hear those statistics, then you see these things that they're saying, and just the lack of trust that you end up with the government.
joe rogan
Exactly.
jocko willink
When the government is already, people just generally don't really trust the government a lot, right?
joe rogan
Right.
jocko willink
There's no one that's always thinking the government has always given the straight skinny.
joe rogan
And it goes back to this click-baity bullshit.
My wife pointed out this story yesterday where she's reading about this kid that died, 17-year-old kid, perfectly healthy, it says.
She reads into the article, type 1 diabetes!
Type 1 diabetes is not perfectly healthy.
That's really sick and fucking dangerous and you have to take insulin to stay alive.
jocko willink
Yeah, and think you can get complications from, like, oh, everyone's living type 1 diabetes, diabetics can live real normally, and then they can have an instance that causes them to die.
joe rogan
Yeah, they can have their foot removed.
Yeah, there's all sorts of shit that goes wrong when you have diabetes.
Your immune system is severely compromised.
But it's like, our information, it's not pure.
We're getting all this muddy thing.
And Fauci telling us, the only reason why they told us not to wear a mask is because they knew you didn't have enough.
Like, holy shit!
How many people died because of that, you fuck?
And then the World Health Organization says, actually, no one died because of that.
You don't have to worry about it.
You really don't need to wear a mask.
Like, fucking, what is happening?
jocko willink
I think so much of this ego plays so much into this of people not want to admit they're wrong.
Here's another thing that people won't say.
I don't know.
joe rogan
Right.
jocko willink
I don't know.
Like as a leader, I've been in situations where I did not know.
This is something I tell leaders all the time.
I say, listen, tell your people the truth about what's happening.
By the way, we're seeing examples where this is factually not happening inside America right now.
If you're a leader, tell the people the truth about what's going on.
That's what you need to do.
And then people come back to me and they say, well, what if...
What if I don't know what?
What if I don't know the truth?
Then what you do is you say hey I don't know the truth.
Hey guys, I don't know.
I don't know exactly how this is going to play out.
These are some contingencies that I'm preparing for.
That is so much more acceptable from the troops than when you try and pretend like you know what you're talking about and it turns out you're wrong.
unidentified
Right.
jocko willink
I mean, Trump does this so much that people lose track of it, right?
unidentified
Right.
jocko willink
Where he thinks something and he just goes out on a limb.
He just walks right out on a limb and says, hey, this COVID stuff will be gone in a week.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jocko willink
And then he just saws off the limb behind his foot.
He does that all the time.
It's a good example of how not to lead, because then people start to trust you less and less.
And then when things like this happen, where you find out that they actually did purposely...
Now think if they would have said this, like, oh, we're worried about we don't have enough masks.
Then you know what you come out and say?
You come out and you say, listen, everyone.
We're not 100% sure what the masks do for people, but we do know this.
Inside of a medical environment, we have to prioritize getting those people that are absolutely exposed these masks.
That is why we are going to put some kind of a control over who's allowed to buy them.
You just tell the truth.
joe rogan
Well, that was kind of happening at some places, like Amazon was only doing that.
They were only selling those, what is it, N95 masks?
jocko willink
N95s.
joe rogan
Yeah, they were selling them only to hospital workers.
jocko willink
There you go.
joe rogan
They were allocating them along with other types of hand sanitizer and a bunch of different things they were selling specifically to them first and first responders.
jocko willink
Perfect example.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jocko willink
What you don't do is say, hey everyone, don't worry about it.
joe rogan
Right.
Right, when Fauci did, but if he's saying that, like, well, hey, fucko, now we can't trust you ever again.
jocko willink
Exactly.
That's the freaking problem.
You're looking at this guy, next time there's some kind of disease, next time there's a problem.
How do we know if we can listen to you or not?
joe rogan
There's also a thing he was saying a couple of weeks ago, that if the United States doesn't open up soon, we could face permanent damage.
jocko willink
Oh, economic damage?
joe rogan
Yeah, permanent economic damage.
jocko willink
You think?
joe rogan
Yeah, and I'm like, wait, hey, hey, hey, how come you didn't say this before?
How come you didn't say, hey, we have to weigh in the pros and the cons here?
jocko willink
Yeah.
joe rogan
You know?
jocko willink
You should have...
And this is actually something I talked to Peter T about it.
I said, hey, it seems like maybe some people should be quarantined and other people shouldn't.
And he's like, yeah, absolutely.
So, like, my dad, who's an older guy, who's, you know, he's an older guy.
Compromised immune system.
Guess what?
He should be isolated.
He should be quarantined.
Should my...
17 year old son should my 20 year old daughter my 21 20 18 year old my 10 year old Should they be in isolation?
Should they be quarantined?
Absolutely not.
joe rogan
Absolutely not.
jocko willink
Hey first week two weeks where we're here and it's a 10% Bob We're hearing all these things cool.
You can make an you can make an in extremis call You can say hey guys.
I don't know what's happening, but in Italy it looks real bad Guess what we're gonna do.
We're gonna shut down for two weeks.
I'm sorry But this is what we're gonna do and you go at the the nation says ah Okay Okay, we get it.
And then two weeks later, you say, you know what?
It looks like it really might impact our medical systems.
We're going to shut down for another two weeks.
Just another two weeks.
And everyone goes, you know, I got to pay my mortgage.
But okay, two more weeks.
Then you got to have the courage and the ability to put your ego in check and say, you know what?
Thank you.
May not have been necessary.
We don't know right now, but it looks like we can start opening back up.
Let's rock and roll.
joe rogan
The other problem is once they tell you what to do, they don't want to stop having that power and control.
Our governor literally said, wear masks because then we can get back some of our freedoms.
You're gonna give away freedom?
You got that kind of power?
Maybe I should run for governor.
I didn't know I could control freedoms.
jocko willink
You got my vote.
joe rogan
Give away freedoms?
jocko willink
The businesses surviving, right?
You're talking about the businesses surviving.
There's a lot of businesses, especially little businesses, right?
Little jiu-jitsu schools, little restaurants.
You want a restaurant to operate on 50% capacity?
Restaurants aren't making this kind of money where they can throw away 50% of their profits.
joe rogan
Right, exactly.
jocko willink
50% of their capability to make money, because they still got to have that cook.
That cook is there, the dishwasher's there, right?
There's your bare minimum.
And they got to be there no matter what.
If you serve 50 people, great.
If you only serve 25, you don't make any money.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jocko willink
So there's a lot of businesses that run that day-to-day, month-to-month, paycheck-to-paycheck, to try and stay afloat.
That's what America does.
And sometimes they're able to creep out of that, and they get ahead, and that's awesome.
That's how you end up with these big, powerful companies.
joe rogan
Yeah, I've had a couple of restaurant owners in.
Adam Perry Lang, who owns APL Steakhouse, and Janet Zuccarino, and Evan Funke, who own...
Well, she owns Felix.
Janet owns Felix, and he's the head chef.
And they were explaining to me profit margins.
And it's fucking crazy.
You really look at how difficult it is to run a restaurant.
And all the decisions that have to be made.
And, you know, food goes bad if you keep it too long and you've got to buy a certain amount of food.
You anticipate a certain amount of customers.
You've got to know your customers.
He was explaining, we know our customers, so I know most of them are not going to order this.
So I'm going to have a certain amount of meals that I'm going to have of the fish and more meals of the steak and the pasta is primary.
That's what most people are coming here for and like...
Fuck!
And then you tell them, oh, you can only open up at 60% and waitresses have to wear a fucking hazmat suit.
And it's like, god damn, man.
jocko willink
What are they, 10%, 15%, 5% profit margin?
joe rogan
I think they were saying 14% is how they operate.
But it's difficult.
It's very difficult.
And people don't want to spend too much money on meals.
And so they...
It has to be kind of engineer.
Like, how can you do it right?
And Janet has had a ton of successful restaurants.
andy stumpf
Like, she's a wizard at it.
joe rogan
I mean, she's been doing it straight out of college.
And her problem was she was in the process of building multiple restaurants.
So all of her money were out, even though she's extremely profitable and very, very successful at all these restaurants.
She's building out all these other restaurants at the same time with that money because she knows how to make money.
She knows how to run these businesses, so she's doing it.
So she's got a Jamaican restaurant.
She's got an Italian restaurant.
She's got all these things happening.
And then, boom, the government tells you you have to shut down.
jocko willink
Yeah, the profit margin...
There's so many...
Because we work with all kinds of different businesses.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jocko willink
And the profit margin...
Many, many businesses is really, really lean.
One of my favorite examples is big construction companies.
Big construction companies that are doing, you know, $500 million projects or, you know, $700 million bridges and coliseums and stuff.
Their profit margin is like 4%.
joe rogan
Holy shit.
jocko willink
4%.
joe rogan
Holy shit.
unidentified
5%.
jocko willink
If they do awesome, it's like 6%.
joe rogan
That is so insane.
jocko willink
And they're, you know, ordering concrete, and they've got to have it showing up a certain time, and then the rebar wasn't in place.
Like, it's crazy.
The margin for error is so small.
And there's so many businesses that operate like that.
And a lot of times, I think some of the people in government, they've never been in business before.
unidentified
Right.
jocko willink
And so they don't understand.
For them, hey, just operate at 50% capacity inside your restaurant.
You'll be fine.
joe rogan
That's a very good point.
jocko willink
But they've never run a business.
I have a jujitsu gym.
We got shut down.
So now they're telling us, hey, you can allow people back in the gym.
They just have to be six feet apart.
Well, you can't do jujitsu six feet apart.
You can't do Muay Thai six feet apart.
So what are we supposed to do now?
And by the way, What about, oh, you want us to check people and we want to have this?
There's all these protocols that are putting in place to have someone come into the gym.
So now we've got to hire extra people.
We've got to hire extra cleaning staff because the gym has to shut down for this period of a day and they need to re-clean everything.
Obviously, the people that are making these rules have never been in business before.
joe rogan
Yeah, telling a person who is running a jujitsu gym that people have to be six feet apart.
Jujitsu is zero apart.
jocko willink
Zero feet apart.
joe rogan
Zero space.
That's the whole goal of jujitsu is smash.
It's the whole goal.
Take your body and smash someone's body with it.
The whole idea is no space.
That literally is the foundation of jujitsu.
A pressure applied with no space.
jocko willink
And this goes back to the idea of as a leader, Taking the information from the frontline troops and saying how you tell me what's a good way to run this?
You tell me you tell me what's a good way to run this and let's see if we can figure out a solution to this problem.
joe rogan
Well you would really want to talk to jiu-jitsu gym owners and my suggestion I've never run a jiu-jitsu gym.
