How to Make Yourself Unbreakable | DJ Shipley

I had a lot of emotional stuff happen to me in that second deployment.

You know, my idol, Matty Roberts, I've talked about him a couple of times.

I really, really hung onto that dude. He was my true north.

He was the guy. And when he got shot up...

When you see it happen...

You know, but I think that was the closest call for a fire mission

the entire Iraq War.

Like, inside of 15 meters.

I mean, Corey Mike, Mike from the AC-130 gunship, it was on top of you.

A belt-fed machine gun just chewing us up.

Everybody shot up except for me and one other guy, and we're all

crowded behind this tractor tire.

Just... you felt like a victim. Like, I felt helpless.

I'm getting rounds poured all over me, and at a certain point, you just go,

'I'd rather run back into the front of this thing and get killed

with all of them than be the lone survivor.'

- Welcome to the 'Huberman Lab podcast,' where we discuss science and

science-based tools for everyday life.

I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

at Stanford School of Medicine.

My guest today is DJ Shipley.

DJ Shipley is a retired Navy SEAL who served for 17 years, much of

that time as a Tier 1 operator, meaning part of an elite,

highly selective special operations unit within the SEALS.

In recent years, DJ has emerged as a top public educator on the topics

of how to structure your days to maximize your mindset for the sake of physical

and mental health, as well as performance in work or school, and to best support

and build your closest relationships.

As you'll soon learn from DJ, there are key points in your day when you can take

specific physical steps, including but not limited to physical exercise,

to shift your mind away from rumination, distraction, and frustration to a state of

immense clarity, focus, and drive.

Through trial and error, DJ has figured out, and he shares with us,

how that process is done and how you can do it too,

right down to the details.

What he describes goes way beyond a standard morning routine or

evening routine, and most importantly, is accessible to all of us.

You also won't hear any cliches or fluff in today's discussion.

DJ is very specific about what to do and when, and how in order to become

the best possible version of yourself.

You'll often hear those words out there, how to become the best version of yourself

or reach your potential, but what DJ does so beautifully

is he explains exactly how to do that.

And he shares his story of how he joined and moved through the SEAL teams

and the victories, but of course, also the immense challenges and losses

that he and his teammates experienced.

We also discuss addiction, PTSD, and depression, and new paths

for overcoming those.

In particular, a new medical treatment, ibogaine, followed by DMT,

and how that's being used to help veterans overcome addiction, PTSD, and suicidality.

I've paid close attention to that work over the last five years because

the brain imaging aspect is being done by my colleague,

Dr. Nolan Williams, at Stanford.

I should mention that the ibogaine/DMT process

we discuss is not a recreational one.

Rather, it's being done as part of clinical trials and

dedicated research studies.

DJ explains that process firsthand, and at the same time, I should mention

that ibogaine and DMT are still illegal in the United States.

They are not FDA-approved, so no one should explore their use

outside of these clinical trials.

However, the FDA is looking seriously at these compounds, and approval for them

seems quite likely in the next 12 months or so.

Today's discussion is one that anybody, male, female, young,

or old, can benefit from.

DJ has immense knowledge, he has immense experience,

and he has an incredible ability to take what he's learned and turn it

into actionable steps so you can improve your mental health, physical health,

and performance, and become the best possible version of yourself.

Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate

from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost-to-consumer

information about science and science-related tools

to the general public.

In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors.

And now for my discussion with DJ Shipley.

DJ Shipley, welcome.

- Thank you so much for having me, man.

- Let's talk about mental health, physical health, and spiritual health,

but not all at once.

You talk a lot about and you post a lot about mental health, but I've noticed

that a lot of that takes on a sort of a protocolly approach where you use

physical steps to approach

mental health and vice versa. - Mm-hmm.

- So, what's your framework on this thing that we call mental health?

I'm not asking you to solve the mental health crisis in one swoop,

but when you think about your own mental health, the people close to you,

people you've worked with in the teams, you know, how do you approach

mental health as a concept and as an actionable thing?

- I've lived so many different stages in my life.

High points and low points, and everything in between.

And at my lowest point, I had no physical connection.

I was either down hard with an injury, coming back from surgery, and then

my mental health rapidly declined right after that.

And for someone who never suffered from mental health issues, it's shocking,

and you feel like you're the only person going through it, especially when

you come from a subculture of special operations.

Nobody ever talks about it.

So when you find yourself in that dark room alone, really contemplating

some terrible things, it's hard to wrap your head around because

you're the only person that's ever gone through it.

And, you know, I had some really good strength coaches and coming back from

injuries, and the better I got physically, my mental health naturally just started

to pull out of it, but everything we did was for the group.

So, all my physical attributes, everything I'm training,

is for the betterment of the group.

Now it's the betterment of my family, of my tribe, of whatever I have, but,

you know, I talk about this thing, stacking up micro wins.

My morning routine is structured in a way to where I can do that same

routine everywhere I go, everywhere.

At any point of the day, I can lock that thing in, but it all starts

with an evening routine.

So when my phone goes off at 5:00 AM, and I spring feet out of bed,

I know exactly what I'm going to do for the next 12 minutes to put myself

in a position to not be stressed.

I have to power down my home life, and I've just have to think

about what's coming next.

So, laying out the clothes the night before, my bottle of water

is filled, my pills are out, my toothbrush is out, everything is set,

so as soon as I get up...

By the time I get to making my morning cup of coffee, I've done 25 things

inside of my control.

- Do you know off the top of your head what those things are right now that

maybe you could just list them off?

You said your alarm clock goes off at 5:00 AM.

- Yep.

- And that's regardless of when you went to sleep?

- Regardless of when I went to sleep, typically.

I mean, if I'm out here, I'm on a - Mm-hmm.

- different time zone,

and I can change it, - Sure.

- but for the most part- - But if you get to bed at midnight

or you get to bed at 9:00 PM or you get to bed at 2:00 AM,

alarm goes off at 5:00 AM, you're up?

- And my wife gave me this the other day. I came home on a red-eye.

I didn't walk through the door until 2:30 in the morning.

And the alarm clock goes off at 5:00, and she rolls over and she's like,

"What are you doing?" "I'm going to work."

And she's like, "You can take a day off."

I'm like, "No, I'm not taking a day off."

These last five days are the first time in as long as I can, in 20 years?

That I've actually taken five days of not working out when I have

the physical ability to do it. - Mm-hmm.

- I've never taken five days off, because

I'm so afraid my mental health will drop. - Mm-hmm.

- Something will happen if I leave that routine.

So I wake up, unplug my phone, shut off the alarm.

I walk in, toothpaste on the toothbrush. I go to the bathroom.

While I'm brushing my teeth, spit it out, all the pills I have

to take in the morning,

you know, vitamin D, all the stuff I take, and then I get dressed.

Left sock, right sock, right shoe.

Everything I do, I do it in a very specific order.

Even the way I put on my bracelets.

If I put them on in the wrong order, I'll stop and I'll de-jock them all and

I'll re-don them just because that's one simple thing.

I'm not rushed. I'm not under duress.

I'm in control this entire timeline, and that way, when I get to the kitchen,

I don't feel like I'm frantic, 'Where are my keys?

Where's my wallet? Where's my bag?'

Everything's in a system right now to where I can step in that car,

I'm not stuck behind a school bus, my car has gas in it, my phone's at 100%.

Because we've all been there. Everybody's a normal person.

I wake up.

My wife wants to have a 15-minute conversation.

That puts me behind that school bus that I'm typically not behind.

Now I'm late for my first meeting. I have to rush through my workout.

I don't have time to take a shower.

All that is going to cascade, and it's going to put me to be

the person I don't want to be when I have to walk into that first meeting.

It's like, I'm trying to optimize everything that's within my control,

so when I step through the threshold, this is the DJ that I'm purposely

presenting to you right now, under my control.

And that really sets the entire framework for the whole day

of being in a good headspace.

I'm controlling the things that are controllable and the things

that I can't control, I don't think about them anymore.

I block them out.

- I love the regimen and your adherence to it.

I'm curious about your mindset

when the alarm goes off. - Mm-hmm.

- Meaning, where is your head?

I guess, I know you're human and I understand enough about the brain

to make an assumption, which is that you don't wake up every morning

with the alarm going off at 5:00 thinking, 'Great. I'm going to get up and just roll

right into the day,' that there may be times when you consider

going into fetal position.

You know, it's warm under those covers. - Mm-hmm.

- But also that your mind, like anyone else's, probably starts spinning.

It leaps to the past, leaps to the...

You know, a little more stress than you'd like, a little more lethargy,

this kind of thing.

Do you purposely stack up to-dos so that you stay out of all of that?

And if some of that persists as you're brushing your teeth,

what's the way of dealing with that?

- I just keep pushing. - Mm-hmm.

- I just keep myself in motion the entire time, and I talk about dials,

not switches, a lot with people.

And it sounds selfish, but I have to be selfish right now

in order to be selfless later.

So I tell guys, you know, "As soon as that alarm clock goes off,

I'm not thinking about my wife, I'm not thinking about my kids.

I'm thinking about being as efficient as humanly possible, and I'm trying

to hit that gym so I unrack at 07:00 the best version of me.

And I can't do it if I'm thinking about a fight or an argument

we had with the wife the night before, the kids, and this and that."

I have to be selfish right now because this is the only block

I'm going to have for me to optimize myself,

because at 10:00 AM, I'm going to get pulled from 50 different directions.

It's the exact same thing when I go home.

So now, between the hours of 10:00 AM and 6:00 PM, I'm only thinking about work.

I don't think about my wife, don't think about my kids.

I only think about the team and everything we're trying to do.

At 6:00, you can watch, and I tell everybody, "If you would put a

hidden camera in my car, it'd break the internet."

I do it every day. I slam that car into park.

I put my phone on do not disturb. I check social.

I check all my texts. I'm good.

There's no phone calls and I've got a 12-minute drive from door to door.

Those 12 minutes, I put on Chris Stapleton, something that

makes me feel good, that calms me down, and I pre-rehearse everything that's going

to happen the moment I hit that garage door opener.

- Really? - I do it every single day.

- I realize it's personal, but to the extent that you're willing,

maybe share a couple

of what you're rehearsing. - Yeah.

I pull onto the driveway. I slam it back in park.

I check my phone one more time and I tell myself, "You're only going to

have three hours, from 6:00 to 9:00, to be the person they need you to be.

You have to be a full-time dad right now. You have to be a full-time husband."

And I don't get it right every time.

Some days, I drag that stuff home with me, two-hand texting frantically,

but I really try not to.

And before I hit that garage door, I tell myself, like,

"They don't know what's going on.

They don't know the stress you're at, at work.

She's had her own day. They've had their own day."

You know, I've got a daughter in seventh grade,

We've got another one in second grade.

We have to work through this whole thing together, and it's like,

what version of me do I want to present to them right now?

I'm going to walk in, bag's over my right shoulder, I'm going to clear

the threshold, and make an immediate 90-degree turn, and there's

going to be that seven-year-old, and she's a huge ball of energy.

She gets all shaken.

She runs at me at full blast, and I pick her up, shake her,

kiss her, like, 100% love.

Take an immediate right in the kitchen, there's my oldest,

usually eating something before homework's about to start.

Give her a kiss, give her a hug, ask her how her day was.

Straight to the room to see my wife, because she gets like a 30-minute

buffer before she has to go upstairs and lock in with seventh-grade homework.

Check her, "What do you need?

If you can fold the towels, if you can start dinner, done."

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

So, my last interaction in the morning was positive.

I left on a positive note.

The first interaction you're getting at the end of the day is in a positive note,

regardless of how I'm feeling.

If I have to fake it, I'll fake it. - Mm-hmm.

- I got three hours, and if you space over the course of five days,

I don't have a lot of time to make positive memories.

Just because of work and stress and everything else.

I'm trying to maximize those three hours, and then when I do,

it feels like you can do no wrong.

But every night after we finish dinner, me and my wife do a 20-minute walk.

Ten minutes for her, so as soon as we start it, "Tell me about your day."

Everything she wants to vent through, everything we have to get caught up on,

we hit the halfway mark right around this park, and then

it's my turn for 10 minutes.

An average human can walk a mile in 20 minutes, helps circadian rhythm,

helps digestion, I mean, mental clarity.

I'm not on my phone. There's no stimulus.

I'm watching the sunset.

But now it's 20 minutes just for us to reconnect, and we do it every single day.

Unless it's a torrential downpour,

we're doing it every single night, - Mm-hmm.

- and our marriage has never been better.

My physical health has never been better, and then my time with my kids,

I can be accountable for every single minute in my day.

Did I maximize that opportunity?

No. Why?

Because I drug that dude home with me from 2:30 in the afternoon,

I drug him all the way home till 6:00.

That's not who they need. They don't need a commando.

They don't need a business owner. They don't need an entrepreneur.

They need a dude that's going to have a tea party right now,

or a guy that's going to talk about how difficult navigating seventh grade is.

Like, she really needs a husband that's going to be fully present,

because I haven't been for the majority of our marriage.

I've been gone, you know, 300 days out of the year.

She really just needs a buddy who's going to help parent,

and if I'm not mentally there, I'm never going to get there.

So I set conditions to where I can be the person I need to be, no matter

what threshold I'm walking through, and it's been hugely beneficial for me.

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What an awesome example. - Mm-hmm.

- And the two dos are super impressive.

I wonder if we could just explore a little bit of the to-not dos.

- Mm-hmm.

- A lot of what you described, it's clear. It requires having the phone away.

I mean, I could go on and on about phones,

but the incoming is incessant, right?

You know, and the temptation is really tough to deal with.

So when you walk in the door, - Mm.

- because you're with family, phone is in the car, or it's just shut off.

During the day, when you're going about your work, is it understood

that if your wife wants to get ahold of you, she can, but there's

a high threshold for that?

Because I think a lot of couples get into, you know, just pinging

each other here and there, this and that.

