On this episode of the podcast, I sit down with a good friend of mine and talk about his life and how he became the man he is today. We talk about growing up on the streets of Buffalo, New York and how his dad was a monster. He talks about how he got to where he is now, and what it took him to become the man that people look up to. I hope you enjoy this episode and that it gives you a little insight into who he is and what he has to deal with on a day to day basis. I know that I did and it was a pleasure to have him on the show and I hope that you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed getting to know him and his story. I appreciate you for coming on the pod and sharing it with the world! Thank you so much for being here and I can t wait to do it again. XOXO, D.J. ( ) and the crew at The Hustleshare Podcast. Xoxo and we're back in the studio with a new episode of The Hustle and Flow! and I'll catch you after the show. XOXOXO xoxo, & the Hustle & Flow And we're Back in the Studio ( ) Thanks for doing this! -The Hustle And Flow -Boom and We're Back -D. J. ( . & We're Live! -BOOO ( ) xoxoxo - I appreciate all the love and support and support you guys. - Thank you for all the support and love you guys! XO -JOSH ( ) - JOSH MILLER ( ) & JUIC ( ) AND JOSH ( ) - JOSHA ( ) . (JOSH) JOSH WELLTONGS ( ) , JOSH'S PODCAST ( ) (JOSHA CHAD ( ) !! AND JODDS ( ) ! (CHAD (JODDS ) - (THAT'SZY ( ) JOSH & JAMES ( , JORDY ( ), JOSH CHAKE ( ) // JOSHY ( & JODY ( ) ? (JAMES ( ) :) ) & KELLY (?) , KEVIN MCCARTAN ( ) ...
00:00:39.000For a lot of people, you sort of embody the idea of hardening your mind and figuring out a way to do things that most people think are impossible.
00:00:53.000You've sort of become that guy over your life, and you've become that guy for a lot of people, including me, online.
00:00:59.000We've talked about you on the podcast a ton of times, so having you in here has been very exciting to me.
00:01:18.000They see me now as the guy that with his shirt off who can do 4,030 pull-ups in 17 hours, who can run 205 miles in 39 hours, who can do all this crazy shit.
00:01:28.000But what they don't understand is they don't understand the journey that it took me to get to this point.
00:01:34.000And what got me to this point was I was just the opposite of what I am today.
00:01:39.000I was that guy who ran away from absolutely everything that got in front of me.
00:03:16.000My whole life I was afraid, but I had this fucking voice, this conscience, that would always be battling me, saying, hey, you gotta get up and do something.
00:03:26.000You know, I was just afraid, but that voice would force me to get up, and my dad, you know, I'd try to beat him up, whatever, at 6, and I'd get my ass kicked.
00:03:34.000So this went on for several years, and I have a big-time learning disability.
00:03:38.000My dad didn't believe in us going to school.
00:03:40.000So my dad, it was about the business, the skating rink and the bar.
00:03:45.000So the skating rink opened about 7 o'clock at night, and this is the time I was able to walk.
00:03:49.000So about, you know, 4, 5, 6 years old, 8, 9. And I'd go to the skating rink at 7 o'clock at night, and I'd work the skating rink until 10 at night.
00:03:59.000And then we would scrape the gum off the floors, and we'd clean the whole skating rink up.
00:04:23.000I was just a jacked-up kid from living in this tortured home.
00:04:27.000From the outside looking in, we lived in an all-white neighborhood, and then we would travel to the ghetto of Buffalo, New York, where the skating rink was at.
00:04:35.000So, you know, we worked around mostly blacks, and I lived around mostly whites.
00:04:40.000But no one knew what was going on in that house on 201 Paradise Road.
00:06:19.000I want to join the Air Force, and the guy gave me an ASVAB test.
00:06:23.000It's like a watered-down SAT. And I couldn't copy on it because the guy beside me had a test A, I had test B, the guy on my right had test C. So I looked to copy on this test and I couldn't copy on it so I got like a 20. And I wanted to be an Air Force pararescueman.
00:06:36.000It's guys that jump out of airplanes and save down pilots.
00:06:39.000It's a special operator in the Air Force.
00:06:42.000And my score was so horribly low that we'd take it again.
00:06:46.000And he said, hey, I got like an 18 the second time, even worse.
