Special Forces Operators On Mindset, Veteran Menta

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impressive meaningful feat. So could we scat Iver-based jump, land and run a full marathon, and then plunge into the water or swim on all seven continents in seven days. My friend, my coach, frequent podcast guest, Chris Houth is one of them. The other two are former Navy SEAL Ryan Bergman Parrot, as well as former US Army Special Forces, Alex Bracey. Together, they're all here to discuss

this insane, crazy, impending feat that they're about to embark upon. It's called the Seven X Project. We gotta go big. And after meeting Chris and doing some of the runs, I'm like, maybe I win a little two-fire. Or maybe a lot too far. I got a couple more things I would very much like to mention before we dig into this one. But first, let's acknowledge the

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WOOP. People ask me all the time for ways to keep their fitness goals and their health-related New Year's resolutions in check. And there's no getting around the critical importance of a solid routine, dedication, accountability, and consistency. But a tool that I have consistently relied upon for many years to help keep me engaged with those principles and to optimize my output and maximize my recovery is WOOP.

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on human performance and more importantly recovery from high stress situations. For the purpose of the day, the purpose of helping retired veterans learn how to recover properly from the traumas they endured throughout a career of selfless service. We've never been a war like this for decades at a time. So when I think about who we can help, there are people out there that maybe just missed

it as far as, hey, there's some really simple things you can do to take better care of yourself. Just focusing on how you eat, sleep, move, and even mindset stuff. On top of all of this, they also hope to shed a light on and find a solution for a silent epidemic in our country, which is that five times more veterans have died by suicide since 9-11,

than have died in combat or in active duty in any form, which is obviously a huge problem in dire need of redress. And so, yeah, it's a massive problem. And that's just that community. Talk about first responders and you talk about civilians. Who knows what that number looks like. So this conversation, we unpack a lot. It's equal parts inspiring and important. And I'm honored to share

it with you all right now. So buckle up. This is a good one. Hope you enjoy it. And without further ado, please enjoy. So happy to have you guys here. Really excited to get into all of this. The how, the why. But let's start with the what? Like who wants to jump in and explain this crazy fucking thing that you guys are about to do right

now? I'm gay men. So the backstory of this event is I've always been fascinated by extreme sports. And so doing things like skydiving, you're bass jumping, flying wingsuits, anything that gets my heart rate going up and fascinated by. And I've been doing it. But I wanted to do it in a way that would not only honor veterans for their service, but also be able to give

back to them. So how do we raise capital? Well, we do crazy things. And then it brings money in and then we give that away. And in 2019, I got a phone call from my teammate, that my sniper partner, my one of my true Northson life took his life. And for me, it was, I don't like when people say that sucks or I'm just going to

mourn them. I want to do something about it. And so I said, what are we missing here? Why does this keep happening? I'm so sick to death of losing friends. So for me, it was, is there more to the story than it just being a brain issue? And my idea was that it was physiologically based because everything is part of the physiology. And if it's not

all in unison, you're going to have problems. Take a guy like Alex, who's done 25 years in the military. If you compound that effect of breaking them down over that career, of course, they're going to have issues when they get out. So then my idea was, all right, let's go do something gnarly and break our anatomy, break our physiology, and then reboot everything. So then we

can start to truly showcase the basics again. How do you get back to your North or homeostasis? So the idea of coming up with 7X was, who's going to care? If we run in six states or seven cities or whatever, we got to go big. And after meeting Chris and doing some of these runs, I'm like, maybe I went a little too far. Or maybe a

lot too far. Chris has experience with that though. He has overly eager and enthusiastic athletes that approach him with audacious projects. And he has a very delicate touch in trying to create a sense of reality around that. But obviously you're here. So I'm going to go back to the North and see what's happening. So it is. And so the idea was, could we do like the

seal thing, sorry, but see air and land. So could we scat Iver based jump, land and run a full marathon and then plunge into the water or swim on all seven continents in seven days. And I immediately asked some of my dear friends, like Alex, hey, what do you think about this? And it was instantaneously I'm in. And so we knew that we had a caliber

of guys who had the mentality for it, who were willing to get to the North or the athletic place they needed to be. And then we started developing the team, the scientist team around it to say, what are we going to study? How are we going to do this thing? And everything we thought of except for like, are we going to get coached? Who's going to

teach us how to move this way? And Alex actually spearheaded finding us Chris. Right. So you're, you're part of your profession, Alex is as a coach, right? As a sort of performance coach at large. Yep. I do some personal performance coaching. But, you know, start getting in on my, from an athletic standpoint, not at this level. So actually, I mean, you know, starting with the seal

army stuff where we bust each other's chops all the time. The only reason I'm at the podcast is because I've heard about him through your book. So I read your book. And I was like, you know, went from the couch to doing what he did. And I had to go back because it was on Audible. I had to listen to the, I'd listen to the voice.

I was like, what's that coach's name? What's his company? And then I, I did the cold email off of the website and got a call back. And here we are. Right. A few months later. So, right. Yeah. So I found, I found Chris through you, your story illuminated, you know, I knew enough about zone two to know that we needed somebody who could. We've been doing.

Get us there. Yeah. As opposed to the whole running in the gray zone the whole time. And then being like, wow, we really tanked on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there's the actual endurance piece to this whole thing running seven marathons on seven continents and seven days. And we'll get into, you know, where those locations are and what that entails. And then there's the extreme piece to

this whole thing, which is based jumping into these marathons or parachuting into them. And then there's the logistics piece, right, which I'm sure you guys are really good at. Like this is kind of what you're trained at. So it's a very complicated puzzle. Right. It's a nightmare. Yeah. It's a, it's a fucking nightmare. So the idea behind, how are we going to pull this off is

my COO is a green beret. And my personal belief is that green berets are the best at logistics. Good at going into places and establishing a relationship, establishing like a mechanism within that place. And so not only do we bring the green beret and Bryce Hansen to actually run the logistics piece, but then he brought in his green beret team to deploy around the world. To

really get these locations fortified, connect with the locals, make sure that we were set with everything. So it's been a process of about 15 months of planning. And we're about 80% there right now. Okay. So explain the locations and the specifics of the event itself. Just so people understand what we're talking about here. Certainly. So we're taking a group of about 75 to 80 people. We

made the look. Chris first called me and he told me this. I was like, wait, what exactly? How many runners are you? Go ahead. So they don't know that they're all doing it too. So that was, but that was another question I have. Go ahead. So, um, so we'll all fly into Cape Town, South Africa where we stage. And that's where our plane will be waiting

for us. We haven't 757. This is not like a little. It's a massive plane. Right. Apparently it seats 400 people. So we went overkill. And it's just one of those things I can get us everywhere we need to go. Um, it's quite expensive too. Uh-huh. So I would imagine just the drama of trying to find the plane that we could actually use that was available that

was somewhat within reason of cost. That was difficult enough just to find a plane. So we actually worked on that for about nine months to get a plane solidified. So once we get the Cape Town, we'll get on our plane. We'll stay on that plane for the duration of the trip. And we go right from Cape Town into a place called White Desert Antarctica. Very private

place. Really, really cool. We're going to be doing a lot of cool places. White-desert.com. And you can actually go there, but it's very desolate. There's not much there. So our VIPs are going with us. We're going to be doing like ice wall climbing. And apparently one of the packages they get is they get to have a snowball fight with the special operations afterwards. Which is really

why everybody wants to go. Um, is this where people have gone in the past to do their Antarctica marathon? Or this is a different part of Antarctica? This is completely different. Yeah. So this is runway, ice runway. This is going to be our location to run around several times. Um, but it's really cool. They have pods. They have kitchen. They have warm rooms. They have everything

that we need. Should we have an issue there? So because weather changes pretty quickly. And if we can't get out and we're in trouble. So we're going to try to make it as quick as possible. So what will happen is when we land in Antarctica, we're going to start off by doing a skydive. And the skydive, the second we leave the plane is when it kicks

off the seven days. So we could be there for 10 hours and not be part of the seven days. It's when we leap starts the seven day window. So we'll do our deal. It's going to take him two hours to complete the marathon. It's going to take us 12. We're going to get it done. Has anybody parachuted into Antarctica before? Yes. They have. Yes. Yeah. That's

we're not trying. I mean, what we are doing with this specific event altogether. It's not a world record because it's never been done. So this doesn't exist. Right. But that's not our vision here. Our vision is we want answers. We want to really build something at the end. We'll talk about it. We'll talk about it later, but build something at the end that we can give

to people to truly have benefit their life. So it's uncharted territory. So we'll do our jump. And then we're going to get right into the run. We're still working out what that's going to look like. And then we're going to plunge. We're going to pull our plunge. Uh huh. They have those glacial lakes out there. So they're going to pound some of that out. And we're

going to jump in. How long do you think you're going to be going in that water? Uh, three minutes minimum. But I'm going to try to push for. Yeah. Nice. That's cool. Do you do parachute? With your running shoes on and just immediately go into the run or do you assess when you land? Yeah. We're going to actually be in cold cold weather gear for the

jump. It's going to be super cold way up high. And we're not sure exactly what they'll to wear in a jump at. But way too cold for us to go slick. So we're going to have time when we land to change out. Get ready and then start warming up because one of the biggest complexities with jumping, especially in areas like this and wind is you can

turn an ankle or knee really quickly upon landing. And if you do that, it's over. You're just no getting into the run, right? You're hosed and you're hosed for the whole trip. So we're going to be very careful about how we do our landings, not just in that type of environment. But because we're going to be tired, muscle is going to be complete smoked after each

day. The jumps are going to get more and more detail. They're going to be more complex. So we have to really be careful about that. And do you jump from a separate aircraft or you're not jumping out of a 757, right? Like that doesn't that would be cool. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know anything about this. Yeah. But you must have some other aircraft

for that, right? It would be a normal, what most jumpers we jump out of twin otters. So we'll be jumping out of a scative plane out there. Got it. Okay. And there's there's four total veterans that are actually doing the challenge. Is that correct? So there's seven and total four veterans. Seven and total that are going to be doing all of the running. And then four

of the seven will be doing the scative run and plunge got it. Okay. And then the rest of the plane is filled with support team. I mean, on your website, you have this massive team. Like there's a lot of people that are contributing to this effort. But then on top of that, you have like VIPs, right, who are kind of donating money or paying for the

privilege of being on the plane for part or all of this endeavor. Yes. Correct. Every time we go into a little deeper mission planning, we find that, how we need this or we need this and we want to be self-sustaining. So we have our medical professionals on the team. We have support staff for our team for the VIPs. Because we're going to go separate directions. The

