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Jocko Underground: Make It All Happen On Your Own Steam - No Support, Home Gym, Your Future
00:15:39
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- [00:00]
Jocko Willink
This is the Jocko Underground podcast number 206 with Echo, Charles and me, Jocko Willink. We have questions from you all out in the field and we will provide courses of action, recommendations, possibly answers. Let's go.
- [00:16]
Charles
All right, first question. Hello, jockey. I'm a dad who works long hours. Also have a six month old daughter. It's been a struggle for me to spend valuable time with my wife and daughter after waking up early for the gym and coming home exhausted. I've been listening to your podcast for the few years and have finally made space for a home gym.
- [00:37]
Jocko Willink
Oh yeah, that's what time it is.
- [00:39]
Charles
What, what do you guys think are the must haves for, for a beginner gym? Not sure where to even start looking. I appreciate all your hard work. Thanks in advance.
- [00:49]
Jocko Willink
So out of the gate I'm going to go, you know, right out of the gate. If you get rings, you got a lot of stuff covered, right? So if you got rings, you got pull ups covered, you got dips covered and then you can do all kinds of calisthenics and there's a bunch of other kind of like functional strength training that you can do with rings. So that's out of the gate for me. If I was going to be on a desert island and I could only have one piece of exercise equipment, it's going to be rings. If I didn't have rings, a pull up bar. Because once again, if you have a pull up bar, you can do pull ups and then you can always do push ups and you can do squats and jump squats and sprints and stuff like that for your legs. So you're good there. After a pull up bar is a dip bar. Now again, rings cover both those. If you have a place to hang rings, then you can do pull ups, you can do dips, you can do ring push ups. There you can do. There's so much stuff that you can do with rings. So rings are really good. But if I didn't get rings and rings aren't that expensive either, like 100 bucks, you get a nice, nice get wood rings too. The get plastic rings, don't get metal rings. I went through a time in my life where I thought everything should be made of metal.
- [02:01]
Charles
That makes sense.
- [02:01]
Jocko Willink
I was trying to, I was trying to. If you were to make something, it had to be, it should be metal. I thought to myself, well, it turned out I was wrong. This was probably when I was like 22. Hey, everything should be metal. But rings, definitely metal is worse. Wood is optimal. Absorb sweat Better traction, the whole nine yards. So that's where I'm out, out of the gate. My next thing would be we're starting to get into some kettlebell. Because kettlebell, you can do a lot of very good conditioning and you can do some strength training with a kettlebell. So that's kind of the basic confined space, confined budget scenario. Now the next step from there is kind of a big step in a way. What do you think it is?
- [02:51]
Charles
Squat rack.
- [02:52]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. Yep. The next thing you're getting a squat rack and, and a barbell with bumper plates. Right. And that's, that's going to be, you know, now you're into this thing for a couple grand. You know, when you start talking about a good squat rack, good probably two bars, two barbells and some enough bumper plates, you're talking a couple grand, couple thousand bucks. So. But once you have that, and also by the way, when you have that, usually a squat rack comes with a pull up bar on it. Usually it comes with some kind of a dip bar attachment. So you kind of are covering all those things. But those things are so inexpensive compared to a squat rack. But yeah, once, then it's squat rack time. And when you get a good squat rack, you're kind of set for life. Honestly. I had one of my squat racks, I had like a kind of a crappy old squat rack that I bought in 1998 and that thing lasted me 20 years, you know, just GT. And it was just a piece of, you know, whatever, low quality squat, squat rack. But it still lasted a long time. And so squat rack should, if you get a quality one, you'll be good to go for a really long time. You get like a Rogue or Sorenex. You're kind of set for life, by the way. Both those American made. So you know, then. And you might have thrown this in there earlier and it kind of comes in the same time zone but you know you're going to need a bench at some point because there's a lot of an adjustable bench that you can do. Decline flat bench, incline bench, all the way up to some kind of shoulder press scenario. Good to have. And with that, now we're starting to talk about dumbbells, you know, and I actually have this kind of dumbbells, adjustable dumbbells. What are they called? Rep pippin or something like that. They were really expensive, but they seem like they were pretty good. I'm liking them. You know, there's no adjustable dumbbell. That's perfect. I think these might be the best of the adjustable dumbbells, but, you know, they're just not perfect. But, you know, you save a bunch of space and you do essentially save money because you're getting whatever, 20 dumbbells for the cost of one really expensive one. I mean, they were like a thousand bucks.
- [05:08]
Charles
Yeah. Well, what's the weight limit where they go up to do you know?
- [05:11]
Jocko Willink
They go to 1 10.
- [05:13]
Charles
Okay.
- [05:14]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, they're in there.
- [05:15]
Charles
How much?
- [05:16]
Jocko Willink
Like 1200 bucks.
- [05:17]
Charles
Yeah. That's very cheap.
- [05:18]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, it's very cheap because what do you pay? Like, what is it, a buck a pound? More than two bucks a pound?