00:06:50.000I need to get a 50 out of a 99. And so my mom and I, for a while, we lived in the government-subsidized apartments, $7 a month, and also food stamps.
00:07:00.000And we slowly moved up to a $230 a month place.
00:07:03.000But at the time, you know, we were pretty poor.
00:07:07.000But my mom afforded enough money for me to go to see a tutor one hour a week, so for four hours a month.
00:07:14.000I had six months to study for my last test.
00:07:16.000I was going to take the asthma test three times.
00:07:19.000And I studied my ass off and passed it.
00:07:23.000And I got in the Air Force and realized there was more things in front of me.
00:07:29.000And I learned how to swim, but what gets everybody in this training, in all special ops training, is the water confidence, where they try to pretty much drown your ass.
00:07:38.000You know, all of our lives we've been breathing.
00:07:40.000And they take that from you, and they want to see how comfortable you are in the water.
00:07:44.000And there's only 1% African Americans in special operations.
00:07:48.000And I didn't know anything about African, like a lot of them are negative buoyant, which I am, because of the bone density.
00:07:56.000But six weeks into the program, there was about 25 guys left out of about 150. I was there, and I didn't go to sleep for six weeks of the program.
00:08:06.000And I wanted to quit so badly, but I quit everything in my life.
00:08:12.000And so here I am, in this Air Force program, starting to get a little more confidence, but this water was kicking my ass, and six weeks into the program, the doctor gave me a blood test.
00:08:24.000Sickle cell trait, not the anemia, but it still killed people.
00:08:27.000But, so they pulled me out of training for a week, and when you go from being very uncomfortable in that water situation, and then now you're comfortable, and I'm sitting back watching the guys drown, you know, I'm not part of the activities anymore for this week, I didn't want to get back in that damn water again.
00:08:43.000So the fear overcame me and all my insecurities from my dad, from this small town, from everything started coming back.
00:08:49.000And even though no one knew how fucked up I was, kind of create this other person who was tough, I live with this shit all the time.
00:08:56.000So, me not wanting to go back in that water, the doctor called me back up.
00:09:00.000I thought I was going to get like a medical kick out of the military.
00:09:16.000There's a good chance, you know, I could tough this shit out and go on.
00:09:20.000But I went back to the CO and the command officer of the program and the sergeant said, hey, you got to start from day one because you missed, you know, that week of training.
00:09:58.000I was afraid of the water, so I avoided it.
00:10:01.000And I gained 125 pounds in that time frame.
00:10:04.000I went from 175 to almost 300, to 297 was my heaviest.
00:10:08.000And I started finding things that was comfortable.
00:10:11.000And the more things I found comfortable, the more uncomfortable my mind was.
00:10:16.000Because that voice I was telling you about, it always was there.
00:10:19.000I was just trying to avoid that conscience.
00:10:22.000I wanted to be left alone from that conscience, and it wouldn't leave me alone.
00:10:26.000So I got out of the Air Force, and I started working for a job called Ecolab, where you spray for cockroaches at 24, and spraying at different Steak and Shakes, Red Lobster, whatever, from 11 o'clock at night to 7 o'clock in the morning.
00:10:40.000And what changed, I came home and watched this Discovery Channel show, Class 224. I came home from Steak and Shake, I sprayed it down last, get a big ol' large 42-ounce shake, walk across the street and get a box of mini donuts from 7-Eleven, and I would drive home for 45 minutes,
00:10:57.000this big ol' fat guy who, yeah, I worked out, but I was fat.
00:11:02.000I didn't run, didn't PT, I just hit the gym.
00:11:05.000So I'm driving home, turn the TV on, and what comes on is Discovery Channel Show, and that's where everything changed for me.
00:11:12.000I was taking a shower, I walked out, heard these guys, and I watched the show, and it made me reflect big time on the piece of shit that I am, and I'm exactly what people said I was going to be.
00:11:24.000So what was on this show that really struck home?
00:11:27.000I saw these guys going in the water, so I was terrified of it.
00:11:50.000But just a scared bitch is what I was.
00:11:53.000But I was watching these guys going through Hell Week, Class 224. And these guys ringing the bell, quitting, dropping their helmet down, rolling out.
00:12:03.000And it made me reflect on my fears, my insecurities.
00:12:08.000And I saw real men, what I thought were real men who were staying, who were overcoming adversity, who were overcoming all these different things that I had blamed so many fucking people in my life, my dad, my mom for not being there.