I've been in a shitload of them.
My suggestion would be have people fill out a waiver or So they waive their rights, have people fill out a form that says, I have not tested positive.
I've showed no symptoms of illness.
I promise that if I do, I will not train and I will get myself tested.
Testing is readily available now.
You know, for a long time we were getting shamed because we were testing people.
jocko willink
Yeah, I was tracking on that.
joe rogan
You can test people too, you fuck, just like you could buy a steak.
It just costs money.
You know, are you mad that people have steak and you can't afford a steak?
Well, you know, there's people, there are different stages of life, you know, in this game called society and capitalism and you start off at square A, you know, everybody starts at a different spot, granted, but I started at the bottom and you figure out a way to get a fucking test!
And if you're in a spot right now in your life where you can't have a test, well, definitely don't go and expose yourself until we know what the fuck it is.
But don't get mad if people can afford tests, you crazy fucks.
And what we're at right now with Jiu Jitsu gyms is you should have a form that you fill out, just like when I was at a restaurant, I went to the Lonesome Dove restaurant, shout out to them, in Austin, Texas.
Fantastic place.
They make you fill out a little form.
Says, you haven't been tested positive.
You're not sick.
You're not showing any symptoms.
They do a little temperature check, check your forehead.
Oh, you're looking good.
All right, come on in.
Sit down.
jocko willink
Did they pack you in or did it keep you...
joe rogan
No, they keep you a little bit separated, but that was two weeks ago.
And there's another place, Gus's Fried Chicken.
Shout out to Gus's.
Best fucking fried chicken on earth in Austin, Texas.
We went there two weeks ago, and you couldn't eat there.
You had to wear a mask in the restaurant, and you had to order takeout.
So we got takeout.
Then we came back again yesterday.
Yesterday, no fucking mask.
Everybody's in there sitting.
All the seats are packed.
They strongly suggest you wear a mask.
jocko willink
And no one's listening.
joe rogan
No one wore a fucking mask.
The waiters all wore masks.
But it's like things are getting different.
There was another restaurant, Red Ash, that we ate at Saturday night.
That place had 75% capacity.
And you had to wear a mask until you got to your table.
And then you had to wear a mask again if you had to go take a leak.
You had to put your mask back on, take a leak, come back.
And it doesn't make any sense.
It's like there's health department guidelines.
They're trying to open up, and they don't want to get sued, and they don't want to get people mad.
We're trying to protect everybody, but we don't know how to do it.
And it doesn't matter what the science is.
You could show them an article that shows that masks are bullshit, and they're still going to tell you, but you're still going to wear your mask.
Because we're playing a little game here.
We're playing a game called Keep People Safe.
Nobody's saying a goddamn thing about take your vitamins, drink water, stay healthy, workout, get out in the sun.
No, the government never says that.
You don't hear Governor Newsom with his fucking goofy, slick back hair.
He's not telling you to go work out and get in the sun.
jocko willink
I think America can only take so much.
And I kind of said this from the beginning.
You can keep America in lockdown for a little while, two weeks.
For weeks, and then people start saying, you know what?
I gotta go out.
I gotta go make something happen.
I gotta do something.
I gotta earn money.
And it's the people that are looking around saying, well, I don't really need to earn any money right now.
They're the ones that are saying, everyone stay in your house and don't come out and wear a mask.
joe rogan
All right, we got a doctor coming at 3.30.
I told him, I think I got you a positive this time.
He's wanting to get a positive.
unidentified
He's like, fuck.
jocko willink
Oh, he hasn't got any positives yet?
joe rogan
A bunch of goddamn healthy people in here.
Yeah, I've had, now I've had, I think I've had seven, no, eight tests.
One, two, three, four nose swabs.
I've had four, yeah, four nose swabs and four antibody tests I haven't, me personally.
I've still come out negative every time.
But the other thing that he said, and this doctor is a very smart guy and a young, healthy guy.
He said, that doesn't mean you haven't been exposed to it.
It means your immune system did its job.
jocko willink
Really?
joe rogan
This is another thing that people are saying.
People are saying, oh, well, you just got lucky.
You haven't been around someone who had it.
He goes, no, no, no.
Many of the people that I tested are positive are in a family where the other people that are also in that family are negative.
So they have it.
They've been around these people for fucking weeks.
And they don't get it.
Why?
Because they have a better immune system, particularly children.
jocko willink
So I guess I'm in a win-win situation.
Because if I had it, If I tested positive, it's like, see, no factor.
I powered through it.
joe rogan
Exactly.
You beat it.
jocko willink
Now, even if I didn't have it, I'm going to say, hey, see, I beat it.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jocko willink
I'm going to win-win.
joe rogan
Yeah.
I know, depending upon what your results are, I know nine people that have had it now.
And out of those people, only one of them had it bad.
And that was my friend Michael Yeo.
And he got it bad from, it's real easy to track.
He flew all the way to New York, no sleep.
jocko willink
What was the dates?
joe rogan
He was in January.
January?
Jamie?
No.
Early February or late January?
March.
March?
jamie vernon
The show in New York was March, the very beginning of March.
joe rogan
So end of February.
End of February, he was here.
And then he went.
Okay.
So he left here.
That weekend went to New York.
No sleep.
unidentified
Right?
joe rogan
Flies to New York.
Does radio.
Does TV. Does his comedy gigs.
No sleep.
Does gigs the next day.
Same deal.
Does promo, all this shit.
Flies back home.
No sleep.
Gets up in the morning.
Drives to Vegas with his wife and kids.
The fucking kid screaming in the car.
Drives back home that night.
Hangs out with his wife's family in Vegas and drives back home that and so eight hours in the car just that day Then the next day he's got auditions day after that.
He's got auditions then boom hits the wall and he's fucked He feels like shit.
Yeah, and he felt like shit By the way his mom got it.
She also tested positive beat it in a day How long was he down for he was down for a week?
But he ran himself down, also vitamin D deficient.
So all those things.
Ran himself down, vitamin D deficient, doesn't take care of himself.
But he caught the perfect storm of exhaustion and travel.
Travel fucks you up.
It fucks you up.
jocko willink
Yeah, and leading into this, I've been traveling the whole time my whole life.
Matter of fact, the lockdown is the most consecutive nights I've ever spent with my wife.
Since we've been married.
And we've been married for 20 years.
Most consecutive nights, because I was in the Navy, I was deploying, I was going on trips, and then when I retired, I was working with consulting all over the place.
joe rogan
Isn't that amazing?
jocko willink
Yeah, so it's been kind of cool, hanging out with my wife, night after night.
joe rogan
Alright, these are FDA approved kits too, so we're good.
jocko willink
So we're totally good.
We're gonna find out for real.
joe rogan
Fully legit.
Doctors pumped.
jocko willink
What do you think?
Do you think I've had it or not?
What do you think?
joe rogan
Yeah, I would say because your kid, your youngest kid didn't get sick and then the other people did get sick, but no one got it badly.
And I know your family's very healthy.
I know your daughter's a savage, your son's a savage.
I would imagine you probably had it.
Thinking about all the places you've been, I bet you test positive for the antibodies.
I know a few jiu-jitsu guys that have got it, but they all just got coughs.
jocko willink
Plus, on top of all this, I'm in my gym.
I was in my gym.
We have a lot of people that show up at my gym because they just want to train, they want to come check it out.
And my gym is big.
We've got 2,000 members.
It's not just a jiu-jitsu gym.
Victory MMA and Fitness in San Diego, California.
You know so it's a big gym yeah, and you know every 2,000 members that means they're all interacting with you know three or four other people Outside of the gym if not five or ten people so and they're literally sweating each and mouth complete.
Oh, yeah, that's another thing That's another indicator when I got sick my main training partner this guy Andy Andy Burke I trained with all the time he got sick and then his girlfriend got sick who's also a jiu-jitsu fighter MMA fighter she got sick too so Very likely.
We'll see.
I'm curious.
joe rogan
It's hard.
When you train hard, you get sick.
It's part of the thing, too.
When you break down your body and your immune system gets...
You know, when you're one of those guys that trains really hard, you do have a tendency to get little colds because your immune system gets tested.
jocko willink
Here's something I've noticed.
When I have downtime, like let's say this has happened to me a few times.
I'm going to Montana and I'm super stoked.
I'm gonna go up there and chill, right?
Soon as I get up there, I get sick.
joe rogan
Really?
jocko willink
It's happened to me like maybe three times where I finally have four days or five days where I, you know, don't have anything scheduled.
I'm gonna go up there.
I'm gonna shoot my bow.
I'm gonna chill and I get up there and it's like my mind switches and all of a sudden I get sick.
It's like I saved up Illness to where I know I can be allowed to get sick.
Has that ever happened to you?
joe rogan
No, but there's a good argument there for like just the way your mind controls your whole system.
jocko willink
Yeah.
joe rogan
Because your mind is just like pedal to the fucking metal slayer in the background.
unidentified
Yes.
joe rogan
Everything is go go go and then when it's silence your body's like what have we been up to?
jocko willink
I feel like that happens.
I was wondering if it ever happened to you because it's happened enough times that I'm talking about it.
joe rogan
Well my best example is Cam Haynes.
That motherfucker's never sick and if he's sick he still runs anyway.
He's just got like a little bit of a cough.
But out of all the people that I know, I don't know anybody who's consistently putting in the kind of hours every day that he does.
He runs 16 miles every fucking day.
Sometimes a marathon.
Sometimes a marathon every day while he works eight hours a day, and then he gets home and lifts weights.
I mean, it's not like he runs and that's it.
jocko willink
And he gets his reps in.
joe rogan
Yeah, he gets his reps in with his bow.
Every day.
jocko willink
And he's lifting.
joe rogan
And he's lifting.
Every day.
Every day.
He doesn't take days off.
That fucking guy's never sick.
If he's sick, it's like, the next day he's running again.
You look at his Instagram, it's, hey, it's a great day to run.
He's out there fucking...
I think there's something to forcing your body to consistently and constantly perform.
jocko willink
Totally.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jocko willink
Imagine not.
Like Olympics, right?
You're in the Olympics for wrestling, let's say, and you've got your whole entire life is on one day.
If you get sick, anything bad happens that day, yeah, you're done.
joe rogan
Yeah, those big moments like that are fucked.
You're so stressed out too, so your immune system is super jacked.
But I think there's a thing about peaking for a big event, whether it's a fight or the Olympics or something, versus maintaining consistent conditioning.
They're very different things.
A good example is Tim Kennedy.
Tim Kennedy went through, I believe, two camps in a row.
The fight got canceled.
Kept training.
