The Art of Manliness - #279： Why Exercising in a Group Is the Best Medicine For Vets (and Civilians)

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast in recent years

00:00:19.360 several new veterans organizations have popped up to help our men and women in uniform transition

00:00:23.300 from the service to civilian life and instead of providing a place where veterans can get

00:00:27.280 together to drink these new organizations are looking to offer veterans a sense of meaning and

00:00:31.220 mission that they often lose after they hang up their uniform my guest today is head of one of

00:00:35.800 these new organizations his name is jj pinter and he's the deputy director of team red white and blue

00:00:40.500 a veterans organization with the goal of getting vets and civilians together to work out today on

00:00:45.780 the show jj and i discuss the issues facing vets that team rwb is trying to resolve such as getting

00:00:50.820 them reintegrated back in the community and staving off feelings of depression we then discuss why

00:00:55.920 team rwb decided to make fitness their primary focus and why exercising with other people is

00:01:01.080 one of the best remedies to melancholy and malaise finally jj and i talk about why it's so important

00:01:06.500 for civilians to interact and connect with our vets and how they can do so through team rwb great show

00:01:11.980 after it's over check out the show notes at aom.is slash team rwb where you can find links to resources

00:01:18.360 we can delve deeper into this topic jj pinter welcome to the show well thanks for having me

00:01:32.800 brett so you're uh part of a board of a veterans organization called team rwb and uh team rwb it's

00:01:41.400 a veterans organization that's not like other veterans organizations can you tell us a little

00:01:46.040 bit how it got started and what you all do that's different from other veterans organizations that

00:01:51.500 are out there yeah for sure brad i'd be happy to and um thanks for having me yeah our organization

00:01:57.240 is a little bit different and it's different in a couple ways but i guess i'll maybe start with the

00:02:01.820 organization how it got going our organization was founded by someone named mike erwin and he and i

00:02:08.300 actually served together when we were in the army but he was at grad school at the university of

00:02:13.300 michigan and was fairly recently off a deployment from afghanistan and just i think was having kind

00:02:17.940 of a rough time with with that integration and he looked around and there was a tremendous amount of 0.82

00:02:25.500 support for veterans but it all felt very kind of episodic and i think that he felt that maybe it was

00:02:33.640 anecdotal that there was no kind of like long-term support for veterans in the community ways for

00:02:39.280 veterans to get involved in the community other than maybe some of the traditional vso's that

00:02:42.940 everyone knows about and so that sparked some reflection from him and he said well i'm going

00:02:47.400 to start my own non-profit and i'm going to start my own organization it's going to be all about kind

00:02:52.180 of building relationships in the community and it's going to be focused on physical fitness and that's

00:02:57.520 going to be the way that we're going to do it and the organization started back in 2010

00:03:01.540 it was initially kind of an advocacy organization like building matching people up and we quickly moved away

00:03:08.260 from that model and so okay it started back in 2010 so you guys do this uh fitness thing that's one

00:03:13.380 of the things but why do that i mean what is it that the whole fitness thing getting veterans together

00:03:18.200 to exercise together what need is that feeling that veterans aren't getting another organization

00:03:24.740 yeah you you've kind of hit on it the dirty secret of our organization is that a lot of people think

00:03:30.020 that we're kind of a fitness organization or a running organization or whatever it is and that's not

00:03:34.840 really what we do what we do our organization is connect veterans to their community our mission

00:03:40.660 is to enrich lives of america's veterans through physical and social activity the the physical

00:03:45.460 fitness is just the delivery mechanism that's what we use to to make connections to their community

00:03:51.840 for veterans you know our fundamental belief as an organization is there there's a lot of kind of

00:03:58.240 negative outcomes that people hear about in the veterans space there's suicide and homelessness

00:04:01.900 and underemployment and drug and alcohol abuse and there's there's a bunch of bad outcomes and so

00:04:06.080 if you have genuine relationships and if you have you know a good connection to your community you don't

00:04:10.660 get to a lot of those negative outcomes and the way we do that is through like the delivery mechanism is

00:04:16.580 is physical fitness and there's um you highlight research um on the site that there's benefits of

00:04:22.600 exercising getting people together moving together uh what is it about exercising together that actually

00:04:28.820 helps these veterans help with issues of ptsd depression and things like that yeah it's it's a

