543: Don't Wait to Get Punched in the Face. The Best Way to Adapt And Learn.

This is Jocko podcast number 543 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko willing. Good evening Echo. Good evening. The US Army's competitive advantage directly relates to its capacity to learn faster and adapt more quickly than its adversaries. The current pace of technological change increases the Army's challenge to maintain the edge over potential adversaries. In the highly competitive global learning environment where technology provides all players nearly ubiquitous access to information, the Army cannot risk failure through complacency, lack of imagination or resistance to change. Outpacing adversaries is essential to maintain the Army's global status and to fulfill its responsibilities to the nation. And that right there is a little quote from US Army TreyDoc 525-TAC-8-TAC-2 US Army Learning Concept 2015. And it's an interesting thing to think about cause we all need to be learning all the time. And if you don't keep that front of mind, it's real easy to not learn anything and not progress. Whether it's leadership, whether it's your professional career, whatever your professional career is, whether it's working with a new piece of gear, whether it's jujitsu, whether it's fighting, whether it's tactics, whether it's music or art or software, that's for you. Sure, hell yeah. Right, communication, how are you communicating? Language, like what's your vocabulary? We should be hopefully learning all the time and it's very easy, it takes effort to learn. So it's real easy to go and cruise control. But the fact of the matter is in all these different spectrums, we have to outpace our adversaries, right? In jujitsu, in fighting, in software, like if you wanna be productive, you gotta outpace your adversaries. So interesting document, it had some interesting statements and I just wanna talk about some of the things that are in there. Here's some assumptions that they make. The army will operate in an area of uncertainty and persistent conflict against a full spectrum of possible threats. This is what we call life, right? You don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow. There's gonna be persistent conflict and there's a full spectrum of threats. What do you call that, an open game versus a closed game? What do you call those two things? Unkind and kind games, right? Oh right, kind of like environment or something like that. Oh, kind environment versus unkind? Is that the thing? Yeah, I forgot. I was just talking about this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I forgot. But I think it's kind of unkind. Yeah, so some things are constrained in some way. There's some kind of rules in place. There's some kind of finite provisions that you have to operate within and then there's things that are just totally unconcerned. So you gotta think about what kind of environment you're playing in. And by the way, there's spectrum there too, right? Cause like checkers, pretty limited. Chess seems pretty unlimited cause there's billions of moves you can make, but it is still, there's a finite number. And then you get to combat. Total war, there's all of a sudden, what is the person gonna do to you? There's no, sure there's rules of engagement, there's laws of armed conflict, but there's also like we can think outside and get creative around those things even. So thinking about the uncertainty of the future and the persistent conflict that we're in, you better be learning. Next one, the army will continue to confront unexpected challenges from an adaptive enemy and must respond rapidly even in the development of doctrine, training and education. So as your competitors change, which they will, and they bring new things to the front, which they will, you have to be able to adjust, learn, train, and move people forward. This is also life, right? Cause things aren't gonna go as planned. Next, the army must prevail in the competitive learning environment. Now, if you start thinking about it, you have an organization, your organization has to, we say adapt, right? We say adapt and overcome, we say this all the time. What is adapt, what is adaptation? Essentially what it is is learning. You have to learn, and not only you have to learn like what the enemy's doing, what the competition is doing, what your rival on the mats of justice is doing, you gotta learn what they're doing, and then you have to learn how to counter it. And then by the way, in an organization, you have to teach and have everyone else on the team learn what you're doing to make adjustments. So that's what we have to do. Next, the army's learning model must be clear in intended outcomes that are rigorous, relevant and measurable. It's a good idea, right? I get it. I do think that you have to keep an open mind and be flexible. Because you don't know, it's very, in fact, it might be the most critical thing. Because let's face it, when you are trying to do something to counter someone and you're doing what they expect, it's not gonna be effective. You have to do things that they don't expect. Well, how are you gonna do things that they don't expect if you have a closed mind and you're only responding with that one methodology? So to really win, we wanna do things that they have no expectation of. That's the goal. You can see this in sports, sometimes someone will bring something to sports that has not been used before. Low calf kick, right? This is something that we got. We got to see, I guess MMA and Jiu Jitsu are very good examples of this. Number one, because they are very close to unkind, right? I mean, basketball, yeah, I mean, if you watch the evolution of basketball, certainly people are doing new moves, but not as radically new as what we've seen in Jiu Jitsu and MMA over the past 30 years. So you have to keep an open mind that you're gonna try and do things that maybe they don't expect at all. The less rules there are in the game that you're playing, the more opportunity you have to do that. So that's why business and wars, those are probably the most open environments that you're gonna have the chance to make adjustments and be flexible. So that's why I say, if someone's talking about, hey, you gotta be clear in the intended outcome, you know what the intended outcome? Win. Because if it is, oh, the intended outcome is to do this move right here to counter their move, okay. They're used to being in that situation. What if you can completely bypass that? As Dean Lister used to say, you go A, B, C, and then D, that's the move, here's the counter, here's the setup, and then you execute the move, but ideally you just go A to D. Or maybe you go A, C, D. You can skip moves, or maybe you just go A, D, C, B, back to D. So that's what we're trying to do. Next one, learning is best achieved at the point of need, and therefore must be accessible in career-long continuum rather than limited to specific time frames or locations. When I hear this, learning is best achieved at the point of need. You know what that makes me think of? I used to say in the teams, we don't care about anything until it punches us in the face. And this is so true for so many humans. We have an idea that this could be a problem or that could be a problem, but no one really cares about it until they get hit with it. Like, oh yeah, you know, at some point I'm gonna, I'm gonna put an emergency kit in my car just in case something goes wrong when I'm driving through the mountains. Some day, I'm gonna do that someday. They know it's a good idea, right? It's a good idea. But then they don't do it. And guess what? When a snowstorm hits and they get stuck in their freezing snow and they don't have anything to survive with, it's a problem. And they're going, dang it. And then they go home and immediately, if they make it, if they survive, they're like, where's what we're gonna do? We used to run in that in the SEAL teams all the time. There'd be something like, we all know this is a problem. No one cares, no one cares, no one cares, no one cares. There's an incident also in everyone cares when we solve the problem. So you have to be careful that you don't do that. My recommendation is you don't wait until you're at the point of need to make adjustments in your world. You know that there are things that require. You know, I had an interesting conversation. You know, they have specific people to do the maintenance of an aircraft, of a jet aircraft. So Dave Burke. Good deal, Dave. You know, he's worried about flying the plane. He's got, and he does inspections. The pilot does the cursory walk around. They're out there kicking the tires. You know what I'm saying? He's not in the systems, right? But guess what? There is a guy that is, there is assignment is to make sure that that ejection seat is ready to eject and it's functional, it's maintained. If that fell on, you know, the pilot who's got all these other things to worry about, as critical as it is, he wouldn't be as focused as that individual that's making it happen. So man, did you see those two airplanes collide? Those two F-18s collide? And they ejected all four people and all four people survived? That was insane to watch. But I bet that maintenance guy, that's what we're saying. Same thing with like fire detectors. You know, it's like, oh, how often do you check, how often you rotate in those batteries like you're supposed to? It's not until your neighbor's house burns down, you're like, I'm gonna get in there. At least that's the way a lot of people operate. Yeah, I feel like sometimes, I don't know, my mind kind of habitually goes to like, hey, but isn't that kind of a more effective way of learning a lesson, you know, the hard way? It's definitely a more effective way of learning a lesson as long as there isn't some catastrophic price to pay for learning a lesson. Right, and even put even more simply, when it's like, yeah, if you have to learn it that way, but if you don't have to, you don't wanna learn like, hey, you should wear your seat belt the hard way, you know? Well, I posted the other day, he who suffers remembers, for Murph, right? We're all out there doing Murph, right? He who suffers remembers. It's like, yes, that is true. That is a term that I heard in buds, because they would be making us suffer because we did something wrong. So to your point, oh, somebody didn't bring whatever piece of gear, we're about to do, you know, 8 million freaking eight count bodybuilders at two o'clock in the morning. Do you think we ever forgot that piece of gear again? Nope. So he who suffers remembers, you're right. But if it's a catastrophic situation, you know, you don't wanna have somebody in your business do something that's gonna get you sued and now all of a sudden it's a catastrophic situation. Cause you're like, oh, I bet they learned their lesson, cool, we're bankrupt. So good point, Echo. However. Yeah, when you don't have to learn it the hard way, let's not learn it. I got you. Let's not learn it the hard way. Next, army learners must have the opportunity to contribute to the body of knowledge throughout their careers. Good. It's a very good idea that people recognize when you're in an organization, you are not only gonna have to receive and learn, but it's good to know that you should be teaching too and you will be teaching. It's a good thing to recognize because then you start paying attention to how you learn and what was helpful to you. Next, soldiering requires a foundation of comprehensive fitness, army values, the warrior ethos and professional competence. Yep. And