Went through another full camp, and then when he fought Calvin Gastelum, that guy's never tired, and he was gassing out in the fight.
And there's a real good indication from all involved that it was because of overtraining.
jocko willink
I know that when I would train fighters, you could absolutely see when they would overtrain.
It wasn't a big question.
You'd go in, you'd have a fighter that's whatever level at, let's say jujitsu, because I'm training jujitsu with them.
And every day, you know, they feel a certain level.
And then one day you come in and you train with them and they just suck.
And I would tell them, hey man, two days off, go eat some steak.
Because you would know 100% that they're overtrained.
100%.
joe rogan
What do you tell vegans?
jocko willink
Yeah, I would tell them definitely eat some steak.
You need that steak.
Get some steak in you.
joe rogan
Yeah, just give them an elk.
Just give them just one good piece of backstrap.
Just try.
Just trust me.
Just eat it and run through a fucking wall.
jocko willink
Yeah, it's the really weird thing about watching people go through camps through fight camps and you know I really I basically don't train fighters anymore like I used to just because I don't have time anymore But you would you would work so hard to make sure that on that night That they're there, that they're there.
And some people get in the cage and they do better than they would normally do.
Some people get in the cage and they don't do as good.
And you got, you know, Jeremy Stevens is a great example, because especially when he first came out and started training with me, and he's not with us anymore, but when he first started training with us, like, he was...
White belt in jiu-jitsu, but man when he got in the cage he would just elevate man like mentally Psychologically elevate and he would perform way better in the cage and then I've had other fighters that you'd get like they would be kicking people's asses in training and they get in the cage and it's a down step and it's so hard to see that so hard is because sometimes those guys are very committed and they're working hard and They're doing great and they just get in there and it
unidentified
just...
joe rogan
It's a psychological thing.
Some people are dwarfed by the moment.
It's very interesting to see.
Some people are also afraid of the embarrassment of losing.
That's a big one.
And they can't trust the process.
They can't just remove themselves and just go out there and fight.
Do you follow Muay Thai at all?
jocko willink
A little bit, but not to any great extent.
joe rogan
There's a guy who George St. Pierre brought into his training camp when he was doing The Ultimate Fighter, Jean-Paul Skarbowski.
And he's this French savage Muay Thai fighter who would basically get drunk every night and showed up at training at GSP's camp drunk.
He was out all night.
He was in Vegas, right?
So the Ultimate Fighter's in Vegas.
Drinks all night.
Shows up in the day the next day and fucks everybody up.
And they're like, this is so embarrassing.
The guys were devastated.
This guy literally came in holding...
He's got a cup from one of those to-go cups from one of the Vegas clubs.
He showed up in the morning.
See if you can find it, because it's kind of hilarious.
Looks like a guy who should be driving an Uber, okay?
He's not built like a savage.
He's just, his mind is just, he's got the I don't give a fuck, and he's got it down.
And was a, you know, world champion Muay Thai fighter, beat champions at Lumpini Stadium in Thailand, and just an amazing fighter.
jocko willink
You know, you always hear about the comparisons of a black belt in jujitsu versus a white belt, right?
Somebody doesn't know anything.
And it's real, real obvious.
But when you get at a high level of Muay Thai, it's very similar.
Maybe not quite as similar because there's always this idea that, well, you know, I at least know if I throw a punch.
I at least know as a human how to throw a punch.
There's some idea, right?
A normal human has no idea of how to do an arm lock.
Zero.
You at least know, have some concept of how to throw a punch.
So there is a puncher's chance.
But I remember the first time I sparred with a real Muay Thai guy.
unidentified
I was, I felt like a white belt.
jocko willink
I was like, oh, okay.
Because I would think about throwing a kick, and I would get, you know, kicked myself.
I would think about it and get kicked.
Oh, he knows exactly what I'm going to do, just like a white belt in jiu-jitsu.
You know, you can predict everything that they're going to do.
joe rogan
There he is.
So he shows up, I mean, look, no six-pack.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
I mean, literally looks like a guy.
If you saw that guy show up, you're like, look at this dad bod motherfucker.
He showed up straight from the club.
I mean, you can kind of tell he's drunk.
And he gets in and starts training with these guys.
And see if he can get to some actual training footage, because they were humiliated.
I mean, he was ragdolling these dudes and beating the shit out of them and dropping them.
It looks like nothing, but it's the problem, you know, he's a world-class kickboxer, and these guys just really have no idea how to handle his movement and the skills that he has.
jocko willink
Yeah, people underestimate.
People don't think there's as much of a difference between like a black belt in jujitsu and what would be considered an equivalent, you know, world champion in Muay Thai.
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
There's a big difference.
jocko willink
Step in the ring and see how that works out for you.
joe rogan
Jujitsu guys sometimes get cocky about that.
I had a buddy of mine who was taking an MMA fight and he wasn't doing any striking.
He was doing very little striking, and he's a really good ground fighter.
And I said, do you know how you can toy with a guy on the ground and they really have no chance?
He goes, yeah.
I go, people could do that to you standing.
I go, you have to understand that the fight starts standing.
It's not like you start, like it's not EBI rules where you start on a guy's back and you know, you have a really good chance of submitting him if you've got a great rear naked choke.
This is not that.
This is you start 20 feet away from the guy and you're standing and you know, you have to close that distance and you're not a great wrestler either.
jocko willink
Yeah, well, that's the key component, right?
joe rogan
Yes, it's a giant factor, right?
jocko willink
Because at least if you wrestle, you can go, well, at least I know I have a decent chance of taking him down.
joe rogan
Yes.
jocko willink
A decent chance.
And even that's no guarantee anymore.
joe rogan
Well, I go back to Mark Schultz when he fought in the UFC. You know, when Mark Schultz fought in the UFC, he only fought one UFC fight.
But that's when we got to see a world champion, Olympic gold medalist, top of the food chain wrestler.
You're only on your feet if he wants you to be.
Good luck throwing that punch or kick because you have no chance.
He's going to close the distance and drag you to the ground unless you have really good takedown defense.
Back then, when he fought Big Daddy Goodrich, people didn't really have it.
Unless they were wrestlers, they didn't really have good takedown defense.
It hadn't really been established as a part of the whole skill set of MMA yet.
You basically had what you came in there with.
You're a karate guy, that's what you had.
You're a Muay Thai guy, that's what you got.
You got to hope you land that elbow before that guy clenches with you.
jocko willink
And there is an overall strategic advantage to grappling.
joe rogan
Yes.
jocko willink
Because you can close the distance, and if you're going to punch me, you have to get close enough to make contact with me, which means I can grab ahold of you and get you down.
That's why the early UFCs, it was like, oh, you're going to have to get close enough to either punch or kick me, and when you do that, I can grab ahold of you and get you to the ground.
joe rogan
Also, the chaos factor, especially in a street fight, the chaos factor.
It's like bodies are flying, there's bad timing, the clinches happen.
It's not like every, you know, you'll watch the occasional street fight where a guy tees off on some drunk guy and, you know, lands the perfect punch and knocks him out cold.
That does happen.
But you know what also happens?
Melee.
Wild shit misses and then someone clinches and then The worst thing in the world is to fight a grappler who's good at takedowns when you're on the concrete.
That is the absolute worst thing in the world.
You get suplexed on your head on the concrete.
I mean, one of the worst things that could ever happen.
You're basically getting hit in the head by the world.
unidentified
Yeah.
jocko willink
Well, this is why I, when I talk about, you know, people say, well, what kind of self-defense?
You always say jujitsu for self-defense, but, you know, you shouldn't let a street fight go to the ground.
Here's how it works out.
If you come to me and you want to fight me, and you, like, square off, like, in a boxing stance, I can run away from you.
Right?
I can just run away.
I can just run away.
I'm going to get away from you.
I don't want to fight you.
If you want to kick me, I can run away from you.
Like, there's my primary self-defense, is I'm just going to run away from you.
When you grab ahold of me, now everything's different.
I can't run away anymore.
Now I have to actually know how to handle myself in a grappling situation.
So, that's why I start with Jiu Jitsu.
And look, absolutely, learn boxing, learn Muay Thai, and learn wrestling.
Absolutely, no doubt about it.
But the very first thing you need to learn is because if you want to fight me, I can run away.
If you square off and, you know, you put your dukes up and say, come on, or you push me, good, I'm running away.
That's fine.
I'll take that.
But as soon as you grab ahold of me, now I got a problem because I can't run away.
joe rogan
The real problem is the ego where people don't know how to fight and someone puts their dukes up and they decide to see what they can do.
They decide in that moment to either fake it or just to like see if they can possibly hit the guy and then they get babinked!
Somebody tees off on them.
jocko willink
Yeah, I think that's...
I think the whole thing with CTE right now, that's why I think the popularity of jiu-jitsu is going to continue because it's a large part of fighting.
Same with wrestling.
Grappling in general, I think, is going to continue to get more and more popular because...
Because of CT. Because, you know, as a parent, you're not looking, hey, I really want my kid to be sparring a lot when they're 13, right?
No, there's not too many parents that are saying that right now.
It's not a good idea.
So I think, but you still want your kids to know how to fight, right?
So how are we going to do that?
Well, we're going to teach them jujitsu and wrestling and let them have that base.
And then if they get older, hey, should they know how to throw punches?
Absolutely.
Should they get in the boxing ring sometimes and do some Muay Thai matches?
Absolutely.
You should absolutely do that as a human.
But, you know, you can do that when you're 17, maybe 16. You can start getting that stuff in.
But the kids' jujitsu, I don't think there's anything else better for them.
joe rogan
I completely agree.
And I think with martial arts, with striking, it's good to know just to know distance.
Just to understand where you're safe and where you're not safe.
And understand tells.
Understand what's happening when someone does this.
When someone does this, and then this is coming.
When they do this, this is coming.
Like, you should know that.
Because some people don't know that.
You should know how to protect yourself, how to keep your hands up, how to duck under things.
You should know that.
You should understand the timing.
You should understand distance and timing.
Those are important things.
But fucking swinging knuckles with some guy in the street is so goddamn dangerous.
Because first of all, you don't know what he knows.
And everyone's vulnerable.
Everyone.
Every person that gets punched in the face is vulnerable.
And if you just want to have some sort of a kickboxing match with some man on the concrete, Like, I don't advise that.
unidentified
No.
joe rogan
No.
I advise clinch and trip.
jocko willink
Yeah, I advise get out of there.
joe rogan
Yeah, get out of there if you can.
That's actually what I advise.
Yeah, definitely.
If someone wants to start some shit with you, you're absolutely better off just swallowing your ego and getting the fuck out of Dodge.
jocko willink
That's the warrior kid books.
