The Peter Attia Drive - #292 ‒ Rucking： benefits, gear, FAQs, and the journey from Special Forces to founding GORUCK

00:00:00.000 Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Atiyah. This podcast,

00:00:16.540 my website, and my weekly newsletter all focus on the goal of translating the science of longevity

00:00:21.520 into something accessible for everyone. Our goal is to provide the best content in health and

00:00:26.740 wellness, and we've established a great team of analysts to make this happen. It is extremely

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00:00:36.960 is made entirely possible by our members, and in return, we offer exclusive member-only content

00:00:42.700 and benefits above and beyond what is available for free. If you want to take your knowledge of

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00:00:53.200 of the subscription. If you want to learn more about the benefits of our premium membership,

00:00:58.020 head over to peteratiyahmd.com forward slash subscribe. My guest this week is Jason McCarthy.

00:01:07.300 Jason served in the U.S. Special Forces from 2003 to 2008, serving in Iraq in 2007, where he was awarded

00:01:14.160 a Bronze Star and an Army Commendation Medal, as well as serving in Europe and West Africa in 2008.

00:01:20.300 Jason currently serves on the board of directors for the Green Beret Foundation. He is also the

00:01:26.580 founder of GoRuck, which makes rucking equipment, and if you've been listening to this podcast at

00:01:31.040 all lately or followed me on social media over the past couple of years, you probably are aware of how

00:01:35.600 much I enjoy rucking and how much I speak about it. I wanted to have Jason on this podcast to talk a

00:01:40.460 little bit about his story, and Jason is not unique or alone in someone who has trained extensively

00:01:47.880 using rucking. Of course, anybody in the Special Forces has done that, and I think that's part of

00:01:51.600 the point. It's really how did Jason think about bringing this as something to the masses. We'll

00:01:57.360 talk a lot about Jason's background and his decision to join the military after 9-11. We talk about the

00:02:02.120 training in the Special Forces and how rucking has been used for many years in the military, and how

00:02:08.820 frankly brutal some of the rucking training sessions are, and how when Jason left the military and

00:02:14.420 kind of felt a little directionless, this idea of creating a company that does what GoRuck now does

00:02:20.340 became part of his salvation. So from there, we answer some of the more frequently asked questions

00:02:25.260 about rucking, and this includes whether or not you need a special rucksack or whether you can just

00:02:29.460 use a backpack, the difference between a rucksack and a weight vest, how to think about how much weight

00:02:34.380 to use, whether you should use a chest strap or a hip belt, differences in types of footwear and what

00:02:39.920 the pros and cons are around those things, common injuries and how to avoid them, and the frequency

00:02:44.940 that you should be doing it when you're starting out, and how to train for longer rucking events.

00:02:49.960 So in many ways, this is both a story of Jason and rucking, but it's also a very practical how-to

00:02:55.880 guide, and I've wanted to do this for a long time now because I get so many questions about rucking,

00:03:01.680 and first of all, I don't consider myself an expert at all, and secondly, I thought it would be really

00:03:05.520 great to have it all in one place, and my clear hope at the end of this is that everybody decides

00:03:11.780 to do some form of rucking at least once in a while. So without further delay, please enjoy my

00:03:18.300 conversation with Jason McCarthy. Jason, thanks so much for making time. I know you're here in Austin

00:03:28.440 for some awesome stuff that maybe we'll get to, but always great to be with you in person again.

00:03:32.720 Thanks for having me out to your podcast studio.

00:03:34.760 So people who listen to this podcast, especially for the past year or two years now, have heard

00:03:40.520 me talk about rucking a lot, and I point back a lot to you and to Michael Easter. Of course,

00:03:47.000 you and Michael are friends. In fact, I met you through Michael. So clearly, we're going to talk

00:03:51.300 a lot about rucking today, but I think for people to kind of understand what it is and all of the

00:03:57.320 how-tos, I mean, I've got a list of all these questions that I know you're so facile in. I think maybe

00:04:03.080 to put in context kind of your broader mission, it makes sense a little bit to kind of understand

00:04:08.960 your journey. So maybe we can start with some of that.

00:04:12.680 Let's start. Where should we go?

00:04:14.940 All right. So you grew up in Florida. You have a military background. Let's talk about how you

00:04:19.040 found your way there and what we're doing in high school and college that ultimately led to that.

00:04:23.440 Yeah. So I was born in Ohio. My mom was really young when she had me. We moved down to Gainesville,

00:04:27.440 Florida. I was the unofficial mascot for the women's tennis team. Go Gators. And I grew up like

00:04:33.580 that, bounced around with my mom. And at that time, the military was not really a thing. My

00:04:40.220 grandfather had fought in Korea. He was an artillery officer, never talked about it. My uncle was a

00:04:46.240 helicopter pilot, talked about it a little bit, but I didn't see him that much. And so this was not

00:04:51.120 something that was top of mind for me at all. I mean, the eighties was, you know, Wall Street and

00:04:56.560 Gordon Gekko and all of that kind of stuff. And how old was your mom when she had you?

00:05:01.260 My mom was 18 and five days old when she had me. Wow.

00:05:04.680 So very young. That's a hell of a way to grow up. I became very close with my mother

00:05:08.720 and just kind of went around with her everywhere.

00:05:11.800 Was your dad in the picture?

00:05:13.120 My dad was and still very much is. Yeah. So he's still in Ohio. Those are still kind of my roots.

00:05:17.580 Both sets of grandparents were in Ohio. They lived a mile away.

00:05:20.680 I mean, my parents were in high school together. And so Ohio was always this kind of grounding

00:05:25.520 thing, but it was because of my grandparents mostly. I mean, my dad, yes. My mom would go

00:05:31.140 back. We'd visit Ohio, but it was because my grandparents and they had an extraordinary

00:05:35.200 amount of influence on my life. So in college, what did you want to do?

00:05:40.840 Yeah. So, I mean, just to give you the years, I mean, I was in Jacksonville, Florida. I went to

00:05:44.960 the Bowles school. It's an athletic school. It's very competitive. It was really, really hard. It was

00:05:50.240 the hardest thing I've ever done was high school. You don't know who you are yet. The school was

00:05:54.500 really hard. The English department just kicked my butt. It's coming at you. I have eight classes.

00:06:00.740 And I'd rather go back to the special forces qualification course than go back and do a

00:06:05.020 year of English at Bowles. But I played tennis. I played a little basketball. And so I was always

00:06:11.480 into sports growing up and being really active. And I didn't know what I was going to do with my life

00:06:17.500 though. I wasn't good enough to go to a big school and play tennis. I played D3 tennis at Emory in

00:06:23.420 Atlanta. And that was great. That was a great way for me to kind of focus.

00:06:27.980 What did you study?

00:06:29.000 I studied economics and art history. My grandmothers were both docents at the Dayton Art Institute in

00:06:34.980 Ohio. And that was just kind of an important part of how I grew up in a lot of art museums in America

00:06:40.580 and in the world. And so I went to college and then I graduated in May of 2001. I did well in

00:06:47.720 college. I finally figured out the school stuff. And it turns out that if you don't live an hour

00:06:53.080 from school and you're able to kind of focus a little bit more and there weren't these kind of

00:06:57.300 distractions as much in life. Oddly, I was just too focused in college, frankly. And so I played

00:07:03.200 tennis. I did well there. I did well in school. And that's what college was for me. And I remember

00:07:08.400 applying to these places that people told me I should apply to. Pick your bank, apply to them.

00:07:14.420 Pick your consulting firm, apply to them. I didn't know what any of that was, which I don't think most

00:07:20.160 people do at 22. What do you do at Goldman Sachs if you're 22? What do you do at McKinsey if you're

00:07:25.180 22? Well, importantly, you pay your dues. And so you have to figure out how to get into these larger

00:07:30.820 organizations. And I didn't know how to do that yet. And so I went and traveled around Central America

00:07:37.480 and backpacked a little bit and then came back and was like, man, I got to get a job. I got to do

00:07:42.120 something. So I started working at this marketing firm and I was working at a call center on 9-11

00:07:47.140 in Daytona Beach, literally across the street from the racetrack. And that was just the day that

00:07:53.400 anybody that was alive remembers exactly where they were on 9-11. And for me, it was just this

00:07:59.040 enormous kind of sense of sadness and anger that led to rage. And at 22 years old, military-age male

00:08:07.860 with no dependents, no attachments, I mean, I felt compelled to serve our country. And that was a

00:08:13.940 really important thing for me. Now, saying that you want to serve our country and watching NVGs,

00:08:21.920 the night vision goggles, and everything's in green on CNN and it's Operation Anaconda. And it's,

00:08:26.940 yeah, I want to go do that. I want to be that. That's a lot different than the process of actually

00:08:32.020 signing up to go fight in a time of war. I looked at all other kinds of places, the CIA, the FBI,

00:08:39.520 the whole alphabet soup universe went and started looking all those. And you know what? Rightfully

00:08:44.500 so. Those places take a long time to get in. The application process is long. And even on the

00:08:50.160 military, I mean, I'd just gone to college, so I have this big, enormous brain. And I'm so valuable

00:08:54.960 and smart. And yeah, that's not how it works. But everybody wanted to serve our country at that

00:09:01.460 time. It wasn't something you just walked up and said, oh, I'm going to be an officer and pick your

00:09:05.680 branch. There was a line a mile long of people, young people that wanted to serve our country

00:09:10.560 because of what happened at 9-11. So without even a huge call to service, there was this call to

00:09:16.000 service. And I remember reading, by now it's 2003, and I started working at a bank in DC,

00:09:22.700 and I'm still kind of applying to places. It keeps not clicking.

00:09:26.900 What's happening in that year and a half between 9-11 and early 2003?

00:09:30.440 So I felt really down in Daytona Beach and Jacksonville Beach where I was, I just felt

00:09:35.500 really far away from what was going on. And so I had some friends that were in New York. I went and

00:09:42.040 visited them in New York and it just felt very communal in a very positive way. I mean, it was nice

00:09:47.640 to be around parents and loved ones in Florida, but Ground Zero was in New York and the Pentagon

00:09:52.700 was in DC. And it just felt like that's where the decisions were being made. It felt like that was

00:09:58.220 just such an important place at that time. And I wanted to see it. I went to New York in October

00:10:05.300 of 2001. I mean, you can smell it still. Anywhere you were, you could smell it. And I can smell it

00:10:11.400 sitting here in your office right now. I know what that smells like. And God bless the people

00:10:16.440 that worked through that. I mean, they just day after day, they just pulled bodies out of the

00:10:20.940 rubble. I still get goosebumps when I think about the amount of sacrifice and the service that went

00:10:26.360 into that day and then to the handoff to the military. And the military is kind of a family

00:10:32.340 business. You're best served if you're familiar with what that looks like.

00:10:38.040 Now, at the time, late 01 and most of 02, presumably anybody could walk into a recruiting

00:10:44.640 office and join the Marines or join the Army or things like that. So not necessarily special forces.

00:10:49.400 Was that something you were thinking of or were you still at that point thinking, no,

00:10:52.140 I want to be in the CIA? Johnny Michael Spann died. He was the first casualty of the war.

00:10:57.080 And he was in the ground branch or the paramilitary side of the CIA. Now, he had come over from the

00:11:04.380 Marines and he was chosen for that mission. This was the John Walker Lind prison uprising where

00:11:09.440 Mike Spann died. And he had a special language skills while he was given that mission. They

00:11:16.520 needed to kind of loosen the reins on some of the press around 9-11 at that time for various reasons.

00:11:21.280 People wanted to know what was going on. And his story was, in fact, a very inspirational one for me

00:11:26.320 personally. And it's like, that's what I want to do. I want to be on the tip of the spear serving

00:11:32.180 our country like that. And so that led me down the path of the CIA. It's a long process. I mean,

00:11:37.900 I went through almost all of it. And I mean, I was 22 years old. I'm a very active person. And

00:11:43.780 I wanted to join the paramilitary side of the CIA. The CIA does not take people and turn them into

00:11:49.960 soldiers. It takes very, very well-trained, highly experienced soldiers, and it plugs them in to

00:11:56.300 kind of a different mission set. And I didn't know any of that. So there was this guy that was

00:12:01.220 interviewing me. And finally, you get to one-on-ones, and there's more of those, and there's

00:12:04.640 lots of those. You know, one of the office parks in Northern Virginia, and he looked at me and he

00:12:08.860 was like, look, we don't train. I kept asking about this. How do I get this? He's like, we don't train

00:12:14.140 people off the street to go do this. You need to go join the special forces, or you need to do something

00:12:18.980 like that inside of the military first, and then come and work with us. And I'm like, okay, finally,

00:12:23.320 a year later, here we go. We have our answer. And so I really doubled down on the officer route,

00:12:27.780 again, because I felt like that's what I should be doing.

00:12:30.980 And just for folks listening, officer route, because you have a college degree,

00:12:34.360 rather the enlisted route for people, say, just doing this right out of high school.

00:12:38.180 Correct. And there's far fewer numbers of officers. Those numbers are determined by Congress.

00:12:43.400 Enlisted ranks, they can grow very quickly. And when you're fighting a war, you need to grow

00:12:46.520 enlisted ranks very quickly. And so we were. And so fast forward, and now there's the buildup to Iraq.

00:12:51.660 I know what it felt like to live in America at that time. It started to become very divisive

00:12:56.320 and all of that, which put some strain on my process, my thought process. I joined up to go

00:13:02.420 to Afghanistan and fight Al-Qaeda. But ultimately, you don't get to choose. When you're serving,

00:13:08.200 you don't get to choose. And I just remember reading, there was the Generation Kill series that

00:13:13.140 came out in Rolling Stone. And it was written about the recon Marines that took Baghdad and that

00:13:19.520 whole thing. And it was later made into a TV series, movie, and stuff. And that was March

00:13:23.860 of 2003. I'm like, man, these wars are passing me by. Little did I know that they would go on

00:13:29.140 so, so long, but it just felt like I needed to do something. And so I bypassed the officer route.

00:13:36.560 I started talking to the army, and they had this program where you can enlist, and they would

00:13:40.700 guarantee you slots into the schools that comprise the Special Forces Pipeline.

00:13:45.660 The only caveat is you got to keep making it. There's a lot of different schools in that

00:13:50.120 pipeline. And so it starts out with basic training and airborne school, and then a prep course,

00:13:54.480 and then selection, and then another prep course, and then phase two, and phase three, and phase four,

00:13:58.680 and survival school, and language school, and all sorts of stuff. And so you just have to keep

00:14:02.960 making it through. And then they give you that little green beret, and you feel like you're

00:14:06.340 king of the world. And so they basically said, you will be able to rise to the level of your capacity.

00:14:12.160 Yes. And you have to get lucky. I mean, if you get injured, you get recycled. I mean,

00:14:18.520 anything's possible. But yes, part of the calculus is you look at, say, the army, and there's a lot of

00:14:25.080 infantry options. So say you go through basic training to join the infantry. Okay, well,

00:14:30.100 you're infantry qualified. You can serve in the 101st. You go to airborne school. Okay, well,

00:14:34.720 now you can serve in an airborne unit, 82nd Airborne, or whatever the case may be. You can still fight.

00:14:39.920 Fight. And that's what I wanted to do, was I wanted to fight. It's odd, because I was not

00:14:45.080 a kid that grew up. I didn't start fights. I wasn't just fist fighting every day on the

00:14:50.540 playground or anything. I just felt, I mean, in every fiber of my being, I just wanted to fight

00:14:55.040 for our country. Where do you think that came from? If you think about other kids you went to

00:14:59.700 college with who were in the exact same situation, they graduated right before 9-11. Did you talk about

00:15:04.180 this with any of those guys? And who were your friends in college? And did you get the sense that

00:15:07.620 any of them felt so compelled? And if not, why do you think this was sort of unique to you?

00:15:11.260 I have thought about it, and I don't really understand. Out of our high school class,

00:15:17.620 there were two of us that joined the military. My wife would join the CIA later and serve on the

00:15:22.440 front lines in Africa as well. But we were the three. It's a class of 150, 160. We all graduated

00:15:28.020 in 97. We all graduated from college in 01. In college, there was an ROTC program at Emory,

00:15:36.320 which, frankly, I thought was a little bit odd. Now, full story here is my grandfather,

00:15:43.360 both of them kind of revered the military. At the same time, and in our country, they had both

00:15:50.040 kind of worked really hard and been successful and loved our country. And yet, my grandfather,

00:15:56.900 this is something that I don't think he got right, was he had this idea after Black Hawk Down in

00:16:02.340 Mogadishu with Bill Clinton? He was like, nobody should ever serve in this man's military.

00:16:07.180 And I think that that's a very knee-jerk and a very human reaction to say when you don't like

00:16:11.720 someone politically, but you always need people to serve this country, or else everything that we

00:16:16.980 hold dear crumbles. In other words, the need for service should be completely nonpartisan.

00:16:22.260 Amen. It's not just the military. I mean, I felt compelled to fight. I'm a military-age male

00:16:28.340 that's been active my whole life, who's predisposed to want to do hard things and

00:16:32.680 challenges. And that's not more important or better than someone that wants to become a teacher.

00:16:38.280 We need both. And we need to celebrate both and honor both for what they do for us and our kids

00:16:44.400 and our society and our way of life. So I think it took all of the data points in my life that brought

00:16:50.800 me to that point. I really wanted to do something special with my life. It's a scary time. How do

00:16:58.780 you do that? Do you do that by joining company A, B, C, D? The short answer is no, that's a stepping

00:17:04.000 stone to something else. You have to push on life and it's going to push back and you have to learn

00:17:09.400 what matters to you and what doesn't. What are you going to do and what are you refused to do and

00:17:13.680 for what reason? And you have to learn these things the hard way. And everybody's a little bit

00:17:18.080 different. Just my life had brought me to that point. And it just happened to be four months

00:17:23.880 before 9-11 and then 9-11. And then it took me over two years to finally join. This was not an

00:17:30.080 immediate thing. A lot of cowardice baked into that whole process. It was hard. It was really hard.

00:17:35.620 And then keeping it secret from my family, my mom crying on the kitchen counter when I finally told

00:17:42.120 her, like, yep, signed up, joined the army today. Oh, that's awesome. Said no mom ever.

00:17:46.620 Yeah. Right? I mean, Iraq's, the front page news every night, they're showing portraits of soldiers,

00:17:54.480 sailors, Marines who are dying in Iraq. Yep, I'm going to go fight. That's hard.

00:18:00.580 Did your conviction waver by the fall of 2003, less about public sentiment, which I think even by the

00:18:07.840 fall of 2003, public sentiment had not fully shifted on Iraq. But just in terms of your own thinking about,

00:18:14.900 hey, Al Qaeda, based out of Afghanistan, probably half in Pakistan at this point, that's where the

00:18:21.960 fight is. Not sure I understand this Iraq thing. I mean, what was your thinking about that?

