543: Don't Wait to Get Punched in the Face. The Best Way to Adapt And Learn.

Summary

Jocko Podcast 543: Don't Wait to Get Punched in the Face. The Best Way to Adapt and Learn

Host: Jocko Willink
Co-Host: Echo Charles
Date: June 3, 2026

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Overview

This episode centers on the critical importance of ongoing learning, adaptability, and discipline—drawn from military doctrine but applicable across business, sports, relationships, and everyday life. Using the U.S. Army Learning Concept (TRADOC 5-5, 2015) as a framework, Jocko and Echo delve deep into how individuals and organizations must constantly outpace adversaries through proactive adaptation, maintaining strong fundamentals, and facilitating effective, context-aware learning. They weave together stories from military training, Jiu Jitsu, sports, and personal experiences to illustrate how suffering, uncertainty, and proper practice drive memorable and effective learning.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Need for Constant Learning & Adaptation

• Summary: Modern life and competition (in war, business, sport) demands continuous learning. Complacency and resistance to change create risk.
• Quote: "We all need to be learning all the time. And if you don't keep that front of mind, it's real easy to not learn anything and not progress."
  (Jocko, 01:08)
• Concepts:
  • Life mirrors the military’s “full spectrum uncertainty”—persistent conflict, surprises, and a range of threats.
  • You must outpace adversaries by not just learning, but teaching and adapting as a team.

2. Kinds of Games: Closed vs. Open (Kind vs. Unkind) Environments

• Summary: The more open or unconstrained the environment (war, business, MMA), the more creativity and adaptability matter.
• Discussion:
  • Chess is complex but finite; real combat is open-ended.
  • "The less rules there are in the game that you're playing, the more opportunity you have to do that." (Jocko, 04:37)
• Insight: To win, do unexpected things—requires open-mindedness.

3. Learning at the Point of Need: Avoiding “Punched in the Face” Learning

• Summary: Humans often ignore problems until they become critical. The goal is to address potential issues before they cause pain or catastrophe.
• Quote: "We don't care about anything until it punches us in the face. And this is true, so true for so many humans."
  (Jocko, 07:45)
• Examples:
  • Not preparing an emergency kit until stranded by a snowstorm.
  • SEAL teams ignoring a known problem until someone suffers for it.
• Memorable Line: "He who suffers remembers." (Jocko, 10:54)

4. Teaching and Contribution: Not Only Learning, But Sharing

• Summary: Everyone in an organization should contribute to the collective body of knowledge.
• Discussion:
  • Teaching helps learners pay attention to their learning process.
  • You're influenced by what you learn—be careful about your information sources (e.g., "doomscrolling" as negative education).

5. The Power of Fundamentals (Not Just ‘Basics’)

• Summary: Fundamental skills, when deeply learned and drilled, trump fancy techniques, especially under pressure or in real-life situations.
• Quote: "Fundamentals is actually the most important thing. And there are skills... if you don't have them, you're doomed." (Jocko, 13:22)
• Examples:
  • In Jiu Jitsu, world champs win with white belt-level techniques done perfectly.
  • The “cover and move” principle in SEAL teams.

6. Learning Progression: Static, Constrained, Live

• Summary:
  • Real mastery involves progression: watching/listening, drilling, constrained practice, live application.
  • Teaching must consider learner differences and context.
• Jocko’s Acting Story (Movie Scene):
  • He memorized a line mentally but didn’t rehearse aloud, leading to a stumble during filming (29:01–30:45).
  • Lesson: Mental rehearsal ≠ actual performance.

7. Individual Learning Styles & Context

• Summary: Learners absorb information at varying rates and through different modalities (visual, auditory, kinesthetic). Prior knowledge accelerates progress.
• Quote: "How much context do you have?... The amount of context that you have impacts how well and how quickly people can learn something."
  (Jocko, 39:22)
• Examples:
  • Jiu Jitsu techniques are easier to teach if the student already knows related moves.
  • Leadership lessons learned quickly with relevant experience.

8. Experience vs. Book Knowledge

• Summary:
  • Real-world experience breeds context and rapid recognition.
  • Veterans “see” patterns newcomers miss (e.g., why a cut on a suspect’s hand points to hidden violence).
• Movie Reference: Point Break—Rookie vs. experienced cop dynamic. (41:25–41:35)
• TV Reference: Forensic Files — Only practitioners with experience can instantly decode evidence (e.g., knife wounds, 42:53–44:05).

9. Adapting Teaching Approaches

• Summary:
  • Don’t rely exclusively on lectures or slides—learning must engage, challenge, and adapt to students' needs.
• Actionable Points from Army Manual (55:43):
  • Convert classes into collaborative, problem-solving events.
  • Tailor learning to individuals’ competence.
  • Blend live, virtual, and game-based instruction.
• Quote: "Ten times out of ten the talking instructor made less progress than the guy who talked probably one third as much."
  (Jocko, 56:46)

10. Adapting to Complexity, Uncertainty & The Unexpected

• Summary:
  • Success requires comfort—and experience—with ambiguity.
  • The best training deliberately introduces “weird” scenarios to build this muscle.
• Memorable Story:
  • SEAL trainees shrunk by two clowns having a pie-eating contest mid-room clearance drill (57:50).
  • Lesson: Train for the unexpected to learn detachment and rapid problem-solving.
• Sport Example:
  • Team Jiu Jitsu event with random opponents; the unfamiliar upsets your plan.

11. Mastering Fundamentals to Enable Adaptability

• Summary:
  • You can’t prepare for every contingency; instead, master a core set of skills that let you improvise when necessary.
• Analogies:
  • NFL/SEAL teams memorize a reasonable number of plays/SOPs, not attempt endless possibilities.
  • “Fumble Drill” from football movie The Program: Fundamentals must be overlearned (72:01).

12. No One-Size-Fits-All Method for Learning

• Summary:
  • There’s no magic strategy. Good teachers adjust methods for content, context, and learner. Prior knowledge boosts learning—activate it before teaching new skills.
• Quote: "Teaching requires an open mind... You got to pay attention." (Jocko, 73:33)

13. Habit of Lifelong Learning

• Summary:
  • Modern learners (soldiers/anybody) must be self-driven, curious, and able to use technology to find and evaluate new information.
• Application:
  • As leaders and instructors, force yourself and your team to do things you avoid (weak hand shooting, fingerpicking, unwanted moves) to build adaptability and don’t default to “just the way it’s always been done.”

14. Intentional Practice: Plan, Execute, Debrief

• Summary:
  • Treat every action as training. Be intentional—plan the session, execute it, and review/adjust in real time.
• Quote: "Everything is training. That being said, you have to be intentional in what you’re doing as well. Which to me, intentional... is plan, execute, debrief."
  (Jocko, 79:01)

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Notable Quotes and Moments (with Timestamps)

• On Preparation:
  “We don’t care about anything until it punches us in the face ... He who suffers remembers.” (Jocko, 07:45 & 10:54)

• On Fundamentals:
  “Fundamentals is actually the most important thing. And there are skills... if you don’t have them, you’re doomed.” (Jocko, 13:22)

• On Learning from Suffering:
  “It’s definitely a more effective way of learning a lesson, as long as there isn’t some catastrophic price to pay...” (Jocko, 10:31)

• On the Unexpected in Training:
  “My trade had guys had dressed two dudes up like clowns and they were having a pie eating contest ... That’s funny, right? ... It tripped guys up.” (Jocko, 57:50)

• On Adaptive Teaching:
  “Ten times out of ten, the talking instructor made less progress than the guy that talked probably one third as much.” (Jocko, 56:46)

• On Lifelong Learning:
  "Soldiers must acquire the habits of lifelong learners ... expert, self-motivated learners who are capable of asking good questions..." (Jocko, 76:00)

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Memorable Analogies & Stories

• Jocko’s Acting Flub: The difference between memorizing a line and performing it aloud under pressure (29:11–30:45).
• Basketball Fundamentals: Drilling “Hoosiers”-style, then freezing in a real (unconstrained) game due to lack of scrimmage reps (31:36+).
• Football Fumble Drill: Movie The Program—the rookie who must carry a ball at all times to internalize holding onto it (72:00+).
• Context Is King: Forensics “blood on the hand” story—experience lets you immediately recognize the hidden patterns (43:56).

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Actionable Takeaways

• Train the Fundamentals Relentlessly: Deep practice of basics enables high-level adaptability and improvisation.
• Proactively Prepare for Problems: Don’t wait to suffer. Anticipate needs before they become urgent.
• Tailor Practice to Context and Ability: Custom-fit instruction for each individual and task.
• Mix Constrained and Live Training: Progress from “static” reps to open, chaotic practice to mimic real-world challenges.
• Encourage a Teaching Culture: Everyone should learn and contribute lessons to the group.
• Debrief Everything: End training/practice with immediate feedback and iteration.
• Treat Everything as Training: Adopt the mindset of being “in training” at all times.
• Be a Lifelong Learner: Curiosity and self-driven learning are mission-critical for ongoing success.

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Important Timestamps

| Timestamp | Topic | |------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:08 | Need for constant learning | | 04:37 | Kind vs. unkind environments | | 07:45 | Learning at the point of need/"punched in the face" lessons | | 10:54 | “He who suffers remembers” | | 13:22 | Fundamentals vs. basics | | 29:11 | Jocko’s acting example: mental vs. physical practice | | 41:25 | Rookie vs. veteran experience (Point Break reference) | | 42:53 | Forensics example—context and recognition | | 57:50 | SEAL training: clowns and pie-eating contest | | 72:00 | Movie The Program: football rookie and fumble drill | | 79:01 | "Intentional" training: plan, execute, debrief |

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Closing Message

Life is training—be intentional, keep learning, and get after it.

"Let's remember to keep learning. Try new things, try new technology, try new words, try new moves... do everything you can to get better every single day. And you do that by going out there and getting after it."
—Jocko (94:25)

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(Advertisements, break chat, and non-content material have been omitted for focus.)

Transcript

[A]

This is Jocko, podcast number 543 with Echo, Charles, and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

[B]

Good evening.

[A]

The U.S. army's competitive advantage directly relates to its capacity to learn faster and adapt more quickly than its adversaries. The current pace of technological change increases the Army's challenge to maintain the edge over potential adversaries. In the highly competitive global learning environment, where technology provides all players with nearly ubiquitous access to information, the army cannot risk failure through complacency, lack of imagination, or resistance to change. Outpacing adversaries is essential to maintain the Army's global status and to fulfill its responsibilities to the nation. And that right there is a little quote from US Army TRADOC 5 to 5, tac 8, tac 2, US Army Learning Concept 2015. And it's an interesting thing to think about, because we. We all need to be learning all the time. And if you don't keep that front of mind, it's real easy to not learn anything and not progress, Whether it's leadership, whether it's your professional career, whatever your professional career is, whether it's working with a new piece of gear, whether it's jiu jitsu, whether it's fighting, whether it's tactics, whether it's music or art or software. That's for you.