Teach those kids, hey, there's going to be problems, there's going to be bullies.
If you can, you don't need to fight them.
Somebody hit me up, you know, because I'm always telling people, train jiu-jitsu, train jiu-jitsu.
Had somebody hit me up, you know, I've tried it, but I don't, I want to try it.
I tried it a couple times, but I don't like to fight.
And I'm like, hey, if you don't like to fight, you more than anyone else should learn jiu-jitsu.
Because if you know jujitsu, your chances of having to fight will go down a lot.
Just by the way you carry yourself, just by the way you present yourself, the chances of you having to fight go down a lot.
joe rogan
Also, with jujitsu, you're involved in real-life struggles.
The thing about karate sparring and light sparring is it's not the real chaos that comes with an actual fight, whereas jujitsu is full blast.
Someone's trying to get you, so you get used to full blast.
You get accustomed to it.
You know what to expect.
If someone swings for you and you clinch with them, you know what it's like to resist with a 100% non-compliant body.
You know, someone's like, fuck, I'm really trying to get away from you.
It's not like play sparring.
You can go full out.
jocko willink
And you know where this brings us right back to.
Police officers.
joe rogan
Yes.
Well, Andrew Yang said it best.
He said, I think that every police officer should be a purple belt.
Purple belt.
jocko willink
That's an incredible statement.
joe rogan
It's a good level, right?
It's like an attainable level within a couple of years.
But with a couple of years, man, you've got your ass kicked.
You've kicked some ass.
A purple belt is basically a black belt who hasn't done enough time yet.
That's all it is.
I mean, once you've got past Blue Belt, like Blue Belt is, I put in the time, I've learned how to do some stuff, and maybe I'll do this.
I might make it.
I might make...
Purple Belt, like, you basically, everybody who gets a Purple Belt, you want to grab them and go, hang in there.
You are a fucking Black Belt.
What's better to say?
And you're a black belt in jujitsu.
You're gonna be a black belt in jujitsu.
Just keep fucking going.
You already have exhibited enough technique that you could actually one day achieve that.
Just keep going.
jocko willink
Yeah, the amount of confidence and mental clarity that cops would have if every cop was a purple belt.
joe rogan
It would be amazing.
jocko willink
Nothing better that we could do.
Than to somehow make that happen.
Good idea for Andrew Yang.
joe rogan
The horrible video of this guy involved with this lady and he's a cop and he's talking to this lady and she's non-compliant and he grabs her and he fucking brute strengths her to the ground and throws her on her stomach and then gets her in a rear naked choke and people are filming this and yelling.
It's a terrible rear naked choke.
You'd tell he sucks.
The whole thing is terrible.
I couldn't imagine a black belt ever handling it that way.
Ever.
Ever.
First of all, you wouldn't be so threatened by her.
She's not physically threatening at all.
And you wouldn't want to bully her and show her that you could throw her around like that.
It wouldn't happen.
It wouldn't happen.
unidentified
Fear, right?
jocko willink
That's fear kicking in.
And it's fear not only of his ego, but he might be legitimately...
When's the last time he put hands on somebody?
I mean, if you put hands on people a lot, you know you don't have to do what he did in that situation.
I haven't seen the video, but you know you don't have to do that.
joe rogan
I think he's just a pussy.
When I'm looking at the video, I'm like, I just think he just wants to throw his weight around, which is another thing you wouldn't do if you know how to fight.
That's part of why a lot of people act like that is because they really don't know how to fight.
And that's really, they really don't know how to do that to a grown man.
So when they're doing it to someone who they can do it to because they're just bigger, they do it.
They'll force them, they'll impose themselves, they'll be a bully.
It's horrible to see, but you wouldn't see a black belt do that to somebody.
jocko willink
The amount of confidence that he has.
It's the same thing with kids.
I posted something a few months ago, but some bully thing had popped up, and I said, hey, if you want to stop bullying, You know, have kids train jujitsu Muay Thai wrestling boxing.
joe rogan
They should have it in school.
They should be teaching kids in school.
jocko willink
And here's the thing, people thought, I said not only will it prevent them from getting bullied, it will prevent them from bullying.
joe rogan
Yes.
jocko willink
Which people don't understand, people cannot comprehend What that means, and it's exactly what you just said.
If somebody actually knows how to fight, and you've been humbled, and you've been beat down, and you've been choked, and you know what that feels like, and you know what it means, and you know how that feels, the chances of you, look, you could still be an asshole, but the chances of you becoming a bully are way less.
joe rogan
Way less.
jocko willink
Than if you're insecure and scared and have a, you know, trying to make up for your ego by abusing people.
That's who becomes bullies.
joe rogan
Yes.
jocko willink
With kids and with adults.
joe rogan
100%.
jocko willink
The more you train, the more secure you are, the smaller your ego is, the more you're able to step back and see things clearly.
You know, that's one of the horrible things about that.
The George Floyd was the other cops.
They're not detached from the situation.
They're all wound up in it.
And jujitsu teaches you and fighting teaches you that if you do that, if you allow yourself to get wrapped up in the stuff, you're gonna make bad decisions.
joe rogan
I think also for kids, a lot of the reasons why they do horrible shit is because they have too much fucking energy.
Oh, yeah.
They're all jacked up with young hormones.
jocko willink
Oh, yeah.
Testosterone.
Testosterone and...
joe rogan
And angst.
jocko willink
And angst and...
Bro, it's kind of fun, right?
You know, like, it's kind of fun.
Like, there's mayhem going on.
Is that the right word?
Am I a jerk for saying that?
I don't know.
When I was a kid, that kind of mayhem, I wanted to be a part of it.
You know?
And actually, I was talking to one of my L.A. cop buddies, and I was asking him the difference between, like, the 92 riots.
What was it, 92 or 93?
Ronnie King.
Those riots and these riots.
Those riots, he was like, those were...
The people that kind of instigated and started and perpetuated those riots, those were real, like gangsters, like shot callers, were making those things happen.
This one, these riots were, he was like, yeah, these are kids.
These are kids that drove down from Riverside.
These are kids that, you know, and sure, some of their attitudes was like, hey, there's been, you know, injustices against police.
We want to stand up to that.
Got it.
And then he said, of course, there's a criminal element as well that are legit, normal robbery crews that are saying, oh, cool, we got some good cover right now.
Let's get in there and make some, you know, steal some stuff and we probably won't get caught.
But that's a big difference.
So you do have an element of kids that are like, oh, there's some mayhem going on.
There's some mayhem going on.
Guess what 17-year-old boys like?
They like mayhem.
They like mosh pits, right?
You love that stuff.
That was my childhood.
If there was some mayhem, I wanted to find it.
And that fuels these things.
joe rogan
Normal boy behavior.
jocko willink
Normal boy behavior, especially when those boys are getting told, don't.
joe rogan
Come on, don't do this.
jocko willink
And they're being locked up in houses right now with COVID. They've got freaking steam coming out of their ears.
joe rogan
And then all of a sudden the cops are going to stand down while you smash windows and steal shit and everybody can get free sneakers.
unidentified
Yes!
joe rogan
It had nothing to do with George Floyd.
It had so many things to do with so many different steps.
So many different factors that have collided together on that one day.
unidentified
Yeah.
jocko willink
Yeah, it's...
Man, I don't know how this one ends up, man.
joe rogan
I don't know how it ends up either.
unidentified
It ends up with me getting the fuck out of LA. Gone, huh?
joe rogan
Looks like it.
jocko willink
Gone.
joe rogan
Looks like it.
I just don't see the benefit.
I want to come back and visit a lot, but it's just not a smart place.
It's not partly managed either.
jocko willink
I'm rooted here, unfortunately, by the ocean.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jocko willink
Because I'm an ocean guy.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jocko willink
And so there's really limited choices in the world.
joe rogan
Yeah, it really is.
jocko willink
That's a problem.
You know, they kind of got me.
joe rogan
You're that connected to the ocean.
What is it about the ocean that you always post pictures of the sunrise in the ocean?
jocko willink
I don't think there's you know going surfing just going just going in the ocean and plus my my life was kind of being in the SEAL teams was always we always Had that it was part of our life, you know part of our life was the ocean growing up in the ocean just There's some, I don't know, you know, I guess for me it's a huge like nature thing, right?
You know, people, you should go outside.
Go outside and go hike in a mountain, you know?
Go to Montana and hike around, see what that feels like.
Go to Idaho, check that out.
Go to the mountains, go to California mountains.
You feel different.
You feel different.
You feel humbled.
You feel small.
You feel perspective.
So the ocean does that for me.
And it's just mind clearing, right?
You go out surfing, like your mind is clear.
It's kind of like jujitsu.
Hey, you got to get out there.
You don't even know what you...
Sometimes you don't even...
You know, you get done with a good role in jujitsu.
unidentified
And you say, well, hey, well...
jocko willink
You don't barely even remember it because your mind is just gone.
You're just monkey mind.
joe rogan
Zen.
jocko willink
This total zen state.
Same thing with being in the water for me surfing.
Same thing.
Like, oh, I'm out here and my mind is just empty.
It's monkey mind.
And I think that's really good for you.
Plus the fact it's humbling.
Plus the fact it's healthy.
So, yeah, I just have a strong connection to the ocean.
I know my son's a real waterman.
You know, he's out.
He surfs all the time.
I'd hate to...
Do that to him, and then my little daughter's getting her surfing on.
So, yeah, it's just one of those things, man.
joe rogan
Yeah, I get it.
There's a reason why I surf towns, like towns that are near the ocean, are chill.
You get humbled by that.
Like, you take yourself seriously.
Look at that fucking body of water over there, stupid.
You ain't shit.
jocko willink
You know people say well what makes the SEAL team so good in one of the major components is the ocean Because when you've got to do an operation that involves the water it just sucks It just everything about it sucks everything about it sucks You're getting in a you know, you're parachuting from a plane into the water.
It's nighttime You got boat yours freakin parachute like drifting around you got to get your motor started.
It's freezing cold Boats flip over then you got to drive that boat to the beach and you got to drive through the surf zone Your weapons are covered with sand you're freezing cold.
It's just everything sucks everything sucks about it So when that's kind of your starting and by the way you haven't even conducted your operation yet You do you haven't even started the operation and you're freezing cold you're tired your radio got flooded out your your night vision goggles are freaking filled with sand everything sucks and And now you've got to conduct your operation.
So in order to survive that way on a regular basis, that's one of the things that makes the SEAL teams good is we're used to this one additional component all the time that you always have to deal with.
You have to figure that out.
You have to be able to gut through it.