what I would say about that is we become what we learn. I would say, is that 100% accurate? No. But I shouldn't say we become, we are highly influenced by what we learn. You've heard me say that you get a lot of your DNA in the SEAL teams from your first platoon because what you learn in that first platoon leaves the biggest impression because you're learning the most. So what you learn is kind of who you become. Like when I got to the SEAL teams, I went to SEAL team one, otherwise known as Stahlag team one and it was all like the professionalism and haircuts and stuff like that. And that's kind of how I maintained. I maintained that course. You get that DNA early. So you kind of, you are highly influenced by what you learn. So that's an important thing to keep in mind, not only as a person that is learning, what are you learning from? Cause are you learning from reels? You know what I'm saying? Are you being influenced by reels? Are you being taught by social media? Cause if you're getting taught trash, what are you gonna become? At a minimum, you're gonna be influenced in that direction. And isn't it interesting to think that you, technically when you're doom scrolling, you are learning something. You are being influenced by that thing. So important to try and maintain some level of control of what you are allowing yourself to be taught. Next, fundamental competencies must be reinforced by maximizing time on the task. Cool. Always fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. In the SEAL teams, I changed the, we say basics, we're gonna go through the basics today. And I changed that terminology to fundamentals. Because everyone hears basics, they go, oh, this is no big deal. This isn't important. Fundamentals is actually the most important thing. And there are skills that you have, leadership skills and operational skills that you have that are truly fundamental. If you don't have them, you're doomed. But when people hear, oh, this is just the basics. It's like, no, no, no, we're not doing just the basics. We're actually learning the fundamentals. Yeah, yeah, it's more like the foundational principles. Cover and move. Do we call cover and move basic? No, call it fundamental. Because if you're not, everything that you do is covered move in the teams, in the military. It's covered and move, covered and move, covered and move, covered and move. That's what it is. One person is covering, the other person is moving. You have to learn that. That is a fundamental skill to learn how to do that. It's not just a basic skill. Is it basic? Yeah, it's basic. Is it fundamental? Absolutely. Next, continually evolving complex operational dilemmas over extended time in culturally diverse, joint interagency, intergovernmental and multinational operational environments will continue to challenge leaders. Again, this is such a military terminology here. Complex operational dilemmas. So these are like different types of missions. Extended over time, they're long. Culturally diverse, they're in different countries with different humans there. Joint, that means we're working with Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, working together. Interagencies, that means you've got other government agencies. Maybe you've got the State Department. Maybe you've got the CIA. You've got other people working with you. Intergovernmental, so now we got their government too. So now you're working with the government of another country. And multinational. So now we have different countries and their military and their government. There's a lot of different players involved. Well, guess what? This is what life is. This is what business is. You got your neighbors. They have a different culture than you. They have different goals than you. Yeah, your business, you got different scenarios going on. You got to work with different regulatory environments. This is kind of interesting to me because as a non-military person and non-law enforcement person, we'll say. We call you a civilian. Yeah, yeah, a civilian. Sivvy. But you know how like, I'll watch movies sometimes and it'll be like, I don't know, the local cops, right? And they're investigating some crime and then they'll run into like. The feds. Yeah, exactly right. The feds come in and they're gonna, you know, even though remember, you know what movie was on the other day, Die Hard. Remember Die Hard, the OG. First it has the one beat cop there, kind of handling business. And then some superior comes. That dude, I forget his name in the show, and then the FBI come, you know, and then they're like contending with each other. And I remember when I was young, I was like, aren't they all, to me, they're all cops. They all should just be like adding to the team. But for some reason they have different agendas and their art. Yeah, you know, like all this stuff. Rambo has that too, right? Interesting. Yeah, because it's like the local cops. Oh, first blood. Yeah, I'm sorry, first blood. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, and then they have like these points of contention, it's like, Brad, that doesn't make sense to me because you guys are all cops or whatever. But no, different cops have different like responsibilities and goals within their, I don't know, department or whatever, their level or whatever. And this is essentially a more complex version of that same thing, same thing. So it's like, okay, our government has all these different like different groups in it that have different goals in it with this one big situation. So yeah, sometimes you can step on each other's soes a little bit and you know, little points of contention. Oh, for sure. But from the outside, I don't, that's not intuitive to me. To me, it's kind of like, oh, that's the USA. The USA is we're gonna roll in and they're all just pointing in the same exact direction and we're gonna go in, we're gonna, you know, but it's not like that. You know what was weird when I got into the military is I just thought kind of in line with what you're saying, I thought the military just kind of did what it wanted. Meaning like, have you ever thought about when you go on a trip in the military, let's say you're driving out to the desert training facility that you gotta get gasoline for the vehicles? Where does that gasoline come from? Have you ever thought about that? Me, no. Like you have to use a certain card. It's like a credit card, but it's a, it's more like a debit card that you use to pay for the gas. Now it's coming from the fund that is your team, but you're paying for this gas and you're gonna get charged for it. So why? Because your team has a certain amount of budget. So when you book, you know, you're using this card to pay for things, just like your ammunition, the batteries for your radios or for your night vision, like you have to actually pay for it. I thought it was all just provided. Yeah. Yeah, that does, I mean, you asked me that. For some reason I feel like we've, you've brought that up before, but yeah, it feels like that. When I played football at University of Hawaii, it's everything's provided, everything. All your clothes, all your equipment, your socks, shoes, like everything, you just go to the little window and you get it. You see what I'm saying? I am under that impression. Yes, like you get, here's the keys to your Humvee, maybe you sign for it. There's already gas in it, you see what I'm saying? Like the gas is magically disappears. And there is like an element of that when you get your gear issue, right? You don't give them a card for that. But if you lose a piece of gear, you might have to pay for it. So, Jack, next time manpower and resources available for learning will continue to be limited. Isn't that just the way it is? Everybody needs more time and more money to train. And we don't have enough. And by the way, the Army trains over a half a million people a year. So getting back to the doc here, current learning is typically instructor led times to predetermine course lengths and not synchronized to meet individual learner needs. That's something to think about. People are gonna learn at different paces. And you just get that, hey, this is how long the course of instruction is. This is how long I'm gonna teach you for. Current instruction is based on individual task conditions and standards, which work well when the Army had a well-defined mission and a well-defined enemy. Similarly, critical thinking is frequently a core subjective instruction, oh, sorry, while critical thinking is frequently a core subjective, instruction primarily delivers only concepts and knowledge. Passive, lecture-based instruction does not engage learners or capitalize on prior experience. Learner assessments are frequently routine, open book tests that lack rigor and fail to measure actual learning levels. So this whole thing here, right? First of all, how are we teaching? Because by the way, when you teach something, you have to use multiple elements to teach it right. You can tell people what's gonna happen, there's your audio, maybe you gave them a pamphlet to read about it. There's visually showing them how to do something. And then there's physically having them do the thing, whatever that thing is. So it's like you listen or you absorb information or you're presented information and then you watch people do the thing and then you have to do the thing yourself. So whether it's doing mag changes on a weapon, like someone will, you will initially get taught, because it seems like when you do a mag change, Echo Charles on your Desert Eagle 50 Cal, when you do that, you do it, I haven't watched you do it, but I bet that it's not, how'd you learn how to do a mag change? Oh, I took a course with our boy, Brian Sarge. Oh, okay, well then you didn't know. If you didn't know that, if Sarge didn't tell you how to change a mag, you would kind of just be fumbling through it, right? So you have to learn how to do it. And Sarge taught you how to do it. Doing a kick flip on a skateboard. Like you have to learn how to do it. Then you have to try it. If there's a new vocabulary word, you can, by the way, if you learn a new vocabulary word and you just memorize the meaning of the word, that's different than actually putting it, using it as a sentence. And reading it in multiple senses and understanding the context of each one of those. Room Clarence is doing it, Room Clarence. Did Sarge teach you any Room Clarences? CQB or whatever. No, CQB, now called CQC. No, but that's the thing, you gotta watch, you gotta learn, and then you gotta do it. Arm lock. Guitar chord, different guitar chords. Somebody has to show you what it is. Prioritize and execute. This is something, the skill that we teach at Escalon Front. You gotta learn how to do it. You hear the concept. It's funny when you do the FTX, when people do the FTX at Escalon Front. Dude, people that show up to the FTX, they can recite exactly what the laws of combat are. Cover moves simple, prioritize, execute, decentralized, they'll kind of be able to talk through them very well. And then you see them trying to do them. It's very, very different. Because you have to actually do these things. Same thing with decentralized command. People can talk about it, but a lot of times they can't do it. So it's very important to keep that in mind. And then you have to keep in mind as a teacher that people learn differently. So I might be able to talk you through a mag change, and you might be able to do it within, 10 tries, you can get pretty smooth at it. Someone else, I talk them through it, and I have to