Why Navy SEAL Andy Stumpf Got into Jiu-JItsu

It seems like that's one of those things that once you get through, and once you get through Buds and once you get through How Week and once you get through all the difficult physical tasks and you actually become a SEAL, how many people maintain that sort of Goggins, Jocko level of discipline and keep training constantly and how many people do the bare minimum? It's hard to say. There are people who slip. What are the requirements once you've gone through all that shit? There's very few. And I can only speak from when I was in in 2013. I left last day of June of 2013, so if it has changed since then, I don't know anything about it. But, you know, the Navy, obviously it's a Navy SEAL, so you're governed by the United States Navy. They make you do a PRT, a physical readiness test, which is running pull-ups, push-ups, sit-ups, and a swim, I think, because we're SEALs. And your wife could meet the standards. My 11-year-old daughter could probably meet that. They're not crazy is what I'm saying. So the bar, if you trip over the bar at that point, like, you know, your hamstrings don't work or it just, you suck. But there are varying levels. There are people who are very like the individuals that you're talking about. And then there are others that will let it slip and they slip a percentage point over time. There's some, you know, obese, disgustingly overweight SEALs, not many, and everything in between. So it'd be hard for me to give you like exact numbers on that. I would say more guys trend towards the Jocko Goggins realm because it's a very self-critiquing community in most ways. It's like working inside of a piranha tank and if there's a drop of blood and they're just like, yes, I'll eat you now. We're very hard on each other for sure. How many of them are involved in martial arts? Again, hard to say because I know it has drastically changed since I was in. The amount of, so I was telling you before I sat down with Henner Gracie yesterday and we were just talking about a lot about his interaction with law enforcement and how they got started and it was with the Rodney King riots. Actually, I didn't know that, but that's when they started interfacing with law enforcement. Really? Yeah. His dad, the generation before him, they started sitting on a panel talking about, I think essentially, combatives with the hand-on-hand type stuff with the LAPD, but that's where it started and it's grown since then. When I went through, I don't remember much discussion of martial arts at all. There was prisoner handling or detaining people and cuffing them. The terminating point would be to get their hands behind their back and flex cuff them. We didn't use metal handcuffs. We would use tie ties just because you can put a lot, you can slide them in your gear and just easily cinch on them. But I think that it has drastically changed since I have been in it. I think a lot of that though is driven by individuals. I'm sure you see it. I feel so stupid being late to the game, to jujitsu. I know that it is definitely, I don't want to say invading all of those communities, but that might be a good term. Infecting, it's just there's a groundswell from guys who are learning on their own. It's increasing, but it was not prevalent when I was in. Unless you were an individual practitioner doing it on your own or had a buddy that would do it with you. Really? That's interesting. I would have assumed that it would have been a core part of training from the beginning just to build character and to understand what happens if you do lose your gun or if you are in a situation where you don't have a weapon. Well, there's not a lot of situations in real life that you can point back to from my community where that has happened. And quite frankly, ego gets into the way and you'll hear guys say things like, well, why do I need to, bro, I don't need to go hands on with anybody. This is all I got right here. And that's purely just ego. What ends up happening is, and I was talking with the Henry about this yesterday, and I have a much better understanding of it now. You can elicit actions from people if you don't know what you're doing. If you do have to go hands on and you're trying to detain somebody, but you're asking about how much I weighed, right? How much gear I had. So I usually would float somewhere between 205 to 215 when I was in. So add 80 to 90 pounds on top of that. And now I'm kneeling on your back, right? But I don't understand weight distribution. I don't understand leverage. I don't understand the way that the joints move that well. And you're trying to comply, but I'm applying so much weight to you that it's forcing you towards a fight or flight situation. And you can increase the deadliness of these situations unintentionally and get yourself into a position where you might have to take somebody's life, but they didn't deserve it. It was actually your fault because you drove them to that point because you were not judiciously applying the pressure that you needed to. Will you see that with police when you watch videos of cops trying to detain suspects and then they lose control of the situation? And it's purely because they don't have an understanding of how to control