Even in business teams, there's a lot of unnecessary communication.

- I'm fortunate now that my wife actually works inside the business, so she gets it,

and she knows that once I lock in, when that camera turns on,

that microphone goes on, you have to leave me alone.

And I tell people, like, "I'm not trained to do this."

I'm a normal dude, so I'm really susceptible to negative energy,

and they know better.

Don't slam me with something negative before I have to turn that microphone on,

because I'm not going to be able to compartmentalize it all the way.

I need to be the best version of me right now, so wait till I'm done

and then deliver the bad news.

And she's the same way. She's an absolute gangster, and she knows.

She's like, "Hey, when you get done today, we have to talk."

I'm like, "What is it?" And she says, "Nothing bad."

It'll definitely be something bad, but she doesn't even give me an inkling because

she knows it'll rob me of bandwidth.

She's like, "Go do what you do. As soon as you get done, we'll talk."

And on that 20-minute walk, she'll drop it.

But now we're here. I'm in a clear headspace.

I've had a productive day. We've had a great 10 minutes into this.

Now hit me with the bad news. Last 10 minutes, we'll solve it together.

- Mm-hmm.

- But not getting on that social media first thing in the morning.

I used to be the guy. I'd roll over.

I'd immediately open up Instagram, and I'm checking it.

What are the comments? How's the posting doing?

How's this? How's that?

You'll stay there for 40 minutes. - Mm-hmm.

- And then if you see something negative,

I'll ride that, I'll wear that jacket all day long.

I can't get it away from me. - Mm-hmm.

- So, I don't take a Zoom call, I don't take a phone call.

There's nothing that happens inside of my orbit before 10:00 AM.

From 7:00 to 10:00, that's my morning block.

I've got the whole team in there. We do fitness from 7:00 to 9:00.

I make them all do a 20-minute walk. I make the whole team protein shakes.

I take a shower, and at 10:00 AM, I walk out.

"Hit me with it. What have we got to do?

We're going to range in my training, and we're shooting content.

What are we doing right now?

You have full bandwidth until I leave here."

And if I run till midnight, we run till midnight, but you have both barrels

of me at 100% because I've controlled that entire morning routine.

And it's been the best thing that's ever happened to us.

But you have to be consistent.

It's like everything else. - Mm-hmm.

- What's the best diet? - Mm.

- The one you'll stick to. - Mm-hmm.

- And that morning routine has been the biggest game-changer I've had.

- That's awesome.

I feel like the teams, and I've been fortunate to know and work with

some folks from the teams, seem to have what I call kind of

an 'unconscious genius,' - Mm-hmm.

- as a whole, as a system. Mm-hmm.

We could talk about BUD/S, we could talk about selection for Tier 1 stuff,

we could talk about any of that, and we will.

But it seems to me that a lot of the practices that are built up

in the teams and in team guys who are successful when they

transition out are built around this notion I just call 'unconscious genius,'

where they weren't thinking about, like, 'What's the underlying neural circuitry?'

Or this and that.

And everything you describe, by the way,

is extremely actionable for anybody. - Mm-hmm.

- I love that you told us, and I'm going to underscore this, highlight it,

and bold it right now, is that it doesn't matter

if you went to bed at 2:30 AM,

or you went to bed at midnight, you're getting up at the same time.

It's actually critical for keeping sleep rhythms healthy.

And one thing from the literature I'll just share is that it's clear that

if people have the same wake-up time each day, that whatever sleep they get

prior to that wake-up time, you get the maximum amount of growth hormone

release that's possible, which is,

of course, crucial for recovery. - Mm-hmm.

- Not just growing muscles, but recovery, et cetera.

So there's that. You guys came to that.

There's that kind of, you didn't need to know the science.

You just arrived at it.

But also, the brain is so context-dependent.

And throughout your description, I keep hearing that, you know,

if there's... you'll wear that jacket all day long.

Like, it can pull you in.

I mean, you're a strong-minded individual, you know how to control

your own behavior, clearly, but you are susceptible like anybody else.

And I always think of mental states as that, you know, we can either be

like a ball bearing on a flat surface, where that ball bearing can go anywhere

with even just the slightest tilt or even a breeze, versus little dimples in

that surface, where it can kind of reside, but it can get blown out

or pushed out easily.

And ultimately, what we're all seeking is to drop

like a ball bearing into a trench.

And rage bait and numbing out, which are the two kinds of core features

of social media, except there's this other opportunity to learn.

I feel like those drop us immediately into that trench.

And so, I feel like our brain wants to be the ball bearing

at the bottom of that trench.

But it's tempting to not do the work to get there.

And so, there are things in the world, highly processed, highly palatable foods,

you know, certain aspects of social media, because I don't think all of it

is unhealthy, that provide that opportunity to drop into that trench.

And so, clearly, the unconscious genius here is that you arrived at, it seems,

an understanding that you're very context dependent.

You know?

It's not that you're so robust internally that you can throw anything your way.

It's exactly because you're, if I may, you're not that robust internally,

that you understand the brain, that you can't let anything come your way.

But if you set the context internally, then the rest of your day is maybe

not a breeze, but it's workable.

And you'll stay that ball bearing in the trench that you're determining.

Do I have that right?

- Exactly. - Okay.

So, I think this is important, because I think a lot of people

hear about special operators and high performers and their structure

and their routine, and they assume, they wake up and they're like,

'Into the day, nothing's going to bother me.'

It's because things have the potential to bother you that you

have to structure it that way.

- Yep. - Okay.

For me, that's very helpful to hear.

And I think you're also defining the difference between an artist.

I know a lot of artists.

They kind of float about their day, they're two hours late to things,

and then the stuff emerges, right?

I mean, I can tell you stories about people in Los Angeles,

and how meeting times, and I'm a little guilty of this,

but it's incredible the way that things just kind of orbit around certain people.

But then they bring the magic, and so

the world continues to orbit

around them, versus an operator. - Yeah.

- And I feel like everything you described is like the essence of being an operator.

You're approaching your civilian life the same way, presumably,

you did your operating life. - Mm-hmm.

- So, let's say you have a morning where something goes wrong.

There's no toothpaste in the toothbrush.

Or something more serious. - Mm-hmm.

- Like your wife really needs

to talk about something. - Yeah.

- Maybe she's so, you know, together that that never happens.

Will you forego those minutes, or how do you deal with that?

- The situation really dictates. When I was in, I wouldn't.

I'd wake up before everybody else is in there, and it's a lot of stuff

I tell to the new guys in special operations, like,

"If you sacrifice your sleep, when it doesn't affect anyone else,

you can really lay the foundation for greatness."

Right? - Mm-hmm.

- "Your first four years, don't rush to make her your girlfriend.

Don't make her your wife. Don't have a kid.

Don't get a dog. Just focus on being a Green Beret.

Focus on being a Navy SEAL and just do that.

Then, when that girlfriend turns into a fiancée, you can have

the bandwidth to do them both."

It's very hard to do that job, you know, build that boat at the high seas,

and now you're dragging your wife into it.

It's hard to do. But the situation dictates.

If it's something I really have to solve, we really have to solve it.

But she knows, no matter what, I'm unracking at 07.

I'm not missing this for you, I'm not missing it for everybody else,

because she knows what's going to happen.

So, she'll either grab me at lunch, "Hey, do you have a block here we can talk?"

For sure.

We'll maybe start the initial conversation.

If it starts going south or I think it's going to take long, I'll look down

at my watch, like, "Honey, I have to go.

I got 12 minutes to be there."

She's like, "Okay. We'll catch you for lunch."

"Cool." And we'll go.

I can't miss morning movement. I can't do it.

That will ruin my day. - Mm-hmm.

- And if I'm rushed through morning movement, if somebody comes in,

somebody beats on the door, and they're like, "Hey, we were in the neighborhood,

just wanted to come see you, can we talk for 20 minutes?"

"No. You can't. No. I'm sorry.

And I know it sounds bad.

You can't, because I know what happens if I miss this day.

And I'm not willing to take the chance on you right now.

You can wait an hour. Wait till I'm done."

But it's hard.

You know, and now we've kind of restructured the whole day to where

I can get my time in in the morning, and I can leave with just enough time

to see my kids wake up now.

They're pouring cereal, so now I get that little dopamine hit of seeing them,

and I kick off their morning in a positive way.

Right? I'm doing red light therapy in the morning.

I'm still going to unrack at 0:07.

I'm still getting up at 5:00, but now I'm just in the house

getting everything processed.

I'm going to leave on my terms, and that way, they get to

see me first thing in the morning.

I only get three hours at night.

Well, if I get 30 minutes in the morning, stacked over the course of a year,

that's a huge difference. - Mm-hmm.

- It's like we've restructured the entire day, with the whole team

also on that exact same schedule.

Right?

And it's not just me, it's not just my world.

I mean, business partners, Cole, and everybody else,

everybody who does that morning block of fitness, that's why

I've been pushing it this whole time.

And if you look at anybody in the military, anybody in the fire department,

anybody in special operations, the military in general, everybody's day

always starts with fitness.

When you're in boot camp, you wake up, you do a workout, and then you eat.

When you go into BUD/S, you wake up, you work out essentially

all day long, and go to sleep.

It's the same thing.

When you get to the SEAL team, you do the same thing.

Everybody wakes up, everybody does fitness, the very first thing,

and then we start our day.

It's been really successful. Why would I ever break that?

When you see guys, when they transition out, they get away from it.

They gain a bunch of weight. They start drinking.

"You working out five days a week?" "No."

"Why? You've been doing it since you were 17 years old.

Why would you break it now? Why?"

- Yeah, why do you think that, that happens?

- I think guys use excuses, injuries, limitations, and lack of motivation.

Like, 'Oh, there's no reason for me to be in shape.' Longevity of life.

Everybody says, "Oh, I'd take a bullet for my kids."

You won't lose 40 pounds for them. You won't prolong life.

If you think you're a real asset to your family, why wouldn't

you try to maximize that time?

So I look at them now. It doesn't take a whole lot.

Like, you don't have to be David Goggins. You don't have to run 100 miles a day.

You can wake up and do a 20-minute walk every single day,

and you'll be better off for it.

You could grab a set of kettlebells. Thirty minutes in your garage.

That is something every single day that makes you exponentially better,

just through the repetition of being there, being present,

being a little selfish right now so you can be selfish later.

So for me, if I don't get that workout in, and everybody's

got stuff going on, I do too.

If I don't get that block of fitness in, I will think about that all day long.

I'll think about it for weeks. - Mm-hmm.

- We go back, the next time we hit that muscle group, I don't get the

same numbers I thought I would.

Well, that's because I took Monday off.

I'm never going to put myself in that position.

I don't want to have to have that excuse, so I set the foundation, I lay it down,

I stamp it on a piece of paper.

That's what I'm doing. I'm not compromising on it.

And it's been great for us.

- That's awesome.

I mean, as somebody who got into resistance training

in his teens and running.

I confess, over the years, I felt some guilt around working out,

because in my community of scientists, now I have a much broader community.

You know, you go to meetings.

Everyone's sitting all day and eating bad food, and then it was happy hour.

I was never much of a drinker, but I would Yeah.

participate a bit until eventually

I just stopped drinking entirely.

And occasionally, I would sneak off during some of the,

I'll just be honest, the weak talks.

I was like, 'I've seen this person speak before. I'm going to get a workout in.'

And only once did I ever run into a colleague in the gym

at one of these places, and we both were like, it was like

getting caught doing something bad. - Yeah.

- But then the years went by, and I saw my colleagues start to die.

I saw my colleagues start to get sick.

I saw my colleagues start to resemble melted candles.

And these were people that had a lot of robustness, and they also had a lot

to offer, and families and friends.

And so, I think nowadays people think about physical

fitness a little bit differently.

They understand it's an investment, and therefore, it's beneficial

to the people around you.

But I still see a lot of people kind of couch it, especially with respect

to anything that relates to muscle, as kind of selfish and narcissistic,

and this kind of thing.

And I think it's so important that people understand the mental health benefits,

but also the benefits that it can bring to the people in your life.

And not just longevity, but just the person that it brings.

You really understand yourself.

In the back of my mind, I'm thinking about,

you know, the oracle, "Know thyself."

It's like so important.

If you don't get that workout, you're going to have to force out

being the best husband, the best dad, the best teammate.

And if you do get that workout, they still get that best dad, everything,

but it's that much more genuine, and it probably is in abundance.

- One of the things that nobody ever talks about is your body awareness.

When you do fitness for a long time,

50 years old, you've been doing fitness - Mm-hmm.

- for a very long time, you are so - Mm-hmm.

- in tune with that vessel that

when something does pop up, - Mm-hmm.

- you identify it right away. - Mm-hmm.

- When you don't, you're like, "Um, my back kind of hurts."

"Where?"

"Uh..." You don't know.

I'm in tune with that thing

so well that when I walk into a doctor. - Mm-hmm.

- I'm like, "Take a needle three inches down, rotate it

over 45 degrees, and that's where it is." - Mm-hmm.

- I'm like, "Okay, this is it."

I'm so in tune with it. - Mm-hmm.

So when anything pops up, I can diagnose it.

I can walk in and give them actual feedback on what's happening.

I'm not just sitting on the couch all day long just...

"Like, uh, my neck kind of hurts." "No, I know exactly what it is."

I'm doing a full diagnostic

approach the entire day. - Mm-hmm.

- And that's why I've got Vernon.

He's the best strength coach in the world, and if I didn't have that guy,

I would be...

I mean, he's brought me back from the dead more times than I can count.

But it's five days a week. He's in there every day.

So if I walk in and I've got a slight limp on my left side,

he's like, "Hey, my man, come over here. What is that?"

And I was like, "Oh, nothing." He said, "Bruised heel?"

"Yeah, how'd you know it was a bruised heel?"

It was like, "I watched that broad jump on Friday. Like, you landed

a little funky. I wanted to see if it was

going to mess with you." - Mm-hmm.