[B]

Sure. Yeah. Hell, yeah.

[A]

Right. Communication, how you communicate language. Like, what's your vocabulary? We should be hopefully learning all the time. And it's very easy. Takes effort. Takes effort to learn. So it's really easy to go in cruise control. But the fact of the matter is, in all these different spectrums, we have to outpace our adversaries. Right. In jiu jitsu, in fighting, in software. Like, if you want to be productive, you've got to outpace your adversaries. So. Interesting document. It had some interesting statements, and I just want to talk about some of the things that are in there. Here's some assumptions that they make. The army will operate in an area of uncertainty and persistent conflict against a full spectrum of possible threats. This is what we call life. Right? You don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. There's going to be persistent conflict, and there's a full spectrum of threats. What do you call that? An open game versus a closed game? What do you call those two things? Unkind and kind games, right?

[B]

Oh, right. Kind of like environment or something like that.

[A]

Oh, kind environment versus unkind. Is that. Is that the thing?

[B]

Yeah, I forgot. I was just talking about this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I forgot. But I think it's kind of.

[A]

Yeah. So some things are constrained in some way. There's some kind of rules in place. There's some kind of finite provisions that you have to operate within. And then there's things that are just totally unconstrained. So you got to think about what kind of environment you're playing in. And by the way, there's spectrum there, too, right? Because, like, checkers, pretty limited. Chess seems pretty unlimited because there's billions of moves you can make, but it is still. There's a. There's a finite number. And then you get to combat total war. There's all of a sudden, how. What is the person going to do to you? There's no. Sure, there's rules of engagement, there's laws of armed conflict, but there's also, like, we can think outside and get creative around those things. Even so, thinking about the uncertainty of the future and the persistent conflict that we're in, you better be learning next one. The army will continue to confront unexpected challenges from an adaptive enemy and must respond rapidly in the development of doctrine, training, and education. So as your competitors change, which they will, and they bring new things to the front, which they will, you have to be able to adjust, learn, train, and move people forward. This is also life, right? Because things aren't going to go as planned next. The army must prevail in the competitive learning environment. Now, if you start thinking about it, you have an organization. Your organization has to, we say adapt, right? We say adapt and overcome. We say this all the time. What is adaptation? Essentially, what it is, is learning. You have to learn. And not only you have to learn, like what the enemy's doing, what the competition is doing, what your rival on the mats of justice is doing. You got to learn what they're doing, and then you have to learn how to counter it. And then, by the way, in an organization, you have to teach and have everyone else on the team learn what you're doing to make adjustments. So that's what we have to do next. The Army's learning model must be clear in intended outcomes that are rigorous, relevant, and measurable. It's a good idea. Right? I get it. I do think that you have to keep an open mind and be flexible because you don't know. It's. It's very. In fact, it might be the most critical thing because, let's face it, when you are trying to do something to counter someone and you're doing what they expect, it doesn't. It's not gonna be effective. You have to do Things that they don't expect. Well, how are you gonna do things that they don't expect if you have a closed mind and you're only responding with that one methodology? So to really win, we want to do things that they have no expectation of. That's the goal. That's. You can see this in sports. Sometimes someone will bring something to sports that has not been used before. Low calf kick, right? This is something that we got, you know, we got to see. I guess MMA and Jiu Jitsu is, are very good examples of this, number one, because they are very close to unkind, right? I mean, basketball. Yeah. I mean, if you watch the evolution of basketball, certainly there people are doing new moves, but not as radically new as what we've seen in Jiu Jitsu and MMA over the past 30 years. So you have to keep an open mind that you're gonna, you're gonna try and do things that maybe they don't expect at all. The less rules there are in the game that you're playing, the more opportunity you have to do that. So that's why business and war is very. Those are probably the most open environments that you're going to have the chance to make adjustments and be flexible. So that's why I say if someone's talking about, hey, you got to be clear in the intended outcome, you know, the intended outcome win. Because if it is, oh, the intended outcome is to do this move right here to counter their move. Okay? They're used to being in that situation. What if you can completely bypass that? As Dean Lister used to say, you know, you go A, B, C and then D, that's the move. Here's the counter, here's the setup, and then you execute the move. But ideally you just go A to D, or maybe you go acd, you can skip moves, or maybe you just go A, D, C, B back to D. So that's what we're trying to do. Next one. Learning is best achieved at the point of need and therefore must be accessible in career long continuum rather than limited to specific time frames or locations. When I hear this learning is best achieved at the point of need. You know what that makes me think of? I used to say in the teams, we don't care about anything until it punches us in the face. And this is true, so true for so many humans. We have an idea that this could be a problem or that could be a problem, but no one really cares about it until they get hit with it. Like, oh yeah, you know, at some point I'm Gonna. I'm gonna, you know, put an emergency kit in my car just in case something goes wrong when I'm driving through the mountains some, I'm gonna. I'm gonna do that someday. They know it's a good idea.

[B]

Right?

[A]

It's a good idea. But then they don't do it. And guess what? When the snowstorm hits and they get stuck in their freezing snow and they don't have anything to survive with, it's a problem. And they're going, dang it. And then they go home. And immediately, if they make it, if they survive, they're like, here's what we're going to do. We used to run in that in the SEAL teams all the time. There'd be something like, we all know this is a problem. No one cares. No one cares. No one cares. No one cares. There's an incident, all of a sudden, everyone cares, and we solve the problem. So you have to be careful that you don't do that. You don't. My recommendation is you don't wait till you're at the point of need to make adjustments in your world. You know, that there are things that require, you know, I had an interesting conversation. You know, they have specific people to do the maintenance of an aircraft, of a jet aircraft. So Dave Burke, good deal.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, he's worried about flying the plane.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

He's got. And he does inspections, you know, they. The pilot does the cursory walk around, you know, they're out there kicking the tires. You know what I'm saying?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

He's not in the systems. Right. But guess what? There is a guy that is. There's assignment is to make sure that that ejection seat is ready to eject and it's functional, it's maintained. If that's. If that fell on, you know, the pilot who's got all these other things to worry about, as critical as it is, he wouldn't be as focused as that individual that's making it happen.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So, man, did you see those two airplanes collide? Those two F18s collide?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And they ejected all four people, and all four people survived. That was insane to watch.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But I bet that maintenance guy, Props. That's what we're saying.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Same thing with, like, fire detectors.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, it's like, oh, how often do you check how often you rotate in those batteries like you're supposed to? It's not till your neighbor's house burns down. You're like, yeah, I'm gonna get in there. At least that's the way a lot of people operate.

[B]

Yeah. I feel like sometimes, I don't know, my mind kind of habitually goes to like, hey, but isn't that kind of a more effective way of learning a lesson, you know, the hard way?

[A]

It's definitely a more effective way of learning a lesson, as long as there isn't some catastrophic.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Price to pay for learning the lesson.

[B]

Right. And, and even put even more simply, when it's like, yeah, if you have to learn it that way, but if you don't have to, bruh, like, you don't want to learn. Like, hey, you should wear your seatbelt the hard way, you know?

[A]

Well, I posted the other day, he who suffers remembers.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

For Murph. Right. We're all out there doing Murph. Right? He who suffers remembers. It's like, yes, that is true. That is a term that I heard in buds because they would be making us suffer because we did something wrong. So to your point. Oh, somebody didn't bring whatever piece of gear we're about to do, you know, eight million freaking eight count bodybuilders at two o' clock in the morning.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Do you think we ever forgot that piece of gear again?

[B]

Nope.

[A]

So he who suffers remembers. You're right. But if it's a catastrophic situation, you know, you don't want to have somebody in your, in your business do something that's going to get you sued, and now all of a sudden it's a catastrophic situation.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Because you're like, oh, I bet they learned their lesson. Cool, we're bankrupt.

[B]

So.

[A]

Good point, Echo. However, yeah.

[B]

When you don't have to learn it the hard way. Let's not learn it. I got you.

[A]

Let's not. Let's not learn it the hard way. Next. Army learners must have the opportunity to contribute to the body of knowledge throughout their careers. Good. It's. It's a very good idea that people recognize when you're. When you're in an organization, you are not only going to have to receive and learn, but it's good to know that you should be teaching, too. And you will be teaching. It's a good thing to recognize because then you start paying attention to how you learn and what was helpful to you. Next. Soldiering requires a foundation of comprehensive fitness, army values, the warrior ethos, and professional competence. Yep. What, What I would say about that is we become what we learn. I would say. Is that 100 accurate? No. But you. I should. I shouldn't say we become. We are highly influenced by what we Learn I, you've heard me say that you get a lot of your DNA in the SEAL teams from your first platoon because what you learn in that first platoon, it leaves the biggest impression because you're learning the most. So what you learn is kind of who you become. Like when I, when I got to the Seal teams, I went to Seal Team 1, otherwise known as Stalag Team 1, and it was all like the professionalism and haircuts and stuff like that. And that's kind of how I maintained, I maintained that course. You get that DNA early. So you kind of, you are highly influenced by what you learn. So that's an important thing to keep in mind. Not only as a person that is learning. What are you learning from? Because are you learning from reels? You know what I'm saying? Are you being influenced by reels? Are you being, are you being taught by social media? Because if you're getting taught trash, what are you going to become? You're at a minimum, you're going to be influenced in that direction. And isn't it interesting to think that you, technically, when you're doom scrolling, you are, you are learning something. You are being influenced by that thing. So important to try and maintain some level of control of what you are allowing yourself to be taught next. Fundamental competencies must be reinforced by maximizing time on the task. Cool. Always. Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. In the SEAL teams, I changed the, we should say basics. Hey, we're gonna go through the basics today. And I changed that terminology to fundamentals because everyone hears basics and they go, this is no big deal, this isn't important. Fundamentals is actually the most important thing. And there are, there are skills that you have, leadership skills and operational skills that you have that are truly fundamental. If you don't have them, you're doomed. But when people hear, oh, this is just, you know, just the basics. Yeah, it's like, no, no, no, we're not doing just the basics. We're actually learning the fundamentals.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, it's more like the, like the foundational cover move.

[A]

Do we call cover move basic? No, call it fundamental. Because if you're not, everything that you do is covered move. In the teams, in the, in the military, it's cover and move, cover move, cover move, covered move. That's what it is. One person is covering, the other person is moving. You have to learn that. That is a fundamental skill to learn how to do that. It's not just a basic skill. Is it basic? Yeah, it's basic. Is it fundamental Absolutely. Next. Continuing continually evolving complex operational dilemmas over extended time in culturally diverse joint, interagency, intergovernmental, and multinational operational environments. Will continue to challenge leaders. Again, this is a. Dude, this is such military terminology here. Complex operational dilemmas. So these are like different types of missions extended over time. They're long, culturally diverse. They're in different countries with different humans there. Joint. That means we're working with Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps working together. Interagencies. That means you've got other government agencies. Maybe you've got the State Department, maybe you've got the. The CIA. You've got other people working with you. Intergovernmental. So now we got their government too. So now you're working with the government of another country and multinational. So now we have different countries and their military and their government. There's a lot of different players involved. Well, guess what? This is what life is. This is what business is. You got your neighbors, they have a different culture than you. They have different goals than you. Yeah, your business. You got different scenarios going on. You got to work with different regulatory environments.