00:18:25.960 Personally, I never really understood the buildup to Iraq. I mean, WMDs, I never really got it. But I

00:18:33.380 still knew, and this is something that I now have this litmus test about regret. I think that regret is

00:18:40.940 about the worst thing that you can carry around with you everywhere you go in life. And I think

00:18:46.160 that most of us know when we're going to regret something. We just don't listen to that voice

00:18:52.140 that's inside of our head. And so I knew for a fact, politics be damned, I knew that I would regret

00:18:59.500 it for the rest of my life if I didn't join up and serve our country at that time.

00:19:03.160 That outshone all of the other stuff. And it was hard. It's like you are joining up to go fight.

00:19:09.960 You're not becoming an officer. You're going through this enlisted route to become a special

00:19:15.900 forces soldier, intentionally going to fight on the tip of the spear. And we're about to start,

00:19:21.660 or we have started, a second war on a new front. What wavered was, oh man, did I make the wrong

00:19:28.540 decision? I can probably get out of this and I can probably go try the CIA again. I can probably

00:19:34.620 go cash in some favor from somebody somewhere and get an officer billet and be safer. Being safer

00:19:42.620 doesn't always spare you from regret. And in fact, it's usually just a way to delay what you know you

00:19:48.740 need to do, which is the right thing for you and your path. That was a really, really hard decision.

00:19:53.600 In a lot of ways, it was an extremely selfish decision. But for me, for the rest of my life,

00:20:00.220 I mean, I had to be willing to roll the dice a little bit at that time.

00:20:03.600 Tell folks where Green Berets fit in the hierarchy of the military. I think people are sort of familiar

00:20:08.960 with special forces and people have maybe heard of Navy SEALs and Army Rangers and Delta Special

00:20:15.560 Forces. But I think for most of us, those things are kind of vague. The main difference between Green

00:20:21.380 Berets and the SEALs, the Delta, SEAL Team 6, the Rangers is those are, in essence, strike forces

00:20:30.640 in the Marines. I mean, the Marines take the beaches, they secure the land, and then a bigger

00:20:34.880 force comes in. It is speed and violence of action. They're doing it with other Marines.

00:20:41.000 The classic mission for the Green Berets that people will remember is right after 9-11,

00:20:46.240 a few ODAs, a few operational detachment alphas, A-teams of Green Berets went in to Afghanistan,

00:20:53.700 into the boneyard of the Soviet empire. And instead of fighting as the Soviets did, which is more

00:21:00.320 assaulters, more helicopters, more whatever, instead of just throwing more of our own people at it,

00:21:04.900 we linked up Green Berets, linked up with the Northern Alliance, and fought by, with, and through

00:21:10.540 them in order to defeat the Taliban. And that happened in under three months. And so, that is

00:21:16.760 the sweet spot for what we, in Army Special Forces, Green Berets, are synonymous.

00:21:23.200 How long had they been around? Had they been around since Nam? Had they been around since

00:21:26.060 June of 1952?

00:21:27.820 Okay, so Korea, basically.

00:21:29.660 Yeah, and Vietnam was, a lot of the similar work was done with local indigenous tribes,

00:21:34.760 the Montagnards in Vietnam. Green Berets is in 100 countries right now, and they're working with

00:21:40.200 local forces. If you go to Africa, Green Berets are diplomats. Diplomats working out of the embassy

00:21:46.440 is fine, but who's really controlling that country is the military. So, you need military people to go

00:21:52.080 and be kind of diplomatic with those people, and we do. We train up partner forces, and then we get

00:21:59.400 them to achieve our desired in-state, our mission set. And so, in the case of Afghanistan after 9-11,

00:22:05.820 it was, overthrow the Taliban, and do it with the minimal footprint possible. So, you can send

00:22:11.300 very few Green Berets in, and God bless the Air Force while we're at it, because having air cover,

00:22:16.900 and that's a total game-changer.

00:22:19.620 So, where did you learn the skills that are clearly diplomatic? To be thrown into Afghanistan

00:22:26.160 and realize that you have to now work with the Northern Alliance is very different from saying,

00:22:34.000 hey, this is our show. Our show meaning, like, we're here to do this. Now, it's we're working

00:22:37.780 as partners to do this together. Was that explicitly taught? Was that part of the training,

00:22:43.460 or are they selecting for that as they're weeding people out?

00:22:46.920 So, these were some of my cadre, the guys that were on those teams, you know, Triple Nickel,

00:22:51.440 ODA 555, 595. Those were guys that had just come back and were our cadre. And so, it is part of the

00:22:59.460 selection process. And I think that when you get into, whether it's the military or business or

00:23:05.680 anything, so much is determined by who you serve with, and what are you looking for out of the

00:23:12.400 people. And so, you need this strong culture. And yes, it's very much a part of Special Forces

00:23:18.660 Pipeline. Like, do you play well with others? And then there is a language component. You have

00:23:24.300 to be able to speak foreign language. How long did it take you to learn a foreign language?

00:23:28.860 So, I already spoke German. I passed out of that part of the language component, but that's because

00:23:33.900 I'd also lived in Germany for over a year at that point and studied abroad and done all that, which is

00:23:39.300 part of what you need to be successful. I mean, the culminating exercise of the Special Forces

00:23:45.000 Qualification Course is called Robin Sage. It's a mock war spread out all over North Carolina.

00:23:49.980 We jumped out of an airplane with 125 pounds on a rucksack between our legs, jumping out, and then

00:23:55.560 you land. Hurts. And then we rucked for 18 plus hours. With 125 pounds on your back. Yes. To link up

00:24:03.600 with what is a guerrilla chief. It's basically a warlord. And you're testing your ability to think in a

00:24:11.240 gray area because the military is very doctrinally based. It's black, it's white. If this happens,

00:24:16.520 you do this. If that happens, you do that. And this is a world where the warlords have malleable

00:24:22.220 morals. And so, you roll up and this is your point of contact and there's an execution that happens

00:24:28.080 within four minutes of you being there. This is in the training environment, but this is real.

00:24:32.800 I mean, this is exactly how it happens. And so, you're just kind of, well, how can you not lose

00:24:37.820 your cool? You lose your cool, you burn rapport, you're done. You have sacrificed the mission

00:24:43.580 because of your dogmatic principles that you brought with you from America. And if you don't

00:24:49.940 like that, don't leave our shores and don't take this job because you have to learn how to conduct

00:24:55.880 yourself like that because you still need to work with them. If you don't work with the Northern

00:24:59.720 Alliance, you're going to lose against the Taliban. Let's talk a little bit about the physical

00:25:03.380 training. I'll preface this by saying that I'm sure most people are familiar with what

00:25:09.900 Hell Week is like for the SEALs and what's their underwater demolition buds that they go through

00:25:15.460 for months leading up to it. It's very interesting, by the way, I'll caveat this by saying I have three

00:25:20.300 good friends who are former SEALs. They're very much like you, which is to say they're not what

00:25:25.760 people would expect stereotypically, right? These aren't super aggressive individuals. I'll share with

00:25:31.560 you a question I have asked them. I'm sure you might echo the same thing, which is what predicts

00:25:37.320 a person's success going through that grueling physical series of tests? And then the second

00:25:44.060 question I asked them, because these guys are all now in their forties, fifties even, knowing what

00:25:49.340 you know today, having the mental toughness you have today, could you physically go back and do it

00:25:55.380 again? So I'll share with you their answers as we get into yours, but let's go through what was

00:26:00.260 physically involved in the most demanding part of that training. You see this stuff on the Discovery

00:26:05.300 Channel, which I had seen as well. And you think that that's what it is. You think that the yelling

00:26:10.340 and the screaming, which plays really well on TV and it lets people think that that's what it is.

00:26:16.620 That part is laughable. It's very short. I mean, I'm talking that was hours out of years of training

00:26:25.220 training, was yelling. The hardest thing that you're competing against is your own mind.

00:26:29.860 And so rucking is the foundation of special forces training, just to answer the foundational piece

00:26:36.680 of this. And so what I have done, what we have done at GoRuck is very much tapped into this. We've

00:26:42.580 not invented this. We've not created it. And what I learned, I owe to the people that taught me,

00:26:48.120 and it's a tribal culture. And I'm grateful that I was able to share some time with them in that

00:26:54.140 regiment. And so I had no idea what rucking was when I joined the army. I started out doing stuff

00:27:00.380 in the gym on normal stuff that you would do with the mirrors everywhere and people and just like

00:27:06.640 normal stuff. And then I ran a lot. Okay, well, cardio and I'll get strong. It's better than nothing.

00:27:11.560 You need to have miles on your legs and you need to be strong, but that is not what this is about.

00:27:18.140 Special forces selection. Ultimately, to be a great teammate, you first have to be a great individual.

00:27:24.220 So they test you really, really hard to make sure that you are the type of individual that has the

00:27:31.040 ability to do really, really hard things and to not quit. Because the draw to do that is hard. But

00:27:38.720 you know, so you start out and it's 45 pounds dry, meaning water doesn't count. Any consumables

00:27:44.860 don't count. They weigh you when you get there. Don't be late, light, or last are the rules. And there's

00:27:49.680 a series of checkpoints that you get throughout the pine forests outside Fort Bragg at a place

00:27:55.080 called Camp McCall. And you're just doing land navigation route after route after route after

00:28:00.380 route. You're plotting with map and compass. You have nothing.

00:28:02.980 You're doing this alone or in teams?

00:28:05.380 Always alone to start out. Always alone. So you have to be a great individual first.

00:28:10.540 You start to learn stuff like, okay, well, if I plot this route, I got to go through this

00:28:15.440 creek. Oh, that won't be too hard. There's a draw. Anytime you get water, you get vegetation. When you

00:28:21.080 got vegetation, it's going to slow you down. There's thorn bushes and all this stuff. And

00:28:24.760 you would get there and it's just so thick and you lose which direction you're going. You're getting

00:28:31.640 all turned around and you're trying to save two miles of walking around this draw, this heavy

00:28:38.140 vegetation next to water because your feet hurt, because you've got blisters, because you've put so

00:28:44.920 many miles on them already on uneven ground and your feet get wet, which makes them harder.

00:28:50.360 What would be a typical distance for that type of a navigation early on?

00:28:56.140 I mean, you're doing overnight, five points say, and it's going to take you, I'll just say,

00:29:01.440 six hours, maybe more, maybe eight hours. Seems like forever. The thing is, is SFAS or special

00:29:08.160 force selection, it's three weeks. You're just doing this over and over and over and over. It doesn't

00:29:14.700 stop. And did they explain to you why? Did they say there's a physiologic reason why rucking is

00:29:21.420 the foundation of what we do? Did they say it's simply the most efficient way to mimic what you

00:29:27.880 will have to do in the field? There was zero of that. It was more, you're here to be tested. It's

00:29:34.040 silent. There used to be a whiteboard. There's kind of barracks and stuff and everybody's in there.

00:29:39.560 And there was a whiteboard. The cadre would write the next hit time on the whiteboard. That's the

00:29:45.520 only way that instructions were communicated. And the main point is if you're looking for someone to

00:29:51.160 give you more information or to help you solve your problems, if you're looking for that, you're in the

00:29:56.500 wrong place. This is not like the army where someone's going to walk around and make sure that

00:30:00.500 you have everything. They're going to weigh your ruck at the end of your iteration. And if you're 44.9

00:30:06.400 pounds, you're done. Adios. See you later. So you're responsible for putting the ballast in the

00:30:11.640 pack. Oh yeah. What we would do is, you know, there's rocks everywhere, which man, walking around

00:30:18.620 on pebbles after being out and about and your feet are sore. And I don't just mean the muscles are sore,

00:30:26.000 like the skin is sore and you got shower shoes. So flip flops on and it's just, man, I can feel it

00:30:31.660 right now as I'm describing this. Your feet are just shifting around and it hurts. You would take

00:30:36.700 that gravel and you would put it in a little bag and then you would use like fish scales and they

00:30:41.960 have them out. You can go weigh your ruck. And if you're dumb, you're going to put 55 pounds in.

00:30:46.660 And if you're smart, you're probably going to put 47 in just because scales are different. And if two

00:30:51.700 pounds is going to be what undoes you, you got bigger problems. So you want to make sure that you

00:30:56.380 don't be late, light or last. And so you always have to have it. It's breeding this culture of

00:31:00.540 autonomy and the selection process is weeding out people. Basically people self-select.

00:31:06.340 So how many people start at that three-week selection process?

00:31:09.940 Oh, shoot. Hundreds at that time.

00:31:12.800 And what's the attrition?

00:31:14.480 I don't know. 20% make it maybe.

00:31:16.540 And of the 80% who don't make it across that three weeks, how many raise the flag and how many

00:31:24.160 show up light? They're trying, but they just fail.

00:31:28.020 I mean, most people self-select, they give you a flare and you'd be out in the middle

00:31:34.360 of your navigation. Say it's at night. Night, when it's cold or it's raining, I mean, the

00:31:39.200 conditions of course matter. And when you see people popping up their flares, what that

00:31:43.020 means is I quit. Because the cadre then comes and gets them and puts them in the back of

00:31:46.740 the pickup truck and takes them to the quitters fire, which they conveniently locate right next

00:31:51.720 to the people still going through the course or going. So they have the warm fire and don't

00:31:56.500 fall prey for that. And these folks that end up quitting, what do they end up doing?

00:32:00.820 They go serve somewhere else. I mean, so honorably, you know, they'd go to Alaska or the 82nd

00:32:05.480 Airborne. That time they were going straight to war. And, you know, I got a lot of respect

00:32:09.620 for that. These are the people that are showing up, towing the line. You can't know if you have

00:32:15.280 what it takes to go through this until you go through it. You talked about predictors of

00:32:19.940 success. Yes, you need to be physically fit, say. You need to be able to carry weight, do

00:32:26.980 all that, whether you know you can or not. I didn't know if I could or not, but I kind

00:32:30.340 of figured it out. But really what it boils down to is there is no predictor. You can't

00:32:37.900 look at a lineup and say, oh, you were the high school quarterback and you look like a statue

00:32:44.760 of what physicality should be. I can tell you that from my personal experience, those

00:32:49.040 are usually the first ones gone. Well, I was just about to say, so in posing this

00:32:53.600 question to many of these Navy SEALs who are friends of mine, that's exactly what they said

00:32:59.160 is if you were the all-American captain of the water polo team that looks like an Adonis,

00:33:04.140 you're probably the first one that's going to quit. It's always funny. In fact, one of my

00:33:08.700 friends mentioned that one of the toughest guys in their buds was the most physically

00:33:16.280 underwhelming person he had ever seen. He described him as a five-foot-eight, kind of

00:33:23.400 slight build. English wasn't his first language. He was Mexican. He just didn't look like an imposing

00:33:30.420 figure in any way, shape, or form. But he's like, guy was mentally so tough. Sounds like

00:33:37.720 that's what you're saying. It's not just not quitting, it's performing. I mean, you have to

00:33:43.400 perform. This isn't like, oh, if you don't quit, you're good. You have to make your hit times. And

00:33:48.620 then you have peer reviews, this sort of testing against, do you play well with others? I mean,

00:33:55.420 you're stack ranked because they put you in groups at certain points, right? If you're consistently

00:34:00.520 last, the cadre just start pressuring, like you don't belong here. And then that just starts to

00:34:05.600 eat inside your brain until they're giving you the words that you're going to tell yourself.

00:34:10.860 And then once you tell yourself for the last time, then you're gone. All you have to do is say,

00:34:14.900 I'm quit. I'm done. I don't even like to even use those words. I guess that's the beauty of it though,

00:34:20.980 is that it's the unknown. And you have to push someone. It won't work in two days. It won't work

00:34:26.960 in five days. You have to push this over days and weeks and months because you're just wearing down

00:34:34.660 someone's will because it gets hard. Now it's interesting. How old are you today? You're

00:34:40.500 probably in your- 44. Okay. And you were about 24 when you did this.

00:34:44.360 Yep. Could you do it again?

00:34:46.080 I love to sit and say yes. I think there is a percentage. The risk is much higher just because

00:34:53.760 injuries are so much more prevalent and you don't recover as quickly.

00:34:57.700 That's amazing. That's exactly what every one of these guys to a man said the same thing.

00:35:03.660 Because I said, look, you've made the case to me that this is mind over body all day long.

00:35:09.100 Your mind is clearly at least as strong as it was when you were in your twenties. Could you do it again?

00:35:13.900 And they all said no for exactly that reason. They said the fundamental difference is

00:35:18.880 we wouldn't have the recovery capacity today that we had in our early twenties.

00:35:23.280 Now I got another buddy who was an enlisted Green Beret for a long time and then just went back and

00:35:28.420 joined the officer corps. Now to do that for the infantry, he had to go back to ranger school.

00:35:33.520 Now he did. He's a couple of years younger than I am. Ranger school, 62 days. And can you do that?

00:35:39.420 Yes, you can do that. I mean, the volume of ocean work at BUDS is really, really, really significant.

00:35:47.860 They're feeding you a lot at BUDS. They don't feed us in the Q course.

00:35:52.640 How much weight did you lose?

00:35:54.500 Certain phases I was down to 180. Laughed and called me Skeletor by the end of a bunch of them.

00:35:59.660 Tall and skinny and I had to work really hard. I thought that you were supposed to look like

00:36:04.540 Arnold Schwarzenegger or Rambo or these guys who had played Green Berets. And what I found is that

00:36:10.200 you can never be too strong, but you can definitely be too big. The more weight that you have on your

00:36:16.060 body that's non-functional, the more you have to carry around with every step that makes you slower.

00:36:21.200 And so you don't want to do that. And so how do you become this kind of lean, super medium-sized,

00:36:27.560 perfect specimen of efficiency, if you will. And naturally it does that for you because you're

00:36:34.380 just rucking so, so much. How are you being fed throughout these training activities?

00:36:39.860 MREs, boxes of MREs. There's a little bit of time at the chow hall at Camp McCall,

00:36:43.560 but not really. You just don't have the time for it. And what's in the MREs?

00:36:47.100 A couple thousand calories of stuff that'll last 10 years. How gross?

00:36:51.600 They've gotten pretty good, actually. And hunger is the best sauce. So when you're hungry,

00:36:56.220 it tastes amazing. And some of my best meals were MREs. One of the phases, we went dumpster diving

00:37:01.020 and we found a whole bunch of stuff and we ate it and it was incredible. It's one of the best meals

00:37:05.500 I've ever had. Yeah, that's interesting. So the 45 dry is kind of your foray into rucking.

00:37:13.760 As the training progressed, talk more about some of the rucking challenges.