- [05:23]
Charles
Yeah, give or take.
- [05:24]
Jocko Willink
When I was in. When I was at Team 1 back in the day, we went on an arc deployment and we brought dumbbells on the ship, and we got up to 120s. So.
- [05:34]
Charles
But.
- [05:35]
Jocko Willink
But I had to buy them. And that's what I remember. The pricing was all like, kind of by the pound.
- [05:40]
Charles
Yeah. So and the higher you go up, the higher the per pound gets.
- [05:43]
Jocko Willink
Oh, I didn't know that. I don't remember that.
- [05:45]
Charles
Oh, yeah.
- [05:46]
Jocko Willink
Oh, jack. So. But we had a lot of. We didn't have to buy the lower end of dumbbells because they were kind of already on the ship in the regular ship's gym. But if you want to get out those buck twenties.
- [05:57]
Charles
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [05:59]
Jocko Willink
Good to go. And then one more thing I added. I mean, there's. There's some little, you know, there's like a jump rope. There's plyo boxes. Right. Having a plyo box is. You can do a lot of stuff with that as well. So what is it? They're 20 inches on one side, 24 inches on the other side, and 30. 30 inches on the other side or 36 inches on the other side. So they're. You can do a lot of different stuff with a plyo box. So that's good thing to have. But that's kind of where I'm at. You with me?
- [06:27]
Charles
Yeah, I'm with you. But you know, like, I would always say if you can determine what kind of. Even on a general, generally speaking, like, what your goal is, like, what are we working out for?
- [06:39]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, because you're right. Because if this guy wanted to be a. A triathlete, I didn't talk about any, you know, having a. Having a treadmill, having a. A bike, whatever. Having a rowing machine. Because I got a rowing machine and I got an air assault bike.
- [06:54]
Charles
Yeah.
- [06:55]
Jocko Willink
And I've got a C2 Concept 2 freaking ski erg.
- [07:00]
Charles
Yeah. Yeah.
- [07:01]
Jocko Willink
And I've got a swim. Erg. I got some ergs in my house. I got a lot of ergs in my house.
- [07:07]
Charles
Yeah.
- [07:07]
Jocko Willink
But I'll tell you what, what's interesting. I was talking to the dude the other day. He's running. He's running a thousand miles. And I don't, I don't. I don't think I've ever actually run again. I won't like, make a sworn statement on this, but I don't think I've. There's a chance. I've never run on a treadmill for more than, like, maybe I've done it for. At some point, but even on the Navy ships, I wouldn't run on a treadmill. I'd go run around in circles on the flight deck.
- [07:38]
Charles
Oh, just because you don't like it kind of a thing.
- [07:40]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, yeah. And then on the aircraft carrier, you don't run on the flight deck itself. You run below the hangar deck. And I have this little map, little course. I just run around in circles. On the amphibious ship, you're running on the flight deck because the flight deck doesn't get used as much, but it's a lot smaller. So you're just running like, just in circles, Tight, tight circles, Tight circles. So I would rather, I think there's so much to do with cardio. Like, if you have a jump rope and you can do runs, do you really need a card? You would really need to invest because those machines are expensive. Like, those are all thousand dollars, right? Any kind of treadmill, rowing machine. Those things are all like a, like a, like a rack itch.
- [08:22]
Charles
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even more for sure. The running kind. Yeah, yeah. Your, your fitness goals. Even though you have everything, it seems like you have this real general, like, capability, fitness pursuit, you know, like. And it made sense to me when I kind of figured this out on my own, where I was like, you. You know how, like, going into the Navy SEAL scenario, you kind of got to be able to do everything, generally speaking, versus a guy who just wants to get bigger muscles and cut up a little bit or the person who wants to do a triathlon or just lose a lot of weight, you know, like, they're. These are completely different things as far as, like, well, how to do it or whatever and what equipment you need. But if you're like, oh, yeah, just general fitness, right. You don't. You barely need anything. And if you want to add resistance training, then, yeah, you, you actually don't really need that much. Let's just, let's just say you want to increase muscle mass, you want to lose body fat and you want to have some, a general level of cardio health. Was it. I would go squat rack first. This, this is why. Because just like how you said, even the cheap ones, by the way, they come with a pull up bar. Usually even mine. Mine is like a cheap one because I needed space. I couldn't get the big, you know, thing and it's like cheap. It's flimsy for the pull up bar. But I already got a pull up bar, a regular one.
- [09:51]
Jocko Willink
But you do have to check like when you get a cheap one, you, there's a, there's a 50% chance, maybe even 70% chance that the pull up bar is not, not what you're looking for.
- [10:00]
Charles
Yeah, it'll be.
- [10:01]
Jocko Willink
Even the old one that I just talked about that I had bought in 1998, I put my own pull up bar on that. I just went down to Home Depot because the pull up bar it came with was like skinny.
- [10:10]
Charles
Oh yeah. Too narrow.
- [10:11]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, too skinny. And so I just went and sawed that thing off and just got a pipe from Home Depot and just put that pipe on there. And I used 550 cord, like paracord just to tie it on there. I drilled the holes through it and that thing. I was good to go.
- [10:25]
Charles
Yeah, I wish.
- [10:27]
Jocko Willink
I don't think I have that pull up already more, dude. Unfortunately. That's a damn shame.
- [10:31]
Charles
Got some nostalgia on that one. But pulling the pulling exercises is going to be the hardest one to go just find in the wild, you know, like to, to get it. So that's why I agree with you with the rings situation. But if you get the squat, the squat rack does not, does not necessarily have to be in the thousands of dollars. It can be like actually a few hundred dollars. But with that it'll be super cheap and it'll be flimsy. But you got it done 100% and you still got the squat situation. You have the pull up situation. And then you can buy just a flat bench or adjustable bench or whatever. Now you got bench, shoulder press. You have everything now in there.
- [11:06]
Jocko Willink
There's also, if you're, if you have a little bit of patience, not even a lot.
- [11:09]
Charles
Sure.
- [11:10]
Jocko Willink
Offer up, bro.
- [11:12]
Charles
Yeah, yeah.
- [11:13]
Jocko Willink
My kid be buying. He's got all kinds of crazy exercise equipment from offer Up.
- [11:19]
Charles
That's a good market.
- [11:20]
Jocko Willink
Just in there. Just driving out to whatever east county and grabbing old whatever. He's getting it together.
- [11:27]
Charles
Yeah, especially like the weights. Weights. So like anything with cables, I very much like to get the brand new stuff with cables. Yeah, just because, you know, just with the wear and tear and you know, the reliability. But. Oh yeah. Plates, bumper plates, freaking dumbbells, you know, all this stuff, what I offer up all day, you don't need them to match or be gold or freaking, you know, branded or nothing like this. So there's that. I personally invested in the full dumbbell set early on just because you can do a lot of stuff with dumbbells in like a bench or whatever, but really that squat rack, bar plates, a set of plates, that's kind of really all you need.
- [12:05]
Jocko Willink
Bumper plates. By the way.
- [12:06]
Charles
Bumper plates is ideal.
- [12:08]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, it, it really is a big deal though. It's not just ideal, it's kind of a big deal. If you don't. Cuz if you don't have bumper plates, bro, it's just, it's just chaos when you start, you know, dropping. If you're doing any like, any cleaning jerks, any snatches, any really deadlift, like high poles, you know, rack pulls, like everything that you're doing is kind of, you're just, you're not being a good neighbor when you.
- [12:33]
Charles
I understand what you mean and I. But I do suspect that you're used to this stuff. Like, you know, you know, let's face it, you know, we got, you got your own full set up. You're going nuts. You're just like, bro, this is like you're in it, you know, so you're dropping weights, you don't got to worry about your neighbor. You don't got to worry about damaging the concrete or whatever. You know that. You know, the normal thing is you're just kind of going and, and to get, and to say goodbye to that kind of stuff is probably a big deal for you and I understand. But I will tell you this. Like, I don't have bumper plates, but when I do deadlifts, I have never been a big slammer of weights, except when I was. We were doing Olympic lifting like for football. But we had full bumper plates, the whole thing.
- [13:15]
Jocko Willink
Exactly.
- [13:16]
Charles
But that, but that wasn't really part of my normal routine. See what I'm saying? So the difference between being able to drop the weights full speed or saving money, that's going to be up to you. You see, I'm saying. So if we're, if we're concerned about budget, maybe we can start just laying the weights down a little bit more gently and be more friendly to our neighbors and family or whatever. So yeah, that's the way I see it. So that squat rack right there, even the cheap one is really kind of that, that, that linchpin of every. And then everything kind of branches off from there in my opinion. Everything else you can do in the environment or at your home, any kind of like cardio, even like legs. Well, you got the squat rack so you're good to go. But cardio, you can run, you do jumping jacks, calisthenics. Like there's a lot of cardio options in the wild. Burpees. Yeah. Without the, you know, so you can kind of make do. But it's really hard to replicate pull ups, weight, like loaded squats and pushes and stuff. Like it's, it starts to get hard. So if you have that squat rack with the adjustable bench and you know, the squat rack, things can, can adjust, you know, you're kind of good to go.
- [14:24]
Jocko Willink
I did make one more note. That is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground podcast. So if you want to continue to listen, go to Jocko underground.com and subscribe. And we're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms so we are not subject to their control. And we are doing this so that we can support the Jocko podcast, which will remain as is free for all as long as we can keep it that way. But we are doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors. And we're doing it so we can give you more control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us. And to do that, we are, we're building a website right now where we'll be able to utilize to strengthen this legion of troopers that are in the game with us. So thank you. It's Jocko underground.com it costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford to support us, we can still support you. Just email assistance@jocunderground.com and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized Underground.