00:04:35.220 it's got a multiplicative effect i think which is what is great about it i mean i i think at this point

00:04:40.340 there's nobody who kind of disputes the fact that exercise is good for you right i mean it's good for

00:04:46.160 physical health and mental health and stress relief and i mean nobody disputes that but the thing that

00:04:53.320 the group exercise does we always like to say kind of inside the organization that that may be short

00:04:59.980 of alcohol that that sweating together is the best social lubricant that you can find it just it's a

00:05:04.620 tremendous way to break down barriers and to build relationships i mean look at look at functional

00:05:08.760 fitness it's a perfect example the exercises that are you know the actual exercise is is nothing new i

00:05:15.240 mean my high school football coach we were doing those same things 20 years ago but there's that's been

00:05:20.980 packaged up in a way that that builds these really strong tight-knit communities and you know we're

00:05:25.560 tribal animals at the end you know the way our society is changing we don't have kind of access to

00:05:29.940 the community like we used to and and functional fitness has found a way to kind of like package

00:05:34.340 that up in a way that's really appealing to people and i think that's one of the reasons why you're

00:05:37.560 seeing it be so popular right that's the secret sauce getting people together yeah there's group

00:05:42.860 there's there's shared hardness and group accountability and all of these great things and and veterans

00:05:47.080 experience that kind of stuff in the military right and then you get out of the military and

00:05:51.840 it's not there so much so looking for it somewhere else or you can you know have a tough time with

00:05:57.920 your adjustment and not right so i mean on this on your website um you mentioned earlier in the

00:06:03.600 podcast that you know one of your big goals is getting veterans integrated back into their community

00:06:09.340 when they return from service you had a statistic on your website saying that a lot of veterans

00:06:16.000 when they come home from combat duty they don't return to their hometown uh why do so few returning

00:06:23.240 vets go back to their hometown when they return from service yeah that that's a good question and i mean

00:06:28.060 i think that i could probably answer that anecdotally a little bit there's been some some research we

00:06:32.440 could probably go and point to in the notes maybe but i i think a lot of it is less about maybe veterans

00:06:38.620 and more about just kind of social mobility in our society you know a lot of veterans get out of the

00:06:43.260 military and they go to school or they're trying to find a job and you know a lot of veterans come

00:06:48.760 from if you look at where veterans come from they come from small rural towns and they come from the

00:06:52.420 inner city and i think in the places where they can go to school or where there's economic opportunity

00:06:56.260 i think that you know i don't want to to come off as being an expert to be like quoting research

00:07:00.700 here but i i think that that's largely why they don't end up in the places um kind of from which

00:07:06.360 they came well so going back to this this physical fitness aspect so what what do you guys do at

00:07:10.140 team rwb what are organizations or chapters of team rwb doing together is it crossfit is it running

00:07:17.800 what what sort of things are you guys doing yeah that's one of the things that's really cool about

00:07:21.020 organizations so we're in about 206 cities right now and our chapters are all volunteer led and we

00:07:26.700 try to have just enough structure so there's kind of a minimum experience that a member would have

00:07:31.040 but we want the chapters to really take on the personalities of the local leaders and the

00:07:35.820 communities so it could be everything from you know functional fitness crossfit yoga or kind of

00:07:40.780 some of our running or kind of some of our core activities but i mean skiing and surfing and stand

00:07:46.720 up paddle boarding and we're really the local leaders want to do it's a very kind of bottom-up

00:07:52.560 grassroots approach from our end and we just try to to take really good ideas and to try to resource

00:07:58.880 them and remove roadblocks and obstacles and and let the chapters really be organic and and do what

00:08:04.240 works for them locally so all sorts of stuff i mean but but it's pretty high volume brett i mean

00:08:09.240 we're probably going to do about post about 35 000 events this year we're probably going to touch

00:08:13.480 about a quarter million people in those events so there's a lot going on yeah that's amazing

00:08:18.900 another thing that makes team rwb unique from other veterans organizations is that civilians

00:08:24.240 can be a part of the organization why was that an important factor for you guys of getting civilians

00:08:32.060 involved in what is mainly a veterans organization yeah it's interesting you say that because we were

00:08:38.760 one of the first to really do this on kind of a wholesale way and it was actually kind of a

00:08:43.300 controversial thing kind of like in the veteran community when we did it but we just felt really