[B]

This, this is kind of interesting to me because as a non military person and not non law enforcement person, we'll

[A]

say, you know, call you a civilian.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, civilian. But you know how like, pack. I'll watch movies sometimes and it'll be like, I don't know, the local cops, right, and they're investigating some crime, and then they'll run into like the fed. State. Yeah, exactly, right. The feds come in and they're gonna, you know, even remember, you know, what movie was on the other day. Die Hard. Remember Die Hard? The OG first it has the one beat cop. They're kind of handling business. And then some, you know, superior comes, that dude, I forget his name in the show, but. And then the FBI come, you know, and then they're like contending with each other. And I remember when I was young, I was like, aren't they all. To me, they're all cops. They all should just be like, adding to the team. But some reason they have different agendas

[A]

in their own jurisdiction.

[B]

Yeah, you know, like all this stuff.

[A]

Rambo has that too, right?

[B]

Jurisdiction.

[A]

Yeah, because it's like the local cops. Oh, and then. Yeah, sorry, first blood.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and then they have like these points of contentious, like, bro, that doesn't make sense to me because you guys are all cops or whatever. But no, different cops have different, like, responsibilities and goals within their, within their, I don't know, department or whatever their level or whatever. And this is essentially a more complex version of that same thing. See, I'm saying.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So it's like, okay, our government has all these different, like, different groups in it that have different goals in it with this one big situation.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So, yeah, sometimes you can step on each other's toes a little bit and, you know, little points of contention.

[A]

Oh, for sure.

[B]

But from the outside, I don't. That's not intuitive to me. To me, it's kind of like, oh, that's the usa. The USA is going to roll in, and they're all just pointing in the same exact direction. And we're going to go in, we're going to. You know, but it's not like that.

[A]

You know what was weird when I got in the military is I just thought, kind of in line with what you're saying, I thought the military just kind of did what it wanted.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Meaning. Like, have you ever thought about when you go on a trip in the military, let's say you're driving out to the desert training facility, that you got to get gasoline for the vehicles? Well, where's that gasoline come from? Have you thought about that?

[B]

Me? No.

[A]

Like, you have to use a certain card. It's like a credit card, but it's a. It's more like a debit card that you use to pay for the gas. Now, it's coming from the fund that is your team, but you're paying for this gas and you're going to get charged for it. So why. Because your team has a certain amount of budget. So when you book, you know, you're using this card to pay for things just like your ammunition, the batteries for your. For your radios or for your night vision, like you have to actually pay for. I thought it was all just provided.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that does. I mean, you asking me that, for some reason, I feel like we've. You've brought that up before, but, yeah, it feels like that. When I played football at University of Hawaii, it's. Everything's provided. Everything. All your clothes, all your equipment, your socks, shoes, like, everything. You just go to the little window and you get it. See what I'm saying? I was. I am under that impression. Yes. Like, you get, here's the keys to your Humvee, maybe you sign for it. There's already gas in it. See what I'm saying? Like, the gas is magically disappears.

[A]

And there is like an element of that when you get your gear issue right, you don't give them a card for that, but if you Lose a piece of gear, you might have to pay for it. So check next time. Manpower and resources available for learning will continue to be limited. Isn't that just the way it is? Everybody needs more time and more money to train and we don't have enough. And by the way, the army trains over half a million people a year. So getting back to the doc here, current learning is typically instructor led, timed to predetermine course lengths and not synchronized to meet individual learner needs. That's something to think about. People are going to learn at different paces and you just get that, hey, this is how long the course of instruction is. This is how long I'm going to teach you for. Current instruction is based on individual task conditions and standards, which worked well when the army had a well defined mission and a well defined enemy. Similarly, critical thinking is frequently a course objective instruction. Oh, sorry. While critical thinking is frequently a course objective, instruction primarily delivers only concepts and knowledge. Passive lecture based instruction does not engage learners or capitalize on prior experience. Learner assessments are frequently routine open book tests that lack rigor and fail to measure actual learning levels. So this whole thing here, right, first of all, how are we teaching? Because by the way, when you teach something, you, you have to use multiple elements teacher, right? You got, you can tell people what's going to happen. There's your audio, maybe you gave them a pamphlet to read about it. There's visually showing them how to do something and then there's physically having them do the thing, whatever that thing is. So it's, it's like you listen or you absorb information or you're presented information and then you watch people do the thing and then you have to do the thing yourself. So whether it's doing mag changes on a weapon, like someone will, you will initially get taught because it seems like you know when you do a mag change, echo Charles on your Desert Eagle.50 cal.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

When you do that, you do it. I haven't watched you do it, but I bet that it's not. Have you, did you. How did you learn how to do a mag change?

[B]

Oh, I, I took a course with our boy Brian, Sergeant.

[A]

Oh, okay. Well then you do know, if you didn't know that tactical. If Sarge didn't tell you how to change a mag, you would kind of just be fumbling through it, right? So you have to learn how to do it and Sarge taught you how to do it. Doing a kickflip on a skateboard, like you have to learn how to do it, then you have to Try it. If there's a new vocabulary word, you can, by the way, if you learn a new vocabulary word and you just memorize the meaning of the word, that's different than actually putting it, using it as a sentence and reading it in multiple senses and understanding the context. Each one of those room clearances doing a room clearance. Did Sarge teach you any room clearances, CQB or whatever?

[B]

No.

[A]

CQB now called cqc. No. But that's a thing you gotta watch, you gotta learn, and then you gotta do it. Arm lock, guitar chord, different guitar chords. Somebody has to show you what it is. Prioritize and execute. This is something skill that we teach at Echelon Front. You gotta learn how to do it. You gotta. You hear the concept. It's funny. When you do the ftx, when people do the FTX at Echelon Front, dude, people that show up to the ftx, they can recite exactly like what the laws of, what the laws of combat are. Cover, move, simple, privatizing, decentralized command. They'll. They'll kind of be able to talk through them very well. And then you see them trying to do them. It's very, very different because you have to actually do these things. Same thing with decentralized command. People can, people can talk about it, but a lot of times they can't do it. So it's very important to keep that in mind. And then you have to keep in mind as a teacher that people learn differently. So I might be able to talk you through a mag change and you might be able to do it within, you know, 10 tries. You can get pretty smooth at it. Someone else, I talk them through it and I have to talk them through other details of it that I didn't have to tell you. Kind of like figured it out. So everyone's going to learn a little bit differently. And you know, I, I talk about this example with Jiu Jitsu, because Jiu Jitsu is certainly a learning sport. Probably one of the highest levels of amount of things to learn. Because it's such an unkind game. Yeah. With so many variables. Yeah. Not just the variables of the move, but just the variable of you as a human, the human that you're going against. Like there's. It just, it's just very infinite. But to make a Jiu jitsu move work, let's say, let's say, for instance, I don't know if I'll use percentages, but let's say there's 10 things that you have to do to Make a move, work. An instructor can show you maybe three of those things, four of those things, maybe five of the things. The physical movements, they can talk you through. They can show it to you. And then even still, the first time you do it, it's not gonna. I just learned a move today from Kynan. It's something that I had never done before. It's like a guard retention. Guard retention move. It was a move straight up. And, dude, when. When he's. When I'm watching him do it, I was like, oh, that's. I'm literally thinking, oh, that's dope. And I fully understood it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Mentally.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

When we started doing was like, yeah, I might as well been a white belt.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

You know what I'm saying? I'm like, oh, I'm a white belt. And. Yeah. So I had to do it. I had to do the physical move a bunch of times to even start, and I still didn't even. I need. I need to do it another. I probably need to do another 100 times.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Of static drilling, we'll say. Right? Where it's just like, hey, this is just the motion I have to go through. So three to five things you can kind of get from an instructor telling you what the move is. Maybe 0.5 or 1.5 you get from doing the movement physically. Yeah. And then there's a couple. Because I remember I said, you got to do 10 things to make move work. There's a couple of these things you have to do. Now. It's not really static drilling. It's like, I have to. You have to actively participate in some kind of a. We'll call it a constrained. In, like, CLA and ecological training, they call it a constrained environment. Meaning, like, okay, echo. In order for me to get this guard recovery movement going, here's what you need to do to me. Do this to me. If you get to this point, we're going to start again. If I get to this point, we're going to start again. And by the way, you can't do this thing or that thing. Yeah. Like, for instance. Oh, I'm working on guard retention. You're not allowed to just fall back on a footlock. Right. Okay. That's a constraint that I put on you. And you're not allowed to, let's say, smash pass, because this isn't a guard retention for a smash pass. So I give you some constraints, but you're allowed to move within the box that I built for you. So I got to do that a little bit. I can. I can figure out one or two more elements of the move by doing that. And then I have to do it live. Because guess what? In real life, you can fall back on a footlock. In real life, you can go to a smash pass instead. So there's one, the last one or two things that I have to learn. There's no way. Way to learn it unless we're doing it fully, unrestrained. So that's what we kind of have to do to get somebody to learn. You want to hear a funny story? Yes, I will tell you. So I was recently doing a movie.

[B]

Yeah? Yeah.

[A]

And I'm doing this movie. And I have one line. Yeah, I have one line. And. But in the scene. I'm in the scene for probably, like, a few minutes, but all I'm doing is listening.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And in fact, I'm listening and kind of giving no response. I'm kind of just being me.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. In real life.

[A]

But the other character is, like, yapping, saying all kinds of funny stuff. I had to keep it professional because she's being hilarious. And I'm trying to keep it professional. And so speaking of being professional, having made the Way of the Warrior Kid, I know that you don't want to waste everybody's time. And when you mess up your line or you mess up. Yeah, you mess up your line. Everyone tries to be cool because they don't want to add pressure, but everyone's pissed. So I know that going in. So I'm like, okay, I'm going to do my best. And I had one line, bro. So I memorize it.

[B]

You.

[A]

But I memorized it in my head. Keep this in mind. I memorized it in my head. So it takes a long time to film. And we're there. We do all the different camera setups. And the other actor, she's yapping and she's doing her lines, and she's improving. Funny. Awesome. And I don't have to say anything. And it keeps going and keep going. It takes, like, three, four, five hours.

[B]

No.