00:37:18.940 Yeah. So 45 dry was uneven and tank trails. So tank trails are basically sandy trails that

00:37:24.860 tanks would go on on bases. You can make better time on those because they're not

00:37:30.320 sloped and stuff quite as much. And we would have straight up ruck run competitions. I mean,

00:37:35.400 and you have to meet certain time standards on that. And that is just you and you have a,

00:37:40.260 we call it a rubber duck version of a rifle that you have to carry with you, which is just

00:37:44.600 asymmetrical carry of several pounds for 10 miles or 12 miles.

00:37:48.940 Carry that in your hands, not straps on the pack. Yeah.

00:37:50.800 Yeah. And so those were foot races. The 45 dry was also across the pine forest and a lot of miles.

00:37:59.000 Then you get into team tactics and the team tactics means that you're carrying heavier machinery,

00:38:03.840 heavier machine guns and stuff. So there's tripods, there's more ammo. At this point,

00:38:08.500 it's blanks in training, of course, but there's larger machine guns. There's a saw,

00:38:12.780 there's stuff like that, which someone has to carry. You're dispersing the load a little bit

00:38:17.480 across the team, but everyone's rucks get a lot heavier. So call it 85 pounds. You're patrolling

00:38:23.100 much more slowly. You're learning what a wedge is. You're learning how to do ambushes and raids and

00:38:27.340 you're getting to an attack point and you're setting your rucks down and you're going and you're going

00:38:33.380 lighter to attack a target. And then you're back to your rucks and then you're egressing with your

00:38:38.860 rucks. And tell me about what the sacks looked like, because presumably when you're carrying all of

00:38:44.260 these trimmings, you've got to be strapping them on. So what does the base pack look like?

00:38:49.180 I mean, the big green army Alice pack.

00:38:52.040 How many liters is it inside roughly?

00:38:53.980 All of them. It's enormous. It's a really, really, really big pack. 80, 90 liters. I mean,

00:39:00.560 it's really big. It doesn't go above your head. So it's not like the big hunting packs or whatever

00:39:06.880 that you would see that goes above. It's kind of on your shoulders. And then you also had this,

00:39:11.620 it's called load bearing equipment, this kind of vest of sorts. And it would have a belt on it

00:39:16.400 where you would store other stuff, magazines and stuff like that, which prevented you from using the

00:39:21.640 hip belt on the Alice pack. You just kind of get used to. So you've got that big pack on your back

00:39:27.740 with or without a chest strap. Without.

00:39:31.260 And then no hip belt.

00:39:32.960 There's kind of a hip belt, but it's not really a load transfer. That's also true in the real world.

00:39:39.160 I say the real world of combat. I mean, you have stuff on your front that you need putting all these

00:39:44.040 straps and stuff is sternum strap and hip belts and all this stuff. I mean, that's fine. If you're

00:39:50.340 going to insert over a mountain to get to your target and then drop your rock, like maybe you need

00:39:55.240 to do that. But if you're carrying stuff on any type of an urban assault or anything like that,

00:40:00.420 I mean, you have a guy in my pistol. My chest rig was right here on my chest. Magazines for my M4

00:40:05.580 were right here. I'm not going to unclip my hip belt so I can then get at my ammo. That's not

00:40:11.940 in line with the priorities of work. You want to get that ammo as fast as you possibly can.

00:40:16.380 So all of that load is on your shoulders?

00:40:18.860 Yes. Until you get into what I talked about with the 125 pound insertion and stuff. And at that point,

00:40:24.560 you're doing everything that you can to carry that load. You're trying to just change it up so that

00:40:30.340 the blood can flow to different places. Because if you jack it down on your hips, great. It'll give

00:40:35.960 your shoulders a little bit of relief. And you jack it down on your shoulders, it'll give your

00:40:39.200 hips a little relief. The blood, you can kind of feel it coming back to life. It's just such a great

00:40:44.600 feeling as that happens. So you're just kind of adjusting it constantly.

00:40:48.800 So the 125 pound exercise, tell us what that was again. You were parachuting with that pack.

00:40:53.400 So you jump in with that, which is, it's a team effort to waddle to the airplane and get on the

00:40:59.540 airplane and collapse back and sit down. And then you hook up and then you're jumping into an airstrip.

00:41:07.500 From what elevation?

00:41:08.760 Not too high. I mean, 800 feet, 1,000 feet.

00:41:11.520 Your parachute's coming open immediately.

00:41:13.460 Yes. It's not a halo jump. So it's a static line jump, which basically means that

00:41:18.100 your backpack at that time is your parachute and you hook up into the side of the plane. It's like,

00:41:23.380 what you saw in Band of Brothers, one of the greatest series ever created. You see them hook

00:41:27.400 up and then as they're going out, the parachute deploys immediately and your rucksack is off your

00:41:33.100 belt and it's dangling in between your legs. What's holding it though? You're holding it with

00:41:38.400 your hands? To your belt. No, it's attached to your belt.

00:41:40.920 It's attached to your belt. Yeah, it's fully attached. And then you lower it down. So there's

00:41:45.200 a lowering line right before you land, you lower it down because if you don't, the risk of injury,

00:41:50.200 breaking your legs or whatever, the way that you would fall would be harder. A parachute landing

00:41:54.540 fall, you land with two feet and then you kind of roll your legs over to disperse the force against

00:42:00.020 your body. It still hurts, but you fall faster with all that weight and you just land, hit like a sack

00:42:06.040 of potatoes. I just remember landing. I'm doing it right now too. I kind of wiggle my toes and my

00:42:11.160 knees and like, all right, nothing's broken. Good. Get up. And then you got to get that thing on

00:42:16.240 and you're like getting on all fours. Like you get it on and roll over like a dog and grabbing

00:42:22.940 the back of your hamstring to pull one of your legs forward and then pressing up. And it's a whole

00:42:28.620 thing. Now, once you have your team, one person does not have a ruck on and then you help somebody

00:42:34.600 else get up. Once you get it up, it's easier. It's still really hard, but it's easier. It's a team

00:42:39.600 effort to get down and then get back up. And it's just excruciating. If that's going to be the hardest

00:42:44.720 thing in your life, you're also in the wrong business because that's basically just physically

00:42:50.160 demanding and some of the other problems. And what was the physical part of that? How long

00:42:55.100 did you guys have to go? I mean, that was 18 hours. Oh, that's right. You said 18 hours. My

00:42:59.620 God. I mean, and it's just horrific. It is so slow. It's in a combat situation-ish. They have

00:43:06.600 timelines that they're trying to hit and basically it just, it really, really sucks. What kind of

00:43:10.580 terrain? I mean, it's pine forest, North Carolina pine forest. So there's some hills and it's not

00:43:15.460 hard balls. It's not concrete. How often do you take the pack off to rest?

00:43:19.640 You just want to get there. All of a sudden they simulate that, oh, there's potential enemy over

00:43:24.920 there. Hide. The last thing you want to do is stop is you just want to keep going and get there.

00:43:30.100 And that starts to eat away at you. It's all you can think about. It's like being cold is the only

00:43:35.180 thing that I would equate it to. It just starts to consume your thought no matter what's going on. If

00:43:40.120 you're that cold, it just eats away at you. And that pack at that weight just eats away at you.

00:43:46.300 You can't think tactically. You can't head on a swivel, paying attention to enemies. It doesn't

00:43:52.060 happen. And so as commanders are susceptible, as we all are to kind of risk aversion, like,

00:43:58.040 hey, you need to have everything in order to be prepared for this mission. I mean, there's this

00:44:01.780 other maxim, which is speed is security. And if there's greater assumption of some risk,

00:44:06.700 if you have fewer things, but you have greater speed. And so that's kind of a worthwhile thing

00:44:13.360 for people to consider, like, how do you achieve mission success? Do you actually need 125 pounds?

00:44:18.560 But that's beside the point in training. You need, at this phase of your training, you are in really

00:44:24.380 good rucking shape. You are in really good shape of everything. And this is the beginning of a mock

00:44:30.780 war. And they need to make sure that you are exhausted and not thinking lucidly. And they

00:44:37.240 need to make sure that you can operate under conditions of extreme stress. And they do that.

00:44:41.800 And it's very effective. And the thing is, is that when you go through that, when you are done,

00:44:48.220 you know that you did something. You can't cheat yourself. You know what you had to do to do it.

00:44:53.420 And it is an amazing feeling of gratitude for the human body and the human mind that you get.

00:45:00.340 That is the gift that you get with these people that you share this sacred experience with. And so

00:45:05.900 you don't want to shortchange yourself of that in any way. You want the full red pill experience.

00:45:12.440 Take the red pill, do the thing, and watch what happens to your mind when you're done.

00:45:18.040 At this point, you've really got all the people who are going to select out have done so.

00:45:22.600 Correct. So it's just such a physically demanding task that I have to imagine that

00:45:27.380 there are people whose will is there, but physically they can't keep up. Do you guys

00:45:32.100 stay together no matter what? So almost nobody washes out by that

00:45:36.320 phase. I mean, there's the practicality of the army has every incentive to weed people out as

00:45:42.400 quickly as possible. They don't want to keep people in a training pipeline for years only to

00:45:46.660 find out at the very end, cost millions of dollars to do this in addition to just wasting time.

00:45:52.160 The body has grown accustomed to this. When you start 45 dry, you're going at various speeds to

00:45:57.740 include shuffling and fast to over uneven terrain. You're getting up into 85 pounds. You're starting

00:46:04.240 to know that this is really vital to your ability to operate and do this job. So you start to take

00:46:10.240 it upon yourself to do this, which I did a lot of. I started rucking a lot because that was the thing

00:46:15.400 that I needed to do to achieve mission success, which was to pass this damn course.

00:46:19.400 Meaning on your own time you were rucking. Oh yeah. How much time did you have for yourself?

00:46:24.020 So, I mean, you would go through a phase and then sometimes it would be

00:46:26.720 a month until the next phase started. Sometimes it wasn't. There were so many people going through

00:46:32.600 at that time, slots and phases and all this. They just needed a lot of people

00:46:37.260 to do this job. So you have to maintain your degree of physicality and that's part of it.

00:46:43.400 So what workouts would you do on your own when you were at home for a month to stay in shape?

00:46:48.880 So on base, I would go and park at one of the gyms. There's tank trails everywhere. It's kind of a

00:46:53.820 thing. And so I would go on long rocks of varying degree of weight. You're also doing things like,

00:46:59.880 how do you harden your feet and keep them hard? Like CliffsNotes version is start out with thin,

00:47:06.520 thin socks. If you develop any hot spots, wring those socks out or trade your socks and keep

00:47:13.320 going. Don't let it develop until it gets blisters, but the hot spots will eventually turn into calluses

00:47:19.420 if you treat them correctly. And when you go out into the field with calluses, you start getting

00:47:23.380 blisters. Blisters have no bearing on your physical performance other than that they go straight to

00:47:28.820 your brain, right? Like this is so much pain and you just start to think about it and it consumes you.

00:47:34.060 So you have to start to think about, well, how do I prepare my feet for this? How do I do this?

00:47:38.160 And so I just put a lot of miles in and then I would do these mad dashes into the gym.

00:47:42.580 I've never actually loved going inside of the gym. So I would put headphones in. I mean, this is back

00:47:49.360 in the Ephedra-Ladden universe of when pregame was really pregame workout. And I'd go in there just

00:47:57.340 like a madman. I didn't know what I was doing. CrossFit started midway through the Q course and

00:48:03.580 that was an interesting thing. It was sandbags and pull-up bars and stuff like that. That was part of

00:48:07.660 the training though. One of the guys came out there. He's had these two instructions. It was

00:48:11.320 razor and blade. Awesome call signs. And he's like, man, there's this new thing called CrossFit.

00:48:16.900 And it is awesome, high intensity training. And this is what you need to be the heroes that your

00:48:22.400 country demands of you at this point. It is so good. It is so fast. We're going to do one CrossFit

00:48:28.500 workout and then we're going to go on a 10 mile run or a 10 mile ruck. And then we're going to come

00:48:32.920 back and we're going to do another CrossFit workout. That's how good it is. And it's like,

00:48:36.920 awesome, I'm in. And it was so simple. You got everybody in this dirt field just rolling around

00:48:44.120 in it. And it's like, don't cheat yourself, man. Look around and see if anybody's cheating.

00:48:49.540 They're cheating. You do not want to serve with them. I mean, that is motivation right there.

00:48:54.860 And so there was just this culture of iron sharpening iron all the time. And you're around it

00:49:01.840 all the time. And you start to just live like that. It's animalistic in a good way.

00:49:08.300 And so, yeah, on my own time, sure, I swam a lot. I mean, I dedicated myself to becoming the best that I

00:49:13.820 could be. I can control those variables. I can't control unconventional warfare. I can't control

00:49:19.720 the problems that they're going to give me. I can't control my perfect reaction to this or that.

00:49:25.220 It's unknowable. I don't know what these things are going to be, but I know the best thing I can do

00:49:30.040 is to set myself up for the optimum physical response that I have to anything. And I found

00:49:35.160 that at times where I found some of the doctrinal things that they were teaching us to be a huge

00:49:41.400 challenge to me. I mean, linear ambush versus an L-shaped ambush. Like, why are we doing this?

00:49:46.500 I remember asking that question. It was like, why don't you low crawl for the next hours until you

00:49:52.500 come up with a good answer for that question? It's like, okay, got it. No more questions.

00:49:56.300 College boy. Some of these were really hard, but I found that I could make it up to the team by just

00:50:01.920 being in great shape, carrying more weight longer and doing with smile on my face. And so that was

00:50:07.300 the variable that I controlled. So I took up a lot of swimming personally. There was this hippie street

00:50:13.000 in North Carolina called Hay Street. There was this yoga studio down there. And I told nobody,

00:50:18.180 I was doing yoga every day when I wasn't out in the field. And I was doing it because I wanted to not

00:50:23.220 get injured because the volume of work and reps, you can feel it. You're getting sore. It's a thing.

00:50:29.660 It's just a lot of weight and miles and reps. And how can I set myself up for success? And so I started

00:50:37.140 doing, getting my ass kicked by these older ladies at this yoga studio. And I was in there and they

00:50:44.140 probably knew I was in the army, but I was trying to camouflage that. I didn't want to talk about it

00:50:48.200 by any stretch. And I was doing that just to give myself a little bit of an edge, at least for me,

00:50:54.640 I thought it was an edge. And I think half the battle going into anything is to go in confident.

00:51:00.240 If you've cut corners, you know it, the cadre is going to find out, but you know it. And that

00:51:06.140 burrows inside your brain. And then when something doesn't go your way, you start to play the what if

00:51:11.680 game. That what if game is so dangerous. If you've done what you can do and you show up ready,

00:51:17.620 the outcome is going to be what it's going to be. And so I was committed to that process and I really

00:51:24.220 am grateful that I had that opportunity to kind of see what I was made of according to a standard

00:51:29.980 that I had nothing to do with establishing. So when did you finally serve? When did you go into

00:51:35.880 the field? So I joined up in October of 2003 and I earned my Green Beret in May of 2006.

00:51:43.140 Just two and a half years. Yeah. I mean, that's unbelievable how long that takes, right?

00:51:49.020 Yeah, it is. I know how much I owe. I'm not talking about taxpayer dollars, although I'm grateful for

00:51:54.780 those. I'm talking about the amount of knowledge that I got from the people who had gone and done

00:52:00.160 amazing things with a human spirit that is burning so brightly. And for them to share some of that with

00:52:07.560 me throughout my training and just to breathe some of that same air, I mean, I just feel like I owe.

00:52:13.360 I owe at least what they gave me and more. And so that was sacred time for me. And then it got even

00:52:19.760 more sacred when I got to my team and we deployed in 2007 and we were in Iraq. That was a really

00:52:26.220 nasty time in Iraq. I mean, the surge was going on. A lot of guys and girls were dying. I was not immune

00:52:33.400 to questioning my own decisions and mortality and why did I do this and all of that. Did make it

00:52:39.860 through, obviously, and then came back and we served in Stuttgart and out of Germany. And then

00:52:45.800 we also went down to Mauritania, the Islamic Republic of, and did work by with and through some of the

00:52:50.120 partner forces down there for a period of time, which was great. And then I got out in late 2008.

00:52:54.620 What determines when you're going to get out?

00:52:57.660 So my contract, my initial contract was five years. And what I expected was, I remember primarily

00:53:06.320 these men that served in say World War II and storming the beaches of Normandy. I mean,

00:53:11.680 most of them served for a couple of years and they were gone for a couple of years. And then they came

00:53:15.060 back and they resumed a life and they started and they started businesses or they worked for a company

00:53:20.460 and they did these things. And I never had the opportunity to really talk to somebody about

00:53:24.820 what it was like, or I wasn't able to even ask the right questions, even if I could have.

00:53:29.980 But I thought that that's kind of what it was. I thought it was going to be a, hey, check the box

00:53:33.900 and go do this thing and serve your country and come back. Now I'll be ready for McKinsey and Goldman

00:53:39.720 Sachs and pick your bank or your consulting firm. And now I'll be ready for my regularly scheduled life.

00:53:45.780 But this service to our country, it changed my heart in the process. And so that was the

00:53:51.300 hard part about when it was time to transition out. I mean, I had a five-year contract.

00:53:56.720 And what were the options if you chose to renew that? Could you have stayed right there in the field?

00:54:00.960 Oh yeah. You finally start to get good at what you're doing. You're not just trained,

00:54:06.920 you've actually done, you've actually applied your training. And it's one thing to train for war and

00:54:12.940 it's another thing to fight in a war. And I don't mean just physically, the physical reactions are

00:54:18.500 pretty straightforward. I just mean the actual emotional contemplation of your own mortality and

00:54:25.440 how do you function against that? What are the quiet moments like at war when someone on another

00:54:32.360 team dies or when your flag's at half mass because an IED struck someone in the next town over

00:54:39.200 or whatever it might be? And how do you process that? And if you don't process that, you don't

00:54:43.400 know what it's like. And so that's why going through that, I know what that's like and it's not

00:54:48.580 great. I also learned how to draw strength from my team and trust in my training and fight through it.

00:54:56.400 What do you think it says about that processing that if anything speaks to the relative differences

00:55:04.220 that people experience when they leave the military? In other words, when you think about

00:55:09.840 whether it be PTSD or lesser versions of that, do you think that that has anything to do with how

00:55:17.360 one processes grief in the field? I think first off, Tribe by Sebastian Junger is a fantastic book

00:55:23.800 on this. It's one of my favorites and he is just a national treasure to me. The way that he has

00:55:28.640 brought so much of my thinking forward on this as well, it's not necessarily the problem of

00:55:35.860 the soldiers. It's the problem of society and just being so disconnected. And when you go from this

00:55:42.920 culture that you're living and breathing in with these guys that you love, I mean love,

00:55:50.260 you're just so much a part of something that matters. You matter to them and they matter to you at a very

00:55:56.600 deep level. Your families matter to each other and you're motivated by the mission and service.