00:08:48.540 strongly that if we're trying to connect veterans to their community what better way to do that than to

00:08:53.880 have supportive members of the community as part of our organization and you know we started that from

00:08:59.300 the beginning and it's it's been really good for us you know there's this whole concept of a of a

00:09:04.860 civil military divide which you know you could have a whole podcast just talking about that but

00:09:08.700 essentially the military is kind of shrinking over time and becoming more and more of a family affair

00:09:13.100 and there's just like this increasing separation between members of the military general population and

00:09:17.540 you know it's it's a lot some people would say and i think i would include myself in that but that's a pretty

00:09:22.500 dangerous thing for our for our democracy and that this is one of the ways that we're trying to get

00:09:28.620 at that because the general public is really tremendously supportive of the military and i think

00:09:33.720 just maybe a lot of times don't know how to get involved or how to be supportive and you know you could

00:09:39.300 just come be part of our organization and there's no labels like everybody's just a member so i can see

00:09:43.600 how this would help veterans getting because it helps you know having civilians evolve helps them get

00:09:48.240 back integrated back into the community how does it help civilians i think you kind of alluded to it

00:09:53.080 i guess it helps civilians kind of understand where veterans are coming from and the problems they might

00:09:57.560 have or just see that they're just like regular people just like you are yeah i mean i think there's

00:10:02.060 a couple ways there is kind of the member-to-member interaction that you're referencing there brett where

00:10:07.260 it is it just it gives an opportunity for members of the community to to get to know veterans and to

00:10:13.400 realize that guess what like veterans are no different than anybody else like we came from the exact same

00:10:17.880 places that that the rest of our society came to and there's just there's kind of less and less

00:10:22.620 opportunity to do that i mean i i think the number now is something like four tenths of one percent of

00:10:28.840 the american population you know are serving in the military right now it's just a tremendously small

00:10:33.900 number so there's yeah and especially depending on what communities you live in have an opportunity

00:10:38.780 to spend any time around someone who's in the military there's that aspect but then the other thing

00:10:43.140 that i think is more powerful is that our chapters all being volunteer led a good percentage of the

00:10:49.980 leaders in our chapters are our civilians so a good percentage and some of our really really great

00:10:56.720 leaders in a veteran service organization are not veterans and i think that that's awesome and

00:11:01.940 besides the physical fitness thing one thing that team rwb does is brings veterans and civilians

00:11:07.280 together to do community service uh so what sort of projects have your chapters worked on yeah that's

00:11:13.080 also a really interesting question i mean a lot of it i think last year we did something like 3500

00:11:19.260 community service events around the country but there's there's like two components to it there is

00:11:24.800 there is the traditional community service that you would think about and for our organization we try

00:11:31.340 to stay vectored in on things that are focused on our missions so i'm kind of on veterans issues or

00:11:36.480 physical fitness issues so that might be everything from you know volunteering at the special olympics

00:11:40.780 throwing an event at the special olympics or working on a habitat for humanity build or doing like a you

00:11:45.140 know a veteran cemetery cleanup or whatever resonates in the community like that's a really important

00:11:50.020 part of it but another really critical part is that you know we we would look at being a volunteer

00:11:56.100 leader in our organization as serving the community as well so that's another really critical way that

00:12:02.460 people can kind of serve the community right and i imagine the uh the community service aspect

00:12:07.020 um is an important part of helping veterans find their bearings when they return home to civilian life

00:12:12.680 because as a as a as a soldier they had a mission to solve but when they get home they might not have

00:12:18.600 that sense of mission anymore and it leaves them feeling a little lost yeah it's interesting so i

00:12:23.260 actually tell you a kind of a funny story that i didn't cover when i was talking about the beginning of

00:12:28.000 the organization so our organization initially started as kind of a one-on-one advocacy model

00:12:33.260 where we wanted to pair up wounded veterans with another veteran who is it who would be kind of an

00:12:38.620 advocate for them and we were the problem we ran into is that we had a tremendous amount of of not only

00:12:45.900 veterans but members of the community signing up to help and we couldn't find anyone to actually take

00:12:50.880 part in our in our programs you know we had all these people who wanted to sign up to be advocates or to sign

00:12:57.040 up to be mentors and nobody to actually be mentored or be advocated you know following that we worked with

00:13:02.820 kind of a major consulting company to do to kind of really tighten down our business model and they did a bunch

