My respect for Joe Rogan's boundless curiosity has never been a secret, but today's episode goes beyond mere admiration, weaving through the personal triumphs and trials of martial arts, the vigor of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and the camaraderie that underpins the most unexpected tournament outcomes. With Zachy Gunz, we dissect the potent mix of firearms and gun control, laying personal experiences against the fabric of societal perceptions. We navigate the intricacies of concealed carry permits and responsible gun ownership, all while sharing the transformative power of running for charity and the profound lessons learned in military service—stories that exemplify the strength of human connection.
Our dialogue takes an intimate turn as we recount memories of UFC fight nights and the simple pleasures they brought into our lives, diving into the impact of martial arts on one's psyche and the growth that comes from such dedication. From discussing the practicality of training in a gi to tackling the heartfelt narratives of loss and service in the military, our conversation is a testament to the shared experiences that shape us. We open up about the challenges we've faced, from the loss of military comrades to personal struggles with adversity, all while emphasizing the importance of finding perspective and cherishing the ability to move.
In the realm of debate, we tackle the contentious topics of gun-free zones and the role of armed civilians in deterrence. We share our personal practices for self-defense, including the utilization of tools like the Tiger Lady defensive claws (Tiger Lady...send the check.) , and spotlight the significance of being prepared. On a lighter note, the annoyance of tardiness in fitness classes gets a humorous jab, and we celebrate the inspiration found in figures who advocate for the simple yet vital aspects of fitness, like walking and stretching. As our conversation draws to a close, I extend my heartfelt thanks to Zack for the insights and stories that have enriched this episode, inviting you, our valued listeners, to join in on this multifaceted dialogue about life's challenges and victories.
https://www.instagram.com/zachygunz/
https://www.instagram.com/zachydrums/
My respect for Joe Rogan's boundless curiosity has never been a secret, but today's episode goes beyond mere admiration, weaving through the personal triumphs and trials of martial arts, the vigor of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and the camaraderie that underpins the most unexpected tournament outcomes. With Zachy Gunz, we dissect the potent mix of firearms and gun control, laying personal experiences against the fabric of societal perceptions. We navigate the intricacies of concealed carry permits and responsible gun ownership, all while sharing the transformative power of running for charity and the profound lessons learned in military service—stories that exemplify the strength of human connection.
Our dialogue takes an intimate turn as we recount memories of UFC fight nights and the simple pleasures they brought into our lives, diving into the impact of martial arts on one's psyche and the growth that comes from such dedication. From discussing the practicality of training in a gi to tackling the heartfelt narratives of loss and service in the military, our conversation is a testament to the shared experiences that shape us. We open up about the challenges we've faced, from the loss of military comrades to personal struggles with adversity, all while emphasizing the importance of finding perspective and cherishing the ability to move.
In the realm of debate, we tackle the contentious topics of gun-free zones and the role of armed civilians in deterrence. We share our personal practices for self-defense, including the utilization of tools like the Tiger Lady defensive claws (Tiger Lady...send the check.) , and spotlight the significance of being prepared. On a lighter note, the annoyance of tardiness in fitness classes gets a humorous jab, and we celebrate the inspiration found in figures who advocate for the simple yet vital aspects of fitness, like walking and stretching. As our conversation draws to a close, I extend my heartfelt thanks to Zack for the insights and stories that have enriched this episode, inviting you, our valued listeners, to join in on this multifaceted dialogue about life's challenges and victories.
https://www.instagram.com/zachygunz/
https://www.instagram.com/zachydrums/
I'm trying to. I'm trying, by the way, three, two, one wrong. Oh, I'm trying to uh get my knowledge base wide. I I've said it on a couple episodes I admire joe rogan I really do, oh yeah I would admire him. Because of his you know the, he doesn't have any more treats. Come here, kenji, I know you like you. Come here, kenji, number three on the podcast. Come on, man. Hey, sorry, buddy, kenji, I'm friendly, kenji, get over here with your fat head.
Speaker 2:I don't know over here. I guess that means he likes me, yeah, he likes you, no, no, you know trust me, he'd get really rigid and he'd be really not friendly looking.
Speaker 1:Of course. Yeah, uh, I don't admire him because of, like, the amount of money that he makes, because I mean mean, listen, that's an admirable take. Everybody feels like that's the end, all be all, and I've been guilty of it for a long time as well.
Speaker 1:So we could talk about that, because that was kind of like the last, the last question as well. But I admire him because he knows so much about so many different topics. Really crazy when you start to talk to him about something where you go, oh wow, this guy's about to really give him some breakdown and knowledge. Oh yeah, and joe's just like oh yeah, I read this book and I knew this and that. And you go, oh wow, like he just knew it already.
Speaker 2:That's pretty cool, and not even just that like controversy too. Like you know, he looked up so much stuff and it's for anyone's take, you know, no matter where you are. But like I like apple podcast, they took him down because of the whole thing with, like the COVID vaccines and this and that the whole nine. You know he signed this. You know multi million I don't even know, maybe it was billion dollar deal with Spotify, but then a bunch of million yeah. So there you go, you know.
Speaker 1:But like Apple took them down, a couple other people took them down because they try to say what he can and can't say he just seems like the kind of guy that I strive to be, which is just a regular ass dude and just to have good conversations with good people and hang out and shoot my videos and chill with my dog, do jujitsu. And you know, I just want to. I just want to have a good time. We're not on this earth for a long time and the long the the older that I'm getting, the more and the more I'm figuring it out that the simplicity of things is actually the better version of things, and with more money does come more problems. It's weird how that kind of works.
Speaker 1:You think like, oh yeah, this guy's got billions and he's got no headaches in the world. And you start to understand when you look from different perspectives and you go oh, maybe it's not like that. It actually might not be that way.
Speaker 2:Well, he is like you know, as a commentator and announcer and stuff like that, but then he just kind of developed himself as he went on. You ever watch his training videos. That dude kicks like a truck, he's like 50 something and he kicks harder than 20 and 30 year olds, you know. So he's massive.
Speaker 1:So, because I'm always with sarah, yeah, I'm always with sarah at school. I was with him this morning and he was saying I'm going back on Joe's podcast in a couple of weeks and this and that. How's the training going? It's good man. It's good, it feels good. I'm still a three-stripe white belt. It's been a journey man. The ankle injury was tough. That was really tough for me. You're talking to the king of injuries. The injury was tough because it took me out of the gym in general. It didn't just take me out of the gym in general, it didn't just take me out of the gym for jujitsu. So you know little nagging things like the jujitsu fingers and joint swelling and whatnot.
Speaker 1:Here comes the cauliflower, here my ears like dude, I was looking today and I'm losing that that I'm. You know, when you look at an ear, you have all of the different pieces that you can see and it's thin here and then you have a line here yep, I'm losing that and it's all becoming like one shape on the inside of my ear, very subtle. I'm. I'm no way saying that it's like, of course, yeah, no, but it's becoming that like very smoothed out and I keep touching my ears because you know it's different, of course your ears.
Speaker 2:This is day one. Yeah, you start feeling wake up. You look at yourself, you stare in the mirror and you're like, you know, like when I was heavy into it, you know, know, when I was, when I was younger I mean my ears. I guess we're still developing. I was 17, 18, whatever it was. But like I know sometimes some people at that age Gordon Ryan, he started cauliflowering when he was young too. I mean, he still is young, he's like 24, 25, whatever he is. But like when I was, when I was training, I pretty much knew like if I would look at their ear, and especially in public. Now, like when I'm walking around and stuff like that, it's like, you know, I just look around and I'll see someone with cauliflower and I'm like man, I feel bad for the guy that messes with you you know, you know, and, like that, shake somebody like let me see those ears.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, look at those ears. I'm not sizing up your arms, i'm'm sizing up your mirrors.
Speaker 2:Exactly, you know. But that you know that's one of the that's you know. That kind of goes into in one of the topics that I wanted to talk about is just kind of like being ready for real life. I feel like a lot of people and it's not taken away from anything in strength training and conditioning but like a lot of people they just go in the world. There are constantly people who are trying to attack others. There's a stabbing here, there's a shooting here, these two people got jumped.
Speaker 2:I've always kind of lived life by a mentality I wouldn't say always, but the military helped shape me kind of into this mentality of being ready for anything and I'm not saying it's just like, oh well, the world's out to get me and I'm just gonna, I'm gonna hurt everyone. You know. It's just like it's all about, just like being aware of your surroundings and knowing what's going on around you. And you know like a lot of what a lot of people don't understand, or maybe they do understand and they're just neglectful of. It is like a lot of street fights end up on the ground.
Speaker 2:And I grew up doing karate and karate helped my basis of a kid of learning self-defense, learning importance of knowing how to defend yourself. But, like, as I got older, I I found the ufc and I was like wow, like this is crazy. I'm not saying I want to go be a cage fighter, but like, you know, like, and now at the time, like world star was a thing and the bare knuckle fights, but then there was like a lot of like kimbo, slice, kimbo, you know. But I was also watching like valley trudeau in Brazil and all that stuff like that that a lot of people don't really know about. And I'm like, you know, maybe I should be ready, you know, to, you know, to learn how to fight on the ground. And that same karate school I definitely going to give them props via the American black belt Academy in Massapequa.
Speaker 2:They helped my foundation of martial arts and they do have an MMA program now and it's great, they have an octagon, full setup and everything. But at the time they didn't. But at like 16, 17, I was like you know what I want to get on the ground? I want to learn how to do this stuff. And that's when I joined Sarah's and one day I walked into OG and I had the Sarah hoodie on and you were like, ah, this guy, the OG, sarah hoodie. So all those guys, and it's great to see I have a couple of them on Facebook. No-transcript um, you know my joints remember them yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:All the bicep cutters and and and all that stuff so we were doing knee bars this morning, and that is oh, you get into reaping and stuff like that, yeah. Stuff just creeps me out. It doesn't even matter if it's just a regular level, competition level, yeah, anything knee stuff. I'm just going, I just cringe and I go. Oh, please go slow, don't do this fast, you know.
Speaker 2:But like the thing is, and it's not even when, just it's not like a competition mindset. But again it goes back to what I said before about being ready for anything Like if you get into a fight on the street and you end up on your back, you know the best offense you can have from being on your back is knowing how to take control of the other guy's legs. And it's kind of like um, mikey, mikey, musemi, you know 120 pounds guy spins like a top. You know like he. You know you're on your back and you know how to spin and take out the other guy's legs or position yourself to where you can get around them. You know it prevents yourself from ground and pound and stuff like that. You know just laying on your back and going like this isn't really going to do anything. You got to be able to move.
Speaker 2:You know so and I feel like that's the importance of jujitsu, the importance of even just karate, or like muay thai, you know, like a lot of people. You know when you just see street fights on the street, it's people just swinging for each other's faces. You kick someone's leg two or three times, they're gonna go down like a tree, you know, and it's like you know, if I've, you know, I pray I never get into it. You know, in a fight, because you know, like you know it's funny, we learn and I feel like that's the majority.
Speaker 1:I don't mean to cut you off yeah, and martial arts. You learn all this stuff with the hopes I never actually have to use it.
Speaker 2:Martial arts makes you the most passive person ever. Yeah, it has. It really does.
Speaker 1:So I did Kung Fu when I was younger, really young. I did Kung Fu when I was a brown belt. I was supposed to test for my black belt. Dude, I don't fucking remember any of that shit. I mean, maybe it's ingrained somewhere in there God forbid it ever has to come out and you just you at to throw a kick and a punch. Okay, great, uh.
Speaker 1:But then I I started doing boxing with my boy, jamal, who's on the podcast a lot. Any of the episodes with jay is into the bat cave. He is the uh strength conditioning coach, used to be for weidman yep, and he's also the strength conditioning coach and striking coach for, uh, a lot of different things, with big baby, miller the boxer and all that stuff. So because we became friends, I started doing a lot of boxing with him, in and out, in and out, and it's great because you learn how to throw punches, you learn how to, you know bob and weave and stay moving and you know read, read your opponent and whatnot. But then when I just decided I want to take it to another level. I always wanted to wrestle. I just never wrestled. I always wanted to wrestle and I always wanted to do jujitsu. I just was a little bitch about it. I remember paying for the fight to watch sarah fight gsp, or paying for the fight I went over. I went to wings over farmingdale ah, back in the day, oh yo wings over.
Speaker 2:I was going to hooters when I was a kid, watching those fights. I should have. I got my driver's license at 18 and me and my boys, we would go to hooters and watch the fights. I should have just done that because it would have paid me the 80. Oh, it was great.
Speaker 1:Because it was like 80 on food, 80 on the fight. Nah, I don't even remember how much. I think it was 70, 80 bucks back then too Something like that, yeah, yeah, yeah, the PPV, yeah, it's the pay-per-view, so anyway.
Speaker 2:So I set everything up, my mom you know, showed me how to get it paid for the fight, bro.
Speaker 1:I fell asleep, realize the fight started at one the main, main, main.
Speaker 2:It's so bad now, especially now that we're older, I'll be laying there in bed. They have all these big fights going on. The other week was $2.99. Yeah, it was $2.99. You had Chido, vera, sean O'Malley. Luckily right now I'm working nights. But I know for a fact that if I was working days I'd working days. I go to sleep not 9, 9, 30. You know like I'm out early, I wake up for the gym early, you know, and I'm laying there and I'm like. You know. You think to yourself like what's going through day? I guess dana has to. He has to accumulate to the rest of the world. So luckily the west coast, they get to watch this from 7 to 10, that's all we have to watch it from 10 pm to 2 am.
Speaker 2:You know I'm laying there I'm knocking out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the prime time dude. The fight should start at 6, 5, 6 o'clock and we should be going into main cards by like 9. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That should be the it should end at 10 latest. It should end at fucking 11. Yeah, I'll get 11. I would even do 11 latest. I'll give them 11. I'll give them 11. I'm waiting for the main event at 1.30 in the morning.
Speaker 1:Especially the decision fights that you know. I remember watching all that and I went to a trial class at sarah's spot here. Yep, back in the day I I don't know who I did it with, I forget what. It might have been his brother. Honestly, nick, I think he has nick. Yeah, yeah, nick, yeah, might have been his brother. I don't really remember but, but they brought me in, I taught me a couple of things and I just I think I got scared from the price of the gym every month and from injuries. My mom got worried with the injuries and shit like that.
Speaker 2:So it just never happened.
Speaker 1:So I said you know what, fuck it. And then now I'm saying you know what? I'm making a little coin. I'm into doing different shit. I'm not doing bodybuilding stuff anymore. Let's dive in. And that's kind of what happened, man. I just I dove in and I've been loving it, dude, yeah, it's just it's. It's just a different world, it's, it's, it's. I've been so much calmer, it's so weird.
Speaker 2:It, it, it humbles you. You know, like I, like I said, martial artists are truly the most like passive people. Be like cause, like I would. You know, when I did Sarah's and then I left, it was pricey for me, I wasn't making too much. I ended up going to the ufc gym in farmingdale and I continued there because I was doing the dual membership sort of exactly, and it was great because, like I was paying an x amount to hit the weights and you know, and work out, but on top of that, like they had muay thai classes, they had jiu-jitsu classes and you know, there is where I kind of developed more into nogi. Like I started nogi when I was at Sarah's but when I went there, like I didn't have a gi and I didn't want to buy another one, like I was like you know what I want to develop my no-gi a little bit more.