That's why in basic SEAL trading, they just put you in the water for a long time.
They just put you in there.
joe rogan
We have to develop an attitude that embraces the suck.
jocko willink
Oh, yeah.
unidentified
Yeah.
jocko willink
For sure.
joe rogan
You actually enjoy it in some way, some crazy way that you know it sucks.
Like that video that I always quote, your video good.
Dude, I listen to that in my head all the time.
I've watched the video a ton of times and listened to it.
I've played it on this podcast at least four times.
But I hear it when I'm training.
Like if I'm running hills and I'm fucking exhausted and there's like another hundred yards to get to the top of that hill...
I hear good.
Good.
unidentified
Good.
joe rogan
You're exhausted?
It means you're fucking doing it.
jocko willink
Good.
joe rogan
Suck it up.
jocko willink
What's your choice?
What else are you going to think about?
joe rogan
Cry.
jocko willink
You know, cry, curl up in a ball.
joe rogan
Can't do it.
jocko willink
No, it's like, no, actually, good.
Bring it.
Let's make this happen.
joe rogan
Yeah.
And if you can do that, I also do that in the sauna.
When I'm exhausted in the sauna, and it's like 190 degrees, and I'm 19 minutes in, and I'm doing a 30-minute session.
unidentified
Mm-hmm.
joe rogan
I'm like, good.
Good.
It sucks.
It means it's going to have a great effect on your body.
You're going to get that hormetic effect.
This is how you get the heat shock proteins, pussy.
Hang in there.
jocko willink
Good.
If you want to do something that's worthwhile, it's going to suck.
It's just going to suck.
And you might as well just enjoy that part of it.
joe rogan
Yes.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
I mock myself, too.
That's the other thing I do.
jocko willink
Oh, you make fun of yourself.
joe rogan
Oh, all the time.
Yeah.
jocko willink
I get pissed at that little part of my brain.
I'll be like, oh, really?
You think I'm going to listen to you?
joe rogan
Yeah.
jocko willink
Not happening.
Not happening.
I put these things in the kids' books.
You know what I mean?
unidentified
Mm-hmm.
jocko willink
Put those things, you know, those kids' books.
Like, there's one of the kids' books talks about this hill, horrible hill.
You know, like, this is what you're going to face, horrible hill.
unidentified
Mm-hmm.
jocko willink
And what are you going to do?
You know it's going to suck.
You just got to do it.
joe rogan
Yeah, you just do it.
But the thing is, it always sucks while it's happening.
It's always fucking horrible.
But then when it's over, it feels great that you got through the suck.
And I don't think most people who don't experience suck, they don't experience that feeling of conquering suck.
jocko willink
Yeah, and that's the important thing to try and remember.
So you remember it.
I remember it.
I remember what that...
So even when it's sucking, I'm like, I know how this is going to feel.
I know how this plays out.
And you know what?
Actually, I know other feeling you know is when you don't do it.
And the end of the day comes, you're like, dude...
That was pathetic.
You didn't even you know you and that's just the worst feeling that's the feeling that really makes you sick and so Between that carrot and stick carrot being like I know this is gonna be good and stick me I know at the end of the day if I'm putting my head on the pillow and I was a bitch That doesn't feel good.
I don't want none of that.
joe rogan
It's the worst feeling of all time.
jocko willink
It's horrible.
joe rogan
Being disappointed in yourself.
It's also when you're a type of person that wants to achieve and so you're always trying to get things done.
You're always trying to push yourself.
When you fall short because of cowardice or because it is the worst feeling that or just just failure any kind of failure the reason why you would one of the reasons why I mean, at least I can speak for myself personally.
I do things so hard is because I've felt that sting of failure.
You need to know what that feels like, especially when you quit.
You need to know what quit- Yeah, see?
That's it.
You need to know in your own- and you need to hear that, that fucking sting.
Feel that sting.
So that when it comes up again, you're like, not today, bitch.
unidentified
No.
joe rogan
Not today.
I've been here before.
Keep going.
Keep going.
Find a way.
But there's something about good.
Like, just even saying it, it makes me smile.
It really does.
It works.
It really does work.
Because it's an attitude changer.
And I use the sauna.
Sauna's really easy.
It's not that bad.
It's just fucking 30 minutes.
You just deal with it.
But there's something about those last 11 minutes that you can get in your head like, fuck, let me really get...
Probably get the good effects if I just leave now.
There's like all these little mind games you play, but if you just say good, does it suck?
unidentified
Good.
joe rogan
I start smiling.
jocko willink
You can rationalize a lot of that.
You can start rationalizing of why.
Well, you know, these last four minutes won't really make that big of a difference.
joe rogan
Shift in perception and I always noticed that from listening to music when I run like There's something about listening to a great fucking song when a great song kicks on when you're running like if I'm running in Ted Nugent stranglehold comes on You know there's something about stranglehold because it also has like a double meaning, right?
It's jujitsu So when you hear that, here I come again now, baby!
I can run!
I can run!
I can get extra energy.
I'm like, where the fuck is that energy coming from?
Well, it's coming from my mind, right?
The music stimulates my mind, it kicks in those endorphins, and then all of a sudden I got an extra gear.
Well, how come I can't just conjure up that fucking extra gear?
I think you can.
unidentified
You can.
joe rogan
You gotta figure out how to do that all the time.
jocko willink
Yeah, that always is horrible to see in a fight when a guy, either he loses a fight, and after he loses the fight, he's raging, he's all mad, but he was just gassed.
unidentified
Right.
He was just gassed.
Right.
jocko willink
Where was that?
joe rogan
Where was it?
jocko willink
Where was that right there two and a half minutes ago?
joe rogan
Yeah, I mean, sometimes it's just overcoming anxiety for fighters.
Sometimes it's just when it's over and the plug is pulled, it's over, and they're like, fuck!
And then they're angry and raging because they realize they failed.
They didn't manage their energy correctly.
They didn't manage their mind, their anxiety.
Yeah, exactly.
The same feeling of fucking loser.
Fucking loser.
I'm so hard on myself, man.
Everything I've ever done wrong.
Everything I've ever said wrong.
Just everything.
I'll be in the middle of working out sometimes and I'll think about it and go, fuck!
But that is also that hard on myself.
unidentified
That's what makes you work.
joe rogan
Yeah.
And that keeps you going.
That makes you achieve.
It's like people think that it's easy to just kind of go out there and get things done, but it's not.
That's why most people don't do it.
jocko willink
Yeah, you know, so I don't sleep a lot, right?
And sometimes people are like, and look, I'm not saying you shouldn't sleep a lot.
Everyone should sleep as much as they can.
I don't sleep a lot.
People are like, hey, no, why don't you sleep more?
And I'm like, Bro, I wish I could.
I wish there wasn't this little thing in the back of my head going, hey, hey, you know, you're actually, you could be doing a lot more right now.
What about this?
What about that?
What about the other thing?
Like, that's what's going on in my head.
There's not something that's going, gee, I have to get up.
Like, no, there's a thing in there going, you better get up.
They're tracking on you.
They're watching you.
You better get up.
It's happening.
There's a bad guy out there.
He's training harder.
Like, that's what's in my head.
It's not in my head like, oh, no.
Hey, please, let the freaking powers of the world allow me to go into bed at night and just pass out and be like, oh, I'm good.
I'm satisfied with my life right now.
I wish I could feel that for freaking eight hours a night.
It ain't there.
It ain't there.
It's like, oh, people talk about staying hungry.
I'm fucking starving.
I'm starving.
joe rogan
All the time.
All the time.
Like, stay hungry.
jocko willink
Yeah, you have to, like, ah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
I know.
It never ends.
jocko willink
It doesn't end.
That's the thing.
And as soon as I get somewhere, as soon as I get somewhere, I'm like, um.
Where else?
I need to go.
I need to go somewhere else.
joe rogan
Yeah, now I'm worried about getting soft.
jocko willink
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, always.
No matter what I've ever done, I'm always like, well, one day there'll be a thing where I'll become satisfied and calm.
No.
With everything that's good that comes, now there's an equal fear of becoming a pussy.
There's a fear of now becoming lazy and becoming like second-rate and just like, God damn it!
There's no end!
So now I don't even think there's an end.
jocko willink
No, there's definitely not an end.
That's what's funny about shooting the bow, right?
What I find funny about shooting the bow is Anger, aggression, really doesn't help you.
joe rogan
At all.
jocko willink
At all.
joe rogan
You know what?
It fucks you up hunting.
jocko willink
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
joe rogan
Because anger and aggression is all fast twitch shit, too.
It's all movement.
Whereas the bow is like, you gotta have the mind of no mind.
You gotta just execute and just stay completely focused on the task.
jocko willink
Totally detached from what's happening.
And you just gotta sit there and...
joe rogan
It's a new skill, really.
jocko willink
Oh, it's a totally new skill.
joe rogan
And for me, like, the competition that I experienced, the only competition I had other than inside the gym, you know, training partners, is fighting, and that's all fast stuff.
It's all, like, explosions and movement.
So anytime where there's danger and anxiety and fear, your body's geared up to go quick and move quick.
But with Hunting, it's the opposite.
When you're drawing back on an animal, all that anxiety, like, you better get that quick out of your head.
There's no quick.
There's execute and calmness.
Stay in the zone.
Nothing exists other than the process of executing the perfect shot.
jocko willink
It's the same thing with shooting.
You know, you have, you draw fast, you move fast, you draw fast, and then as soon as you punch out that weapon, you gotta go, boom.
And like, you just gotta let that thing go.
joe rogan
Yes.
jocko willink
Used to see guys, myself included, like, you ever shot headplates before?
joe rogan
Yes.
jocko willink
And you know, there's six headplates.
You'd see me or someone else, they miss one, and if they don't let that go, then everything falls apart.
joe rogan
The wheels fall off.
jocko willink
If they miss one, and then they try and shoot, usually I would just miss one and just keep shooting, like it didn't even happen, and maybe go back and get it, or you kind of have to go back and get it.
But...
If you go, how did I miss that?
It's just a total and complete and utter disaster.
joe rogan
There's a great video that Tim Kennedy put off of him shooting on the range.
And, you know, he puts dummy rounds in with his regular rounds.
And he hits the dummy round and click.
And he's like, look at that trigger control!
Triggered discipline because like there was no flinch.
There's no nothing.
It was just click.
There's no movement.
It was perfect.
You know, which is what you're trying to achieve.
jocko willink
Which is what you're trying to achieve.
joe rogan
You're trying, you know, the last thing you want to see is click.
unidentified
Ah!
joe rogan
You little some weird fucking...