00:12:22.000When I was 14 years old, my mom was going to get remarried to this great guy.
00:12:58.000And no one, people who are hearing this shit, they will never really understand and grasp when you face these things and so many things, how they keep you up and haunt you at night.
00:13:08.000I think there's a lot of people out there that know what you're talking about.
00:13:16.000To either be that 300 pound guy who sprayed for cockroaches and made a thousand dollars a month, And at 24 years old knowing when I'm 50 fucking years old I can reflect on this and think about what guy I never became or I can totally just sack it up and fail and fail and fail until I succeed.
00:14:11.000He saw me, put me through the weight standard, all this other stuff, and to get into the class I had to get into, I had to lose 106 pounds in less than three months.
00:14:19.000So, I was like, fuck that, I can't do that.
00:14:22.000I grabbed my chocolate milkshake and went back to Ecolab.
00:14:28.000So, in this job, you're looking for cockroaches, looking for rodents and stuff like that, and this next morning, or this next night, I went to work, and I don't like cockroaches too much.
00:14:40.000I hit the mother load of cockroaches, and this restaurant got full of cockroaches and rodents and everything else, and I sat there and said, this is my life.
00:14:51.000You are exactly who the fuck, this is it.
00:14:54.000And I said, this ain't gonna be it for me.
00:14:57.000So, in that restaurant, I quit my job, left my canister in that restaurant, my spray canister, got back in my Ecolab truck, and I went home.
00:15:07.000And I started working out like somebody, I became the most obsessed person on the planet Earth.
00:15:13.000And I was basically I had to invent a guy that didn't exist.
00:15:20.000I had to invent a guy that can take any pain, any suffering, any kind of judgment, be called nigger, be called whatever the fuck in the world and be able to stand in the fucking room and say, go fuck yourself.
00:15:29.000I had to build this callous mind and I built it through suffering.
00:15:34.000I built it through downright fucking just crushing myself.
00:15:37.000If it was raining outside at 3 o'clock in the fucking morning, if it was snowing, The first instinct is don't go out there and do shit.
00:15:43.000My instinct was, we gotta fucking go out there.
00:15:47.000Anything that was fucking horrible in my life that I would normally say no, that was inhumane to most people, I had to go do it.
00:15:56.000And I started callusing my mind at this point in my life.
00:17:00.000It's a brutal journey every fucking day and everybody goes, well, are you happy?
00:17:05.000If anybody knows my life story, and I'll try to give you just a snippet of it, where I'm at today is in front of Joe Rogan telling you my life.
00:17:12.000To get through where I became, to get through where I'm at now, there's nothing but pride I have for myself that I can't really show people.
00:17:33.000This is an exciting story for people because there's a lot of people out there that feel trapped and they feel stuck and they feel like they can't do anything and this is who they are.
00:17:41.000You're a guy who felt that exact same way but figured out how to not be that person and be a person that you would admire.
00:17:49.000How did you, what were the first steps?
00:17:51.000Like, you had some slips before, right?
00:17:54.000Because you quit because of the water thing, but then when you went back the second time and you decided you're going to lose all that weight and you quit that job, Was it just straight forward from there or were there some days where you just failed and then you picked it back up again?
00:18:08.000So my first run when I decided to lose the weight I was like I said 297 I was about 32 percent body fat and I went my idea was to run four miles for my first run I didn't know how bad it's gonna fucking hurt me I used to run before I was fat and I was like fuck it I can do this I ran a quarter mile and walked home I walked home and sat on my couch and cried.
00:18:30.000I went to my mom's house who was about maybe 20 minutes down the road and cried and get in her couch and said, man, I can't fucking do this shit.
00:20:14.000It was like, just by that motherfucker getting up, not winning, just by him getting the fuck up, Apollo Creed was his champ, he was the best.
00:22:02.000And so, I was like, man, what story would it be if my fucking fat, dumb, lying to be friends with people, insecure ass, can overcome this shit?
00:22:17.000And that what-if mentality, that dreamer mentality just would always fuel me.
00:22:35.000And how would that feel if I'm graduating?
00:22:38.000Because I don't forget at the graduation thing I was talking about, 224, like the video I sat down and watched.