00:56:03.780 You wake up, you know that you're doing good and it feels really, really good. And when that

00:56:10.780 infrastructure goes away, and there are other components to that infrastructure. I mean,

00:56:15.980 the army and the military, I mean, everything's taken care of. There's housing allowances or there's

00:56:20.660 housing that you stay in. There's chow halls. It just kind of works. And you're in that and you're

00:56:26.700 allowed to focus on being a part of the team. And so my transition was extremely hard. You just lose

00:56:33.240 a sense of identity, but practically you lose kind of a structure. You lose a purpose. You lose friends.

00:56:40.620 Yeah. I was going to say, how many of your, call it brothers really, because it's probably what it is.

00:56:45.240 How many of your brothers did you go from speaking with and seeing every day to not having contact

00:56:52.440 with outside of the occasional phone call? That's right. All of them, basically.

00:56:56.480 No one else you were close to was leaving at the same time in reasonable geographic proximity?

00:57:01.240 No, absolutely not. That's probably normal. That's normal. That is the norm because you go back to

00:57:07.040 where are you from then? And now you've been five years completely removed from any of the normal

00:57:14.660 structure of society. Your friends who you were probably close to before you went in have

00:57:20.480 moved on. They've gotten married. They've had kids. They've been promoted.

00:57:24.500 They've been at that bank for five years and I've been doing something different. And I felt like I

00:57:29.740 was quitting. When you left the military. Yeah. I mean, because they went right back to Iraq

00:57:33.820 and whatever was going on Iraq didn't matter. Going on in Iraq, that's not what mattered. What mattered

00:57:40.060 was this team that we had and our ability to serve together and we were safer and we were more

00:57:46.400 effective and we were better able to carry out our mission together. This is natural. I mean,

00:57:52.020 people come and people go no matter what, but to do it of my own volition felt like I was quitting

00:57:58.720 on my team. And that was a lot to process because then the practical side of, well, you're giving up a

00:58:05.000 job, you're giving up an income, you're giving up purpose, identity, and just the structure of,

00:58:12.160 okay, you wake up, you do PT, physical training in the morning. You go for a run or a ruck or you

00:58:16.760 lift weights or you do whatever. I mean, there's a lot of camaraderie that comes out of that. You feel

00:58:20.980 a lot better. And so I started to reject all of the things that I thought I didn't love about the

00:58:28.400 army. The structure of, I'm never doing PT again. Never going to wake up early again. Everything's

00:58:34.300 going to be just efficient. So optimized. And I'm in control of my destiny all the time now. And

00:58:41.000 for that quote freedom, I gave up a ton. I mean, the freedom to go it alone is what's the point?

00:58:49.880 Make sure that that's what you actually want. And it took me a while to kind of rebuild a group,

00:58:56.520 a team of friends or people that I wanted to do stuff with. It took me a while to be

00:59:02.020 vulnerable enough to let anybody in. So I wasn't just robotic about the whole thing.

00:59:08.220 I really didn't want to talk about the army at all. You talk about in your book that you would

00:59:12.620 run away from diet questions. I would run away from army questions, grew my hair out,

00:59:18.340 basically had a series of, if not half-truths, just full-on lies about not and no, I didn't serve

00:59:25.260 there. No, I wasn't in the military. Let's talk about something else. It was just because I didn't

00:59:29.180 want to talk about it. Why do you think that was? Because I felt like I'd quit this deep sense of

00:59:34.980 shame. Why would you get out when you're winning the Super Bowl? So did you think about going back?

00:59:40.840 Yeah, I very much thought about going back. And the personal side was very complicated. My wife,

00:59:47.180 who I married a year and a half into my time in the army, we had grown up together, went to high

00:59:52.560 school together. Finally knocked that cowardice as well. Things come in twos. So I joined the army and I

00:59:58.420 told the girl finally that I loved her. The courtship was handwritten letters from basic

01:00:02.880 training. We eventually got married and I told her about what I was doing before I joined up.

01:00:08.480 And she eventually applied to the CIA and applied as a language instructor. And they're like, no,

01:00:13.540 no, no. So they made her a case officer. She went to the farm. She graduated the farm and became a case

01:00:18.100 officer, I think five days before I became a Green Beret. Got put on a smoking hot plane to

01:00:24.400 Darfur to help work on that issue, like right after she graduated and then was posted in war-torn

01:00:29.680 West Africa, Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire for three years after that. So I was at Fort Carson and then I was

01:00:35.860 in Iraq and she was in West Africa. And then I was in Mauritania. She actually visited me

01:00:41.200 in Mauritania while I was there. Were you married at this point?

01:00:44.980 Yes.

01:00:45.700 So was part of the reason that you left to also be with your wife?

01:00:50.160 Yes. And I was going to go join Ground Branch. I was going to go back and finally join where

01:00:55.680 Mike Spann had served in the paramilitary side of the CIA. And now I knew the people.

01:01:01.440 And you brought the skill.

01:01:02.700 And I had, quote, checked the box. I mean, I cried when I was driving out of Fort Carson.

01:01:09.460 You take a razor blade to your base pass. It's on your car. It lets you slide through a certain

01:01:15.480 entry point so that you don't have to stop and do the same security as if you're a civilian.

01:01:19.480 And you turn that in. And then I've cried all the way through Kansas, going back home to Florida

01:01:25.660 to get on a plane to fly to Africa. And I was like, what is going on? You know, I just did not

01:01:30.860 foresee that happening. And it was this loss of something. Like it was a grieving process.

01:01:37.980 And it's just at that point, Em and I had been married for almost five years and never lived

01:01:43.060 together. I mean, that doesn't work. The thinking like she can't join the special forces,

01:01:48.380 but I can join the agency. I mean, having at least one boss of a company is easier to coordinate.

01:01:55.340 And that was naive as well. It's really, really hard to make that stuff work. Those tandem couples,

01:02:01.680 it's nice in theory, but really someone has to be willing to kind of take a backseat or else both

01:02:07.240 suffer or both are compromised in their careers. So what happened when you got to Africa?

01:02:12.340 It was about what you would expect. It was not perfect. There was this skip to the end and

01:02:18.800 sat phone calls on top of a bunker with mortars coming in to my wife in Africa on meetings of

01:02:26.940 whatever she's doing down there and working a hundred hours a week by Wednesday. And we had

01:02:31.600 just grown apart. I brought all of my baggage with me, which was I've given up everything to be there.

01:02:38.220 She was used to working and working and working. I mean, case officers are measured in scalps,

01:02:45.280 meaning how many people do you get? Do you recruit that are assets? And the harder you work,

01:02:50.580 just like anything else, the harder you work, the more you'll achieve. The more you fish,

01:02:55.320 the more fish you catch. And so it's like hard to incorporate me into that. I didn't have a job,

01:03:01.360 right? I couldn't really work there. The embassy had openings. The opening that they had was for a

01:03:06.880 janitor. And I've spent plenty of time cleaning the head. You know, I'm not above it. At that point

01:03:12.760 in my life, I did not have the self-confidence enough to say, okay, I'm going to go from a green

01:03:17.460 beret to being a janitor at the US embassy in Abidjan. I just, I couldn't stomach that at that

01:03:22.360 time. I was there two months and then I flew back and sleeping on a buddy's couch in New York and

01:03:27.460 trying long distance stuff. And we met in Morocco. The things that you do to salvage something that's

01:03:34.740 in the crash and burn phase of its time. I mean, there is a happy ending to this.

01:03:40.620 We did get divorced. Yes. She came back to the States. We did get divorced.

01:03:45.060 Years later, we got remarried. We have a great family and we're very happily married. And I can't

01:03:51.220 imagine life without her. That's the greatest failure of my life. What's the failure? Divorce

01:03:56.900 from the girl that I loved my entire life, not making that work. Do you think it could have worked?

01:04:04.280 In that first version. Hypotheticals are a very difficult thing to sort of answer. I mean,

01:04:10.120 there are scenarios where it could have worked. I mean, it was hanging on by a thread and then it

01:04:15.200 wasn't, and then it's hanging on by a thread and then it wasn't. I mean, the fact that it does work

01:04:19.340 now to me is proof that yes, it could have worked. Maybe it's possible that it works so well now

01:04:25.120 because you both lost it. It's very true. That could also be true. I will say this, that I was

01:04:32.240 used to doing pretty well at things. I don't want to sit and rationalize something and say like,

01:04:39.340 oh, it's all good that this failure happened, right? I just want to say that the silver lining

01:04:44.520 to it was, it made me a lot more compassionate. It made me a lot more understanding that you don't

01:04:50.040 know what people are going through. So be kind. It's a good thing to be kind to people. You just don't

01:04:55.640 know, because at that time, I mean, I had my whole new set of, oh, how are things going? Like,

01:05:01.440 oh yeah, they're going great. Thanks. Let's move on and talk about something else. So then I just

01:05:05.220 stopped seeing people and became a hermit. It was me and my dog and a country song and

01:05:10.440 a bottle of whiskey. And that was not a healthy phase in my life at all. Because then I'm out of

01:05:15.220 the army. I don't have a job. I don't have prospects for a job. Don't have a marriage anymore.

01:05:20.320 How are you supporting yourself? I had a little bit of money saved up and I just didn't have a

01:05:27.160 lot of expenses. And presumably, I'm sure you had a GI bill. You could have gone back to grad school.

01:05:32.320 I mean, did any of these other ideas entice you? That's what I did. I went back to business school

01:05:36.680 in DC. It's another case of I'm grateful to the American taxpayer for that opportunity. Because as

01:05:42.900 you kick this off, it's how do you process grief and how do you do, what is that like PTSD or PTSD

01:05:49.420 light or however we want to say it. But the time that that bought me to kind of help figure my

01:05:55.260 stuff out, I had a lot to offer. I just couldn't do it at that time. I have a lot to offer now. And

01:06:01.320 I'm really happy to offer that to our country, the world, the next generation, whomever. And I'm

01:06:06.940 very motivated to do that. And that's in no small part because the American taxpayer was willing to

01:06:12.000 finance my school for a couple of years and help me transition a little bit and gain a little bit

01:06:17.080 more confidence in time and all of that stuff. And so I would just say going through, it starts to

01:06:23.680 stack. Murphy is around and he's just striking left and right. And what I learned in SEER school,

01:06:32.920 which is survival school, is everybody has a breaking point. No matter how tough you are,

01:06:38.560 name and serial number is not reality. You will crack. Everybody cracks. It will happen.

01:06:45.860 And so that is a maxim for life. And to think that you won't is just hubristic.

01:06:52.600 And when did you realize you were heading in that direction?

01:06:56.140 It was just really, really bad. I just lost the desire to do anything. There wasn't some moment,

01:07:02.660 I wasn't suicidal in that sense. I was just not well. I have a lot of energy in life. I'm active. I like

01:07:09.680 to do stuff. And it took my dog, which Emily gave to me. We were still friends throughout this, oddly.

01:07:16.820 And the greatest gift I ever got until we had kids was we had one dog that had been with her in Africa.

01:07:24.040 And she looked at me and she was like, you need him even more than I do. You can have him.

01:07:28.380 I mean, you could maybe even argue that we wouldn't have gotten back together without

01:07:33.340 that happening. Because then my life was this just not good. Living in a basement and I got a dog and

01:07:42.380 I don't have any mission or purpose. I have nothing to do. I have a friend and I asked a friend for help,

01:07:47.060 which was very humiliating. I'm the guy that doesn't ask for help ever. That becomes your shtick.

01:07:54.100 And that's what the army, especially special forces, especially these special operations units,

01:07:59.840 that's what it is. Yes, there's a team component and tactically if you need help, but you don't need

01:08:06.780 help solving your problems. Emotional problems, you don't bring those to the team. That's not a thing.

01:08:13.220 And so when you have to do that, when you get out, it's a very foreign territory and it's a very

01:08:17.360 shameful thing. And I think that that is a problem that we need to kind of take head on and say,

01:08:25.200 there's a lot of strength in asking for help and you're going to need it. So you need to be part of

01:08:31.600 something bigger than yourself. You need to take care of yourself. You need to do the things that

01:08:35.740 were healthy in the army that brought you this value. You need to do those things still. Physical

01:08:40.680 training and take your pick. There's a lot of great things that are a part of that. It's a very

01:08:45.800 social organization. You get to know the people that are around you. You develop deep and lasting

01:08:49.700 friendships through doing hard things that develops a lot of camaraderie and you need to

01:08:54.280 go do those things and be active. And it's just very easy to fall into this state of all that's gone.

01:09:02.920 I'll never be as cool as I was. And I don't know what I'm going to do with the rest of my life. I don't

01:09:08.280 have any exactly transferable skills. This is just not what I signed up for anymore. And you can go down

01:09:14.760 that spiral and everybody's got a breaking point. And at no point during this, where you are right

01:09:19.820 now, the friend's couch, etc., the divorce, what year is this? How far after 2008? It's fast. That's

01:09:26.740 2009. My flash to bang on this was pretty fast. I mean, I ended up starting school late 2009. It's like a

01:09:34.420 full year of not good. But a year at that time felt like a long time. School felt like an easy thing.

01:09:43.920 I know this is progress to somebody. I didn't really... I'm like, okay, I'll go back to school,

01:09:48.420 I guess. And during that period of time, are you picking up a rucksack again?

01:09:53.780 So the funny thing is, the only thing that kind of got me off the couch was Java, my dog.

01:09:59.180 So I believe in community. The social health part of our lives is vital to everything that matters

01:10:06.420 the most. And to me, you plus a dog is the most foundational. It's the bare minimum for a

01:10:12.860 community. You plus one. And that one can be a dog. And for me, it was. It's like he had to go

01:10:17.460 out. He needed exercise. He needed someone to take care of him. So serving someone else, or in this

01:10:23.080 case, a dog, was a huge unlock for me to kind of face the world again. It's still very humbling to

01:10:30.680 think about. I'd just been this special forces soldier that felt like I could do anything with

01:10:35.640 my team until I couldn't do anything. And it took a dog to kind of get me out of that

01:10:40.080 state. And then GORUCK was in the background of all this. Emily had actually had the idea for it

01:10:45.880 in West Africa. It was like, hey, you should do the GORUCK thing because I had built her a go bag

01:10:51.300 full of supplies and stuff for her to put in her car and want to put at her house. And it was just in

01:10:57.300 case. A go bag is a bag that when everything goes wrong, it's the one thing you grab.

01:11:01.860 It's what we would put in the trunk of the Humvee. Because if our vehicle's disabled and

01:11:05.620 we have to fight, we need more bombs and ammo and water and radios and batteries and all that

01:11:10.740 stuff. It's just more supplies. And that's a good thing when you're fighting.

01:11:14.580 Do you have a go bag at home right now?

01:11:16.320 Yeah.

01:11:16.840 What's in it?

01:11:17.520 It's mostly medical stuff. I'm going to have some weapons as well. I mean, what scares me or what I'm

01:11:22.780 cautious about are these times of whether there's hurricanes or power outages or these kinds of

01:11:28.600 things where it becomes lawless and everybody jumps on I-10 or I-95 and then people are running

01:11:34.480 out of gas. And it's like, how long does that last? Who knows? Those are the kinds of things

01:11:38.580 that concern me.

01:11:40.420 Yeah. I think a lot of people don't remember what happened during Hurricane Katrina, which

01:11:45.520 people probably remember there was a real delay on the part of the federal government in getting

01:11:51.040 aid in there. And I don't remember the exact number of days, but it was surprisingly short

01:11:58.260 as to how long it went from no power, no food, no water to complete lawlessness and violence.

01:12:06.000 I mean, very short. We're talking four or five days. And you could make the argument that that's

01:12:11.420 the most compelling reason for self-arment. It's not the home invasion in bed and someone breaks

01:12:17.560 into the house. It's the total societal breakdown that comes with a natural disaster or something

01:12:22.760 like that.

01:12:23.800 Yes. I mean, you're more likely to hurt someone that you love. Most people are more likely to

01:12:28.200 hurt someone they love in this, there's a robber in my house situation. Just give them everything.

01:12:32.460 These are only things. This doesn't matter. Like the idea that you're going to shoot someone cold

01:12:36.420 in your hallway. I mean, you have to be extremely well-trained and you have to be able to target,

01:12:43.020 discriminate and make sure it's not a bad guy. I mean, is this your first time in that kind

01:12:46.680 of situation? If so, you're stressed, like go shoot with a heart rate of 160 sometimes. See

01:12:51.400 how you're doing. It's hard. In the middle of the night, you've just been woken up. Those are not my

01:12:55.980 deep, dark fears. The worst case scenario are the natural disasters and stuff like that. So yes,

01:13:01.180 we have a go bag and we have a med pack in the back of our truck as well. And our office is a safe

01:13:06.800 house. We have a lot of stuff there too, and a big safe and all that kind of stuff.

01:13:12.080 So you're making her a go bag.

01:13:13.460 We were trying to figure out what I was going to do when I was there in Africa. And she's like,

01:13:19.480 oh, you should do the go ruck thing.

01:13:21.060 But where did that name come from, go ruck?

01:13:23.180 I kind of started calling it a go ruck to her. A go bag, a go ruck. That was just what we called it.

01:13:29.440 I mean, we had a SOP, a standard operating procedures for what would go in our go bags.

01:13:33.960 I probably still have it somewhere, but I haven't looked at it since I was in Iraq.

01:13:37.080 But I tailored it to what we had there. And I just used a surplus bag, an extra bag that I brought

01:13:42.520 with me. It's like, now you have this just in case. And it's better to have just in case and

01:13:48.620 know where it is. And so what she meant by that was take the special forces way of life. And then

01:13:52.720 I built one for her boss there and another person at the embassy. It was like, okay, well, I can fill

01:13:57.820 a year doing this. That's fine. Upgrade people's home security and teach them a little bit about what

01:14:02.780 to do just in case. And the language was a barrier because it's French. The import-export business of

01:14:08.540 using diplomatic pouches to send stuff to populate people's goat. I mean, just building a business

01:14:13.080 from scratch in West Africa as a diplomatic spouse, your marriage better be on perfect ground and you

01:14:20.040 better be in there for the long haul. This smash and grab year that I was going to have doing that

01:14:24.520 would not have worked, but the idea sort of endured. And so I moved back and I was just still

01:14:29.280 searching for something to do. I needed a hobby and this became a hobby. And so I was like, oh,

01:14:35.340 these bags are too military. I don't want anything to do with the military. So I need to make them

01:14:40.000 less military, but still awesome like the ones I had in the military. I put an ad in Craigslist,

01:14:45.220 New York City for a backpack designer. Got a bunch of people that wrote in and found this couple that

01:14:50.140 was in Bozeman, Montana. And that started a year and a half-ish process of working with them on a

01:14:57.160 couple prototypes. What were the specs that you gave them? So I started out with an old assault

01:15:02.000 pack that I had. An assault pack is a way stripped down version that you would take on an assault.