talk them through other details of it that I didn't have to tell you, you kind of like figured it out. So everyone's gonna learn a little bit differently. And I talk about this example with Jiu-Jitsu. Because Jiu-Jitsu is certainly a learning sport. Probably one of the highest levels of the amount of things to learn. Because it's such an unkind game with so many variables. Not just the variables of the move, but just the variable of you as a human, the human that you're going against. It's just very infinite. But to make a Jiu-Jitsu move work, let's say, let's say for instance, I don't know if I'm gonna use percentages, but let's say there's 10 things that you have to do to make a move work. An instructor can show you maybe three of those things, four of those things, maybe five of the things, the physical movements they can talk you through, they can show it to you. And then even still, the first time you do it, it's not gonna, I just learned a move today from Kynan. It's something that I had never done before. It's like a guard retention, it was a move, straight up. And so I'm watching him do it, and I was like, oh, I'm literally thinking, oh, that's dope, and I fully understood it, mentally. When we started doing it, it was like, I might as well have been a white belt. You know what I'm saying? I'm like, oh, I'm a white belt. And yeah, so I had to do it. I had to do the physical move a bunch of times to even start, and I still didn't, I need to do it another, I probably need to do another 100 times, of static drilling, we'll say, right? Where it's just like, hey, this is just the motion I have to go through. So three to five things you can kind of get from an instructor telling you what the move is. Maybe 0.5 or 1.5 you get from doing the movement physically. And then there's a couple, because I remember I said you gotta do 10 things to make a move work. There's a couple of these things you have to do, now it's not really static drilling, it's like, you have to actively participate in some kind of a, we'll call it a constrained, in like CLA and ecological training, they call it a constrained environment, meaning like, okay, Echo, in order for me to get this guard recovery movement going, here's what you need to do to me. Do this to me, if you get to this point, we're gonna start again, if I get to this point, we're gonna start again. And by the way, you can't do this thing or that thing. Like for instance, oh, I'm working on guard retention, you're not allowed to just fall back on a footlock, right? Okay, that's a constraint that I put on you. And you're not allowed to, let's say, smash pass, because this isn't a guard retention for a smash pass. So I give you some constraints, but you're allowed to move within the box that I built for you. So I gotta do that a little bit. I can figure out one or two more elements of the move by doing that. And then I have to do it live, because guess what? In real life, you can fall back on a footlock. In real life, you can go to a smash pass instead. So there's one, the last one or two things that I have to learn, there's no way to learn it unless we're doing it fully unrestrained. So that's what we kind of have to do to get somebody to learn. You wanna hear a funny story? Yes. I will tell you. So I was recently doing a movie. Yeah, hell yeah. And I'm doing this movie and I have one line. I have one line, but in the scene, I'm in the scene for probably like a few minutes, but all I'm doing is listening. Yeah. And in fact, I'm listening and kind of giving no response. I'm kind of just being me. Yeah, in real life. In real life. Same thing. But the other character is like yapping, buh buh buh buh buh buh buh buh buh buh buh buh buh buh, saying all kinds of funny stuff. I had to keep it professional because she's being hilarious and I'm trying to keep it professional. And so speaking of being professional, having made the way of the warrior kid, I know that you don't wanna waste everybody's time. And when you mess up your line, or you mess up, yeah, you mess up your line, like everyone tries to be cool because they don't wanna add pressure, but everyone's pissed. So I know that going in. So I'm like, okay, I'm gonna do my best. And I had one line, bro. So I memorized it. But I memorized it in my head. Keep this in mind. I memorized it in my head. So it takes a long time to film. And we're there. We do all the different camera setups. And the other actor, she's yapping and she's doing her lines and she's improv and funny, awesome. And I don't have to say anything. And it keeps going and keep going. It takes like three, four, five hours. And I haven't said a word yet. All I'm doing is my expression, which is expressionless, by the way. Try not to crack up cause she's hilarious. So finally, then we turn the cameras around and now it's the closing of the scene and it's time for my line, which I memorized. And so we get to that point. She delivers the line that like, what is it? Cues me, is that what it's called? A cue? Sure, the setup. She gives me the setup. And it's my turn. After five hours, everyone's looking at me. That's my time. And I had memorized that line, but I hadn't physically spoken the word yet. And when it came time for me to say the line, I was like, it took me a second. I got it out. I had to go team guy mode. I just had to like muscle through it. I had to muscle through it, but I hadn't physically rehearsed it. And when you don't physically rehearse it, there's something that you're missing. And I hadn't said the words. So I muscled through it and then we cut. And I said it out loud to myself whispering it like 19 times in the next three minutes. I was just like, I said my words. Because I didn't want to get choked up. I choked up. I choked. I didn't get choked up. You know, this is very similar. You've heard this story about when I started playing basketball. When I started playing basketball, my dad, I told my dad I wanted to play basketball. And my dad's like old school Hoosiers. You ever seen a movie Hoosiers? Yeah, bro. My dad's 100% Hoosiers. Like, okay, oh, you know, flashy. You're going to be defense. You're going to learn ballhandling. You're going to learn to pass. You know, you don't want to worry about scoring. Scoring is like, we're, you know, so he got me going in that mode. Didn't really, didn't, all we did was drill. This is a case where you, if you go too far with drilling. And then my, I get to, this is seventh grade or eighth grade. I get, now I try out for the team. I make the team. My dad, my dad worked with me for, you know, two months, just Hoosiers, man, Hoosiers. So now I get to my, and my coach, guess what kind of attitude he has? Hoosiers all day. We're not worried about looking flashy and scoring points where it played defense, we're going to pass, we're going to ballhandle. So we did that. And we did almost no live basketball games in practice. So the first game that I went into, oh, by the way, because I was good passing and was ballhandling left hand, right hand, I became the point guard, seventh grade or whatever, eighth grade, right hell yeah. The first game I'm dribbling down the court. I hold up the signal for like, oh, we're going to run play number two. And I, you know, boom, walk, boom. I pass the ball, totally get picked. The ball gets picked off, the dude runs down the court, scores a layup. I was like, well, damn well, play two sucked. I come down again. I call play one, you know, better play. Pass it off, gets picked off, the same guy just picked it off again. Because I had never actually played. I mean, I might have played like one scrimmage. We never scrimmaged. So you have to drill, you have to play, you have to play games to get good at it. And then you have to actually play in an unconstrained environment. So these things are very important and you have to do all of them, even when it comes to like delivering saying words. If you, because let's face it, when you're saying, oh, like when I did that show, Billions. Yeah, yeah, hell yeah. They, all the lines that those guys gave me were just shit that I said anyways. You know, it was just, it was just me. You had some ramps. It was me and it was just me, right? And so even though it was pretty easy for me to say those words. Oh, you want me to say, hey, keep knocking them out. Like that's some shit I would normally say. But this line was like a little different. And so I didn't, so I forced it out. No one said anything. I think people that stayed like, oh, that's the first one, we'll give him a little breather. Cause it sucks when the director comes up and he's like, hey, actually it's a female director. She didn't come up to me and say, I was so thankful. She gave me a little grace. Grace, yep. But that's what we gotta watch out for. Is this movie out? No, no, it's not out yet. When do they come out? Comes out, I think in December. Hell yeah. All right, okay. I forget if I'm allowed to talk about it. Yeah, that's what it feels like right now. I forget, I don't want to, I don't want to get in trouble. Yeah, yeah, leaking the tea or whatever. Yeah, the tea, exactly. But yeah, you gotta be careful with that one. Yeah, it's, I mean, as far as the idea, the concept, it seems obvious when you just sort of look at it, but if you understand it, then I feel like, yeah, you can be like way more effective in like when you progress through learning. So if you, let's say, like, let's do basketball, basketball's a good one. Where if it's like, okay, hey, Jocko or whatever, young Jocko, you've never played basketball ever before, but I'm gonna teach you how and you're gonna become good at basketball. I could be like, okay, first things first, this ball right here goes in that net. See it? See the net, see the ball? And you're like, bruh, that makes perfect sense to me. The ball going in the net? Hell yeah, I know basketball, right? I know that part of it. I was like, okay, cool. You know that, okay, here's this or whatever, but you didn't do anything. I just explained it to you. Bruh, you tried throw that ball in the net, right? You can't, it's almost impossible actually. You know with 100% certainty what the ball going in the net is, yet you can't do it because you have no reps doing it. Because there's like millions of little variations in there. You seem to say, so yeah, you got to, same thing with the talking thing in your line. Like there's so many little variations that you have to experience for them to get locked in. No matter, I mean, yeah, you said the word the and so called or whatever the words are. You've heard those words, you said them, but not in that progression under that circumstance. So you got to replicate that circumstance and get that experience. In real life. Yeah, same thing with like juggling, for example. You can watch tutorials on how to juggle the technique. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like, oh, bruh, that's, I didn't know that. And you're like, bruh, I think I can do that. Yeah. It's impossible, you got to do like. Yep, exactly. And by the way, I got, in this movie, I'm playing a pilot. Yeah, hell yeah. A helicopter pilot. And I get in and I'm kind of like, I watch, I literally went on YouTube and watched some videos about like, see what the helicopter pilots are doing. Yeah, yeah. But I got in there and I said, you know, I'm kind of, they're kind of like, what are you going to do? I'm like, well, I'm going to look at the instruments and look around. And I said, and they said, yeah, you know, that'll be fine. They said, well, the thing is when we get pilots, real pilots, sometimes they don't act. Yeah. And I said, well, unfortunately for you, I'm neither a pilot nor an actor. So you're just going to have to deal with it. You get the worst of both worlds. To go back to your basketball example, is if you just said, hey, all you got to do is put the ball in the net. And you, so now you take a shot like, what is your form? If what I should do is like, hey, you got to put the ball in the net. Here are some basic points of performance that you need to utilize. Point your elbow at the basket. You know, use the other hand to guide. Cause if you say put the ball in the basket, a lot of people would do a two-handed set shot like they used to do in the fifties. You know, like, oh, just two hands. But it's known that there's a better technique now. Not that some people couldn't hit good shots with a two-handed set shot, but it's just not as effective. You can't do it from a job. Like there's all kinds of reasons why it's not good. So that's why we need to give people the, that's what those things are. That's what the, when I say that three to five things can be shown by the instructor. It's a perfect example, a jump shot and basketball. Like I need to give you the fundamentals of the movement. Now listen, you might, you know, have a specific way. You know, you see this with pitchers sometimes in baseball, like a side on pitcher. Like they didn't get taught that way, but they figured it out and it works for them. And there's, that's an extreme example, but a lot of times, you know, your jump shot might be a little bit different. Well, it's gonna be a little bit different. Everyone else is based on your body and based on the way you calculate the distance and how much backspin you put on the ball. It's gonna be a little bit different, but there is, there is a line. There is a guide that you can give someone and then how well, or how much they need to deviate from that line is kind of up to them. And that's why they have to do the drilling, the static drilling, the constrained environment. Like I'm not gonna teach you a jump shot and then say, okay, go ahead and take one and I swat you, you know, like I'm not gonna get in your face. No, you gotta learn the technique. And then I start, okay, let me put a little bit of pressure on you. Oh, here's what you gotta do. Here's a little head juke. You can, and you start, and then you start using the game. And you start realizing, oh, I can do this. Here's how I can do it specifically. So those are all really good examples. And it's important to remember too, it varies for different people. Like I said, some people are visual learners. Some people are audio learners. Some people have to feel it. There's a bunch of different types of learners. And then on top of that, there's context. How much context do you have? Because if you have no context and I try and teach you an arm lock, it could take an hour. If you know how to do an arm lock and I wanna teach you how to finish with a wrist lock, I can teach you that in seven minutes, maybe even five minutes. If you know how to do a straight foot lock and a heel hook, and I wanna teach you the Aoki lock, I can teach you that very quickly. But if you don't know the heel hook and you don't know the foot lock, it's gonna take me longer. And I'm gonna have to show you more to get you there. And it's same with the guitar chord. Like if I know the D minor and I wanna teach you D major, like you already know them, I can teach, if you already know one, I can very easily teach you the other or a weapon system. Once you know a particular, once you know like how a rifle works, it's gonna be much easier when I hand you a new rifle, I go, here's the safety, here's what this type of a sight looks like, here's what your sight picture should look like. As opposed to you've never shot a rifle before, I'm like, okay, this is called a safety. Here's how you're supposed to manipulate it. This is what you're gonna look on the sight picture, here's the front sight. You should focus on the front sight. The other thing's gonna become a blur. The, your target, you're gonna see it, that's gonna become a blur too, and you're gonna keep your focus on the front sight, and then you're gonna slowly pull the trigger, and you're gonna let it surprise you. Like all those things I'm gonna have to teach you. If you already know all that stuff and I hand you a new weapon, here's how this safety works, here's what the sight picture should be, go kill, and you can make it happen. And even this is true even with leadership skills. Like depending on how much context you have, I can give you a little note, bro, hey, you were a little bit aggressive when you walked in and you really didn't, you took partial ownership, but you also said, you know, this is probably my fault, and you go, proof, yeah. Whereas if you've never taken ownership before, you're like, dude, this I had nothing to do with this. We have a lot of work to do. So the amount of context that you have impacts how well and how quickly people can learn something. So when I watch movies, back in the day, as a kid, you know, okay, so you know, a typical movie scenario, we'll say, let's say it's a cop movie or a lawyer movie or whatever, we'll say a cop movie. And you get the story about the new young, freaking bright-eyed, enthusiastic, gifted new rookie, right out of the academy. Then you get this old guy who his kind of claim to fame or whatever is his quote unquote experience. He's like, you know, he doesn't read very fast. He's not very like good on his weapon, but he has a lot of experience. We're talking point break, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? Cano Reeves and then who? Keanu Reeves and Gary Busey. Gary Busey, yeah, yeah. It's a good matchup of what you're talking about, right? Yep, yep, yeah, lot of experience. And I used to think like, what the hell does that mean? A lot of experience, like, bro, he sucks. You know, he has a lot of experience. Like, why is that valuable? But really it's this. It's like you have so many reps in this context that you're talking about. He's seen so many different scenarios that like details just formulate themselves and paint like this very clear picture of what's going on. If you're an investigator, we'll say. But if you're new, you just know this contextless list of skills kind of that you have. So you can't like, you can't place these skills onto anything yet. Meanwhile, this guy can place everything onto everything. Sure, he might not run the fastest if the criminals run in a way. He can't chase them or whatever, but he knows exactly what's going on. And just that one look at a situation, same saying. Like, you ever heard of a show called Forensic Files? It used to be called Medical Detectives. It's basically like some crime happens and they kind of. Is it real? It's a real show, yeah, yeah. Under a documentary or is it? Yeah, yeah. What does it mean? Like, it's a show, it's a series show, right? So you got episodes on it? But are you, is it real Forensic people? Yeah, real. Looking at real crime scenes. Real crimes and the actual investigators, the actual medical examiner. It's not like CSI Miami. Right, right, correct, correct. It's real. So they interview a lot of times, they interview these cops with a lot of experience and they reveal little secrets that you would know only if you have experience, right? So one of them that was pretty cool was they're investigating this guy, they're questioning him and they saw a cut on his, oh, on this part of his hand, on the back of his, on the outside of his pinky, right? Right by that first knuckle. There was a cut there. And he's like, and most of us know that when you're stabbing someone through experience, when you're stabbing someone, the knife gets bloody and blood is very slippery. Like if you're not, if you don't have experience with blood all over your hands, probably, you don't know that. I didn't know that. Blood slippery like motor, like motor oil. So it gets slippery and then when you're stabbing someone, the impact of the knife makes the knife slide, your hand slide down the knife onto the blade, you cut yourself right there. That happens freaking like 90% of the time or whatever, as far as what he's saying, you know? But if you don't have experience like that would've, oh, he has a cut on his hand. I wonder what that cut is for. But if you have a lot of experience, you're like, I know exactly what that cut is for. I've seen a million of those things, you see what I'm saying? Does it happen every single time? No, but all the context, all the situations that I've seen, that thing was present, you see what I'm saying? So it's like that kind of stuff. You can just like see it right at an instant. Makes you way better. The context and experience are very closely related, for sure. So when it goes back to instruction, what percentage of instruction, like telling you what percentage of static drilling, what percentage of active resistance constrained training, and what percentage of life should we do? Well, there's a lot of variables there and you can't set that in stone. You can't say, oh, if you're training guitar, you should do this much finger picking, this much scales. No, because guess what? There's some people that are just naturally good at scales and they're naturally bad at finger picking. If you're training in jiu-jitsu, you can't be like, oh, I taught a new move today. We're gonna drill it 22 times each and then we're gonna do four minutes each side of constrained drilling or game, and then we're gonna do live. How complex was the move? Jeff Glovertone moved the other day and he gets on teaching it and he's like, all right, let's give it a try. Good luck, he says. Good luck because it was a wild ass move. And I would probably have to learn that move from him, let's say five classes in a row. Five classes in a row, because I had no context around this particular move. Now someone that has a lot of context around the move, they probably got it that day. They at least started figuring it out. So how complex is the move that you're teaching? How well, how much context does each student in the class, how much context do they have around that type of move? So it's not gonna be, there's no miraculous percentage that you should always teach to. What you do need to do, you have to observe oriented desired act as an instructor. You might have to go, hey, echo and Greg train, you guys go over there, start actively, cause this is whatever, Mount Escape. You're really good at Mount Escape. I just want you to add this finishing touch on it. Meanwhile, I got a couple people that are, they might still be black belts, but they don't have that Hawaiian, what do you call it, the Hawaiian Shuffles. They don't have the Hawaiian Shuffle down. They've never even seen it before. If they've never seen it before, it's gonna be, it's gonna take some time. The deep, the deep arm, I think he calls it the deep arm drag, the deep arm drag by Jeff Glover. Bro, I'm still trying to figure that shit out. You know what I'm saying? And this is a guy, Jeff Glover actively will do this to me. I know exactly what he's doing. He's a hundred pounds less than me. And he can do this deep arm drag to me. And it's like, okay, well, I'll do it too. Can't do it to him. Can't do it to him. I've gotten my back taken a hundred times by trying deep arm drag. But I have no context. That's like, okay, so Jeff Glover, what does Jeff Glover do? He turns his back on people all the time. He doesn't give a shit. He doesn't care. I hardly ever turn my back on