00:22:43.000This command officer stood up and he said to the graduation guys who are graduating buds, like 18 of them, he said, we live in a society where mediocrity is often rewarded.
00:22:53.000And he went on to say something about these men detest mediocrity.
00:22:57.000And I wanted to be a man that detests mediocrity.
00:23:01.000It got me in a lot of trouble in the SEAL teams and going forward in my life because I just, I started looking down on people for not going hard as fucking shit.
00:23:10.000And I started to create different things but that's for a different day.
00:23:14.000But I just believe that, you know, my whole mind changed.
00:23:17.000That is a problem that a lot of people who work hard do have.
00:23:20.000You get angry at people who don't work hard to the point where you, you know, you want to insult them.
00:24:23.000And people in my Hell Weeks, you know, I was in three of them, they'd always hear me singing these songs.
00:24:27.000These songs, humming these songs in torturous situations.
00:24:31.000When everybody's quitting this fucking code, I would be somewhere gone.
00:24:37.000Somewhere fucking gone, somewhere fucking dark as shit.
00:24:39.000There's a scene in the platoon where Elias, when Barnes shoots Elias, and you know, they think Elias is dead, and the choppers are taking off, and Charlie Sheen's asking, you know, Tom Berenger, where's Elias?
00:25:21.000Man, you're going to have to fucking suffer to go from this fat...
00:25:27.000Insecure motherfucker to one of the best guys on the planet Earth.
00:25:30.000This journey is going to take something that is going to be incomprehensible to most people.
00:25:36.000And these different visualizations, how I visualize them in my self-talk, it became so nasty and dirty that I almost liked the fact that I went.25.
00:25:47.000So it became from being defeated to like, man, all right, motherfucker, maybe, you know, maybe tomorrow we can go 0.75.
00:25:54.000You know, it just became this different mindset.
00:25:58.000So I would take it like, who would even think about doing this?
00:26:02.000So I would sit on my couch saying, who at 297 who can't fucking swim that great, who's scared of the fucking water, would have the fucking balls?
00:26:09.000Who had the balls to fucking man up, quit a job, and go and just put everything on himself?
00:26:16.000So it's how I start talking to myself and put myself in a whole different category and that would fuel me the next day and I just kept using that as fuel and fuel.
00:30:29.000And so the insides of me are also getting fucked up.
00:30:33.000So in this process, my psoas muscle got real tight to my T12. I can show you the bump in the back of my head after this show is over, but I started growing this fucking large tumor-looking bump in the back of my head from my body compressing.
00:30:49.000So I'm 6'1", but my muscles were like 5'9".
00:30:52.000Because I just started, just the muscle tightness for my psoas, going to my T12, I was just getting tighter, my quads, everything getting tired from just stress, just stress in my life.
00:31:03.000So the more I stressed my body with the workouts, my lower body became out of balance.
00:31:09.000So I had a bunch of stress fractures, a bunch of injuries going through BUDS, and how I got through BUDS was they gave me my third time, was my last time going through Hell Week, I basically put a black sock on at 4 o'clock in the morning and I would get duct tape.
00:31:23.000I had numerous stress fractures on both of my legs because my body was literally like coming in on itself.
00:31:31.000And my legs were like, I was pronating it really bad and putting stress on my shins.
00:31:38.000I would duct tape my feet and I would show you the top of them where I have pressure ulcers that were the size of quarters.
00:31:44.000From, you know, how the ankle joint, so the foot goes to the shin, and how you move this, where the tape was so tight, it just created a nice ulcer right there.
00:33:11.000So, I've missed two days of stretching out in five years.
00:33:15.000And so what happened was all the shit I did to myself, the stress I was under, physical, mental, all kind of shit, it just choked me out from the inside.
00:33:25.000And doctors put me on all kinds of medication.
00:33:28.000And the medication started doing the exact opposite.
00:34:21.000But it gave me time to reflect on everything I had accomplished.
00:34:25.000I've never taken time to reflect on the kid I was to the man I am now.
00:34:31.000So honestly, the time I wasn't working out, it was the best time of my life because I got a chance to really reflect back and be proud of who I became.
00:36:35.000And I... If I were to tell somebody one thing right now, man, that's so-ass muscle and getting that hip flexor opened up, because we're all stressed the fuck out.
00:38:18.000I was in Three Hell Weeks, as you know, as I said a million times.