01:15:06.780 And when you think about assaulting in places around the world, doorways are narrow, you're in a stack

01:15:13.120 to go into a room, meaning there's four of you and you're as close as you can possibly get. You can't

01:15:19.080 have these huge rocks because you're going in and clearing the room. And so milliseconds are life.

01:15:23.800 So you have to have really small silhouettes of stuff and more what you would associate with an

01:15:29.400 urban style backpack, not a big giant hiking pack or a big giant Alice military pack or whatever. And

01:15:35.740 so started with one of these assault packs and just said, hey, we'll strip away all this stuff that

01:15:40.200 makes it look too military and let's do that. And also I'm guessing you immediately realized at that

01:15:45.960 point that the weight had to come in the form of iron plates. Our mutual friend Jocko, when he rucks,

01:15:51.420 he's using a more traditional pack where it's got a pole on it that you're basically dropping heavy

01:15:56.560 plates onto. When you were in the military and you were doing your own training, how were you loading

01:16:02.380 up a pack? Putting weights in the back? Rocks. Rocks. Yeah. I mean, rocks and stuff. And you would

01:16:07.600 wrap them in something so that it would kind of protect the interior lining. Full story, I did not

01:16:13.980 start GORUCK with this idea that rucking was going to be the thing. I did not think about it like that

01:16:20.400 at all. This whole series is something that Emily and I have tapped into. It's not something that

01:16:25.840 we've invented or really created. But what were you thinking? Who were you thinking the customer was

01:16:30.320 when you got ahold of these people in Montana? The summer of 2010, I drove around, realize I'm in

01:16:35.760 business school at the time. And so there's this idea about total addressable market size and well,

01:16:41.600 you can go to retail and you get press and you can do all this stuff. And direct to consumer was still

01:16:46.260 not quite what it is now. I mean, Amazon was not Amazon yet. I thought that it was going to end up

01:16:52.260 being, and I was surrounded by some artisans and stuff in New York. And I wanted this to be beautiful

01:16:58.900 and simple as well. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication as da Vinci. I really love that quote

01:17:04.920 when it comes to the design of things. It's also less to go wrong. It's less to break. And so the summer

01:17:11.880 of 2010, in between years at business school, I drove around to 48 states in my Ford Expedition

01:17:17.080 with my dog. And I approached small men's stores and other kind of retail places about having them

01:17:23.560 carry this- 48 states? I drove to all 48. In how many weeks? This summer. It's like 12 weeks.

01:17:30.920 Two plus months. Probably 10 to 12. Yeah. That's incredible.

01:17:36.120 Yeah. Well, it was very painful is what it was because you have these hopes and these grandiose

01:17:42.440 dreams. It's like, I don't know how to do Facebook ads. I don't know how to do Google ads. I don't

01:17:46.820 know anything about that, but I can get in a car and drive around and go meet people face-to-face and

01:17:51.460 tell them the story. And we're going to get people to buy this stuff. And I bought this sport rack to go

01:17:56.720 on top of the truck. I needed extra space with so many rucks that we were going to sell. I didn't sell

01:18:02.500 any rucks. None. Every state, I was finding a new store. So toward the end of my first year in

01:18:08.620 business school, I started making a list of all the higher-end men's stores around the country.

01:18:13.760 And I did that only because of a price point thing. It was GR1 primarily. We're making GR1

01:18:18.380 exclusively in America, and it cost me more than I wanted to charge everybody else. When I saw the

01:18:23.600 price, I was like, oh my gosh, what is this? This is insane. But I just never thought that

01:18:29.320 founded by Green Beret and made in China just never had that good ring to me. So I wanted to

01:18:34.240 double down. What was the price premium to make it in America versus China?

01:18:39.060 4X. Oh my God. 4X. I mean, I didn't cost it, but that's what it would be now. And we've never

01:18:46.460 made in China. But I thought, okay, well, this is an advantage that I do have. And one thing that

01:18:51.980 special forces teaches you is don't fight fair. I mean, definitely don't do that. Never launch a

01:18:57.320 ground war in Asia, Princess Bride. Never fight fair. I mean, bring the Air Force with you to a

01:19:02.660 gunfight. Always. Why would you not? Use what is your unique strength that you have. Bring that to

01:19:09.940 the fight. And I thought that it was me driving around and going and meeting people at these shops

01:19:15.380 and convincing them of the story and the quality and all this stuff. And it just was an unmitigated

01:19:20.420 disaster. It just didn't work. Because of the price, because people didn't understand

01:19:25.740 who would, in their right mind, want to buy a backpack to put weight in it to walk around.

01:19:30.960 There was no rucking at the time. This was just an everyday carry, cool bag with a lifetime guarantee.

01:19:37.820 I don't have a GR1. So the GR1 was not one that was fit to have the slots of the weights in it.

01:19:43.420 So we'll fix that with GR1 with you. GR1 has a back panel with a zipper on the back of it. I'll

01:19:51.320 show you in my car when we leave. Mine's in there that's 10 years old. And there's a zipper

01:19:56.680 that's next to the back. It's a completely separate compartment. And we had an assault pack that was

01:20:02.480 kind of like that in war that was designed to put a hydration bladder there. The problem with

01:20:07.460 the hydration bladder there is that it's this big, giant lump in the middle of it. And it's very

01:20:12.260 uncomfortable. It's a very terrible position for it. But when we deployed, we would put our laptops

01:20:16.620 in there. And so I was just like, okay, well, this is sure you can put a hydration bladder if you want,

01:20:21.160 but this is for a laptop as well. And so it became this travel bag. Well, okay. So then I have every

01:20:26.900 dollar and then some of what started out as mine and Emily's and then was just mine, my half poured

01:20:33.980 into inventory and all this stuff of primarily GR1. Which cost how much to make? Well, it was $295

01:20:40.900 was what it cost, the price on the website. At that time, it was, let's say roughly,

01:20:47.940 there's this idea of the golden ratio, like you would charge 4X and that's wholesale pricing.

01:20:52.540 And I think I kind of split the golden ratio saying, okay, well, if it costs a hundred bucks

01:20:57.320 and how do you calculate cost is this very tricky thing. Say it costs a hundred bucks. Everything

01:21:03.020 costs more than you think, but let's say the direct costs were a hundred bucks. It's like, okay,

01:21:05.760 let's charge 300 and we'll be able to make some of that up direct, but I can still have some margins

01:21:11.680 at 147.50 to sell to wholesalers and the wholesalers would be more about press and direct is where

01:21:19.720 there's more margin. And that was kind of the thinking. So when you're doing the 2010 tour of

01:21:25.860 48, you have what size inventory? Like you're ready to put these into stores if people are willing to

01:21:32.380 take them. I probably have 2000 rocks. What is it that people are rejecting? Are they rejecting

01:21:41.140 the idea of a backpack or the idea of rucking? So rucking was definitely not a thing, but presumably

01:21:48.900 you told them what it was. Well, rucking was not the start point for this. It's going to come quickly

01:21:55.980 though. I'll get to that. It was just this, Hey, this is bomb proof gear and here's this great story.

01:22:01.620 And I think it would go well in your store. It might be that over time it ends up in Nordstrom's

01:22:06.900 or it ends up in these higher end things because it's quality and craftsmanship and all of that

01:22:11.420 people. I would meet with them and they would say, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. Yes. And then it was

01:22:16.560 just silence. Everyone loved this story, but you have an unproven brand trying to charge $300 for

01:22:23.700 what people perceive to be a backpack. That's very simple and black. It's the anti features selling.

01:22:31.160 Because everybody, you know, Oh, look at all these features it has. I think that's terrible

01:22:36.120 because it's more stuff to break. It's like, show me all the stuff that it doesn't have and tell me

01:22:40.720 why it's going to last forever. That's kind of my thinking. That was very much against the grain

01:22:45.040 of what people wanted to hear. Apparently we didn't have all these crazy colors. We had black.

01:22:50.440 It was a model T4 to give you any color you want as long as it's black. And that's just,

01:22:54.140 was not a compelling argument. And nobody's going to walk into a store and say,

01:22:59.200 I want to go Ruck in 2010. So then they have to buy the inventory and educate the people.

01:23:04.640 And education's really hard. I mean, really hard. So people are just completely unwilling

01:23:09.300 to take a chance. And I understand that. And so I have all this money poured into it and sold none.

01:23:16.320 And I'm back in business school. I'm still being floated by the taxpayer in essence. And I'm like,

01:23:22.200 man, I got to do something. There was a partnership with an obstacle course racing

01:23:25.420 company called Tough Mudder. This was kind of part of the longer journey of finding partners and

01:23:31.580 working by, with, and through them to kind of get the word out on what GoRuck is. And so I started

01:23:37.760 showing up to these Tough Mudders. And this is when it was really hot. That market was really hot.

01:23:42.440 I mean, they were getting 10,000 people a weekend to show up. And so I started the first ever Tough

01:23:47.360 Mudder was I think May of 2010. And it actually kicked off that summer. And it's like, oh,

01:23:52.320 this is going well. And then nothing. And the next one wasn't until the fall out West. But

01:23:56.620 I put together a team and we stuffed the rucksack with bricks. And we wrapped those bricks with duct

01:24:01.580 tape. And then we did Tough Mudder together. It was like, okay, let's do this like a team.

01:24:06.760 I brought a bunch of my old buddies that I'd served with. And we did it at the first one.

01:24:11.400 That was fun. That was how I got back into rucking. And so we had that. And it was like,

01:24:16.340 people then like, wow, I want to do that. I'm like, oh yeah, it's simple. Go back,

01:24:19.580 become a Green Beret. I'll see you in 10 years. And one thing led to another though. And it was,

01:24:24.800 well, why not do something that's kind of like that? That's based on special forces training

01:24:29.220 that doesn't require this huge obstacle course. And so created an event called the Go Ruck Challenge,

01:24:33.760 which basically became Fight Club with backpacks.

01:24:38.020 So tell us about the Go Ruck Challenge.

01:24:40.260 First, it was led by me, current and former special forces. And it was,

01:24:44.120 hey, meet me at 10 a.m. at the beach in San Francisco. Details not forthcoming.

01:24:50.040 And you were doing this through Facebook?

01:24:51.740 Yes. Facebook and then Tough Mudder had it on their site for a while. We were partnering with

01:24:56.060 them for about a year until maybe we became a little too successful or something. I'm not sure.

01:25:01.160 But that faded. The hardest thing to do is go from zero to one. You have this great thing and

01:25:06.480 how do you break through? How do you do it? And I had so many other partnership talks and

01:25:13.900 US manufacturing partners and all this stuff. But this was the one that ended up working because

01:25:18.700 it gave me kind of a platform to fall back on what I knew, how I had been trained. It goes back to,

01:25:24.720 again, how much I owe. And so you would just travel around the country spontaneously popping

01:25:29.260 up for a Go Ruck Challenge? Like Tyler Durden, Fight Club with backpacks. And so the overhead was

01:25:35.440 me flying out there. And the business model was pretty simple. The cost of the challenge was half the

01:25:40.460 price of the rucksack and you got to keep the rucksack. So if GR1 was $295, it was. The price to enter this

01:25:46.460 event was $147.50 and you got to keep the ruck. And the first ones, I brought your bricks for you

01:25:51.380 and I brought duct tape. Here you go. Now make them disappear. They go in the rucks.

01:25:56.580 How many people are showing up to these?

01:25:58.360 The first ones were 20. I mean, the second one was six and I had to beg four of the people to show up.

01:26:04.440 So there was some element of I was taking pictures and people were really responding to this because it

01:26:09.840 was a very challenging thing. There was no published route. There was no published course. There was nothing.

01:26:14.480 And typically, how long would a route be when you showed up?

01:26:17.480 We developed it over time and I started to bring in some of the buddies that I'd served with.

01:26:22.100 And it started out as five hours. That proved to not be long enough. The tough, which was our

01:26:27.880 original event, the tough challenge, it ended up settling in at about 10 to 12 hours. And we have

01:26:33.860 all different kind of lengths now. There's a 24-hour version. There's a three-hour version and a

01:26:38.380 six-hour version and stuff like that.

01:26:40.700 How is the wait determined?

01:26:42.440 We've kept the same thing since the beginning, which is if you're 150 pounds or over, you have

01:26:47.340 30 pounds. And if you're 150 or under, you have 20. In the early days, it was bricks. So six bricks or

01:26:52.440 four bricks. And you had to put those in the rucks. And it was me or the special forces

01:26:57.940 cadre going along with the group the whole time. There was no separation.

01:27:02.880 Okay. That's not a lot of weight, but it's enough weight that for somebody who

01:27:07.220 is not necessarily in great shape. This is a hard thing for them to show up and do.

01:27:12.680 It's a lot more weight when you're doing Indian runs for what we call Indian runs. I don't even

01:27:16.940 know what you call them now. Sorry. 10 miles of that. So you line everybody up in rows of twos.

01:27:21.760 You slap the ruck of the person in the back and they sprint to the front.

01:27:25.300 That's what you guys do for the whole challenge?

01:27:27.160 Well, that was part. And then you're stopping along the way and doing physical training.

01:27:30.700 Now it got more and it gets a lot heavier when you start ripping logs out of forests and carrying

01:27:36.060 down Fifth Avenue, which we did. So again, my point then is even more dramatic, which is

01:27:41.580 these are not things that people show up to do when they just want to start to get in shape.

01:27:46.640 No. And that was the exact idea. This was meant to be...

01:27:50.480 This was finishing school.

01:27:51.700 Yes. This was meant to be an extreme rite of passage that you would show up and you would

01:27:56.880 do the same way that how do you get confident? You earn it. You do really hard things and you

01:28:01.760 show yourself what you're capable of because you can't cheat yourself. It started out as this thing

01:28:06.600 and people were just blown away. I mean, sitting in the parking lots or wherever their cars were

01:28:12.020 or wherever when we were done and people are just exhausted and so proud of themselves. And

01:28:17.680 they've made friends with these people that they had nothing in common with. I mean, we didn't care

01:28:21.740 if you're black, white, young, old, male, female, gay, straight, civilian, military. Didn't care.

01:28:28.200 Ruck up and follow me. That's what it was.

01:28:31.060 So how many of these were you doing a month?

01:28:32.860 I mean, it was every weekend. And so I would go somewhere and I do a route recon Friday and that

01:28:38.840 was hours and hours. Like where am I going to find a log? Where's all this other stuff that I can do?

01:28:43.640 What's closed? What's open?

01:28:45.220 And would you already post the start time the week before?

01:28:48.640 Yes.

01:28:48.660 Okay. So you give people like a week, you show up Friday, you spec the route, tape the bricks.

01:28:53.940 I got smart. I started telling them to bring their own bricks, which was way better. Say it started

01:28:58.600 at 10 o'clock on Friday night. It was the first one. 12, 14 hours later, it's noon. And then you can

01:29:04.220 start at 10 o'clock Saturday night as well. And then you're going overnight and then you're done

01:29:08.800 Sunday morning.

01:29:09.920 Oh, the challenge would be back to back.

01:29:12.080 Oh yeah.

01:29:12.540 Or two different groups.

01:29:13.380 Two different groups. And so I'm sleeping under a bridge or parking lot somewhere for a few hours

01:29:20.440 between the events. And the greatest pep talk in the history of GORUCK is the one that the cadre

01:29:24.720 gives himself between those two events because it's brutal.

01:29:27.880 How many guys did you have doing this with you?

01:29:29.880 Hundreds. We've put on 10,000 of these since 2010.

01:29:32.560 Oh, but I'm saying how many of you were like instructors that were going to do both the

01:29:35.500 Friday, Saturday?

01:29:36.320 It was always just one.

01:29:37.860 You and one?

01:29:38.520 No, it was just me. Until you're training somebody else. And so then you have two of

01:29:43.160 you, but they have to sort of do and shadow and be shadowed and then they can do it. And

01:29:47.140 part of the thing is you can't believe that how much people are willing to do. When you're

01:29:51.860 transitioning out of the military, and these are all special operations guys, you think

01:29:54.940 that you have this exclusive license to doing really hard things. And what I found is that

01:29:59.640 there's people all over this great country who really want to do hard things that want to

01:30:05.400 sign up and say, send me. And they just didn't choose the military. And that's okay. I wouldn't

01:30:10.260 have chosen the military either without 9-11. You've got these people and man, the human spirit

01:30:15.060 just burns so brightly. And it's such a gift to get to spend that time around these people.

01:30:21.280 It's just magic. And you get to see it and you get to feel this transformation that they

01:30:26.260 have as individuals and as a team. And it works because it's in the human terrain with

01:30:31.740 these cadre who are well-versed in the human terrain and pushing people and training people

01:30:37.160 and getting them to where they need to be as a team. And so, I mean, I was doing this

01:30:40.900 all over the place. And then more of us were doing it and more and more and more.

01:30:45.740 It got to where we were running over 1,000, 1,200 a year of these. And then the pandemic

01:30:51.940 crushed a ton of it. And so where did rucking come in is kind of the important part because it

01:30:56.880 was just a rite of passage. It's like, you're never going to want to do this again.

01:30:59.920 Rite of passage, good. Thanks for coming out.

01:31:02.220 But people started to say, well, how do I train for this? I'm like, no, it doesn't matter.

01:31:05.380 Just show up and take your licks.

01:31:07.620 Yeah. But give me a sense of it. The people who were showing up,

01:31:10.480 most people are completing it.

01:31:12.060 Oh, yeah. That was the point.

01:31:13.780 What was the feeder to this population? Were these runners primarily?

01:31:19.300 This goes back to what we tapped into. The military was much more prevalent than front.

01:31:24.960 I mean, when was the Afghanistan surge? 2010 under Obama?

01:31:28.660 10 or 11.

01:31:29.140 And so you still have this resurgence of special forces in the media. And then I was leading a

01:31:34.740 go-ruck challenge in Boston when bin Laden was killed. There's just this very front page

01:31:40.280 prevalence and people wanted to be around that.

01:31:43.660 Sure. But these people were what type of athletes coming in to be able to do something so extreme

01:31:49.140 without training for it specifically? I'm just thinking of the little stuff. I don't think I could

01:31:53.460 have on my first day doing a ruck done this simply because just the amount of discomfort

01:31:59.760 due to how foreign it was. That was the beauty of it though, was that it was a team event. So

01:32:05.380 if I saw that you were struggling with your ruck, I've done this. This is one of the favorite learning

01:32:10.120 points that I had. I would get these people, usually big, strong dudes who have egos because they're big

01:32:17.780 and strong and they think that they should be the strongest and carry all the weight and they should

01:32:21.880 never show weakness. And so there's this one event that I was running in Key West. We were moving

01:32:27.120 towards index. This is like 12 hours in and it has been brutal and it's hot and all this stuff. And

01:32:32.240 I'm like, hey, we're moving. You're unable to keep up with this team. Give your pack to that person.

