if you like please paint me a picture
how to imagine a BJJ class from you as an active soldier did you have a key
mats and how would it differ from a quote-unquote
normal class so yeah I always brought mass with me starting with 1998 I think
is when I started bringing mats with me how do you bring math do you just be
like hey in military transport you build something called a pallet alright pallet
and they're like 8 feet by 8 feet yeah pretty big and you put stack all kinds
of stuff on them yeah and you know you've got your weapons just whatever
you like you got your engines you got your motors you got your motors you got
your boats your zodiac boats you've got paddles you got all this I mean all the
equipment and everyone's personal gear is on there they're op dere their body
armor it's all on these big pallets and when you go on deployment you'll have 8
pallets 8 of these giant pallets and so on some of those pallets there would be
mats so who is it up to though you know you're talking about weapons and zodiacs
and stuff and and then yeah it's like oh yeah move it up to whoever's in charge
which so that it made it real easy yeah and and even if it wasn't me I mean
everybody you know if people are bringing something to help everyone get
better yeah you know people yeah yeah that's cool so is it a proven process no
man you can say like this is the world or sky's bringing all kinds of crazy
things man I remember guys you guys to bring surfboards I mean they pack their
surfboards on pallets they attack you weights and squat racks and anything
that you want if you're going on a six-month deployment to a remote
location yeah you're gonna prefer your load out of squat rack and a bunch of
bumper plates and if that remote location has waves
you're packing surfboards if it has if it has you know rock climbing you're
gonna pack rock climbing gear yeah that's the I'm telling you this is
one of the things that it's really hard to the SEAL Teams it's really hard to
have that I think we I think in the we in the SEAL Teams have that better than
most people it's just this this autonomy to kind of make things happen and do
kind of cool stuff yeah and I'm not saying no no one ever gets to do that
but you know IIIi don't think a regular army unit or
regular Marine Corps unit would be putting you know seven surfboards on
there yes so where so where's the limit they like so what can i let's say me who
we're going can I get a Leia TV can I get a TVs like a big-screen yeah yeah
yeah it just do it also depends on where you deploying what you and what the
mission is cuz you know my first time to Iraq we didn't have much of any of this
stuff obviously right we just had our op gear basically and but the second time
the second time I went to Iraq we brought more but we actually add – well
– squat rack it's pretty awesome there's a third Marine that there's a great
marine that was with us and he ran he manned the radios and he was just a just
a awesome guy and he was he was a marine but he was there was Marines across the
river and so he was supposed to keep continuity and he got assigned to us
anyways awesome guy and he knew how to weld he was from a farm up in Montana or
something so he knew how to weld and he had the
gear and we didn't have a squat rack and so our Seabees because there's a bunch
of Stevie's with yeah they got they were able to like just come up with stuff
they make anything happen my head CB was just could see that's Seabees build
things and they also acquire things combat builder it's it's a combat
engineer battalion it's a Construction Battalion that's what it's so it's CB
for short but it's the Seabees and so yeah they build things and they also are
very good at acquiring things you know things just show up at your at your base
and my guys were awesome at acquiring things and we didn't have a squat rack
which is which is crazy to me to be having no squat rack right why why don't
you have a squat rack so yeah it's ridiculous this this Marine welded a
squat rack now here's the interesting part the squat rack he was he was tall
he was like maybe six 465 maybe not that tall but he was a manga the marine
welder so on this squat rack there was you know there's adjustable to put the
bar on mm-hmm well this didn't have adjustable things just had two hooks and
there was one hook at his height or set of hooks at his iton and one set of
hooks at my eyes everyone just had to figure it out from there but but yeah so
yeah you could bring you could bring that if you wanted to and so so yes we
brought mats I brought mats on that deployment and
both actually both my deployments to Iraq brought mats and then one of the
class like well generally your training with people that don't know anything and
I would have trained with them on the work up you know so they're starting to
learn and they're like you know low-level white belts or mid-level white
belts are even high-level wipeouts I don't think we I even had one blue belt
on even one of my deployments and the good thing is they're team guys they're