- He IDed it. - Mm-hmm.

- I IDed it. I just wasn't going to say anything.

"Okay, what are you going to do about it?" Right?

Be proact- instead of reactive. - Mm-hmm.

- But that's because you're chipping away, and you know, you understand yourself

so well because you are constantly in tune with your body,

and people just forget about it.

Like, "Why aren't you sleeping?"

"Well, I had caffeine at 4:00."

Oh, I'm accountable for everything I put in my body and then

everything that comes out of me.

The gym's just one of the methods that really ties them all together for me.

- The body awareness piece, I think, is something that

we should also underscore a bit.

I think one thing that happens if people don't develop body awareness

is that they don't learn the difference between something that hurts

and an injury.

A few years ago, right before going on Cam Hanes' podcast

where you carry that rock... I was about to say he

makes you carry the rock, but you don't have to.

You carry the rock up. The thing's heavy.

It's 72 pounds. - Mm.

- Slippery. It's muddy. It's 1,000 feet of elevation.

And people do it, right? You can do it.

But I'd popped a hamstring on the hamstring curl machine

a couple of days before. - Oh.

- But I didn't pop pop it. It didn't unravel up the tendon.

So I was like, "I'm just not going to talk about it."

I'm not going to say anything. I'm not going to..."

Because that's going to create its own thing.

I was like, "I'm hurt. It hurt, but I'm not injured."

And knowing that line is really important, because if you are injured,

it'd be the stupidest thing in the world to carry that rock up that hill, right?

If you end up out for six months, potentially, or four months...

I had, years ago, a back pain, kind of sciatica thing,

and I couldn't stand up. Actually, it was online.

It was Instagram. And I have no business affiliation

to this kid, but there was a... I think he's a chiropractor.

He has this channel called RehabFix. And he convinced me that what I need to do

is some updog things. It looks like you're kind of

humping the floor. - Mm-hmm.

- Your pelvis is down and you're pushing up and you're...

Repeat those as kind of like lizard push-ups, you know?

- Yep. - And then against the wall

if you can't actually do that from the floor.

Within three days, it resolved itself. - Hmm.

- And I was thinking about pain meds, which I don't like to take.

In fact, I avoid them entirely. I was thinking, "Well, am I going to

have to have surgery?" I mean, I could not stand up.

I couldn't move. I couldn't do it. And I realized then, I was like,

"Okay, the line between hurt and truly injured is often kind of blurry,

and you need to be able to work through that space."

And you think about this and it... Through one lens

and it sounds like a selfish thing, "Oh, it's all about being able

to work out more." If you think about it

through another lens, people who think they're injured

or who are in pain and don't resolve that,

are very difficult to be around,

very difficult. I've been that person.

It's just everything grates on you. - Yep.

- And male, female, young, or old, people now, they'll talk about their neck,

or they can't sleep right. And I think being able to suck stuff up

is really great. It's also important to know

when you have a real issue. And so the body awareness thing,

I think, is a gift to one's self. You can avoid a lot of costs,

a lot of unnecessary medical interventions.

You can know when it's time to take action with proper medical intervention.

But also, it really allows you to be in life with people

without being the person that's always complaining about stuff

or is just difficult. I think a lot of people

who are difficult are in pain, and they don't know how

to resolve that pain. - Yep.

- And they think they have a problem with pain,

so then they take pain medication, and that's a whole cycle.

So, I just wanted to underscore kind of where we're headed here,

it seems, again and again, is with what seems selfish

is actually one of the most selfless things you can do.

Let's talk about what you call "Unracking at 07:00."

- Mm-hmm.

- Tier one operator. Former tier one operator.

The lingo. So that... I'm guessing, is that unracking the weight?

That's when the workout starts. - Yep.

- Phone is off?

- Phone's on because we run an app on it.

- Okay. - Because we have Vernon Griffith.

- But you're not looking at text messages?

- No. - And you're not shooting selfies

of your calves- - No.

- and biceps? Right.

I point that out in semi-jest because I always joke that

the first rep of every set now seems to be guys in the gym

taking pictures of themselves. - Yeah.

- The last rep of every set seems to be guys

taking pictures of themselves.

So 07:00, so what's that workout look like?

You're doing it five days a week. I know it's going to be different

for different people, but you have this program

that I really want to explore with you today about

how to measure progress, and set standards,

and meet new standards, higher standards.

What does that workout look like for you?

- So I linked up with Vernon right when I was getting

medically retired around 2019. I came back from a gnarly shoulder injury.

I blew it. I had a dislocation. It came through my armpit,

shredded out everything. And I went from about 215

to about 180 pounds. Got stuck in a rehab clinic

in Bethesda, Maryland for 31 days in-patient,

and I came out like death warmed over. Worst I've ever been in my life.

Worst my mental health has ever been. I did not want to play the game anymore.

And Navy SEAL Foundation hooked you up with this physical rehabilitation program

in Virginia Beach ran by a former SEAL, and Vernon was the lead strength

conditioning coach. And he was my coach.

And we walked in. We did full-body assessments.

And what's interesting about him is he took all your limitations

and developed concepts and movements to establish confidence in that area.

So when I came back, day one he's like, "Okay, let's try to hang from the bar."

I looked right at him, "No."

He's like, "What?"

"No, I'm not hanging from that bar. I'm done. I've done more pull-ups

than most people on the planet. My pull-up days are done, man.

I'm not doing it again." He goes, "You gotta trust me."

I was like, "Well, it's not going to happen on day one."

Slowly but surely, I mean, he's at the point where

he's holding my knees. I can't even extend my arm overhead.

I'm so- - That's humbling.

For a guy that was a tier one operator,

that's humbling.

- I was so bound up by fear that he was going to come...

Because that was my first shoulder surgery,

and if you've never had one, shoulder surgeries are the worst rehab

I've ever had. And I've had a lot of them.

The shoulder rehab was brutal, and I didn't want it to pop.

And I'd extend, and I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it. And he's like,

"You just gotta trust me, man. Like, doctor cleared you.

The anchors have set. Everything is there,

but you cannot go through the rest of your life like this."

He's like, "You're not even 40." He's like, "Do you want to go

another 40 years without doing a pull-up? You're going to have to trust me."

He'd pick me up by the legs. I'd put my arm on there,

and he'd slowly but surely start to extend me down

until we got full range of motion. And we did that for days and weeks.

Then we went to a band. Then we took the band off.

"I just want you to hang. Now we're going to focus

on going back up." And we built back to...

I mean, I can do sets of 25 pull-ups now because then-

- You're pulling your weight, which is what right now?

- I'm like 215.

- You're 6'1" and 215? - Yep.

- And you're doing sets of 20? - Yeah, 20, 25.

- Non-kip pull-up? - Yep.

And it's all bouncing back from him, but the whole program he did...

Because I'm not a unicorn by any means, but I've had all the injuries

that everybody else has had. I've had double hip surgery,

I've had double shoulder surgery, I've had my abdomen blown through

a couple of times. I've had them all.

I've had thumbs, I've had to rebuild- - Blown through, blown through.

- my own structure. - Boom.

Yeah. - I mean, just everything.

- Yeah. - When I got electrocuted,

it blew out everything and we had to rebuild that entire thing.

So all the guys that are in this process,

if you're a SWAT team, a fireman on a SEAL team,

anybody in between, we've all got injuries

that become limitations, and we just avoid them.

You can't avoid them forever, and this program is designed

to get you back in shape. And it grows with you as you go,

so every single week you're chasing numbers

from the week before and pushing. On the days you don't have it,

on the days you wake up and you're bound up

just lacking motivation, we're going in with 100%

of what we have to offer. That might be 75%.

I'm giving 100% of the 75% I have today. But Monday's a pull day from the floor,

usually trap bar deadlifts, and we do those

because of all the injuries. I've got a really long torso.

It puts my back at a weird precarious situation,

so we do trap bar deadlifts. We do those, a lot of pull-up work,

a lot of grip work, a lot of core stability stuff.

Tuesday's a press day, heavy upper body, bench,

incline, that kind of stuff. Wednesday's an upper body,

lower body disassociation. So we get the upper body

moving in one direction, the lower body moving the other.

A lot of core- - You got any example of that?

- We'll do a lot of banded work. We'll drop down to a knee,

like almost in a shooting position- - Mm-hmm.

- and we'll do cross body pulls with bands-

- Mm-hmm. - resistance training, but just-

- So rotational stuff and sort of anti-rotation stuff?

- Yep. - Yep. Okay.

- On that day, we'll do plyo stuff- - Mm-hmm.

- box jumps, height, distance, and broad jump-

- Mm-hmm. - that kind of stuff.

- Farmer's carry, walks, and all the stuff, just trying-

- Mm-hmm. - to connect all the dots.

- Thursday is the most brutal leg day you've ever had,

and it's amazing. We got a belt squat machine.

So anybody who walks in, regardless of the injuries

and limitations you have, we have equipment to accommodate that.

- Mm-hmm. And when you say

brutal leg day... - It just-

- I have a belt squat. I love that thing.

I love throwing a lot of weight on that thing.

It's nice, it doesn't load the spine up- - Yeah.

- but yeah, I like to think it's brutal. Can you describe?

Are you talking about like an hour and a half,

two hours of low weight- - It's usually from seven to nine.

High weight, pretty high repetitions. - So high weight, high repetitions?

- Trying to. - Yeah.

- Always trying to push, but a lot of single-leg movements,

Bulgarian split squats. - Mm-hmm.

- A lot of lunges, a lot of lunges with heavy weight.

- Mm-hmm. - 70 pounds in each hand,

for me, that's a lot of weight. - So not calf raises, leg curls.

- No. - Mm-hmm.

- But some days we'll do a feel-good day. - Mm-hmm.

- Like some days we'll come in, he'll take a pulse-

- Mm-hmm. - of the whole room, and he'll go...

We're all going to hit the same muscle groups.

We're just going to do it more traditional.

- Mm-hmm. - So we're going to do

hamstring curls, leg extensions. We're going to do belt squats,

we're going to do pulsing lunges, really just pump the blood flow,

and just chase a really good pump. Everybody loves doing that.

And Fridays are really... It's a feel-good day.

It's an arm day. We'll do some shoulders,

some accessory work, and then we add in sprints in between,

probably two to three days a week. - Mm-hmm.

- 200 meter repeats, 300 meter repeats.

- Done where in the workout? In between sets?

- At the end. - At the end?

- Yeah. We always save it at the end, and we always did that with military, too.

- Mm-hmm. - It always ends with a run.

And I've tried every combination, doing sprints, pre and post,

and it really just zaps the workout for me.

- Yeah, Pavel Tsatsouline, you know, the Pavel Tsatsouline

sat in that chair right where you're at now and said,

if your goal is hypertrophy and you're going to come into

a pumping workout, doesn't really matter

if you do cardio first or last, but if you're serious about

strength and performance and form, then do your cardio after, if at all.

Because a lot of times those kettlebell workouts

or some of these leg workouts, they're not, "cardio",

but they definitely get heart rate up in a serious way.

- So on Wednesday, if we're doing a sprint workout,

it might be 10 by 40, 50 meter sprints.

- Mm-hmm. - Right? Nothing crazy.

We'll do that at the very beginning, get the fast twitch muscle fibers going-

- Mm-hmm. - and then we'll do whatever

the normal Wednesday workout is. - Mm-hmm.

- And then we go to the flat range every Wednesday.

- Mm-hmm. - So we train.

We bring him out too, so all the stance, the grip, the presentation,

everything we talk about in a tactical setting,

he's there with us. So when I talk about

flexing your right glute to add stability to a stable shooting platform,

he's there driving home, "This is why it's important.

Think big toe down, drive your heel down." So I mean, he's as much of a coach

as I am on the flat range, but he can connect the dots so well,

and that's why I love him, is he's not going to let you

take that limitation and then live it forever.

- Mm-hmm. - You don't want to be like that,

and it doesn't help that he's bigger, stronger, faster than everybody else.

So you've always got a good lifting buddy to kind of chase.

- Mm-hmm. - He always pushes you.

But he's so good at navigating human terrain,

because some days I'll walk in and whatever's happened over the week,

he'll see me in the morning, he'll look at me like,

"How we holding up?" I'm like, "100%."

"Yeah, you ain't... Come over here.

What's going on?" I'll talk to him, he's like,

"We'll shake it all out. We've got two hours here,

just us, nothing else matters. Let's just focus on this."

And I find myself pacing a lot, so in between sets

I'll block out everything else. I'm not thinking about social,

I'm not thinking about my wife, not thinking about the business.

I'm thinking about putting myself in the best mental spot

to pull that off the floor at 100% with no distractions.

And I think that's why I like it so much,

because it allows me to isolate my thoughts.

Nothing else matters. You don't matter.

This doesn't matter, just that movement.

Let me get through that to the best of my ability.

Set it down, recock, walk around, get ready for the next one. Here we go.

Eight reps, I'm going to put so much intent behind this pull

that if I get eight or 12, it doesn't matter.

Every single one is all out. - Mm-hmm.

- And Dorian Yates talks about it. Intensity is what really drives him.

- Right. - I really try to drive intent

behind everything I do now. And yeah, he's a huge...

Man, I can't tell you how many times he's brought me back, I mean,

the worst injuries you can imagine. And he's there every single time,

and I think that's why so many people get on with it,

because they see the injuries you've gone through, and it's like,

"Well, you can still perform at a high level."

"Only because I'm..."

I don't want to say I'm even ego-driven. I've been so ingrained in

the sitting with routine that it doesn't matter

what injuries I've had. I mean, I come out and...

We've got pictures of me in there in double slings.

Like when I got electrocuted, double slings.

I can't even tie my shoes; he's tying my shoes.

Like he's putting the belt squat on me. I'm squatting down, he's clipping it in,

he's unracking it, the entire thing.

He's my guy.

- Tell us his first and last name. - Vernon Griffith.

- And you met him when you were injured, right?