01:32:39.000 He's like, nope, a real man doesn't give his pack up. I'm like, okay, that's fine. I go,

01:32:43.980 so there's two courses of action here. The first course of action is you're going to give up your

01:32:48.220 pack. You're going to submit to the speed that the team needs to go on to get to the index point.

01:32:52.740 Now we're going to finish happy. We're going to have beer when we're done. It's going to be a

01:32:55.560 celebration of life. The human spirit will burn brightly. The second is you and your ego are

01:33:01.200 going to quit this event right now. And for exactly 60 minutes, not a minute less, not a minute more,

01:33:06.860 this squad is going to do squad pushups on this sidewalk until it runs like the river Nile with their

01:33:12.880 sweat. If you want to inflict that upon your team 12 hours in, that's what your choice is right now.

01:33:18.680 Well, he gave up his pack and we went there and someone carried it for him and we got to the end.

01:33:23.420 And then I get, you know, a note after him, like, thanks so much because, you know, I needed that in

01:33:27.180 my life. Imagine that he's one of us that doesn't have feelings, that has a hard time asking for help,

01:33:32.840 that thought he was checking the box on something that was another mud run, but he got a lot more out of

01:33:37.700 it. That is a great gift to be able to give that to somebody and to do it with a purity of heart.

01:33:43.720 Like that was not about me. That was about him and his team and that brought them together. And then

01:33:48.960 we were up all night partying in Key West and it was a ton of fun. And that was just an important

01:33:54.420 lesson that you would learn. So yes, you could have done it, but it may have been different. And so the

01:33:59.200 thing is, is those who much is given much is expected. Those who can carry more weight,

01:34:03.420 they do carry more weight.

01:34:04.360 How did you choose who was going to carry 60 pounds?

01:34:07.400 What do you mean? Which 60?

01:34:08.620 Well, his 30 plus their 30.

01:34:10.760 I don't care. Here's the beauty of it is that they have to rotate it. For the team to optimize,

01:34:15.380 it's like the log was the great instructor too, because they would get the log and they would

01:34:20.200 immediately reject it because it's very heavy. And I'd be like, okay, move that way. And they're

01:34:24.260 expecting this to go on for a very little bit of time. They would do it. And what you have to realize

01:34:28.800 over time is that you can't keep getting the strong people exclusively to carry this because

01:34:33.920 they have a breaking point too. They will get exhausted. You have to rotate people with

01:34:37.900 frequency. So I'd rotate people. I would let them kind of fail for a little bit because pain is the

01:34:43.380 greatest teacher of them all. And so then they would start infighting. I would never let that

01:34:48.640 continue. So I would stop and say, look, the first hour you're going to fight it. The second hour,

01:34:54.400 you're going to finally start to develop a system that works. And the third hour, you're going to be

01:34:59.240 ready to carry this thing the rest of the event. And they're like, what? They're 20 minutes in right

01:35:03.880 now thinking that they're about to put this down. I'm like, no, no, no. How much does this log weigh

01:35:07.760 typically? It's whatever we could rip out. I mean, they're big and they're always gnarly. They're not

01:35:12.560 telephone poles. One side's way heavier with roots and nasty stuff right into your shoulder. And there

01:35:19.020 was a lot of learning points and teaching points and it was very extreme. And it felt great. I felt like I

01:35:26.160 had mission and purpose again. And that was fantastic. Like serving others and giving back

01:35:32.240 with what I had learned about building teams and personal endurance and overcoming and sharing that

01:35:38.720 and teaching that to other people was very, very rewarding. That was the foundation.

01:35:43.760 It wasn't until COVID that basically the idea of using rucking as the training came about,

01:35:50.980 if I heard you correctly?

01:35:51.780 No. So it started much earlier than that. So people started asking, how do I train for this?

01:35:57.400 And I was like, doesn't matter. Just show up and take your licks. Well, then they started to

01:36:01.240 self-organize. They started to form ruck clubs around the country where they would just meet up

01:36:05.840 and people would go for rucks together. I'm like, that's insane. Who does that?

01:36:09.580 Meanwhile, I used to do it, but that's insane for you to do it. And so they started to do that.

01:36:13.820 And then they became kind of social clubs as well. It finds out that people are looking to be part

01:36:17.500 of something bigger than themselves. They want to find friends that want to go do stuff. Not

01:36:21.340 everybody just wants to doom scroll. Going to bars is fine, but going for a ruck, then grabbing

01:36:27.700 dinner with the people that you know, that you talk to about your life and what matters to you.

01:36:32.740 And you listen to what matters to them. That stuff is hugely important. And those are the lessons that

01:36:37.220 I learned in SF and special forces. And that's just what we saw from the community. And so it became

01:36:42.780 this groundswell of, okay, so people wanted to self-organize. I mean, those are easy tea leaves

01:36:49.980 to read. This isn't me inventing something. This is people saying, we want to do this independent

01:36:55.480 of this company called GORUCK. And that is such a amazing thing to have happen. And so then we started

01:37:03.120 building around that. Because at this point, the company is an event running company that provides a

01:37:09.140 pack. Yes. I mean, it took two and a half years of figuring out how to develop the packs. We had

01:37:15.680 internal sewers as well. We have a repair department called SCARS, which is where we offer our lifetime

01:37:20.720 guarantee. I mean, we have the DNA of a manufacturing company as well. We just also have the energy of our

01:37:26.780 own events company. It's kind of a weird thing that we still wrestle with a little bit. I don't on some

01:37:34.060 existential level because I can't imagine a world without both, but it's unusual. Usually a

01:37:39.940 manufacturer will sponsor a race or an event series or whatever, or we develop both from the ground up

01:37:46.720 out of necessity. And so it sort of turned into, okay, well, how do I train for this? And then it

01:37:51.600 was, okay, well, what else can we do? And so we started to make longer events and harder events and

01:37:56.860 heavier events and lighter events and shorter events, because you don't always want a 24-hour

01:38:01.720 event like this or a 12-hour event like this. Then it started to be, okay, well, let's live that life.

01:38:07.420 And then we have rucks and we developed the rucker, which was a pack specific for rucking, which

01:38:12.780 removed the laptop because you could put a ruck plate in the laptop compartment. But what we found was

01:38:19.720 if you do that at a go ruck challenge and you drop your ruck and the iron meshes with that zipper

01:38:25.740 right there, it's going to break it. There's nothing we can do no matter how well we build it, you can't do it.

01:38:29.520 The zippers are the weak part in almost every piece of gear, no matter the gear. So we always

01:38:34.660 use the best zippers, but you can't endure a crush load against a zipper like that. And so we removed

01:38:41.280 that as a failure point for rucking and training and the rucker was born. And so then we had cast

01:38:47.860 iron plates and we've been messaging that for a while, almost a decade.

01:38:53.140 Got it.

01:38:53.320 So let's talk about the training because this is where I think people who've listened to this

01:38:58.960 podcast or heard me talk about it, I'm going to become a real fan of this. And I've talked about

01:39:03.080 how sometimes I almost don't even include it in my tally of weekly exercise. If I'm adding up the

01:39:08.600 number of hours in a week that I'm exercising, there's almost an afterthought to include the

01:39:12.800 ruck, even though the ruck isn't a great source of exercise. But I often talk about how I sort of do

01:39:17.160 it as, I don't know, I think it's kind of like mental health for me because it's the only thing I do

01:39:21.520 without any other input. So if I'm in the weight room or on the bike, I'm either on the bike,

01:39:25.500 I'm listening to a podcast. If I'm in the weight room, I'm listening to music or something like

01:39:29.300 that. But this is something where I'm decidedly never carrying a phone. So I'm either just alone

01:39:35.440 in silence or I'm doing it with a friend or my wife or something like that. I've really fallen in

01:39:40.320 love with it and I've yet to bring somebody on a ruck with me. If they haven't fallen in love with

01:39:45.700 it, they've certainly come to appreciate why this is a great thing to do and gone out and bought their

01:39:50.180 rucksack and things like that. But certainly I get a lot of questions. And so I kind of want to go

01:39:55.360 through some of these with you. So I guess the first question is, do you need a rucksack? Because

01:40:01.880 I have a Rucker 4.0. My wife has a Rucker 4.0. We have a spare Rucker 4.0 in the garage that if you

01:40:08.200 come over, we basically have three packs, tons of weights to slot in all different permutations.

01:40:13.580 But somebody listening to this says, man, I don't want to spend 300 bucks on one of these things.

01:40:17.360 Can I just use my backpack? It seems to me the answer is clearly yes. It's just a little more

01:40:21.560 convenient to use one of the formal packs that you guys make. Is that fair?

01:40:25.160 The answer is clearly yes. You are correct. Look, the last thing I ever wanted to be was

01:40:30.700 the Willy Loman of backpacks. I refuse to do it. That's not why I was put on this earth.

01:40:35.960 I think that people should be more active, myself included. Let's be more active. And so try

01:40:43.140 whatever you've got. Don't wait on this purchasing funnel about, well, I'm going to deliberate this

01:40:49.980 because it's expensive and I'm going to wait and wait and wait and maybe someday I'll buy it and do

01:40:55.240 this. Don't do that. Go find a backpack. You have one at your house. Put 10 or 20 pounds in your back

01:41:02.040 or whatever you want. Put a bag of rice. I don't care. Put some water. Go walk around your neighborhood.

01:41:07.740 Sinch it down. Make it kind of as tight as you can. And I'm reluctant to tell people to put too much

01:41:12.040 more weight in it because that's where it gets more uncomfortable. And once you add too much more

01:41:17.420 weight to something that's not built for rucking, it's uncomfortable becomes a bad ride. And so then

01:41:22.820 you're like, well, I hate rucking. And you can find a bunch of people that hate rucking, right? It's

01:41:27.140 usually people that serve in the military that carried a ton of weight that got no sleep, that had

01:41:31.900 fighting positions when they got there. It's like wrapped up into this whole universe. I'm talking about

01:41:37.280 20 pounds, 30 pounds for pick your mental health, physical health, social health. If you're talking

01:41:43.280 to your wife or a friend or a loved one, start there. Don't give yourself any excuses that you

01:41:48.640 have to go buy something because you have what you need to go get started right now.

01:41:53.940 My kids use their backpacks and school books.

01:41:56.260 Great.

01:41:56.720 And it's just so cute to watch them load up as many books as they can put into their backpacks.

01:42:00.840 That's great.

01:42:01.400 Okay. Let's talk a little bit about some of the parameters around weight. So what guidance do

01:42:08.280 you offer to, let's start with a person who is not that fit, but they're listening to this and

01:42:16.400 they're like, you know what, guys, I'm going to give this a try, but they're not an athlete.

01:42:20.400 They're not capable of Herculean tasks at the moment. They can walk around, they could put in

01:42:25.960 10,000 steps, but that's about the extent to their fitness. How do you start this person out?

01:42:30.420 I mean, 20 pounds, try it for a couple of miles. It's one of those things where

01:42:34.260 this is completely different from running from the standpoint of if you are walking

01:42:39.500 as part of your daily life, that is the same movement. You're not doing this thing where

01:42:45.500 there's all this different gait and new things with your Achilles, the way that you land or

01:42:51.400 foot strike or heel strike. It's so much simpler than that. It's just carrying a little bit of weight.

01:42:56.320 And the thing is, is that your shoulders will get a little bit sore the first time. That's good.

01:43:01.360 That's how they get stronger. And so this should not be some crazy thing where you start out with

01:43:07.720 a third of your body weight or more, and you want to really see what this is all about.

01:43:12.220 I mean, start out simply. Go for a walk. It's so great to be outside. The sunshine and the wind and

01:43:19.800 all of that, those are additional benefits. If you want to start on your treadmill,

01:43:24.020 start on your treadmill. That's fine. You'll get the physiological side of it at that point.

01:43:28.280 But this is so simple. You get a little sore. If you want to go a couple of miles, great. Go a

01:43:32.840 couple of miles. Come back and try it again tomorrow. What kind of guidance would you provide

01:43:37.140 as you escalate the weight and or if you're a person who's already kind of fit and wants to

01:43:41.600 add this in? So there are some variables here. There's the speed that you ruck and there's the

01:43:49.220 weight that you carry. And the elevation, I suppose. And the elevation and all of this. And so

01:43:53.500 you have to kind of listen to yourself or what are your goals in this? I mean, if you're training

01:43:59.260 up for a hike, this is a great thing to do. If you're training up for a hunt, this is a great

01:44:02.460 thing to do to just baseline. Baseline your fitness like that. I don't think there's any

01:44:07.280 reason to go out of the chute too hard. I didn't. I mean, I started out with minimal packs and basic

01:44:14.200 training. And I mean, 45 dry was by the time I'd done a little bit of this. And 45 on 200 pounds is

01:44:21.320 still less than 25%. I mean, we're not talking and I was in really good shape otherwise. So

01:44:26.500 there's no shame. Nobody cares. I mean, it's like if you come to my driveway and you work out or we

01:44:30.920 go for a ruck, I don't care how much weight you carry. If you ask me how much should I carry,

01:44:35.140 it's like, okay, great. Well, let's talk about your specific situation. If you're used to carrying

01:44:40.220 weights or if you're used to squatting a lot, or if you're doing the things that are going to kind

01:44:45.660 of prepare you to carry weight, then great. Try 30 or maybe 45 if you're really fit. There's no shame.

01:44:52.160 Start out with 30, go for a couple of miles. What's the worst thing that happens? You're like,

01:44:55.140 oh, I want to make that a little harder. There's no problem there. It's just getting out is part of

01:45:00.900 the joy without the pressure about, well, what's your bench press and your deadlift? How much exactly

01:45:05.900 can you do? Just simplify it. Just simplify it all. What about the differences between a rucksack

01:45:12.760 and a weight vest? So I used to use a weight vest to train for hunting trips. So I would put it on

01:45:19.580 my shoulders and go up and down hills with that. But I know you've thought a lot about the ergonomics

01:45:24.360 of this. So what are some of those differences? Yeah. And it was fun to see you and Dr. Humerman

01:45:28.220 going back and forth on this a little bit. I think he had spent more time with a weight vest and

01:45:32.320 that actually inspired Michael Easter and I to go even deeper into weight vest versus rucksack. So

01:45:40.000 an important thing is that weight vests are vital to the success of soldiers and police officers and

01:45:49.500 those who are in those kinds of dangerous jobs. And so there's a component of train like you fight.

01:45:54.380 You need to be comfortable in a weight vest if your job requires you to wear a weight vest to do

01:45:59.020 things like stop bullets. That's really important. What I will also tell you is that people that wear

01:46:03.380 weight vests have typically terrible posture because of it. It is just kind of a compression

01:46:09.180 downward that doesn't really open up. In order to breathe better, you have to create this cavity of

01:46:17.760 air in the front of your belly, which the more fatigued you get, the more that you do that when

01:46:23.000 you're wearing a weight vest. And so you're kind of hunching over a little bit. It's not good for what

01:46:28.560 I would personally say. You want your spine to look like this. Dr. Starrett would say you have to own

01:46:34.880 your breath to own a pose. Well, rucking is no different. If you can own your breath, it means

01:46:39.420 your shoulders are back and you can take a really deep breath while you're rucking. The weight vest

01:46:44.920 is also looks a little different than a rucksack. You can't quite blend in quite as well. This is

01:46:51.060 getting into the aesthetics less than the physiological response. But the rucksack is more comfortable.

01:46:56.620 And I say that from not the standpoint of I'm trying to live more easily. I say that from the

01:47:02.820 standpoint of I can put my shoulders back. It's posture corrective for me. So it rolls my shoulders

01:47:08.380 back when I cinch it down tight, which for me works well to maintain solid posture that is the opposite

01:47:15.360 of say, lower back or neck curvature forward, which is more likely when you don't have that on your back.

01:47:22.760 One of the things that I remember from when we went out for a ruck last year was that you didn't use

01:47:31.060 the chest strap, which comes on the rucksack and you weren't using the hip belt, which is an

01:47:35.920 attachment you can buy for 20 bucks or something. I've played with both of these. I also prefer not

01:47:42.340 to use the chest strap. I find it actually makes it harder to breathe. I actually prefer to have it

01:47:47.780 wide open, which means there's a little more pressure on my shoulders, but that's a worthwhile

01:47:51.720 trade-off because I have unrestricted breathing. But I do quite fancy the belt. And I just recall

01:47:58.320 you weren't using either. Is that just a throwback to your days of the use case you referred to

01:48:03.840 earlier, which is like in the military, I wasn't going to wear a belt because it would get in the

01:48:07.320 way of me grabbing a magazine. So I did grow up like that with my rucking where we just didn't use

01:48:13.240 hip belts. And for a hip belt, there's a butt coming. And the butt is for the fit for me when you

01:48:20.780 start to transfer the load around your hips. It kind of reduces some of the stability that I have

01:48:27.780 with the weight and the way that my shoulders go back and the way that I breathe. Now, when you get

01:48:33.480 into very heavy loads, hunting style elk loads or heavy military ammunition loads or something,

01:48:41.160 I mean, I found that there's a lot of value in just alternating how you're doing it because

01:48:45.160 you want the blood flow to go certain ways. Even when it's a shoulder only carry, there's little

01:48:50.840 tips and tricks to kind of flex your shoulders around just a little bit so that you can get

01:48:56.820 the blood flow to go there even a little bit more. It's just not a comfortable thing for me.

01:49:02.380 I don't use it. And what you find is that for the load to actually transfer can be at odds with how

01:49:10.040 much you cinch the rucksack down. Yeah. You can't cinch it down much on the shoulders if you want

01:49:15.960 it to be cinched tight on the hips is what I found at least. Right. So then for that to be a both thing,

01:49:22.400 that's why these hunting packs are enormous and they're really long and they're built to carry

01:49:28.520 really heavy loads that you can do either with. For me, it's just not quite as practical. And I prefer

01:49:34.900 the feeling of the shoulder carry. I mean, they taught us high and tight on your back is where

01:49:40.280 you want the weight and stable always. So whether you use our stuff or whatever you're using, you

01:49:45.900 want it to be stable. The more that stuff is shifting around inside of your ruck, you have

01:49:51.060 the opportunity to, okay, you step on uneven ground and then you go a little bit too far this way. And

01:49:56.380 then you tweak your back in the wrong spot or your whatever it might be. You don't want that.