I remember when I first started shooting rifles.
Like, uh, that's what I would, I would experience that thing where you're anticipating the right, you know, 30, uh, uh, um, um, um, Win Mag, 300 Win Mag.
So it's got a lot of kick to it.
You know, it's a boom!
It's like a loud, loud kicking gun.
So there was no round in the chamber.
And I pulled it and I saw myself doing it.
I'm like, you bitch.
Like, you better learn how to stop doing that.
One thing that's interesting is learning how to shoot a bow radically increased my accuracy with a rifle.
jocko willink
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
Radically!
jocko willink
Yeah.
joe rogan
Because it's so still.
There's so much stillness.
And everything's freehand.
Right?
You're very rarely shooting a rifle at an animal freehand, usually trying to find a rest.
Unless it's like inside of, you know, 60, 70 yards, you're probably going to try to rest.
You're not going to shoot a 300-yard shot with a rifle freehand.
But with a bow, everything's freehand.
So with a rifle, I just knew that all it was, just squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, let it go off.
Just let it go off.
Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.
Boom!
When I started shooting at Terran Tactical and shooting on the range, the easiest thing for me was a rifle.
I was like, oh God, all I have to do is just squeeze and the trigger will go off.
I'm so used to a bow where there's so many moving parts and you're using your back and you're letting it go off a surprise shot.
It made a big difference in my rifle accuracy.
unidentified
Yeah.
jocko willink
That was when Dudley was teaching me how to shoot.
And Andy was there too.
So Andy was like translating.
For me, he's like, hey, what do you mean?
He's translating it to seal, like pistol shooting.
And they're kind of like communicating to each other.
And then Andy said, hey, what he's saying is like, you know, frontside focus.
I was like, okay, cool.
Got it.
You know?
And it was awesome to have freaking Dudley.
joe rogan
I know.
jocko willink
The first person that ever shows me anything about archery is Dudley saying, hey, here's a bow and here's exactly how to shoot, you idiot.
And I'm like, thank you.
joe rogan
That's pretty goddamn lucky.
Yeah, I mean, we're both real lucky in that regard.
I learned how to bow hunt from Cam Haynes and John Dudley.
I'm like, jeez.
It's pretty lucky.
jocko willink
Those are like the world champions of that.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's Jordan and Kobe Bryant.
Or Jordan and LeBron James.
jocko willink
Completely.
joe rogan
Yeah, 100%.
Yeah.
We're very fortunate.
And there's something about hunting, too, that once you...
It seems like when you're looking at it on the surface, it seems so straightforward.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
And then once you start doing it, it's very much like martial arts, where you're like, God damn, there's a lot of layers to this shit.
There's so many layers.
And then when you're hanging out with a guy like Cam or a guy like Dudley and you hunt with them and you see them hunt, you go, oh, I get it.
This is a black belt.
jocko willink
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
This is some Mundial's champion here.
jocko willink
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
It's exactly what it is.
jocko willink
So, so crazy.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jocko willink
So crazy to see those guys in action.
And just to be like listening to what Dudley's telling me about what a freaking elk is going to do.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jocko willink
He's going to come over here.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jocko willink
Watch him again.
I'm like, well, I guess that's just about to happen.
Oh, and it just happened.
joe rogan
Yeah.
It's madness.
And then with Dudley, too, it's like he's so into cooking it, too.
He's so good at cooking.
It's like you get the whole lifestyle thing from him.
You get like this learning how the art of archery, which really is an art form.
It's an art form just like martial arts are.
Then this moment of keeping your shit together and the execution of a shot and then the big payoff when that does happen and Then the harvesting the animal carrying it out and then the meal that meal afterwards when you've had a successful hunting trip It's like goddamn when we were in camp in Utah and Dudley made that neck that neck roast with with jalapenos and the bell peppers and holy shit But it was also so good because you knew what went down.
You were there when he shot the elk.
It's all so crazy.
It's so satisfying that I can't imagine it not being a part of my life and that meat not being a part of my diet.
It just changes you.
jocko willink
So it's too bad that it's not more available to people, you know?
joe rogan
Yeah, it's not.
jocko willink
It's hard.
joe rogan
There's a high bar for accessibility.
And we got real lucky.
jocko willink
Oh, for sure.
joe rogan
We get to hunt at the Deseret Ranch in Utah, which is this incredible place.
It's a private property.
I mean, it's all wild animals.
There's no fences, but it's private property.
So there's not an overwhelming number of people.
There's a lot of guys that they try to go into public land and Unless you're willing to hike in 20 miles, and there's a lot of guys that are willing now to hike in 20 miles because there's now this culture of these really fit backpack hunters like these Aaron Snyder type dudes who put these fucking heavy packs on and they just go.
They're training for this moment all year round.
Aaron has this crazy setup in his gym where he has this elevated treadmill, and then the treadmill on each side has an Olympic belt.
And you lift the bar so you're holding weight and you're going up this elevated treadmill.
I'm like, Jesus fucking Christ, man.
But that's what you have to do if you want to be mountain fit to be able to do that.
And that's the barrier for entry.
To go and do these public land hunts.
Everybody stops at the trailhead.
Everybody gets out of their car.
And then how far are you going to go?
Because he's willing to go 20 fucking miles in.
Are you willing to go 20 miles in?
That's going to take eight hours.
jocko willink
And then come 20 miles back out.
joe rogan
With a moose on your back.
unidentified
With a freaking moose on your back.
jocko willink
That's totally legit.
Totally legit.
joe rogan
That's as legit as it gets.
And most of those guys all had to learn themselves.
They all had to teach themselves.
We're real lucky that we get this amazing coaching.
Even though there's so many layers to it, I've been doing it now.
I've been hunting for eight years, bow hunting for, I guess, six?
Six-ish?
Total rookie, you know, I'm still like a blue belt or maybe maybe I'm like getting ready to be a purple belt Maybe I might get my purple belt soon, but you know you go out with those guys They're fucking 10th degree black belts and it's like there's even though there's You know this this barrier for entry it is still possible It's still possible,
jocko willink
but it's just like jujitsu It's like when you when you talk to that blue belt you like keep fucking going Yeah, and you can make it you can do this, you know speaking of which I I have to at least bring this up a little bit to clarify a little bit what I did to John Dudley on the jiu-jitsu mats.
joe rogan
You broke his neck.
You broke his fucking neck.
What do you mean what you did?
jocko willink
Here's the only part that you're missing a little bit, right?
So I'm giving him, his wife, like a jiu-jitsu private.
joe rogan
So you broke his neck in front of his wife.
jocko willink
Andy's there.
Little Dud was there.
joe rogan
This is getting worse.
He broke his neck in front of his wife and his son.
jocko willink
So I'm just completely, you know, I'm chilling and like, hey, this is this, this is that.
And I'm not even doing...
In one weekend, Andy, John, and me, we did archery, which I had never done before.
Then we did jiu-jitsu, which John had never done before.
And then we went and got in the wind tunnel, which John had never done before.
You know, because Andy's like a sky god, parachuting, blah, blah, blah.
And so we did those three things.
It was kind of like a cool weekend.
I mean, that's kind of an epic weekend, really.
Let's be honest.
So, it's jiu-jitsu time.
So I'm like, okay, cool.
So I'm going over, hey, this is the guard.
This is the mount.
I'm going over all the basic stuff.
I'm just giving the basic overall kind of concepts.
So I get done with that, you know?
And I'm done.
Like, I'm done.
I'm just done.
I'm like, okay, you know, great.
It's a good introduction.
And then Dudley is like, well, let's go a little bit.
And I'm like...
joe rogan
That was the wrong language.
I would have pulled him aside.
Come here.
jocko willink
So he's like, let's go a little bit.
And even that, you know what?
I'm totally cool with that.
Of course, he wasn't mean.
He wasn't thinking he was going to be...
joe rogan
He wants the experience.
jocko willink
Yeah, I shouldn't have even said, let's go a little bit.
He was like, hey, can we try it?
You know, something like that.
Just being cool.
And I'm like, absolutely, man.
No problem.
So I lay down on the ground, right?
And I'm like...
He says, well, what should I do?
I go, you know, just attack me.
So I lay down on my back.
I'm like, just attack me.
And guess what he did?
joe rogan
What'd he do?
jocko willink
He freaking attacked me.
He like came at me.
And Dudley's a big, strong, athletic guy.
He's six, what is he?
Six, five?
joe rogan
At least.
jocko willink
Yeah.
So he comes, he grabs, and I'm chilling.
You know, I'm just like, okay, cool.
He comes at me.
I think I, he like grabbed me.
And so I kind of replace guard, and then I sweep him.
And so I'm mounted, and all this is just pretty chill.
And I put in a...
Ezekiel choke, right?
Which I have a little...
unidentified
Nogi?
jocko willink
Yeah, Nogi Ezekiel choke.
I have a little good technique for doing it, but no big deal.
So I put in the Ezekiel choke.
unidentified
He's...
jocko willink
This is the thing that I really wish I should have explained more.
Because we hadn't rolled...
Wasn't like hey when you start to feel like you gotta you gotta tap out, right?
He knew to tap out, but I kind of figured everyone knows how to tap out so I put the choke in on him, right?
Well, he doesn't know what to do so he he's grabbing me and he's pulling he's squeezing me and So he's on the bottom, I'm mounted, I've got the Ezekiel choke in, and in order to defend himself in his own mind, he's squeezing me into him.
Which the way I do my Ezekiel choke, it hurts, I mean it compresses the choke even more.
And so...
joe rogan
What are you doing specifically?
jocko willink
Basically, I put my hand...
I make a fist.
And I put my fist in my sternum.
And then I, you know, grab the forearm here and then arch my shoulder.
So there's the neck right here.
It closes it, right?
joe rogan
So you're putting the fist into the...
jocko willink
The fist into...
Right.
It's a trach.
It's an air choke.
It's gnarly.
joe rogan
Okay.
jocko willink
And so I'm just doing this.
And you can see that hole.
And you shrug.
But as I'm doing this, he's panicking and pulling me into him.
unidentified
Okay.
jocko willink
And he only did it for a second, and then he taps out, and I was like, ah, you know, and I wasn't, I was just like, oh, you know, boom, and then he taps.
And then the rest of the stories.
I guess I didn't know a lot about the rest of the story.
I didn't know any of the rest of the story.
unidentified
Because he didn't want to feel like a baby.
jocko willink
Yeah, it fractured like his hyoid bone and then it built calcium up around it.
unidentified
So he calls up Andy one day and he goes, dude, I think I got throat cancer.
jocko willink
Because there's something growing in my throat.