someone. So for me to actively start incorporating a move where part of the move is turning your back on someone, it's gonna take me a long time to figure that out. So as an instructor, and probably there's, you know, just like I said, the move I was learning today from Kynan, just the mechanics of the move, it was gonna take, cause it was oddly enough, it was a guard retention where you kind of turn your back. This is unfamiliar territory to me. How many times do you think you've got my back? Got in your back? Yeah, got. I can't remember once actually that I can remember. Yeah, yeah, I'm like very protective of having my back taken. Comes from the old days in MMA, having your back taken was, having your back taken in jiu-jitsu was bad, but having it taken in MMA was horrible. Now those, now that things have evolved, and it's actually, if you watch Sean Strickland, his last fight, he gave with the back no factor. Because again, things have evolved. He knows how to defend better. But for my upbringing, we didn't give up the back. And so now I got kind of telling me, kind of turn your back. Took me, I didn't even get it, you know? And I was drilling with Noah, Noah was like, oh, I got this. He started doing it pretty quick. And so that's what you gotta deal with. The discrepancy between each student is a real thing. And so you gotta take that into account. And the context you gotta take into account. And then you gotta provide a little bit of, modulation, like I just said, hey, Echo and Greg, you guys go over there. You guys got this, you guys can start working. But you two over here, let's start with this basic, all I want you to do is, all I want you to do is get the person moving back and forth. That's the game we're gonna play. All I want you to do is just get the person moving, but just disrupt their balance. Once you've, because if I'm trying to get you the whole move and you don't even know how to disrupt their balance, we've got a problem. It's the same thing we used to do in the SEAL teams. We would start immediate action drills. Immediate action drills are what you do. They're like coordinated plays like you do on the football field, someone makes a call and then you execute the play. You do that when you get enemy contact. Well, when you start your, when you start doing immediate action drills, what you do is you start them on a big, flat open range. And the targets are down there and you can all see each other. And there's no terrain to deal with. You just go through the motions. You're going through the mechanics of the move. And if a platoon has worked well, if they did, before they went out to land warfare, if they already went out on the beach and they did a bunch of walkthroughs and everyone starts getting the mechanics down, by the time they get out to the desert training facility, you do a center peel. Oh, they're knocking it out first. They're actually will knock it out on the first try. If you have a platoon that didn't get together and didn't do walkthroughs, they're a soup sandwich even on the flat range. So once you get done with the flat range, once you get them up to speed, then you start putting them in terrain. The first terrain will be very obvious. Then the terrain gets a little bit more complicated. And then guess what you do? You start doing it at night. And once you're doing it at night on nods, well, guess what? Now we start using rockets and grenades and you're going to start escalating things. And by the way, and then you're going to start hitting them multiple times. And when they're really good with all that live fire, all that, by the way, it's all live fire. Then once they're solid, they're live fire, then you can say, okay, now we can go force on force, which means you're going to go against real people that are shooting fake bullets at each other, right? It's ammunition. So that's what we as leaders have to do as instructors. We have to figure out all these things and we have to apply them correctly. And that is, can be challenging, but it's also the way you can make the most progress with everyone that is trying to learn. All right, next, all course proponents can start now by taking the following three steps. So this is going back to this Army manual. It's trying to help people change their learning method, or their teaching methodology, convert most classroom experiences into collaborative problem-solving events led by facilitators, vice instructors, who engage learners to think and understand the relevance and context of what they learn. So it's much better. You know, if you, if you, if you're a kid, you want to teach your kid the times tables, if you have to make it a flashcard and you can't see the answer when you say two times four, if they see that it's eight, it doesn't help them at all. They have to come up with that solution themselves. And that's what I like about this. It's like, you have to get the people to think, you can guide them, and if they miss it, you can tell them, but then you got to flip it back over and try it again. Taylor, Taylor learning to the individual learners' experience and competence level, based on the results, this is what we just talked about, dramatically reduce or eliminate instructor-led slide presentation lectures and begin using a blended learning approach that incorporates virtual and constructive simulations, gaming technology or other technology delivered instruction. So you can't just read to them. You can't just show them. You have to, you have to interact. And this is funny because when we used to teach close quarters combat, you'd have different instructors. So you got two, let's say we got a troop, a task unit, and they got two different platoons. And so you take two different platoons and they're going with two different instructor groups. And for a while we would just be like, okay, you're going with this guy all day, you go with this guy all day. Well, one of those instructors really liked to talk a lot. And so he's going through all these details. So the other instructor like talked, kind of gave the fundamental concepts and then started, all right, start doing it, start doing it, start doing it. 10 times out of 10, the talking instructor made less progress than the guy that talked probably one third as much. And then one third, you still, like I said, I'm not going to say, hey, here's a ball put in the basket. No, I'm going to say, hey, here's how you should position your foot. Here's what your elbow should do. Here's where your hand placement on the ball. That's all good stuff. Now, if I start telling you about the physics of the ball and the physiological alignment of your elbow and stuff like that, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. So when you start talking about room clearance, you start getting into these things that are beyond the necessary knowledge for the shooter, you're kind of wasting their time. So let them start to do. Shout out to slow, Cal Poly slow, where my daughter, coach Rana went. Their motto is learn by doing. So they do a lot of stuff there. They do. And that's definitely a great way to learn. Next section, full spectrum operations. Counterinsurgency and stability operations dominate the current fight. Again, this is written 2015. However, forces must be prepared to execute full spectrum operations. And this means you gotta be ready for anything. And this means you have to train in different environments for things that are less likely. And putting in a little bit of time on things that are less likely, instead of waiting for you to get punched in the face with that problem, is the way to do this. And also you gotta look at different variables that you train in different environments. Different tools. Gino G in Jiu Jitsu. Gloves. Like, hey, you know what you should do in Jiu Jitsu sometimes? Put on gloves. Once a week, someone puts on the gloves and is punching you in the head as you're working your guard. It's a real thing. Striking for takedowns. Somebody puts on big 16 ounce boxing gloves or 18 ounce boxing gloves. They try and punch you as you're trying to hit a takedown. Just, and then with what else you're doing, you know? You're doing pistol work. What about nighttime? What about low light? What about mid light? What about back light? You gotta do, what about with noise happening? What about when it's cold outside and you're wearing gloves? Little things are gonna be different. So you gotta be prepared for those things. Next, soldiers and leaders must learn to rapidly transition between offensive, defensive, and stability operations or civil support operations, while understanding that many military fundamentals remain the same in any type of operation. Preparation for future operations must include complexity, uncertainty, continuous transition between operations, protracted time, information complexity, and adaptive enemies that are anticipated in future conflict. What this means is you have to be ready for uncertainty. And you get, let me tell you what, you get better at dealing with uncertainty by dealing with uncertainty. Believe it or not as a skill and it's a skill that you can improve over time. We used to throw the most random shit at platoons, random. You wanna know what's the most random thing? So let my guys would be setting up targets, you know, for a big hit to go down, big target assault to go down. But I generally wouldn't go out and see like the details that they were doing. I would be with the platoon. As the platoons planning to go to the head, I'd be sitting and listen to the brief and listen to their platoon interactions, see what kind of frictions and fault lines there were. But the boys are out in the field, the trade-at boys are out in the field, they're setting up the targets. Putting in the pyro and all the special effects and all the craziness is gonna go down. So anyways, the guys are out there setting up a target and we were always trying to surprise the guys, give them something they didn't know what to deal with, or how to deal with something. So we're, I'm standing there in like a hallway, watching the platoon clear. And all of a sudden like a couple guys open a door and they kind of enter a room and I can see that, the reaction is like kind of confused and shit. And then there's like, I hear like weird noises coming out, like commands like normally go, get down, get down or whatever. And I hear like, hey, who's that? You know, just weird stuff. And I see like someone else kind of stumbling back out of the room, it just was bad. And so I kind of go down there, I kind of peeked to what's going on there. And they had my trade-at guys had dressed two dudes up, like clowns, and they were having a pie eating contest. That's funny, right? It's funny. Dude, those guys, it tripped guys up. It tripped them up. They're like, what are we, what are we supposed to do? Is that a weapon? The guys holding a pie, getting ready to hit someone else in the face with a pie. Is that what we shoot him? Yeah, I don't know. At least that's what the guys were thinking. What am I doing? Are they gonna throw the pie at me? Is that now a weapon? Is the pie a bomb? So doing that kind of thing is a good way to give people things that they're not expecting at all. Giving someone something that is so uncertain, they have to deal with it, will help them in dealing with, cause it'll help them learn to detach, it'll help them learn to assess quickly, it'll help them move through the decision-making process quickly, but you have to deal with uncertainty in order to learn how to deal with uncertainty. Did you notice at