01:50:00.840 But stable is exactly how you want it. And so I really like that feeling of stability high and

01:50:07.540 tight on my back, just right up on my shoulders. So would you just sort of suggest that folks

01:50:12.460 muck around with this and figure out what feels best to them? Yes, absolutely. The idea of the

01:50:19.580 resistance side of rucking, starting with your shoulders and going all the way down to your feet,

01:50:26.160 you're starting that resistance with your upper body. And when you transfer all the load to your

01:50:31.900 hips, you're starting it much lower on the body. And so it's different strokes for different folks,

01:50:37.460 just as my grandmother used to say. And people like it certain ways, depending upon how the fit is.

01:50:42.040 And especially at lighter loads, people who are, say, used to carrying book bags or they're used to

01:50:49.740 doing these types of things, I mean, you're used to carrying that on your shoulders. You've already

01:50:54.160 prepared yourself. You're walking in part of your daily life. You're training for this. You're ready.

01:51:00.580 And so there's this idea of ride that through. And as you get more weight, say you start to get up

01:51:08.060 to 45 or you start to maybe max out at a third of your body weight, it puts more pressure on your

01:51:13.980 system, your technique. And you might want to transfer the load or you might want to do it a little bit

01:51:18.440 differently. I mean, if I do really long, really heavy rucks, I will occasionally use the

01:51:23.960 sternum strap in the front because it's going to take some of the load off my shoulders, which allows

01:51:28.300 the blood flow to come back to my shoulders and my hands. And that then just gives me that little

01:51:34.240 break. And then I just continue with the mission. For you nowadays, how many events do you lead in

01:51:40.280 a month typically or in a year now? I don't lead a lot of events. I mean, I have people over to my

01:51:46.100 driveway every weekend when I'm home. People come over from the community or we run events.

01:51:50.160 What it means to be a go ruck event is certainly broadened. We've decentralized a lot of the,

01:51:55.880 hey, work out like this, bring the people together in the parks, bring the people together in your

01:51:59.840 driveways. This doesn't need to be so complicated. And go for rucks in wherever you want to go.

01:52:05.800 And I do that a lot. No, I probably only lead 20 events a year now.

01:52:10.800 You led one in Normandy, didn't you?

01:52:12.260 I did. And we're going back next year in May and June for the 80th.

01:52:15.900 Tell me about the one you did. Was it for the 70th?

01:52:17.920 We went for the 75th. So we have different kinds of events. The one that my wife and I did

01:52:24.240 together, it was a 75 kilometer ruck only, which was about 50 miles. And it started at Utah and it

01:52:32.660 ended at Omaha. And it passed through all the things that you saw in Band of Brothers, the cities,

01:52:38.660 Pointe de Hau.

01:52:39.340 Did you do it on the beach or did you do it above the cliffs?

01:52:42.180 You can't do it on the beach. So you've got to go around to the cities and then around the kind of

01:52:47.060 inlet. And then you come up and almost at dawn, we were at the German cemetery, which is black

01:52:52.620 tombstones. And you walk around and it's one thing to know that we were on the side of right

01:52:58.980 and justice. And God bless those men and everybody in our country that had any part in that war,

01:53:03.820 because we did right. You walk around that German cemetery and you see 16, 17, 18 year old kids

01:53:09.240 that are buried there. I mean, it's just another perspective that you get from seeing that,

01:53:14.560 especially that far in. And then you go to Pointe de Hauk and you see where the Rangers scaled that

01:53:19.220 wall against those machine gun nests. The amount of sacrifice that's gone into this. And then

01:53:24.480 from there, we hand railed the final piece from Pointe de Hauk to Omaha, which is my favorite rock

01:53:31.300 on planet earth. And it took us to Omaha. And then the American cemetery is there. And I think that's

01:53:36.900 the most American place on planet earth.

01:53:38.400 It's amazing.

01:53:39.820 And I get goosebumps thinking about it right this second. It's something that to see what

01:53:45.160 they had to endure for that to happen, it is mind blowing. And think not only of their passing,

01:53:51.220 think of the glory of their spirit. It's at the American cemetery. And it's hard when you're there

01:53:56.260 because it's a very solemn place, but man, there was a lot of glory of a lot of spirit there.

01:54:01.060 So you'll be doing an 80th anniversary there?

01:54:03.260 We are. We're running a lot of different events. So there's an 80 kilometer, roughly a 50 miler,

01:54:08.840 again, probably the same-ish route. And then there's a 26.2, put on some 12 milers, do some

01:54:13.440 commemorative hero workouts. We'll do some of our challenges of different links. We'll put on some

01:54:18.460 scavenger hunts. We'll put on some stuff for the kids. So we have two chateaus right on the beach,

01:54:23.820 pretty close to Pointe de Hauk, and we'll be running stuff out of there. We have this really crazy long

01:54:28.360 endurance event as well called GoRuck Selection, which is patterned after special forces assessment

01:54:33.320 selection. It's the toughest endurance event in the world. It's pass rates sub 1%. It's the only

01:54:37.680 event where we try to get people to quit. What is that event?

01:54:40.200 It's 48 hours. It's late May next year. We're doing it for the first time overseas. It's going

01:54:44.620 to be at Normandy. It's the dark side of GoRuck. But people ultimately wanted the biggest test they

01:54:50.140 could possibly find. And so this past year, one person finished. The year before, zero people finished.

01:54:55.400 The year before that, one person finished. People come and it's aggressive. So that's the first event

01:55:00.200 that we're kicking off with. And then we get into the more fun stuff that's there.

01:55:05.040 ADK doesn't sound like it's just pure fun stuff. I mean, that sounds pretty challenging.

01:55:09.160 That event is my favorite event to do as a participant. You have to put the miles in

01:55:14.260 to kind of train up. The first time we ever did it, we did it in DC and it was a torrential downpour.

01:55:19.820 And I went in with a little bit too much pride. Like, oh, I've been rucking for a long time.

01:55:24.300 You have 20 pounds. So you end up having 25, including your stuff. And I was like, oh, no,

01:55:29.020 I'm good. And man, I had to go to the well to pass that thing. And it was under 20 hours. I mean,

01:55:33.900 you're rucking. You're not shuffling. You're not ruck running or anything like that if you want to

01:55:38.980 hit that kind of time hack. But the beauty is just it does wear you down. It's longer than you want.

01:55:44.980 It's harder than you think. The 40-mile mark is about where you're like, I'm ready to be done.

01:55:49.220 But it's great to get the time with the person that you have there. What you'll find over the

01:55:55.020 course of these longer events is that there's highs and lows for all of you, but they don't come

01:56:01.700 always at the same time. So you're there and you need someone's help and they help you. They just

01:56:07.060 lift your spirit up a little bit. And then you in turn do that for them. I mean, it's like, hey,

01:56:12.320 I got some M&Ms. You want some? I mean, that can change your whole life. Just amazing.

01:56:16.840 It's little stuff like that. And it really brings you closer to people that you're there with. And

01:56:22.120 that was a great experience. I don't know that we'll do it this year.

01:56:25.440 You won't do the 80K?

01:56:26.660 Personally, I think we'll probably choose M&I. I'll probably choose a shorter distance only

01:56:30.200 because we have a lot of events to also put on. That takes you out of commission for a couple days.

01:56:35.300 And you do this right on June 6th?

01:56:37.660 We're there for basically two weeks prior. Normandy is a great place. It's also very big.

01:56:43.360 Yeah. And it's also going to be very busy leading up to the anniversary.

01:56:46.160 I mean, June 6th is where all the heads of state will be at the American cemetery,

01:56:50.440 which just means there's more traffic. There's more checkpoints. It's harder to operate. So

01:56:54.620 the way that we plan it is we let people show up early. We run our events like that

01:56:59.940 during the week and the weekend prior. And then if people want to stay, they can stay. And if they

01:57:05.000 want to go home by then, they can go home. It's kind of up to them. But I think people should go to

01:57:08.740 Washington DC as well and go see our nation's capital and see the Lincoln and the Washington.

01:57:13.060 You can't get as close to the capital as you used to, but go see the capital and the Jefferson and

01:57:17.520 go see these things, the MLK and the FDR and go see them and read what's up there. Read the

01:57:24.340 Gettysburg Address at the Lincoln. It's amazing. As well, I think the more people that go to Normandy,

01:57:30.700 the better. It's just an amazing place.

01:57:32.340 Let's talk about footwear for a second, because this is something where you guys have started to

01:57:39.180 take this as something you own now. Why do you guys make footwear? And why do you think that the

01:57:45.440 footwear you make is really good? I wear your footwear, right? So I'm wearing, what's the one

01:57:50.180 I wear? The ballistic trainers? Ballistic trainers is what I wear. I love both the high top and the low

01:57:54.660 top. About an eight millimeter drop. That's right.

01:57:57.620 Quite supportive. I have found, at least I found prior to wearing these, that I was destroying

01:58:03.340 shoes. There are certain minimalist shoes that I like, but I just felt I needed more support. But

01:58:09.160 say a little bit about why you guys have taken the innovation in footwear really seriously. You're

01:58:14.280 almost a footwear company at this point now, aren't you?

01:58:16.200 We are. So an important thing happened was that I met a guy named Paul Litchfield. Footwear is a lot

01:58:21.620 of dark arts. The process of building footwear, there's a lot of chemistry involved and there's a lot of

01:58:26.940 dark arts. You can sew a rucksack. You have some sewing machines and a cutting table. You can sew a

01:58:31.620 rucksack together. You can iterate a million times. You can do this. Footwear is just way more

01:58:36.620 complicated with lasts and molds and foam chemistry and all this stuff. And so I met Paul with Emily

01:58:44.280 a long time ago when he was still at Reebok and he was running the advanced concepts group at Reebok at

01:58:50.380 the time. He had invented something called the Reebok pump and been a shoe dog, one of the foremost

01:58:56.140 shoe dogs of his generation and still, and has sold over a billion pairs of shoes. So that's a lot.

01:59:02.860 And there's a lot of expertise that comes with that to help navigate the dark arts because getting into

01:59:07.420 your own, hey, I'm going to start a shoe company because it sounds sexy is a great way to build

01:59:12.180 terrible product because you have to liaise with the factory and get the molds built. There's just a

01:59:17.220 lot that goes with it. So important was that we had someone who's a real expert. I'm a really

01:59:23.100 aggressive product tester. I hate everything till I accept it, if you will, right? And then

01:59:29.020 great art is never finished. It's only abandoned. And so there's always this kind of relentless

01:59:33.200 pursuit of excellence, but you have to have somebody who is just dogmatic in their beliefs

01:59:38.240 that knows what they're doing, that is a subject matter expert that has dedicated their life to

01:59:42.620 this as a profession. And so without that, I was unwilling to get into the footwear business.

01:59:47.440 The reason why footwear is so important is that if you lined up 100 people who are masters of the

01:59:54.520 ruck, most of them at this point would come from the special forces community. And you said,

01:59:58.780 what's more important, the rucksack or the boot? 90 plus percent, if not all 100, will say the footwear.

02:00:06.860 And the reason why is because when that goes wrong, it is just excruciating. I mean, Napoleon

02:00:13.980 lost because of foot problems, right? I mean, you can lose wars. You can lose everything based upon

02:00:20.600 the feet of your soldiers. And if they're not doing well, it's really hard to do anything. You're

02:00:27.280 living on your feet all of the time. And so it turned into this, yeah, we had some footwear in

02:00:33.800 the military and we were always just modifying it to make it more like a sneaker, but still supportive.

02:00:40.160 And there's all this stuff in the civilian sector about, okay, well, minimalist, you cannot go

02:00:47.100 through the training that we went through in minimalist stuff. Your feet just need more support

02:00:52.000 under that kind of load. We just kind of took the most beloved shoe in the military repertoire,

02:00:58.080 which is the jungle boot. And we started there and we made that ours. That was basically the boot

02:01:04.000 that I wore in the special forces qualification course. We stripped away the weight. We added tread that

02:01:09.880 was lightweight that would still work with that. Most importantly, we'll provide the support for

02:01:14.960 your feet for all of the miles. It lets you scale up the weight and the distance. And because this

02:01:20.260 is GORUCK, we want stuff to last forever. It doesn't, but we want it to last forever and that's

02:01:24.920 how we build it. And so that's just in our ethos and we're uncompromising about that. So we were

02:01:31.340 unwilling to do it unless we could build best in class, world-class product. And we wanted to solve

02:01:36.680 a real world problem, not just a stylistic problem like, oh, this is going to be a cooler

02:01:42.620 looking shoe. That's a terrible problem to solve. The problem is you live on your feet and you're

02:01:48.000 carrying weight of any amount, volume, distance, whatever it might be. And we need to build something

02:01:54.520 around that. That's a harrowing task. Now there's all different facets of how people carry and is it

02:02:01.860 off-road or is it on trails? How did people grow up? Look at how Born to Run kind of ignited that

02:02:08.240 divide from five finger, which I call the five finger death punch when I would see it at events

02:02:13.060 because people would just destroy themselves when they would wear this because they're so unsupported

02:02:16.960 with so much weight for so long. And people just don't know and they are looking for answers. It's

02:02:24.600 like, what's going to work? And if you're carrying weight or you're living on your feet,

02:02:28.500 you need supportive footwear. That's the deal. Yeah. I love my minimalist footwear,

02:02:34.880 but I have learned, I would say the hard way that rucking is not the time for it.

02:02:40.420 My daily drive is about 50 to 60 pounds and the amount of foot problems I was having,

02:02:46.660 I have very hypermobile feet. So that makes me, it seems even more susceptible to injury

02:02:52.020 on uneven terrain with that much weight. Maybe talk about the ballistic trainer versus the boot.

02:02:57.080 You have a couple of different models. How would you help somebody navigate those?

02:03:00.620 Yeah, we do. I mean, people do make decisions based off of how things look or how simple they

02:03:05.280 are. I mean, we come from a special forces background. So we have stuff that's, the boots

02:03:09.000 are inspired by our jungle boots that we used to wear. We just sort of strip them down.

02:03:14.140 And then the ballistic trainers started out as the best garage gym shoe on the planet. There was a little

02:03:20.540 bit of, Hey, how do we solve a problem that you can lift, push, pull, drag sandbags or barbells or stuff as

02:03:26.880 well, but this is go ruck. So you need to be able to ruck in them as well. And, you know, at that time

02:03:31.860 CrossFit, it started out with a really minimalist drop for lots of different reasons, but I don't

02:03:37.580 think many of them very good over the long haul. And we came in with an eight millimeter drop shoe.

02:03:43.180 We said, this also happens to be the best shoe for CrossFit, but for us, it's also the best garage gym

02:03:48.920 shoe and you can ruck with it and live in your feet with this ballistic trainer on as well.

02:03:54.760 The drop does matter. So basically the rucking offset or the heel lift as it might be. And

02:04:01.360 that's how you prevent things like shin splints.

02:04:04.620 And it keeps the Achilles a little bit safer. You take a little bit of that strain off.

02:04:08.960 The thing is, is that you can argue philosophical positions forever. You should have a stronger Achilles

02:04:18.140 and a stronger shin and a stronger foot. And the word should is not really very useful. The thing is,

02:04:23.920 is that people grew up how they grew up. And there's a lot of asphalt and people weigh what

02:04:28.500 they weigh. And the more that you weigh, the more strain you're putting on your feet with every step

02:04:33.440 and how do you walk and all of those things. And so, yes, I think it's important to actually

02:04:39.320 strengthen your feet as well. Walk around your house barefoot, do whatever. But when it comes time

02:04:44.560 to perform and you have a lot of weight, your foot has three arches. You need to support them all over a

02:04:49.920 lot of dynamic movements, pavement, uneven terrain, whatever it might be. And there's a lot that goes

02:04:55.620 into doing that successfully. And so the stuff that we build is designed for that.

02:05:02.180 Yeah. I do most of my activity barefoot, but I take care of my feet when I ruck. And when I do kind

02:05:07.500 of my heavier carries and stuff like that, that makes a ton of sense. What are the most common injuries

02:05:12.440 you see in people who ruck? And what are the steps that you recommend people take to mitigate those?

02:05:20.140 If you do it at lighter loads, you don't see a lot of injury. And you've seen this proven in

02:05:24.900 special forces training. I mean, the number one cause of injury is running and there's no close

02:05:28.380 second. Lifting is number two and marching is way down the list. The injuries that you'll see are

02:05:34.300 usually from people that start too fast, too soon with too much weight. So slow down, reduce the weight,

02:05:41.100 listen to your body. If you start to get shin splints, they're not going to get better from

02:05:46.280 doing more of the same thing. So yes, you can ice and rest and do all this stuff. You can also just

02:05:51.340 reduce the weight and the distance and the time and put the variables that are like that.

02:05:57.200 You know, look, my standard, I have a 45-pound plate. I carry it often. It's by the door at my office.

02:06:04.600 It's by the door at my house. If I walk the dog, I ruck the dog. If I can take a phone call outside,

02:06:09.300 I put the 45-pound plate on and I go walk around the neighborhood and I take a phone call. It lets

02:06:13.800 me squeeze a few more hours out of the day that I don't have to dedicate to just fitness. Some days

02:06:19.560 I don't feel like doing that much or some days I want a little bit more. And you just have to listen

02:06:23.420 to yourself. I mean, look, if you start running with weight, you're putting a lot more strain on

02:06:28.060 yourself. So make sure that you're physically able to do that. There's a middle ground that's a

02:06:32.920 shuffle that is really, really interesting to me. And when I want to do a little bit more and I don't want

02:06:38.860 my knees to feel like I just went on a long run, I just try to keep my feet as low to the ground as

02:06:44.220 possible. And I just move them as fast as possible. It's just kind of shuffling. My heart rate goes up

02:06:49.540 a lot more and you can really accelerate that pretty quickly. The faster you go and the more

02:06:55.140 that you gallop, the greater risk that you're going to have of injury. So most people walking with 20 or

02:07:00.100 30 pounds, you're not really going to see a lot other than shin splints. If you're unready,

02:07:05.580 if your Achilles starts to hurt, dial it back a little bit, get a little more ready or look at

02:07:10.120 supportive footwear. If your shoulders are sore, then decrease the weight or if it's a good sore,

02:07:16.260 then that's them getting stronger. I always find that in the winter, I just rock less for whatever

02:07:21.240 reason. I enjoy the heat more. So I have less motivation to go out in the winter. And I always

02:07:26.700 find that when I really ramp up volume in the summer, that first week, I feel it in the shoulders

02:07:31.860 again. But as you said, it's easy to distinguish a good sore from a bad sore. This is foreign to me

02:07:39.000 sore versus this is causing an injury sore. If you get too much weight, what you'll start to do is

02:07:46.000 you'll start to lean your body forward. You'll pivot at your hips a little bit too much while you're

02:07:52.600 doing it. And you're doing that because you're trying to put the weight over your stronger muscles

02:07:57.620 and you're kind of cheating. You know how Arnold talks about, I don't care how many pushups you can

02:08:02.360 do. I want to see you do 10 perfect pushups. Master the movement first and then get into the miles and

02:08:08.480 all that. Do the movement correctly. Remove the ego a little bit about how much weight that you have,

02:08:14.700 especially if you're starting until you get comfortable or know what you're capable of and

02:08:19.060 keep good form while you're doing it. And you're going to reduce the risk of really anything. So

02:08:24.760 that's kind of really a critical thing because if you start hunching over and stuff, you shouldn't

02:08:29.720 be doing that. For someone starting out, what would be the frequency you would recommend they do it if

02:08:34.440 they're starting out at a modest weight? Would you put any limit on it? So much is subjective around,

02:08:39.900 well, what's their step count? Do they work out otherwise? I mean, try a couple miles a couple

02:08:45.580 times a week. I don't know. I probably need to just have a more strict, hey, this is exactly what you

02:08:51.460 should do. But if you tried two miles with 30 pounds and you're like, okay, that was cool. I

02:08:56.420 mean, that's 30 minutes of your life. I mean, you can do that. Yeah. I think at light enough load,

02:09:01.900 once you're in a cardio zone two or below, there's really no limit to what I think you can do in terms

02:09:07.940 of frequency. Yeah. So you're the expert. People always ask me, hey, Peter, when you're doing your

02:09:13.240 ruck, is that a zone two workout for you? And the answer is no. It's a zone one, zone four. I'm never

02:09:19.080 just a steady state heart rate of 130 to 140. The only way I can do that is the ruck shuffle.