00:38:21.000And I knew a lot of guys that died in the operation.
00:38:23.000I was at Free Fall School with Morgan Luttrell, who was his twin brother, during the Operation Web Wings, where Marcus Luttrell was Lone Survivor.
00:38:31.000I knew Marcus Trill well, and I was about 200 some odd pounds, and I didn't run hardly at all at this time.
00:38:38.000I was a SEAL, but I was like a bodybuilder.
00:38:40.000And I did an elliptical trainer 20 minutes on Sunday.
00:40:05.000He said, I'll call him up on a Wednesday.
00:40:08.000And he goes, there's a race on Saturday in San Diego, San Diego one day, where you run around a one mile track for 24 hours, so many miles you can get.
00:40:16.000If you get 124 hours, I will consider you in my race.
00:40:20.000I did the math, 14 some minute mile, fuck it, I can do that.
00:40:25.000Dumb shit thinking, I'll tell you that right now.
00:42:43.000I wanted to be ripped, big Navy SEAL guy.
00:42:47.000And the day before this race, it's funny, this guy named Joe Burns, who put me through my hell weeks, a SEAL guy, he's one of the hardest guys out there, He was in the gym the Friday before I did this race.
00:42:59.000And he was doing a full body squats, dead lifts, power cleans.
00:43:11.000I went in there and did a full body, hardcore squats, deadlifts, and everything with this guy.
00:43:16.000Because I knew he was going to come watch me in this race.
00:43:20.000So I've always been about, alright man, you're going to see me come in here and jack this weight, and tomorrow you're going to watch me do a 100 mile run.
00:43:27.000What are you going to think about that?
00:43:31.000So he came out there with my favorite thing, chocolate mini donuts, because he knew my story of my past life, and brought six mini donuts out there, and I had my hat pulled down, and at mile 70, man, it was torturous.
00:43:44.000And with blood down my leg and 30 miles to go, I... Started reaching the cookie jars man.
00:43:52.000I started pulling off all kind of stuff I reached in my mind and a lot of us when we have bad times in life even the hardest person where we forget how badass we are during that hard time I Have a thing where I take a couple seconds to reflect on hang on man You've been to been through this you've been through that you overcame this overcame that I don't ever close my mind to the fact that this can't be done and And I knew I had to get up.
00:44:52.000And at that time, at mile 81, Something clicked that I'll never probably be able to do again with my mind, body, spirit, soul, everything just connected.
00:45:01.000And my mind knew I wasn't fucking around anymore.
00:49:04.000Who was mentally tortured himself and was tortured.
00:49:07.000It's all to this kid, to this guy now, who was able to overcome such amazing odds and obstacles.
00:49:13.000And I called Chris Cosmo, the race director of Badwater, and he said, the idea of a 24-hour race is to run 24 hours.
00:49:21.000You only ran 19. And he put doubt in my mind that he wouldn't let me into Badwater.
00:49:26.000So a month later or so, about a month and a half later, I went to this race called the Hurt 100. It's a 100-mile race in Hawaii, 26,000 feet of colony.
00:49:57.000How long did it take you to recover physically?
00:49:59.000The funniest thing about this, I don't tell this story very often.
00:50:01.000I had signed up for, I'm getting to that answer, it's right now.
00:50:06.000I went on deployment and me and my wife my mom signed up for the first Las Vegas marathon down the strip of Las Vegas and That incident happened so I ran a hundred miles before I ran a marathon Two weeks later roughly December 5th was this marathon that we all signed up for I couldn't walk I could not walk I was fucked up so Ten days or two weeks after this hundred mile in one race I did This
00:50:40.000I said, you know, it's the first one I can't run Maybe I can walk with my mom So I tried to go out to this little knoll around our grassy area in San Diego I tried to run legs were broken.
00:50:50.000I said fuck I can't even I'm jacked can't do shit So I said, you know, maybe I'll watch you guys do the marathon and I'll cheer you guys on whatever I said, I'll try to walk with my mom December 5th happened.
00:51:35.000Let's say I listen to Joe Rogan's podcast.
00:51:38.000I heard some black dude from fucking Brazil in the end talking about, this happened, this happened, three hell weeks, ran to school, ran 100 miles, broke my feet, broke my body.
00:51:46.000I'm like, this mother, he's the biggest fucking liar on the planet.