VIPs get to actually run a mile with us on each continent. They get a tandem scative over the pyramids of Egypt. I mean, they get to do some really cool things. But then they're off to do a very personalized excursion while we're completing each mission. I see. Cool. So we'll have nutrition support. We'll have physical therapy, you know, PT support. We'll have our doc team and

our emergency medical technician. You know, on the ground, we need to stick this guy with an IV pack. Right. We'll be with us on our part of the adventure and all of the admin piece of feeding us and just being able to react to anything that happens. Some of the runs will be laps, others will be out and back. So they'll be different admin requirements for

all of that. And even just running in Antarctica, we're going to make a good guess at what we should be wearing. Right. Luckily, a few miles later, if we've completely booger that up, we'll be able to have that. We need right there with our team to fix it. Well, the good news is you have a massive plane that can handle a lot of equipment. Right. Don't

worry about how many bags you're bringing with you. Right. There's that. But it's also, I mean, knowing what we're getting into and trying to preplan that. But I think the bigger story is around all these participants to from a logistics standpoint. They're part of the experience to then help in the documentary and sort of the information will come from the leaning from it that they're their

first hand to also provide valuable, you know, professional insight. Right. And we'll get into all of that in the why. But I just want to walk through like the experience itself. So from Antarctica, you go where we go to Perth, Australia. So we chose the most, well, I should say this because I'll take ownership. I've chosen the worst scenario of travel. So everybody, the world marathon

challenge, all those other organizations that do things like, why are you going that way? Yeah. What do you mean? Am I wrong? So I just looked good to me. So we're going bass accords, but we're going to Perth next. So that's a nice long leg for us to do some recovery. See how we feel after the first one. And then we're going to start thawing out

midway through and then we get to Australia. And it's going to be hot. So we go from super cold, sub zero temperature. All the way to super hot summertime. So that's going to be interesting in itself. We chose Perth and really I chose some of these locations because at the beginning planning of this, we were still heavily in COVID. And so some of these places were

locked down where it was in possibility. There was one point where I said, this is not even going to be able to happen because Australia was locked down completely. And we were, I mean, we brought in state department reps and other entities to help us figure out how to circumnavigate. And I mean, they're like, we'll do everything in our power, but we can't guarantee anything. It's

something like, we don't have a program here. So it got really nerve racking, but we just kept pushing forward. And then finally you started seeing things open up was a blessing. So Australia would be next. One of our probe based jumper skydivers from Australia. So we've got major connectivity out there. We're connected to Australia and SAS. So they're going to lay out a lot of the

red carpet. And we're choosing more of an area that's more desolate. It kind of looks like Australia as far as instead of city. I just I don't like spiders much. So I'm kind of that's going to be my thing in this old trip. Like if I see a spider, you'll hear me a million miles away. Well, there's lots of stuff in Australia. Then wants to kill

you. Spider is concerned me. But you're going to base jump into the marathon from there. Let's see. So in Australia, we're also skydiving. I see. So there was only a couple places. We actually originally wanted to do base jumping everywhere. But it's impossible to do base jumping in seven days on seven continents. It's just too hard. So skydiving is a lot easier. Everybody on the team

skydives at very few base jump. So we wanted to make sure that everybody who is jumping could truly jump. Alex and some of our other guys did military jumps and it converts over. And our pro athletes are some of the best jumpers in the world. So skydiving. We're only doing base jumping in two or three locations. Okay. Of the seven. Right. But those are epic locations.

So from Perth, you go where's next from there to Dubai? Dubai. So there's an epic base jump happening there. So it was it was originally going to we were looking at the alberg and we heard that it was feasible. But for a price tag that we couldn't afford. Right. So that's the Burj Khalifa that the tallest building there. That's the one on the water. The tall

one. Oh, definitely. The sail one. Correct. Okay. Yeah. It's got the helicopter platform. But we've now gotten word that it's the princess tower. So hume. I mean, you can jump a wing suit off. But so I'm thinking. Hmm. Maybe we're going to do wing suits. Hmm. So that'll be a base jump. But everywhere will still contain a skydive as well. So with the guys that are

our base jumpers, so we can still get that going. I mean, how many can do the wing suit? You that you do that, right? Does anyone else on the team do it? I mean, you have coaches and stuff like that. But of the people that are running the marathons. No, you're the only one. Right. Yeah. I should look at that and say am I doing something

wrong with my life? Yeah. By the way, my wife is obsessed with with like, bird suit flying. Like she's constantly sharing those video. Like she just like. I think in some parallel universe, she's like a, you know, a bird suit person. Like she just loves it. Like it's fantastic. It's such a cool. I want to get into like what that's all about. But I don't want

to derail what we're talking about. Sorry. I have a diversion. Absolutely. So sneak Dubai. Really cool place. And for me, I mean, he's traveled everywhere around the world. I spent most of my time in Iraq. So I haven't seen the world like he has. I've never been to any one of these locations minus London. So I'm really excited. It's going to be new. Yeah. So we

go to Dubai and after we complete the jump, then we're going to run. I think that they've considered the marathon that they do out there. The marathon route. And then we'll plunge in the water and get back to our plane. And we're out to the next location, which would then be Cairo Egypt. That one's going to be fun. Yeah. So you're going to parachute over the

gray pyramids. That's right. There has to be some logistical back channeling with political bigwigs in order to pull that off. Right. No one gets to do that. It's hard. It's been difficult. And it's, yeah, sign this paper and then submit it. And we'll tell you in three weeks if you're good to go or not. It's been a lot longer than three weeks. So we're still working

through it. But it happens. We've, you know, plenty of our guys have jumped it before. So not really worried about it. It's going to be an interesting marathon because some of it soft sand takes me back to the days of seal training, which sucked. So running in soft sand is not the most fun. So it won't be all soft sand. And then we actually have to

get into a helicopter or we're going to get into a plane and fly to a different location and jump in the water. Because the Niles really, really bad. There's a lot of bacteria in there. Apparently Americans are not allowed at all to go in the water. And what is the swim piece and all of this? So what does that mean getting in the water? Yeah. So

of course the athletes always ask that question. Everybody else, like, oh, you're going to get in the water. So it was just a plunge. And the idea for me was see our in Lancelot just getting the water because I didn't think we were going to have enough time to actually do a swim. Swim on each location. It's more so just dash yourself off from the marathon

and enjoy. So right. Yeah, that was my first question. When Bird brought this up, I was like, when you say swim, what do you mean? Because that's a significant emotional event for some army guys. Right. Right. So there's a reason you went into an army. And I went into an army that is absolutely traviar. Yeah. So he was like, I just a plunge man. I was

like, all right, I'm good with that. Right. I'm looking forward to swimming. Yeah. Of course you are. Yeah. I'm looking forward to watching Chris. You're going to have some lawn chairs, park right at the base and see him go out. It's going to be great. You all plunge. Chris is going to go on a little mini adventure of his own. Right. Again, unique locations. When else

am I going to have a chance to do those swims? And Chris, are you going to run all the marathons also? Yeah. And we have two Pacers along guys who run altruism so on. So friends of theirs and they've been around them for a while. But then when we're about a month into the coaching, six weeks into the coaching day, said we'd love to have you

along. And I was like, well, all right, twist my arm. Yeah. So although you know, you go through the training, you're like, yeah, marathon for seven days in a row is going to be a little painful. It's a little bit. You're no stranger to these things though. I am not. But this is a little qualitatively different. Right. It is. Base jumping. Are you going to jump?

I'm a tandem jumping in Egypt. That's right. You are. Wow. Is that a minimum? Yeah. We'll see. Exactly. Just you're going to push Chris out the door. Right. Absolutely. We're going to get it on camera too. They've already said a few times the fact that I've put them through this training peaks torture. They're like, we're going to get it all back. Yeah. One single push. Out

the window. We'll catch you. Yeah. Catch you. Wait, as you're freefall. And release the shoot. Right. All right. So from Egypt then to London to London. Yeah. And here's here's where it gets pretty cool. Right. I'm super excited about London, because I believe personally that I'm James Bond. So I'm super excited to go back to my homeland. So. Uh-huh. Now London was just one of those

deals where I'd work with some of the British SAS. And I've got a lot of friends out there. So I said, this was going to be a really unique place for us to go. So initially we worked on jumping the bridge out there. And the bridge is very unique. It's called London Bridge. And a lot of people know it. Significant. Well, people don't know is it

was the place where they first did Bay Shumps. And it was like in the 1800s, like late 1800s for military testing. So it has been jumped once since then. And it's very difficult to get done. Well, one of our guys on our team is friends with the guy who makes all that happen. So we said, all right. Let's go for that. And then we're going to

get it on camera. And then we were going to jump into the water. So we would actually land, run the full marathon first, and then jump off the bridge into the water. We have had since then had to change it because getting a parachute wet and saltwater. It really taxes your parachute. We can't use the rest of the trip. So the idea now is we're actually

going to land. And we're going to run our marathon. And then what will happen is at Chelsea Hospital. We're going to park a crane. And we're going to base jump off the crane right in your Chelsea Hospital. And there's water right there. And then we're going to get our skydivers. They will go on a helicopter to a new location to make their jump. And then we'll

come back together. Wow. That's cool. That's a bummer though. They won't let you do it off the bridge. Well, let them do it. It's just because of the shoot. Right. Okay. Gotcha. We are still working on it. You know, we're just going to keep going until they say absolutely no. Can you get a different shoot? It just can become more money. Yeah. I mean, you got

a 757. I mean, you're going, you know, you module, go the extra mile. Let's get it. Oh, this is logistics. Learn about. Yeah. Wow. Cool. And then from there, Cartagena, Cartagena. And that's the last stop. The last stop will be America. Oh, America. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Okay. So sorry. Walk us through the last two. Yeah. So we want to go to Cartagena. Originally, it was

going to be Brazil. We chose Cartagena because it's closer. It gets us into town. We can do what we need to do. And then it's a shorter stunt from where we're going in Columbia to America. So that we could get on the ground and rest for a bit and acclimatize before we start moving. So we chose Cartagena. And it's really nice because they're super about working

with us. You know, we've partnered with the Columbia Navy. They're offering an experience of a lifetime to our VIPs, where they can go out and shoot fully automatic machine guns off their boats at targets and just metal targets and plastic targets and things like that. But it's something that they don't offer to anybody. So that's what we were looking for with the VIP experience was, could

we do things that you can't pay to do? Period. It's things that we are using our connections and our friendships to say, we're doing something unique. And this is for the greater good. What can we really do? Because these VIPs are benefactors. They're the ones who are making this whole thing handy for us. So we're showing them an incredible experience while we are almost dying. So.

Yeah. You guys are going to be fine. You're in good hands with Chris. You're going to be all right. Yeah. I don't know about the shoot not opening up. And Chris can't help you with that part. But the running part, I think he goes around going to be good. If he twisted his ankle apart and landing, he would still run faster than I think. Yeah. We're

going to get into the training. Don't worry. All right. And then you end up at, at a, in the United States, at like the SEAL museum, right? So we're initially trying for that. And we ended up deviating to Texas now. We're going to go just near Dallas, Texas. So it brings everybody back to where we're originally starting from. We can bring all our gear back. And

then after we finish, we're going to have a couple of days of R&R and enjoyment with families and that. And then we've got brain scans for the athletes. So we partner with the Center for Brain Health and they're doing pre-imposed brain scans. Just to see what happens when somebody goes through something like this. Yeah. So they able to quantify some data. One thing is we focus

on physiology. They focus really on the brain. So let's bring it all together. Right. This episode of the podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Therapy has been a crucial and nonnegotiable aspect of my life for decades. I started back in like 1997 before I even got sober. And it's part of how I ended up getting sober. And I'm still in therapy. In fact, I just did an

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free and it includes a 25 year warranty. What is not to love? To help you level up your sleep in 2023, Birch is giving $400 off all mattresses and two free EcoRest Pillows at BirchLiving.com. Well, I think that's a pretty good segue into the why behind all of this. I mean, you shared a little bit about your background and your colleague who took his life. I

know veteran health, mental, emotional, physical, spiritual is really the backbone of this whole thing. So, I think that's a pretty good segue. Talk to me about the inspiration for this and maybe even contextualize it with some sense of what's going on with veterans right now, what the problems are, and how you are looking at the solutions to these problems. Absolutely. Love the tag team. That's one

with you. Sure. Let's do it. So Alex, more on the mic here. Yeah. So, it would be nice. David Matt Caff is my sniper partner's name. And it would be like me and Alex. Alex is a leader. He was higher ranking than me. And he's a guy that everybody around him looks at as, hey, you're the go-to guy because you're always on point. You're always ready

to go. You're the guy we look to for a word and vice. So, that was David for me. And we have this suicide epidemic. And it's not just the veteran community. It's across the globe. It's an issue, a terrible issue. But you never think about your mentor. You're true North taking. You're in your life. You feel completely helpless when that happens. And that's what I felt.