Speaker 2:I was debating on getting a gi because everything you do in jujitsu and you know this as well is it applies to real life. You know, gi is, you know you and me going at it in a t-shirt and shorts. You know how, how do I get the advantage over you in just normal clothes. You know gi, you have literally grips everywhere, but that's what gets the jiu-jitsu fingers and you're going for collar chokes and you know, you're going for wraparounds and this and that in the whole nine and because there's so many, you know, grab pant legs, you're grabbing this, you're grabbing that. So I kind of developed a lot of my nogi when I went to the ufc gym and then it closed down. But then when it closed down I was looking for which one?
Speaker 1:this was farmingdale. Yeah, it was farmingdale.
Speaker 2:One closed it closed down behind the vitamin store. That closed down, yeah, yeah, yeah, right, right on route 110. So they, so they, closed down, um, and then I ended up. It worked for me, I guess, because at the time I was looking for another place. But then I graduated uh nassau community college and I joined the military and then, when I got to my first duty station in south korea, I ended up meeting up with a guy who's huge on mma, him, and I started hitting pads and then, like him and I started rolling and him and I started to like actually like teach, like guys out there, like just basic jiu-jitsu, like I mean, I was, I was a four striper, you know, I'm not gonna say I was an expert by any means, but like I knew more. So, yeah, yeah, well, exactly, yeah, you know and that and that's how, that's how like I kind of like I thought it and like I was able to get a lot of volunteer hours out of it.
Speaker 2:My evaluation looked good for the year and like it was just it helped build camaraderie because guys were like all right, what's this? Well, I'm teaching like an armbar from from basic guard, how to go from, how you know if you're, if you're in half guard, how to get back to full guard. You know, bridges, bridge and roll. What's an alternative to bridge and roll? I just it was just more of whatever I knew, you know.
Speaker 2:And then, like I would also learn as well by just going on youtube because, like at the time, there was a jujitsu school out there but there was a big language barrier and me and my buddy, chris uh, who was a big jujitsu guy as well, we ended up competing out there just for that, just for the hell of it, you know, and it was so funny story is we got to our first competition and this guy kept telling us it was nogi and we kept asking him over and over. It's like it's nogi, yeah, whatever, it's fine, because what we did out there was nogi. So we show up with our stuff and it's this big, you know stadium in south korea, so cool, and and it was no. We walk and we're like, wow, this is gonna be awesome. I was like I don't even care if I lose today, like this yeah so I look around and then the guy's like oh.
Speaker 2:And then he asks us, he puts in his google translate and he says uniform. And I'm like uniform, like what are you talking about? Turns out it was a geek competition. And me and my, we look at each other and we're like, uh, yeah, we don't have a gi. And they're like, oh, hold on one second, hold on one second, they come back. They got us two geese from two guys, two sweaty guys who just like hey, Like hey, man, they dried it off and they're like you guys.
Speaker 2:And I looked at him. I'm like, listen, this is going to be a hell of a story in the future. Yeah, once in a lifetime. Yeah, and it was. You know, we both lost first round. I got submitted in like two minutes.
Speaker 1:And he lost by points. He lost by points.
Speaker 2:Tough dudes. Oh, this was white belt level Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, like I was wearing. You know I was a white with four stripes. I had a, but the guy the belt I was wearing, it was white belt, no matter how many stripes, whatever it was, I got submitted in like two minutes. He lost by points and it was a lot of fun. But and then the, and then the second one, same to the guy at the school.
Speaker 1:We're like you got to tell us you know, like we got to, we got to figure this out, man. So. But I know it's a couple of years later, but this could have helped.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:Shit, you could talk and it does the translating. It's so sick. Oh, I had to travel internationally to try it.
Speaker 2:I can't wait. I think there wasn't really that much to talk about like doing that, but it was just like when it came to the competitions and I'm like this and that and all nine. But it was a lot of fun, you know, and I do think that mma is a good basis, or just any type of martial art, you know. That kind of just gets you ready for being alive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for for. To go back to the point.
Speaker 2:It goes back to the you know the point, um, bradley martin, huge guy, you know, obviously. You know big, big bodybuilder, you know he's. He's so tired of seeing the clips of him like oh, how much you weigh, bro yeah, you know. So he, he's this huge dude that actually, and I don't know if you saw, but like he I don't know if he called out nate diaz or nate, I mean, nate diaz is a clown anyway, but like I know he was.
Speaker 1:Well, he wasn't one of the one of them was on his podcast yeah and he's like, oh yeah, I would tool, I would tool you yeah, I would smack you on my face.
Speaker 2:I was like nate diaz. He may be 180 pounds, soaking wet, and he has absolutely no muscle on him. I was like this man will ruin you. Like, yeah, could you? You know, we'll bradley martin, maybe you know get a clean shot and stone him cold and that's it. The second you fall to your knee. That man is going to twist you like a pretzel and do things there's only so much strength will get you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's only so many places that it will, and I've learned that as well in what I'm doing and I've pulled off the gas on a lot of the strength stuff that I do because, listen, there's a lot of kids that I could just toss in that class. Yeah, I could fucking toss people and I don't, because I use my strength when I have to and when I need to, and I've had a couple guys from Bev's come and join Sarah's and they're learning and they're going, oh shit, like yeah, it's different than what we thought, and then they go yo, man, this is this is this is a different challenge.
Speaker 2:This is what I wanted, and one of the worst things you can do as a smaller guy and I learned this at 16, 17, when I first joined sarah's was, you know, the last thing you want to be is on the offensive against the guy who's bigger than you and he's on top of you. Like when they would get on top of me, I would just let them, I would try to let them gas out and I would just, I would just fight defensively and just prevent the, prevent advancements, prevent submissions, and and then just wait until let them not, let you breathe yeah, exactly, you know, and and you know what most of the time they would get me, because I was not only was I small, but I was also a starter. You know, I wasn't like mikey musemi, 120 years old, spinning like a top. You know, I was a little 16 year old, white belt, and I had these, you know, 25, 30, 35 year old guys that are just twice my size.
Speaker 2:At the time I was, I was only, oh man, I was like 130 myself. You know, I had no muscle back then, so it was just like one of those things. But I think, yeah, mma and martial arts is very comparative to being ready for the real world and I believe functional type fitness and movements are imperative. It's a combination of the two, like I'm not gonna sit here and say, okay, just do MMA but don't do weight training. Well, I think.
Speaker 1:MMA can be considered functional fitness.
Speaker 2:It can be. That's what I'm saying it can be.
Speaker 1:I believe when I say functional fitness, I mean martial art type of modalities and I mean weight training type stuff. It doesn't have to be CrossFit specifically, it doesn't have to be bodybuilding type specifically. I think when you bridge the gap to together, of course start getting like really into life training, of course.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, you know, and, and that's like you know, you have guys that are in ridiculous shape that don't even look at. And the guy I just talked about for nate diaz, that guy, he's, he's flat as a pancake. He can run 20 miles and not even sweat, you know, and he and he and he's puffing on like six, seven blunts a day and he's out working literally everyone in the room, no, but that's how he is. All the post-fights he's token and he's like, oh, I'll do this. He's all messed up whatever he is, but he's a tank. He's an absolute monster. Yeah, he loses a lot, but he has an endless gas tank too. The fights with Conor, his first round is where he starts up and then he just keeps working and working, and working you know like marab, marab, yeah, oh, unlimited tank, that's gonna be a fight, I that, and o'malley, I well, o'malley, you know, o'malley's trying to be the shot caller now.
Speaker 2:so, like mara, you know he's like, oh, if you want me to knock out marab, I'll knock him out too. But like there's so, there's, so I, I don't know man, dude, I, I mean he pieced up cheeto, though he, he pieced up Cheeto, I heard about Marab a long time ago, like from seven years ago you ever train with him, you ever roll with him. No.
Speaker 1:I haven't. I've rolled with Steamroller.
Speaker 2:Okay yeah, steamroller.
Speaker 1:I love Matt. Matt's the homie. I've trained while Sterling Aljamain. Aljo is at the gym. I've trained next to him. I haven't trained with him particularly, yeah, yeah, yeah, but he was very nice, super cool. I haven't met Merab yet, but I hear about him through the networks. Yeah, and you know, you heard a lot of things about like they didn't want them to go against each other because they're teammates and this and that Controversy. Listen, whatever it all. I know Aljo went up to 145. Now, exactly that's that. And then on top of that, you know, dude, this guy's got I've heard chin like a fucking cement truck and he's got a gas for days. And he who was the dude, he just fought.
Speaker 2:I would say did you watch his fight with Cejudo?
Speaker 1:That was it.
Speaker 2:Cejudo, Now granted Olympic wrestler, and he would just walk with him and smile at Dana and then slam him. Took him right on his shoulder Insane.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's freaking ridiculous.
Speaker 2:These European guys are nuts, Dagestani, Yep Dude.
Speaker 1:Dude's built different man. That's a different type of a person. That's a person that's like a Batman villain.
Speaker 2:Like he's a really good guy, not to say he's a villain.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the dude that out in a fucking cave all his life and just that was. The only thing he knew was just getting in and fighting and grappling and doing everything. And then, when given the opportunity on the big stage, all of his years of training, that everyone never saw. Now it's front and center and he just piecing dudes up.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, but you know easy. So it's like it's awesome to see guys doing that and taking care of yourself that way. But and that and that, and and and doing MMA and jujitsu and being ready for real life leads into the next topic, that is, it goes into it's like okay, now you know how to fight on the ground. Now you know how to fight on your feet. Do you know how to fight with a weapon? You know, like, now, now you get into, you know, do you? You know I get no-transcript attack. Do you carry a knife on you? You know anyone could carry a pocket knife on them. You know, and, and you'd rather have something on you than nothing. I carry a knife with me pretty much everywhere I go, except the gym, yeah, I usually have one on me.
Speaker 1:I don't have one on me right now.
Speaker 1:I got one on me right now, you know, but I work in the city, I usually have one on me right now, and that's actually why I've been wearing more and more jeans, because I'm getting used to having the belt on and carrying, because then when I get concealed, I won't be able to have it on me for different purposes if I deem it so.
Speaker 1:But I would say that there's a mixed bag in this topic. There's a mixed bag because there are people that either have been introduced to firearms at a young age and they're very comfortable with them, or even at a later age, like me, that are very comfortable with them because you have friends that teach you the right way to do things and the responsible way to hold guns. And every gun is loaded, no matter what. Even if it's empty, it's loaded. We're not pointing it at people. We're not pointing it at people. We're not pointing at ourself. We're keeping good trigger finger like trigger finger, off of everything. These are the things that you know, you learn as a responsible gun owner. But, yep, I would say on the, on the opposite end of the spectrum, I believe that there's a lot of people that are afraid of firearms, afraid of knives, of real, not like, not not cutlery, you know yeah, but same thing basically just less sharp and because of what happens in the world.
Speaker 2:You read about stabbings, you read about shootings. Yeah, they're like, oh, I'm afraid of this.
Speaker 1:But then it's like and I, and the fear stems from the unknown of not actually understanding this thing I said this on another episode. I have a buddy, his girl is a teacher. She's very, very left leaning.
Speaker 2:Listen, don't matter whatever you, wherever you lean I'm not here to talk about left, right, up or down, oh, yeah, yeah, if you've listened to any of my episodes yeah, fuck what anybody is exactly yeah.
Speaker 1:So she just leans very left and because of that, her preconceived notion is absolutely no guns, absolutely no weapons, absolutely no that. And it's just like and I've talked to her before and I said, listen, you have to just open your mind a little bit. It's not that you are wrong, it's that you're afraid of something because you're constantly told by the places that you look for news, the people that you converse with, that these are demonized things and the gun's not just going to get up and go shoot somebody. It has to have like a catalyst of somebody using it. That's the whole way that the gun functions. You know the guns that are in my house, the guns that are in your house, the guns are in how many people's houses across?
Speaker 2:the country Mill guns that are in my house, the guns that are in your house. The guns are in how many people's houses across the country? The millions and millions and millions of gun owners. They don't get up and they don't just kill people in the middle of the night, but all it takes is one bad apple to spoil the bunch. Exactly, you know, next week they're unfortunate, you know what, and there probably will be a shoot. I mean, listen, I read about shootings in the city and all these other places every single day. Not many people know about it because they don't know where to look, but it's like, at the end of the day, it's, you know, it's not like a spoon. You can't blame a spoon for making you fat, right. So it's like you know, but it's one of those things where it's like, at the end of the day, firearms will always be controversial to the public because of what offensive do, what offensive people do with it and what defensive people do with it.
Speaker 2:You know like, I've been a firearm owner since 2018. And I go to like my friends that are scared of guns. I'm like you tell me the last time I went and shot someone. Yeah, exactly, you know like, I keep my guns locked up. I train with them for a purpose. But like I, also like you, I started as a kid. You know I started I was a kid with Nerf guns and then from Nerf guns I upgraded to BB guns and then from BB guns I upgraded to I uh shooting small 22 with um.
Speaker 2:My great uncle, who lives in Delaware, joined the military, went into an MOS that you know as being an MP. You know we got introduced to the Beretta M9. I was shooting the Mossberg 500 um. You know I got training on an M4 AR-15. You know, probably one of the most controversial pieces of weaponry in the United States history, you know. And then when I deployed, you know, and then you know, when I deployed, I got hands on machine guns, grenade launchers. You know I was shooting all that stuff and having a ton of fun, you know. But like so I got. And then I came home, bought more stuff.
Speaker 2:And now you know and you know because I've texted, you know I tried to I go to the range. You know I try to go to say someone needs to get a concealed carry permit and needs to do this and needs to do that, but I just want it's more of a thing of, like people need to just keep their minds open about, like everything that goes on around them and it goes into. You know, it's like one of those things, like you said, like you know, you have a friend who's a teacher or you know, and they're leaning to the left and they're afraid of this, this and that, so on and so forth. Your politics and your views are are a reflection of your reality, Right? So? And I mean and what I say by that is generally, generally speaking here like education is left-leaning, first responders and military usually right-leaning. You know, like everyone in politics are just a mess as it is.
Speaker 1:But like, if you get rid of the two first of all, we got to get rid of a two party.
Speaker 2:That's another thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know like nothing but pit everybody against each other.
Speaker 2:It's bullshit. It is. I'm tired of having these geriatric fucks in the office. That's that's what I'm tired of. What annoys me more than anything is and it's left-leaning people complaining about this, right-leaning people complaining about this and upside-down people complaining about this, and all they do is complain about politics and what's in their lives.
Speaker 1:And they feed the algorithm too Exactly.
Speaker 2:And now you just got people talking about it and now you just got them paid. And politicians always need to promise you something in order to get elected into office. They'll keep saying, oh, I'm going to create this, oh, I'm going to ban this, I'm going to create this, I'm going to ban this, and most of the time it never happens. No, it never happens Because they have to promise you stuff, because they don't give a fuck, they don't care about you.
Speaker 1:They don't care about you, they don't care about your. They are some of the best actors in the world. For a lot of people that believe that shit, they're better than some of the actors in Hollywood with how they act with certain things, and you know just. Like you said, it's just, it's all about having a hold of power over the people.
Speaker 2:That's really what it winds up being.