athletic they're strong they're in good shape they want to learn so they learn
fast they're tough there's like I said strong and athletic
so you got to get good rolls yeah I mean want the more you teach them the better
the rolls get talking about gear nogi we never try never traveled with Aggie for
the military I don't think and so well what I started wearing almost all time
was Cammy pants and a t-shirt and what's cool is I did that when I assumed I
started you Jitsu I was training with other seals that were in Cammy pants and
and a t-shirt because it didn't make sense to wear like a Cammy top yeah and
so what's cool is without even knowing it when no one was training noogie I was
actually training noogie because I did was just training with guys with
t-shirts on not wearing pants but but anyways so yeah that's what we'd wear
Cammy pants and a t-shirt would we occasionally put on top gear
occasionally but but not not very often the other thing you got to watch out for
with with my former organization in the SEAL Teams is there's guys that would go
nuts like they didn't want to tap because you get major he goes and so
guys could occasionally go psycho sometimes when I when I pit for certain
people against each other sometimes I'd have to basically officiate slash be a
safety officer to make sure that no one actually got killed because they'd be
trying to kill each other and no one wants to happen after the game and you
can't know you're about to your arms about to get broken stop so you had to
do some of that and I'm I'm I am a bit of an instigator yeah and when it
everything you see it now I still do it on the mats today
you know I mean if if there's two guys that are going hard against each other
but maybe they're not going super hard yeah yeah they could go hard it's real
easy to escalate yeah and so I would escalate matches between
guys as well and and then you know I just roll with everyone so yeah well the
Class B like we teach the moves just like a Drago jiu-jitsu class teach the
moves go over some stuff and then roll and that's it pretty simple good times
yeah I found that if you can do little drills with yourself if you go if you're
a high level guy and you're going with a white belt especially if they're
athletic what you do is you know how like when you roll with a guy who's
maybe one level give or take from you you um or let's say they're one level
lower you'll kind of slowly put yourself into better or worse situations you
won't go all out or nothing like yeah but this is kind of counterintuitive to
if you go with like a like a beginner beginner but they're athletic what you
do is you try to you think of a finish or magician do that yeah as fast as you
possibly can oh so if you're like okay I'm gonna start in the box we're gonna
force how many know well depends on we're gonna have to force it yeah but uh
force an armlock if you say I'm gonna finish this with an arm lock you have to
force him into that position someone yeah yeah yeah oh you can set it up sure
yeah exactly that's what that's really the drill is that you gotta set it up
given what he does and he could be retreating the whole time sure it's and
so it's gonna take longer it's just that's just how did you do is but that's
the drill in your head rather than you know you let's say an intuitive method
to roll with the white belt is let's just go light let's see what he does let
him give and get a good position on you and I don't work out or whatever but no
don't do that be like okay I'm gonna treat this person like a person that I
have to in real life so do with and you choose whatever that's a good game to
play actually that is a good game to play and then you get real good at that
like going from one thing and then it's also I don't play that game very often I
don't know what there's something that snaps in my head sometimes I'm like okay
I'm gonna just smash this person but you know sometimes I'll be watching the
clock and when there's 40 seconds left I'll be like alright I'm going to try
and submit this dude in the next 40 or this is when I'm going against
someone that's good you know what I mean that's honestly I do that with you
sometimes word you can feel me chilling and I'm all of a sudden I'm like oh wait
there's a 30 seconds left and I have to go super hard to try and get you and
sometimes I don't give myself enough time and so then I have to learn it
better yeah and yeah me saying that agree like I don't do that in training
because what I hardly my lazy instinct is I always go just enough better than
the person I'm going against you to maintain and eventually finish you see
and that's good because you give the other guy good training yeah and that's
kind of the point with not you don't want if you go and regular jusu class
and you're like you know upper belt mean like purple brown black belt and you go
against a white belt you get paired up with a white belt I'm not saying
necessarily to do that all the time because it's kind of you kind of it's a
relationship you have with your training partners so if I'm like okay every white
belt I go against or every or any beginner I'm just gonna go as hard again