[A]

And I haven't said a word yet. All I'm doing is my expression, which is expressionless, by the way. Try not to crack up, because she's hilarious. So finally, then we turn the cameras around, and now it's the closing of the scene, and it's time for my line, which I memorized. And. And so we get to that point, she delivers the line that, like, what is it? Cues me. Is that what it's called? A cue?

[B]

Sure. The setup.

[A]

She gives me the setup, and it's my turn. After five hours, everyone's looking at me. That's my time. And I had memorized that line, but I. But I hadn't physically spoken the words yet. And when it came time for me to say the line, I was like. And it took me a second. I got it out. I, like, I had to go team guy mode. I just had to, like, muscle through it. I had to muscle through it, but I hadn't physically rehearsed it. And when you don't physically rehearse it, there's something that you're missing. And I hadn't said the words. So I. I muscled through it. And then we cut. And I said it, like, I said it out loud, like, to myself, whispering it like 19 times in the next. In the next three minutes. I was just like I said, because I didn't want to get choked up. I choked up.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I choked in. Get choked up. I choked. You know, this is very similar. You've heard the story about when I started playing basketball. I started playing basketball. My dad. I told my dad I wanted to play basketball, and my dad's like, old school Hoosiers. You ever seen the movie Hoosiers? Yeah, bro. My dad's 100% Hoosiers. Like, okay. Oh, you no flashy. You're going to be defense. You're going to learn ball handling. You're going to learn to pass. You know, you. You don't want to worry about scoring. Scoring's like the where def. You know, so he got me going in that mode. Didn't really didn't. All we did was drill. This is a case where you. If you go too far with drilling and then my. I get to. This is seventh grade or eighth grade. I get. Now I try out for the team. I make the team. My dad. My dad worked with me for, you know, two months. Just Hoosiers, man. Hoosiers. So now I get to my co and my coach, guess what kind of attitude he has. Hoosiers all day. We're not worried about looking flashy and scoring points. We're gonna play defense. We're gonna pass, we're gonna ball handle. So we did that. And we did almost no live basketball games in practice. So the first game that I went into, oh, oh, by the way, because I was good passing and was ball handling left hand, right hand, I became the point guard. Seventh grade or whatever. Eighth grade, right? Hell, yeah. The first game, I'm dribbling down the court, I hold up the signal for like, oh, we're gonna run Play number two. And I, you know, boom, walk, boom. I pass the ball, totally get picked. The ball gets picked off. The dude, runs down the court, scores a layup. I was like, well, damn. Well, play two sucked. I come down again. I call play one. You know, better play, pass it off, gets picked off. The same guy just picked it off again. Because I had never actually played. I mean, I might have played, like, one scrimmage. We never scrimmaged. So you have. You have to drill. You have to play that. You have to. You have to play games to get good at it, and then you have to actually play in an unconstrained environment. So these things are. Are. Are very important, and you have to do all of them. Even when it comes to, like, delivering it. Saying words.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

If you. Because, let's face it, when you're saying, oh, oh, like when I. I did that show, Billions.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

They. All the lines that those guys gave me were just shit that I said anyways. It was just me. It was me, and it was just me. Right. And so even though I. It was pretty easy for me to say those words. Oh, you want me to say, hey, keep knocking them out? Like, that's some shit. I would normally say, but this line was, like, a little different.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so I didn't. So he. I forced it out. No one said anything. I think people that they like. Oh, that's the first one. We'll give him a little breather.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

Because it sucks when the director comes up and he's like, hey, actually, it's a female director. You know, she didn't come up to me and say, I was so thankful. She gave me a little grace.

[B]

Grace.

[A]

Yeah. But that's what we got to watch out for.

[B]

Is this movie out?

[A]

No, no, it's not out yet.

[B]

When does it come out?

[A]

It comes out, I think, in December.

[B]

Oh, hell, yeah. All right. Okay.

[A]

I forget if I'm allowed to talk about it.

[B]

Yeah, that's what it feels like.

[A]

Yeah. I forget. I don't want to. I don't want to get, you know, get in trouble.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Leaking. Yeah, leaking the stuff or whatever.

[A]

Yeah, the tea. Exactly. But, yeah, you got to be careful with that one.

[B]

Yeah, It. It's. I mean, as far as the idea, the concept, it seems obvious when you just sort of look at it, but if you understand it, then I feel like, yeah, you can be, like, way more effective in, like, when you progress through learning. So if you. Let's say, like, gol. Let's do basketball. Basketball is a good one where if it's like, okay, hey, jocko or whatever, young jocko, you've never played basketball ever before, but I'm going to teach you how and you're going to become good at basketball. I could be like, okay, first things first, this ball right here goes in that net. See it? See the net? See the ball? And you're like, bruh, that makes perfect sense to me. The ball going in the net. Hell yeah. I know basketball, right? I know that part of it. I said, okay, cool. You know that. Okay, here's this. Whatever. But you didn't do anything. I just explained it to you, brother. You tried throw that ball in the net, but you can't. It's almost impossible. Actually. No, you know, with 100% certainty what the ball going in the net is, yet you can't do it.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

Because you have no reps doing it. Because there's like millions of little variations in there.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

See what I'm saying? So, yeah, you gotta. Same thing with the talking thing in your line. Like there's so many little variations that you have to experience for them to get locked in. No matter. I mean, yeah, you said the word the and so called or whatever the words are. You've heard those words. You said them. But not in that progression under that circumstance. So you got to replicate that circumstance and get that experience in real life. Yeah. Same thing with like juggling, for example. You ever. You ever. You can watch tutorials on how to juggle the technique.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

And it's like, oh, bro, that's. I didn't know that. And you're like, bro, I think I can probably do that. Yeah, it's impossible. You gotta do.

[A]

Exactly. Yep, exactly. And by the way, I got in this movie, I'm playing a pilot. Yeah, Hell yeah. A helicopter pilot. And I get in and I'm kind of like. I watch. I literally went on YouTube and watched some videos about like, see what the helicopter pilots are doing.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

But I got in there, I said, you know, I'm kind of. They're kind of like, what are you going to do? I'm like, well, I'm going to look at the instruments and look around. And I said. And they said, yeah, you know, that'll be fine. They said, well, the thing is, when we get pilots, real pilots, sometimes they don't know how to act. Yeah. And I said, well, unfortunately for you, I'm neither a pilot nor an actor, so you're just going to have to deal with it. The worst of Both worlds to going back to your basketball example is if you just said, hey, all you got to do is put the ball in the net and you. So now you take a shot like, what is your form? If what I should do is like, hey, you got to put the ball in the net. Here are some basic points of performance that you need to utilize. Port your, point your elbow at the basket, you know, use the other hand to guide. Because if you say put the ball in the basket, a lot of people would do a two handed set shot like they used to do in the 50s. Yeah, you know, like, oh, just two hands. But it's known that there's a better technique now. Not that some people couldn't hit good shots with a two handed set shot, but it's just not as effective. You can't do it from a job. Like, there's all kinds of reason why it's not good. So that's why we need to give people the. That's what those things are. That's what the. When I say that three to five things can be shown by the instructor. It's a perfect example. A jump shot in basketball. Like I need to give you the fundamentals of the movement. Now listen, you might, you know, have a specific way. You know, you see this with pitchers sometimes in baseball, like a sidearm pitcher, like they didn't get taught that way, but they figured it out and it works for them. And there's, that's an extreme example. But a lot of times, you know, your jump shot might be a little bit different. Well, it's going to be a little bit different everyone else's. Based on your body and based on the way you calculate the distance and how much backspin you put on the ball can be a little bit different. But there is, there is a line, there is a guide that you can give someone and then how well or how much they need to deviate from that line is kind of up to them. And that's why they have to do the drilling, the static drilling, the constrained environment. Like I'm not going to, I'm not going to teach you a jump shot and then say, okay, go ahead and take one and I swat you, you know, like, I'm not going to get in your face. No, you got to learn the technique. And then I start, okay, let me put a little bit pressure on you. Oh, here's what you got to do. Here's a little head juke. You can. And you start and then you start using it again and you start realizing, oh, I can do this. Here's how I can do it specifically. So those are all really good examples. And it's important to remember, too. It varies for different people. Like I said, some people are visual learners, some people are audio learners, some people have to feel it. There's a bunch of different types of learners. And then on top of that, there's context. How much context do you have? Because if you have no context and I try and teach you an arm lock, it could take an hour. If you know how to do an arm lock, and I want to teach you how to finish with a wrist lock, I can teach you that in seven minutes, maybe even five minutes. If you know how to do a straight foot lock and a heel hook, and I want to teach you the Aoki lock, I can teach you that very quickly. But if you don't know the heel hook and you don't know the footlock, it's going to take me longer and I have to show you more to get you there. And it's same with the guitar chord. Like, if I know the D minor and I want to teach you D major like you already know them, I can T. If you already know one, I can barely easily teach you the other or a weapon system. Once you know a particular. Once you know, like, how a rifle works, it's going to be much easier. When I hand you a new rifle, I go, hey, here's the safety. Here's what this type of sight looks like. Here's what your sight picture should look like, as opposed to if you've never shot a rifle before. I'm like, okay, this is called the safety. Here's how you're supposed to manipulate it. This is what you're going to look on the. On the sight picture. Here's the front sight. You should focus on the front sight. The other things can become a blur. Your target, you're going to see it, but that's going to become a blur too. And you're going to keep your focus on the front sight. And then you're going to slowly pull the trigger and you're going to let it surprise you. Like all those things I'm going to have to teach you if you already know all that stuff and I hand you a new weapon. Here's how this safety works. Here's what the site pictures should be go kill and you can make it happen. And even this, this is true. Even with leadership skills, like, depending on how much context you have, I can give you a little. A little note, bro. Hey, you were a little Bit aggressive. When you, when you walked in and you really didn't, you took partial ownership. But you also said, you know, this is probably my fault. And you go, yeah. Whereas if you've never taken ownership before and you're like, dude, this, I had nothing to do with this. We have a lot of work to do. So the amount of context that you have impacts how, how well and how quickly people can learn something.

[B]

So when I watch movies back in the day as a kid, you know, okay, so, you know, a typical, typical movie scenario, we'll say, let's say it's a cop cop movie or a lawyer movie or whatever, we'll say a cop movie. And you get the story about the new young, freaking bright eyed, enthusiastic, gifted new rookie right out of the academy. Then you get this old guy who, his kind of claim to fame or whatever is his quote unquote experience. He's like, you know, he, he's, he doesn't read very fast. He's not very like, good on his weapon, but he has a lot of experience.

[A]

Point break. We're talking point break, right?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right, exactly.

[A]

No, Reeves.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then Keanu Reeves and Gary Busey.

[B]

Gary Busey, yeah.

[A]

It's a good, good matchup of what you're talking about, right?