00:13:07.960 of kind of survey work for us and this isn't unique to our organization but there's a tremendous

00:13:13.160 sense or or desire to come in continue service or serving for veterans when they leave the military

00:13:20.060 and this is a i think a way that they can do that you can continue to serve in your community you know

00:13:26.140 community service to be perfectly honest right that wasn't something that we really wanted to be

00:13:29.320 involved in as an organization we just kind of said you know what let's stick to our mission

00:13:34.120 and there's other great organizations that that do community service and we can just pair up with one

00:13:39.420 of them but there was such a rush and like a groundswell from our members saying like we want to do

00:13:44.160 community service we want to do community service that we finally just kind of embraced it and put our

00:13:48.060 arms around it and we're doing a ton of it now right we uh we had the author of charlie mike on the

00:13:54.320 podcast a couple months ago talking about some of these other veterans organizations that are more

00:13:57.960 service oriented yeah he just talked about yeah a lot of the complaints of veterans have is like

00:14:02.320 they're they're appreciative of the support but like they don't want to feel like they're a victim

00:14:05.660 or like they need you know to be coddled they want they're these guys are soldiers they want to they

00:14:09.620 want to they want to help they want to serve they want to you know do the thing that they they're

00:14:13.240 trained to do yeah i mean when i look at and maybe this is like maybe a little bit too soon right now

00:14:18.760 but i think most people would say that there's probably when you look at like the national level

00:14:23.280 regional level or even your local level i think most people would say that there's probably not

00:14:27.000 enough good leadership in america and you can either lament that or what we would say especially

00:14:32.940 to to veterans is you can be part of the solution here like you know go back and look at the greatest

00:14:38.240 generation these folks grew up in the great depression they went off and won world war ii in

00:14:42.220 korea like fought and then they came back and became kind of titans of industry in our country and

00:14:46.240 there's no reason that our generation of veterans can't do that exact same thing and so we're very

00:14:51.000 adamant about like veterans aren't victim and go be involved in your community like be a leader in

00:14:56.240 our organization if you don't want to do that get on your local school board coach you sports be a

00:15:00.660 deacon in your church like volunteer for big brothers big sisters and and people are doing it because

00:15:05.740 there's just the desire to serve and you know we just we just fundamentally reject that kind of

00:15:10.660 victimization and try to take a different approach to it and speaking of leadership um you all also

00:15:17.380 you guys wear a lot of hats you do the fitness component you do the community service component

00:15:21.180 but you also do leadership development uh within team rwb that's a big component so what's the team

00:15:27.300 rwb approach to leadership development is it taking military leadership principles and showing veterans

00:15:32.640 and civilians how to apply them to civilian life or is it something else no it actually couldn't be any

00:15:37.080 farther from taking military leadership principles the way it started was our kind of the bread and

00:15:43.100 of our organization are our chapters that's that's where we the meat of what we do happen so that's

00:15:49.060 where we connect veterans their community that's where the physical fitness happens but you know

00:15:54.300 we're a volunteer-led organization and we recognized early on that if we were going to grow and become

00:15:58.280 what we know the organization can become we've got to have a pipeline of really good volunteer leaders

00:16:04.000 to run these chapters and so from there we started a leadership development program a few years ago and it's

00:16:10.900 one of our two core programs now and we're trying to to you know full disclosure we want to grow leaders

00:16:16.440 to help grow our chapters but we also want to make our communities better in our and to make our members

00:16:22.120 better so we've made some tremendous investments in our leadership development program for those

00:16:27.800 reasons and i guess to maybe answer your question more specifically about the content no our it's all

00:16:33.840 self-developed and it's all we kind of we try to take a need space kind of reverse engineer approach to this

00:16:38.940 and it's very unmilitary in its approach our leadership development is all about building genuine

00:16:46.360 and we do that through we try to develop leaders that are empathetic and authentic and loyal

00:16:52.520 and that can can like the the building block is these genuine relationships in our organization

00:16:57.860 and so most of it is self-developed content but we we do work with a couple other kind of well-known

00:17:03.220 parties and have plucked out things from simon sinek and brene brown to name kind of two of the

00:17:08.480 biggest ones that most people may have heard of but it's yeah it's it's all kind of self-developed

00:17:13.480 internally and how can people get involved or take part in the leadership development is just is it just