00:54:52.000Now, when you say you were using compression tape on your feet and that your feet were jacked up, what was the extent of the injuries?
00:54:57.000So basically, because of my pronation that I never figured out, because of my psoas muscles, I always had issues with stretch fractures, shin splints.
00:55:07.000So I put a lot of pressure on the inside of my ankles.
00:55:10.000And so there's this tendon that goes up the back side of your, I don't know if it's your fibula, on the back side of that little bone, on the back side of your foot.
00:55:21.000It goes right up the side of that, right alongside that bone.
00:55:24.000And that thing was just so flared up on both sides that even this flexing my foot was just killing me.
00:55:31.000So I realized when you cast that thing up, casting my feet always helped me out because it locked my foot into a position that wouldn't make me pronate as much.
00:55:41.000So between the casting of that, and if you watched the Badwater video of 2006, You'll see me crossing the finish line with this compression tape literally like flying on my ankles because I went to the race with compression tape on my ankles.
00:55:56.000And so basically, I have that on my, you know, on my ankles.
00:56:01.000I had inserts in my, you know, in my shoes and also this wedge.
00:56:56.000So as you see the story may be kind of unbelievable, but there's some proof right there So that's how I was so painful Yeah, I was pretty fucked up as you see right now.
00:57:08.000Yeah, I'm pretty destroyed right there What is the most amount of miles you've ever run at one time?
00:57:15.000Yeah 205 and 39 hours Wow non-stop Yeah, I've had quite a few people on, I've met quite a few people now over the last year or so that have run Ultras.
00:57:28.000Courtney DeWalter, you know who she is?
00:57:30.000She won the Moab 240. She beat all the men by 22 miles, something like that.
00:58:18.000So when you do this and you qualify and you do that race in Hawaii, they just let you in after that?
00:58:28.000No, so the race in Hawaii, yeah, I actually called the race director up and there wasn't like a big time, like I didn't have a 100 mile race I believe I had.
00:58:37.000So you had a 100 mile, you did the Boston Marathon, or you did the Vegas Marathon?
00:58:42.000Yeah, so I did the 101 miles, the Vegas Marathon, went to Hurt 100, did that 100 miler.
00:58:48.000And all this is in a very short amount of time.
00:58:50.000Yeah, so November was the first 100 miler.
00:58:53.000December was the 26th miler in Las Vegas.
01:02:04.000So I went from squatting a lot to where I couldn't even squat the bar because my lower back was all fucked up.
01:02:08.000And I was like, I don't know what's going on.
01:02:10.000It was because this muscle, so in Hell Week, your hip flexors are so, and I went through so many of them so fast.
01:02:18.000And so the hardest part of BUDS, I went through three times.
01:02:21.000Not the Hell Week part, that's one of the hardest parts, but it was the initial part of the, what everybody sees on TV. The log PT, the surf torture, the daggone boats over your head, all that shit.
01:02:33.000I went through that person three times in one year.
01:02:37.000And over a period of time, my hip flexors got so tight that it just jacked me up.
01:02:43.000It jacked me up from my hip flexors, always being so cold and so stressed out.
01:02:48.000And everything led up to it, but this really was the part that I noticed I could squat before Hell Week or before my first time going to BUDS. After BUDS, I couldn't squat anymore.
01:03:02.000Do you just think it might just be because your body was exhausted?
01:06:01.000For anybody who does anything hard, like, you know, if you do anything like weightlifting type shit or martial arts type shit where it's just everything's explosion, it's lifting, it's heavy, it's push, push, push.
01:06:40.000One of my friends was telling me about it where they're trying to find the benefits of 90-minute hot yoga classes because they think it might mirror the observed benefits of sauna, which they already know for a fact has big benefits because of your body producing heat shock proteins to deal with the heat.
01:07:09.000It was yoga, stretching, all that stuff combined.
01:07:11.000Well, I just think it balances out your body in those static poses where you're just holding the pose and it just works you out in a weird way.
01:07:37.000If you see like two doorways, right, and one of them is like fucking C.T. Ali Fletcher's fucking super pump Iron Attic's gym, which is hard work, and then right next to it is the yoga studio.
01:08:01.000So what do you do now in terms of like you got over this five years ago, you're in this bad situation where your body's not working right, now everything's working great again.