CJI2, one of the rules implemented was, you didn't know who was getting sent out on the map from the two teams, remember that? So when someone got beat or when the round started, cause it was Team Jiu Jitsu, which didn't work out well. But you didn't know, each team didn't know who the other guy was sending out, remember that? So you might be getting ready to go against that 170 pound fast guy, but all of a sudden the 280 pound slow big smasher comes out, you gotta be ready to deal with it. There was an interesting aspect that wasn't, I don't, even though I'm using that as an example, it's not a good example for a tournament. Yeah, a good example of this, that the unexpected weirdness that can happen, even though it's rare, is okay, you have to have seen this clip. And I didn't know who this person was until later on, I found out it was Andres Punofskis. Okay, so he was in a tournament and how he started, you know, some guys they'll pull guard, or they're whether this guy freaking starts upside down. Did you see that? Did you know that was Andres? Yes I did. I didn't know until later, but yeah, he's upside down, like on his inverted. Inverted guard pull, followed by moving like towards the person in the inverted guard. He was very unusual, we'll say. He won by the way. Yeah, exactly right. By the way, the master of all unexpected shit is Jeff Glover, hands down. Oh yeah, and you know, the thing he invented, donkey guard, whatever, no one starts like that. So it's like, bro, I threw all my training, I've never had to deal with it right here, you know? So yeah, it makes sense, just the idea of this is unusual, this is unfamiliar to me, just that idea is just one big obstacle in and of itself. So if you deal with like unpredictable stuff, you can kind of mentally navigate your way through that obstacle that would be there. For sure, and the other example that is the way John Donahue explained, when they started using leg locks against people that weren't familiar. And as Dean Lister said, you know, when they started calling the position that we called Kakariko, which is called the 50-50, you know, Dean would say, Dean would hear someone say 50-50 and he's like 90-10, because Dean spent so much time there. If you don't know what's going on there, bro, you're screwed. You're screwed. So yes, getting put into unfamiliar situations will make you better at dealing with unfamiliar situations. Also, if you can do something that's completely unfamiliar to someone, it's gonna confuse them, at least momentarily. So keep that in mind. Back to the doc. The learning model must provide opportunities to experience a full spectrum challenges through a balanced mix of live, virtual, constructive, and gaming environments. And again, this is like static drill, resistance, game, constrained game, less constrained games, and then live, unconstrained, live training. That's what we gotta do. And we gotta mix those things up appropriately, depending on what it is you're trying to teach, how you're trying to teach it, what the context and knowledge that the individual has is. Gotta put all those things into play. That's what we have to do. Adaptability. Leaders at all levels must have opportunities to develop operational adaptability through critical thinking, willingness to accept prudent risk, and the ability to make rapid adjustments based on a continuous assessment of the situation. They must be comfortable with ambiguity and quickly adapt to the dynamics of evolving operations over short and extended durations. You have to learn to adapt, and the way that you learn to adapt is by adapting. And it's the same thing we just talked about. It's like uncertainty. You get better at dealing with uncertainty. By going through uncertainty, and what do you do? You learn how to adapt. And the way that you train this is by different situations, different tools, different scenarios, different people. That's what we have to do. We have to try different things and continue to make people adapt. When you force people to adapt, they get better at adapting. Leaders must be adept at framing complex, ill-defined problems through design, and make effective decisions with less than perfect information. The learning model must develop adaptability at all levels through a foundation of operational competencies, and then increase the type of intensity, the type and intensity of stressors and ambiguity. So that's what we need to do. We need to get people good at reframing complex things. So here's a couple notes on this, talking through potential contingencies. Like, hey, if this happens, what would you do? Talk through them. That is a step that you now don't have to discuss options. If we just say, hey, if this happens, hey, if our competitor does this, here's the two things we're gonna do immediately. Just that right there. You took, and it might take you an hour, or two hours, or three hours to come up with, hey, here's our immediate response to this. It might take you three hours to come up with that. But now when it happens, boom, you just save yourself three hours of response time. So you talk about it, you discuss the various options, and then run some scenarios. Like, actually run through it. And if we actually run through it, when you add in a new scenario, and you don't have time to talk, you don't have time to discuss, you will be better at problem solving. So you learn problem solving, and you become more proficient at problem solving over time, and the more you have to problem solve. And part of that is what you mentioned earlier, just the context of it. You know, you have a cop that's been to a thousand crime scenes, he's gonna, and it looks a little bit different, he's still gonna adapt faster, and say, hold on a second, wait, don't go in that other room, I see this sign and that thing, just hold what you got. Like, he's gonna be able to adapt faster than someone's, like, well, the protocol that I just learned in the academy was this. So you get better at it. But you have to put people in problem solving situations so they get better at problem solving. Next, master fundamentals. Currently, the army has extensive combat experience that provides an in-depth understanding of the fundamentals that contributed to mission success and counterinsurgency operations. Mastering and sustaining core fundamental competencies better support operational adaptability than attempting to prepare for every possibility. So we're not gonna be able to prepare for every possibility. But first of all, our standard operating procedures can and should cover most contingencies. There's a lot of contingencies you have in combat that you don't need to prepare for, because you already have standard operating procedures to prepare for. Like, if we are approaching the target and we start taking fire, everybody knows what's gonna happen. This takes no, it's a standard operating procedure. If we have already guys entered the first floor and we take contact from the building, we have a standard operating procedure. Like, we have things in place. In immediate action drills, like, are you patrolling through the desert and you take contact? Everybody knows the immediate action drill that we're going to do. When you have a company, when you have a business, there should be protocols you have in place. If this happens, here's where our immediate response. Doesn't take any thought, doesn't take any leadership. This is what we're doing. The standard operating procedures, the better you have them wired, they give you a line to deviate from. Now, if I gave you a book of eight football plays, how many football plays did you think you had in your book that you had to know? Any given year? You know, from 10 to 20 maybe? Something like that? 10 to 20, and you have to memorize those. So, how much do you think is a lot more in the NFL? Yeah, good question. No, I don't think so. And then even then, that's hard to even say because a lot of the plays are like so simple and there's just like this much difference between one play to the next, you know? So, it's easier to memorize, but yeah, I'm sure there's more dynamics in the NFL. You know how they call audibles, probably more. They're probably more, yeah. But they didn't have you memorize 250 radically different plays? No. Right, and the same thing in the SEAL teams. Like, you're not gonna memorize, you don't have 342 standard operating procedures. You're not trying to prepare for every contingency. You can't do that, and that's what they're saying here. But what we do know is that you have to train if you know the fundamentals well, you'll be able to adapt the fundamentals because the fundamentals exist for a reason. You know, it gives you the opportunity to be flexible because you already have a standard operating procedure. Not just rote, memory or fundamentals. Jimmy Page, right? He played, he's a studio musician that just had to play what they told him to play. His fundamentals were incredible. So that way when it came time to make rock and roll music, you get after it. You could do things that no one was doing. Next, the fundamental competencies must be clearly identified to support executing future full spectrum operations and time must be allotted to attain proficiency through repetition and time on task. So just make sure that your fundamentals connect to everything that you're doing. If you're learning fundamentals, if you're playing football and you're learning how to do a tennis serve, it's not gonna help you. It's not gonna help you. So you gotta have those SOPs that make sense. Next, nearly a decade of conflict has shown the Army that it is extraordinarily difficult to prepare soldiers for every battlefield contingency. Instead, soldiers and leaders must master a set of critical core competencies that provide a foundation for operational ability. This is how we need to train. And by the way, this is like in, let's go Jiu-Jitsu Street Fight. By the time you're learning a go-go plada, the chances that you have to use a go-go plada in the street are very, very, very, very small. Very, very small. If you're at the point where you know how to do a go-go plada, your fundamental already handled the problem. Your fundamentals of Jiu-Jitsu already handled the problem. So if you never learned the fundamentals and you only learned a go-go plada, there's a chance you get your ass beat in the street because there's a whole bunch of things that that other person can do to stop you. So you need to train the fundamentals. And if your fundamentals are good, this is why we see sometimes, the fundamental Jiu-Jitsu guy, Haja Gracie, just take the back or get the mount and do just a gi cross choke. He's doing things that you literally learn as a wipeout, but he's a master, Hicks and Gracie, you'd see him in the old days. It's like, oh, what's he gonna do? Take the person down, get their back, and apply a rear naked choke. You can learn all those moves in one month of Jiu-Jitsu. But you might not be proficient at that. And there's a big difference there. But if you learn these fundamentals, and by the way, there's also times where the someone tries fancy moves that aren't fundamentally sound and they're not functional. But you can do fancy moves that are based and rooted in fundamentals. That's fantastic all day. So it is important that your fundamentals are strong. There's this movie called The Program back in the day. Yeah, that's when the dude's got a skull face and stuff. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, football, college football. That's Ogre, right? Fogre. Fogre. Revenge of the Nerds? No, no, no, no, no, that's a different dude. Is it a different dude? Oh yeah, those are, actually, I wanna say a whole generation apart. Ogre from, that's the guy from Bloodsport. He just died recently, actually. Bummer, he's over here. Yeah, Jack Ray Jackson, right, from Bloodsport. That's what that is. Anyway, no, no, no, the guy from The Program is the same guy. He's on that movie called Higher Learning. Big buff dude. College football movie, right? But this new up-and-coming rookie goes to, you know, it was Florida State, but they called it ESU. But anyway, one day in practice, one of the early days in practice, he fumbles the ball, right? Just fumbles it, loses the ball, he's carried. So the coach, what the coach does, because holding onto the ball, that is as fundamental as fundamental can get. You're a tricking nine-year-old kid playing football, like you gotta hold onto the ball, right? Can't just drop it. So he made him carry that ball with him to class everywhere. So, and he said, if anyone, the coach goes, if anyone brings this ball to me other than you, you're, I forget what the punishment was or whatever, some big punishment. But that's it, he had to train his fundamentals to hold onto the ball 24 hours a day. See what I'm saying, that's how important it was. Made sense to me. That coach was wise too, by the way. What was the crux of the movie? Like, what was the, did they win the championship or something? Yeah, basically that. Spoiler alert. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Not too swear. Jack. Next, advances in learning science, cognitive psychology, educational psychology, neuroscience, and other related fields provide new insights into improved learning strategies and applications of technology to learning. Yet years of research show that there's no single learning strategy that provides the most effective solution to every learning problem. That's why when people get totally bought into like one system, you gotta watch out. Cause it's, there's just years of research, so there's no single learning strategy. And when you talk about all the variables that I just talked about, who that person is, what the context is, how long they, what type of learner they are, how long they've been training for. Like there's so much to think. If you think, no, no, we're just gonna use this methodology. It's not a good, not a good plan. Teaching requires an open mind and teachers and instructors have to continually monitor and adjust what they're teaching and how they're teaching it and what they're doing and how they're doing it. Everybody's gonna be a little bit different. And this doesn't mean you have to teach nine different classes cause there's nine different people in the class. You know, but it does mean you gotta pay attention cause there's, generally speaking, bell curve. You got a knucklehead over here, he's gonna have to, you're gonna have to explain it to, he's gonna have to go a little bit slower. Genius over here, get right into it. Everyone else is gonna be, you're gonna have your, you got one, you got seven people that are kind of like, okay, there's gonna be a general sort of modality you can use, but you still gotta pay attention. And by the way, again, that's with this move. That's with this guitar chord. But tomorrow I might teach a guitar chord that these guys have never seen before. None of them, no context to it. It's gonna take, or it's very tricky with the fingers. Gotta pay attention to that one. Next, adult learning is promoted when the learner's prior knowledge is activated prior to learning new knowledge. Yep, there you go. You're gonna teach something. Let's have them play the chord that's close to it a bunch of times, so we're bringing it out. Let's have them shoot the pistol or shoot the rifle the way that we have, the way that they know how to shoot it before you give them this advanced technique. The learner observes the demonstration. The learner applies new knowledge, demonstration, application are based on real world problems. The learner integrates new knowledge into everyday practices. You gotta finish with that real world thing. Gotta finish rollin'. Soldiers must acquire the habits of lifelong learners. Soldiers must become expert, self-motivated learners who are capable of asking good questions and possess digital literacy skills that enable them to find, evaluate, and employ online knowledge, whether in learning or operational environments. This is pretty focused on the army. But the fact that we need to have people with the mindset of being a lifelong learner, that's gonna pay off in spades inside of our organization. If we got people on the front lines that do a certain task and they are continually trying to learn how to do that task better and what technology they can use and how they can make it more efficient, that's what we need. If we have a person that's not a lifelong learner and they're just doing what we told them to do or the way it's always been done, we're not making progress. Army training, education, and experience domains require a holistic integration and clearly defined paths to achieve outcomes at each stage of a soldier's career. The army's learning model can facilitate a lifelong learning culture by encouraging critical thinking, complex problem solving, and providing tools that allow soldiers to access relevant performance related information. And by the way, that's what we have to force ourselves to do. We have to, force might be a strong word, but we have to pay attention to it. We have to be forced, as instructors, we have to force people to do things that they wouldn't normally do. So like me working on triangles in Jiu Jitsu or Darshtroaks, moves that I just don't do, but I need to do them. Finger picking on guitar, I suck at it. But should I do it? Yes, absolutely. This is why we have people do offhand shooting and mag changes. People don't wanna do that. They're not like, hell yeah, let's do some offhand. Most people aren't. They wanna hear that steel plate go ping and they wanna hear that thing go beep ping. They wanna hear, they wanna get it. As a leader, forcing yourself to either be quiet if you have a tendency to talk too much or forcing yourself to speak because you're usually too quiet. You gotta force yourself. Using words you don't normally use. You wanna prove your vocabulary. You can't just look at the vocabulary. You gotta force yourself to integrate these new words to expand your vocabulary. And then finally it says, well the last thing I wanna cover from this document. The continuous adaptive learning model is not static but is responsive to operational changes and evolving trends and learning technologies and methods. It's important to frame the things that you're doing in life as training. Kind of everything is training. And there's a whole philosophy like the Russian weightlifting thing. It was all, it was like all practice. And everything is practice. That being said, you have to be intentional on what you're doing as well, which to me intentional, the yoga fufu word. What it means to me is plan, execute debrief. That's what intentional is. We're gonna have a plan, we're gonna execute the plan and we're gonna debrief. Even real time. As you train, you should be doing that. What do I need to adjust as an instructor right now? Is this too little? Is this too much? Are they over trained? Are we at the point of diminishing returns? Which you can get to from time to time. But you have to be paying attention to that. You have to be intentional. What's my plan for today? Now, can you say, hey, plan for today is we're gonna do six hard rounds. And you get out there, you see everyone lagging and by round three, you see people like, they're over trained. Can you make an adjustment? Absolutely. Did you reach a point of diminishing returns? Perhaps. That's what we have to do. To both be lifelong learners ourselves and be able to teach. So that other people can learn. Life is training. So go get after it. And with that, speaking of getting after it, we are shooting, running, lifting, boxing, surfing, playing guitar. Sure. How's the ukulele coming? Clunky. How many hours a day do you practice? Zero hours. I've been off it for a while. Bro, I taught you two quarts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you were pretty good at them. I, yeah, you know. I got into digital music making too, by the way. Yeah, that's true. I know, we're tracking. But I'm kind of off that. How come? I'm not off it. Do you need more riffs from me? I haven't. Yeah, I do need more riffs from you. Actually, it's been like two weeks since I've done it. But yes, I'm always into something though. Actually, you know what I'm into right now? Learning. Yeah, it's learning what I picked up. And I'm actually, it only took like two days. Solving Rubik's Cube. Have you ever called it Rubik's Cube before? Yeah, there's like a technique to it. Actually, more than one, there's a bunch of techniques to it. Yeah, it's like, what are they, it's an algorithm or it's a, what is it called? Like to get that piece back, there's a certain protocol that you can use to memorize these various protocols. Yeah, you know, yeah, yeah, basically. Yeah, there's the first method is, I think it's called layer by layer. So you go, it's like, you know, yeah. And so there's like a little method to move any one piece. Yeah, and you memorize a protocol. Yeah, per step. Right. Yeah, yeah. And because I remember seeing when I was a kid, because I was around with those things, I think when they were invented. And when people would get into the solving them, you know, of course I learned how to like turn it quarter way and then break the piece off and disassemble the whole thing and put it back together. You know? It's a little bit different. I learned how to just manhandle that thing and overcome. So how long is it taking you to solve the Rubik's Cube? My best time layer by layer, which is not the speed way to do it. Layer by layer is a minute 59. And do you have your kids into it as well? Yeah. Are they beating you? My son, no. Okay. You can get easy, you have kids nine over here. Jesus. Sorry, sorry. Why you over here having them beat me all of a sudden? It's my freaking jam right now. Man, leave me alone. Nah, it's, it's, you got a furl commit to it. It's not like you're going to learn it in one day and then okay, you know how now, you know? But you said two days. Yeah, because I nerded out on it. Like basically to the point where within that two days, my wife was already mad at me because I had, I have like four Rubik's cubes now. There's like one in every room, you know, kind of a thing. So like if I'm not doing anything or if I'm quote unquote done with the things that I have to do, I'm like on it, you know? So she's like, is this going to be your thing now? You know, like chess was for that, for that flurry. But so I'd nerd it out on it. So that's why I picked it up or whatever. But yeah, my son, he knows how to do like the first two layers, you know, but it starts to get progressively a little bit more complex. There's more moves that you have to make. Exactly, right. So you get to a certain stage. It's like, okay, you got to do this and then, and it's based on like the configuration. So you got to react to it, you know? So it's not like, oh, you just do it and it does it. It's not that you got to do the right thing. And it gets a little bit more complex. I remember seeing like a basically some kind of instructional and it would just have like arrows, like down, down, down, right, right, left, up, across