I mean, I felt like I was, I had no guidance at that point. And then I couldn't understand why he of all people did it because this is not David. Some people say that. David was the guy that we all went to. And we never saw it. His wife didn't see it. I mean, there's nothing up until the very end. And we've been dealing more and

more with the post-traumatic stress of the wars, the TBI's, traumatic brain injuries. You're hearing about CTE within that. And so, it's becoming a bigger problem. Personal take, as we've talked about it, we try to understand and try to take our minds to where that could be. To better understand it because it's hard. I've been low before. I've had my dealings with depression and anxiety. And I

didn't get to that point where that was a thought. So, I'm trying to get there for David's taken for all the others. And one is being away from the tribe. That's a huge problem. It's the humongous thing. You're a part of something I was eight years in. I did eight years in the military. 25 years. You've been an athletics your whole life. And then let's say

that you can't be around that community anymore. How does that make you feel? What do you do? And it's not easy to get through it. You got to figure out who you are deeper. And we're not trained to do that. We don't talk about that stuff. We're supposed to be tough, right? We tell ourselves that. So, being part of the community is something that we're trying

to teach people is how you get to stay connected with the brotherhood, the sisterhood. You have to stay involved. Even though you don't wear the inform. Because it's not the uniform. It's the camaraderie. That's what matters. And what builds us to do the job so we do. So, that's one of the biggest pieces. The second piece is they don't try to reinvent themselves. You know, we

don't want people to live in the past. You're going to move forward. And you're going to say, OK, I'm still in that person, but I want to add to it now. So, what's next for me? And I'm going to go for it. What are your thoughts on it? I think to just add on to what Birdman said. And I've been out of the military since 2016.

So, my experience is way different than what people leave in the military now. I got our experiencing. And I hope they're experiencing a much better transition than what was going on back when I got out. And I had a great transition, but I don't know that it was, you know, my unit did as much as, you know, we were always kind of on the cutting edge

of how do we just get better at everything, whether that was performance while you're in the job to, hey, we need transition guys out better and gals out better. And we're always just trying to learn. As I think about everything that we're talking about, I'm fortunate in that I've never had someone very close to me from the military commit suicide. And I try to think about,

you know, how do people get to that spot? And I just, you know, obviously anybody sitting here talking about it can't, can't really relate to it. To that or at least in my mind they can't. What I've been thinking about a lot as part of this project and the, you know, the things we're trying to help our community with. And that's firefighters, police officers, you know,

people on the medical field that just have these incredibly stressful situations that generally people, you know, a lot of people in their common day to day life don't experience like the military. So, so I would, you know, I kind of look at that whole group. And that's our, as our community that we want to be able to help affect mainly. I keep coming back to transitions

and relationships. And I'm fortunate in that I've, I have, I had great, you know, my big thing was I love the people I worked with. And I was in the same organization for over 17 years. Last 17 plus years of my career was with the same people. And I'm, you know, it's, I mean, they're your family. You know, some years I spent more time with them

than I did my, my wife and kids, my biological family. So, so it is, it's interesting to think about how that can affect certain people when they, when they lose that, when they lose that identity, you know, you put all your eggs in one basket. Hey, I'm a, I'm a, I'm an Army Special Forces stud. I'm a Navy CEO. I'm a Marsack guy. I'm, I'm a

SWAT operator. I'm a, you know, I'm the, whatever the best firefighter in my county. And then all of a sudden, you lose that, or you just age out, right? Um, how does that affect people? And how do we, like, like Birdman was saying, how do we, how do we maybe focus on keeping people from ever getting to that spot where they think of, like think about

that as an option? Cause I don't, you know, I don't, I don't know who's ever going to figure out how to fix the, well, I'm already here, but, you know, I, like walking them off the ledge versus like preventing them from even getting it. That's like left and right. Let's just keep them off, you know, away from the cliff. It's a, you know, it's a, it's

a great point. And it's a much more complicated conversation about how you solve that connection piece than it is to talk about TBI or PTSD. Like I feel like, you know, we, we have come a long way in terms of awareness of these issues. I don't know how great, you know, the veterans administration is or, or what the care looks like for, you know, people in

your situation when you're exiting out of that life, I'm pretty sure that there's a lot of work that still needs to be done to, you know, properly attend to these issues, but at least we're talking about those issues. And there are, you know, sort of medical solutions to those on some level, or psychological solutions to those issues. But the connectivity piece, the community piece, like when

you exit out of this thing that was so intense where you're so bonded to this community of people and then overnight it's gone, then that leaves you with, you know, this search for meaning in your life that can be existential, you know, like, like that's a much harder thing. I mean, Chris, when we were talking the other day about just, you know, I was trying to

wrap my head around how to approach this conversation. I mean, you had some interesting thoughts about this as well. Yeah, I mean, for me, and I can relate it to what we even talked about last year. Or two years ago, with regards to athletes, right, you're playing in front of 100,000 people one Saturday, suddenly you're graduated or not even graduated and done during tired identity. Yeah.

Your entire life since your two, three, four, five years old is gone. Right. And so relating, not understanding, but relating. And we talk a lot about it. And you talked about it to me early on in this project about how just the tools and techniques are not available from, you know, nutrition. guidance to supplements to what kind of strength work or PT work you should be

doing. Or just, you know, in order to keep yourself healthy and sharp and with purpose. I mean, that's the main component. We as the group keeps talking about, we just spend four or five days together in Scottsdale training and getting to know each other better before this trip. Instead of do the simulations that I like to do so much. But the constant conversation. Revolves around why

is there not a better platform for these operators who are human performance, you know, specialist at the highest level that we as athletes are given that. And they're not given that in the same way the education, the insights, the knowledge. And they're the front of the spear. They're putting their life on the line. And they're not given these tools. Yeah, this was this woman in a

pool. And this was shocking to learn. Right. Like you think, oh, buds and all the, you know, sort of rights of passage that you guys have to go through in order to become, you know, the elite of the elite in our in our armed forces. That you're being armed with the absolute, you know, best science, best tools, mindset, physical, emotional, mental, spiritual to equip you to

handle the highest stressful situations that, you know, any human being could ever place themselves in, which would in turn, lay it down the line, serve you as you're exiting. But, you know, I'm learning through what Chris has shared. And I'm interested in what you guys have to say about this. That there are significant gaps in that training or in that toolbox that need to be rectified.

I'll just take it from my perspective. We serve in two different entirely two different units. So, and I was back at the beginning of the war. And I got out on the war. I thought was dying down. So I did eight years. So I only had a eight year glimpse into what performance was and we didn't have it. So if you get broken, they're going to

send you to a specialist and they're going to have to rehab to get that brokenness back. But we don't talk about diet or nutrition. Talk about sleep. It was purely, let's just do the workout that the PT is asking you to do to rehab yourself to getting back to war. The problem is that we go and we do a hard work up where we trained. And

then we go to play and we do the work overseas. You're breathing in all kinds of crap. You're running over undulating terrain. You're going to have to do the unforgiving jobs. And then when you get done in the back end, it's Wash Rinse and Repeat. There's no stop pause and reboot. And that was a big point. And I never knew any of this in my career.

Up until doing this project, I didn't have a lot of this. The God sent me my wife. My wife, she got into health and nutrition a long time before me. And when I first met her, I went into her fridge and she had nothing but green in her room. And I've never seen half these plants before. I'm like, where's the food? And she's like, that's the

food we're going to eat that. I'm like, hmm. She puts into my belly. I'm like, whoa, it's pretty cool. But I didn't know any of that. And that's the problem is they're not teaching that stuff and how vital, how important. I mean, just this last couple of days talking about the nutrition and this supplementation pre-during a post, how vital that is. Well, why didn't I do

that overseas? I could have been a better performer. I am tired of relying on brain matter to get me through something. If I could be that much more of a performer because I'm doing the right things that I don't have to really push it that high. I'm tired with my brain so that when I choose to, I can go even further. That would be the goal.

What does it look like? From your perspective. So from my perspective, I look at it over the decades. And the bottom line is we don't have any, we've never been at war like this for decades at a time. So I completely agree with Birdman, especially in the fact that everybody has their own experience. So some people can get out of the military and they have the

ability to transition into their civilian life with and maintain the same standards that kept them very high functioning while they were in the military. And others don't. So I mean, when I think about who we can help, I don't know who all it might be. But there are people out there that maybe just missed it. Like they didn't hear it the way they needed to hear

it as far as, hey, there's some really simple things you can do to take better care of. Just focusing on how you eat, sleep, move, and even mindset stuff, right? My experience was just like Birdman. It was like, hey, we're going to war. Oh, this is neat. Finally, I've been training for over 10 years in the military. And now we get to go do what we

got hired to do. Fast forward 10 years later after 10 years of deployment, that was unknown. So, even if you're not sure what you're doing, you're not going to be able to do it. Even in wanting to affect performance at the individual and group level, there was no model for that. So preservation, so so calm, are all the special operations highest headquarters, which is in Tampa,

through a ton of money at this around 2013, 2014. And it was called the preservation of the force and family program or potif is what a lot of people have had. It's been a very successful program. And the four buckets of care or focus were, physical, mental, what I call social and spiritual. So, you know, how are you performing physically, mentally, how are you performing as

a member of society and as a member of your family and then the spiritual component. And all of the special operations units were able to take money out of this pot and bring in contractors to support and all four of those domains. So, I was fortunate enough to be the first person to be the preservation of the force and family director for my unit. And they

were like, hey, we want somebody who actually, we want the customer that's, you know, the operator and everybody who's just going down range over and over and over again, just getting, you know, the wheels run off of them and their families. We want somebody like that representing us in this, in these discussions and these planning meetings for who, who needs what and who gets what. And

you know, the fact that I wasn't an expert in any of these four domains made it really easy for me to just kind of go down there again as the representative and go, yeah, we want all of it and we want as much as we can get. So, that's what I did in my last three years in the Army for my unit and I retired from

that position. So, I was personally very fortunate to start interacting with all of these next level professionals in the mental space and in the physical performance space because where we were trying to pull expertise from is professional and college level athletics and all of the top drawer performers outside of the military space, we said, hey, we want your expertise, we want to try to fix some

of our problems with your expertise. So, I learned a ton and honestly that kind of led me to my current situation where I'm doing personal work. Right. It's coaching. Right. Did it help? Did it help the routine? It's absolutely helping and you know, the program overall is still, I mean, it's still in existence. We're still pulling a lot of contractors in to support all of this.