01:09:16.000And they put this catheter through my femoral artery that went through my heart.
01:09:20.000They went and they took this Helix patch, they placed it in there, and then they found out six months later that the hole wasn't covered up enough yet.
01:10:25.000That's so crazy that they could do that.
01:10:26.000Yeah, so I was off active duty for three years, so I was in a recruiting area for three years trying to get back on active duty, and that was my life for three years, man.
01:12:03.000And the guy didn't know that I was, he knew I was a Navy guy, but I don't think he knew I was a SEAL, because not many black guys are SEALs.
01:12:10.000And we had a conversation about, you know, we got to fix this real quick.
01:12:14.000I said, yeah, I mean, then I came up that I was a SEAL. He said, man, you could have died jumping, you could have died diving, you could have died and all this stuff.
01:12:22.000Because basically, the hole in your heart, if it gets plugged with something, like anything, like, you know, let's say you get a bubble from diving or something like that, you're going to die.
01:12:40.000They give you the first one, and then when do they realize that it's not good enough?
01:12:44.000So they take you back in, and you get a bubble study, a bubble test.
01:12:47.000So they literally send bubbles that way, safe bubbles that way, to see if the bubble goes through your heart.
01:12:54.000So they have this echocardiogram again, and they hook you up, I think, to IV or something like that, and they throw these bubbles through your heart.
01:17:27.000Like running, you can overcome it because you have these big giant legs and it's different.
01:17:32.000When you have these little fragile punk-ass hands touching the bar, you know, imagine 4,030 pull-ups, how many times you're coming on that bar, coming off.
01:20:45.000Like, all that training goes out the fucking door when you're in the fucking cold water and you're fucking miserable and it's the first hour of 130 hours of Hell Week and that first wave goes over your head and you're the coldest you've been in your life and your mind goes from hour 1 to hour 1 fucking 30. All that fucking self-talking shit,
01:21:41.000At that time, it's just going to last forever.
01:21:42.000And then you get to sit back on Friday with everybody walking across the, you know, back on the grinder, all the 16, 17, 18 guys that graduated Hell Week, and you get a chance to watch these guys victorious.
01:21:53.000And then you get the chance to think about that.
01:21:55.000You take that hot, warm shower, First thing that comes to your fucking mind is why the fuck did I quit?
01:22:13.000There's something about talking to a guy like you that a lot of people hope that you're gonna say some magic thing that's gonna click in their brain.
01:22:21.000Everybody wants to change who they are.
01:23:09.000There was this guy there, I forget his name, but he was like the top head guy.
01:23:13.000Old white guy, you know, all geniused out.
01:23:17.000And we were on this panel, and they were asking us all these questions about the mind, mental toughness and shit, and he was answering them.
01:23:23.000And I wasn't answering them any questions.
01:23:25.000And I'll never forget, he was just answering them off of theory.
01:23:28.000He ain't never put his fucking ass in shit.
01:23:30.000You read a bunch of fucking books, and you think that you know how the fucking mind works and shit.
01:23:35.000I'd have gone through hell since a kid.
01:25:39.000Like, what was he saying he couldn't do?
01:25:41.000It was something about if you're born a certain way, you can't become this way.
01:25:51.000It was totally saying that who I am now, like I had to be born with some, not genetic power or some gift from God, but I had to have some kind of special gift.
01:26:04.000Had to have some kind of special gift.
01:27:36.000Bottom line is most of us, even the people who have all these theories and shit, it's easier to accept the fact that I'm just not good enough.
01:28:16.000When you look at someone who's super successful, you always assume that it has to be because of some sort of physical gifts because people look at themselves and I'm sure this doctor, this old dude, probably had like a little gut and probably had- That's exactly how he looked.
01:28:32.000Little tiny arms and weak shoulders and probably thought, well, there's certain people that are just mesomorphic and probably broke it down all these scientific terms.
01:28:40.000You know, they just have fast twitch whistle fibers and they'll say all this crazy shit that is true at the very highest levels of the winners.
01:29:44.000And it becomes in your fucking mind, like, there's people who are retiring, you know, at 40-something years old, or 30-something years old.
01:29:50.000At 43, I'm still putting 100 mile weeks, still doing thousands of pull-ups, thousands of push-ups, because I'm not allowing myself to become civilized.