or whatever. Yeah. And is that still a thing? I've seen those before and there's way more to it than that. A lot of times those, especially if it's on like Instagram or something, that's like if you take a solved Rubik's cube and you want it to look like a American flag or something, you know, like little tricks you can do, but to solve it, no, because it, it, those moves are going to kind of depend on what you're presented with, you know? But there is a move. There is moves. Yep, yep, yep. Yeah, for example, yeah. That you kind of memorize. Yeah. So like clockwise, clockwise, counterclockwise. And you, but at the same time, it's right top, right? You know, like, yeah, yeah, there's that. But then when you do it, when you finish it, you have to evaluate what you're presented with. And then you do another series of moves. Another series of moves or move on to the next one. So I'm saying it just depends on what you get. And it all depends on where it started. Yeah, it's a thing, but it gets good fun. Nonetheless, yes. Well, it's good learning. It is, yeah. It makes your, you know, it's weird. Like I think as you get older, I'm more in touch with this where, you know, like this idea of warming up, right? Let's say before you lift like heavy, you go through a warm up process. You can't just jump under the bar, start lifting heavy, right? Cause your body's like, oh, I don't think your body can even produce the force yet. So I'm saying you gotta activate the whole system. But doing that Rubik's cube and sometimes even Chastain, whatever, it'll activate your brain. So you'll feel like way more like loose and like sharp during the day. For this kind of activity, you need fuel. It's true. And I recommend Jocko fuel, but I'm not the only one. There's a dude that does reviews and he, he's actually a San Diego dude and he did a review of brain power. And he did like a memorization, memorization tasks and measured his effectiveness. And it was much more effective on brain power. Straight up. And he, you know, it was, it was cool because he did it. And then he like took brain power and then he's like, oh yeah, he's like, I feel, you know, cause you do feel brain power. You start feeling all sharp. You start, you start seeing like numbers and you start understanding things more clearly. And so then he just rolls out and does his memorization task and wins like beats his time by a lot. And so that's pretty, pretty dope. Brain power. I take brain power and I have to speak. And especially when I'm doing Q and A cause boy you get sharp. So check out jockofield.com. If you have a Rubik's cube to solve, if you have a memorization game to play, if you have a meeting that you got to present in, get yourself some brain power. Keep it in, keep it. Like I have some in my back at all times, at all times, didn't get much sleep, brain power. Feeling a little groggy, brain power. Need to perform brain power. You'll feel it. Jockofield.com also we have protein, we have energy. I'm on my second go of the day. One before Jiu Jitsu, one before this podcast. Is that illegal? You know what I'm saying? Is that illegal? It's not, technically it's not. Now, am I getting an advantage? Yes I am. Yes I am. And also a muscle drive. We're in the muscle drive activity? Good. I'll tell you what, for some reason muscle drive, it's got the amino acids in it. And for some reason it makes me feel like a little full. Like your body's getting something that it needs. Do you ever have that with salt? Like sometimes, like today, trained real hard. I know you didn't. But hydrate, cause you're missing the electrolytes. And sometimes you just want that. But it's something you want food. But if you have the muscle drive, that's kind of one of the reasons we made it was for fasting slash cutting weight. So for cutting weight, you know, get yourself some muscle drive. I fucking need to cut some weight. Do you? I feel like I do. Jack, I thought you looked really actually kind of thin. Jack, jockelfield.com, protein, everything that you need. Also originusa.com. We're training Jiu Jitsu, at least some of us are. Yeah, sure. Some of us. How come you didn't train today? Today I was caught up, you know, I got a lot of stuff I gotta do. Playing Rubik's cube. Well, you know, of course. Has your foot still hurt or whatever that was? My foot is not sore, it's hurting more or not. And my knee is better too. So yeah, yeah. I had the strangest calf oddity. Like I don't think I've ever hurt a calf before. Yeah, it seems kind of weird. It's a weird thing. And I'm not talking like, oh, I got footlocked and someone cranked and I hurt my calf. Like Dean Lister just getting you on an outside footlock, just leaning into it. And you're like, yeah, I have basically a bruise on my calf. Now I'm not talking about getting calf kicked, which is another just way to get. This is a random no combat engagement. And I had this, like my foot just felt tight. And then believe it or not, I was lifting, doing some dead lifts and all of a sudden it just. And my point in telling you this is I was like, ah, maybe I shouldn't train today. But you know what? To maintain the discipline, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna do what I can. And guess what I ended up doing? All of it. Got some. Was able to just compensate a little bit, no factor. That's what we're doing. So we're training Jiu Jitsu. We should be. By the way, Jiu Jitsu is fascinating. It's fascinating. But you need a gi when you train Jiu Jitsu. Origin USA makes communist free gis, communist free rash guards, 100% made in America. But we're not doing Jiu Jitsu all the time. That's why we make jeans. We make pants. We make shorts. We make everything that you need to wear on your body. Origin USA.com, 100% American made from American made materials. That's what we're doing. The boots, the Chelsea boots or whatever. Are those all in freaking stock or what? I mean, you know, those out. Yes. And we have a very fast production line. So yeah, they're out. They're in stock. And if they're not, if whatever particular size you need happens to not be in stock, it'll get made like in that day or two days. No, yeah, yeah. And it'll be to you stat. 100% American. You will be more patriotic when you put your boots on. You'll be a little bit prouder to be an American. Factually. So originusa.com, let's defeat slavery, tyranny, and communism. One pair of blue jeans at a time. Brothers, I was just gonna say one pair of pants at a time. Must go. Hell yeah. Also, chocolate store, discipline equals freedom, shirts and hats and hoodies on there as well. Summertime, coming up, is summer here? I heard Thiel Vaughn say June 1st. June 1st. Is summertime. Yeah, that's what it feels like. So if Thiel's saying it, gonna say we're probably pretty good to go on that one. Summertime, hell yeah. Summertime has hit. So yeah, maybe index on the tank tops or summer. We got tank tops in. Send me a couple tank tops, will you? All right, I got you. Every time I say that and you say I got you, I never get shit. Well, let's not say never, but let's say rarely. Very rarely. From time to time. Can you throw me some tank tops? How about this? I promise I'll send you some tank tops. Promise. Promise over here. What, do I am I gonna have to remind you again? I got you, 100%. 100% Okay, got you. What's the delivery time? Anyway, from 12 hours to, well you're here, so yeah. Could be 12 hours. I sent out some shorts to Shannon Gugarty. Because of you by the way. I guess you like shamed him. Cause he had some old shorts on. And you were like, bro, hold those shorts or whatever. Dude, I got some old shorts too. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, I'm with you. The ones I use, you gave me and they're from, yeah, back in the middle of the day. Very durable. Anyway, nonetheless. We got joclestore.com. That's where you can get these things. But the reason I'm kind of understanding, if it's summer right now. So we got Fourth of July coming up, kind of in a way, in a month or so. So we got this year's Fourth of July shirt. Being ready. It'll be ready. But if you want to get the jump on that first, that first run, that first dish and not risk it being sold out when you go on there, you gotta sign up for the email list. Don't put your email in there on the website on the front, the bottom there. Don't worry, I won't spam. But you will get the heads up. So you can get your first dibs on that one. Those ones seem to sell out quick. Yeah, they do. Yeah. So anyway, there's a lot of stuff on there. Also a subscription scenario called the short locker. Get a new design every month. It's fun. There's this, I called it a mosaic, but like this month's one. It's a doll. It's like a famous artist that he paints this thing. It's a picture, but when you look at it from far away, it's like, it looks like Abraham Lincoln. But when you look at something else, when you look up close, anyway, it's that. But it's something else, not Abe Lincoln. Something else. That's this month's one. It's pretty good. It came out good. It's a mystery. You gotta go on jockelsdor.com. You can click on there, you can see what it is. The sneak peek or whatever. But yeah, it's all in jockelsdor. Some good stuff. Right on, right on. We got some bucks. Put your legs on by Rob Jones. Need to lead by Dave Burke. We got steaks. Primalbeef.com. Steaks from the Shenandoah Valley. Sean Glass out there making some primal beef. Primalbeef.com. Also Coloradocraftbeef.com. We got the best steaks and great people. So get in there. Primalbeef.com, Coloradocraftbeef.com. Ashland Front, we have the muster in San Diego, July 8th through the 10th, 2026. This is our flagship event. By the way, this is a leadership conference where you learn the skills of leadership. Come and check that out. If you want, we also have extremotorship.com where we teach leadership online. So you can check that out as well. Also, if you wanna help service members active and retired, you wanna help their families, you wanna help the Gold Star family, check out Mark Lee's mom, momily, check out her charity organization. It's absolutely incredible. If you wanna donate or you wanna get involved, go to americasmightywarriors.org. Also check out heroesandhorses.org and Jimmy May's organization beyondthebrotherhood.org. We got Warriors in Need. So check that one out. And strongholdrescue.org. Got a bunch of people out there doing amazing things. So check those out. If you wanna connect with us, check out jockel.com. On social media, I'm at jockelwillingecos.ecotrals. Just be careful because you don't wanna learn things that you weren't intentionally wanting to learn. We have to be careful. That's called brainwashing. And your algorithm is doing that to you. So don't let it, be careful. Thanks to all of our military personnel who are right now, this moment, staged around the world. Thank you for continually learning so you can stay ahead of our nation's enemies. Also thanks to our police law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, as well as all other first responders. Thanks for learning and training and adapting every day to keep us safe at home. And everyone else out there speaking of learning, let's remember to keep learning. Try new things, try new technology, try new words, try new moves, try new chords on the guitar or the ukulele or the Rubik's cube. Try new tools and do everything you can to get better every single day. And you do that by going out there and getting after it. That's all we've got for tonight. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko, out.