a person. They run out of tools. I have a ton of empathy for law enforcement. If you're out on the streets and you have verbal commands and then a taser and maybe a pepper spray is in there somewhere, I don't even know if they still use that, but then your next resource is a gun and you rapidly go through all those options. I understand how those situations occur and I'm not trying to justify them in any way whatsoever, but I understand what happens when you reach the limits of your tools and you're left with what you think is a life-threatening situation. Henry has some great videos of breaking down what goes wrong with police when they're trying to detain someone. I mean, it's oftentimes two and three on one and they wind up getting killed. There's videos of guys having a suspect on the ground and a suspect who's not trained in martial arts. But unfortunately, the cops aren't either and they're doing these stupid things and hitting this person and trying to control them. Then the guy gets out, gets to his car, pulls out a gun and kills them. I've watched a video like that recently. The guy who got me into Jujitsu was a sheriff. The only reason I started this because I wanted him to shut up. I had known him for like a year and he's like, Jujitsu. For me, it's like the harder you push that at me, I'm like, I'm not doing it ever. I don't care. Oh, you like carrot cake? I'm never having a piece of carrot cake. I will not have a piece. So we were at my house, drunk, downstairs at the bar and he was like, we were standing there drinking. He tried to put me like a standing head and arm. He's like, this is how I would joke. He was like, if you start right now, you'll never tap me. He was a four strike white belt at the time. Got his blue belt shortly after. Oh, that's hilarious. If you start right now, you'll never tap me. So he claims he didn't say this. Fuck that. He said it. Yes, like the next day and fell in love with it. He got pulled into and started Jujitsu because a buddy of his got into a damn year life or death fight where I live up in Kalispell. Sheriff's department doesn't have that many people on shift and a response time of 20 to 30 minutes is possible for sure. So this guy goes out and he's in the fight for his life in like two feet of snow in the winter time. Oh Jesus. I think one of the first things that happened was his radio got ripped off. That's a fucking problem, right? If you need to call for backup. But fortunately they have procedures like I guess if you check in and then over a certain period of time, like if you don't, people start moving their car in the right direction, start coming to you. If you don't check in in a longer period of time, you know, the lights and sirens come on. So other people came. He was okay. And he just got his brown belt. Not too long. He's a savage. So what happened to him? Obviously I wasn't there, but it was he pulled somebody over for a particular reason. I don't know what it was. This is an interesting thing too that I've come to understand better developing friendships with law enforcement. You know, they come up to a car and they're just they're doing a stop and it's another touch point for their day. But somebody in a car might be in the back of their mind thinking, oh my God, I have a misdemeanor or a felony. I might be going to prison for the rest of my life. So two very different head spaces as they converge. In this instance, I believe there's a pistol that was in between the driver's seat and the little center console. The individual went for it and somehow they came out of the car and it just became a scuffle at that point. And they fought until other cops arrived and basically dogpiled on the person and ended it. And it was over, I believe they were at that for like 10 to 15 minutes. Jesus Christ. And for people who don't understand how hard it is to go that hard for 10 or 15 minutes, I mean fuck. Well, if they weren't in shape and that guy was, that would have been death. So he found jujitsu. He just got his brown belt. He's awesome. But he started my buddy who made that comment. And then I have started, they'll do defensive tactic stuff. I've helped him out twice where I'll just go and I'll be a role player. And I'll just lay there on the ground and put my hands underneath my chest and they have to try to cuff me. And it's an eye opening experience. I mean, I've been at this for 18 months. I'll be the first to tell you, I don't know shit. I'm at the point now where I'm starting to realize how little I actually know. You blew a belt now? Correct. Yeah. And it's like a foreign language. Like I can kind of see a little bit of the alphabet, but don't even think for a second that I'm trying to put together words yet, let alone sentences. And so I'll go and I did, I was the role player for two of those and it was interesting. I saw some of the same stuff where you can elicit responses for people. Like I was resisting, but not a crazy amount. And the amount of pressure that they started applying to me, grabbing fingers and pulling my fingers back. To me, I wanted to ramp it up just like anybody else would. So without that skill or without that tool in their tool belt, you run out of options. And they have a dangerous job as it is.