00:17:17.900 becoming a part of the team rwb organization and then signing up for a course is it online is it you

00:17:23.500 get together what yeah and you join the organization and just show up and come out to an event and then

00:17:28.020 really it just is you raising your hand and saying i want to be a leader in the organization and then

00:17:32.660 that kind of starts you getting in the pipeline of being a leader and it's not it's not episodic it's

00:17:38.860 it's you know this is kind of ever evolving and it's a big focus of ours for 2017 but we have

00:17:43.640 kind of a leader experience that's it's a combination of kind of our own self-developed

00:17:49.160 e-learning platform with different modules and experiential leadership kind of doing things

00:17:53.160 in person at eagle leader academies and athletic camps and it'll kind of get you into the pipeline

00:17:59.500 which is a multi-year experience well jj can you give us any specific examples of a veteran or

00:18:04.780 veterans life who was transformed by team rwb you know that's a uh i i think just out of out of maybe

00:18:12.860 safety i won't answer that specifically because that's i think that's kind of like picking your kids

00:18:17.100 but what i would say is that on our website we have kind of a weekly blog and our members kind of

00:18:22.240 like write in and write their own blogs about how our organization has changed their life and there's

00:18:27.420 a new one every saturday we call it a saturday member sub outline and i would just say to for

00:18:32.900 anyone to kind of just go through and scroll through those if they like and there are more than you want

00:18:37.440 to read and how many members are a part of team rwb now i mean it started in 2010 you've mentioned you

00:18:42.440 there's like hundreds of thousands of events you're doing so how many people are in this thing yeah so

00:18:46.300 currently we have about 110 000 members and about 60 to 65 percent of those are veterans and the rest are not

00:18:52.220 and if you're a civilian or a veteran you want to get involved with team rwb uh how do they find out

00:18:58.380 if there's a chapter near them hey so you could just go to our website it's team rwb.org and there's

00:19:03.220 a chapter locator on there and you can go see it's it's got all the fancy dancy stuff where it'll

00:19:07.720 geolocate you and show you the chapters that are around you and most everywhere that you could live

00:19:13.320 in america we have a chapter within reasonable distance to you we're in every kind of major metropolitan

00:19:17.360 area and you can do that and then you can go on and join the team and someone from your local

00:19:22.440 chapter will reach out to you within 48 hours and welcome you and if there isn't one i mean can a

00:19:27.020 civilian start a chapter if they wanted to what's the process there yeah absolutely any anyone can

00:19:31.760 start a chapter um you know if someone wants to be a leader then we're going to let them be a leader

00:19:35.700 and you know we don't i think for events you would probably not recognize who is in the military and

00:19:42.780 who wasn't because we try to make it a very kind of welcoming and inclusive experience for everybody

00:19:46.840 but yeah absolutely there's a there's a start a chapter link on our website you can go you can go

00:19:52.140 put in an application to start a chapter and jj what's the future of team rwb is it just continuing

00:19:57.460 more the same and just expanding it out or do you have is there other are you guys looking to look

00:20:02.460 get into other venues to help veterans connect with their community no i think that we feel really

00:20:07.540 good about our mission and you know we've done a bunch of research that really like we feel really

00:20:12.600 good about the efficacy of it so there's not going to be any fundamental shifts in what we do i think

00:20:19.220 what you're going to see is two things we want to do it kind of we want to do more of it so in more

00:20:23.240 places and we want to do it better in the places we currently are and then you're going to see just an

00:20:27.900 increased focus in leadership development because you know we know that we have to grow

00:20:32.040 internally the leaders that we're going to need to grow the organization over the next 10 or 20 years

00:20:35.800 very good well hey jj pinter thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure

00:20:39.180 thanks brad i really appreciate it my guest today was jj pinter he's the deputy director of team rwb you

00:20:44.220 can find more information about that and get involved at team rwb.org also check out our show notes at

00:20:50.520 aom.is team rwb where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic

00:20:55.340 well that wraps up another edition of the arc of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:21:07.660 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at art of manliness.com as always

00:21:11.640 appreciate your support and one way you can do that is give us a review on itunes or stitcher

00:21:15.040 takes less than a minute really helps out a lot until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay

00:21:19.940 manly

The Art of Manliness - February 16, 2017

#279： Why Exercising in a Group Is the Best Medicine For Vets (and Civilians)

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript