What It’s Like to Roll With Jocko Willink

How do they mitigate when you go overseas the effect of being over there too long? Because I would imagine that the stress of constant combat, first, this is my ignorance of it, but this is what I would think, was that what happens first is probably like you get better at being calm and more accustomed to it, but after a while the pressure eventually starts to crack you. Many many many months over there dealing with it, you have to decompress. You do. And they have decompression windows at the end of deployments. How much would it look, a typical deployment, how long does it last? So I was over there for four months and they do everything from, or they've done everything from three months to 13 plus for special operations guys. And the reason being they do the shorter ones is because of the operation tempo. You're doing so much and you're doing it so quickly and they want you to be fresh and they want you to be good at it because they don't want that stress to happen. What is that like? This stress, how does it affect people? Because I mean, I would assume it affects everyone differently, but the process of being in harm's way consistently for a long term. I joke about it making everybody professionally paranoid. You're always like, I'm not always wound up, but I'm always on some sort of alert for things. Yeah. You know, I'm always like, I'm always thinking about stuff. I'm always keyed on to what's that guy doing? Why is he doing that? Right. In a way that I don't, I don't know why that's there. I mean, I know why, but I don't know what part of my brain is saying, what the fuck is that guy doing? Is that hard to let go in civilian life or is it just there forever? No, I think it's there. Well, I think it's there forever. I can't, I don't know. It's still there. You see Jaco's video. He does that. He did a video recently where he's like, people are saying, why are you looking over your shoulder, Jaco? He goes, I'm being tactical because I'm checking my flanks. Yeah. He's like, what, why are you always in the dark? And he goes, so the enemy can't see me. How can you not smile? I don't want them to see my teeth. That guy is hilarious. He's the best. He is. I love that guy to death. He's so great. He's an important person too because he's both articulate and savage. He's both a brilliant guy who is wise and humble and, but also a fucking gorilla. He is. He's a legit savage. Yeah. I had the chance to roll a little bit with him. Oh, don't do that. I would have told you not to do that. He was with Andy and Doug. Uh-huh. Was that when he broke Doug's neck? Yeah. Terrifying. Broke a bone in his neck. John thought he had throat cancer. He did. Didn't want to tell anybody. Like, yeah, what happened to you? I was like, oh, it's fucking gorillas. Put me in a guillotine. Snap my neck. Big, like, gorilla was on me. I don't think he actually did a guillotine. I think he actually was, he had his knuckle in John's throat doing something. I think, I want to say John. That sounds right. I think John had him in full guard. Doug didn't know how to tap. Exactly. He just was like going. Yeah. I think John had him in full guard. I might be fucking this up. And Jocko put his knuckles into John's neck and was like using a neck crank, compressing his neck from like either the guard or maybe even side control and then had a knuckle in the throat. I can't remember. I think he popped a bone. I think it was from the guard. Yeah, I think so. Because I think I was about like from me to you to this going on. He broke a bone in his neck. Well, he's a gorilla. Yeah. A big hairless gorilla. Yeah, you can't. How much do you weigh? 165. You can't roll with that guy. It's not. Don't do that. You can't run away from him. Yes. Just wait for him to get tired. He doesn't run at all. No. It was terrifying. He'll just march after you. It was like I was wrestling around with a sweaty piece of mahogany. Yeah, big guys that are skilled. That's so humiliating. You roll a big guy that's skillful. Oh, God. And I've had that happen once in the past. I think I'm cool. And then you find out you're not because I'm not a big dude. Right. And then I played, I think, O-line at Stanford. I came home from deployment and I got a little blitzed. I was like screwing around. I'm like, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. At the time I was like 175 and he picked me up from under the arms. And he's like, you're real strong for your size. And puts me down. I'm like, oh, God, I feel so emasculated. You're real strong for your size. It's such a fucking weird compliment. And he was like, he's like 300 pounds, you know, like 6'5". I'm like, oh, crap. Those are huge humans. That's giant. How often do you do jujitsu? I don't. You don't? So you just did that one time with him? Did it the one time with him. Well, that's ridiculous. He's a fucking multiple year black belt. Hey, thanks, Andy. Yeah, Andy's crazy. Andy's obsessed. He does jujitsu five days a week now. That's when we were teaching to skydive. Oh, Jesus Christ. Everybody's trying to die. He's trying to get his neck broken. You guys are skydiving.