Again, kind of back to my initial point is we're at some level we're guessing. And I left years ago. So, I'm sure we have a better picture of what Wright looks like now. But it's like, hey, what do you do? When somebody's been going overseas over and over and over again for 10 years, one guy on the team who's still pretty active. Right. Is active. And

you know, there's sauna, there's cold plungers, there's state of the art facilities. But he's asking me what to do. Interesting. How to apply the protocol. Yeah. And why it works. They're making these things available, but it's not exacting. I remember like I went to the Olympic training center in Colorado Springs and they have a whole like mindfulness program there. None of the athletes do it or

sign up for it. Right. Like there's a gap in that. And if it was, I mean, it's great that this program exists. And hopefully it's, you know, growing and improving. But the mental health statistics and the suicide statistics tell the real story of outcomes. And, you know, on the website, you or in your deck that I went through like there's some pretty die. It tells a

pretty dire story. I don't remember the numbers. Maybe you do, but they're, you know, it's not great. Yeah. The last statistic they released 75. 500 soldiers have been killed in combat and training since 9.11. Since the same date, we've lost just over 30,000 to suicide. That's an unbelievable number. Yeah. It's almost five times. And so yeah, it's a massive problem. And that's just that community. And

talk about first responders. And you talk about civilians. Who knows what that number looks like. Yeah. So in a, you know, an alternate universe, if you found yourself in the seat of the, you know, being the secretary of defense and you had a massive budget at your disposal to deploy, to address these problems, you know, what do those solutions look like for you? Like what do

you think needs to be done? Where are the blind spots? How can we better address this crisis? And, you know, create a better path for all of these veterans who are exiting in this civilian life? It's a great question. Well, since I'll never be offered that job. The first thing I'm going to do is legalize base jumping in America. That would be great. That would be

my number one plan. I was in the purview of the secretary of defense. I don't know if that's his job. He energizes on alert. So for me, my vision with hopefully what would come from this project. And it's a lofty goal, but it's a goal. Is can we put a humor performance program together for every workup, not just for the special operations for military for the

first responder communities for the education system. It's mandatory. It's not just something where you have the ability to go to the gym and lift weights so you can go run. This is a protocol that happens for, let's say we get back from deployment, we have a couple weeks of post-to-plement leave where we get to dial it down, reboot, see our family or loved ones put all

the gear away. And then when we get ready to start back up the first week of training or two weeks, whatever it may be is humor performance only. Let's get you back to homeostasis. And here's the protocol on how we're going to do that. And you're going to do it as a team. That's something that doesn't exist in our community. And I think it's super important.

I think that it, there's things that are mandatory that don't need to be mandatory. You don't even need to be their period. And they're not this. And if I were to say anything as a secretary of defense was mandatory, if we're supposed to be in charge of national security, we need to be at optimal levels. And the only way to preserve that is to continue to

go back to the basics. That's what we do in training when we get on a gun. We go back to the basics on the pistol, back to the basics on a rifle, doesn't matter how good we are. I was a sniper. Still go back to the basics. Even though I know I can make this shot, I need to bring it all the way back to and

simplify things to make sure I know exactly what I'm doing or maybe I just need to readjust. Right. So in this context, getting back to the basics from a well-being perspective means how's your sleep, like how's your mood, how's your temperament, how's your relationship with your family, like all of those kinds of things, like making sure that there's a baseline and protocols around, you know, sort

of apprising that from time to time to making sure that those buckets are all being adequately filled. I mean, from it, it's so crazy, right? Like, because this is the world I live in with regards to health and wellness, like wearables and like breath work and thermal regulation and all the things we do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is, this is, they should be the ones doing.

Right. I would, I would have thought that like the special forces were pioneering all of this stuff and like beta testing all these things that ultimately find the way to the consumer markets and it's sort of shocking to discover that like this isn't being taught or these aren't protocols that are, you know, part and parcel of like your daily routine. Well, the special operations are doing

a lot. Don't give me wrong, but you think about big, maybe big army. They don't have the budgets that we have. They don't have all the opportunities we have. So they are truly struggling. So this would be more of a play for them. Right. The things that we do will transfer to them. So special operations adopted. It bleeds into the military. So it's sad. Yeah. And

it's like a lot of things. If it's not mandatory and I'm not saying anything, you know, everything needs to be mandatory that I think is good for personal performance. But there's, you just kind of have this like shoulder shrug kind of, yeah, we got all that. But that's not my thing. You know, and I didn't, you know, I, I, I, I got in the sauna for

10 minutes. I didn't like it. Didn't do it. You know, I didn't notice any difference. Yeah. Whereas, you know, if you look at the protocols of, if you look at the science behind even just dry son is right, you know, and the protocols that all the different talk, you know, all that. There's a ton of performance podcasts out there to talk about. Hey, it's this simple.

Do this. This many times a week. This temperature, this duration. And here's what the science shows as, you know, all calls mortality goes down by. And it's just like, ah, you know, you kind of have. And I had it for a lot of years. So I can speak to it clearly. You don't really think about your demise. You know, you don't think about. Sure. Being, you

know, you're, it's going to be good for me. Oh, I'm, you know, I'm in my, you're 25 years old. It's going to be good for me. You know, highly trained. You're like, I don't need that. Like I don't need this. I don't know. But that's the interesting thing. Like I like the word homeostasis. Because it's an interesting dynamic. If you think of it from exercise physiology,

the, the fact that this is what it feels like to feel good. Right. That when my nutrition is right and I'm sleeping right and I'm fully alert and I'm strong and I'm capable and I'm rested. And wow, this is my baseline. And now before I deploy, right, that I know, okay, these are my values. I mean, cycling, we have biological passports where they know everything. Right.

Like I can go through any sport and they have homeostasis. They have values and numbers that you know. Okay. When things a little bit off, therefore you might not be a sharp. You might be, it not be as durable. You might not be as capable in what you guys need to do. Right. And so having this sort of mental physical recharge reboot where nutritional, you're like,

you're getting all those things that will last you for a few weeks, right. Like, or months where you set a baseline of, okay, these are clearly foods I need. And we can get them when we're deployed or not. But at least I know what I'm missing. Again, constantly optimizing yourself so that you can be of better service to others. Coming back for more, but first, I'm

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act today. Back to the mental health piece. What is the ambition with the seven X project and how I can, you know, sort of address these issues in terms of veteran work. Well, being like, how are you, you know, creating some connectivity there? So the full outlook of this project is at the end, we're going to make a documentary. And that's going to explain everything from

the trials and tribulations of how this was. The fact that each one of us have had our injuries or learning curve to what we're doing in the completion of it. And then the science behind it. But ultimately, all this is going to be comprised in a manual. And the manual is something that we're going to sell publicly across the world. And 100% of the time, we're

going to sell the world. That proceeds are going to veteran causes to continue their mission to help support. I believe that's how the mental side works is. I'll just give you a real, a real test subject here. So we have a person on the team who at the beginning of this project, I called them because he, if not the best, he is one of the top

five base jumpers in the world. He's certifiably insane. He is unbelievable to just get this gift of gab Australian dude. He's got this. I love those accents. And so. I called him and said, Hey, I need you on the team because I always put safety advisors. Everybody on this team is so good. I don't even know why I'm part of this team. I kid you not.

It's just, it's amazing to me. Well, I asked him to be a part of it. And he would, I didn't know that he was struggling. And it's amazing, right? We don't know what people are going through. So he called me a couple weeks later after he said, you know, I love the mission here. I want to be a part of this. I'm in a couple weeks

later is in Brazil. He's sitting on the beach. And he's a surfer. And he's like, how about the lowest point of my life? Right now, I don't know what I'm here for. I don't know what I want to do. Or I don't even know how to move forward. And all I said to him was, well, get up off your ass and go run the mile. It's

it. Isn't that called when you're done? And I'm no expert in anything. So I just threw that out of my ass, right? And he called me right after apparently did like a five car or something. He has a tendency to overdo it. Yes, he does. But he did it. And he called me after when I was like, great. That was just great mate. And. Since then

he's like, all right, I've just seen this switch in him where he's just that one little step forward was everything to say, okay, somebody cared about me to call me. Somebody tell me to do, do go do something. And that's all we really need to nurture people is to get him moving forward. Just one step at a time. If somebody told me when I got out

and I was having a bad day, I need you to go eat a meal right now. And then I need you to go, you know, rest for a second. And then I need you to get up. And I need you to go run. And then journal. And then call me after or four words, check. I know that. And that's not just military. This is anybody like,

thank you for you, Missing Guy. So I'm going to go do that right now. And then you're going to feel a little bit better. Like, man, I just accomplished something. Yeah. And that's something that we're losing sight on as the accomplishments. You know, when we'll have to be the first class and the best in the world or anything. It's just got to be our best version

of ourselves. Yeah. And it's those simple things, right? Like in recovery, Parallels, they say, halt. Like if you're feeling like that low or, you know, down or not great. Hungry, angry, lonely, tired. Are you hungry? Are you angry? Are you lonely? Are you tired? Like in the solutions that all of those are pretty simple. Like, eat a meal, take a nap, like move your body, you

know, call a friend, things like that. But, you know, we're always looking for that behind the velvet rope thing. Like, where's the secret that I don't know when the solution is kind of self-evident? And it just all it is is a friend reaching out and saying, hey, go run a mile and call me afterwards. Like that idea that someone cares and you got that person to

move his body. It's cool. I think the piece that I want to explore a little bit further is the community piece, like the, you know, this notion of, you know, when you're in the military and then you leave or you're a professional athlete and you're done with that career. And, you know, the, it's just going to be impossible in your civilian life to find that kind

of heightened experience where you're so bonded to people because you're doing hard things together. And the best that we can do is to recreate some version of that through, like, these 29.029 experiences or, you know, a lesser version of this extreme thing that you guys are about to do that can, you know, bring those, those communities of people back together so that they can maintain some

kind of cohesion with those people that were so important to them for that, you know, formative period of their lives. And that's what we're looking to do. I mean, that's what we've talked about. But before we get to that, also the, the, the part that Ryan and the team, are looking to do that, it's just, it's not a solution to the mental health, but it contributes,

right? Physical activity, good nutrition, good sleep, good recovery, and also having a purpose and aim towards something, something, whether it's outside of myself or greater than myself, or with my group or with my team. And that ties back into your question just now. Yeah, this project that we're on sounds very audacious. And it is going to be very difficult. And that's not necessarily the answer, but

it's to highlight that next time we do this, we do this as a greater community, more approachable, do an annual thing that allows many veterans to say, you know what? I had a chance once a year to see my brothers and sisters to get together to do something hard, to grow, to learn, to calm down, to be with each other, the people that get it, and

that filled my cup. That filled me up. And it allows me to say, you snap out of it or somewhat snap out of it. Again, nothing permanent solution, but more like a reprieve. And whether it is something like a 29 or 29, where it's all veteran based and have an opportunity to bond and get closer and be healthy and feel good and learn and nutrition and

mindset and breath work. And you put all that together. And then off they go. And hopefully that carries them for four, five, six months. Yeah. It's crazy. That's something like that doesn't already exist. It does. Maybe something does. I don't know. That I'm not aware of your foundations. There are many veteran foundations that offer a lot of activities. Let's say mountain biking excursions and so forth.