01:29:59.000The worst thing that can happen to a man is to become civilized.
01:30:01.000You lose that fucking fight, you lose that, why the fuck am I doing this shit?
01:32:18.000And you're not eating, you're not sleeping, so I always would put myself, I would immerse myself in shit like that.
01:32:24.000Even, I would climb the ladder, and I would intentionally fall back down that motherfucker to say, alright man, getting soft dude, getting soft.
01:32:37.000Did you find resistance from that amongst other guys that didn't like that you were making them uncomfortable?
01:32:43.000Because that is something that people, there's a natural instinct that people have when someone's working harder than them to somehow or another diminish that person.
01:32:51.000Well, I know that a lot of guys don't like me for a lot of reasons.
01:34:35.000And that's one of the things that I've gotten from paying attention to you, is that what you're preaching, what you're talking about, is finding yourself through struggle.
01:36:37.000Don't you think that your happiness is probably elevated by The amount of pain that you've gone through 100% so the amount of suffering that you understand the amount of pain that you've gone through Makes you appreciate the happiness and the beautiful moments with much more intensity.
01:36:55.000That's what weak people miss about my story Weak people hear this soft kid.
01:37:02.000You're missing the fucking story You're not listening to the story man Look what I overcame.
01:37:10.000If that doesn't put some badge of honor tattooed in your fucking brain for the rest of your life that you can die today talking to Joe Rogan, you're missing the story, man.
01:40:16.000If I die now, if I die at 80, if I die at 90, 100, I want to look at myself and say, proud of myself.
01:40:21.000Don't you think that also, like what we're saying, that because you've gone through so much struggle, you appreciate happiness, true happiness?
01:40:28.000Do you think that you appreciate discipline because you weren't disciplined?
01:40:32.000Do you think you appreciate the hard work you put in because you used to be weak?
01:40:38.000I never had, and the crazy thing about what, you know, you say that, I didn't have a motherfucker come wake me up at 3 o'clock in the fucking morning and say, hey, you gotta get your shit in.
01:42:09.000Well, listen, I guarantee you've already done that.
01:42:11.000What you experienced from watching that television show and what got you out the door, what got you to sort of take the first steps to change your life, what you experienced by watching Rocky, those moments of inspiration, those are critical for people.
01:42:27.000They need to know that someone's done something, that someone's done something that's greater than what they could imagine themselves doing, and they want to take a Step towards trying to be better that that that inspiration is gigantic and sometimes it comes across as corny You know people read it too much of it online it becomes It drowns out you lose that the meaning gets lost I mean there's and there's a lot of posers There's a lot of people are out there that are they're pretending that they're trying to offer up inspiration or a true
01:42:57.000honest account of their experiences but really what they're trying to do is say something that's gonna get likes and Right.
01:43:03.000You know, they're trying to say things that they think people are going to go, yeah, double high five.
01:46:11.000I'm not going back through that shit, man.
01:46:13.000I'm not going back through the suffering and shit that it took to become who I am today.
01:46:17.000So I'm slowly trying to build this brand to the point where I can slowly hopefully make people from motivated to driven because motivation is crap.
01:47:22.000We've all seen motivational things that are bullshit.
01:47:25.000We've all talked to people that are talking, and you realize there's nothing really...
01:47:29.000That they're not really connected to their words.
01:47:32.000Their words are just a bunch of words they've pieced together because they sound like something that someone who's enlightened on the subject would say.
01:48:13.000Give me a backpack a fucking ground to sleep on and a pull-up bar and a fucking some running shoes and a subway sandwich or some shit and I'm fucking straight.
01:48:27.000I can watch the piece of grass grow for 20 years because I know that this is how you get somewhere in life by being that monk-like mentality And being able to watch something grow very calmly, patiently.
01:52:23.000And they say the car can go 130. That governor stops the car at 91. And you're driving thinking, man, I want to fucking floor it, but I can't go any faster.
01:52:34.000The second we feel pain, discomfort, suffering, all those words that we hate to say because we have this happy, peaceful world we live in now, we stop.
01:52:45.000And if you can get through these different barriers and gain 5%, 2%, 3%, that 40% becomes 60. That 60% becomes 70, 80, and 90. And then you'll hopefully one day near 100. I don't know many people who probably add 100. I mean,
01:53:00.000we think we're there, but there's so much more.