Speaker 1:Yeah, to just go back to my buddy's girl.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:My, my, my biggest thing with her was you have to look at things with an open mind, so it's not a matter of you need to. Like you said, you don't have to go get a concealed carry, you don't have to do all of that, but at least having a basic understanding of a firearm. You're in schools they're gun-free zones, unfortunately Does it work?
Speaker 1:Unfortunately you know, when you tell criminals that, or people that are trying to do harm to others hey, you're not allowed to use a gun in this area. Or some of the signs that I laugh at when I drive past schools are this is a drug-free school, really okay? Uh, let let have all the students come out, especially in the high schools, obviously. Have all the students come out and let's clear out all the backpacks. Let me see what's what we got here, because I'm going to prove to you that that sign doesn't work new york city.
Speaker 2:Every corner you go, you see this is a gun-free zone. You want me to pull up statistics of every shooting that's happened in new york city. Like what do you think? Do you think a sign is going to stop?
Speaker 1:you know people and we have to stop leaning with our feelings yeah we have to lead more with like logic and statistics real statistics, yeah, not bullshit. That, just that just adheres to the agenda that you're trying to have be the main point of view. So when you start seeing that, oh, this is a gun-free zone, why do all the shootings seem to happen in gun-free zones? I don't know. It seems like that's a strange thing.
Speaker 2:Because you just told responsible people they can't bring a gun. And that irresponsible people don't care about that sign.
Speaker 1:I've had this conversation with friends too and I've said why is it that they don't have as many mass shootings in Texas and Florida? I don't know, because if a dude pulls up and he's looking to do a mass shooting quote, unquote looking to harm as many humans as possible in a short amount of time, if you pull up to a place in Florida and you start counting oh, there's 50 people here there's a good chance that 20 to 30 are strapped. Yep, I'm probably not going to get the odds that I want in my favor and they're going to go somewhere else.
Speaker 2:Places like here, places like Chicago, have the most shootings without they have the most offensive shootings without any defensive shootings, taking police officers out of the question because you know, obviously that's their job to respond and to take down the threat. If you look at offensive shootings and defensive shootings, you know one was there are articles and there's many people who they call good Samaritans that will take down bad guys when they can.
Speaker 1:I'm not sure, that's a fucking risk, man, and that's a risk because you're going to be persecuted for that.
Speaker 2:One of the craziest things I saw Persecuted, prosecuted both yeah both.
Speaker 2:One of the craziest things. I forgot what state it was. It was somewhere in in in the midwest, and some guy came into a mall with a rifle and I always so I, you know, I have a carry permit through the navy. I carry in highly populated places. I carry when I go to the grocery store, I carry when I go to the mall, I carry when I go to the movies, you know. But like I don't carry going to the gym, I don't need anything like that, I only carry.
Speaker 1:That's tough, though, yes, then you got to take it off and then you got to leave it somewhere exactly my mind would always be on yeah, the gun. Where's the where's?
Speaker 2:exactly like if my gun's either in my safe or on me, and and it's, and it's neither one of the two, so people lock shit up in cars. I'm like, oh, please, don't leave I would never.
Speaker 1:Please don't leave your gun in the car.
Speaker 2:Please don't do that because you, you, could you if someone breaks into your car and take it. Like if I left my gun in my car and someone broke it and took it, I would be done for oh yeah, you know I would be absolutely done for sorry anyway, back to you.
Speaker 2:No, no, that's okay. So this guy came into a mall I have to, there's an article on it somewhere but he came into a mall with a rifle and some like 19-year-old kid with a stock Glock 43 or 45. I heard about this, too With a stock Glock 45, this guy came out with a rifle. I think he shot one or two people, injured them. They didn't kill them. You know the it's, it's, it's somewhere on google, if you search, if you search, oh god, you know, somewhere in the midwest idaho, ohio. Uh, we, I got. Now I'm gonna, I'm gonna rush to find it, like you.
Speaker 2:Uh, more shooting stopped rush, I'm racing you bro oh yeah, elijah dick in 22, this was indiana, yeah I got it indiana, yeah 22 yesterday to other shoppers to flee as he engaged, and closed in on the suspect yep gangster gunman had two rifles, a handgun and more than 100 uh 100 rounds of bullets that's weird, though, aren't?
Speaker 1:aren't moles gun-free zones?
Speaker 2:I, I'm pretty sure they are, but so so he, so he. He heard gunfire and he he wentfire and he took his gun out. He put this guy down at 20 yards with one shot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man.
Speaker 2:One shot, but that's all it takes, and you know that Exactly. But you know how many people probably don't even know about that story because they don't want to listen to it.
Speaker 1:Not even that. They don't want to listen to it, they don't want to project that out there, that somebody did something good, good gun, because there's no, because in a certain world there's no such thing as good, so scary like it's just it's so scary. That's why I have to sit here and wait two years, yeah, for a ccw, for a handgun that's new york in politics while I go buy a shotgun in 10 minutes?
Speaker 1:yeah, because I have no record. Yep, and they and rifles and whatever else I want. I go buy it in 10 minutes. Yep, because they're like, oh yeah, he's clean. Well, why is it? Oh, because the little scary concealable one. But I could do 10 times more damage with the rifle or shotgun.
Speaker 2:And that's why most of these mass shooters and offensive shooters, they come with rifles.
Speaker 1:They don't practice with these guns. They miss all the time, exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, they're just going around.
Speaker 1:Regular people don't understand how hard it is to actually shoot and hit on target repeatedly yes, repeatedly and accurately, and just while there's things going on. They have no idea how hard it is to just go bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, just even in that succession, yep, not even quick, just bum, bum, bum, fucking miss all the time.
Speaker 2:That's why I like it, especially when I do like my not even like you know, my rifle training is just about really getting on target because it's not like I'm walking around and I'm never gonna walk around in public with a rifle. But when I do like my pistol training, you know, I I do some friendly competitions too. Uh, me and my friend chris, we were doing uh some like uspca competitions in freeport, which was a lot of fun. Can you let me know when?
Speaker 1:yeah, because I really want to do it when I get my license.
Speaker 2:They stopped for a little bit. Some guys stepped down. I'm trying to find more. I haven't done it in a while, but I was doing one once a month. It was great you go do a course of fire, this, that I bought a belt and all it was trying to get on target. There are guys there with staccatos that shoot a grouping like this at 30 yards. I always told myself if I have to shoot a pistol at 30 yards, I got a real big fucking problem. Don't get me wrong. It's always good to train distance, but how I try to train. And there's a guy on YouTube and Instagram and I'm going to send him your link because I follow a lot of his stuff. When I'm watching his stuff and I'm not doing anything. I think his name is Colin. He runs T-Rex Arms. I don't know if you've heard of T-Rex arms. Is he a black kid? No, he's a white guy. Oh, you know who.
Speaker 1:I'm talking about Colin. Yes, colin.
Speaker 2:Noir, colin Colin, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, he does a lot of podcasts and talks about the Second Amendment and guns. This guy does just a lot of training videos that's cool and stuff like that, and he walks through how to effectively shoot a pistol, how he's not a cop, he's just a normal dude that loves guns, and this guy can out shoot and out class, you know, and any guy that you know that's on the job or whatever the case may be. Um, you know, but he has really good training videos and he I get a lot of my training from him because he'll be like all right, you know, do this course of fire and it's like. You know like. Or you know draw. You know, put two rounds on reload. You know, whatever, like my, my like, I'll work my concealed draws, you know, yeah, two in the chamber, like one in the chamber, two in the bag.
Speaker 2:Well, if I'm carrying, here it's like lifting the shirt up, coming up this, and that you know how long it takes me to lift my shirt up. Get the gun out. Get my gun forward. You know? Have you ever used?
Speaker 1:the Mantis, what Mantis? There's a Mantis piece that you can does all of the dry fire like numbers for you, so you could just be able to record everything.
Speaker 2:I always wanted to get into into something like that and my girlfriend sent me a link for something like that and I've been meaning to buy it, I just forget. But there are times at home where, like, if I'm not doing anything it's not often, but like I'll be home and if I'm not doing anything I'll just like coming up, coming down, coming up, coming down, you know, and then it's like, then it's then, you know, then it's getting on target and I'm shooting certain targets and it's like, obviously you want everything to be center mass, like right in the middle, but it's just like, as long as you know, in my mind, like you know, obviously I want to hit as close to center mass as possible, but I'll work a drill at he was doing and I just kind of work from there. Man, you know, it's all just about practicing and it's not just. You know a lot of people with guns. They just they're like oh cool, I have a gun. Let me, you know, go to the range and get on target. Yes, getting on target is important, but especially now it's in the state of New York, you know, people are working on their concealed carries and stuff range. I mean, yeah, you're not gonna. But like you know train how you fight, right, you know, you know.
Speaker 2:So it's like when you're in public and you're looking around like, especially like the heavily, heavily populated places, you know, I'm always just, I'm hyper alert when, when I'm, when I'm walking around, like when I work in the city, when I go, my volume on my headphones is like the bare minimum, I'm not, I refuse to take my phone out unless I have a phone call and I'm constantly just like looking around, especially on the subway too. You know, the subway, I'm just, you know I'm sitting there and I'm just I'm not sitting there like this, but like I mean I'll be looking down at the floor and I'll just like kind of be doing this, doing that. You know, there was a guy next to me, you know that, one time and he was, you know, super covered up and like look, whatever. And then I was sitting off to the side of him and I was like this he got up, I thought he was sleeping, train stopped. He jumped up and a giant knife fell out of his pocket and then I got nervous. So I put my hand to my pocket like whatever. I was like all right, what's about the? I mean he wasn't taking it out, but he just picked it up and got off the train but like snap of a finger.
Speaker 2:I, like you know, like what's going on here. You know just, people need to be really aware of what's going on around them and if you're not going to get a carry permit, fine, I respect that. Carry a pocket knife. Women need to carry bear spray.
Speaker 1:You know mace, you know also understand what the law is for the knives too exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah, I'm not going to say go out and take a steak knife with you, you know, but like you certain length and whatnot yeah, but you, but you can get, like you know, an inch, inch and a half, you know, just have something. And like I always tell, and you know all women, you know they should care, you, even men do it all women should carry the cat lady.
Speaker 1:Yep, yeah, I gotta get a sponsorship. This is like the third time I shout these people out cat lady or something. Whatever are they. Are they a mace company? Nah, so what it is is it's like these wolverine claws that go between it's, almost like they look like bear, um, they look like, uh, brass knuckles sort of, but they don't wrap around each digit, they just kind of sit in, yeah, and then, if god forbid, a woman is in an attack, she squeezes it and these little prongs come out and you could scratch a dude and it takes his dna too. Yeah, oh, and it's that's pretty cool. It keeps it in the actual unit so people that don't know what that is they're not going to. You know, they may get slashed, they may continue attacking or flee now in that unit, and even if they don't, god forbid, an attack goes further. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:Eventually they're going to leave. Yeah, most times, of course, they're going to leave, and then you still have that.
Speaker 2:Oh, give, have that. And also, even if you don't want to get violent, they have those little sound machines you know what I'm talking about when they hit something and it's like the loudest thing you could possibly.
Speaker 1:My mom bought me one of those. Yeah, Kenji, I go. You realize, I have a 90 pound Akita right.
Speaker 2:Clearly you know, but like I'm not, you don't even have to carry to, don't even have to carry a weapon. I mean, I personally believe in carrying a weapon, but like, just carry something that's going to make you aware of what's going on around you. You know, and if and and if you're walking around a place where that's not known to be safe or whatever, just all you got to do is have that thing in your pocket and you just hit a button and then just, you know so. But it's just, it's a tiger lady, tiger lady. Damn, I've been fucking up cat lady there. It is tiger. I was like I gotta know what it is. Tiger lady, that's what it looks like. Oh, that looks painful. Yeah, that looks very painful. You get, you get a right cross with that, yeah, yeah, it's over man you get a right cross at that, you know.
Speaker 2:But it's just, and it's important to kind of going back to what I said before, is, you know it's important to when you have a gun, because I know a lot of guys that have guns and they only shoot like once a year, you know they like and I try to like for the qualifying, yeah well, not even just like cops, yeah like there are definitely cops out there that just shoot on their qualifying and then they put them away. But it's like definitely with them and military, you know, I I have to qualify twice. Even as a reservist, I still have to qualify twice a year because I carry, when I go on my active training in Italy and if I deploy and stuff like that, you know. So it's like, but I try to put a good amount of my, you know, especially as hobbies. You know I definitely consider shooting one of my hobbies and it's just like constantly buying ammo, doing this, doing that, you know. But it's just like training to a certain expectation and you know I'm never going to get better unless I constantly do something over and over and over, and that's that applies to everything in life.
Speaker 2:And there was a quote that I found that I definitely wanted to bring up today. And it goes that we never rise to the level of our expectations. We only fall to the level of our training. So if you set a bar this high and you don't do anything to constantly try to get to that bar, whatever it may be benching 27, benching 275, trying to do a holstering drill in less than five seconds you're never going to get to benching 275 if you don't work your weights up, if you're just constantly, obviously when you're building strength you want to do 175, 200, 225, but you're never going to get there if you just keep repping out 175 for 15, 20, 15, 20. You're never going to get there if you just keep repping out 175 for 15, 20, 15, 20. You know like you're never going to get that weight up. I'm never going to get my you know my whole string drill. You know if I'm going to get two rounds out reloading two rounds less than five seconds if I keep giving myself eight seconds to do it. You know like or if I'm not, or if it's an, if it's a concealed draw but I'm drawing from the outside.
Speaker 2:You know you have to be practical with everything you do in life and it's important to be precise. You know, like if you have something, you know, like you only train to what you have. You know how much you can lift, how fast you can run, how, how much you can shoot, how much you can do this, you know, and I feel like that's pretty important because a lot of people they'll be like, oh, I'm doing this or I'm doing that, and then it's just like something happens and it's like, oh well, what? Well, what happened here? And it's like, oh well, I didn't do this, I didn't do that, but it's like, whose fault is that? You know. So it's like you know we have it's always good to set a standard and be respectful of that standard and respectful of the people who set that standard for you. You know, but ultimately it comes down to you and what you're doing, you know, and there's so much more to it too. Um, when it comes to setting a standard for you know, because let's just talk about, like you know, weightlifting and training and stuff like that, I'm never my motivation through strength training and weightlifting, whatever the case may be, injuries or no injuries is. I may not be the strongest guy in the room, I may not be the fastest guy in the room, but I'm constantly going to try to chase them and be that. That's the basis of it. I mean OG, man monsters, monsters and animals, everyone goes there, and OG is a great place where you just punch it for an hour and you just go and go and go.
Speaker 2:But one of the things that always annoyed me and Evan knows this was a lot of people would show up late and there's a difference when you're having you run late one day, this, that the whole nine. But aside from I was I, was you and me, you know I was, you and me were mainline or six, 15 or so you know before you know I got all jammed up or whatever it was day and aside from the goodell sisters, shout out nicole and alissa, because, because, because you, because you guys were early and you guys were awesome. I walked in that door no later than six o'clock every single day, so as people were walking out, I'd be walking in and you had some people kind of trickle in this, that the whole nine. But then, like evan, would be going over you know the like, the like, you know the class and going over what we're doing, and then people just walk in, but it was the same people walking in late all this, all the time. And then they're like oh well, I did this today and they're putting up an Instagram story. Worked hard this night, no, no, no, you didn't work hard. You missed two stations and you came in at 625, 630.