And there's a lot of veteran owned businesses that offer these things, but almost like an annual like sturgis or something like that. Right. Well, if you get a hundred thousand motorcycle riders, I'm not the code. I tinner it. Yeah. We should be able to get them. Yeah. It should be a lot easier. You know, right. So, but that's why I've been bugging Ryan a lot about

this about like, let's just use this as a catalyst to create something where annually it's known as the human performance project. But it's not like they said, Americans, it's something that's approachable, meaningful that they have to train for. So you're getting ready for it for a few months. And that creates community and bonding already, right? Because you're looking for people in your community or even your

former teammates and so forth that you can say, Hey, are you training for this too? Like, how are you doing? And just another platform to get closer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's, it's, it's, it's a pretty cool thing. You mentioned the human performance project. So that's your like sort of umbrella company. The seven X project is just but one project that lies under underneath that

umbrella. So what is the broader like human performance project mission? What's that all? Also, it all umbrellas under a company we call American extreme. And so they'll be broken into three components. One being extreme live sports stunts because we know that that's something that people want to see. I think it's that people want to see me crash and burn. I think that's why people follow it.

Uh huh. I hope I never give them that opportunity. Yeah. But it draws people in it. It draws our younger generation. And that's something that we need to really focus on as yes, this is applicable for everybody, but we got to start making these kids and getting these kids to understand it right from the get go. So that's why this manual that we're creating is for

a 14 year old kid and up. So they can truly understand like, I want to live with you north to start. How do I do that? I don't want to go to Google and find all these bio hacks and all these other things. Well, not even know the baseline. So we'll have that we're going to have the human performance department that we're going to continue to

add to by doing different types of hard things to develop human performance both on the mental side and the physical side. And then we're going to have event. So that way it's a community because a short story on the community. So when I got out 2010, I moved to Dallas. I started working in a job that I didn't want to work for. And I had no

community around me of my community. I considered. So it's by myself. I didn't like the job I was doing. It became very difficult. And I did it because, you know, your motivated and you get out. I got to work hard because this is what I'm disciplined to do. And over a couple years, it really started away on me. And I felt like it had zero meaning

of purpose in life. It was terrible. A friend of mine said, hey, you need to go back to San Diego and see your teammates. And I was like, you know what? You're right. I need to. And he's like, well, let's book it right now. And I was like, okay, booked it. I went back to San Diego. I got into San Diego before I even texted the

guys. And then I said, I'm going to have to drive. And it was just ridiculous that I put it in my own head. But ultimately nothing had changed. And it was mostly here in stories of me and some of the fun stuff that I used to do that they still have in picture. But it was just everything. And that gave me not just a refill for

the time it recharged my batteries forever. So now I make it a point. I'm going to continue to go back to the community because the better served I can be for myself inside. Now I can start helping everybody else out. And when did the base jumping and bird suits start? Because that was also sort of a curative thing that you found after right after you left

the military. Yeah, absolutely. So it's not just one day you wake up and say, I'm going to jump off a cliff or I'm going to with a parachute. Let me just make sure to say that. Don't do the other thing. And then. Or the fly wing suit now. Everybody thought, well, I'm birdman. So initially that's what I'm supposed to do. I was actually terrified of everything

growing up. I didn't like heights or anything. Whatever. But you get into skydiving and it becomes a regret. I was wondering why the base jumpers were leaping off a cliff. And I wondered if I could do that. If I had it inside. And I remember getting trained in it years after I started skydiving. And I remember being on the exit point in Switzerland and the Swiss

Valley looking down and saying to myself, what the hell have I gotten myself into? This is insane. I'm standing there probably 180 beats a minute not doing a thing. And I'm like, I can't believe this. And you know, of course, you don't want to let your guys down. So you're like, I'm going to do this. And you breathe. And when you jump, what happens is you

initially start falling and then you go head down. And so your body picks up enough speed for you to actually start getting air underneath you. And then you start flying. If you're good at body position. And it puts you into a flow state. And it was so incredible. It's like meditation. It you don't focus on anything else on the care of what's going on in your

life. It's gone. And you're right in the moment. And you're super alert. And everything means something. So when you pull, it's a great. You just like the if you have a problem with your canopy, you have to be on it in a split second or you're dead. So that's not the exciting thing to me. That's the stuff that I just like switching my brain on and

having to make quick decisions fast and making the right decisions and everything's on you. So this is the only thing that I do as an individual sport yet. It's always with the community of base jumpers. So that progression led into I didn't get into it because I just wanted to do it for fun. I didn't get into it because I wanted to make myself a profile.

Instagram or whatnot. I purely got into it because I knew that people were watching it. And I saw the number of likes underneath it. And I figured maybe we can do this in such an extreme way to hook people in the younger generation. And then we can use that hook to now engage them with the right things. Right. Like the that that gets people's attention. But

that's the Trojan horse for the bigger conversation that you want to have. The obvious question you probably get this a lot is that you're, you know, you're finding a way to replace. This extreme experience as a member of the SEAL teams, you exit that. And then you find this other super extreme, you know, pursuit activity that satisfies your kind of hormonal baseline. Right. Like it's sort

of like, well, I don't have that other thing that was so, you know, intense. And you found this other really intense thing. The question being like short of, you know, base jumping in the that Swiss Valley. Like is there a way for a more. A normal person to acclimate to, you know, a more kind of sedated civilian life without having to go chase extreme pursuits. Like

that's the bigger question that most veterans are are facing, right. So I mean, my answer is. Fine homeostasis at home. That is my number one because I think we put a lot of that off. Like I look at I have to wonderful children. Mostly wonderful. And then I have an awesome life. And. I'm trying to engage and move forward so fast and do all these things.

And I'm like, what's the real meaning here? And the meaning is I'm a dad. That's my number one. And I have to be a husband. So helping people engage with their families again is really could be the catalyst for everything. Extreme sports for me was never a thrill seeking thing because I just love adrenaline. I'm actually quite terrified when I jump. But I know that the

bigger pushes if we can do these things as a team, we can engage people. And then we can really with the experts around us, give them the information they deserve. Yeah. So yeah, when he's about service, right? Yeah. Sorry. I had no desire ever to get on a cliff and jump off. So when he's like, I wonder what why they do that. I never I never

I never crossed my mind. But and and like him jumping, you know, I jumped my entire career literally from February 1992 retiring in August of 2016. Just the first few years. I got a client and then free fall the rest of my my career. I'm back to jumping again for this project. And it still scares me like it always did. And I in an in an

enjoyable way, if that makes sense, like I, you know, feel very alive. Prior to during the jump. And obviously, once I've safely landed on the ground. But I the transition piece out of the military for me at 25 years, I kind of, I mean, I'd been in the same place for, you know, I feel like I grew up in the army, obviously, I retired at 45.

So I, so I, I think, I think I'm going to be able to do that. I spent 25 years in the army more than half my life. And then I, you know, I kind of as I was transitioning out, I was like, well, you know, am I who I am? Like, can I be a productive person outside of this organization? Like it kind of, I was

curious, right? And then I get this opportunity to go all the way to Colorado from North Carolina. And so I, you know, and my wife agreed to it. Like all four of our kids had been born right there in North Carolina. And we pulled them all out of everything they'd ever known and moved to the Denver area. And, and it worked out. Actually, what could be

it pretty quick. And that's where I started a side coaching business. Um, but, but to speak to this project, when I heard about the project, and I didn't hear initially from Birdman, I heard it from one of the other athletes, Danny P. And the first thing that hit my mind about this whole thing, it was fully like me focused. I was like, I couldn't do that.

And I just went right to the marathons. Seven marathons and seven days I couldn't do like thinking about moving on an airplane from location to location. I was just like, I'm thinking the time involved and the recovery. And my immediate thought was I couldn't do that. And then of course, the next thought was, I, you know, I would love to do that. Like having that. Just

like we're talking about something in the distance that I would really have to like get to a whole new level on for being prepared for and to be able to execute that, you know, barring any merfys in an accident. And here, their sickness or something. And if we can get a lot of attention doing this crazy adventure, or what I've tend to call the expedition, to

get people to then realize, well, you know, I can, why am I not doing a little bit of movement? Why am I not eating a little better? Why am I not focusing a little more on how, how to sleep better? You know, I'm going to start and see what happens. I think that that's going to be. Great. So I mean, it's funny because running, jumping off

a cliff and running seven marathons in seven days, I don't know why one was more appealing to me than the other. But for some reason, I pick along the long slog to get excited about, I guess. Well, I'm interested in what you, your experience has been, you know, pivoting into this world of endurance and taking on a challenge where you have, you know, Chris kind of

guiding you with some training principles that are probably new and different from what you're used to in the military. And then conversely, Chris, who's had a career coaching endurance athletes and aspiring endurance athletes, what has it been like to now train and coach military athletes? Like how is that? How is that different? So I don't know who wants to start. Go ahead, guys. You don't need

to bust me. I'll start. I'll start. So, so I knew enough to know that, I didn't know enough, right? I'd been a general physical preparedness guy. Like, hey, I want to be, I want to be fast. I want to be able to have a little bit of endurance. I want to be strong, powerful, all 165 pounds of me. And then we, then I started running as

we talked about this. And I, you know, it's like, oh, let me grab this book and that book and I'll start reading. And I know here's what a perfect week looks like for a marathon, you know, 16 week plan. So multiple of that times, you know, seven, you know, okay, this is not, this is not, this is not answering the mail, right? So Chris is laughing.

So, you know, and where I was in the military, if we wanted to do something good, we found whoever we could get a hold of, that was the best, you know, the best person in the world that we could get a hold of, whether that was shooting a pistol, driving a car, driving a truck, driving a, you know, whatever, parachute in the expert, we were like,

hey, let's find the expert. And, you know, I, I'd obviously run a ton. I was over my lifetime, but nothing like this, I ran a one marathon in my life in 2011. And it was very ugly, the following 24 hours. So I, I, again, yeah, your book, I found Chris through your book. And I said, and listening to your story, I was like, thinking about four

military, you know, special operations, chuckle heads for lack of a better term. I was like, this is the guy that's probably going to be able to get through to us. If anyone, you know, I'm going to be able to get through to this. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've had, you know, it's, it's been an interesting experience. I have some experience with working with, right, former operators

and, you know, guys trying to get into it. And then I worked with a couple guys, getting through Ranger School and so on. So the protocols and so forth were familiar. But, you know, you're putting something together that you have four different people doing something that they've never been on before. And you know, 184 mile run week, however you slice it, yeah, whether you're an endurance

runner or not, it's still a huge week. So it's been a, it's been a fun experience on putting it on paper and then seeing how four people apply it in different ways, where they are in their lives and how they train and how they sort of retain the information. And so we've been, we've been progressing quite nicely. We had a specific training plan in mind. And

so we've been, we've been progressing quite nicely. We had a specific training plan in mind. So what we started with is that we just started running for a little bit. But then I'm a simulation guy. Yeah. And so as you know, yeah, some familiar. Exactly. And so we started. And I always said, you know, you don't need to run seven marathons in order to prep for

this. We'll build up to let's say five or close to five. That's plenty. If you can do five close marathons, you're ready for seven when you're resting. And by the time the durability and the endurance kicks in. So we literally started in June with five by eight miles one week. And then we went back to marathon training in general stuff. And then we went to five

by 10 miles. And then a month later, we went to five by 13, one, one, right? And so constantly learning in that process, what do I need for fuel? And you don't really know that yet at five by eight and five by 10. But at 13.1, you start to pay attention to what you need to eat during the week and recover. And then we went to