And he goes, the doctor gets an X-ray and he's like, hey, did you do something to your neck?
Because there's a hairline fracture that's not now calcium deposit around it.
And he's like, oh, I know what happened.
So, I guess, in my defense...
joe rogan
Why didn't you just get him in a head and arm choke or something?
jocko willink
It wasn't like a big deal.
It wasn't crazy.
It wasn't crazy.
It was just normal.
It'd be like if you grabbed somebody that showed up here and was like, hey, can you roll with me?
You'd be like, oh, cool.
And you'd put him in a kind of whatever presented itself.
Maybe you'd arm lock him.
Maybe you'd do a chimera.
joe rogan
The problem is when you get used to doing certain types of chokes and then you're doing it to someone who doesn't, especially that where you've got a fist in the neck.
jocko willink
I guess this is the only thing.
Make no mistake about it.
Even though I was just chilling.
joe rogan
He was not.
jocko willink
He was going level 7 berserker mode on me.
He's such a good athlete, you know?
joe rogan
The other thing about people that have never done jujitsu, when they're doing it with someone who's a black belt, they probably feel like they can just kind of go crazy and you'll just absorb it and deal with it.
And so they just try it.
Let's see what happens when I go crazy.
jocko willink
So now he holds us over my head.
He should.
joe rogan
He broke his neck in front of his wife.
jocko willink
Oh, I know.
I know.
One day I'm like, we're up in Montana and I said, hey, man.
He's at my house.
He's like, oh, thanks for having us over.
I go, bro.
You know, you taught me how to do this.
You brought me up here.
You take me hunting.
Like, you're doing all this awesome stuff, man.
You know, you're the man, dude.
I really appreciate it.
He goes, yeah, you know what you did for me?
I'm like, what?
He goes, broke my neck.
unidentified
It's awful, bro.
joe rogan
It's all good now, though, right?
jocko willink
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
Is it not bothering him anymore?
jocko willink
Oh, I don't know about that.
I thought you meant it's all good between us.
It's all good between us.
unidentified
He just sent me a new bow.
jocko willink
We're freaking fired up.
joe rogan
I think every time he swallows, he thinks about you.
jocko willink
No, he coughs.
joe rogan
Oh, no.
jocko willink
He coughs.
Hopefully, I mean, I haven't talked to him about it.
I don't like to bring it up a lot.
joe rogan
So there's something in there that's fucking with his throat.
jocko willink
Something in there that's making him cough.
joe rogan
So they'd have to probably get in there and scrape it.
jocko willink
So while we're hunting, he would be like...
unidentified
And then he'd look at me, and I'm just thinking, oh, I'm such a horrible person.
joe rogan
Oh, no.
jocko willink
You know, I always say like, Dean Lister, I've been Dean Lister's training partner for 20-something years.
Up until recently, he never hurt me, and I never hurt him.
Never.
joe rogan
Up until recently?
jocko willink
Yeah, because he ended up hurting me.
And he ended up hurting me in the dumbest possible way.
I show up to class, this was like...
This is over a year ago because it hurt my archery for a while.
I show up to class late, right?
And he's teaching and we're just going to roll, but I come out and he's like finishing the class.
And I'm cold, and I'm just getting on the mat.
And he says, oh, let me show something.
He goes, here, lay down.
And he gets a straight...
He gets an Americana on me, or a Camara, but anyways, he's like, hey, try and get out by straightening your arm.
And the whole class is watching.
He goes, try and get out by straightening your arm.
And I go, okay, cool.
And so he puts me across, he gets across side, he puts the...
I think it was an action, a Camara.
He says...
joe rogan
So he's like straight-armed Kimura.
jocko willink
He's about to straighten.
My arm is here and he's about to straighten.
He wants me to try and get out by doing almost like a hitchhike or escape or something.
So he says, try and get out by straighten your arm.
I go, okay.
I straighten my arm and he just, in a millisecond, and you could hear it.
Arm locks me.
Totally destroyed my arm.
No, not totally.
It was injured very bad.
The first time in my life I had to get a sling.
This bro, this guy comes over to me, Dean Lister, and he goes, bro, and he's such a nice guy.
He's all, bro, I'm so sorry.
And he goes, I didn't know your elbow wasn't very flexible.
I go, bro, it's an elbow.
Elbows aren't flexible.
They're bone, dude.
joe rogan
I didn't know your elbow wasn't flexible.
unidentified
Ugh.
joe rogan
D needs a DNA test because I know he's at least 86% Neanderthal.
jocko willink
Yeah, at a minimum.
joe rogan
The way his neck and shoulders move together.
jocko willink
At a minimum.
joe rogan
You can see that dude with like a big club.
jocko willink
For sure.
And a total, total mutant and a savant on the jiu-jitsu mats.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
jocko willink
A complete savant on the jiu-jitsu mats.
joe rogan
Well, he's literally the missing link.
He's the link.
I shouldn't say the missing link.
The link to jiu-jitsu expanding into the leg locks.
jocko willink
Modern jujitsu.
joe rogan
It's 100% Dean Lister.
And the statement that he made to John Danaher has become world famous.
Because Danaher said it on my podcast.
He said, Dean Lister said to him, why would you ignore 50% of the human body?
And Danaher, being the fucking genius that he is, was like, why would you enjoy it?
Why would you?
jocko willink
So, all these new things that are coming out now, right?
You see Gordon Ryan, just insane.
All these guys that are really attacking legs now.
And by the way, just like Dean, Gordon's not only good at attacking legs, he's good at everything.
But...
I was asking Dean because I watched, you know, Dean's done all these moves to me for years, you know, and just over and over again, right?
This is what we do.
This is what we've been doing.
We've been doing it since he won ADCC when Eddie beat Hoyler, when Dean won, when he beat Kakareko in the finals with what they now call 50-50, which he and I called Kakareko.
After that, we called that Kakareko.
No one started doing it for another many, many, probably 10 years regularly.
joe rogan
I was there that year.
jocko willink
Oh, yeah, and I wasn't there that year.
I was there when Eddie won in San Diego.
We were all...
I competed in San Diego, Dean competed in San Diego, and Eddie competed in San Diego for the trials.
joe rogan
I was there for that, too.
jocko willink
Eddie won.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jocko willink
Dean won.
I lost to big country, Roy Nelson.
unidentified
Oh, wow.
jocko willink
Yeah, yeah.
And I did because I wasn't very tactically smart.
I scrambled to a position and I tried to get a...
As a matter of fact, I got a crucifix, because that was kind of one of my go-to moves, get a crucifix and I'd get a choke from there, when I should have taken the back and gotten points, and I didn't, and Roy Nelson, who is a great guy and he's a total stud, I got the crucifix position and he like powered out of bounds.
And so then, and he beat me because he's a much better wrestler than me.
Awesome at jiu-jitsu too.
Anyways, when he won that, we were doing this stuff.
So, anyways, probably six months ago or three months ago, I was asking Dina, I said, hey Dina, are you starting to see things that you didn't know?
When you're watching, because he watches, I said, are you starting to see jujitsu things that you didn't know, like footlock stuff?
And he's like, yeah, about three or four months ago, I started seeing some things that I didn't think of.
So that's how long it took people to get to and then start to develop their own stuff, which is pretty crazy.
joe rogan
Well, it's fascinating that once the game moved into this sort of leg-lock heavy style that so many guys like Craig Jones and Gordon Ryan and this, you know, Gary Tonin, there's so many of those guys that you're seeing this game getting tighter and tighter with leg locks.
Yeah.
And the way John Donaher examines everything, too, because Donaher's body is broken.
unidentified
Mm-hmm.
joe rogan
He can't really compete anymore.
I mean, he has an artificial hip.
He's got an artificial knee.
His body's really fucked up.
And his other knee is really unstable.
So he can roll, but he can only roll very controlled with guys who understand his physical limitations.
And you can see how he understands positions.
You can get a lot out of rolling with him.
There's a great video, actually, of Gordon Ryan rolling with John Donahue.
And obviously, they're not using strength.
They're just flow rolling.
But you see how...
Tactical he is and how ahead of every position he is and how his deep understanding of it.
And part of it is because he's teaching these guys and he's teaching them from a position where he can't really do it himself.
He can do it, but he can't compete.
jocko willink
He can't roll.
joe rogan
Right, right.
But he has the mind for it.
So he's seeing it from the outside.
And he's also this fucking really genius human being.
So he's able to break this down.
And then he has this core group of badasses that understand what a great pleasure it is to have this genius teach you.
I mean, it's not a coincidence that that whole Henzo Gracie team has become one of the biggest threats.
Like, the whole team is filled with fucking murderers.
jocko willink
Yeah, and they're...
Just to again emphasize the point is leg locks are a part of the game.
And there was a time period where people thought that leg locks would change the game completely.
And at a certain point, the defenses for the leg locks become known.
And all of a sudden you have to go back to the other parts of jiu-jitsu.
And that's why you see guys like Tonin, right?
He doesn't always win with heel hooks, but you have to address them or you will lose.
joe rogan
Right.
jocko willink
And yeah, those guys, it's really cool to see those guys coming up.
I mean, I shouldn't know why I'm kind of saying it coming up like I'm...
But I'm watching this development come, which I was at kind of ground zero with Dean Lister.
And the crazy thing is, Dean Lister...
He has like a like a crazy savant mind where I would create one thing for every Whatever for every 20 things that Dean created It's probably like Eddie and I don't know Eddie as well as you do but Just the creative part of his brain is what the most powerful thing was yeah, and then once people saw it they're like okay now we can build upon this and Yeah, for Eddie, it's 100% the creative part of his brain.
joe rogan
Also the fact that when I met Eddie, he hated lifting weights.
He wouldn't lift weights.
Because I would try to get him to lift weights.
I'm like, come on, let's lift weights.
I'm fucking lifting shit.
Like, you can go lift weights.
So he was this little tiny guy, and he had to rely on technique.
So he had to rely on trickery.
Plus, he was a musician, right?
So he's always this creative guy, and he smoked a lot of weed, too.
So he was always thinking about things outside the box.
And he's also this guy that doesn't like people telling him he's wrong.
So, like, you know, like, you can't do it that way.
He's like, oh, really?
unidentified
Hmm.
joe rogan
Let's see if I can.
And then he would find a way to do it.
And, you know, he just developed all these, like, weird entries into things and these weird setups that people didn't see coming.
And once he sort of improved upon these and then started expanding upon them and then developing that whole 10th planet system, I mean, really, it's an insanely creative system that's just developed based on his...