[B]

Yeah, A lot of experience. And I used to think, like, what the hell does that mean? A lot of expert, like, bro, he sucks. You know, he has a lot of experience. Like what? Like, why is that valuable? But really, it's this, it's like you have so many reps in this context that you're talking about. He's seen so many different scenarios that like, details just formulate themselves and paint like this very clear picture of what's going on. If you're an investigator, we'll say, but if you're new, you just know this contextless list of skills kind of that you have. So you can't, like, you can't place these skills onto anything yet. Meanwhile, this guy can place everything onto everything. Sure, he might not run the fastest if the criminals running away, he can't chase him or whatever, but he knows exactly what's going on. Just that one look at a situation. See what I'm saying? Like, you ever heard of a show called Forensic Files? It used to be called Medical Detectives. It's basically like some crime happens and they, and they kind of.

[A]

Is it real?

[B]

It's a real show. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Documentary or ish?

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

What does ish mean?

[B]

Like, it's a, it's a show. It's a series show. Right. So you got episodes.

[A]

But are you. Is it real forensic people.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Looking at real crime scenes.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Okay, cool.

[B]

Real crimes and the actual investigators, the actual medical.

[A]

It's not like CSI Miami, right?

[B]

Right, Correct, correct.

[A]

It's real.

[B]

So you. They interview a lot of times they interview these cops with a lot of experience and they, they reveal little secrets that you would know only if you have experience. Right. So one of them. That, that was pretty cool. Was there investigating this guy. They're questioning him and they saw a cut on his. On, oh, on this part of his hand. On the back of his. On the outside of his pinky. Right, right by that first knuckle was a cut there. And he's like. And most of us know that when you're stabbing someone through experience. When you're stabbing someone, the knife gets bloody and blood is very slippery. Like if you're not. If you don't have experience with blood all over your hands, bro, you don't know that. I didn't know that. Blood slippery like motor, like motor oil. So it gets slippery. And then when you're stabbing someone, the impact of the knife makes the knife slide. Your hands slide down the knife onto the blade. You cut yourself right there. That happens freaking like 90% of the time or whatever. As far as what he's saying, you know, but if you don't have experience like, that wouldn't. Oh, he has a cut in his hand. I wonder what that cut is for. But if you had a lot of experience, you're like, I know exactly what that cut is for. I've seen a million of those things.

[A]

You see what I'm saying?

[B]

Does it happen every single time? No, but all the context, all the situations that I've seen, that thing was present.

[A]

See what I'm saying?

[B]

So it's like that kind of stuff. You can just like see it right at an instant. Makes you way better.

[A]

Context and experience are very closely related, for sure. The. So when it goes back to instruction, what percentage of instruction, like telling you what percentage of static drilling, what percentage of active resistance constrained training, and what percentage of life should we do? Well, there's a lot of variables there, and you can't set that in stone. You can't say, oh, if you're training guitar, you should do this much, you know, finger picking, this much scales. No, because guess what? There's some people that are just naturally good at scales and they're naturally bad at finger picking. If you're training in jiu jitsu, you can't be like, oh, I taught a new move today. We're going to drill it 22 times each, and then we're going to do four minutes each side of constrained drilling or game, and then we're going to do live like you. How complex was the move? Jeff Glover taught a move the other day, and he gets on teaching it and he's like, all right, let's give it a try. Good luck. He says, good luck because it was a wild ass move, you know, and I. I would probably have to learn that move from him, you know, let's say five classes in a row. Five classes in a row. Because. Because I had no context around this particular move. Now, someone that has a lot of context around the move, they probably got it that day or they at least started figuring it out. Yeah. So how complex is the move that you're teaching? How well, how much context does your. Each student in the class, how much context do they have around that type of move? So it's not going to be. There is no miraculous percentage that you should always teach to what you do need to do. You have to observe, orient, decide, and act as an instructor. You might have to go, hey, you know, Echo and Greg train. You guys go over there. Start actively because this is whatever Mount Escape you're really good at. Mount Escape. I just want you to add this finishing touch on it. Meanwhile, I got a couple people that are there. They might still be black belts, but they don't have that Hawaiian. What do you call, the Hawaiian shuffle? They don't have the Hawaiian shuffle down. They've never even seen it before.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

If they've never seen it before, it's going to be. It's going to take some time. The. The deep. The deep arm. I think he calls it the deep arm drag. The deep arm drag by Jeff Glover. Yeah, bro. I'm still trying to figure that out. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? And this is a guy. Jeff Glover actively will do this to me. I know exactly what he's doing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

He's a hundred pounds less than me, and he can do this deep Half this deep arm drag to me, and it's like, okay, well, I'll do it too. Can't do it to him.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Can't do it to him. I've gotten my back taken a hundred times by trying deep, deep arm drag, but I have no context. That's like, okay, so Jeff Glover, what does Jeff Glover do?

[B]

You.

[A]

He turns his back on people all the time. He doesn't give a Shit, He. He doesn't care. I hardly ever turn my back on someone. So for me to actively start incorporating a move where part of the move is turning your back on someone, it's going to take me a long time to figure that out.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So as an instructor and probably there's, you know, just. Just like I said, the. The move I was learning today from Kynan, just the mechanics of the move it was going to take because it was. Oddly enough, it was a guard retention where you kind of turned your back. This is unfamiliar territory to me. I don't. How many times do you think you've got my back got in your back? Yeah. Got.

[B]

I can't remember. Once. Yeah, that I can remember.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. I'm, like, very protective of having my back taken. Comes from the old days in mma, having your back taken was. Having your back taken in jiu jitsu was bad, but having it taken in MMA was horrible. Now those. Now that things have evolved, and it's actually. If you watch Sean. Sean Strickland, his last fight, he gave it the back, no factor, because. Because, again, things have evolved. He knows how to defend better. But for my upbringing, we didn't give up the back. And so now I got kind of telling me, kind of turn your back took me. I didn't even get it, you know, And I was drilling with Noah. Noah's like, okay, I got this. He started doing it pretty quick. And so that's what you got to deal with. The discrepancy between each student is a real thing. And so you gotta take that into account, and the context you gotta take into account, and then you gotta provide a little bit of modulation like I just said. Hey, Echo and Greg, you guys go over there. You guys got this. You guys can start working, but you two over here. Let's start with this basic. All I want you to do is. All I want you to do is get the person moving back and forth. That's the game we're gonna play. All I want you to do is just move. Get the person moving, but just disrupt their balance once you've. Because if I'm trying to get you the whole movie, you don't have to dis. You don't even know how to disrupt their balance. We got a problem. Yeah, it's the same thing we used to do in the SEAL teams. You don't. We would start immediate action drills. Immediate action drills are what you do. They're like coordinated plays like you do on the football field. Someone makes a call, and then you execute the play, right? You do that when you get enemy contact. Well, when you start your, when you start doing immediate action drills, what you do is you start them on a big, flat, open range and the targets are down there and you can all see each other and there's no terrain to deal with. You just go through the motions. You're going through the mechanics of the move. And if a platoon has worked good, well, if they did before they went out to land warfare, if they already went out on the beach and they did a bunch of walkthroughs and everyone starts getting the mechanics down, by the time they get out to the desert training facility, you hey, do a, do a center peel. Oh, they're knocking it out first. They actually will knock it out on the first try. If you have a platoon that didn't get together and didn't do walkthroughs, they're a soup sandwich even on the flat range. So once you get done with the flat range, once you get them up to speed, then you start putting them in terrain. The first terrain will be very obvious. Then the terrain gets a little bit more complicated. And then guess what you do? You start doing it at night. And once you're doing it at night on nods, well, guess what? Now we start using rockets and grenades and you're going to start escalating things. And by the way, then you start hitting them multiple times. And when they're really good with all that live fire, all that, by the way, it's all live fire. Then once they're solid, their live fire, then you can say, okay, now you can go force on force, which means you're going to go against real people that are shooting fake bullets at each other. Right? It's ammunition. So that's what we as leaders have to do as instructors. We have to figure out all these things and we have to apply them correctly. And that is, can be challenging. But it's also the way you can make the most progress with everyone that is trying to learn. All right, next, all course proponents can start now by taking the following three steps. So this is going back to this army manual. It's trying to tell people, help people change their learning method or their teaching methodology. Convert most classroom experiences into collaborative problem solving events led by facilitators, vice instructors, who engage learners to think and understand the relevance and context of what they learn. So it's much better, you know, if you, if you, if your kid, you want to teach your kid the times tables. If you, you have to make it a flashcard and you can't see the answer when you say 2 times 4. If they see that it's 8, it doesn't help them at all. They have to come up with that solution themselves. And that's what I like about this. Like you, you have to get the people to think you can guide them and if they miss it, you can tell them. But then you got to flip it back over and try it again. Tailor learning to the individual learners experience and competence level based on the results. This is what we just talked about. Dramatically reduce or eliminate instructor LED slide presentation lectures and begin using a blended learning approach that incorporates virtual and constructive simulations, gaming technology or other technology delivered instruction. So you can't just read through them, you can't just show them. You have to, you have to interact. And this is funny because when we used to teach close quarters combat, you'd have different instructors. So you got two, you got, let's say we got a troop, a task unit and they got two different platoons. And so you take two different platoons and they're going with two different instructor groups. And for a while we would just be like, okay, you're go this guy all day. You go this guy all day. Well, one of those instructors really like to talk a lot. And so he's going through all these details. The other instructor like talked, kind of gave the fundamental concepts and then started, all right, start doing it, start doing it, start doing it. 10 times out of 10 the talking instructor made less progress than the guy that talked. Probably one third as much, it makes sense. And then one third you still, you. Like I said, I'm not going to say hey, here's a ball put in the basket. No, I'm going to say, hey, here's how you should position your foot. Here's what your elbow should do, here's where your hand placement on the ball, that's all good stuff. Now if I start telling you about the physics of the ball and the physiological alignment of your elbow and stuff like that don't matter. It doesn't matter. So when you start talking about room clearance, you start getting into these things that are beyond the necessary knowledge for the shooter. You're, you're kind of wasting their time. So let them start to do shout out to slow Cal Poly slow. Where my daughter, coach Rana went, their motto is learn by doing. So they do a lot of stuff there. They do. And that's definitely a great way to learn. Next section, full spectrum operations, counterinsurgency and stability operations dominate the current fight. Again, this is written 2015. However, forces must be prepared to execute full spectrum operations. And this means you got to be ready for anything. And this means you have to train in different environments for things that are less likely and putting in a little bit of time on things that are less likely instead of waiting for you to get punched in the face with that problem is the way to do this. And also means you got to look at different variables that you train in different environments, different tools. Gi. No. Gi. In Jiu jitsu gloves. Like, hey, you know what you should do in jiu jitsu? Sometimes put on gloves. Once a week someone puts on the gloves and is punching you in the head as you're working your guard. It's a real thing striking for takedowns. Somebody puts on big 16 ounce boxing gloves or 18 ounce boxing gloves, they try and punch you as you're trying to hit a takedown just. And then with what else you're doing, you know, you're doing pistol work. What about nighttime? What about low light? What about midlight? What about backlight? You got to. What about with noise happening? What about when it's cold outside and you're wearing gloves? Little things are going to be different. So you got to be prepared for those things. Next. Soldiers and leaders must learn to rapidly transition between offensive, offensive, defensive and stability operations or civil support operations. While understanding that many military fundamentals remain the same in any type of operation. Preparation for future operations must include complexity, uncertainty, continuous transition between operations, protracted time information complexity, and adaptive enemies that are anticipated in future conflict. What this means is you have to be ready for uncertainty and you get, let me tell you what you get better at. Dealing with uncertainty by dealing with uncertainty, believe it or not, is a skill and it's a skill that you can improve over time. We used to throw the most random at platoons. Random want to hear the most random thing? So let my guys would be setting up targets, you know, for a big hit to go down, big target assault to go down. But I generally wouldn't go out and see like the details that they were doing. I would be with the platoon. As the platoons plan to go to the head, I'd be sitting and listening to the brief and listen to their platoon interactions, see what kind of frictions and fault lines there were. But the boys are out in the field, the trade at boys are out in the field, they're setting up the targets, putting in the pyro and all the special effects and all the craziness is gonna go down. So anyways, the Guys are out there setting up target and we're always trying to surprise the guys, give them something. They didn't know what to deal with or how to deal with something. So we're. I'm standing there in like a hallway watching the platoon clear, and all of a sudden like a couple guys open a door and they kind of enter a room. And I can see that, like the reaction is like kind of confused and. And then there's like, I hear like weird noises coming out, like commands like normally, go, get down, get down or whatever. And I hear like, hey, you. Just weird stuff. And I see like someone else kind of stumbling back out of the room. It just was bad. And so I kind of go down there, I kind of peek to what's going on there. And they had. My trade at guys had dressed two dudes up like clowns and they were having a pie eating contest. That's funny, right? It's funny, dude. Those guys, it tripped guys up. It tripped them up. They're like, what are we. What are you supposed to do? Is that a weapon? The guy's holding a pie, getting ready to hit someone else in the face with a pie. Is that. We shoot him?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. I don't know. At least that's what guys were thinking. I don't. What am I doing? Are they gonna throw the pie at me? Is that now a weapon?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Is the pie a bomb? So doing that kind of thing is a good way to give people things that they're not expecting at all. Giving someone something that is so uncertain they have to deal with it will help them in dealing with because it'll help them learn to detach. It'll help them learn to assess quickly. It'll help them move through the decision making process quickly. But you have to deal with uncertainty and learn in order to learn how to deal with uncertainty. Did you notice at CJI2, one of the rules implemented was you. You. They just. You didn't know who was getting sent out on the mat from the two teams. Remember that? So when someone got beat or when the round started, because it was. It was team Jiu jitsu, which didn't work out well. Yeah, but you didn't know. Each team didn't know who the other guy was sending out. Remember that?