- Yep. - And he's a former operator as well?

- He's not. So his business partner

was a former operator. He was actually in the Air Force.

- Mm-hmm. - And transitioned out,

got his strength and conditioning- - Mm-hmm.

- all his quals. And he's got such an

interesting look to mobility, impact... And the high-level athletes

that come through him... And that's really what it is.

He gets big guys tricked into doing mobility and liking it

because nobody wants to do mobility.

- Mm-hmm. - It's not a sexy thing to do.

We get first round draft picks that are pouring through

that gym all week long. And you see them because it's the truth.

We're trying to keep you at a super high level

as long as humanly possible. The average guy that plays in the NFL,

what, three years? - Mm-hmm.

- But I'm trying to keep you in there for 12.

How are we going to do it? You have to maintain that vessel

at a super high level because all these young kids

are trying to knock you off the team, and then the reality of the sport

is trying to knock you off the team as well.

So we got to keep you really, really mobile and healthy.

And I've never seen anybody that can connect dots

better than that guy. He's an absolute lifesaver.

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The way you describe him and your interactions with him,

it almost takes on a sort of a mythical-like quality.

I mean, like we could be talking about a movie,

but this is real. And when we'll talk

about just how real it is- - Mm-hmm.

- where some very real things have happened to you

by virtue of the high-risk, high-consequence career

that you undertook. But when you hear about this person

who's able to bring back a high performer and then get him to exceed his previous

notions of what he could do under conditions of duress

and hopelessness, this is real life though.

This is not Star Wars. This is real life.

And so without ever having met him, I can feel the respect,

and the admiration, and the gratitude you have for him.

And I'm sure everyone else can, too. This is the stuff of mythology,

but it's real.

So, here's what I know about you. You live in Virginia Beach.

- Mm-hmm. - At one point you were interested

in skateboarding and partook in skateboarding.

At some point you decided to become a Navy SEAL.

At some point you got electrocuted. - Mm-hmm.

- Fill in the blanks for us.

- Yeah, man. I was born in San Diego, California.

My dad was a SEAL. My mom was in the Navy.

So when my dad graduated, my mom was nine months

pregnant with me. So his whole first four years

at the West Coast SEAL Teams, I was one of the only kids there.

So kind of grew up in the culture, really ingrained into it.

My first bottle- - On Coronado?

- Yep. It's my first bottle, I'm wearing a SEAL Team One onesie.

- You literally were raised on Coronado. - Yeah. So I did that.

- Mm-hmm. - We moved to the East Coast.

He got transitioned over to the East Coast.

I grew up the rest of my time there, fell in love with skateboarding.

That's all I wanted to do; I wanted to go pro.

Got into a fight with the old man around 15 years old, something like that,

and he signed me up for summer school to graduate early.

So I graduated at 17, hit delayed entry program,

joined the Navy a month later.

- Was that a contentious interaction? - Oh, yeah.

- Skateboarding was clearly not the right career for you.

I mean, I'm sure you would have done exceedingly well there,

but having grown up a bit in that culture- - Yeah.

and also knowing a bit about the culture, you eventually decided on...

It's hard to say which one is the better career choice.

One is definitely more life-threatening in many ways.

But you just said, "Okay, like, you're a Navy SEAL,

you want me to be a Navy SEAL, so I'm going to hang it up?"

- It was always in the back of your mind, like that was always-

- Mm-hmm. - what you thought

you were going to do. But at 15 years old, in your mind,

you can do them both. You're like,

"Oh, I can be a professional skateboarder, and then I can be a Navy SEAL later."

You don't realize what it actually takes to do it-

- Mm-hmm. - even though you grew up in the culture.

- Mm-hmm. - So when that happened,

the towers had just fell, I was 17 years old,

delayed entry program, straight out to Coronado,

got through SEAL training, came back to the East Coast

where I've been essentially my whole life-

- Mm-hmm. - and, yeah, joined the Navy in 2002

and I got medically retired in 2019, right around 17 years.

I think it was 16 years and 10 months, or something like that.

- Can I ask you about BUD/S? A lot of people have heard of BUD/S-

- Yeah. - and they understand that

it has a hell week with minimal, if any, sleep, maybe an hour-

- Yeah. - or two tops,

but probably not even that.

How hard was BUD/S relative to other things

that you did in the Teams? I've heard people say

it was the hardest thing they ever did.

I've heard some people say it was extremely hard,

but not nearly as difficult as some aspect of, like,

guys who hate the jungle- - Mm-hmm.

= and humidity are like, "That was worse."

Yeah. - And you never know

if people are joking around.

Did you learn a lot in BUD/S about yourself?

- If you can make it through BUD/S, you can do anything.

It is such a brutal program, and I just... A hell week just secured...

And I saw a bunch of the guys, took them out to dinner the other night,

and I was explaining to a group of civilians that

were out there with them, like their parents, like,

"You guys all see it. Every single person does that pipeline."

It's not just BUD/S. It's the Q course for Green Berets,

it's RIP for the Rangers, MARSOC selection.

Every single kid that's doing that selection program

is the biggest deal in his hometown, the biggest thing in his high school.

Everybody knows he's going, and the amount of external pressure

that's riding on that kid, unless you've done it, you have no idea.

You just don't. It's like playing D1 college ball.

Everyone in your family is expecting you to be a pro.

They're expecting you to be in the NFL. And if you don't get drafted, it's like,

"Oh my God." It's so much pressure on you,

and it's the same way.

- And it's self-selection because people quit.

- It is. - In general,

they're not asked to leave- - Exactly.

- although that can happen. Yep.

- So if somebody doesn't make it through BUD/S, it means they quit.

- Yep. Pretty much. And it's a lot of pressure, right?

The GWOT just kicking off, all the instructors

were coming back from Afghanistan, and they were larger than life.

I mean, you really looked up to them. And I was just very fortunate

that I grew up in the culture, and I knew a lot of the guys going in,

so I knew what the in-state was.

Most of these kids are from Biloxi, Mississippi.

You've never even seen a Navy SEAL in real life

until you showed up here. I grew up with one.

All my family friends were SEALs. We didn't have a single civilian friend

growing up. The only thing I'd been around

were commandos, so... - Mm-hmm.

- I felt really natural around that environment,

but I knew it was going to suck. I just knew it was.

- Did your dad have you running with him

and doing push-ups and things like that at home?

- No. - Or was it mow the lawn

and then go skateboarding, you know? - Mow the lawn and go skateboarding,

and then as we transitioned, we got closer, it was turn it on,

download the Stew Smith "Guide to Navy SEAL" prep,

and did that like everybody else did. - Mm-hmm.

- And it's a phenomenal program for anybody who's trying to go.

But I was so young, I was so immature,

didn't have a cellphone, didn't have a car.

I lived on the barracks and the only thing you had to do

was get through the program. But what I will say, is the 17-year-old me

that showed up in 2002, if I would try to be a Navy SEAL in 2025,

they wouldn't even take me. My performance scores,

like you have to pass a screen test, push-ups, pull-ups, run, swim,

the whole thing.

Your scores now have to be so competitive,

they wouldn't have even taken me.

- Oh, so the standards have changed? - The standards are the same,

but the people going through the program are so better prepared,

they wouldn't even take you. So if you're not 120 push-ups, 120...

They don't even look at you. Like for me, I basically

barely scratched through. I was a strong swimmer,

but technique wasn't my thing. And until you take the test,

you don't realize how hard it is, and I got through it,

and I went on to BUD/S and I was successful,

but I was by no means a star athlete. And you have guys, you know,

Coleman Ruiz, Naval Academy. They are freaks. They're phenoms.

They are professional athletes. And there you are, 6'1", 145 pounds,

pot-smoking skateboarder. We are not on the same level.

But mentally, you couldn't mess with me.

I didn't care. - Mm-hmm.

- Like we're getting surf tortured, and you'd watch these guys

who were just these studs get up and quit, and you're like...

It's not going to stop. And I felt like I always

had the inside scoop, like, "If you think this is going

to end, it's not." My dad did a lot of diving.

I was like, "I've seen the conditions; they dive in breaking through the ice.

Like, it is only going to get worse, dude.

If this phases you, this is not the program for you."

And I was right. If that phases you,

the SEAL Team's going to chew you alive.

So not everybody should make it through that program.

I was just fortunate enough that... Just good enough to get by,

and maturity came later, but BUD/S was definitely not

the hardest thing I've ever had to do. At the time, it was.

And when you get through it and you see all the...

I mean, you start with 200 and something people,

you graduate less than 20.

It's 200 of the most physically capable people

of that year in the United States Navy, and they couldn't make it.

- Did any of the people that not made it through

as well as who made it through surprise you?

For not making it through or making it through?

- Not making it through, for sure. I mean, all the guys that...

You've been around them. - The Captain Americas. Yeah.

- Navy SEALs have a certain look. They have a certain mystique-

- Mm-hmm. - a certain aura,

and they do in training, too. It's not like you just develop that.

You've had it your whole life. And there were definitely guys

you'd look at that looked like Dolph Lundgren from "Rocky IV."

You'd look at him, you're like, "Oh, that dude is definitely

gonna make it." He's gone in 20 minutes.

You're like, "How? He passed everything."

They're like, "He didn't like that cold water."

Like, "Okay." And then you see

another guy who was in worse shape than me,

barely squeaked by everything, and he is the hardest dude

you ever met in your life. Nothing phases him.

Every run, every swim, just miserable, he doesn't care.

He- - You just kind of...

It sounds like you have to not mind being miserable.

- You have to get used to it. You have to embrace it.

It's going to suck. - Mm-hmm.

- It's supposed to. And you've just got to tell yourself,

"It's worth the price of admission. It's gonna be miserable.

You bought the ticket, you're gonna get the whole show,

and it's totally worth it. But you've got to be there at the end."

- You mentioned Coleman Ruiz, who's been a guest on this podcast,

is a good friend of mine, and yours as well,

and you worked with him. And I'm probably going to

get this a little bit wrong, but I think once he said...

Because I think he was an instructor at BUD/S also for a short while.

- I think he was. - And I think he said,

"When you look at the guys that make it through BUD/S,

nine times out of ten, they've had one or at least one of

the following three things: either spent some serious time

in detention in high school, played a varsity sport in high school,

divorced parents." And that raises a whole bunch

of other questions about- - Mm-hmm.

- friction, and kind of, for lack of a better way to put it,

some internal sense of like, "F you, I'm going to

push through this anyway," or just, "F you," to something.

So when you're going... So let's assume that Coleman,

given the fact that he's not a scientist, he was a former operator, so he knows.

Do you think that there were moments, or many moments where it was

you against them? Like, you and your teammates,

because you're on a boat crew or whatever with your teammates,

you're working as a team and learning how to do that.

It's not just about you; it's about the group.

And it's about you, and it's about the expectation.

But how many different bins of motivation

do you have to access to get through BUD/S?

And is, "F you," to the instructors or whoever,

to the cold water, is that a critical bin?

- It is and it isn't. Because sometimes

you get caught up in the moment, you don't even think about it,

you just want to finish that evolution. - Mm-hmm.

- So when you're doing a four-mile timed run...

That was one of the big things, is you have to do a four-mile timed run.

It's got to be, I think, a seven-minute mile or less.

And nowhere in there does it say the condition of the beach matters.

So if it's high tide, low tide, you have to run it

on the berm and soft sand. The time standard's a time standard.

- Mm-hmm. - And talk to anybody.

At any point in that training, you are going to hit a wall

where you think your heart's going to stop.

Like, "If I take one more step, I'll die right here."

- Because your heart rate's so high. - And you're like, "I can't do it."

And at some point, you just don't care. You're like, "I'd rather fall

stone-cold dead in front of all of them and die right here

than I would failing or quitting." - Yeah, at least you don't have

to go home head hanging in shame. - Exactly.

- Yeah. - And you just push anyway.

Sometimes you'll get it, you'll be getting surf tortured

by the instructors, and you're just laying

on that 60-degree water, just miserable.

And I tell this story quite a bit. We had dudes getting up and leaving,

mass exits, just... And the biggest, strongest dudes.

It's broad daylight. 70 degrees on Coronado Island,

the most beautiful day you've ever seen.

We're laying there just jackhammering. And you look over, and all

the West Coast SEAL teams are out to your right.

And you can see SEAL Team One out there doing log PT

for their morning PT. And you could look down the left

and you see the Hotel Del and this little, what I call

a seven-year-old with a big pink flamingo,

jumping in the water, having the best time of their life.

And I'm like, "It's all about your perspective."

- Mm-hmm. - Could be a palace or a prison.

- Mm-hmm. - However you want to see it right now.

- That's funny. - That, they're still doing it.

- That kid, time of their life, and we're in the exact same water.

- Mm-hmm. - Just change your mindset.

This is all part of the process, and if you want to wear

that shiny gold thing on your chest, you must do this. Just do it.

And I remember that was one of the things, like,

"You're not going to break me. No matter what you say,

I'll die right here in this water. I don't care."

And that kind of mindset has really been beneficial

throughout the entire process. - Mm-hmm.

- Because there are parts of BUD/S and parts of being in special operations

where you think it's going to kill you.

- Mm-hmm. - And then at a certain point,

you just don't care. "If it kills me, it kills me.

I don't care." And you get through it.

Like, "I'm so terrified of heights. Like, I can't jump out of

the back of this airplane."

You watch 15 guys go in front of you and you get right to the ramp,

and you go, "I don't care." And for whatever reason,

they just jump. Like, "What made you jump?"

"Everybody else did it. I didn't want to be the guy who said no."

Sometimes that performance anxiety, that pressure to perform on demand-

- Mm-hmm. - it gets you through the hump

and it shows you,

"If it can be done by a human being,

I can do it." - Mm-hmm.

- And it just rings true. It's like, "How far can you run?"

"As far as I have to." "Well, how fast can you run?"

"As fast as I can. Like, if you can run that,

I can run it. If you can get up and over that mountain, I can do it too."