Speaker 2:And then, you know, when this man some respect. You know, there was one time, there was one time where I thought I couldn't get to a class in the morning and I ended up being able to get in and I saw that it was full, but I texted Evan. I'm like, yo, I'm showing up at six. I know there's going to be about four people showing up at 630. I should take their spot. I'm dedicated, you know, like I'm. I'm here to give respect to you because I'm here If you're. Today, you told me to be here at 10. I was here at nine, 46, right?
Speaker 2:You know, if you're early, you're on time. If you're on time, you're late. You know, I am never, ever, ever, late to anything and I'm always early to something, just because I feel you know, when you're early on time, if you're on time, you're late, you know. And then I I walked in and I'm like stretching out and stuff, and I think he made the rule that, uh, he made the rule that, like, if, if, if you got there after the demo, then you gave up your spot if someone was waiting and I said, how about punishment? I was like, how about a hundred burpees? You know, if they walk in after the demo, you know that that starts the standard right. There is like you know, if you're going to a group fitness or just that's just an example if you're going to group fitness, like, show up early for your coaches, you know, get loose. I mean, a broken guy like me has to stretch out for you know, 10 minutes regardless, you know.
Speaker 1:So I'm the worst I wake up like for a six. I wake up at I mean, I was waking up at 4 45 for a while and then I wake up. Then, you know, even now I wake up at like five, even for jujitsu. This morning I woke up at six o'clock. I walked kenji by yeah, I'm talking about you, bro. Yep, I, I walked kenji by 6 15. We walked for like a half hour just to give him something. 6 45 I left. I got to sarah's by 6 55 yeah, and then class started 10 minutes later and I mean I cracked my back twice and I was like, all right, let's go, let's roll.
Speaker 1:And you know you feel it, man. So you got to get there. You got to give yourself the time. I'm not sitting here puffing my chest out saying that that's the cool way to do shit. It's not.
Speaker 2:I should be stretching more and I should be warming up and what's crazy, and listen, everyone's different, and I get that, you know.
Speaker 2:The craziest things that I saw, though, were like and I, maybe they're younger and more limber, and I get that because you know my body's taken a beating over the years um, but, like you know, there are people that could just walk into og and then and then evan will be like oh, you know, we're doing a thousand meter sprint today, and they do it without even stretching, and I'm like, if I don't stretch for at least 10 minutes before I do this, I'm pulling something and I'm out.
Speaker 2:You know, like you know, when I was younger, I used to be able to do that. You know, when I was like 21 to 25, I might, you know, my time overseas were. Probably that was when I was in the best shape of my life. You know, when I was out partying and drinking until like three, four in the morning, and then we wake up for like PT at like seven, or it was waking up like oh man, take a hangover shot or a big chug of water, and I would just go. Now, if I need eight hours of sleep, I need to put the cucumbers over my eyes.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, You're in a spa treatment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, spa treatment I'm always. And it's funny I tell my girlfriend, carrie, because when she first met me I would be rubbing my eyes or this and that she's like are you all right? Are are this? And that she's like are you all right? Are you tired? I'm like I've been tired for the past eight years. I'm going to be tired for eight more. I'm just constantly tired. Now I'm going to be tired for an amount of time I got left on this planet, exactly. I'm never going to be fully rejuvenated, I'm just all messed up from what it was.
Speaker 1:I had this debate with a buddy of mine Would you rather be tired and beat up and sore and all that stuff, or would you rather be probably a different type of tired, because you're sick from not being able to train or not training and staying healthy and your body feels a little bit better but it's actually rotting from the inside? So it's like the first one yeah. I know logical people are going to pick the first one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1:Then there's people that just hate the gym and they just don't want to exercise at all.
Speaker 2:I'm very glad you brought that up, because that that brings me to. We keep going into the good points that I want to talk about. So I definitely would say the first one and I'll tell you why, and I kind of just said this you know, like I'm still in pretty good shape. You know I'm trying to just preserve my health and stay loose, and this and that in the whole nine there was a time where, uh and I specifically remember it is uh, we all know rob, we love rob, right, rob, big young, yeah, rob, rob, joe ciliberti's roommate, right as he referred to him, big young, yeah, big guy, is an absolute monster and when he gets to the gym he locks in. There's time where I at him and you know where we would be like make faces and smirk, but like that guy, you know we would just go, and then we get on stations together and this and that, and then he great dude, an absolute truck of a human being.
Speaker 2:And one day after class he was looking down and he looked discouraged and I'm like what's up, man, what's going on? He's like, ah, he's like today wasn't my day. He's like I couldn't get this up, I couldn't get that up. You know, whatever I was like, let me tell you something, man. I was like perspective is everything in life. Now, if you're normally shoulder pressing 65, 70s and that day you were sore and you only got up 40, 45s, being able to move your body is a gift. And I looked at him and I said that there are millions and millions, maybe I could even argue, tens of millions or hundreds of millions of people who wake up every day and they don't do anything. They don't go for it. I'm not saying you have to, you know it's not like, oh, if you don't go to, you know. Like, if you're not doing a hardcore, you know fitness class for an hour, you're, you know you're a scrub, you know. But like going for a walk, going for a run, yes, weight training, this, that but like just being able to move your body and get into fitness is a gift.
Speaker 2:There are people that were born without limbs. There are veterans who come back missing legs, missing arms, and I follow all these guys on Instagram. There's one dude I forgot his last name is Tyler something. He was blown up in Afghanistan. He lost an arm and he lost a leg. And this guy is in the gym deadlifting with one arm leg, pressing with one leg, and he's and his and all his cat. You know what his captions are. What's your fucking excuse, you know? And there are people with two arms and two legs that wake up every day and just treat themselves like shit. They binge eat, they do this, they do that, and everyone's different. Maybe there's factors and is what?
Speaker 2:But I went to Rob and I'm like listen, man, you're going to have your good days and you're going to have your bad days. I was like there's days where I, you know, would come in here and feel on top of the world and I did great. There are days where I would leave in pain or I'm like, oh, maybe I shouldn't go that heavy today. Maybe I'm like, just understand that when you come here and you dedicate yourself to fitness for an hour, that's all you need. You know like you need that momentum and that drive to run this amount, to bike this amount. Yeah, you might show the press 65s or 70s five days of the week and then on the last day you're only doing thirties because you're so beat up.
Speaker 2:Obviously, rest days are important, but just the fact that you got up and you went and you took time out of your sleep and out of your routine to go to the gym and haul ass is a blessing and a gift. You know, fast and furious, 50% of something is better than a hundred percent of nothing, Right? So you know, I and I try to like, and that's what I and he and he looked at me and like there were times too, even after that, like you know, he'd be like, oh, this that the whole night. I'm like, hey, you got up and moved today and that's that's a gift. And he would just look at me. He's like you know what, man, you're right, you know. And like I try to tell people, you know, and there's nothing wrong with swinging for the fences and you know and and going on and going, you know, balls to the wall and this, that the whole nine. But I feel like and maybe this is just my perspective but like the older we get, you still kind of have to be careful because, like we become a lot more injury prone the older we get, the younger we are like, yeah, you might hurt something, but whatever, now it takes us longer to heal, you know, like we have this, we have that, you know. So it's like I feel and I'm not just saying like trying to, you know wimp out of something, because I'm not david goggins running 200 miles a day at the age of like 51 or something you and doing doing a million posts, because that guy is made of stuff that's not even on this earth, you know. But it's just like, as long as you're moving yourself, you're good.
Speaker 2:So there's a bunch of guys I follow on Instagram I don't know if you follow them uh, gbrs, so global battlefield research solutions, and they're a bunch of awesome guys there. Uh, it's two retired Navy seals and a retired British SAS operator and a retired British SAS operator. Bad dudes, bad dudes. And they just emphasize the basics. Man, like they run a training company where you know they'll do you know firearms training and fitness training and this and that, but they go over. You know what they do every. You know what they do.
Speaker 2:Three times a day they go for a 20 minute walk with each other. This isn't like yo, we're bonding over. You know doing a marathon every two days. You know they they all wake up together. They get a cup of coffee, they go for a 20 minute walk and they and they talk about how important it is to get out, get fresh air, to get air and, you know, to get air in your lungs, just to walk, to open up this, to open up that. They have a stretching and mobility guy. They go over all these different stretches and I've followed his name is Vernon Griffin. I've followed his name is Vernon Griffin, griffin Griffith, something like that. He is huge. He's been huge with my with, with with me lately because I've been slacking. I keep saying I want to get more, you know, back into yoga because yoga keeps you loose and limber.
Speaker 1:Um, I got to redownload the pliability. Pliability is the app that I was using for a while. I need, I need that for constant stretches. I just I, I get, I get like, uh, I don't know, I get weird because I want to do it at night before bed or in the morning, right when I wake up and I'm just like I don't feel like laying on the floor, I'm cold yeah I'm, I'm, I'm stiff right now and obviously that's what's there. It's there to help you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you get you more limber and this guy, he goes over all these like basic functionality movements and like I follow his routines to like the t. Now, like my stretching, I would do like five minutes and then I would like pull a hamstring or hurt this or hurt that and I'm like, oh, I should probably stretch out more. And then my stretching went from five minutes to 10 minutes and 10 minutes to 15 minutes and I started getting more and more loose and don't get me wrong, I'm still stiff as a board, you know, but I'm not getting as hurt as I did before because, like I would be like, all right, warm up for two minutes, bam, let me go sprint a mile. And next thing I know, you know, my right calf is on fire and I'm like, why is my calf on fire? And then I would like look at some of his stuff and be like, oh, this is how you stretch out your calves, this is how you loosen up your hips.
Speaker 1:You know, and these guys, they just you know, and things sometimes just creates more of a headache for us to do it and it's not even worth it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, simple stuff works. These always has. That's why it's the simple stuff.
Speaker 1:These are guys that did 50 plus years in special operations and they're just telling you to go for a 20 minute walk let's say you know, like, let's just take it like this fundamentals of jujitsu work, not because you know, not because they're oh, it's the fun, it of the fundamental, the building blocks of everything else. Yes, so it's like you know you're going to be able to get all that shit done and it's more effective than if you try doing some fancy shit that doesn't actually do anything.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, like what do you think I'm going to go for? You know, if I ever got into a fight, you think I'm going to a made up words omoplata, gogoplata, anything that ends with plata.
Speaker 1:just sit next to him and just hit him on the head while you have a second draft, yeah you feel like you know, like I would.
Speaker 2:Only you know like complicated moves like that they're not needed unless the opportunity arises. You know they always teach you like, for example, you know right triangles, what am I? Am I if someone's on top of me? Am I gonna constantly try to pull someone's arm in so I could triangle them? No, I'm only gonna go for a triangle if someone's trying to wail on me and I have their arm conveniently in my control, you know. But if someone's on top of me, you know I'm just gonna try to get out. If you're gonna try to wail on me, yeah, I'm good you know gas out, while he misses every yeah but if I, if, if I have your arm, then then it's something you could go for.
Speaker 2:But it's not like I'm just going to be like oh, I need the triangle, I need to omoplata, gogoplata this, that the whole nine, the basics work. Like you said, gassing someone out, letting them.
Speaker 1:Yo, dude, I do that now, so good.
Speaker 2:What? Just laying on bottom and just letting them gas? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Hold people in my guard because I got the strong bodybuilder's legs.
Speaker 2:Of course.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just hold people in my guard and they'll be struggling. They'll stand up. I'll go for a dummy sweep. They'll sit back down. I'll be like do you see how crazy you're moving right now? I'm like do you see how relaxed I am. I'm chilling yeah.
Speaker 2:You can keep going. I'm just hanging out, tyler and I, as we say, all the time, just hanging out man. So the good news was, when I got to the UFC gym or not even actually the UFC gym when I was overseas and I was rolling with these guys and I guess it was to my advantage because for the first time, I knew more than them, but these were kind of guys that were like 225, 250. These were big dudes and I mean, I gained a little bit of muscle when I joined. I was, I don't know, maybe one, 70 at the time.
Speaker 2:You know like, I was definitely I, I I got a little bit more meat on me, but they were on top, but they were just panicking, you know, like, you know they they're going for shoulder locks and I'd be like, nope, not not doing that. Oh, I'm going to do this. You know, and it's yeah, yeah, yeah, and it's just like and it's making me so uncomfortable because you're just like. You know, like, like. And there was one guy that I tapped from it because he had this forearm that was just like out to here and I was like yeah, this hurts yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm super nice guy, really great a dude he was trying so hard to get for the first couple seconds yeah he was trying so hard to get an arm bar from me and I was like my grips are very strong. I was like you were on bottom, I was on bottom, okay, okay. So I literally just anytime I feel like an arm bar is coming, I grab my, especially if I'm in gi was it?
Speaker 2:was it a gi class?
Speaker 1:yeah, see, but yeah exactly I grab my own gi and then I kind of like twist my arm like this and I kind of just dude, I'm anchored, you're not, I don't care if you put a foot in there. I'm so tight right here that you're just not, you're not going to be able to get through it. And that's what he did. He was lacing it through for a little while he was trying, he was trying, and then he realized that he wasn't going to get it, so he let go, and then I turned into him so I was like, okay, oh, it's next thing, there were people.
Speaker 2:There were people when I was in gi that would get me in arm bars without even touching my arm. They would just pull my cuff link and just yank it in and I'm like I'm gone. And then you know like, yeah, all they gotta do is go like this yep, okay, yeah, and I'm trying to get out. They are not, they don't have a single hand on my arm and all it took was two grips pulling. But that goes back into the. You know real life. You know grips, no grips, gi no gi, etc. So on and so forth.
Speaker 2:But it just basics, work, man you know, the basics work and, at the end of the day, are you going to get into a fight with someone that knows more than you? There is a chance that you could, but there is a higher probability that if something happens and you're squaring up with a guy and he's just staring at you in the eyes, then you could just chop him down like a tree to the legs and, hypothetically, if it gets messy and it goes to the ground, you know what to do. Concrete hurts. Concrete hurts.
Speaker 1:We were doing takedowns today and I said to my partner I said, dude, this takedown would be horrible. Yeah, oh my God it would be. My knee would blow out right there. I'd Pretend to be dead like one of those goats. Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Especially when you watch competition and I get wrestling is a whole thing, but do you think I'm going to shoot a double leg on concrete? My knee is going to get shredded to bits if I do that, especially in shorts.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, exactly, it's over man.
Speaker 2:You know, I would rather take my chances in a clinch and go for a leg sweep or something, but like or try to go hip to hip or something like that. But if you think that I'm going to shoot for a double leg in normal clothes, you got. No way is that happening.
Speaker 1:I'm going to hurt myself more than I hurt you no, no, I'm good, I'm skipping that one, yeah.
Speaker 2:So absolutely, absolutely not. What else did I have? So actually I wanted to.
Speaker 1:I wanted to back up. I wanted to ask you about the military. I wanted to ask you about the military just like what got you into it? What? How did you get involved? Was it something you always wanted to do? And then, obviously, your time in south korea, like my, my buddy, um daquan. He came on a long time ago, yeah, and he was in the air force and he was talking about soju and all this stuff oh yeah, I knew that you fucking military guys, you guys are crazy soju man, that was, uh, that was, that was, that was the, that the poison?