[B]

Yep, I remember.

[A]

So you might be getting ready to go against that 170 pound fast guy, but all of a sudden the 280 pound slow big smasher comes out. You gotta be ready to deal with it.

[B]

There was some.

[A]

There's an interesting aspect it wasn't. I don't. Even though I'm using that as an example, it's not a good example for a tournament.

[B]

Yeah. A good example of this. That the unexpected weirdness that can happen even though it's rare is. Okay. You have to have seen this clip. Clip. And I didn't know who this person was until later on I found out it was Andres. Okay. See, he was in a tournament. And how he start. You know, some guys, they'll pull guard or they're what? This guy freaking starts upside down. Did you see that?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Did you know that was Andrews?

[A]

Yes, I did.

[B]

I. I didn't know till later. But yeah, he's upside down. Yeah. Like on his.

[A]

He's an inverted.

[B]

Inverted.

[A]

Inverted guard pull followed by moving like towards the person in the inverted guard.

[B]

Yeah. It was very unusual, we'll say.

[A]

And he won, by the way.

[B]

Yeah, exactly right.

[A]

By the way. The master of all unexpected is Jeff Glover. Yeah. Hands down.

[B]

Oh yeah. You know him, the thing he invented donkey guard or whatever. No one starts like that. So it's like right through all my training, I've never had to deal with this right here, you know, so. Yeah, it makes sense. Just the idea of this is unusual. This is unfamiliar to me. Just that idea is just one big obstacle in and of itself. So if you deal with like unpredictable stuff, you can kind of mentally navigate your way through that obstacle. That would be there for sure.

[A]

And the other example, that is the way John Donahue explained when they started using leg locks against people that weren't familiar. And as Dean Lister said, you know, when they started calling the position that we called Kakareko, which is called the 50 50, you know, Dean would say. Dean's. Dean would hear someone say 50, 50, and he's like 90, 10. Because Dean spent so much time there. If you know what's. If you don't know what's going on there, bro, you're screwed. You're screwed. So, yes, do. Getting put into unfamiliar situations will make you better at dealing with unfamiliar situations. Also, if you can do something that's completely unfamiliar to someone, it's going to confuse them, at least momentarily. So keep that in mind. Back to the doc. The learning model must provide opportunities to experience full spectrum challenges through a balanced mix of live, virtual, constructive and gaming environments. And again, this is like static drill resistance game, constrained game, less constrained games, and then live unconstrained, live training. That's what we got to do. And we got to mix those things up appropriately depending on what it Is you're trying to teach how, you're trying to teach it what the context and knowledge that the individual has is got to put all those things into play. That's what we have to do. Adaptability Leaders at all levels must have opportunities to develop operational adaptability through critical thinking, willingness to accept prudent risk and the ability to make rapid adjustments based on a continuous assessment of the situation. They must be comfortable with ambiguity and quickly adapt to the dynamics of volume of evolving operations over short and extended durations. You, you have to learn to adapt. And the way that you learn to adapt is by adapting. And it's the same thing we just talked about, like uncertainty. You get better at dealing with uncertainty by going through uncertainty. And what do you do? You learn how to adapt. And the way that you train this is by different situations, different tools, different scenarios, different people. That's what we have to do. We have to try different things and continue to make people adapt. When you force people to adapt, they get better at adapting. Leaders must be adept at framing complex ill defined problems through design and make effective decisions with less than perfect information. The learning model must develop adaptability at all levels through a foundation of operational competencies and then increase the type of intensity, the type and intensity of stressors and ambiguity. So that's what we need to do. We need to get people good at reframing complex things. So here's a couple notes on this. Talking through potential contingencies, like hey, if this happens, what would you do? Talk through them. That is a step that you now don't have to, you know, discuss options. And if we just say, hey, if this happens, hey, if our competitor does this, here's the two things we're going to do immediately. Just, just that right there, you took, and it might take you an hour or two hours or three hours to come up with, hey, here's our immediate response to this. Might take you three hours to come up with that. But now when it happens, boom, you just saved yourself three hours of response time. So you talk about it, you discuss the various options and then run some scenarios like actually run through it. And if we actually run through it, when you add in a new scenario and you don't have time to talk, you don't have time to discuss, you will be better at problem solving. So you learn problem solving and you become more proficient at problem solving over time and the more you have to problem solve. And part of that is what we, what you mentioned earlier, just the context of it. You know, you have a cop that's been to a thousand crime scenes. He's going, and it looks a little bit different. He's still going to adapt faster and say, hold on a second, wait, don't go in that other room. I see this sign in that thing. Just hold what you got. Like he's going to be able to adapt faster than someone's like, well, the protocol that I just learned in the academy was this, like, so you get better at it, but you have to, you have to put people in problem solving situations so they get better at problem solving. Next master fundamentals. Currently, the army has extensive combat experience that provides an in depth understanding of the fundamentals that contributed to mission success in counterinsurgency operations. Mastering and sustaining core fundamental competencies better support operational adaptability than attempting to prepare for every possibility. So we're not going to be able to prepare for every possibility. But first of all, our standard operating procedures can and should cover most contingencies. There's a lot of contingencies you have in combat that you don't need to prepare for because you already have standard operating procedures to prepare for it. Like if we are approaching the target and we start taking fire, everybody knows what's going to happen. This takes. No, it's a standard operating procedure. If we have already guys entered the first floor and we take contact from the building, we have a standard operating procedure. Like we have things in place in immediate action drills. Like are you patrolling through the desert and you take contact, we, everybody knows the immediate action drill that we're going to do. When you have a company, when you have a business, there should be protocols you have in place. If this happens, here's where our immediate response doesn't take any thought, doesn't take any leadership. This is what we're doing, the standard operating procedures. The better you have them wired, they give you a line to deviate from. Now, if I gave you a book of eight football plays, how many football plays did you think you had in your book that you had to know

[B]

in any given year? No. You know, from 10 to 20 maybe, something like that.

[A]

10 to 20. And you have to memorize those. So how much do you think, do you think is a lot more in the NFL?

[B]

Yeah, good question. No, I don't think so. I, I think because it's, and then even then that's hard to even say because a lot of the plays are like so simple and there's just like this much difference between one play to the next, you know, so. Got it. It's, it's Easier to memorize. But yeah, I'm sure there's more dynamics in the NFL, right. You know, they call audibles probably more. And they do, you know, they, they're probably more. Yeah, the.

[A]

But they didn't have you memorize 250 radically different plays.

[B]

No.

[A]

Right. And it's same thing in the SEAL teams. Like, you're not going to memorize. You don't have, you don't have 342 standard operating procedures. You're not trying to prepare for every contingency. You, you can't do that. And that's what they're saying here. But what we do know is that you have to train. And if you know the fundamentals well, you'll be able to adapt the fundamentals because the fundamentals exist for a reason. Yeah. You know, it gives you the opportunity to be flexible because you already have a standard operating procedure, not just rote memory, your fundamentals. Jimmy Page, right. He played. He's a studio musician that just had to play what they told him to play. He. His fundamentals were, were incredible. So that way, when it came time to make rock and roll music, he could get after it. He could do things that no one was doing. Next. The fundamental competencies must be clearly identified to support executing future full spectrum operations. And must and time must be allotted to attain proficiency through repetition and time on task. So just make sure that your fundamentals connect to everything that you're doing. If you're learning fundamentals, you know, if you're playing football and you're learning how to do a tennis serve, not going to help you. It's not going to help you. So you got to have those sops that make sense. Next. Nearly a decade of conflict has shown the army that it is extraordinarily difficult to prepare soldiers for every battlefield contingency. Instead, soldiers and leaders must master a set of critical core competencies that provide a foundation for operational ability. This is, this is how we need to train. And by the way, this is like in, you know, let's go, let's go Jiu Jitsu street fight. By the time you're learning a Go Go plotta, the chances that you have to use a Go Go plot in the street are very, very, very, very small. Very, very small. If you're, if you're at the point where you know how to do a Go Go plata, your fundamental already handled the problem. Yeah, your fundamentals of Jiu Jitsu already handled the problem. So if you never learned the fundamentals and you only learned to go Go Plata, there's a chance you get your ass beat in the street because there's a whole bunch of things that that other person can do to stop you.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So you need to train the fundamentals. And if your fundamentals are good, this is like, this is why we see sometimes, you know, the fundamental Jiu Jitsu guy Hodger Gracie, just take the back or take, you know, get the mount and do just a GI cross choke. You know, like he's doing things that you literally learn as a white belt. Yeah, but he's a master Hicks and Gracie, you'd see him in the, in the old days, it's like, oh, what's he going to do? Take the person down, get their back and apply a rear naked choke. You can learn those, all those moves in one month of Jiu Jitsu.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Now you. But you might not be proficient at that, right. And there's a big difference there. But if you learn these fundamentals. And by the way, there's also times where the. Someone tries fancy moves that aren't fundamentally sound and they're not functional, but you can do fancy moves that are based and rooted in fundamentals. And that's fantastic all day. So it is important that your fundamentals are strong.