"How you going to do it?" "One step at a time, brother.

Here we go."

And it makes you so mentally resilient. And I think that's really

the defining factor, is you can make them believe

in their mind they can get through anything.

Now collectively as a group, now you stack 25 of those

true believers together, you can do anything.

- Mm-hmm. - And I've seen some dudes

do some Herculean feats, and they do it just because they're too afraid to say no.

"Can you do that?" "Yep."

"You sure?" "If it can be done, I'll do it."

I've seen it time and time again. But yeah, I mean, everybody hits

those moments in BUD/S where it's just,

"I cannot believe I'm doing this right now."

But it's magic once you get through it.

- It's awesome. I mean, I think setting a threshold for,

"If it kills me, it kills me," is, in many contexts, unhealthy,

but in that context is, yeah, I guess healthy, adaptive.

Let's call it adaptive. I'm not going to decide

what's healthy or unhealthy. I'm sure some people are listening to this

and they're thinking, "Oh, God, like this is how guys

get themselves killed." And indeed, outside of

the context of BUD/S, sometimes guys do dumb stuff.

I always say there's something about having a Y chromosome

that through...

You know, I wasn't around

tens of thousands of years ago, but I'm guessing

the first Homo sapien male who picked up a rock,

the first thing he did was hit himself in the head with it and was like, "Ouch."

- Oh. - Then he hit the guy next to him with it.

- Yeah. - And he went, "Ouch."

And then they decided to take it and throw it against a wall

and see what happens, and on and on, and here we are.

- Yep. - And obviously,

those with two X chromosomes took a different path,

and we need the collaboration in order to survive-

- Right. - as a species, obviously.

- But there's something about that, "Let's just see what happens if,"

and, "If it kills me, it kills me," that actually is a core feature

of human evolution that's brought us

to some incredible positive places. So clearly BUD/S

is one such microenvironment. - Yeah.

- So you make it through. And then I realize

there are a lot of other iterations. There's jump school,

and there are a bunch of other things,

and you go off and you start oping right away?

- Yeah, I get stationed at SEAL Team 10 in Virginia Beach, Virginia,

and we deploy in 2005.

The Iraq war had just kicked off, so we...

I check in, and it was early '04, and we deployed in...

Yeah, we deployed probably seven months later and sent out.

Iraq was phenomenal. - Mm-hmm.

- Everything you ever wanted it to be, scary, like you don't know anything.

The IEDs are really bad, and just being a really young kid,

I mean, I was stormtrooping out in Iraq and 19 years old.

You forget how young you are at 19.

- So you're 19, you're kicking doors down-

- Yeah. - driving Humvees,

blowing stuff up- - Yeah.

and seeing friends get blown up.

- If you talk to anybody who was in Iraq, the chances of you not hitting an IED

were so rare, and we never hit one. They'd hit the convoy in front of us,

the one behind us. We'd get delayed at the gate

for two minutes, we'd turn, and boom, they'd go off in front of you.

They're just not hitting... They're hitting everybody else but you.

And you would tell yourself things like, "Oh, the reason they're not doing it is

'cause we look so aggressive because we have flames

and death skulls on the Humvees." It's not that, man.

It's just not your time. - Mm-hmm.

- You can be the best trained dude in the world and that IED hits you-

- Mm-hmm. - the lights are over.

- And on that deployment, we lost all the guys in

Operation Red Wings in Afghanistan. That was the other half of our SEAL team.

- That wasn't an IED, that was the-

- That was a helicopter that got shot down.

- Now, I don't know whether or not to call it famous or infamous, forgive me.

I'm going to step in it one way or the other.

"Lone Survivor." - Mm.

- Amazing book, I should say. - Yep.

- I really enjoyed the book. The movie does, I think,

a pretty good job of extracting some of the key moments from the book,

but more than a movie or a book-

- Yeah. - it's a true story.

- And that's the four guys that got... The three of them got

killed on the ground- - Yep.

- and then one helicopter blown up attempting to come save them.

- Yep. - To save the one guy.

Save the one guy. - Yeah, Marcus.

- And that was so hard to wrap your head around

as a 19-year-old because you've got to think,

you know, in my mind, I'd essentially been

in the community for 19 years up to that point.

- Mm-hmm. - And during my dad's time,

it was peacetime the whole time, so you weren't going to

funerals all day long. Navy SEALs getting killed

was like folklore. It's like, "Oh, it's a bad parachute accident."

We had Neil Roberts got killed in the early GWOT in Afghanistan,

Robert's Ridge, if you ever heard of that story.

That's a gnarly one. Russell [unintelligible]

got the Medal of Honor. John Chapman, the Air Force guy,

got the Medal of Honor. Gnarly firefight.

But outside of that, it wasn't happening very often,

and then when all those guys got killed in one shot,

it was like a slap of reality.

They were the best dudes you've ever seen.

Like, unbelievably trained, unbelievable experience,

and they're gone in an instant. No goodbye, no fanfare,

no holding him like, "Tell my mother..." It's nothing like Hollywood. They're gone.

- And that was kept under wraps for a long time before the book

and the movie. - Yeah.

- People really didn't know. There wasn't a lot of discussion

about SEALs and- - No.

- Well, yeah. - It wasn't in popular culture,

- Mm-hmm. - and when the book came out,

it started to gain steam, and people started to read more about it.

But for being inside the SEAL teams, that was your own private 9/11.

Every single SEAL cried in an instant, throwing up.

Just you cannot believe that just happened.

And then for everybody else who's still fighting the war,

you have to try to explain to your wife and your family

why that's not going to happen to you, and it's a lie.

It's not like they did anything wrong. That's just the way it is.

Sometimes it just happens. - You were married at this point?

- I wasn't. Single, thank God. - Intentionally?

- Intentionally. - Yeah.

- Yeah. I tried to wait as long as humanly possible and try to do that.

Good advice, but, you know, it's hard. It's hard to do that job at full-time

and trying to be a full-time boyfriend that turns into a fiancé

that turns into a husband, turns into a father.

It's very hard unless you're able to compartmentalize really, really well.

And fortunately for us, that's the thing you're the best at,

is I can wall it off so fast and never think about you again.

Now when you transition out of the military,

that's not really a super power anymore. But in the moment, it served you.

- So as more and more guys are getting killed,

did you find that getting into action each day,

the same way that you describe civilian life now, and getting into

action each day, being really adaptive, did you find that that was key

to being able to not go down mental traps?

And at the same time, I acknowledge

that you must have also just been really busy.

There's stuff coming at you all the time...

I mean, it sounds cold, but just because guys get killed

doesn't mean that the oping stops. In fact, it probably picks up even more.

- You go out the next night. You have to.

You've got to keep going, you've got to get back on the horse.

Keep on going. The last thing that we wanted

is those guys get killed, "Well, let's pull them all back.

Let's take, you know, six months to, you know, regroup."

No. No. "We gotta go out right now." Same thing with the parachute accident.

I told you about the electro-- "I gotta do it right away.

If I don't get back on the horse, I'll just build up this dread,

and I'll lose my confidence in the whole process.

Like, we have to go." And NSW did, everybody did.

Full gas, full steam ahead, let's go, and just kept going.

We did another one in 2007. If you've seen the stuff

with Jason Redman, I talked about my buddy Matty

getting shot up. That 2007 deployment was dicey,

but it's the same thing- - Two of your close friends.

- Yeah. And- - Pretty mangled.

- Oh. Crazy mangled. And you start to find out really,

really fast that it doesn't matter how much you train.

If your number's called, you're getting pulled.

And it's hard to justify because now you have a girlfriend,

you have all this stuff, and people are dying,

and you have to reassure them why it's not going to happen to you,

and you get really good at compartmentalization.

Like, I can't control that. The only thing I can control is this.

I'm shooting as much as I can, I'm doing as much CQB as I can,

I'm jumping as much as I can, I'm around the boys

building team camaraderie as much as humanly possible

because I can't control anything else. Control the things you can control,

building confidence. But reality, when it slaps,

it slaps hard and definitely slapped us.

- As the public understanding of what the SEALs even were and are

started to grow and change, and the movies-

- Mm-hmm. - the "Lone Survivor" movie, and...

I actually think, again, they did a good job with the movie.

I know the book and the movie were approved by the military,

so there was a lot of kind of vetting of the material,

but I think it hit powerfully. At the time, I was living in San Diego-

- Hm. - so the movie theaters were packed,

but that was true everywhere. It made a big impact.

But then with like the Bin Laden thing, televising the White House watching,

I feel like the whole world came to understand

that there were these guys called Navy SEALs,

and they're doing this really dangerous stuff,

and taking out bad guys.

Was there anything that changed about the job just knowing

that it wasn't as vaulted as it once was?

I mean, what you're doing is vaulted on a day-to-day basis,

but, you know, just this idea, like, this is in movies,

and there it is on the cover of CNN. There's Obama and Secretary of Defense

watching the op, and people at... Then there's a movie made about it

very quickly, and it was all happening. It was weird, in real time

and on the movies, and it just... For a civilian, it was a little bit

of a mind bend. I can't even imagine

what it was like if that's your job. And so much of being able to perform

the job well relies on people not knowing what you're doing

and how you do it. What was that like?

- Terrible. I mean, the very next day you couldn't drive on the compound.

Every news channel across America was sitting outside of that thing,

and not only are they taking photos of everybody that comes in,

they know what you look like. They're looking for guys with long hair,

beards, covered in tattoos, driving jacked-up pickup trucks.

That's what they're looking for. And now you can't go anywhere.

Now they're going out in town to all the bars and restaurants you go to,

and they're pulling you aside asking you...

It's very uncomfortable. They'll see wives in there

with a little trident stick on the back of their car.

They'll nail her in the Whole Foods parking lot.

"Is your husband a Navy SEAL?"

Nobody's ever done this before.

It's like mum's the word. Everybody kind of just collapsed

on ourselves and really, really tried to hush this thing down,

but it made the job very, very difficult. It felt like you were just under

a microscope the entire time. And then when Extortion happened,

then everybody started that, "It was an inside job." Come on, man.

- I know it's probably not something you want to get into,

but maybe just explain for people what Extortion 17 was,

and why that was so additionally impactful,

after what happened with Operation Red Wings?

- Yeah, I mean, we had Operation Red Wings

that happened June 28th, 2005. You had a bunch of really historic things

that led up after that. You had the rescue

of Captain Phillips in 2009. That was a huge milestone win,

like, "Everybody's cool, yeah, yeah, yeah."

- And they made a movie. - They made a movie, and it's great...

But nobody in the Teams is on social media.

I didn't watch a YouTube video my entire time in the SEAL Teams.

What would I watch a YouTube video for?

Nobody knew how bad it was spinning outside of your control.

- Mm-hmm. - Nobody.

Bin Laden happens...

And then August 6th, 2011,

we lose an entire troop of guys in Afghanistan.

Helo gets shot down, kills them all in an instant,

killed 31 total people, and it was like we were reliving

June 28th again, but now it's double as bad.

And now you truly have the best that have ever suited up.

If you look at the experience level they have,

most of those guys were pre-9/11 guys, 10, 12 combat rotations... Gone.

You'll never replace it. Never. You've never filled that void

since that moment. And then you have all these people

just hateful rhetoric, like, "Oh, it was an inside job,"

and, you know, "They knew too much. They were on the Bin Laden raid

so we killed them." Do you know how hard that is

to live in Virginia Beach doing that job seeing those wives at Whole Foods

wearing a memorial T-shirt knowing you're saying that?

Do you know what that does to a family? Do you know what that does to little kids

who wake up and they read the comment section?

"Mom, was Dad killed?" "Yeah." "Was he killed by the government?"

That's what they read because that's what you're saying, and it's not the truth.

It's just not. That was an op that went wrong.

It's a dangerous job and when you fly in those big gigantic black helicopters

and they're slow to land, you can shoot them

and that's what happened. And it's as simple as that.

It's a dangerous job. Like, what are you going to do?

But it is very hard to live in Virginia Beach.

It is so small. Everywhere you go

it's around you. I mean, you're sifting through

black T-shirts all day long. Which memorial shirt

are you going to wear? It just is. And now you get there,

now people are starting to erode that from you,

and it really starts to lose your confidence.

So for me, now I'm married, I'm in the organization.

We had to fill a lot of those guys from other squadrons,

and one of my best friends had to go over, and unfortunately, he got killed

in December 8th, 2012 on a hostage rescue.

Ed Byers got the Medal of Honor for that operation.

My buddy got the Navy Cross, and we went to BUD/S together.

His name was Nic Cheque. One of the greatest,

most pure operators you have ever met. Came from Pennsylvania, big wrestler,

always in a gym, always training. He represented what the essence

of being a Navy SEAL was, and everyone knew it.

When he died, a piece of me died that I've never gotten back.

And I'm trying not to cry.

The hardest thing I've ever had to do was look at my wife and tell her

that it wasn't going to happen to me

after he died. - Mm.

- Because he was the true north. So when she looks at me and she goes,

"Well, the reason you're away from us, the reason you spend 300 days on the road

is because you're perfecting this craft because you say it buys down the risk."

What about that? And you can't justify it.

You just look at her and you're like...

"I just hope it's not my time. I'm just going to try to exhaust

all my resources for now to put myself in the best position,

surrounded by the best people, to buy down as much risk

as humanly possible. If my number is called, it's called."

What do you want me to do? And that's where

the compartmentalization really took hold.

You have to be able to leave Virginia Beach,

your wife, your two kids, and completely block them out.

I can't run through that door with bullets coming out of it

thinking about my wife and kids and how I'm going to orphan them.

You can't. I don't have pictures in my room.

I'm not trying to FaceTime all the time. I'm trying to separate myself out

so I can just do this job. And it makes you really distant.

It makes you not be the person you want to be or the person

you used to be because you can't.

- Well, you're being the person you need to be in order to

eventually be able to go back and become the person you want to be,

is what it sounds like to me.

- And, you know, I say to the guys now, and it'll sound messed up, so forgive me,

but I never chased a guy who had a perfect family.

There was never a Navy SEAL I ever wanted to emulate

who had the picture perfect family, ever. They were all either on

their second marriage, bad relationship with their kids

because they were so devout at work, and you looked at them like,

"That's a master class." It's like watching Tiger Woods

drag around his golf bag. Like, that's the best

it's ever been, ever. And he has no 50/50.

There is no dial for that man. He is living this at 100%,

and the moment he retires, I really hope he takes

all that energy, all that focus, and becomes a better husband and father.

But you can't do it both ways. My mind has come to change now.

- Mm-hmm. - But I've never seen it.

And I most certainly had no balance. I wasn't even trying to find balance.

I was trying to wall them off as much as humanly possible

to focus on the task at hand, because any distraction was dangerous.

And it's hard to do, but it was necessary at the time.

- Yeah, I don't know any high performers, especially ultra high performers,

and especially ultra high performers in high risk, high consequence careers,

that don't have some unresolved dark aspect of themselves or their life

or something that... I mean, you mentioned Tiger, you know,

it's public knowledge he had issues- - Mm-hmm.

- outside of his golf game, and sounds like he's resolved those.

I think he got married again recently, and I think everyone should

wish him the best- - Yep.

- and them the best.

It's like, especially in the United States,

we hold people up, and we expect perfection

from our so-called heroes, historically, as well as ones that are alive.

And perfection doesn't exist, right? - Yeah.

- Because so much of what's required from high performance is total focus,

total compartmentalization, and that being a human being

is a lot more complicated than that. It's something, I think, to keep in mind.

I also just want to just briefly double-click on this thing about comments.

You know, I'm not going to tell people to stop saying mean stuff about me

if they want to, or mean stuff about somebody.

They're going to do it anyway. It's not the issue.

But when it comes to kids reading about their dead parents,

their dead dads in this case, and last week we had

a public assassination. It was a dead dad.

And people making up theories, and coming up with ideas

that they somehow know things that other people don't know.

And sometimes these people have a professional background

in politics, or in the military, or in law enforcement,

and it adds additional weight to these theories.

But the repercussions on the kids and family

and the legacy is, it's really bad.

- Yep. - It's really bad.

It's a shame there isn't a thicker filter.

I'm all for free speech, 100% for free speech,

but there's a lot of damage done with those thumb clicks

that I don't think people can really comprehend.

So I'm glad you pointed that out.

- Yeah, I mean, just imagine it. Like you're a 14-year-old kid

and you've grown up worshiping your father,

and he gets killed in Afghanistan, and you see a post about him.

You start to read down like, "He was killed by his government,

by this and this."

"Mom? Mom?"

It raises doubt. - Mm-hmm.

- And then that little seed of doubt is going to be with him forever.

It takes the entire collective to be like, "Listen to me. They've never even met

a Navy SEAL Team. That's some kid

in the middle of nowhere who's typing in his mother's basement

who's just writing some hateful stuff.

It's not real." It's hard to block it out

when there's 500 of them.

- Or guys that were in the military that didn't make it through selection,

they're pissed. - Yep.

- Or have some resentment for some guy that was jacked in high school

who said something and they didn't get the date, or...

- Yep, this guy stole your girlfriend. - I mean, it's like the ego and resent

are a bitter combination. - Yeah.

- It can last a lifetime. Negative comments,

many times, are irrelevant, but in this context,

have a potential lasting, very corrosive aspect.

- Yeah.

- I'd like to take a quick break

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So you're oping. Guys are dying,

you now have a family. - Mm-hmm.

- And it's in your family lineage to do this job.

I'm curious, was the fact that your dad was a team guide,

did that feel like pressure, or did it feel like buoyancy?

Or neither? - It felt normal.

- Mm-hmm. Did you feel like you had to outdo him in the...

I would ask that of anyone, military or not.

There's this notion... Well, let me just briefly back up.

A friend recently, we were talking about kids and family and building family,

and he said, "You don't want a son,

you got daughters." He has all daughters.

And I go, "No, you know, I think I'd like, you know,

one of each, but who cares? I'd have daughters, I'd have sons,

you know, I don't care." And he said, "No, 'cause if you have a son,

he's gonna try and be better than you, and then you're gonna be in conflict."

And I almost said, "No," and then I was like,

"My dad's a scientist." - Mm.

- And so I was like, there's a point in your life where you go,

"Can I fill those shoes? Can I exceed those shoes?"

It's natural human son-to-father behavior,

I think. - Yeah.

- Right? And so was there ever a moment where you're like,

"I gotta exceed," or was it irrelevant?

- I think it was irrelevant, but just because of the timing

you came in, you know, he spent his entire time at peacetime.

- Mm-hmm. - I did nothing but

combat the entire time. - Yep.

- A lot of deployments back and back, never took a shore duty station.

Just by that amount of experience, you already surpassed it.

- Mm-hmm. - It doesn't need to be said.

- Why not leave?

One of your closest mentors and friends gets killed.

- Mm. - I mean, the retirement plan,

I'm guessing, is pretty good, but it's not that awesome.

- No. - That's a plug for the military

to increase the retirement salaries, and- - Yep.

- You get some medical care, right? Some things come to your family

for staying in 20 years, I think it is.

But did the thought ever cross your mind like, "Hey, guys are dropping off

and you're right in the center of it," maybe leave?

- No. - Not for a moment?

- No. - I should have known

that wasn't going to be the answer.

- At that time, it's so different because a lot of people think about

special operations in the Global War on Terror

is the Marines pushing through Fallujah. Broad daylight, just getting smashed.

Those are the bravest dudes that served during the GWOT.

- The Marines. - There is nothing more impressive

than a 19-year-old Marine and the things they'll do.

Like, they just are. They're heroes of mine.

My experience in a GWOT was very different.

It's always at night, it's always select targets.

It's not like they're like, "Hey, you and your team

are going to go raid this village." No, we're going for a very,

very specific person. And then when you look at it,

Hemingway said it best, "Once you've hunted our men

long enough and liked it, you'll never care

for anything else thereafter." There is nothing like hunting

a human being who's hunting you.

Nothing. And you are so afraid you're going to miss it,

so that's why you hide injuries, you don't get surgery.

You do everything you can to put yourself in position

to be on the op, to not miss the deployment.

And I think that's what it is

in the essence is, you know, you have all the intel folks

and all the technology that are giving you this one thing,

and you just stare at them. "I know everything about you.

Where you live, your secondary house,

everybody you talk to, you're right-handed,

left-handed, how many windows, how many doors, the inward opening,

outward openings, are there storm doors? What's the windows made...

I know everything about you, and then we know exactly when

we're going to go get you. We know you're bad,

and we know everything you've done. I know everything you've said

on that phone for the last six months. I know everything there is

to know about you, and we are coming to get you."

And when you're successful, it becomes addictive,

and you just keep chasing that feeling like,

"I am pulling these people off the earth, and it makes a difference.

I'm not just carpet bombing anything. Like, that one singular dude

has done all of this. We have to remove him.

Let's go." And it makes you feel like you're important.

It makes you feel like people actually need you,

and you chase it for as long as possible.

My buddy Jimmy Hatch wrote a book called

"Chasing a Dragon," and that's what it's like.

You chase them long enough, you'll find them, and you don't want

to jump off that train. You're so afraid, and the Teams and the military

does a really good job of painting a narrative that,

"If you leave this, your life is over.

There's nothing that's going to surpass this.

The SEAL teams are the only thing

you know how to do, and it's the only thing

you'll ever feel at home." And it's the truth.

You get guys to get out and they go work at Goldman Sachs,

and they do this, and they do that. If you really get a couple beers in them

and you sit down, they're miserable.

They miss it. Even all the stuff you didn't like, the things you hated

about the military and the people you hated working for,

at the end of the... You don't remember any of that.

You only remember the good times.

And because you had the entire time at war,

the whole aspect, the whole career

was just amazing. You know, standing

on the shoulders of giants. I've got to work with people

that are the greatest thing you'll never get to see.

There are 12 people on the planet that were there that saw that thing,

and we won't even address it because it's not cool if you address it.

Like, "I cannot believe you just pulled that off.

That's the most impressive thing I've ever seen in my life,

and you don't even talk about it." The regular people never get to see

the level of detail that goes into doing that job.

They see it on a flat range shoot or whatever, and they're like,

"Oh, I can do that." Bet you can't jump

out of 35,000 feet at night into a place you've never seen,

and then do it. Bet you can't do that.

Do you know how hard it is to put yourself

in a position to do that operation? They have no idea, like-

- Well, and they're shooting back at you.

- Yeah. - There's that piece.

- You have a two-way range. - The targets on a flat range

don't shoot back. - Yeah.

- Right. - This is a two-way range,

this isn't airsoft, this is not "Call of Duty."

Like, those are real people, and that dude has five kids,

and he's going through that threshold regardless

of what's coming at him without a second thought.

It's amazing to see. And you know, I said to a group of guys the other day,

when the tower fell, I've never felt more patriotic in my life.

In those moments, you never think about the flag.

You never think about the American people, you never think about that.

You think you do it for the country.

You really do it, and you stay doing it

for the culture. The culture of the SEAL teams

was worth every ounce you had to pay for it.

And every other group will tell you the exact same thing.

The culture's what keeps you there. You're so afraid to leave it

because you know you're never going to find it anywhere else.

And I was the same way. I mean, when me and my old lady

were going through our worst moments,

I told her, it's like, "If you don't like the train,

jump. I'm not stopping for you. I'm not."

And that's why I was really concerned when we first got together,

because she was married to Danny Dietz, who was on Operation Red Wings,

on the ground. Her dad was a SEAL.

We're embedded in this thing. - Oh, wow. So you guys

both came up in it? Wow. - Oh, yeah, man.

We're embedded in this, and I met her three years

after Danny passed. I didn't know Danny,

I didn't know her. Mutual friends, we connected around 2008, '9.

And I told her when we first... I fell in love with her instantly,

and it scared me. - Mm-hmm.

- Because I was getting ready to screen and try to go to the tier one command,

and the pace was so fast and I was so worried

that she'd look at me one day and go,

"I can't do this again."

And I wasn't going to leave it for her, and I told her that. It's like,

"Don't ever ask me to leave, because I won't.

If you don't want to do this, I get it. Like, we can be best friends,

we can do whatever, but I'm not leaving this for you."

And that was one of the hardest things

I've ever had to do.

And for whatever reason, she's a unicorn. She has been the quintessential Team wife,

above and beyond. Every deployment,

full steam ahead.

Hot water heater blows up, tree falls through the minivan,

she doesn't even tell me, she just solves it.

She's amazing.

And I still blocked her out like I did everything else

because I still thought that my love for her

was a distraction.

And like, those are the times I look back on and I regret.

But in the moment, I don't think I'd change it.

I don't think I could.

I don't think I could do that job at the level that was required to do it,

and have that love hanging around my neck.

I couldn't do it.

It all ended up working out in the wash, but it's hard, man.

It's hard to sit there and just wait for your number to get called

and just hope it doesn't. Because I mean, the best dudes

in the world are getting killed. And you can't just...

It's not lack of training, it's not lack of funding,

it's not lack of experience, it's not lack of commitment.

What is it? It's a dangerous job, man.

That's what it is. It's a super dangerous job,

and people are trying to kill you all day long.

You just hope that you're better than they are.

But some days it happens regardless.

And it's hard. It's hard putting guys

in the ground.

Especially when you've grown up with them your whole life.

- Well, you definitely picked the right woman.

- I lassoed a unicorn. I did. Unbelievable.

- I have a good friend... Because I know you've got daughters.

And he said, "You want to marry a woman, that were you to have daughters-

- Mm-hmm.

- with her, you'd be very happy if they turned out like her."

- Yeah.

- Which is one of the best pieces of advice that I didn't hear

until fairly recently. - Yep.

- And the moment I heard it, I was like, "Wow, that's really good."

You know, they don't tell us that in high school.

- No, they don't. No, they don't.

- But clearly you bullseyed on that one. - Yep.

- So you're oping, you're alive, guys are dying, you got a family.

And it sounds like you love it, too. You're loving the work.

- Mm-hmm. - Which is so key. Right?

I don't...

Because in moments of stress, and all the other stuff

that's clearly important, love of country, flags,

and all that stuff, it sounds like it's necessary, but it's not sufficient

in those moments. The culture is really the glue.

- Yep.

- Then you start incurring some damage.

- Mm-hmm.

- So what do you see in your mind as kind of the first high impact event

that's not someone else dying?

That your body- - Hmm.

- is starting to take a toll?

I had a lot of emotional stuff happen to me in that second deployment.

My idol, Matty Roberts, I've talked about him

a couple of times...

I really, really hung onto that dude. He was my true north. He was the guy.

And when he got shot up...

When you see it happen, you know, his arm shot off,

it flipped around his shoulder, it looked like his arm was

completely gone.

My fingers were inside his arm, we're trying to solve this thing,

they're shooting at us from really, really close proximity.

And I think it still has the record... I'd have to ask J. Redman,

but I think that was the closest call for fire mission the entire Iraq war.

Like, inside of 15 meters. I mean, 40 Mike Mike

from AC-130 gunship. It was on top of you.

A belt fed machine gun just chewing us up. Everybody shot up except for me

and one other guy, and we're all crowded behind

this tractor tire just... You felt like a victim.

And at one point, right when the initial contact happened,

I sprinted to a tree and got a piece of cover.

So there's me, three guys that are all shot up,

and one other guy who's behind this tractor tire.

And I'm screaming at him like, "Hey, I've got an out. Come over here."

And he screams, "I'm Black Hawk Down,

like, nope. Come to me."

And you're looking back at it, you can see all the muzzle flash.

And just the way it happened, you had blue forces or friendlies

that were in behind him, so you couldn't shoot into this

[unintelligible] because you knew there were friendlies who were back there.

- Hmm. - So you're in this weird dance

where I can't do anything. Like, I felt helpless.

I'm getting rounds poured all over me, and at a certain point you just go,

"I'd rather run back into the front of this thing

and get killed with all of them than be the lone survivor.

I don't want to walk through this. I don't want to live with

the survivor's guilt. I'd rather just run back up,

and let's just catch it and be done with it."

And I ran right back into the center of it and dropped down behind that tire,

and started working all the guys back and putting on tourniquets, and QuikClot,

and all the stuff.

When I came back from that, I was mentally scarred

for the rest of my life. And I just never ever processed it.

I just blocked it off.

- Because it was so close?

- I think because it was the first time I felt helpless.

Like, I was just waiting to die, right?

The guy that I looked up to, that I wanted to be like, he was

a physical representation of what I thought the essence

of being a Navy SEAL was.

And he's dying in my arms, and I can't shoot back.

We're hunkered down, and rounds are just skipping all over you, and you're just...

If that JTAC hadn't called in a fire mission, we'd all be dead.

I mean, it's only a matter of time before he stands up and

just realizes he can just walk us down. There's no illume.

Night vision's all messed up at this point.

I mean, everything that could have went wrong, went wrong, and now

we're inside of 10 meters getting pounded by a belt-fed machine gun.

You can't move.

And it was the first time in my life when I truly felt helpless.

And everything worked out. Everybody ended up surviving it.

We got them in the helicopter and did all that.

I just think I never got an opportunity to ever talk about it.

And when I went back home, you know, you're taking a shower.

The showers in Iraq aren't the best, as you can imagine, and I'm standing

there in ankle-deep sludge water that's just filled with blood.

I mean, it's all in my mouth, it's all over my hair, and I remember

taking the shower and just seeing it all and not knowing if he lived or not.

And thinking, 'Do I want to be washing this off?'

Because if they call me in 20 minutes and tell me he's dead,

this is the last piece of him I have.

- So I saved the cammies, I saved the boots, I saved the shirts,

I saved everything I wore.

I shoved it all in a bag, and I kept it in case he died.

But it was hard, man.

The back of that helicopter looked like 'Black Hawk Down.'

Just blowout kits and tourniquets and magazines and rounds all over it,

and just the most blood I've ever seen.

And you're just slipping and sliding in it, just like out of the movies.

And it's not.

It's dudes you've wrapped your arms around and told you

I've loved you 100 times.

You're like, 'This is not what I thought it was going to be like.'

I didn't think this was going to be like this.

I didn't because I'd never seen it. My dad has never been through that.

None of his friends ever went through that.

Now I am this 20-year-old kid, and this is what I'm living with.

And it was hard because you got to walk back in, and the culture

of the SEAL team says, "We're not talking about that."

Nobody's ever addressing that.

When you see him, you know, you always make a joke like,

"Hey, did you scream any louder?

Like, I'm surprised we all didn't get killed by how loud you were yelling."

You always make a joke about it. - Mm-hmm.

- It wasn't a joke, man. I was traumatized.

Like, I worshipped that guy.

And to see the reality, like, he's not Superman, and neither am I.

Fortunately for me, he did the most heroic thing I've ever seen,

and that moment has stuck with me forever.

When that initial contact happened, everybody got shot, including him.

He stood back up and ran forward and grabbed our corpsman,

who was all shot up, and started dragging him back, and I watched it happen.

Gets shot again, and it spins him, drops him on the floor,

and he gets right back up.

Picks him up again, gets shot.

Arm spins over his shoulder, keeps dragging him back.

Gets shot again, hits the ground, gets back up, keeps dragging him.

It's like, at no point was he ever going to leave that dude.

Could he have? Yeah.

He could have run and dove behind that tractor tire and

sent me out there to go fetch him.

He was so committed to the process of

'I am never going to leave you.'

If he had taken one right in the head and he would have died right then.

He would have never batted an eye about it.

If he had known the outcome, he would have went in anyway.

And that part has stuck with me the entire time.

Like, a true believer will go further than anyone else in the moment

of total duress because they're conditioned to it.

He's already made up in his mind, "How far are you willing to go?"

"The entire way right now.

I'm just looking for an opportunity to prove it."

And that was his moment to prove it, and he proved it to everybody.

And still to this day, I mean, probably still my biggest inspiration

in the entire team is Matt Roberts.

Unbelievable human. Not trying to get emotional, but yeah.

Just an amazing human.

- I mean, intense in every way - Yeah.

- to hear about, so I can only imagine

what it's like to be there, and your

reverence for people around you who do amazing things is super impressive.

I notice you're constantly noticing the people that you've been blessed

to be around that show you things. - Mm-hmm.

- And the extent to which you internalize it is awesome.

I realize it also carries some weight when they're not doing well.

It's so interesting. I hope people hear what I'm hearing.

I'm sure they are, which is that,

it's never about you. - Mm-hmm.

- It's always about seeing this other person that you, you know,

were like of almost a superhero status.

They're human, and it sort of brings reality back, but all the while, you're a

central figure in this interaction.

This wasn't like watching it on an iPad from a distance and wishing

you could do something.

You're in there too, and that's not lost on us as you tell this.

So, you're carrying this in your head, and you're

still going back out.

So you didn't process it then. Let's talk about you getting electrocuted.

- Mm. - Because you keep OPing.

Fortunately, you're not killed.

And then you're pretty close to the time when you can leave

feeling like you've done sufficient time in the teams.

You've done your work.

Was there a desire to stay in past 20 years, or were you-

- Oh, yeah. I never planned on getting out.

Never. I... Nope.

- You wanted to be one of these so-called 'Bullfrogs,' one of these guys.

- Yeah, or- - I know one I won't mention

his name because it... He won't appreciate it.

But he did something like 32 years or something, and he's a friend.

I actually asked him once what his training regimen is.

He's getting up there now.

He's going to give me s*** for saying that, but he's

in great shape, obviously.

And he says he finds some way to make sure that he's breathing

super hard and his heart rate is maxed for an hour a day.

Just work out.

I'm like, it doesn't get any simpler than that.

- Yeah.

- I didn't ask him the variety of things he's done to accomplish that,

but I think it's running, I think it's lifting heavy objects,

I think it's swimming, I think it's...

But, yeah, it doesn't get any simpler than that.

In addition to his physical durability, his mental durability, he says,

is directly linked to that.

An hour a day, breathing as hard as he can at max heart rate.

That's that sort of Bullfrog mentality. - Pretty simple.

- So you wanted to be one of - Yeah.

- those guys, but you decided

at some point, it might be wise to lean into the family life?

- No. No. God, no. Nope. I- - Okay.

- So... my- - Okay.

Bad guess, Andrew.

- Yeah. - Yeah.

- My first major injury, I made it all the way through.

You know, I came in 2002.

In 2010, I was going through selection for the Tier 1 organization, and about

three-quarters of the way through.

We do a big skydive block out

in Arizona, and I love jumping, - Mm-hmm.

- it's my jam, and I had a bad landing.

Downwind landing, hit this ravine, and I snapped my femoral neck,

broke that thing.

And I was so afraid they were going to wash me out of the program.

I just didn't say anything. So I can barely walk.

I can't drive a car. I mean, it's full atrophy.

It's bad, and I'm jacked up on so many Toradols, Tramadols,

and 800 milligram Motrin that I'm able to get through and jump.

They know something's wrong with me, but they know I'm not going to quit.

They know I'm not going to ask for any help, so as long as I can pass

the evolutions, we're good, and all I have to do is jump.

We graduate that, you know, we get drafted into all the different

organizations you're going to go to, and I walked into rehab and I went,

"Okay, now that that's over, my back's broken."

And they were like, "Oh. Why do you say that?"

And they told him, like, we got an MRI on my hip when we were in Arizona,

and nothing showed up.

They were like, "We think you tore your hip flexor."

And I was like, "Oh, if I tore my hip flexor, I don't care. We're good."

I thought it was my back.

We get home, they run new images, and my femoral neck is snapped off,

and you know the deal.

You lose a femoral neck, blood supply, total hip replacement,

and you're out of the military.

And I walked in, saw the doctor, and he's sitting there in front of

my command master chief and all the rehab guys, and he goes,

"Hey, we got emergency surgery for you tomorrow morning at 07."

I went, "No." And he's like, "What?"

"I'm not getting surgery. I've never had surgery.

I'm not getting surgery.

Nope, I got deployment coming up, I'm not doing that."

And my command master chief looked at me, and he goes,

"Um, let me rephrase this.

You're getting surgery tomorrow at 07.

If you don't, I'm going to s*** candy out of the program."

It's like, "Oh. Okay, what is it?"

And he's like, "15 inches of titanium, three lag bolts, we're going

to pump them in there.

Here's a rehab protocol. You're still going to deploy in..."

You know, I think it was a month and a half, and we did.

But I got through, from the time I broke it,

I did another 85 skydives on it.

Went through Utah, I mean, up and, up and down that crazy elevation,

just really just sucking it up, but it was a test for mental resiliency.

How far are you willing to push to be a part of the organization the entire way?

- Did your team teammates - Oh yeah.

- know you had a broken femur? Okay.

- We got through. We did the emergency surgery.

It had a nasty complication, got infected, you know, wound vacs, the whole thing,

and they were so cool.

They flew a rehab guy over to Afghanistan with me, and that's how we tested out.

And, you know, the final test, like, we're doing VO2 maxes and broad jumps

and all the things to make sure your hip can take it.

And the very last thing was this huge box, probably a 48-inch box.

I've got a full kit on, and he looks at me, his name is Mike, and he goes,

"Okay, we're going to have you drop off this and land on the bad leg."

And he goes, "DJ, do not step off that box if you don't think it'll hold."

I knew it wouldn't hold. There's no way it's going to hold.

Like, it feels so bad inside me. Stepped off it.

Boom. Hit.

It felt like a bolt of lightning went through me.

- Mm.

- And I looked at him, and he went, "How do you feel?"

I went, "100%." Got my stuff, got in the helicopter.

Made it through all that.

The screws ended up backing out, going through my IT band

a couple of months later.

Had to have another surgery, and it was just a long history of things

that happened to me, but it really got you used to...

We talked about it before.

Are you hurt or are you injured? - Mm-hmm.

- I got to the point very, very fast in the SEAL teams.

I could not tell the difference. I don't know the difference.

Everything hurts.

Everything's got a limitation, and I'm just pushing through it regardless.

And again, it's not like I'm a unicorn.

The amount of people who need major reconstructive

surgeries, eight out of ten.

Everybody needs it.

And they just don't do it because you have a deployment coming up

or you have a trip you can't miss.

There's something going on to where you can't miss it,

so you sacrifice yourself.

Just don't do it. The same thing was happening.

So, I had a gnarly shoulder dislocation.

Blew it out, had to have major reconstructive surgery.

I had an admin wound, four rounds of plastic surgery,

couldn't get it to close, and all the complications are happening.

After the shoulder surgery, it was so bad that medical retirement was imminent.

So, "Hey, we're going to medically retire you.

Same benefits if you do 20 years, but you can't do this job anymore."

They wanted to fuse my lower back, my neck, shoulder surgery,

shoulder surgery, double hip surgery.

So, I had three years of surgeries lined up, and it's like, 'I'm not going

to sit here in rehab for three years doing surgeries, taking up a slot.

I'm not doing it.'

I was like, 'I'll just get out.

I'll retire and I'll deal with it on my own.'

That's kind of the whole process, so I got put on a laundry

list of medications.

Sixty-something pills a day, probably 25, 30 different

prescriptions we were on.

- Goodness.

- I mean, Cymbalta, Adderall, Gabapentin, heavy, heavy doses.

- Cymbalta? They got you on antidepressants?

- Oh, yeah. And yeah, Cymbalta, when you come off Cymbalta,

it gives you the jolts.

- Oh. - Yeah, Cymbalta's a treat.

Lyrica. I've been on everything.

Amitriptyline to sleep, taking a heavy dose of those.

Ambien, obviously. Everything.

Everything in between, you take it all, and you don't

realize that you're smashed all day because you're not hitting alcohol.

You don't realize that you're processing pharmaceuticals

24 hours a day, every single day, 52 weeks out of the year.

You don't realize it. You're not sober.

And that was my hardest thing to kind of walk away with.

I came out of this rehab program.

They put me on these medications, and I felt like a million bucks.

I got really hurt in 2013.

Amnesia, forgetting where I was at, and when I went down, they gave

me these pills, and I felt like Jesus came down and touched me.

"You gave me Adderall and Cymbalta." It's like, "Okay, what else do you have?"

"Oh, we got this, we got this, we got..." "Give them to me."

"Stellate ganglion blocks in my throat." "Give it to me."

"Reiki." "Give it to me.

Anything you have, I'll do it."

There's not a protocol on the planet I have not done, and I've done

them at 100% full value.

And they buy you a little bit of relief.

We got to the point where I was taking so many different medications.

A bunch of them you were not allowed to take together.

And I had a new doctor come in.

He's trying to refill all my prescriptions, and he's like,

"You can't take these four medications in combination."

He's like, "It'll give you a stroke, DJ. It'll kill you."

And I went, "Well, it's 2019. I've been taking them since 2010.

Like, I have to keep taking them."

He's like, "You're going to have to do a med washout."

They sent me down to Walter Reed, the 7 East, it's a neurobehavioral ward.

I don't know that.

I think it's like a team guy clinic where we're going to go work on

shoulder mobility and whatever else.

Because I just came after- - Sorry, that laugh, couldn't help it.

- Oh, I mean, you know, I was... You don't know, right?

- Mm-hmm. - I don't know.

I go down there. They start taking my shoelaces.

They take everything I have, I'm like, "What is this?"

I mean, there are fighter pilots who are in there.

There are Green Berets who are in there.

- You're like, "I went through SERE school.

I don't need this."