Speaker 1:Yeah, he was talking about soju and just like the life over there and I'm just curious what, what your experiences?
Speaker 2:were oh man, wow, I guess I could be here forever talking about this. So, um, so the military, right. So I was in high school and I started seeing ads for stuff and I didn't know. At the time I was like you know, I was like kind of like every other kid in high school, you know, you're kind of undecided, you don't know what you want to do. There are very few that who are like oh, I'm going to do this, and they go out and do it in props to them. When they do, I still don't know what I want to do. You know, you got it going on me. Look at this Exactly. No, it's all right. So don't know what I want to do, this, dad.
Speaker 2:So I graduated and I went to my parents and I told them I was thinking about the military and I talked to a friend of mine who was in and he was like listen, man, he was like you can't join the military half-ass, like you know. Like now you can go active duty, be overseas, do what you got to do, you know, or like, if you just want to do boot camp and do your training and then just jump right into the reserves, and you could do that as well. But you know the military is a pretty big investment because then you know you owe the government your body for a couple of years. You're in, you're in. So I was like you know what, let me get some more time to think about it.
Speaker 2:So I went to Nass, revisited the conversation with my parents. You know they were like you know what do you want to do? And you know like are you going to go to school from here? This, that? And at the time I mean listen, we all know, like you know, college is stupid amounts of money, stupid amounts of money.
Speaker 1:my mother hates when I say that I don't believe that Quinnipiac was worth the money. Yeah, and every single time. I did two years at Nassau, which was a great great idea, nassau's awesome. Two years at Nassau and then I was doing two years at another college. Yeah, and truthfully, with the amount of money I spent at Quinnipiac, I should have just went to like University of Hawaii or somewhere fucking fun and warm.
Speaker 2:Instead I chose depressing connecticut.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I just, I I don't, and you know, now the there, there's a a rebuttal from the world saying, oh well, yeah, actually you probably don't need a college degree for you know a lot of these different things and yes and no depends on it depends on the field you want to go to obviously yeah, for a fucking doctor but I'm saying for most of these careers that they're saying, they're saying, oh, you know what?
Speaker 1:now we're not really looking that much into the college degree as like the end, all be all, and I agree with that because there's a lot of people that are way smarter and way more in the actual dirt of work and actually getting their fingernails dirty and actually doing things Trade work Exactly Well that ends.
Speaker 1:I'm saying I'm not even saying physically dirty, but I'm saying there's somebody that could have been, let's say, a photographer and a cinematographer, and they've worked on indie sets and they've done a lot of things just by networking, and they never went to film school. Yeah, but they're more qualified than the dude that's in a four year film school, because the dude that oh well, he's learning about the abstract look of this artist and this, and that the other dude was doing it, yeah, he was just doing shit. So there there are some things to be said about an actual college degree and if it actually is mandatory, for 52 000 a year is what quinnipiac was. I only went for two years. Oh, that was two years too long.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it was two years too long and I agree, you know, like our like Car payment every month. Oh, yeah disgusting, disgusting.
Speaker 2:It's insane, Disgusting, you know. And then, like, college can benefit some people. You know, it's not like you have to completely rule it out, but like my dad was a local three electrician in the city and you know he got in and did great, you know, had a great career, you know retired lives and you know a lot of people, especially in this day and age. You know, like when I was growing up, I'm 30. But like when I was growing up, not many people were talking about trades, you know. Or like, oh well, you don't want to be a plumber, you don't have to deal with this, you don't want to be an electrician, you want to do this. And then I came and I actually worked with my dad for two summers before I joined. I was a summer apprentice, local one. We're making like $92 an hour.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You know, and guess what? When that? When the day is done, the day is done.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, exactly, you're not on call. You punch your hours and you go home, you know. Oh, you want some overtime here, you know like you're not.
Speaker 1:You're not just creating a career. This is the big thing that I'm learning now You're not just creating a career, You're creating a life. Yep.
Speaker 2:Yep, exactly so. So I graduated Nassau and I still was kind of unsure with what I wanted to do. But I wanted a challenge. You know I was. I was the skinny kid in high school that didn't do any sports. You know, like I wasn't. You know I wasn't on the football team. I wasn't doing this, I wasn't doing that, I was just another. You know schmo walk in the hallway. I wasn't.
Speaker 2:I was involved in music at the time. You know my other hobby, which is drumming, you know that was I started drumming when I was a kid. Yeah, we'll get to that. But I was like you know, I'm just another guy here. And then, like I just like I was, like you know what, I got something to prove to myself. Like I want to go challenge myself. I've never challenged myself before. I never went out for sports in high school, I never did this, I never did that. And then I kind of told my parents like hey, like I think I want to do this.
Speaker 2:You know I came from a pretty simple background. You know my parents got divorced when I was four. I didn't have any siblings, so I didn't really have like an anchor at home. Like, yeah, like I love my mom. I love my dad, but it was just like I wasn't anchored to anything. You know, I was like I wasn't in a relationship at the time and I'm like, all right, I might as well go for it. And um, I joined the navy in 2014. I decided to go active it's so funny too because I didn't know what branch I wanted to join. So my dad went with me to all the different recruiters and I went to the marines and I was like what?
Speaker 1:did each one promise. Yeah, yeah, exactly, I promise you.
Speaker 2:Well, the hell cat well, well, well, the, well, the. I went to the marines in the army and I looked at the marine jobs and I was like, eh, I don't know about all that. And then I went to the army and then they were like, well, you could do this, you could do that, whatever, so on and so forth. And then I was stupid If I knew now what I did, then I would have joined the air force, but they got steak and lobster every day for dinner. Um, but so I looked at the Navy and they'd said, you know what, at the time it was, joined the Navy, what? Maybe the navy will work for me. I'll try this out. And then, you know, I took my asvab and I got my scores and I was like he's like, oh well, you know, you could be an mp and we do this and we do that. You know, recruiters they, they sell you, you know. And, uh, I was like sure, yeah, I'll be an mp, this will be cool, you know, maybe it'll apply to something when I get out, as opposed to just sitting on a computer and doing this and doing that the whole nine up. Uh, my first duty station was, uh, yeah, south korea.
Speaker 2:2014, 2016, south korea. My first couple months. They were rough because I missed home a lot. You know, I finally realized like I wasn't. I wasn't stationed in the states, I was stationed halfway across the world north korea at the time. You know kim jong-un he was, you know, lighting off, you know, like doing shit, yeah, so, like, so, like, so, like it was. It was kind of like we're going to be well. Obviously we had a ton of free time to go out and do this and do that, but like whenever he was like testing like bombs in the ocean, like they would come out with like orders for us saying like, oh, be aware of this, be aware of that, and you're like oh, wow, okay, so this is kind of like whatever. But it was really cool because my dad came out to visit me for Christmas that year. We had a good time Christmas in.
Speaker 2:Korea Christmas in Korea. Well, I mean, I didn't come home for a single holiday in my four years active, so I spent my time coming home in the summer. Also, actually, it wasn't even just that More of the senior guys were allowed leave in the big holidays and since I was a junior guy, it was kind of like earning your stripes. So if I had an 11 or 12-year guy saying, oh well, I'm going home, I'm going home, I'm going home, you know. And then I'm like, hi, little little gunnison you know little little petty officer third class gunnison wants to go home it's like, oh well, we're already filled up for christmas leave block, so you got to stay here. Sucks to suck, rookie, you know. Like one of those deals, you know.
Speaker 1:so I was like was it bad staying there?
Speaker 2:no, no, it wasn't. Uh, you know, like I said, it was only like the first couple months that kind of were rough, from missing home, and then, like I kind of just got used to it, you know, and I lived a pretty normal life there, you know, luckily. Um, you know, korea really wasn't bad. You know, I was doing base security there and it was just, you know, we stood, we stood gate and, you know, controlled the entry points. Nothing really happened, um, driving around, I think I pulled over maybe like three. It was a very small, quiet base there was. We had a population of maybe like 140, 150 people.
Speaker 2:Long days, though that's what. I had a very easy job, and the hardest part about my job was not falling asleep because I was up. We work five to five, but you had to be at work at four, which means you had to be up at three 30, because you had to be at work at four. You have to arm up, you have to go over what you're going on for the day, and these days on gate, like you know, you're on the gate and it's not hard, but you're like you're standing there in full gear. You know, you have your vest on, you have your belt, your gun, your cuffs, your mags, you know your, your baton, your flashlight, and you're just standing there for eight to 12 hours a day, Nighttime would probably be the hardest.
Speaker 2:Oh, the nighttime was worse because, like I, would hear my own thoughts in my head. You know night to five you know like oh yeah, you know, I would stand out there and like you're, you're with. I was with the korean guards too and I missed those guys. They were good guys, like we would talk and stuff, but that's all you could do is talk. You can't have your phone, you can't be distracted.
Speaker 1:You know there's cameras all around you, you know so in a lot of ways, that's actually really good for your brain. It was your mind, because it's actually a the time that you probably it was probably some of the only time that you've had actual downtime. Oh yeah, you know, even though you're on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is downtime for your brain. It's down, but then, like you just kind of feel you're just like I'm staring into the street for six hours, you know, and I'm like man, what is going on out here, you know. So it's like I helped a buddy with construction one time and he just watched paint dry flagging, yeah in the city okay, on the side yeah, side of the road yeah, moving cars and you're and I'll tell you what man.
Speaker 1:That was the worst.
Speaker 2:We did 20 hours or something like that, and bro, when you stand still and you just let your body lock up, it's the worst. Yeah, it was cold.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh yeah. I was looking around and the thing that fucking pissed me off about it fucking Petey, the thing that pissed me off about it was he went into his car and took a nap. For an hour and a half I was outside. So then, when it was my turn, he's like yo, you can take a nap after me. Okay, cool, he gets out, because the boss comes onto the site yeah, yeah, yeah, and we're outside, this and that and then the boss decides to stay and PD goes. Oh yeah, you can't go in the car and nap. Now, what the hell you mean?
Speaker 1:I can't okay, so now it's here, and I was on another corner away from him, yep, for a while, and then there was nothing, nothing going on, yep, and so I definitely understand what you mean when it's oh, it was, it was.
Speaker 2:That was. That was the hardest part about it. But, like, I don't know if a lot of people know this, but south korea is one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world. Yeah, when I tell you this, so they well, I went to seoul twice, so the dmz is up there. I went out there. Actually, my first ufc event was ufc seoul, when ben henderson fought um, uh, korean zombie, I think was the main event. Yeah, it was like a whole bunch of korean fighters and then benson henderson was on that and all this stuff. So me and my buddies I, uh, two of us took leave and then we all went up there but like, we stayed the night. We got to go out. This was awesome, but every single place you go had wi-fi and the wi-fi there is faster than any wi-fi ever been on my life, even in the states. Now that south korean wi-fi was lightning quick and I wonder how fast they're running. I, I don't know, but all I know is that they had the best internet I've ever had in my life.
Speaker 2:I got a playstation. You know, like whenever me and my buddies would play like you know, we would sit in our barracks and play playstation and just like pound endless. You know bud lights and stuff like that. Um, but south korea it was, and south korea was a party man. You know like the nightlife out there was awesome. You know we would go to you know a town or two over and go out and party. You know soju, you know nectar of the gods. You pay I mean here it's different because of import tax but like we were paying. Like we go to the corner store, pay like a dollar, dollar 20 for like three bottles of soju. And then I'd go to busan and busan is huge, huge party city, very, very industrialized there. We would take the bus there. The bus is like an hour, it's like an hour long. I would have like three bottles of soju, not know who I was by the time I got there and I spent six bucks you know it was awesome.
Speaker 2:So, um, south korea was a good staple, um, I got to do the food. Food was great. I don't you have a korean barbecue I've not had korean barbecue.
Speaker 1:I've had a lot of korean friends and I have not had korean barbecue.
Speaker 2:If you ever want to smash some korean barbecue, you call me because, no, I don't.
Speaker 2:I actually have never been a korean barbecue here because of how overpriced it is. I would go, though, but I haven't found enough people to like want to go with me. But like you go, you do the bulgogi, everything on the table. I'll definitely spend some money on that, but like we have, we would go to places and like we would tip them so they would hook us up. So it's like you know, like they would give us like three bottles for one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, culture only.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, and you know you owe them 500 exactly so, so, so if, like, the bill was like 80 bucks, we would give them like 130, you know, because we're all tipping out like 10 here, 20 here, you know, and then like the next time around, they're giving us all this extra food, they're giving us extra soju, is it was a great place? I I don't know if not many people know this I got lasik there and I got lasik there and the the thing was is I put so I wore glasses my whole life and my buddy's wife went out in town there and got lasik and she was like it's great, this. They sat the whole nine. I applied for LASIK through the Navy but since I wasn't considered in like a condition one combat zone, I wasn't like essential, so they put me at like I don't know, tier three, condition three, and I had to wait like three years or whatever the case was.
Speaker 2:So I did my own research and I found the place into town and I bought it to my command and I was like hey, like you know, can I get it out in town? I know it's not through the military and they're like you can, but you know. So I sat down with the commanding officer and he was like these are the stipulations. Like you have to pay for it. We're not going to give you medical leave for it. You have to take your vacation leave, if you know, to recover. And that was pretty much it. Like you're accepting the risks. Of this is a place that great reviews. Not a single this at the whole nine. And I went in and I went for the test, I qualified for it and the CEO signed. I was like you sure you want to do this? I said yeah, it's fine, I got LASIK there. Oh, the first five minutes, I don't know if you know you got LASIK you know anyone with LASIK?
Speaker 1:For some reason, I don't like wearing my glasses. I don't like the feeling of everything being blurry and then this is like tack sharp. Yeah, it freaks me out a little bit. I was, and I used to, I guess, as my vision is becoming more poor due to not only aging but looking at screens all the time and whatnot I'm finding there, I used to love wearing my glasses all the time.
Speaker 1:Now I'm finding it harder and harder to want to wear them for prolonged periods of time, because it generally does feel very strange to me as my, as my prescription is getting stronger oh yeah.
Speaker 2:well, mine got worse and worse and worse and this was when I really started to like dive into fitness, because it was just a military culture, you know, working out this and that, and I'd be running and my glasses would be bouncing up and down. I was like I can't do this anymore, you know. So I was like you know what I'm gonna try? Because contacts were burning my I couldn't do glasses anymore. I've never tried contacts. So I tried them twice and I mean contacts do burn your eyes. At first that's kind of the point I just hated it and I was like you know what, let me try this whole LASIK thing, you know. And the first I'm going to be real with you. It takes about 10 minutes. It's like five minutes each eye. The first five minutes, I know.
Speaker 1:I've heard. Please list it down for people that don't.
Speaker 2:Okay, and I'm just going to be I'm going to be squirming when you're talking about this. I'm going to be brutally honest here. It doesn't hurt. So this is what they do. They put a clamp in that holds your eye open. Then they put eye drops in. It's like a numbing eye drop so you don't feel pain. I felt no pain. I want to say I felt no pain during this. I felt zero pain. But the problem is that you have this clamp and they tell you if you look away, it's going to screw your eye up. So you have to watch your eye get taken apart. They take the top layer off. They laser into it. They got to do put it back on. And you are watching all of it happen. You are staring into this laser. You smell the burning because they're doing know, doing whatever the hell they gotta do doesn't hurt. It does not hurt a single bit. It is just the scare mind fuck it is.