[B]

There is this movie called the Program back in the day.

[A]

Yeah. That's when the, the dudes like got a skull face and stuff.

[B]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Football, college football.

[A]

That's Ogre, right? Revenge of the Nerds.

[B]

No, no, no, no, no, that's a different dude.

[A]

Is it different dude?

[B]

Oh yeah, those are actually, I want to say, a whole generation apart. Ogre from. That's the guy from Bloodsport. What was his name? He just died recently actually.

[A]

Bummer here.

[B]

Yeah. Jack Ray Jackson, right? From Bloodsport. That's what that is. Anyway. No, no, the guy from the program is the same guy. He's on like that movie called Higher Learning.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Big buff dude. Anyway, college football movie, right? About this, this new up and coming rookie goes to, you know, it was Florida State, but they called it esu. But anyway, one day in practice, one of the early days in practice, he fumbles the ball, right? Just fumbles it. Loses the ball when he's carrying. So the code, what the coach does. Because holding on to the ball, that is as fundamental as fundamental can get. You're a tricky nine year old kid playing football. Like you got to hold on to the ball, right? Can't just drop it. So he made him carry that ball with him to class everywhere. So. And he said if anyone, the coach Goes, if anyone brings this ball to me other than you, you're. I forget what the punishment was or whatever, some big punishment, but that's it. He had to train his fundamentals to hold on to the ball 24 hours a day. See what I'm saying? That's how important it was. Made sense to me. That coach was wise, too, by the way.

[A]

What was the crux of the movie? Like, what was the. The. Did they win the championship or something?

[B]

Yeah, basically that.

[A]

Spoiler alert.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. No, not too.

[A]

Swear, Jack. Next. Advances in learning science, cognitive psychology, educational psychology, neuroscience, and other related fields provide new insights into improved learning strategies and applications of technology to learning. Yet years of research show that there's no single learning strategy that provides the most effective solution to every learning problem. That's why when people get totally bought into, like, one system and you got to watch out. Yeah. Because it's. There's. There's just years of research, so there's no single learning strategy. And, and when you talk about all the variables that I just talked about, who that person is, what the context is, how long they. What type of learner they are, how long they've been training for, like, there's so much to think if you think, no, no, we're just going to use this methodology. That's not a good. Not a good plan. Teaching requires an open mind, and teachers and instructors have to continually monitor and adjust what they're teaching and how they're teaching it and what they're doing and how they're doing it. Everybody's going to be a little bit different. And this doesn't mean you have to teach nine different classes because there's nine different people in the class, you know, but it does mean you got to pay attention because there's, generally speaking, bell curve. You got knucklehead over here. He's going to have to. You're have to explain it to. He's going to have to go a little bit slower. Genius over here. Get right into it. Everyone else going to be, you got. You're going to have your. You got one. You got seven people that are kind of like, okay, there's going to be a general sort of modality you can use, but you still got to pay attention. And by the way, again, that's with this move. That's with this guitar chord. But tomorrow I might teach a guitar chord that these guys have never seen before. None of them, no context to it. It's gonna take or. It's very tricky with the fingers. Gotta pay attention to that one. Next, adult learning is promoted when the learner's prior knowledge is activated prior to learning new knowledge. Yep, there you go. You're gonna, you're gonna teach something. Let's have them play the chord that's close to it a bunch of times. So we're bringing it out. Let's have them shoot the pistol or shoot the rifle the way that we have that they, the way that they know how to shoot it. Before you give them this advanced technique, the learner observes the demonstration. The learner applies new knowledge demonstration application are based on real world problems. The learner integrates new knowledge into everyday practices. You gotta, you gotta, you gotta finish with that real world thing. Gotta finish rolling. Soldiers must acquire the habits of lifelong learners. Soldiers must become expert, self motivated learners who are capable of asking good questions and possess digital literacy skills that enable them to find, evaluate and employ online knowledge, whether in learning or operational environments. This is pretty focused on the army, but the fact that we need to have people with the mindset of being a lifelong learner, that's going to pay off in spades inside of our organization. If we got people on the front lines that do a certain task and they are continually trying to learn how to do that task better and what technology they can use and how they can make it more efficient, that's what we need. If we have a person that's not a lifelong learner and they're just doing what we told them to do or the way it's always been done, we're not making progress. Army training, education and experience domains require a holistic, integration and clearly defined path to achieve outcomes at each stage of a soldier's career. The Army's learning model can facilitate a lifelong learning culture by encouraging critical thinking, complex problem solving, and providing tools that allow soldiers to access relevant performance related information. And by the way, that's what we have to force ourselves to do. We have to. Force might be a strong word, but we have to pay attention to it. We have to be forced as instructors. We have to force people to do things that they wouldn't normally do. So like me working on triangles in jiu jitsu or dartstrokes, moves that I just don't do, but I need to do them. Finger picking on guitar. I suck at it, but should I do it? Yes, absolutely. This is why we have people do offhand shooting and mag changes. People don't want to do that. They're not like, hell yeah, let's do some offhand. Most people aren't. They want to Hear that, that, that steel plate go ping. And they want to hear that thing go beeping. They want to hear, they want to get it. As a leader, forcing yourself to either be quiet if you have a tendency to talk too much or forcing yourself to speak because you're usually too quiet. You got to force yourself using words you don't normally use. You want to improve your vocabulary. You can't just look at the vocab. You got to force yourself to integrate these new words to expand your vocabulary. And then finally it says, well, the last thing I want to cover from this document, the continuous adaptive learning model is not static, but is responsive to operational changes and evolving trends and learning technologies and methods. It's important to frame the things that you're doing in life as training. Kind of everything is training.

[B]

I agree.

[A]

And there's a whole philosophy like, like the Russian weightlifting thing, it was all, it's like all practice and everything is practice. That being said, you, you have to be intentional in what you're doing as well. Which to me, intentional, the yoga fufu word, what it means to me is plan, execute, debrief. That's what intentional is. We're gonna have a plan. We're gonna execute the plan and we're gonna debrief even real time as you train. You should be doing that. What do I need to adjust as an instructor right now? Is this too little? Is this too much? Are they overtrained? Are we at the point of diminishing returns? Which you can get to from time to time, but you have to be paying attention to that. You have to be intentional. What's my plan for today now? Can you say, hey, plan for today is we're gonna do six hard rounds and you get out there, you see everyone lagging and by round three, you see people like they're over trained. Can you make an adjustment? Absolutely. Did you reach a point of diminishing returns? Perhaps that's what we have to do to both be lifelong learners ourselves and be able to teach so that other. So that other people can learn. Life is training, so go get after it. And with that, speaking of getting after it, we are shooting, running, lifting, boxing, surfing, playing guitar. How's it you. How's the ukulele coming?

[B]

Clunky.

[A]

How, how many hours a day do you practice? Zero hours.

[B]

I've been off it for a while.

[A]

I taught you a. Two quarts.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

And you were pretty good at them.

[B]

I. Yeah. You know. Yeah. I got into digital music making too, by the way.

[A]

I know we're we're tracking, but I'm

[B]

kind of off that. How come I'm not off it?

[A]

Do you need more riffs from me?

[B]

I haven't. Yeah, I do need more riffs from. Yeah. Actually, I've been. It's been like two weeks since I've done it, but yes, I'm always into something. Actually, you know what I'm into right now? Learning. Yeah, it's learning what I picked up. And I'm actually. It only took like two days solving a Rubik's Cube.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Have you ever sold a Rubik's cube before? Yeah. There's like a. There's like a technique to it. Actually, more than one. There's a bunch of techniques to it.

[A]

Yeah. It's like, what do they. It's an algorithm or it's a. What is it called? Like, to get that piece back, there's a certain protocol and you just memorize these various protocols.

[B]

Yeah, you know. Yeah, yeah. Basically. Yeah. There's. The first method is. I think it's. It's called layer by layer. So you go. It's like. Anyway. Yeah. And so there's like a little method to move any one piece or two,

[A]

you know, and you memorize a protocol.

[B]

Yeah. Per step, Right. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Because I remember seeing. When I was a kid, because I was around when those things, I think, when they were. When they were invented.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And when people would get into the. Solving them.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, of course, I learned how to, like, turn it quarter way and then break the piece off and disassemble the whole thing and put it together,

[B]

you know, a little bit different.

[A]

I learned how to just manhandle that. That thing and overcome. So how long is it taking you to solve the aerobics cube?

[B]

My best time, layer by layer, which is not the speed way to do it layer by layer is a minute 59.

[A]

And have you got your kids into it as well?

[B]

Yeah. Are they beating my son? No, no, no.

[A]

It's okay, bro, you gotta take it easy. Dude, the kid's nine over here. Jesus. Sorry. Sorry.

[B]

While you're over here having them beat me all of a sudden, bro, it's my freaking jam right now. Leave me alone. Nah, it's. It's. You gotta furrow, commit to it. It's not like you're gonna learn it in one day and then. Okay, you know how. Now you know.

[A]

But you said two days.

[B]

Yeah, because I nerded out on it, like basically to the point where within that two days, my wife was already mad at me. Because I had. I have, like, four Rubik's cubes now. There's, like, one in every room, you know, kind of a thing. So, like, if I'm not doing anything or if I'm, quote, unquote, done with the things I have to do, I'm like, on it, you know, so she's like, is this gonna be your thing now? You know, like, chess was for that flurry. But so I nerded out on it, so that's why I picked it up or whatever. But, yeah, my son, he knows how to do, like, the first two layers, you know, but it starts to get progressively a little bit more complex.

[A]

There's more moves that you have to make.

[B]

Exactly right. So you get to a certain stage, it's like, okay, you got to do this, and then. And it's based on, like, the configuration, so you got to react to it, you know, so it's not like, oh, you just do it and it does it. It's not that. You got to do. Do the right thing, and it gets a little bit more complex.

[A]

I remember seeing, like, a. Basically some kind of instructional. And it would just have, like, arrows, like down, down, down, right, right, left, up, across, or whatever.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And is that still a thing?

[B]

I've seen those before, and there's way more to it than that. A lot of times those, especially if it's on, like, Instagram or something that's like, if you take a solved Rubik's Cube and you want it to look like a American flag or something, you know, like, little tricks you can do. But to solve it. No, because it.

[A]

It.

[B]

Those moves are going to kind of depend on what you're presented with, you

[A]

know, but there is a move. There is moves.

[B]

Yeah. For example. Yeah.

[A]

You kind of memorize.

[B]

Yeah. So like, clockwise, clockwise, counterclockwise, and. But at the same time, it's right, top, right, you know, like. Yeah, yeah, there's that. But then when you do it, when you finish it, you have to evaluate what you're presented with, and then you

[A]

do another series moves.

[B]

Another series of moves, or move on to the next one. See, I'm saying it just depends on what. What you get. And it all depends on where it started. Yeah. It's a thing. But gets good fun nonetheless. Yes.

[A]

It's good learning it.

[B]

It is. Yeah. It makes your. You know, it's weird. Like, I think as you get older, I'm more in touch with this where, you know, like, this idea of warming up. Right. Let's say before you lift, like, Heavy. You go through a warm up process. You can't just jump under the bar, start lifting heavy, right? Because your body's like, oh, I don't think your body can even produce the force yet. See what I'm saying? You got to activate the whole system. But doing that Rubik's Cube and sometimes even chest or whatever, it'll activate your brain so you'll feel like way more like, loose and like sharp during the day.

[A]

For this kind of activity, you need fuel.

[B]

It's true.

[A]

And I recommend Jocko Fuel. But I'm not the only one. There's a dude that does reviews and he, he's actually a San Diego dude and he did a review of Brain Power and he did like a memorization, memorization tasks and measured his effectiveness. And it was much more effective on Brain Power.

[B]

Straight up.

[A]

Straight up, yeah. And he, you know, it was cool because he did it and then he like took Brain Power and then he's like, oh, yeah. He's like, I feel, you know, because you do feel brain Power. You start feeling all sharp. You start, you start seeing, like, numbers and you start understanding things more clearly.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

And so then he just rolls out, does his memorization task, and wins, like, beats his time by, by a lot.

[B]

Straight up.

[A]

And so that's pretty, pretty dope. Brain Power. I take brain power and I have to speak, and especially when I'm doing Q A because, boy, you get sharp. So check out jockeyfield.com if you have a Rubik's Cube to solve, if you have a memorization game to play, if you have a meeting that you got to present in, get, get yourself some brain power. Keep it in. Keep it like, I have some in my back at all times. At all times. Didn't get much sleep. Brain power. Feeling a little groggy. Brain power. Need to perform Brain power. You'll feel it. Jockeyfield.com Also, we have protein. We have energy. I'm on my second go of the day. One before Jiu jitsu, one before this podcast. Is that illegal? You know what I'm saying? Is that illegal? Technically, it's not. Now am I getting an advantage? Yes, I am. Yes, I am. Such. And also a muscle drive. We in the muscle drive activity. Good. I'll tell you what. For some reason, muscle drive, it's got the amino acids in it. And for some reason it makes me feel like a little full.

[B]

Right, right.

[A]

Like your body's getting something that it needs. Do you ever have that with salt? Like sometimes, like today. Trained real hard. I Know you didn't but hydrate.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because you, you're missing like the electrolytes and sometimes you just want that. But it's. Sometimes you want food. But if you have the muscle driving, that's kind of one of the reasons we made it was for fasting slash cutting weight. So if you're cutting weight, you know, get yourself some muscle drive.

[B]

I need to cut some weight.

[A]

Do you?

[B]

I feel like I do.

[A]

Jack. I thought you looked really actually kind of thin. Jack. Jockeyfield.com protein everything that you need. Also Origin USA.com we're training Jiu Jitsu. At least some of us are.

[B]

Yeah, sure. Some of us.

[A]

How come you didn't train today?

[B]

Today I was caught up, you know, I got a lot of stuff. Well, you know, of course.

[A]

Is your foot still hurt or whatever that was?

[B]

My foot is not sore. It's hurting more. No. And my knee is better too. So. Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

I had the strangest calf oddity. Like I've never, I don't think I've ever hurt a calf before.

[B]

Yeah, it seems kind of.

[A]

It's a weird thing. And I'm not talking like, oh, I got, I got foot locked and someone cranked and I hurt my calf. Like Dean Lister just getting you on an outside foot lock, just leaning into it and you're like, yeah, I have a. Basically a bruise on my calf. And I'm not talking about getting calf kicked. Which is another just the way to get. This is a random. No, no combat engagement. And I had this like my just felt tight. And then believe it or not, I was, I was lifting, doing some deadlifts and all of a sudden just. And my point in telling you this is I was like, ah, maybe I shouldn't train today. But you know what? To maintain the discipline, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do what I can.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And guess what I ended up doing. All of it was able to just compensate a little bit. No factor. That's what we're doing. So we're training Jiu Jitsu. We should be. By the way. Jiu Jitsu is fascinating. It's fascinating. But you need a GI when you train Jiu Jitsu. Origin USA makes communist free geese. Communist free rash guards. 100% made in America. But we're not doing Jiu Jitsu all the time. That's why we make jeans, we make pants, we make shorts, we make everything that you need to wear on your body. Originusa.com 100American made from American made materials. That's what we're doing.

[B]

The boots that, that, you know, the Chelsea boots or whatever. Are those. Are those all in freaking stock or whatever? I mean.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

You know, those out.

[A]

Yes. And we have a very fast production line, so. Yeah, they're out. They're in stock. And if they're not, if whatever particular size you didn't you need happens to not be in stock, it'll get made like in that day or two days.

[B]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[A]

And it'll be to you stat.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

100American. You will be more patriotic when you put your boots on.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You'll be a little bit prouder to be an American, factually. So. OriginUSA.com let's defeat slavery, tyranny, and communism one pair of blue jeans at a time.

[B]

I was just gonna say one pair of pants at a time.

[A]

Let's go.

[B]

Hell, yeah. Also, Jocko, store discipline equals freedom. Shirts and hats and hoodies on there as well. Summertime coming up. Is summer here.

[A]

I heard Theo Vaughn say June 1st. June 1st is summertime.

[B]

Yeah, that's what it feels like.

[A]

Theo's saying it gonna say we're probably pretty good to go on that one.

[B]

Summertime.

[A]

Summertime has hit. So.

[B]

Yeah, maybe. Maybe index on the tank tops or summer.

[A]

We got tank tops in. Send me a couple tank tops, will you?

[B]

All right, I got you.

[A]

Every time I say that and you say I got you, I never get.

[B]

Well, let's not say never, but let's say rarely. Very rarely, from time to time.

[A]

Can you throw me some tank tops?

[B]

How about this? I promise I'll send you some tank tops.

[A]

Promise?

[B]

Promise. Over here.

[A]

Yeah, within. Am I going to have to remind you again?

[B]

I got you 100%.

[A]

100%.

[B]

100%. 100%.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Got you.

[A]

What's the delivery time?

[B]

Anywhere from 12 hours to. Well, you're here, so. Yeah, I don't know. Could be 12 hours. I sent out some shorts to Shannon Googarty.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Because of you, by the way. I guess you, like, shamed him because he had some old shorts on and you're like, brought hold of those shorts or whatever.

[A]

Dude, I got some old shorts, too.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, I'm with you, bro. The ones I use, you gave me and they're from. Yeah. Back in the Very durable. Anyway, nonetheless, we got jocko store.com. that's where you can get these things. But the. The reason I'm kind of understanding if it's summer right now, so you got. We got 4th of July coming out kind of in a way in a month. Or so. So we got this year's fourth of July. Sure, being ready, it'll be ready. But if you want to get the jump on that first, that first run, that first dish and not risk it being sold out, when you go on there, you got to sign up for the email list. Boom. Put your email in there on the, on the website on the front, the bottom there. Don't worry, I won't spam. But you will get the heads up so you can get your. Get first. First dibs on that one. Those ones seem to sell out quick.

[A]

They do, yeah.

[B]

Anyway, there's a lot of stuff on there also. Subscription scenario called the shirt locker. Get a new design every month. It's fun. There's this, I called it a mosaic, but like this, this month's one, it's a doll. It's like a famous artist that he, he paints this thing. It's a picture, but when you look at it from far away, it's like it looks like Abraham Lincoln. But when you look at something else, when you look up close anyway, it's that, but it's something else. Not Abe Lincoln, something else. That's this month's one. It's pretty good. Came out good.

[A]

Mystery.

[B]

It's a mystery. You got to go on jockey store.com you can click on the, you can see what it is tech, the sneak peek or whatever. But yeah, it's all in Jocko store. Some good stuff.

[A]

Right on, right on. We got some books. Put your legs on by Rob Jones. Need to lead by Dave Burke. We got steaks. Primalbeef.com Steaks from the Shenandoah Valley. Sean Glass out there making some Primal [e-mail] also Colorado craft beef.com we got, we got the best steaks and great people. So get in there. Primalbeef.com ColoradoCraftBeef.com Echelon Front we have the muster in San Diego July 8th through the 10th, 2026. This is our flagship event, by the way. This is a leadership conference where you learn the skills of leadership. Come and check that out if you want. We also have extreme ownership.com where we teach leadership online, so you can check that out as well. Also, if you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help their families, you want the Gold Star family, Check out Mark Lee's mom, Momma Lee. Check out her charity organization. It's absolutely incredible. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's mighty warriors.org also check out heroes and horses.org and Jimmy May's organization beyond the brotherhood.org we got warriors in need, so check that one out. And strongholdrescue.org got a bunch of people out there doing amazing things, so check those out. If you want to connect with us, check out jocko.com on social media. I'm Ocko Willink. Echoescounnels Just be careful because you don't want to learn things that you weren't intentionally wanting to learn. We have to be careful. That's called brainwashing and your algorithm is doing that to you, so don't let it be careful. Thanks to all of our military personnel who are right now this moment staged around the world. Thank you for continually learning so you can stay ahead of our nation's enemies. Also thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, Secret service, as well as all other first responders. Thanks for learning and training and adapting every day to keep us safe at home and everyone else out there. Speaking of learning, let's remember to keep learning. Try new things, try new technology, try new words, try new moves, try new chords on the guitar or the ukulele or the Rubik's Cube. Try new tools and do everything you can to get better every single day. And you do that by going out there and getting after it. That's all we've got for tonight and until next time. This is Echo and Jocko out.