SERE's kind of like... It's torture training.

- Yeah, and I'm like, - Yeah.

- "I don't know why I'm doing this."

They don't tell me it's a neurobehavioral ward.

They tell me it's for a med washout.

He's like, "Hey, you're going to go there."

He's like, "You're going to focus on shoulder rehab," because

there was a gnarly shoulder surgery.

He's like, "They're going to focus on that.

We'll get you washed out of all these meds.

We'll come back. You'll be in a good spot.

Medical retirement, transition to next phase."

I'm like, "Awesome." I went into that hospital broken.

My eyes were jet black.

I was 180 pounds, just death warmed over.

I didn't want to do anything.

And I lay in that hospital bed, and I had the most amazing nursing staff.

I lay down on that bed, and I started getting sick.

And I was like, 'Oh, f***ing food poisoning.'

Throwing up, pissing myself. I mean, the whole thing.

And I remember throwing up in this bucket, and this beautiful

Black nurse has this wet washcloth, and she's washing my face off,

and I was like, "I don't know what I ate."

I was like, "I'm so sorry." I was like, "I feel so embarrassed."

And she's like, "It's okay. It's okay." I was like, "I haven't eaten anything."

I was like, "I never get food poisoned." And she's like, "Oh, honey, it's okay."

And I can remember the look she gave me, like,

"You have no idea why you're here."

- Wow. - I was like that for probably 10 days.

Around the 10th or 11th day, I finally came out of my room.

I got sunglasses on. My photophobia was so bad.

If you shine light in my eyes, I'd throw up.

And with my TBI, it was controlling everything I had.

I wasn't sleeping, had insomnia, had everything you could have.

And that was the first time in a decade I had been truly sober.

No booze, no nicotine, no pharmaceuticals of any kind, and that was my baseline.

And if you had given me the ability, I would have closed out

that chapter right then.

I was done.

I could not believe what I had done to myself, what I had turned myself into,

and there's no way to get better.

Like, I'm stuck like this, and now you're going to kick me out

of the only thing that I've ever loved.

What am I supposed to do now? Rock bottom.

And we started spinning up art therapy.

So I'd been there before.

We'd done art therapy before, and I found it really beneficial,

and actually, the Red Cross used to bring me in dogs.

They'd bring me in a Saint Bernard, drop him in my bedroom,

and I'd do dog therapy for a little bit.

And she's like, "Do you want to do art therapy?"

And I was like, "I'd love to." And she's like, "Well, what do you want?"

And I was like, "I'd really love a skateboard."

And they snuck me out of that hospital, not supposed to, and they drove me

down to this little skate shop right outside of Walter Reed.

And there's a skate shop there, and I walk in, you know,

I've got my gown stuff on, like I'm all jacked up.

Hair's super long, beard's long. I looked like a hobo.

And I told the guy my story. I was like, "Hey, I grew up skateboarding.

Like, it was my passion, and I really would love to have a skateboard

just to paint and do art therapy."

- "Yeah, because I got a couple bolts in my femur that ripped through

a couple tendons and, you know, I just got detoxed and didn't realize it."

- Yeah. - "And and I'm here.

Can I ride a skateboard?"

Love it. - Yeah.

So, he gives me a bunch of blank skateboards, and I go back

and I'm paper-maché.

I'm doing hands coming out of them.

Just a bunch of really dark, demonic stuff, but I felt so good.

When I came out, my best friend Cole Fackler, the same guy I started

Trybe Skates and GVRs with.

We went to BUD/S together.

He grew up in Virginia Beach with me, and so, we've been

thick as thieves for 25 years now.

And he's like, "Well, open up an LLC."

He opens up the backside, and he's like, "Let's just make

skateboarding your art therapy."

So we had an artist come on board.

We'd start drawing motivational things, you know, old school UDT stuff

for firemen, stuff for police officers, memorial skateboards.

And then I found fracture burning.

So you essentially take a microwave transformer, pull it out, and you hook

it up to jumper cables.

And then run a lead out to an octopus outlet, like 110.

So when I clip it on top of the wood and I pour an electrolyte solution on it,

Coca-Cola, baking soda with warm water is my favorite, and I hit it.

It'll burn the wood grain, and they'll connect.

Scrub all that out, fill it with resin, just make these beautiful pieces,

and that was my art therapy.

I could sit there and burn skateboards all day, every day.

It was amazing. Like, it truly changed my life.

And I don't know why. I didn't grow up around electricity.

Obviously, I'm not very good at it.

And it was something about having to sit there and

sand the lacquer off that skateboard.

I mean, I'd buy brand new skateboards.

I'd sand the entire graphic off of it, and then we'd burn them.

You have to sand them off.

You'd have to rinse them, wait 24 hours, pour the resin,

wait 24 hours, sand them off, pour it again, 24 hours.

I mean, it's a seven-day process to make one board.

And we'd bring in guys who were transitioning.

They'd do it too.

It was their form of art therapy, and I felt like I was making a difference.

And I'm scheduled to retire at the end of August 2019.

This is Father's Day. So was that in the-

- It's, like, mid-June. Is that right? - Yeah.

- Something like that? - Right before I'm scheduled to retire.

Father's Day morning, around 9:00 AM.

I've been up since 5:00, burning skateboards.

I got a big bay window that looks out my backyard, and I've got these

see-saws set up with these boards.

And I've got an EOD guy, an explosive ordnance guy from the Navy.

He's making paddles for retirement. So he comes over.

They're covered in lacquer.

And I'm like, "Yo, my man, I can't burn them while they have the lacquer."

So he's got a sander out.

I'd been burning, so I unplugged my machine.

He plugs into my octopus outlet and is sanding down the lacquer.

When he's done, I'll clip in. I'll burn them real quick.

He'll finish them off. And my wife, I'll never forget.

I look up, and she bangs on the window, and she's like,

"It's Father's Day.

We're supposed to go eat brunch." And I was like, "Last burn. Last burn."

He had unplugged the sander and plugged my machine into

the octopus outlet, and now there's a charge going to it.

It's sitting on the ground. I don't know it.

And the way I run the protocol is there's no electricity running to it,

so I mean, you can put these things in your mouth.

There's no electricity.

So I pick them up to adjust them because then I'm going to walk back,

plug it in, and everybody's clear.

Flick the outlet.

And when I readjusted them, the whole thing lit me up.

I had them in both hands. - You closed the circuit.

- Yep. So they were live on the leads just sitting on the ground.

I didn't know it. So I went to readjust them.

I made contact with them, and it spun me around,

and I faced them about this far away.

And I can remember the back of my head was trying to touch

my tailbone, and I was trying to fight it.

I could feel my teeth heating up.

And I was squeezing this thing as hard as I could,

and I heard a pop, pop.

And I step back.

That was my collarbone shattering from the flex.

My scapula. They both shattered.

But in the process, you take a hose and you wash off all the ash.

So right behind me is ankle-deep standing water.

- Oh, Jesus. - And now I'm holding onto this thing.

I step back, and my wife, both my kids are turned around watching me

from eight feet away.

I pop up, I levitate, and it launches me about 20 feet across my backyard,

still holding onto the leads.

He, thank God, has the wherewithal to unplug it.

So when I wake up, my hair's standing straight up.

My hands are smoking, and I exhale. I went...

And all this smoke came out of my mouth.

And I remember lying on the ground, and he's right in my face, and he goes,

"Do you know where you're at?"

And I said, "On the ground." And he went, "Can you move?"

And I went, "My shoulder's dislocated, for sure."

And he went, "Can you sit up?" And I went, "Help me."

And he pulled me up, and as soon as he put pressure on there,

I could feel my scapula just gravel.

I could feel this all hinging in there. My hands are smoking, like...

So it blew out of my finger, blew out of this thumb.

It fused my tendon to the nerve bundle, so it was stuck like this.

I couldn't move anything up here.

He stands me up and I tell him, "I'm going to drive myself to the hospital."

My wife is freaking out.

They're trying to unplug the machine, you know.

My kids are running out there, and I don't want them to see me like this.

I don't have a shirt on. I don't even have shoes on.

I just got a pair of shorts, and my shorts were on fire.

So I had little ingrown hairs in my thighs.

Electricity was shooting out of those and caught my shorts on fire.

Anywhere I had them.

So out the top of my head, one next to my nether region.

I mean, just exit shots coming out of my body.

And I don't know anything about electricity, but it's not good.

And I take a turn, and I've probably have to walk

maybe 35, 40 feet to my car.

So he's in there with my wife, trying to get the keys, trying to get me in there.

And I turn and I step to the door.

Have you seen 'Kill Bill?' - Mm-hmm.

- Remember the five-finger death touch? - Mm-hmm.

- Five steps? I took one step and everything went...

I took another one, and it started closing in.

Everything started going black. And I was like, "Oh, God."

Third step, and I was like, "Oh, no." Fourth, fifth, and I'm looking through

a toilet paper straw, and I'm like, "Oh, my God."

I took one more step and everything went black.

And I was in total blindness standing out there.

I'm opening my eyes as wide as I can, and I'm panicking.

I can hear my wife running through the house screaming.

I can hear him running around screaming, trying to get everything

together, and I'm stuck on the side of my house like this, just shaking.

I can't see anything.

And I started power breathing as deep and as hard as I could,

and I saw a little speck of light.

And I just kept doing it, just forcing it.

Inhaled through my nose and mouth, just power as much as I can.

And it started to open up, open up, open up.

And probably 20 breaths into it, it was like I had superhuman vision.

It was like I was interconnected with everything on the planet.

It was like I had a DMT trip. Everything was super vibrant.

I was totally aware of my whole body.

I knew everything that had just happened to me.

I could recall things from the past.

And I knew everything was going to be fine.

I'm good. I walk right over to the truck.

I open up the car. I get inside it.

We hit every single speed bump and pothole from there until the ER.

Just jostling around me, and you can hear this-

- Just to remind you, your shoulder was a little messed up.

- Yeah. - Shoulders, excuse me.

- Shoulders. - Plural.

- So I walk through the ER, and Princess Anne Sentara in

Virginia Beach has an amazing staff.

What they also have is a staff of really, really beautiful nurses.

But now it's COVID, so now everybody has a mask on,

and all you can see are their eyes.

And they had the most beautiful eyes I've ever seen.

And I'm lying on my back, you know. I walk in and they can see it, like...

One of the nurses made a comment. She's like, "Who brought in barbecue?"

And it's my hands. Like, they're melted.

They're smoking. - Jesus.

- It's so bad. It's making me nauseous to think about it.

They get me on that table and I'll never forget.

This nurse came over and spun her face in, and she goes,

"I'm so surprised you still have a penis."

I said, "What?"

And she went, "Honey, when you get electrocuted, usually fingers come off,

your nose comes off, everything comes off of you."

And she's like, "As far as we can tell, you're intact.

You haven't lost anything right now." She's like, "Move your fingers."

I'm moving everything. Open my mouth. "Can you hear?"

I can hear, and she's like, "Okay. Well, here we go.

"They transfer me. I think I took an ambulance ride.

I kind of blacked out for a little bit, and then I woke up in the burn unit

in Norfolk, and I had this specialist come in.

My wife is now with me.

We're lying there, double slings, you know, trying to identify

how bad everything is.

They know we've had to do an emergency surgery on all this,

and he goes, "DJ..."

So this is after my two months with Vernon.

So, this is the best physical condition I've ever been in.

I came from 180, now I'm 220, 6% body fat.

I'm in phenomenal shape. Like, I don't need to retire.

I could probably still suit it up again, and now I'm lying in this hospital bed.

I'll have to show you the photos.

And he walks in, and he's like, "Do you know what rhabdo is?"

And I said, "Yeah."

And he goes, "When you get electrocuted, your body releases

an enzyme everybody has, but it multiplies rapidly, and your

muscles liquify, and they go toxic.

Then they go septic, and you die. Your issue is you're a big dude.

If these enzyme markers hit this level, I'd have to start cutting

stuff out of you, man."

- Taking muscle off?

- Yeah. He's like, "Pecs, lats, shoulders, delts, hamstrings, quads."

Like, "So every hour, I'm coming back here, and we have to start

doing these enzyme markers."

So I'm lying in that bed.

Can't move, I can't run, I can't do anything,

and I'm looking at my wife, and I'm just imagining Dr. Kevorkian

coming in here and chopping me up into little pieces.

I've never been in a low spot like that.

Outside of being stuck behind that tire with Maddie, this was

the first time since then when I was a true victim of circumstance.

There's nothing I can do to prevent this. There's no magic pill I can take.

There's nowhere to run. There's nothing I can do.

I'm either going to lie in this hospital bed, or I'm going to let

that dude come in here and chop me up into pieces.

And I'm just consumed with anger, guilt, and envy.

I just don't want to be here right now.

And he came back in an hour, and he's like, "Levels are good.

Levels are good." Came back next hour, "Levels are good."

Third hour, fourth hour, fifth hour, and he's like, "DJ, every person on

the planet has this enzyme in their body.

Everyone.

And not only is yours not climbing, not increasing, there's not a trace

of it in your body now."

He's like, "I've never seen anything like it."

He's like, "Tomorrow morning, - Hmm.

- you're free to go.

"Okay." They planned the surgery.

They put in two plates, 20-something screws, did the whole thing,

but didn't have to chop me up.

And from talking to all the other people, typically, people get

electrocuted by one touch.

So this arm comes off, you know, rib cages blow open.

They were like, "We don't know if it's because you had leads in both hands

and you just completed a circuit and were to ride it.

We don't know what would have happened if you had held it

for another second and a half.

Was your heart starting and stopping just the perfect timing?

All the stars had to align for you to be here right now,

and it's a medical mystery."

So, I took it with that. Medical mystery.

And now we're here. But I had to walk back in.

So I get dropped off at my house, and this is where Vernon

really comes into play.

I'm sitting in my house in double slings. I've got two kids.

I've got a wife. I've got no income.

I've got no job.