Speaker 2:It is the biggest mind fuck to sleep bro, they can't do that because when you sleep, your eyes go to the back of your head and you have to stare and they literally tell me, they told you over and over again if you look away, this is gonna hurt, this is gonna you're not gonna be able to see out of your eye.
Speaker 1:It's gonna fuck you up. Don't fuck me up like that.
Speaker 2:So it's listen, it's it I, I. I was hyperventilating for the first bit of it. They stopped. I said, all right, you know, let's go back into it. And then after that they did my left eye, no problems. But that, my right eye, that that for that five minutes was. It felt like an hour and it was terrifying. But they did my left eye. I calmed down, they did my, okay, well, nevermind, that really wasn't so bad, as long as I look forward, right. And then, after they tape you up, then my buddy took me out. He helped me. My roommate at the time, gabe Murray, shout out Gabe Murray, I miss that guy Shout out to the homie.
Speaker 2:Yeah, shout out to the homie. I hope he's doing well. He helped tape up the windows that we had in our barracks so we put like blackened them out and stuff like that, and light is tough, so the first couple of days are pretty tough. Yeah, uh, I healed generally quick, though I think I was only so. I took I think 10 days or 11 days of leave and I was back at work after like the fifth or sixth day. Were you able to get those other days back.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So so I was able to, I was able to cancel my leave early and I got those five days back because I well, I told them, I, I, this is what I said I said, hey, I was like it was the first two or three days I couldn't really see, but then, like, then they tell you to gradually introduce light, so then I would put sunglasses on and then turn a light on here and turn a light on here, you know. And then it got to a point where, like I went outside at night with sunglasses on and I was sitting there or I was walking around, and then, like I would take my sunglasses off at night and I would just kind of look at street lights, and it was a little bright, you know. And I kind of just told him I'm like, hey, like I can come back. But I was like, if a room is super, super light, you know I'm gonna have to put sunglasses on.
Speaker 2:You know I'll keep sunglasses on inside, but like I can see, you know, like put them on night duty yeah, no, no, no, stamp on no I well, I I'm trying to remember I think we were on nights at the time and and I think it did work out like that but like in our like dispatch area we had lights on and stuff and they were like, yeah, we don't care if you're you know, it is what it is. You got to wear sunglasses, so and. But then after that, I mean, it was just, and then just gradually got better and better. But my eyes are still a little bit more sensitive. I put eye drops in every morning, like because they dry out a little bit. Um, you know, I wear sunglasses in most places that more people don't, you know, like, if only like a shred of light is coming through, I'll put sunglasses on just cause they're sensitive. But night and day, man, you know, I'm able to see now.
Speaker 2:um, you know, I'm knock on wood, I'm, I think I'm, you know I'm still a 2020. Um, so, any him? So career, yeah, I don't know, $7,000 or something like that Is that expensive, or? Cheap. I paid $1,300 for both of my eyes and then the medical eye drops after.
Speaker 2:Pennies to the dollar. That seems to be most procedures. Pennies to the dollar? Well, that's what I'm saying. So they are so advanced and so ahead, and this was 2016. At the time, lasik here is probably still even more, and there you're paying just over a grand for it. You know, and it's you said 7,000?. I want to say, I think, roughly a LASIK, but it also depends on how bad your eyes are, but I think the average is like 6,000 or 7,000. Yeah, so go ahead and enlighten me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm curious.
Speaker 2:Yeah, If you just search it. What are the average LASIK procedures in the United States?
Speaker 1:LASIK. On average, lasik costs between $2,000 per eye to $4,000 or more per eye per eye. So that's what they're saying, but then there was an ad up top, so that's $4,000 to $8,000, depending on your eyes. It was an ad up top LASIK Garden City highest rated LASIK clinic. We've made premium LASIK more affordable $3,000 for both eyes for a limited time. That's not bad yeah.
Speaker 2:That's not bad, but regardless, 2016, I paid $1,200 for both eyes. It was great. So South Korea was cool. I had a lot of fun there. Like I said, the work wasn't I want to visit South Korea. It was a great call I definitely would recommend.
Speaker 2:Not many people really know what goes on out there. And then from there, um, I went to japan for a week. Japan was cool, so, jealous, uh, I. Well, I didn't get to do much there. I was only there for a week, um, but I was on like temporary duty there. We had to do like it was like some sort of intoxilizer thing that we were doing for like road stops. Um, I did they drinking and driving out there. Well, no, we were getting trained on the new intoxilizer that we had to administer in case, you know, there was suspicion of dui or anything like that.
Speaker 2:So then my two years were up and then I ended up scoring a really good deal. I was supposed to go to an aircraft carrier after I was supposed to go to the USS Nimitz out of Washington. At the time, this was 2016. Is that the dream or no? It was not the dream. I was applying for other overseas duty stations and I was getting shot down for all of them, but the order writing system like crashed and like 5,000 people lost their orders and I was supposed to leave Korea in like three weeks and I didn't have orders. And I'm like, uh, what's going on here? So I talked to the detailer and I ended up scoring really good orders to this really small Naval base in town called Gaeta, which is in Italy, and it's a little, uh, harbor security command, so little tiny boats driving around and stuff. The USS Mount Whitney was there, so we were doing port security for them. And when I tell you that 2016 to 2018 in Italy were the best years of my life, they were the best years of my life.
Speaker 2:I loved Italy. Man, my workload was not too heavy. You know, we did boat maintenance, we drove around, but like it was never anything crazy because, like you know, when the Mount Whitney was in, we didn't we only didn't really have to deal with them, but like it was a small command, there was no barracks, so I had an apartment out in town. Um, you know, on the weekends that we were off, as long as we were in good behavior, we were able to go pretty much anywhere in the European union for the three days that we were off and we didn't have to take vacation, we just had to like, pretty much, ask for a request to go Me, asked for a request to go Me and my buddies. We saw like, oh my God. I want to say it was like 13 or 14 countries I've been to. Austria, I've been to I don't even want to start where I've been to. Europe was beautiful. Man, I don't know how much of Europe you've seen, but Europe was.
Speaker 1:I've done, I've done. Switzerland, italy, france, germany did a little Greece. Great Greece was the most beautiful water?
Speaker 2:I don't really remember.
Speaker 1:It's Spain too.
Speaker 2:Spain, I don't really remember too much of in Spain. Spain was cool, yeah, but Italy.
Speaker 1:So I guess the Navy poster wasn't lying.
Speaker 2:So, so I, I did see the world, yeah.
Speaker 2:So when I, when I got off initial active duty in 2018, I think I had like 20 countries under my belt or it was like 18 or 19 countries under my belt and I got out because I was, I wanted to go reserves.
Speaker 2:Well, after I'm sorry, after that, let me let me backtrack a little bit they said that if I wanted to stay in, they were going to send me to Nebraska to like an Air Force base, and the work there wasn't that good. I didn't think it was going to be rewarding to my career. So I was like you know what I was, like, I'm going to still keep my uniform, I'm going to go into the reserves, but I'm going to go home, go to school, you know, and and and so on and so forth. So I came home, I went to school for a year, but then, um, I signed up for a deployment that I can't really talk about. It's kind of well, no, it's one of those things, but let's just say that. Let's just say that the the whole night I got to train with a bunch of guys that were, you know, bad dudes, if you get what I mean.
Speaker 1:Where were you when they killed Osama?
Speaker 2:Exactly, yeah, exactly, like one of those things. So, you know, I got to wear normal clothes for seven months. I didn't have to wear a uniform. We were all on a first name basis. You know, it was one of those things, great time. I'll probably go back out with them in a couple years, uh, when my time is up again.
Speaker 2:But, um, the military has been great man and, and you know, it got me my bachelor's degree, it got me, you know, my foot in the door with a lot of things that help, help with you know what it did help with a lot of networking and one of the things that I, you know, I got a recommendation letter from this guy. I reached out to this guy. This at the whole nine, especially because, being in the reserves, there's always orders going on everywhere oh, you're here, oh, hey, I'm trying to come out to where you are. Can you see if they have any like two or three month billets here? This that the whole nine. Um, and I met a lot of solid guys, like a lot of solid dudes, and one of the things that I actually always say is I have the biggest love hate relationship with social media, the biggest love hate relationship I know you've talked about it on pretty much every single one of your podcasts. I'm just going to say my two cents of why I'm grateful for it. I want you to. My two cents of why I'm grateful for it is because I joined the military at a time where Facebook was kicking off. Instagram wasn't hot until a couple years ago but I still talk to guys that I know. Is it simple enough to get someone's number and download WhatsApp and text them and this and that like, yeah, of course I could do that. You know, because everyone is in different parts of the world and WhatsApp is the most common, you know texting app, no matter where you are.
Speaker 2:Um, but I still talk to the guys in Korea, like I'm in a group chat with them and I've been in a group chat with them since 2014. We play fantasy football every year. Some of them are still in the military and deployed. Some of them are civilians. Some of them are civilian reservists, like me. We are scattered all over and I'm going to talk to these guys till the day I die. We're going to play fantasy every year. We talk UFC. We all used to get together for UFC fights, so when UFC events are going on. It'll be like 5 pm in this guy's time zone, it's 1 am here I'm falling asleep. You know this, that, and they're all great dudes and we BS day and night.
Speaker 2:Some, all my guys from Italy, you know, I still talk to them every now and then, um, you know, so social media has it's. I'm grateful for that because I'll see what they're doing on Facebook or what they're doing on Instagram. Some people post a lot. Some's been good, you know, like, whatever the case is, it's awesome to see him doing this, doing that. So that, and I want to say for that reason, and that reason only, is why I'm grateful for social media. I think social media is a disaster. Otherwise, obviously, I can't talk too much about it, because I'm a guy that uses social media not a lot, but a little bit. And but I'm just so happy to still talk to those dudes and I'm going to talk to them forever and I hope, like you know, down the road I'll run into them somewhere, because when I got to especially Korea, you know, I didn't know anyone there you know, and I became close with a certain amount of people and then we'd go out, we'd party, we'd do, we'd work, we'd in 2016,.
Speaker 2:It's like telling yourself like, wow, I came really close to these guys and I may never see them again, you know, and um, you know, one of the things that sucked was, uh, that guy, chris, I was telling you about before who I worked with. He was an MP with me and, uh, we were doing the jujitsu and the competitions together. I think about a year after I left, I got word that he passed away and I still, to this day, kind of don't know what happened. I, I, I there's something about a blood clot, but I don't know. And that's like you always wish you could say more and do this, you know and do that, and, and you know so, I lost him a year after I was super close with him.
Speaker 2:Um, a guy I grew up with. God rest his soul, chris, and God rest my buddy TJ, who I worked at Applebee's with. He joined the Marines. He came back. He unfortunately took his life. He got out of the military. I guess he decided that the civilian world wasn't accepting of him and he didn't want to be here anymore and it's just like.
Speaker 2:I'm grateful for a lot in the military and the bonds that I've built and the friendships that I've had, but I've also lost a decent amount of people on the way too. And, um, you know, when I first especially, like you know, with the guys that I did lose you know, I started doing probably towards 2017, 2018, I started doing the Murph, and the Murph challenge was based on, you know, michael Murphy, operation red wings. We all know, know that, and I was grateful enough that the first year that I did it at og, evan and taylor were just awesome about it. They didn't even do an event for it. Like, taylor was like, hey, I'm just gonna come. You know, you guys can do it.
Speaker 2:And taylor, it was me. This guy, mike, um, I don't know if you know him. He was, uh, he's in, uh, brazil now he's, he's working with the feds, um, but he was the dude that always had a vest on every class huge, built like a truck. He had the uh, the the 75th ranger regiment tattoo on the back of his shoulder if I showed up, yeah if I showed you a picture of him, it's tough when I don't interact with people on a daily.
Speaker 1:I don't yeah, you know I, you know the name quick, of course.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah so, so, when, when, when that rolled around on april weekend, like they were like, hey, hey, like you know, just coming at this time, and it was me, him and this girl, diana, who's an NYPD cop she's awesome people, and it was just the three of us we came in I wrote on the board hey, this is what we're doing. And then I wrote for Chris, for TJ, and then, you know, and Taylor was there, you is, when they do it, you know, and then that kind of like move forward, and then, like evan made an event out of it, you know, like, like, like last year, you know, he told me he was like hey, like you know, this is, it was, I think, I think it was supposed to fall on like a leg day, and he was like hey, guys, we're doing the today.
Speaker 1:He's like this is what the workout is and this is I was there last year, I had exactly yeah, I had a hurt AC joint so I couldn't do it Exactly.
Speaker 2:Listen, I try to do my best with it too. Now I can do it, but I can't do it as fast as I used to be able to. What is it running down again? It's a mile run 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 squats, and then another mile run. Some do it with the vest, some do it without the vest. It's just one of those things. It's one of those things that every year that you know, I get to look back and think on, like the times that I had with those guys and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:You know, they, they, they contributed to all the fallen members of the military. Obviously it was for michael murphy, who was out of you know, uh, out of. Ron conkama actually died with an FDNY patch on for, for I think it was his dad that was. That was FDNY, you know. But it's like a commemorative for, you know, everyone that has passed away in the military.
Speaker 2:And when I would show up to do it, I would write on a piece of paper for Chris and for Chris and for TJ, and, like you know, and my, my piece of paper just sat on the floor and no one touched it. You know people would go by it and look down because, but I, I scotch tape that piece of paper to the floor and people would go by it, this and that, and there was like two guys that would look at the piece of paper and then they would look back at me because I mean, listen, I had a vest on but you could tell I was military, I had my unit patch, I had this, I had that, you know whatever. So they would. So they would, they would turn. Guys just looked at me and they're like, yeah, that's it right there. So, but like it started with, his passing Murph, Murph.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it started. What is the significance of the workout, though? Is there a reason that was his favorite workout to do? That was his favorite workout, I figured it was either something that he did or something like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so when he passed and Red Wings happened great book, even, you know, great book, great movie Um, you know, they came back and they said like this was his favorite workout to do and they made something out of it. So, but anywho, you know, it's just, you know, the military has been great with my mindset and it's developed me as a man and as a person. Um, you know it just, and I have, I've had a lot of ups, I've had a lot of ups and a lot of downs, know, and, and it's just like, I'm grateful for everything I've done, things that I continue to do. You know, um, you know I'm not going to sit here and say, say, say, I'm a hero, but you know, I I've, I've seen a lot of the world. I've seen a lot of the world that a lot of people don't see, and I'm not just talking, going to europe partying this out the whole nine.
Speaker 2:I've seen some things where, again, like I, you know, they can't really talk about it, but you, just but urge of the earth but there's, there's certain countries that are just like legit war zones and people going back to I guess what the second or third point of politics and complaining about politics here, and this is wrong with the united states and that's wrong with the united states.
Speaker 2:They don't understand like perspective, like, okay, this is what the problems are in the united states we're working on. We might be working on them, we might not be working on them, but you guys need to understand something like we are a powerhouse of the world. There is so much wrong with the middle east, there's so much wrong with asia, there's. So there is, there's, there's stuff that's wrong with europe. You know, like there's great countries out there that are awesome don't get, get me wrong but like I've seen, just like I go past some stuff or read about some stuff that will never be in the news, no one's ever going to know about it, but like it's just like one of those things where I'm like I can't believe people are complaining about this.