Ability to just think outside the box.
jocko willink
I had Jeff Glover at my training at my gym for a long time.
joe rogan
He's another one.
jocko willink
He's the same thing where he's small, he's crazy flexible, he smokes a lot of weed, and he would just do wild things.
Wild things.
I was actually at ADCC, and I was with my son.
My son was probably like nine or something.
And we're there watching and Jeff Glover's about to compete.
This was before I really was friends with Jeff.
joe rogan
Was he doing that donkey guard thing back then?
jocko willink
He was doing everything.
The donkey guard hadn't become super popular, but he was kind of in the beginning stages of it.
So I'm sitting there next to my son and we're at ADCC, so it's a small thing.
And I go, and I said to my son, watch this guy that's about to come out.
He's crazy.
Glover comes out and he like just he falls on his back flips inverted guard and starts like just going Insane just doing insane things and you know the rest of the matches are two guys you know playing patty cakes and looking for the takedown Glover comes out falls down freaking just doing all kinds of wild stuff and then submits the dude in 30 38 seconds and And my son looks at me and he goes, I thought you meant like crazy.
And he goes, I didn't know you meant crazy.
And I go, yes.
joe rogan
He thought you meant like brutish.
jocko willink
Yes, brutish, crazy.
He didn't think I meant what that weird creative thing is.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's one of the best things about learning jujitsu from a small person.
Like, those small guys, they figure out how to get around things.
I mean, there's been a bunch of, you know, Hoyler Gracie's a great example of it, too.
Eddie, Glover, yeah.
jocko willink
Yeah, that's why I'm never a good, that's why I'm a bad person to introduce people to jujitsu.
unidentified
Right.
jocko willink
Because they just think, oh yeah, of course you're a gorilla.
You outweigh me by 40 or 50 pounds.
I used to always have Jeff Glover on standby at my gym and be like, oh, yeah, okay, go train with that guy over there.
See what happens.
And when Jeff goes against a big, strong guy, he's going to get something.
joe rogan
Yeah, they really get so disappointed in themselves.
It's so sad.
jocko willink
He said the easiest people for him to roll with were big, muscular guys.
joe rogan
Really?
jocko willink
He says the easiest people for him to roll with are big, muscular guys.
Like, big, muscular guys.
He says, I love rolling with them.
They're so easy.
joe rogan
That's so crazy because most people get injured.
That guy's so freaking flexible.
jocko willink
I think his neck's jacked up now.
joe rogan
Oh, is it now?
jocko willink
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's the thing that gets everybody is the goddamn neck.
Because very few guys really strengthen their neck correctly either.
I think the neck is one thing that you absolutely should strengthen.
I think you can get away with not lifting weights and doing jiu-jitsu, but I don't think you can get away with not strengthening your neck for very long.
jocko willink
Yeah, that's...
It's one of those things and it connects you to the rest of your freaking body.
joe rogan
You also use it.
You use it more than you think.
You know, especially me, my favorite technique is probably head and arm choke.
And you're using your neck to secure that arm.
And once you develop a feel for holding that arm in place with that neck, that neck gets a workout mat.
You know, you really, you use it a lot more than you think.
And if you can strengthen your neck, it's just, it's such a big advantage.
It's also a big advantage in avoiding getting hurt because it strengthens the whole chain from the top of your spine all the way down.
You know, that's why I'm such a big fan of that iron neck.
I just used it right now, right before the podcast I was doing it.
I do it every fucking day, man.
I have one.
jocko willink
I bought one.
joe rogan
Love it.
jocko willink
They emailed me a bunch.
They're like, bro, how do you like it?
I'm like, it's all good.
joe rogan
It's fucking awesome, man.
Between that and, you know, there's a few other back exercises and stuff that I think are critical.
Strengthen the lower back, too, because it's another thing that guys always get jacked, is their lower back.
jocko willink
Yeah.
You know the weird thing is people's necks get jacked up regardless.
Like, there's people that go through life doing whatever paperwork, and they end up with a bad neck.
Neck is a vulnerable thing, so if you don't take care of it...
Especially when you are abusing it, when you are getting choked, when you are not tapping.
It's one of those things.
joe rogan
I judge people on their necks.
jocko willink
On the size of their neck?
joe rogan
Yeah, if I see someone with a little skinny neck, I just go, what are you doing, man?
jocko willink
Yeah, go do some bridges.
joe rogan
It just doesn't seem like it would be a good thing to have.
That's the thing that holds your head on.
jocko willink
I can't wait for the future when your neck is all jacked up and you go in and they just put you in surgery for two hours and you come out and you got a metal spine.
I'm going to be the first person.
I'm right in line.
You want to give me a metal spine or any metal components inside my body?
joe rogan
You're down with that?
jocko willink
I'm 100% down.
Let's make it happen.
joe rogan
Eddie's got a fake disc.
Eddie's got a titanium articulating disc.
jocko willink
Where?
joe rogan
Lower back.
His lower back had been so smashed and suppressed that his, you know, that's one of the things that's why men, when they get older, they shrink, is your discs get squished to the point and they start touching.
You get stenosis.
jocko willink
Do you think you can go too far with flexibility that it starts to injure you over the long term?
joe rogan
Well, I don't think you can go too far with flexibility, but flexibility without strength, perhaps, because maybe that inflexibility, like maybe you'll get like some muscle damage, you know, when you're trying to push too far, that'll prevent you from getting disc damage.
Maybe.
That's just speculation.
But I think it's just so critical to strengthen your back, man.
I mean, I'm always doing reverse hypers, and I do all these different back extensions.
I just think strengthening that whole column, and yoga in particular, and then the neck, the iron neck, I just think that whole thing...
It's like too many guys just rely on their workouts to strengthen that.
And they don't take it as like, hey, I really like doing jujitsu.
I really like doing Muay Thai.
I want to put in the time to work out these areas.
jocko willink
How's Eddie's back now?
joe rogan
It's not 100%.
It still fucks with him a little bit, but he's rolling again.
But he's got a fake disc.
A disc.
It's a titanium disc that they replace the smooshy part with this thing that rolls and moves.
But it still creates some inflammation.
Look, I know...
I had Ronnie Coleman here last week.
jocko willink
I know, I listened to it.
joe rogan
And his whole back is all fused.
And it's horrible, man.
I mean, he can't walk.
And, you know, he's the king.
Greatest Olympian of all time.
I mean, he's a fucking amazing...
Pro bodybuilder.
Eight time Mr. Olympia.
unidentified
Only him and Lee Haney.
jocko willink
I watched the documentary.
Did you see the documentary?
joe rogan
No, I didn't.
I didn't.
jocko willink
Really good, man.
Really just, what a good guy.
joe rogan
Great guy.
jocko willink
What a nice guy.
joe rogan
Couldn't be nicer.
And in pain.
In fucking agony.
jocko willink
And still working out.
joe rogan
Friendly and wouldn't have it any other way.
And he talks about the days that he, like, he was talking about squatting 800 pounds.
And that, like, he said he was going to do it for two reps.
And after the two reps, I could have gotten more.
And to this day, he thinks he should have gotten more.
jocko willink
That's what we were talking about earlier, right?
That's keeping him up at night.
joe rogan
That's why he's a champion.
I mean, that really is.
That's what made him a champion.
jocko willink
Did you watch the West Side vs.
the World documentary?
joe rogan
No, I didn't, but I got to interview Louie.
That's why I got the reverse hyper on here.
I have another piece of his equipment too, that belt squat machine, which is amazing.
It puts all the weight on your hips versus on your back.
He's a fucking wild dude, man.
jocko willink
I want to go out there and hang out.
joe rogan
Oh, he would love you, man.
He would love you.
You would love him, too, man.
That is who Louie is, and he's got this fucking gym filled with barbarians.
jocko willink
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
Just all they're doing is just trying to lift the maximum amount of weight they can lift.
jocko willink
It's insane.
My kid watched that, and he, you know, he's just all about it now.
unidentified
West side!
Him and his little buddies talking about Louie Simmons.
joe rogan
He's contagious.
Go heavier.
Go harder.
I mean, Jamie and I were in his office interviewing him.
That's where we did it.
jocko willink
Oh, you went out there?
joe rogan
We actually did the podcast at Westside.
Yeah, I was in Columbus doing stand-up, and I just had to interview him.
jocko willink
God, that's awesome.
joe rogan
I just knew.
I knew just like I want to get the guy in his gym, too.
It was just fucking amazing.
He gave us a tour of the gym, and then we did a podcast at his desk.
It was awesome.
unidentified
What?
jocko willink
What a rare human being.
joe rogan
Yeah, they don't make them like Louie Simmons, but also a genius.
Like, here's a guy who figured out, like, his disc was fucked up, and they were like, we're going to fuse you.
And he's like, well, let me think of this.
Something made it compress.
I'm going to figure out something to make it decompress and strengthen that area, and that's where the reverse hyper came from, which I think should be a staple in every gym.
That reverse hyper machine for strengthening the lower back and then actively decompressing.
I've never found anything better.
That's all in Louie Simmons' mind.
It came out of his own brain because of his injury.
jocko willink
That he came back from and was squatting whatever, 729 world record at whatever, 62 years old.
joe rogan
Yeah, but I wouldn't recommend any things he does.
I mean, here's a guy who got his biceps reattached and then blew it out because it was too annoying to not be able to work out.
So he just went back to working out and pop, snapped back off.
So he's got no biceps.
Just pulls back.
Crazy animal.
He had his shoulder redone.
They gave him an artificial shoulder.
Goes back to the gym and they're like, you're gonna max out today.
His friends made him max out after his shoulder surgery with an artificial shoulder.
Like, okay.
That's just the culture.
The culture is, it doesn't matter.
Injuries don't matter.
jocko willink
In the documentary, one of the guys was saying, my goal My goal was to hurt Louie when he came in the gym.
My goal was to hurt him.
I wanted him to get hurt.
I wanted to push him so hard that he got hurt.
And this is one of his buddies, one of his friends, one of his training partners.
My goal was to hurt him.
joe rogan
That's that culture, though.
I mean, that's how you develop such a legendary place.
The sensibilities are beyond what a normal person would consider a prudent thing to do.
jocko willink
Yeah, and the people that could withstand that kind of pressure became champions.
unidentified
Yeah.
jocko willink
Became world record holders.
joe rogan
It's all about the mind, Jocko.
jocko willink
That's what it takes.
joe rogan
Nobody knows more than you.
We just did three hours, dude.
I'm going to give you a COVID test now.
It's 3.30.
jocko willink
Let's get some.
joe rogan
All right, let's get some.
Thank you, brother.
Appreciate you, man.
jocko willink
Right on, bro.
unidentified
Right on.
joe rogan
Bye, everybody.
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