five by 16. But as we discovered at five by 16, the rails started getting a little screwy because people just weren't able to do that type of volume. You know, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a big run week. And keeping these guys healthy and durable. For the day, that week will be the primary objective. And so we just got together. We progressed to technically

on the timing to five by 20. And we just got together. We progressed to technically on the timing to five by 20. And we just got together. And we just got together. And we progressed to technically on the timing to five by 20. That was going to be this past week. And we pulled the plug on that mainly because we don't want to get injured and

different people have progressed differently. Like Alex, for example, he's fully ready for five by 20. He did the five by 16 felt good. We have another guy. He built up some good volume. But he got some niggles and injuries along the way. And I don't want to put that load on him right now. We've got Ryan. He's been in and out some injuries and trying to

keep his body in one piece. Same thing. Pull the plug. So right now, we're sort of pulling a thread from now until February. Sure. And trying to figure this out. But meanwhile, these guys are masters of self discipline. They know how to, you know, sort of follow a chain of command. Like there's not a lot of excuses and whipping out. That's going to be one. That's

a problem. Yeah. Because for overtraining or not, I put it on the training piece. They're going to figure out how to do it despite being broken. Right. And so this is the whole coaching thing once again that they're not very familiar with. They're receiving commands. But they're like the whole, I need feedback. Tell me how you're feeling. What you're observing. Like, are there any niggles? How

is yesterday's run? Like silence. Got it done. Right. It's like executed. Check. That's when I get back or I don't get anything back. And you're like a month later. Oh, don't worry about him. He's getting it done. Yeah. Alright. So it is. These guys are like, what's with Chris and all this touchy feeling stuff? Like I know it. I told me to do it and I

did it. Yeah. So it's it's been a it's been a interesting journey. And here we are. And again, we're going to figure it. Now it's individual. But everybody has their individual. There is no group plan in the beginning. And I knew that we talked about this early on. I knew that we would go our separate ways with regards to everybody. Have you ever seen this? We're

doing an individual plan and keeping it together for as long as we can. Problem is when you're in a team in a unit like these guys are, if the one guy hears, Hey, what you did 20 miles. Next thing, you know, he's out there. They are doing 20 miles. And I'm like, dude, here's what's the stop at 14. Like we want to keep you healthy. So

it's been fun in that respect. I've just given him a hard time. But there is a, you know, I'm concerned. Not in a negative way, but I'm concerned in paying attention that. Hey, we've got 10 weeks to go till we fly to Dallas. And I need you guys to sort of. Now we're now in the dirty part. And everybody needs to go their separate ways with

regards to this is your training plan. This is your training plan. And let's stick to it. Mm hmm. Yeah. And with a puzzle, this complex, the chances of it going completely smoothly are pretty low, right? Like there's going to be obstacles and shit's going to get fucked up and not go correctly. But you guys know, I mean, you you guys are masters of navigating that kind

of thing, right? Yeah, I mean, and now I'll answer into this part because Alex, you've asked me the other day with regards to like how you feel about the team. And you know, they know their world. But the getting into this space of just being that exhausted and broken down and from a physical activity like this and just going to have to run 26.2 miles the

next day, even letting go and walking some of it, right? We just got to execute. There's going to be so many dynamics in this that because I don't know them in past experience of doing it about like this, I'm more worried of like, wow, that shit's going to hit the fan. I know that they'll be fine and they'll bond and they'll be like, yeah, isn't this

hilarious? Like my femur's broken, but look, it's pretty funny. I don't want that. I don't want that. So there's my nerves. Like I'm in it. You know, I my conversation. I'm very nervous because I want you guys to have this positive experience. It's an amazing experience versus go to misery for four or five days. So. Hmm. Is there anything particular that you guys are like top

of mind? Worried about or. What's the what's the yeah, like the one thing that is waking you up in the middle of the night about the whole thing. What you're going to say already. The next training picks that comes in tomorrow. Always comes in. It's a great thing. I'm going to say that I'm going to be able to do it. 6 p.m. like I saw that

email. Let's check that later. So the big thing for me when I started to put this team together is I knew that I needed experts, but I wanted them to have good attitudes. That was the biggest thing for me is like great. I know a ton of experts in different genres, but you get a good attitude. And so that's why I chose the individuals on the

team because I know it's going to get hard. 2014 or 15 I did a hundred mile run and you hit those walls where you're just hate and are at least excited. I hated like from mile 65 to 80. I was in this terrible wall and it was just so miserable. And I didn't have positive attitude always around me. It made it even worse. And so I

know that we're going to hit these walls going through how we can still training. It's five and a half days. We are up just getting crushed the whole time. And so you've got the positive side of the house for this people that want to be there. There's like in the psychopaths that are laughing at you with the femur exploded out of their leg and they're just

like this is awesome. You're holding it like it could be a war game or something like that. And then there's the ones quit. So for me like he said it's keeping myself durable enough. Mentally I know that I can do something like this. If I were forced to do it or task to do it. But physically will my body hold up because again we're not trying

to prove to ourselves that we're you guys that we're these awesome athletes. We're trying to prove that a normal human being like myself can do this so you can't do. Right, but you're not a normal human being. I mean. I don't. I don't. I don't think he's a. Yeah, but I'm not an ultra distance runner. I get that. I get that. I get that part. Well,

maybe that's a good opportunity to ask you guys about. You know, the experience of being in the Armed Forces being part of special forces. There is, you know, now we're in a culture where there's a lot of books out there. There's a lot of kind of internet influencer, podcast or type people like we know a lot more about what that experience is like. But I think

the normal person also projects an idea of what that experience is all about that probably doesn't exactly match the reality of it. Like how do you, you know, kind of characterize like how do you think about that experience and and you know how people might, you know, sort of get it wrong or or have a different wrong headed idea about what it was all about for

you guys. I mean, I I talked to a lot of kids that want to go on the program and I specifically talked to them about still training because I don't know anything else and. I ask them why they want to be a seal and I there's not a perfect answer, but I want to see where their minds at because I didn't know anything about being a

seal when I went in. I knew about being a student in training. That's what we can see publicly. But 90% of the job is either miserable or it's boring. So it's that 10% that's just absolutely amazing. It drives you to continue to do it all the time. And it's the people that really make it worthwhile. So I mean, the job of putting all the gear together

to go actually do the mission. It takes a long time on a lot of prayer. And it's not fun and it's not sexy. And then for instance, in the seal teams, let's say you skydive at night where you can't see anything and then you have to land in water and you know that it's the ocean and there's sharks and they love to eat things that look

like seals. And we got a dive underwater for four hour exhaustion dive and you can't see anything and you keep getting vertigo from the algae out there and you're just looking at a tack board the whole time and you finally get to your place for two minutes of glory. And then it's over and now you got to get out of there. It's that's not fun. You

know, especially when you're doing a day and day and day again. It's just so it's about how much do you want it? And for me, there's a huge misconception. And they also think that we're just these unbelievably unique people. And I don't believe that. And I think it's that you either have to be super stubborn to get through the training or you have to want it.

It's so bad. And that's something I don't think people give themselves enough credit for. I think there are a lot more people that can make it into the special operations community. It's just not their thing or they're not interested. But for those who try and attempt and I just don't think they give themselves enough credit to be there if they want it that bad. Because we

could have a bigger populist in our community. Yeah. And what is the difference between the person that is able to make it and see it through and have a successful career versus the person who flames out. I think the big thing is like not setting your aperture on what you're trying to complete close enough. You know, it's not. Yeah, I'm joining the military. In 20 years

from now, I'm going to be in this perfect unit doing this perfect job, you know, looking like this perfect special operator. It's more like, can I get through them? You know, hey, what if I make it to lunchtime? That would be pretty cool. Let me focus. Yeah. Let me focus on getting to this next stop point successfully. I mean, you know, that if that's not I'd

talk to my kids about that all the time. Whatever they've got going on, right? It's it's about just kind of. Keeping your perspective smaller on it, you know, eating the elephant one bite at a time. On what people get get it wrong. You know, if you watch a movie, it looks like it's super exciting all the time. And, you know, even in. Even in like the

chaos of a of a busy rotational recise, you know, that's there's not a whole lot of that. It's not like you're doing that every, you know, you're having these amazing, these significant engagements, at least I never, you know, wasn't for me. I have these significant engagements every night, you know, for four months in a row. It's, it's just every, you know, it's a lot of, a

lot of operating just like you do in training. And then occasionally there's this. Wow, it wasn't expecting tonight to be like that kind of experience. And, and then you come back and you, you just go right back to what you've learned to do in training with regard to finishing up the night and preparing for the next, you know, getting ready to go out again for what

may be an ex, you know, some people would consider an exciting night or a boring and not knowing when you're going to go out again. Right? Like there's a lot of waiting around. Yeah, there were definitely rotations like that. And then there were some rotations where you knew even before you left the States, it was going to be, it was just going to be a super

busy rotation. But the training is. There's not this magic where it's like, well, would it, you know, when you get to this level, like what's, you know, what's, tell me the secret. And there is, the secret is there's no secret. It's like, hey, the stuff you learned from day one, just keep getting better at it. Shoot, move, communicate, get better at it to the point of

being a master. And, you know, and, and like, hey, I used to be able to shoot a gun really good and, you know, laying in this one position to now I can do it, you know, moving through three dimensional target with three, you know, three to three dimensional environment with targets, who knows where and successfully finish that type of training. Yeah. There's, there is no magic.

It's just getting better at the basics. And Chris, is there anything, you know, qualitatively different about working with these guys or these types of guys that that you've seen and and learn from from, you know, that distinguishes them from the other just, you know, sort of civilian endurance athletes. No, actually, they're humans. Yeah. You know, they're humans like everybody else, they have a desired outcome. They're

looking to achieve a goal, a pretty audacious goal. And it's out of their comfort zone. But overall, the human side and who they are comes forward. And you're dealing with the same, same sort of versions of humans. I mean, the only thing is you, and that's maybe a mistake. You make assumptions of, oh, they won't, they're mentally this or they're not going to quit on this.

And that might be true. But you can't, you know, you're not necessarily assuming that on everything. You gotta treat them just like any other athlete, because they're breakable too. Right. And they can over train too and so far. We have a sort of a tradition here on the podcast that we kick off January with, with some special forces guys. We've done this a number of times.