Speaker 1:I have friends that are spec up guys that they just probably they disappear for a few months and then they come back and you're like, oh hey, what's up? Man, how you been.
Speaker 2:They're like crazy shit man yeah Well, kind of crazy shit, just crazy shit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. At this point I know what to ask. I just go. I'm glad you're good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's not even just that.
Speaker 1:But if you were to ask them that too, like more so with the false realities that people believe yeah, exactly, yeah, that that the only bubble they know is oh my god, I hate to use this fucking buzzword, the echo chamber.
Speaker 1:I hate that everyone uses that word, someone used it and everyone uses it now. But the echo chamber of their life, of what they see on social media, or the celebrities or this or that, and oh well, why isn't my life like that? I need to go to art, bathel and all these different stuff. It's. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not living a good life if I don't get to go to the formula one race in vegas for 3 500 a ticket. Yeah, nah, bro, like there's a lot that you got going on, that you don't, that you really don't understand and know about all all you read and see is what's going on and what's wrong in america, like I mean, over the past couple years, unfortunately.
Speaker 2:You know we have and I we're not going to dive into it, but like, but like we have. We have israel and gaza going on right now. We have, we have russia and ukraine, but like there's, but no, but I'm gonna leave it at that. I'm gonna leave it at that is like, but no, I'm going to leave it at that. I'm going to leave it at that. It's like, but, but that has the potential of growing full scale and there's so much going on over there.
Speaker 2:But then people are still waking up and complaining about what's going on in America. There are families getting shelled in the Middle East, there are families that wake up to gunfire. There are families, you know, there are wives and children that are being taken away from their husbands because their husbands are being recalled to active duty to fight for their homeland. You know and I'm not gonna sit here, talk about sides or anything, but like they are in. There's so many places. And not even just that, too. There are warlords and militias. You ever see, um uh, 13 hours, the story of benghazi no put that on your list, okay, um, it's, yeah, yeah, 13 hours.
Speaker 2:The story of benghazi that was about, um, a cia stronghold in libya that was taken over by a local militia and, uh, grs, which was a bunch of retired spec ops guys there was eight of them defending against, like 500.
Speaker 1:Is this the one that clinton left? Is that the one? Is that the benghazi?
Speaker 2:yeah, I don't know, I don't know truthfully, I don't.
Speaker 1:I don't. If you want to dive into it, truthfully, I know nothing about you you just you hear benghazi, and then I hear, I think clinton, because that's all I hear. It was yeah, and I have no idea.
Speaker 2:Yes, so there was eight dudes defending a cia stronghold. We lost, uh, we lost two of them, we lost the ambassador. But then, like that's what I'm saying like there's all these militias going for power, black hawk down, you know, you know the desert storm that was, you know, that was a mess within itself because we were sending all these army guys to go to the middle east trying to, you know, um, trying to maintain a stronghold. But local militias, local warlords, this that the whole nine. There's so much in history that happens that a lot of people don't know about because they just live in this bubble that is the United States, and they don't. I get it. You don't want to worry about the problems of other people, you want to focus on yourself. But they're like oh, the United States is wrong with this, oh, the United States is wrong with that, oh, we're doing this, we're doing that. Like this world is a mess.
Speaker 1:Would you still and obviously you have to have some type of a, some type of a tailored response due to the your active role in the military?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Would you still consider the America to be a powerhouse of the of the world?
Speaker 2:Yes, Because I, I, I a hundred percent do, and I'll tell you why. Because we have all these bases and outposts in every other country there's. I was in a Naval base in South Korea. Does South Korea have a naval base in the United States you hear about?
Speaker 1:No, you know, but you hear about. You know all these different things with like China having now.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Police forces like little things in the US, as like hubs and whatnot, but it's not a full-blown military base.
Speaker 2:We have bases everywhere around the world, sketchy, and we are the only country that has bases all over the world. Zacky guns, sketchy, sketchy. So, but no, but that's, that's big government. You know I'm. I'm here to do my part and do what I got to do. Whether I agree or disagree, I wear a uniform for a reason.
Speaker 1:There's a reason why I'm in there's a reason why I haven't gotten out, you know. But all of my friends that have gotten out they say they wish they never did, they wish they had stayed.
Speaker 2:Well, everyone has a different perspective.
Speaker 1:Every single one.
Speaker 2:A lot of people that get out, it's because they disagree with what the government is doing, and I'm not saying I agree or disagree with everything that happens, and I'm not even saying that's why they got out, there's the switch of career.
Speaker 1:Whatever their reasoning for having left, whatever it is, it is what I'm saying the switching career going from military. Military especially, because I mean, what do most military guys turn to? They turn to cops. Exactly. That's like the life that they know, at least in that form. Yeah, yeah, on civilian type. Yeah, yeah, land. But now you have them on that perspective and they go, wow, I can't fucking stay. I wish I was still in the military.
Speaker 2:Everyone's different, everyone's different, but it's just in. In total it's the military's taught me a lot. It has made, made me a pretty spot, like I don't want to say a pretty spot on person, but I'm very, I'm pretty attentive to detail. Like I said, I'm early to everything. You know. Like you know, that's one of the things that's forever in my head. I make my bed every single day, you know, and I make, you know, like I used to make my bed a certain way.
Speaker 2:Now, you know, and, um, admiral bill mcraven, you know, he started that whole video of you know, of the steps you take in a day to, you know, to make your day better and to be more productive, and it was. And the speech that he made as the chancellor of the university of texas was, you know, as a navy seal for over 40 years. The first thing you have to do when you wake up in the morning is make your bed. It's not waking up and killing the bad guys, it's waking up and making your bed, and now it's doing this and it's doing that, you know. So he's he's a pretty good read too. I don't know if you're a big reader, but bill mcraven, he I've become more, uh, more, yeah, more of a regular reader yeah, so he's, he's.
Speaker 2:If you ever need a good read, uh, bill mcraven he's. He's got some pretty good books, um. But you know, the military has a bunch of ups and downs for everyone, you know. And, and it's had more ups and downs for me, and I'm happy for what I do and the perspective that it's given me, because if I didn't have the perspective on life now, if I didn't have it, then you know like I feel like I would just be another person that lives in the bubble that's the United States, and I'm not opening my mind to what's really happening around the world and seeing. You know countries doing this and countries doing that, and countries denying people of this and this and that, and all the hundreds and thousands of innocent people that die that never make the news. So the news only puts out there what they want you to know. Isn't that sad?
Speaker 1:A lot of people don't know that. They don't know that they're just being told what they feel like being what they want them to be told. I have seen so many things that no one will know you know, most people will never understand that for the entire time that they're alive they will never know they're never going to understand.
Speaker 2:All they know is what they see on TV and how we're doing this and we're doing that. You know, and it's just. It is what it is. I'm not going to call them wrong for it. Scary it definitely is, you know, and that's why it's like when you start thinking in that terms.
Speaker 1:What do you think that we've else? We've been told that just to be told and not actually told the full picture.
Speaker 2:Okay, some point yeah so, but it's uh. It's been a good run man. You know I've been in 10 years. I plan on doing another 10 more. You know, we'll see until they kick me out.
Speaker 1:Uh, but it's uh you know I was gonna say what is the progression now?
Speaker 2:I'm still going, man. You know, uh, my, my reserve unit supports, uh, the command in naples, italy. So I'm grateful I get to go to italy once a year have some bruschetta, have a little bit of wine you know what I'm saying. So, uh, I definitely want to get out and deploy again. Uh, maybe, maybe in another couple years. You know, try to get that under the belt. Uh, you know where do you want to go?
Speaker 1:well, I want to.
Speaker 2:It depends on where they need you Well, yeah, so there's a couple places right now, but I want to get back to doing what I did before, the one that I can't really shake and talk about much. The other ones aren't really as interesting. That one's kind of better for networking and career. Like I said, I had a ton of fun out there. I was shooting a lot.
Speaker 2:The one thing I will say because I think I was able to cross the equator, I got my shell back, so we got to. I don't know. You know, the shell back is a big thing with the navy, you know so, so that was super cool. Um, is that something I should ask you off camera? Well, the, the shell back is a navy tradition where, uh, it's like this, like I can't talk about what it totally is, but it's like it's like a rite of passage for crossing the equator, okay, and then, like there's, like you know, certain events that happen. It's I'm gonna call it hazing, but it's like it, it's it's a lot of challenges and stuff that happens and it's it's, it's, it's pretty funny, it's a lot of fun on the other side of it now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you've come out the other side oh, it's great though, but like I have a new man, yeah, yeah, yeah, but but like I have, like, my, I have my plaque. I want to get, uh, like my tattoo, like I want to get tattooed the coordinates of where I crossed. It's like a Navy rite of passage thing. I want to say it's like you can't really say you're not in the Navy until you get your shell back. But a lot of people kind of hold that, because I have friends that have never been on ships and it's like, yeah, you got to get out there, you got to earn your way. You know what I'm saying. They don't just throw you on a ship, right? No, no, no, no. Well, I I did of.
Speaker 2:You know, I did four years on land in the navy before I got out, and a lot of people do. It also depends on your job as well, you know. But like my job doing pulling security and stuff like that, like we are a majority land-based, like, uh, a majority land-based job, we're protecting bases, you know where, you know we're standing the gates and this and that and the whole nine not saying it's the most exciting thing, but that's what the navy s out of us. But yeah, I mean, I have a ton of friends, myself included, you know, up until 2018, like I never saw a ship until later, later on in my life, you know so. But it's uh, it's good on perspective and mindset.
Speaker 1:100 um, you know how long do we get to keep you here for right now. What do you mean in new york?
Speaker 2:you've been here for a little oh yeah, you know, I like, like I said, I drill here, uh, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm doing all right here. I'm actually on orders in the city right now with, uh, this, uh, with the state naval militia doing, um, you know, with the migrants, and it's helped me to be a better leader. So, and I and I will say that it's helped me be a better leader because I'm doing a lot of different tasks and and and and stuff like that, so I can't really complain about that, especially because I have good military orders in this state. I get to come home every day. You know it's not a combat zone. You know I'm working, I'm working an eight hour shift and I'm coming home, you know. So it's, um, it's, it's, it's, you know. So.
Speaker 1:Have you been?
Speaker 2:hitting OG. What have you been hitting OG? No, I've. I've been out of navy for a little bit and, um, when I, when I was, oh, when I was in italy, I was, I was in italy, I I threw my back out and I was like, all right, let me try to get better. And then I did get better and I was like you know what I just kind of want to, like, preserve a little bit more, like I'm, I'm gonna go back, I'm 100, I'm definitely gonna, you know, I'm gonna go back. Just right now I'm trying to, you know, trying to build up some more strength and avoid. You know, I've had little nicks in here my knee, my, you know, my, my calf, this out the whole nine, and I just want to focus more on my mobility and my recovering and and then, when I'm healthy enough, to go back, because, like I said, oh, geez, you know, it's an hour of just pedal to the metal, you know, and it's nice it's nice to go in, get your shit done, just be yeah yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 2:So it's, uh, it's, it's, it's, it's been great, uh, you know, like a, I love, I love, og, og, it's, it's, it's a good place. Just right now I need to kind of focus on the recovery aspect of things yeah, I have to. I'm the king of the injured reserve. I said that since day one. So yeah, dude, I have.
Speaker 1:I've always had herniated discs, since I was like 18 years old. Yeah, yeah, yeah, in a bad car accident and I just herniated L5, s1. Oof, and it sucked for a long time. I couldn't even put my shoes on without being in pretty excruciating pain.
Speaker 1:But the guy that I worked with the doctor after I did my first bodybuilding prep with the bullshit guy, he had told me deadlift and I looked at him like he was fucking nuts. I said deadlift for my back pain. He said, yeah, you need to build up strength down there and this, and that he's told me to do sumo deadlifting because it'll build up more glute and more posterior. I said, okay, cool, did it? Nope, I mean, if I threw my back out which happens every now and then, because you know it just happens even when you're young, we're at that age I was like early and late mid-20s I'd still have like a, you know, throw my back out the wrong way, or I yanked a deadlift instead of just smoothly pulling it. Yeah and uh, it got so much better. One day at og last, uh, last year, I forget when it must have been during the summer tyler and I were working out together and it was one where we were doing deadlift to like clean press and for some reason, dude, I just moved the wrong way.
Speaker 1:It wasn't even heavy, wasn't even my lower back, the door. I must've herniated a disc in the middle of my back ever since. It's still every so often like certain. Oh yeah, if my elbows are fully pinched back like that, every so often, like certain movements, if my elbows are fully pinched back like that, I feel it. Super early in the morning I feel it and it goes away. It doesn't hurt when I roll, it doesn't hurt anything, but you just know it's there, yep. So ever since then I'm just like fuck man. I really just wanted to keep the herniations to, like those I go to a chiropractor times a week.
Speaker 2:I'm going to play the game.
Speaker 1:For years now he's been working with him and he's been on the podcast too. Derlin, he's fucking awesome, yeah. But yeah, I got to get better with the recovery. You've inspired me again to download the Pliability app.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Pliability, I got to download that. But I feel like at this age especially guys like us that push it, man, you know, I feel like at this age it's about preserving yourself.
Speaker 1:We're not six days a week on top of OG, at least three to four.
Speaker 2:You got to preserve yourself and like, especially if you're working out hard and you feel something click when you're going heavy, like I might need to take it down a little bit today. You know exactly yeah.
Speaker 1:Dude, it's very, it's very difficult for me sometimes when we're doing shoulder presses at og and I'm in a much different stage of training in my life not that I'm weak, or oh yeah I'm. I'm actually just as strong, if not stronger, but I can't shoulder press the 150s anymore yeah, it's weird yeah, because I have shoulder injuries that I obviously haven't taken care of so like I'll go to press the 80s, 90s and dude, I get the craziest pinches inside.
Speaker 1:My shoulder Doesn't hurt when I do anything else, when I roll, when I frame, no problem, but the second I do 90 pounds and up on the shoulder just sitting vertically and pressing pain. So it's like I have to be cognizant of these things. But guess what?
Speaker 2:Tell me you still got up and you shoulder pressed, I shoulder pressed. And millions of people wake up every day and they don't even touch 20 pounds. I shoulder press, man, that's what I every time. Every day I go to the gym, no matter whether I go heavy, I go light, I run fast, I run slow, I'll do a mile. I might run a mile in seven and change. I might run a mile in nine and change. I might run a mile in 10 and change Depends. I still did a mile. I'm excited how many other people didn't do a mile.
Speaker 1:I'm excited for it to get warm again.
Speaker 2:I love running outside.
Speaker 1:We got cock-teased, bro, for a couple weeks and then all of a sudden, the ass-cracker winter just came back and just said hey, I'm still here.
Speaker 2:Well, you know what this might be the military in me? I love cold running.
Speaker 1:Now get out.