02:09:25.880 Remember how we do our ruck and we end up at that track at the school? There I can get into zone two.

02:09:31.340 If I do a shuffle, I can titrate the speed of the shuffle to zone two. But walking here and there,

02:09:37.680 my heart rate's either pretty low or pretty high when we're going up those really steep hills,

02:09:43.100 which is part of the reason why I don't really bank it as exercise in my mind.

02:09:46.820 What I really enjoy are those pushes up the hills because then you're getting that VO2 max.

02:09:53.740 And I really like the walking down the steep hills because you're really working on how do your

02:09:57.960 brakes work? And brakes are the things that fail when we age. And so walking down a very steep hill,

02:10:05.620 and we have a lot of them here with weight on your back, is a really good way to train eccentric

02:10:11.160 strength while the muscle is lengthening.

02:10:13.040 So would you recommend going very slowly while you do that? Or is there any value in increased

02:10:19.740 speed while going downhill?

02:10:20.940 I don't think there's a value in increased speed going down. I mean, the only athletes I know that

02:10:24.520 do that are sprinters do that. Sprinters will do downhill running to teach the muscle how fast the

02:10:31.040 legs can go. I think the risk reward for a normal person like me is not there to justify it. So

02:10:37.260 I'm not going incredibly slow. I'm just going at what I think is the safest pace possible when I go

02:10:43.220 down. Whereas going up, I'm really limited by my cardio system. I'm basically going up as fast as my

02:10:48.960 lungs will carry me.

02:10:50.480 The way down hurts my knees more. The faster I try to go, my wife was a really, really good runner. And

02:10:55.420 when we would ever go for a run, she's like, got to make up speed on the downhills. I'm like,

02:10:59.040 I'm just not willing to do that on a training run, if you will. And it's the same thing for me with

02:11:03.520 rucking. I know what you're saying about the brakes. It's a leg workout on the way down,

02:11:09.120 unless you're sacrificing. One of my favorite workouts, and I don't do this often because this

02:11:13.960 truly is a workout, is a heavy 80 to 100 pack. Where we live, there are four short, but very

02:11:21.040 steep hills. And it's an up and down of all four. So walking there, and then an up, down, up. Yeah,

02:11:28.820 there's four. And that is brutal. Michael Easter and I have gotten into this 100-pound

02:11:33.980 one-miler thing, and it is a thing. I mean, to actually baseline your time against that.

02:11:40.740 What's a benchmark time that one should think of for 100? And you're doing this as a shuffle?

02:11:45.240 Oh, yeah. What gets exhausting is when you change too much, like a walk to a shuffle.

02:11:50.720 You need to pick a cadence that you can go.

02:11:53.060 Give me an example of how long would it take to shuffle a mile with 100 pounds on your back?

02:11:56.760 I don't know, 9.30? I was about to say 10 minutes. Sounds like it would be pretty tough.

02:12:01.120 I've seen a really, really, really competitive runner did it in 6.30. I mean, that's insanity.

02:12:07.860 It's still a VO2 max type of game. I wonder at what point it starts being more about a strength carry,

02:12:15.940 a really extreme weight. At a heavy enough weight, when you simply can't even shuffle,

02:12:21.260 it probably shifts more to just pure strength. Yeah, but the 100-pound 10 minutes,

02:12:25.760 it's a smoker. It's a lot of fun. So rucking can turn into this. For me, it's more like a baseline.

02:12:32.260 And I think about how do I sleep well at night. I really, really prioritize that.

02:12:37.120 And getting step counts and some percentage of those with weight on my back is a very

02:12:41.580 useful tool for me to sleep well. Tomorrow comes and it's a better day. Yet, I think it's also fun to

02:12:48.020 have these challenges with a ruck on my back. Because I also hearken back to those days when I did that,

02:12:53.940 and it was really, really fun. And there were foot races and all of that. And that was a lot of fun.

02:12:59.480 So what do we know about the plates? Because you guys obviously sell these amazing plates now that

02:13:04.860 just make this so easy and plug and play. They slot right into the pack. What's the over-under on TSA

02:13:11.800 pre here in the US allowing those through security? Because for many of us, it would be great to be able to

02:13:18.300 take plates with us when we travel to both have them at our destination, but also just

02:13:23.900 frankly, utilize the time we're in the airport. Amen. So I personally have done this 50 times,

02:13:31.220 I'd say, and never been confiscated. Now, there's a raging debate inside of the GORUCK community,

02:13:37.020 and a lot of people do get confiscated. Enough to where it comes up. I mean, I found that the best

02:13:43.120 way to do it if you want to do it. First off, you have to be willing to check it or sacrifice it if

02:13:48.540 it doesn't go through. But you separate it out, you put it in its own thing. You can put a little

02:13:54.000 descriptor on what it is, or you have to be ready to tell them what it is. And I think the more people

02:13:59.600 that know what rucking is, the more likely it'll be that it's okay. Have you got a sense of whether

02:14:05.520 the people who are getting confiscated are lighter plates versus heavier plates? Is there any pattern

02:14:09.260 to what's getting confiscated? Because there's a light enough plate maybe viewed as a potential

02:14:12.680 weapon where a 50-pound plate, nobody thinks you're going to be wielding that? I think the

02:14:16.460 opposite. I think the heavier ones are more likely to get confiscated. You've gone 50 for 50 carrying

02:14:22.220 what size plate? 20 or 30. It's always 20 or 30. So the other thing that I do, though, is I just have

02:14:27.740 a stuff sack. And instead of using a plate, it's more like you get somewhere, you can find some rocks

02:14:34.620 outside a hotel, and finding 20 pounds of that is not hard. I mean, you can wrap a dumbbell from a hotel

02:14:40.660 gym, which I've also done. I mean, it's not as nice of a ride, that's for sure. But there's this

02:14:45.600 ability to multi-use the things that you carry or you travel with. So, hey, your dirty clothes bag,

02:14:52.680 you can also use to put rocks in it. The reason I really want to bring a plate is I'm thinking about

02:14:58.800 you go on vacation to Europe or something where you're not going to have the luxury of going to

02:15:03.920 the gym every day, but you're going to walk 10 miles a day. Wouldn't it be great to just have that

02:15:08.560 20, 30 pounds on your back for 10 miles a day walking around and have that not be a dumbbell

02:15:13.940 jabbing into your- Yeah. More like a sandbag that goes in that takes up a little bit more volume that

02:15:20.400 isn't iron. I've had good success with that. I've also had really good success with that,

02:15:25.420 even in the States with my garage and all of the toys that I have. You baseline with the weight and

02:15:30.580 then you say, okay, well, I want to add 20 pounds today. I just throw a sandbag in.

02:15:34.380 It's not always just stacking. It's easy in, it's easy out. You can use it for other stuff too.

02:15:40.120 It works great. You mentioned earlier a treadmill. So what are the advantages or

02:15:44.980 disadvantages to rucking on a treadmill? I mean, the disadvantages are very clear to

02:15:49.580 me that you're not outside. There's these fractals that Easter talks about, which you

02:15:53.920 also have talked about and you're missing out on sunshine and wind and light and all of that kind

02:16:00.240 of stuff. Some advantages to treadmills are simply safety and practicality and all of that kind of

02:16:06.060 stuff. I mean, I have a couple of friends that are surgeons at Mayo and they get home at three in the

02:16:10.720 morning and they want to get their workout in then and they're on their treadmill. I'm like, okay,

02:16:16.180 you guys do you. I think you should do what works for you at the end of it. Americans are spending

02:16:21.240 something like what? 93% of our time indoors now? It's a ton. And so giving yourself a little bit

02:16:27.680 more freedom to go outside. I'm more comfortable walking around with a rucksack on than I am with

02:16:34.400 a weight vest or a big giant hiking hunting pack or whatever it is. I mean, you kind of look like you

02:16:39.760 can blend in. You can go ruck and get the groceries. You can bake it in. So treadmills are fine. It's the

02:16:46.720 physical side, staring at some screen the whole time and doing that. There are other downsides to that.

02:16:52.040 If somebody wants to do one of these really extreme events, like the 80 kilometer Normandy

02:16:58.960 challenge, how do they train for it? What do you recommend they show up? Because we really know

02:17:03.780 how to train for a marathon. That's a well-oiled machine. What is the build pattern of volume to

02:17:11.280 get ready for something like that? I mean, we do have mileage training plans against that. So

02:17:16.240 you need to at least do a marathon. Like you need to at least do half. 40K. Yeah. You need to at least

02:17:23.560 do that. And the way that I have always cheated the distance is by adding weight and trying to

02:17:30.140 maintain the same speed. Because you're trying to do the 80K in what time? Under 20 hours. Okay. So you

02:17:36.760 need to be able to rock a marathon in 10 hours and the event is done with how much weight? You'll have 25

02:17:45.520 not much. How much would you increase that to maintain the pace? You'd go 50 pounds. 50 or 60

02:17:52.900 almost all the time. I would almost never train with 25. The beauty that you can do also, it's kind

02:18:00.440 of what I was talking about with the sock system to toughen up your feet. With rucking, you can go a

02:18:05.440 certain distance and you can drop weight if you want. And you can go faster. If you're dropping weight

02:18:10.680 to kind of start this descent into, well, I can't handle it anymore. I'm just going to walk.

02:18:16.220 That's fine to do that. But you can drop weight and then you can pick up your speed. And so you're

02:18:22.380 hitting the systems a little bit differently in the same type of movement or process. You just kind of

02:18:27.960 have to experiment with it. Unlike running, you have this other variable that you can control.

02:18:33.060 And it's fun to control it because it's a different workout. Like you're saying,

02:18:37.240 a hundred pounds is a lot different than 60. Totally different. Yeah. A lot different. And

02:18:41.500 you reach this point and everybody's got this point where an incremental amount of weight added

02:18:48.760 feels like an exponential amount of weight added. And that can change over time relative to how much

02:18:55.520 you rock or what you're comfortable with, I'd say. But it's kind of up to you. If you have an hour,

02:19:03.060 what do you want to do? You can do a lot of different things. You can go lighter and faster.

02:19:08.000 You can go heavier and slower. You can go middle of the road and try to push on one of those systems

02:19:13.320 a little bit more. And that's fun. So you've said to me before, your goal is for rucking to be the

02:19:21.460 new running. Bigger than running. The goal is that rucking is bigger than running. What's that going to

02:19:27.140 take? Well, we're in the early stages of it. First off, it takes awareness that people are actually

02:19:32.080 rucking. Everybody that joins the military is rucking. Let's start out. Now you've got millions

02:19:37.360 of people. You go to airports. I mean, roll bags and stacking stuff so that everything is easy all

02:19:45.540 the time. Like you sit on a flight for 10 hours and then you stand on a walking escalator and then you

02:19:51.180 go sit at your gate. No, don't do that. Put everything on your back. You have hands-free

02:19:58.040 movement. That's freedom. You can do this in an airport. You can do this while you're traveling.

02:20:03.320 It's going to make all of your adventures better while you're doing it as well. You're training to

02:20:07.020 climb the mountain in the airport right there. Training to explore the city by any time that you

02:20:12.340 put a ruck on your back. Go to Europe, which you're mentioning. It's cobblestone roads. There's

02:20:17.100 narrow sidewalks. I mean, roll bags are just not, it's just a ball and chain around your life.

02:20:22.820 And so the first step is to just say, this is better because, and to get people to buy into

02:20:28.700 that. And then there's just the physiological side of this is extremely healthy for people to do.

02:20:34.500 I come at that from a baseline of activity. The best things that you want out of life require

02:20:41.460 passion and energy and activity. You have to do them. We need to be people who do things.

02:20:47.760 And the more that you do, the more confident that you get doing things. And this is a really

02:20:54.280 important lesson that everybody has to relearn throughout the course of their life. And you

02:21:00.140 have to keep doing stuff. The body is anti-fragile. The more that you work at, the stronger it gets.

02:21:06.200 And that's an amazing, amazing thing that we have. And to not know what we're capable of

02:21:11.580 is just a shame. And so let's intentionally do these physically harder things than nothing,

02:21:20.940 than just living our lives on phones or always standing to then sit, to never move. There's

02:21:28.860 so much benefit that comes from your ability to move yourself and to carry weight. And you are built

02:21:36.560 and born and have evolved in order to do this. You just have to kind of do it.

02:21:43.320 Yeah. It is our superpower, right? Michael wrote about this in The Comfort Crisis, that

02:21:47.300 there's nothing that's evolved to carry more than we do.

02:21:51.880 So we have to just do it and you can work it into your life. The risk of injury is fractional.

02:21:58.740 You're kind of even describing it as like, I'm just don't even almost count it as exercise. Now,

02:22:02.860 most people would count an hour and a half with 60 pounds on their back exercise. And when you do

02:22:07.880 your hills, you'll count it as exercise. The scalability, it's a very simple thing to do.

02:22:13.440 You carry weight. It's not a new machine that's going to turn into a towel rack. It's not Mr.

02:22:19.020 Spandex yelling at you through some screen on a bike. It's none of these gimmicks. It's not a new band.

02:22:24.900 It's not a new whatever. It's so simple. This has been going on for millennia. It's why humans exist.

02:22:31.640 This has been proven by the Roman Legion. Rucking was their litmus test to get into that. It's been

02:22:37.660 proven in all of the special operations communities. The SAS started in the West and that came over to

02:22:43.680 Army Special Forces from there, to Delta, to all of these kinds of units. It's foundational to our

02:22:49.260 ability to survive and thrive as a species. And for us to then take a little bit of that that's been

02:22:55.580 proven for millennia and enrich our lives so much, to take these steps and to become more active.

02:23:02.900 It's such an unlock in our lives when you take this kind of responsibility and you say,

02:23:08.020 I want to be a more active person. And all of a sudden you're around active people. You're figuring

02:23:13.200 out how to move forward. I mean, I want to die with my boots on moving forward up a hill somewhere.

02:23:18.780 And that's my hope and my goal. And part of that is physical maybe, but part of that is also

02:23:24.160 metaphorical. It's very much tied to a mental outlook of life. Do you want to take your two

02:23:30.820 fingers and roll your bag onto the walkway and stand there and then go find a seat and sit down

02:23:37.680 and stare at your phone? Or do you want to take the bull by the horns? Yeah. No, one of the things that

02:23:43.220 we do with our patients is talk about this marginal decade. What are the activities you want to be able

02:23:46.900 to do in the last decade of your life? And we want them to be noted very specifically. These have to

02:23:53.700 be quantifiable things. I want to be able to rock three miles over uneven surface with 20 pounds in

02:24:00.980 my back in the last decade of my life. I have a feeling you'll be doing much more than that. But

02:24:05.240 to your point, it's a really beautiful thing to be able to do. I'm so grateful for what you're doing.

02:24:10.500 And I suspect that we're really on a both positive first and positive second derivative

02:24:18.560 of the appreciation for this and the adoption of this. So I suspect that this time next year,

02:24:25.540 you'll be looking back saying, can't believe how many more people are doing this.

02:24:29.300 There's been times in my life where I felt like I'm completely crazy. The entrepreneur's journey,

02:24:34.320 and I'm not asking for any kind of sympathy. I've chosen this path of my own volition,

02:24:39.080 and I'm grateful to what has brought me to this path. And there's other times in life,

02:24:45.280 I know that that's not how I want to live a life. We're all meant to be part of something bigger than

02:24:50.380 ourselves. And we're meant to have friends and spiritual soulmates and people who are fighting

02:24:56.180 the same fight without this transactional approach to the world. You want to believe in the human

02:25:02.600 spirit in other people. And it's been very uplifting for me at a very deep level that you've embraced

02:25:11.140 this and just live that life and have told people that they can get a lot out of this as well. And

02:25:18.880 it gives me more strength to drive on with this mission that is near and dear to me. And this is a

02:25:25.020 mission so near and dear to me. We tapped into this. We didn't invent it.

02:25:29.180 It comes from this long story that I have with 9-11, this terrible day happening that eventually

02:25:37.000 helped me find enough courage to join the army, that somehow these guys who had fought in the

02:25:42.760 invasion of Afghanistan put me through some gauntlet that somehow I passed and measured up to their

02:25:49.120 standard, which is very humbling to do. Then I served with these people who had been there and done

02:25:54.220 that. And they taught me so much. And what I left was this overwhelming desire to pay that forward

02:26:02.120 because of how much I feel that I owe everything that I've been afforded. And so that can become a

02:26:09.220 very lonely journey at times though. And it's been amazing to have your activity, your support in

02:26:16.660 that. I don't mind being crazy, but I'd rather be crazy if you're also crazy, if that makes sense.

02:26:22.660 I'm happy to be crazy with you. Jason, thank you so much. It's been great spending this time with

02:26:28.180 you today. Again, thanks for what you're doing. And I hope that a lot more people after listening

02:26:32.280 to this are going to dip their toe in the water. And I suspect that they will experience not just

02:26:36.940 what I've experienced, but what everybody I've dragged on a ruck has experienced, which is,

02:26:41.520 I'm going to go do that regularly. Thanks. It's been wonderful to chat with you. I appreciate it.

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The Peter Attia Drive - March 04, 2024

#292 ‒ Rucking： benefits, gear, FAQs, and the journey from Special Forces to founding GORUCK ｜ Jason McCarthy

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