And because I have you guys here, I think it would be cool to talk a little bit about habit change because that is that just happens to be on everyone's mind at the beginning of January. When people are thinking about their goals, their dreams, their aspirations, their New Year's resolutions, what they want this new year to look like, overcoming past bad habits and replacing them with

healthier ones. How do you think about goal setting and habit change? Like what practices have worked for you, which ones haven't? And what are some kind of words of wisdom that you can impart to that person who's trying to put the pieces together to create something. You know, different and more exceptional than their previous lived experience. There's a lot there. This next year is going to

be different for me because I'm still going to be focused on getting through this one. So I'm going to be very focused in training peaks. But ultimately, I think for me, because I've done this 2022 as a self reflection. Am I happy? And do I love myself? That was my biggest thing. And so, for me, I would say instead of focusing on, okay, what are the

new objectives for the year? I'll be more internally. How can I actually focus on myself to make myself feel much better? How can I love myself again and be human and be happy again? Then I can start to project all the cool things I'm going to do because if you love yourself, everything else is easy. So that's something I had to do and take a deep

look at. And it's not easy. But if very well, maybe the hardest thing, but the best thing you can do for yourself. I like the, I mean, I think there's always, there's never a better time than right now to have a habit change that's for the positive right. With the people I work with and with myself, I try to, you know, I used to, if I

couldn't, if I lost my window to go to the gym for this perfect workout, I just wouldn't go at all. And I realized that as a dad of a bunch of kids and husband and a guy trying to make money in the civilian world, you know, sometimes I just got to accept. You know, be minus work, right? So my biggest recommendation for anyone trying to move

into a set of better habits is start small. Don't boil the ocean. Take any positive progress, you know, day to day as a win. You know, kind of the army, the military has task condition standards, right? So you can be like, Oh, the standard is, you know, here's the task. Here's the conditions. Here's, here's the standard that I pass. Yes. Well, make your standard, you make

it a window, but have the bottom of that standard where you can say, did I pass? Yes. Low. Right. So yeah, I want to have this optimal day tomorrow, where I eat perfectly. And, you know, my salad, the chef, like sang to the greens before he put them in the bowl that I or whatever, you know, like that's perfect. Well, have perfect as a ideal, but

accept accepted, like a day as a win. If you, if you get some movement in and you, and you eat pretty decently, and you get a little bit of, you know, basic focus on sleep done so that you're, you're not just a train wreck every day. And then, and then when you, when you, even when you don't make that minimum standard, you know, give yourself a

little grace and get right back on the horse, because the problem is people are like, Oh, this is how I'm going to live my life. I'm going to change all these habits. And then they miss a day. And then they miss two days. And then they're like, Well, I'll, I'll start again next year. Yeah. You know, yeah. Yeah. What's interesting about, it's great advice. I think

that's really good advice. But as you're recounting that, I'm thinking, you know, guys in the military, they're so disciplined, like these guys have, you know, their habits dialed in, they know what they're doing, but you're also in this highly regimented environment, where accountability checks are built in. And you have an agreed upon goal that you're collectively working towards, like there's systems in place to kind of

these guardrails, right, that are directing you towards a certain kind of outcome. And then in the civilian world, it's kind of just up to you, right? Like you have to create that accountability for yourself. Like you have to try to recreate whatever, you know, kept those guardrails up in the military in your own personal life. And that's a different type of skill set. Did you find

that challenging when you, you know, left the military? Has that has, or do you just have like that's so ingrained in you that you kind of know how to do that for yourself? I mean, for me, I saw it right away that people around me weren't operating at a standard that I would have felt was sufficient. But it didn't change how I operated, but it became

difficult because they weren't operating. So yes, that's, it's very difficult. So that's why you form a team around you. So that way you can put out word and you can better serve, like, hey, I want to help you with this, but this is the way that I'm going to do things. And this is what I expect in the military. When a senior leader would come by

and say, okay, here's the word of the day. This is what we got to get done. Check, check, check. And then by the end of the day, all he has to do is say, bird, check, we're good. He knows it's done. And in the civilian community did that in the corporate. How we doing? Well, let's talk to HR real quick. It's going to be a long

time. So that's personally why I form a team around that are better than me so that I'm held accountable, even though I'm creating these things because it's a lot. Right. And it's not easy. It's definitely not easy being a civilian. It's very difficult. It's not just because in the military, it's difficult. Tough times out there. There's a lot at stake. I mean, you want to build

a family some day. You want to retire some day. I mean, I'm going to work in while you're younger and fortify yourself. Chris, you always have a lot of wisdom around. Have a change. Well, I'm about aiming at something. Right. Like it doesn't have to be the perfect goal, but aim at something. And along that journey, you're going to discover a lot of things about yourself,

but also what you don't like and what you do like. And we know that the human being is most happy when they're making progress. Even if it's miniature little progress goals, the galaxy's talking about we get a little dopamine hit. We get some validation that we're on the right path towards what we're aiming at. Right. And standing still leads us somewhat unhappy, actually, digressing. It's just

very unhappy. So find something to aim at. And so when it's around something, whether it's New Year's or something that you're you're missing a direction. Aim at something that fulfills you that gets you excited. That makes you curious. And from there, start taking small steps. And again, it's the small things that we keep saying that keep adding up. And everybody that I talk to is when

we come up with adventures with a lot of athletes that I work with, they ask me, well, what should I do? What's the adventure I should take on? What do you think I should do next? And it's more diving into what they're curious about or what invigorates them or wonder what they've always wondered. Hmm, I wonder if I can do that. And if there's a string

to pull there, that's the direction. And then you start heading in. Because then you're satisfying a deeper need curiosity, a deeper why. And that's fun. Hmm. There is something magical and mystical about what happens when you just string a few sort of actions together that are self-esteem building or moving you towards a certain goal, even if they're super tiny, right? Like you create this momentum. And

that momentum build suddenly, you're more enthusiastic about taking that next step than you were one step prior because you did these two. It could be tiny. It could be like, I brushed my teeth in the, whatever it is that you're struggling with. And then you do that. It's like, you know, this, this idea of self-esteem is a function of doing a steamable acts. And those esteemable

acts can be on behalf of yourself, right? And when they're small. But those things like they really like build in this compounding kind of way that can really redirect your life. So it is really important to start small as that idea of like atomic habits, right? That James Clearbook. But it's also about those little things, right? If you do those small things, you look back and

you go, man, I've come pretty far, even in a short time, because I've strung those little things together. And I think that's also an accelerator to where you're, where you want to go. Right. There's one thing pulling you to or you're aiming for, but you're also moving away from something. And you combine those two motivations. That's a pretty powerful tool, meaning I no longer want to

be this person, whether that's in a health way or in a personal way or in a career way. And you're moving towards something, you're striving towards or you're aiming towards. That's pulling you. That's pushing you away. Now you have double momentum. And when you're in that sweet spot and you've identified that you can do both, it helps you on days when you're not that excited to

move in that direction. Yeah. But you're reminded, I no longer want to be that version of myself. So it gives you that little bump that you're talking about that little extra step forward. Yeah. I think that that to Ryan's point, it begins with that first question, which is like, how do you feel about yourself on the inside? Right. Are you happy with who you are? And

if you're not, it is reflecting upon, you know, the past, like, who have I been in the past? And how do I want to show up in the future as a solvent to that notion of, like, I don't feel good about who I am right now? And, and that's an exploration of your values, right. Like, you have to be clear on like, your values, because your

value, your values paint the portrait of the person you aspire to be. Like, how well are you living up to these values that you feel are important, right. And then dissecting that into actions that you can take that will move you towards that more aspirational version of yourself that is living up to that value set that fundamentally you feel like is important and a reflection of

the person that you want to be. And it's dynamic, right. It's constantly moving where you're with regards to your value. Right. And it's and who I don't want to be and who I do want to be. And so there's that that's constantly sort of in this little flux state. And so if you're kicking that forward a little bit, I think that's when you're also finding it

easier to do the hard things. Yeah. And, and, and that idea that if you're not feeling good about who you are, it's probably because there's tension between, you know, how you're showing up in the world and how you wish you were showing up in the world, right. That makes you feel like shit. And then you beat yourself up and you go down that shame spiral. Of,

you know, making the second mistake that compounds in the negative direction. Well, that's especially when you think of new year, right. We create those expectations. We created that story of who we want to be, which is just a story. Exactly. Exactly. And we're stuck and we give ourselves a hard time. We created no one else is giving you a hard time. Yeah. Yeah. And so the

hardest judges on ourselves. And so that's why I talked to a lot of athletes too. It's like wait a moment. You set that expectation to do. You can still move towards that by sort of creating a little bit more leeway around that expecting. You're still going to achieve it but give yourself maybe a different timeline or give yourself some you know a different path towards it

but expectations are hard hard hard drivers of how we judge ourselves and that's one of the nice things about this project. We have no expectations on how we're going to do it. We just know we are going to do it. It's not like am I going to run a 3 30 marathon on everyone? No. We may in the interactive. We're going to absolutely not. Yeah. We're

walking a lot of times. So it is what it is and you're just going to achieve your outcomes and don't judge yourself on the expectations you created for yourself. Yeah. The other really important piece there is sustainability. Right. So we all know people set these New Year's resolutions and you know two weeks, two months, three months, whatever. Flame out. You know here we are again. I

said I was going to you know go to the gym every day or whatever it is and it's unsustainable and they lose interest or they miss a day and do that thing you were talking about where it's just like you throw the baby out with bath water. Well I can't do it. And so I just I'm giving up altogether. So how do you think about and

communicate around this notion of sustainability to create these habits and practices that you know conserve you long term because it's not about what you're going to do over the next two months. It's like where are you going to be next January and beyond. Yeah. I think something that some people you know what is the one way to maybe change the thought process for people is you

know hey I want to lose 40 pounds. Well that's great. You want to lose 40 pounds. But let's not focus on that. Let's focus on the behaviors that we can measure. Right. You know like hey every day I'm going to I'm not going to have any food until this time and then you know this is what my first meal is going to look like and I'm

going to do all the stuff we know to do from a nutrition standpoint based on my lifestyle. That's going to move me towards that goal but I'm not measuring. I'm not getting on the scale every day to see if I lost 40 pounds because that's just like punching yourself in the face. Right. But I can go okay did I did I eat the way you know

did I eat within my protocol did I keep my food well the time the amount of hours I ate throughout the day. In in the in my you know my target range did I did I get my baseline protein requirements and that I stay away from added sugar and all the you know highly processed and highly refined. I'm not going to lose foods that caused me

to gain this weight like you like I'm not yeah I have this goal but I'm going to keep track of of my of my behaviors and measure those and yeah I'm based success on that. And maybe not even set losing 40 pounds as the goal but set living your life as a healthy person as the goal where the 40 pounds comes off as a byproduct of

the goal of you know adhering to the habits that a healthy person would because being a healthy person is a very very good value that you know I want to manifest in my own life. Well that's an identity question too right 40 pounds is it is a projection. Where is I want to be the type of person who is active or who is leaner or healthier.

Now you have a wider runway to achieve that. Your your goals along the way your many objectives and how you're progressing towards that give you a lot more leeway from a sustainability standpoint versus a five only lost two pounds in last month. Well that's disappointing but if you're sort of saying well I am already living out the lifestyle of somebody who I'm looking to become who

each health here who's more active who gets a lot of sleep and you know who cares about how they're caring for their body and their health and wellness. Now you're already that identity. And along the way you're going to get those benefits. I'm the type of person who well I can do that. I can do that. I can do that. In two minutes from now walking

out this door I can be the type of person who lives like that. And now it's just all right that's already who I am it's non-negotiable it's an identity of mine and I can be that person. The other thing I always look at is how am I progressing from yesterday so is many steps like I don't maybe I didn't eat perfectly maybe I didn't do that

workout but I thought about it and I took care of myself in other ways so I'm a little bit better than yesterday and again I'm moving towards I'm the type of person who because then now we're dealing with identity versus judgment. Why do you think most people abandon their New Year's resolutions? Because it's the end of the year they're probably eating the worst they eat most

you know over the whole year they're probably already not eating themselves. They're the right way. I mean if I had to think about you know we're as busy as we ever are it seems like as a family so oh I'm as busy as I'm ever going to be and I'm going to make this I'm not even going to take time to think about my New Year's

resolution and an actual execution I'm just going to throw it out there. And then you know January 1st you're like what was it yeah that's it's a weird time too because everything in my DNA is telling me to you know hibernate and go into the covers like it gets dark early I don't have the energy that I have in the summertime like you know we're sort

of program for this time of year to like slow down and kind of stop doing things and yet it's the time of year where we have more social obligations and expectations around holidays and social all this kind of pressure on top of it that it like it's like I don't this is not the time of the year that I want to do these things you know

and big goals that myself. Yeah big goal yeah like I want to sleep and tackle gather the chestnuts. I think another interesting thing and I think about this from the military in general and I'll just tell a story that maybe we'll paint the picture but I would get my new guys from training as a leader and and I would immediately take my new team guys to

the O course that we had access to every day of the year knowing that they hated the O course because they go to the O course. Opsicle course. Excuse me. So I'd take them down to the obstacle course knowing that they probably hated it because every time they'd run it to that point they were timed and it was a test and they either passed or they

failed and if they passed maybe they were first and so they loved the O course but maybe they were last and the whole training group and just and it was just a super stressful thing that when they heard when they saw it on the schedule they were just like oh yeah. Great. I've got to go run the obstacle course and and see how bad I do.