Speaker 2:I haven't. I haven't done in much this year, um, and that's kind of on my fault because I've just been, I guess, spoiled the running inside. But I want to say maybe like a month, month and a half ago, I woke up and I put all this stuff on and my girlfriend was like where are you going? And I was like I'm going to run and it was like it was like 35 degrees out and and I, I would, I would. I was at a time at that time and I do want to bring this back, it's completely my fault, but I was doing a 5k a week. So one day I would wake up and it was like my I guess I'm psychotic enough to call it an active rest day my active rest day was doing a 5k and I how?
Speaker 1:okay, so I I can agree with that. Yeah, job first off. Yeah, second off, though. But how was the run? Was it a? Was it a very intense run? Was it something that you were pounding through? Or was it something that you were just doing? And it didn't matter how much time it took you, you're just getting it done. It depended on the day, because Because I can agree with you when you say it's an active recovery day if you were going light and just cozying about and you were just getting the miles on the shoes.
Speaker 2:Some days I would go at like a jogging pace. You know, I had like the Under Armour running app and I would like see my pace and how I'm doing. Some days were 10 something each, you know whatever. But then, like, if I felt good, then I would try to end. You know, as you know, with a lot of running people you try to go for negative splits. So I might start at a jog and then my second mile will be faster and then my third mile will be faster. Other days I might start fast and then I'll just gradually get slower. I don't know, I would kind of try.
Speaker 2:There was no really method to my madness. For me it was like I just want to get a 5k done, and 5k is what? Like three and a half three, uh, 3.1. Okay, yeah, three, yeah, 3.1. Um, I do, uh, especially when it's nice.
Speaker 2:I mean, now it's been different with my work schedule but, like last year, I was doing like a ton of charity 5ks, you know. So they do the lieutenant mike murphy 5k in the summer. Um, I was. I do that every year. I, that's the one 5k I try to hammer in. Um, I did like the hot dog fire department 5k. I did like a cancer 5k, like I'm all about just giving to charity and using fitness as like a charity tool, donating, doing what I can and everyone's different, I get that, but like I just enjoyed showing up, putting in miles to test myself, but also donating to a good charity. And you know, for I I even did one, I think I did one for like teachers once, for like an education foundation, you know, for, for, for, for the, for uh, for uh, scholarships for the underprivileged kids.
Speaker 2:So like doing donating for that, donating for this, you know, like, if it's for a good cause, I'm, I'm probably in more than anything yeah um, so when the weather gets nice, yeah, no, I listen, I'll thrive on running and stuff like this, but there is nothing, I guess, for me because I'm psycho more peaceful than like 35 degrees outside with a beanie and a long sleeve on and just going. You know, I'll start, don't get me wrong, I'll be freezing, but then, like once you, once I warm up, like you know, like uh, and I can get my stride going. Now I won't run as fast because the cold air, you know, you know, cold air, you know. But that's the good trainings, yeah. So like I can't, like if I that in freezing cold, I'll try to keep it at nine something, or else I'll gas out and I'll be heaving.
Speaker 1:I like running super hot with a super hot weather, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Some people won't run super hot Carps off.
Speaker 1:You go to Jones Beach shirtless, with just a pair of shorts on, and you just go, dude, I go from here I go from my apartment all the way up to the top of Huntington, the way down to Harbor. So all the boats in the summertime and you're on Harbor Road, everyone's at the beach and shit like that, and you're just fucking going and you just got music on and you're just chilling.
Speaker 2:I just try, when I do run, I try to avoid like heavily, like big streets with a lot of cars, you know, because you don't want to, constantly you want to stop.
Speaker 2:Look at both cross, you know. So, like when I do run, like I know my area enough, when I do run, I try to stay in like the back streets, and it's like it may not be like a good view but I at least don't have to break my stride and wait for like a red light, green light, this, that the whole nine. You know, because that's what pisses me off more than anything is when, like when I lose my stride and like I, you know, I'm like, oh, now I gotta pause it. Then I have to go on my phone, pause it, and then, and then it's hard, but then, like, I'm taking rest and I try not to account rest into it unless I'm trying to be like all right, I'm gonna run a mile, wait a minute and then run another mile, this and that the whole nine. So it's just.
Speaker 2:There's no method to my madness, you know, it just depends on the day. I don't wake up and say I'm gonna do sub eight, I'm gonna do sub nine, I just just do your damn thing. Hey, I woke up and I ran three miles, and that's what matters to me. I could do it in 30 minutes. I could do it in 60 minutes.
Speaker 1:I still woke up and did it. I may have to hit Jits again tonight, do it Get me jazzed up.
Speaker 2:Yeah Listen, movement is a blessing man. There's people that are missing arms. There are people that are missing legs. There are people that don't believe in fitness and moving your body is a gift. Don't matter if it's a six minute mile or 30 minute mile, you still got up and did it. Facts and, like I said, those navy seals and those dudes they wake up and they say that a 20 minute walk is the most important part of your day, and these are dudes who have done bad things, you know that's why I'm so blessed with kenji, because he not he forces me to go outside and walk him because I don't have a yard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we are forced to, like, walk around. Don't get me wrong. Sometimes I cheap out on the wall. Oh yeah, it's, it's too fucking cold and I go. Bro, I know you're built for this weather. I am not.
Speaker 1:Even if I'm bundled up and just the wind's hitting you, of course, of course we're going back to the house. But once it starts getting nicer which it was for a couple of weeks, I mean, I walk all the way up to prime with him. We do a nice two and a half three mile just walk, and he's like he's not having it yet.
Speaker 2:He's like I'm not a.
Speaker 1:Malinois bro, what the fuck. My bones are a little bigger and heavier than this. He's not having it, but it's nice because we get to like walk around, see things, get the fresh air, this and that, and then you know obviously you've heard my sp just on the other, one full time. But now my close friends that have the number and my family, they're starting to just hit me up on the personal line, which my mom at first was just like I don't know which one to hit you up on, and now she just hits me up on both and if I don't answer on one she calls me on the other. So now she's got two mean nicky, yeah, nicky, what the fuck? So everything is uh everything's good dude.
Speaker 2:Yeah, now listen, it's every you know. And and I'll say one more thing, and this is going to be kind of upsetting, but it's just kind of something I want to get out into the world, because so I lost my mom last year and it was an unfortunate battle with complications of a stroke, and while I was sad and upset, what put my life into perspective was that there was a woman who was in the room next to my mom and she was coming down from cancer. She went terminal, had six months to live. She had a four-year-old and a one-year-old. And while I was upset because I think I'm decently young and I didn't deserve to lose my mom, knowing that I had 30 years with my mom to make memories and enjoy the time that I did have this one-year-old is not going to remember his mother. This four-year-old, if he's lucky, he's going to remember her.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know, when she passed, everyone felt bad. You know, I'm human, I'm allowed to be sad and everything, but the one thing that I emphasize more than anything, and especially on this on on, on this podcast, was life in perspective. You're allowed to be sad and you're allowed to have feelings, but there's always someone out there that has it worse than you. And another quote that I've always lived my life by is that the world does not feel sorry for me. Therefore, I will not feel sorry for myself. Whenever I was training hard and I got injured and I had to sit out, or if I was doing like a fitness test and I didn't get the numbers that I wanted, you know, and that kind of really hammered home, when I lost my mother because I thought about everything going on in the middle east and how many mothers and kids you know are are losing their lives every day out there, how many kids are losing their parents to cancer and all these other unfortunate things at such a young age. So you know, I had 30 years with her and a lot of people can't say that they have 30 years with their parents. And you know, I just you know. I hope that you know.
Speaker 2:Perspective and just all of that I talked about before is that life is not just a little bubble. There is so much more to life and everything that's going on around you and people. That perspective and just all of that I talked about before is that life is not just a little bubble. There is so much more to life and everything that's going on around you and people kind of need to be aware of that. After I lost my mom, I was back at work like a week later. Was I upset? Of course I was, but guess what? I got stuff to do. The world does not feel sorry for me losing my mom. Therefore, I will not feel sorry for myself. So when you're down, like Rocky said, it's just about picking yourself up and going back to it.
Speaker 1:Getting right back to it.
Speaker 2:You know, and getting back to it, you can't sit there and wait for the world to come pick you up. Only you are responsible for picking yourself up. You know what I'm saying. So it's all about wide perspective, man. There's always people that are going to have it better than you. It's healthy to strive for a better life. It is not healthy to feel bad for yourself of the people that have it worse than you. You know, and everything, then it's just everything.
Speaker 1:So when, um, when kenji started having seizures and he had up and he formed epilepsy, uh, it was a very devastating thing to me because I painted the perfect picture of a dog in my head of like, how amazing he is and how amazing he's going to be and how I won't have to deal with health problems until later in life for him. And it was very difficult for me in the beginning, especially because I painted this perfect picture of him on social and life and all these things. And then on the side we're dealing with seizures and you're sitting there crushed every time that one happens. And I don't remember exactly who had said it to me, but somebody had said he doesn't even know, he doesn't feel bad for himself, he has no idea that that's happening. He just knows that he loves you and you're his guy and this and that.
Speaker 1:And I've had to, I've had to battle with the thought process of did I cause this? Was it something? Maybe he hit his head or a pill that I the, the uh tick and flea that I gave him, because they're known to cause neurological issues and I battled with myself for a long time, thinking that this was my fault in some capacity. And it was a very hard battle and until I started realizing that number one, there's a couple of things. Number one that, whether he lives two years a year, six months, 10 years, 15 years, you got to just keep living and having fun with him. Yep, Unfortunately, when shit happens, you just got to deal with it and then get right back to normal life. Exactly, and then, on top of it, one of the other puppies from the litter. A couple of weeks ago I got a message from the breeder.
Speaker 1:They just started having seizures, so it runs in his line.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:So, as I've come to terms mentally with it, it seems like it's spearheaded in like a closure type of a way of like you didn't cause this, it's just in his line yeah and then it brings you back to the perspective of just keep doing what you're doing with him.
Speaker 1:You know, just keep living, keep having fun, keep doing things. It doesn't mean that he's not perfect because he is. He's perfect in his own way. We're all. We all gotta deal with shit. There's other dogs that have seizures and they die a week later, exactly the fact that he's four and he's been having them since he was two on and off. That's two extra years that other people didn't get with their dogs, see, and it's tough to agree with it. Try to bargain with yourself and say yo, it's cool, bro. You have to just realize that it's not you're painting the picture. It's actually a brighter picture.
Speaker 2:Just focus on that what you have is what's in front of you. You know that's and that's kind of it goes. But we were talking. We talk about like injuries, right, like I may not feel like I'm capable of doing you know something, pedal to the metal at full speed without hurting myself. But like I still, you know, would wake up or go to the gym and modify my workouts to where I don't hurt myself. And I go to the gym six days a week now I go to an mass people but like I do a certain program where I know is healthy for me and it's not going to hurt me. You know, like I, I take out heavy hinging movements and and and, and I do a lot of machines cause, machines have a lot of back support and this, and that you know. So that's what I'm focusing on right now. And then for me, oh, I have a shoulder injury or I have a leg injury. Guess what? There's people missing legs, there's people missing arms. Life is perspective.
Speaker 1:I don't speak to my dad anymore. I cut that relationship off. It's okay, it happens, man, but he had MS, or has MS, and he just progressively got worse as I was getting older. So you go from seeing your dad struggle to walk in general to using his hands in the car to like move his legs to the gas pedal, into the brake pedal, to then years, years later, being fully in a wheelchair, do especially the double training sessions and this, and that even though I'm sore and I'm beaten down and I'm tired and I know I need a rest day.
Speaker 1:Sometimes, even though, like I said, we don't speak, I still think of that situation where he can't work out at all. He does PT, but it's. I mean the PT is trying to stand without the support of his chair or crutches or anything like that for more than 20 seconds. So that's his version of working out and you know, I never want to take that for granted. So if I can train and I can do my thing and I can get out there and roll and give other people a tough challenge and work out and do all this different things, movement is a gift, yeah, then it's a win.
Speaker 2:Yes, sir, so that's. That's pretty much it. Zachie guns, you're fucking awesome bro hey, listen, man, I'm. I'm happy to be here. I want to thank for having me. I know this was a long time coming, since a couple months back, so I'm happy to be here. Well worth the wait, yeah you know, I'm not an influencer or Instagram famous by any means. I do have the drum page. If there's any musicians out there that want to talk drums or just talk life, I'm out here.
Speaker 1:I want you to give everybody the plugs, but, however, I just want to say that I never, no matter how large or stagged, whatever it might be, no matter how big or small this podcast winds up being in the long run, I never need or want famous people. I don't fucking care Exactly I don't care how many followers, because I guarantee you that, out of most of the influencers that I know, you have more substance to you than any of them no dead serious, no than any of them no dead serious, no dead serious.
Speaker 2:Thanks, man, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:You have more substance to you than a lot of these other people. And that's really what this is about. It's about substance. It's about people that actually have gone through shit, have experienced things and have taken life by the fucking, the bull by the horns, taken life by the horns, and that's what we go through.
Speaker 2:I appreciate you, man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I don't need some chick with a million followers coming through and talking about how the surgery changed her life. She got a million followers. I don't give a fuck about that person like enjoy your million followers. Yeah, I want the real people.
Speaker 2:No it's, it's. You know, every person in life has has different perspective, and I guess I'm just here to talk about mine, you know. So you've been through some shit man?
Speaker 1:yeah no, and the navy helped you see the world, yeah you know 20 countries.
Speaker 2:Hopefully 20 more, we'll see.
Speaker 2:I love that so appreciate you give the drum plug if anybody wants. Oh yeah, well, so the one thing I didn't really talk about is, you know, the expensive hobbies of the world besides, uh, besides shooting. You know I'm definitely a decent shooter. You know, if there's anyone that wants to talk about getting into firearms training I'm not an expert by any means, but, again, I think I know a little bit more than the common man. So you know I'll talk about that.
Speaker 2:I'm a musician as well. Uh, I'm trying to get a couple of gigs with my uh. I have a cover band in the works right now. We're trying to just get out there and play green day and blink182 and all the songs that people love. I just want to. You know I grew up playing drums. It was a great time. I'm trying to get back to that now. So you know my Instagram will probably be posted here. Zachy Guns, if you ever want to talk. Zachy Drums is the drum page. I post some covers on there with just my GoPro. I'm working on some recording equipment, but for now I'm just good for conversation and talking about life outside the bubble, which is kind of the main topic of what this was was life outside the bubble. So if anyone wants to talk about anything like that or is interested, or if people are thinking about the younger guys out there. If you're thinking about joining the military, I think I can give you some perspective on that as well, about the pros and cons of everything that happens.
Speaker 1:But thank you, brother, I appreciate you. I appreciate you. Dude um, this is episode 92. Nine two, ninety two with zacky guns slash zacky drum that's my fucking man, I gotta tell you you, should you probably? I'll tell you this after we cut off you'll. Uh, this is probably something that you'd like for the recording oh okay, stuff like that okay, but uh, on that note, I appreciate everybody for listening to the episode.
Speaker 1:Please share, comment like, subscribe. Do all the you know that's the call to action do all the things that help this channel grow so I can continue sitting down with amazing humans like zach and definitely reach out if you're interested in the military second amendment stuff whatever you might feel he's a down-to-earth human being, as you can tell, for you know, two hours of us sitting down to each other, that's you.
Speaker 1:You got the, the third person sitting down listening in our conversation that's really what it was about. So appreciate you, brother, I appreciate you and I appreciate all y'all for fucking with us, but for now, yeah, peace.