it's like brought what are you doing the guy sure good that's why that's why for
what you're saying for blue belts to do that is not good so who else is that
white belts they don't have the skill yet yeah yeah I do that's like a brown
belt black belt yeah that's gonna be that's gonna be like okay I'm gonna test
my efficiency on making this happen really quickly yes blue belt against a
athletic white belt it's gonna be it's gonna be World War seven yeah and
there's injuries that are waiting to happen
yeah as a purple belt general he's not gonna get injured not gonna generally
injure someone from being in a bad position blue belt white belt
yeah and and so really the point in doing that is like in a scenario like
your situation where you don't have anyone to train with except for
beginners that are all athletic and hungry so it's like okay well what do I
do you know you know what's critical I would come home from deployment better
at jujitsu than when I left for sure that happened on every deployment when I
came home I was better at jujitsu than when I left but not only better than I
was but I was in keeping with the standards of the guys I was training
with yeah so you know I'm rolling with Dean before I leave and I come back and
I am now doing better than I was against Dean before I left
where he's been here training the whole time so that that says to me that is an
effective way to train you know you just you just and the that's why there's
really no excuse to lie people ask you know what should I do I live four hours
away from the closest gym man get some friends put some mats on the ground
watch YouTube and start training with each other and occasionally when you get
the chance go somewhere to a school once a month once every two weeks so you can
learn yeah yeah and I think in your situation is is kind of a not
necessarily unique but kind of a specific type of situation where you
have all the fundamentals essentially down sure so you know like habitual
stuff stuff that you you just automatically do with certain techniques
which is the correct technique you know so you could think that you'll benefit
more in that way where you can train with beginners in trance when I was a
blue belt myself yeah I still got a lot better when I would be on deployment
yeah when I was a purple belt when I was a brown belt yeah still still it's just
like a little just a smaller version of that idea where if you're a beginner and
you're like okay I'm never taking jiu-jitsu them start on YouTube or
whatever I don't think you can benefit fellow situations oh no you can decimal
initiative not as much you can't yeah you can definitely not as
much but you can benefit I mean definitely benefit you can definitely
benefit yeah it's better it's a thousand times better than not doing anything and
not train oh yeah and if you've got one person that has that gift of being able
to like understand what's happening maybe you got a wrestler in there
Berlin's gonna help you so much or you've got someone that did you don't
maybe that's gonna help you so much yeah but even if you don't you just start
looking at it and saying okay what's happening in this what's happening right
there okay try that on walk on me and you get some of those good YouTube
videos that really break things down well yeah I think you can cuz I didn't
have to learn that way luckily yeah yeah luckily got to train with the best guys
in the whole entire world actually yeah actually Roger Gracie who's you know we
not even arguably top three all-time yeah ever he and he was actually telling
me he's like I don't have like a team of world-class guys to train with he's like
sometimes I trained with Braulio sometimes because he's in England yeah
so he has like he's like I only train with my students
and who are good and they give awesome training but they're not I don't have
world-class trainer partners like my opponents do kind of thing and raising
yeah so man to kind of teach their own but all these things yeah can be
beneficial even even if they don't necessarily seem like it yeah you know
what I think actually this is leading to is like you get what you make out yeah
yeah there's there's people in the UFC that have done the same thing that came
from some random camp and they're training hard and they go and win the
the Conor McGregor he didn't come from he didn't come from Greg Jackson you
know he didn't come from American Top Team he came from a group you know their
school with Cavanaugh and obviously they're doing something right but same
thing he didn't have the highest level guys to train against he trained
I'm not saying slagging off there they're training partners but it's not
it wasn't a known camp when he came around he's so he's a guy like that max
Holloway he's out in Hawaii right he's training hard but he's coming out here
winning the UFC championship based on you know his training partners so I
think guys that that actually understand what they need to do yeah they do it
they get it done they don't make any excuses excuses
yeah yeah that's it