I would take them down there and I would be like all right everybody give me your watch because we're just going to play on the O course. We're not going to do the O course as a timed event and try to immediately change their aperture on what the O course was because it was an amazing training opportunity to just I mean it was just amazing. You're

here in all these different dimensions of moving across the O course. We've got a lot of different ways. It's a lot of different aspects and we've got different ways to do it. It's a lot of different ways to do it. So what I'd like to do is I'll just take you down there and make sure you don't get lost ropes and different planes of momentum and

stuff and learning transitions in that environment and stuff was amazing. People get out of the military. So so hey let me let me take something that you hate about the last little bit of your life and and change your perception of it. I think a lot of people get out of the military and they are like man I three days a week and do these stupid

runs, information and call cadence and then I had to do these stupid pushups whatever the case may be. So they get out of the military and like not having to do that anymore. I'm not you know and then they because of some angst they had about something they hated they lose the ability to identify that as part of a healthy life in the future and of

course that's catastrophic as we all know. I think New Year's resolutions are kind of probably the same thing. I mean it's like oh I have to have a New Year's resolution. Yeah I have a great point you know. And that's what I was just thinking when you were saying that is like wait you're forcing a goal into this window where you're not really thinking about a

goal. Like if it if it comes to you naturally where you say oh I want to do that I want to achieve that outcome but we put January 1 and we go okay I got to think of a goal and I think of a New Year's resolution. It's not natural it's not your natural rhythm of figuring out a goal. Instead maybe a short term like I

like to do who I like to do. Who do I want to be on February 1st right that gets me alright do the holidays. Well who do I want to be on the Q one Q one ends. So now I'm just thinking for the next 12 weeks versus this whole annual thing where even you have to sit down and think about your year and reflect on

your past year that's overwhelming to me and I live in the goals. It's it's fabricated and it's not official like it feels pressure like you have to you have to come up with this. Is that how you're going to stick that. Right you're not going to stick to that. Now but if you say I once again I want to be in six months somebody who looks

like this okay well that why. Well that's because X Y's a I'm going on vacation I'd like to look good it means a lot to me whether it that should be something that means a lot to you or not is it totally different question it's more if it's important to you good. Now we have a goal that's important to you we have a timeline and we

can gradually start moving to it but this whole forcing a square bag in around hold just because it's January 1st. Right seems like doom for failure in the first and and to Alex's point how can we reframe or tell a new story around the pursuit of hard things so that it's more like play or fun than regimen in in this artificial kind of performance construct right

like remove the timing for I mean especially like is we're getting older right who gives a fuck. Come on. No like can we just do this for the joy of it. Yeah. And and you know be be nourished through community and the collective pursuit of doing hard things as opposed to qualifying for X Y or Z or or meeting some kind of artificial performance goal that

we may or may not achieve. And if we don't we feel less than about ourselves when honestly it doesn't really matter. As long as we're staying healthy yeah progressing forwards that we feel good about ourselves nourishing exactly nourishing ourselves. That's the part sure if you can figure out a New Year's resolution where you're nourishing your soul and yourself from a physical standpoint in a positive way

it's going to be so much easier. Yeah that should be our word nourishing nourishing there you go. All right well for this 7x insanity are you feeling the pressure Chris to just think on the rails. Yeah I am. I am. He's going to be fine. He's worried. Yeah I know that stress. I did see on the Instagram account though there's this woman Katie Hernandez who's going

to do a mile in a bomb suit like tell me about that I want to hear a little bit about that is officer EOD which is explosive ordinance disposal so she's a bomb tech. They're the psychos they're the ones who take bombs apart. We like the blow stuff up they like to take the stuff apart so she's awesome she's a world record holder and doing a

mile in the bomb suit the fastest bomb suit can weigh anywhere from 190 to 150 pounds. Wow so she is an awesome awesome person she's a great human being good attitude and she really wants to challenge herself continue to challenge herself so she's raising money for this cause and as a function of that instead of her doing the marathons she's going to go mile and each

of them she won't be cold they don't know she I don't know yeah she's right right you know my yeah I just I'm thinking of her like Jeremy Renner in the bomb suit and in in the movie of course yeah hundred I didn't realize it was that heavy. Yeah you imagine a bomb going off you want something to protect you sure it probably won't do the

job but I think they're running joke is that if you mess up you'll never know so right I guess that keeps them at people they'll be they'll all be in one spot if they mess up right the bomb suit's not really saving you now but after the after she's done with it and I get out of the plunge I'm jumping right in that thing. Well I'm

I'm really excited about this for you guys I can't wait are we going to be able to kind of watch it in real time on the internet somehow like how how can people support what you guys are doing what are some of the you know charities that are you're supporting where do you want to direct people so that they can you know stay up to speed

with everything that's going on. I appreciate that so it's seven X that project you can follow it on social media and American extreme dot com is our website we'll be giving updates and we will be doing live segments and we will be putting everything online at American extreme dot com and we'll continually blast social media through this event. Yeah cool. There's gonna be news coverage and

all the jazz with it and then we are going to build this into something that people from any genre can come and participate in after. Right. And what are some of the nonprofits that you guys are supporting so we focused on a plethora of different organizations we didn't want to double tap so they could be anything from mental health related to physical ailments so injury, gold

star families helping veterans transition they're all veteran and first responder focused and not just American but elsewhere so every one of our charities is up on American Extreme dot com we have 14 organizations globally. Yeah we'll link that up in the show notes I saw that like the beneficiaries that page right that's correct what it is right. I don't thoughts how you feeling. I feel pretty

good I mean again once once you get the professional in and I'm going to do that. And he's telling you what to do and you're going to execute it and knowing that you know it's more to task not to time. Yeah I think it's going to be a hoot and it's it's going to be the hardest in some ways it's already the hardest thing I've ever

done just because of the hours of sure of you know training requirement et cetera and I plan this out over the next few months it's going to be awesome. I'm not expecting that to happen but yeah I think I think it's going to be very exciting in a run of marathon every day. So we're recording this in early December this will go up at the beginning

of January and then the event kicks off in late February February 23rd is that right February mid February mid February. February. February 13th is going to be congregating in February. February 16th is actually when we'll be out in Cape Town to get ready to go. And if people are listening and they live in one of those respective regions can they come out and be boots on

the ground to support you guys or run alongside you or any of that kind of thing like what happens if you know people are listening they're in London and they want to you know watch this all go down when you guys are there. Bring it on share it with your friends tell everybody tell the queen. Oh tell the king now. Tell everybody. And we do have

a few seats you got to figure out this London bridge thing man you got to jump off the bridge. So to his point of he's feeling good I'm the opposite because I'm also in the logistical side of the house so we're still in pre all the planning so there's a lot to still accomplish. We still have a few seats available. There are those who love adventure

who want to go along with us. How many seats how many how many seats on the 757 like 400. I think it's an air bus actually. It's an air bus. It's a wide-body aircraft. Yeah it's going to have more seat way more seats than than we need and we'll actually turn part of the aircraft into more of a recovery now. Yeah I mean you're going to

you want to sleep right so you're not going to sleep in normal airplane seats right. We'll have a whole athlete section of hopefully even some soft side hyperbaric chambers and stuff like that back to do a little bit of recovery work in but well the other interesting thing is that we're going to have a lot of fun. Starting from an admin point is for every seat

like for every X amount of seats you keep on the aircraft you have to have a stewardess just due to regulatory requirements. Sorry we're on work there. So we're trying to like from an admin standpoint as I listened to all of those calls occasionally. There's even those issues of trying to really be precise with how we keep the air air aircraft set up. Sure but as

a wide-body I think you know over 400 seats would potentially be the capacity. I can't help but think when we when in talking about like customizing an air bus for an endurance adventure I'm like looking at your all day running company hat and I'm like we got to get Jesse it's learned just by this plane when sing is over. Colt the all day running company. You

put a song. Airbus just put song and cold lunch and I'll just go from one twenty two nine out twenty nine. That's all day running event exactly. I think there's an outcome there. Yeah. Paging Jesse is learned. But I think we're we're how many seats do you still have available. It's six so we're only allowed at 30 right now and that's and it's a high ticket

item if people are if some ball are out there as interested in and contributing and participating in that they just go they go to the American extreme website and they can get information and contact you that way. Yeah. You'll contact me directly and we'll just run you through everything. Yeah. And are you have you met your like sort of fundraising goals just to execute the the

adventure or you still looking to raise some money. I mean obviously you want to be able to give back to these nonprofits and beneficiaries right. But. Yeah. So we've met the goal for this to actually happen but there's going to be that I should affect so we're still raising capital so that we can cover down on everything. And then how we're spite the splicing this is

a hundred percent of the net proceeds from the documentary and the manual that sold go to these charities and perpetuity. So it'll be that everlasting gap stopper for them to continue to fund them. Cool. Yeah. Right on. Final thoughts, Chris. Well, I've never done something like this before. So nobody has. That's true. But it's I'm doing the scariest thing I've ever done, which is jumping out

of a plane. It's one of those things where I've always said, you know what, not for me. And so I'm happy to go to the edge of my comfort zone a little bit. But yeah, it's going to be an adventure for sure. And final thoughts would be I just want to get back on boots on the ground and Dallas. Everybody's safe, healthy, had the experience of

a lifetime. And then I can sort of exhale. Yeah. Cool. Final thing. You mentioned, you're putting together this manual, which I think is great. Like is there an ETA on wrapping that up and making that available or is that to be TBD on the website? It is TBD on the website, but 2023, you're having it completed. And we're not sure on when we're going to debut

it, but we're going to get to work on it pretty cool. Yeah. Well, I appreciate you guys. This is in addition to just being an epic adventure that you guys are about to embark upon. The broader mission of addressing veteran rights and and just mental health issues at large, you know, in this very strange and kind of difficult time that we live in where a lot

of people are suffering unnecessarily is really important work. I applaud you for that and wish you wish you guys well. I'm at your service. There's anything I can do to support you or help you guys out. Please hit me up. Thank you. Can't wait to hear about it. Thanks for having us. Yeah. Absolutely. Cool. Here we are. We did it. Good. Happy New Year, everybody. New

year. Happy New Year. Right on. This episode was brought to you by Athletic Greens. Get a free one year supply of immune supporting vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase at Athletic Greens dot com slash rich roll. That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation to learn more about today's guest, including links and resources. The

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